Important Note:

Opinions are fun. My friends tell me I am someone with lots of opinions and that's fine since I don't get mad at others when they disagree with me. In this same spirit I am interested in hearing yours views as long as you are able to share your views without boiling over. I look forward to hearing from you. I tend to write in the form of short essays most of the time, but contributions do not need to be in this same format or size. Some of the content here will date itself pretty quickly, other content may be virtually timeless, this is for the reader to judge.

Displaying 1 - 1 of 1

Where Did the Trust Go?                                                                                    

Posted at: Dec/05/2023 : Posted by: Mel

Related Category: Perspectives, Politics & Gov, Watching America,

The expulsion of George Santos from Congress in December 2023 for his litany of fabrications, lies and potential crimes is a major step towards rebuilding the reputation of that institution. Yes, it would have been better for him to resign, but this vote for expulsion sends a clear message that even in our permissive age, not every scandal can be survived. Undoubtedly, many of our American institutions would benefit from a similar ethical cleansing for the sake of rebuilding some public trust.

In 1965 Biden plagiarized 5 pages from a law review article without giving attribution. In 1988, Joe Biden was forced out of the presidential race for having borrowed major portions of speeches from Neil Kinnock and Robert Kennedy amongst others. Additionally, in that same year Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his nomination to the Supreme Court when it was discovered he had smoked marijuana while an associate professor at Harvard Law. Adhering to laws and ethical standards appears to have meant more in 1988 than now.

In 2023, Biden is president of the United States, though he still indulging in frequent fanciful claims and stories we would normally only tolerate from our befuddled grandfather. Marijuana is now widely legal and one of the industry’s top lobbyists is John Boehner, a former speaker of the House of Representatives. In 35 years, a lot has changed in America, but the collapse of moral and ethical standards in our halls of governance should not be on the things that have changed.

About being expelled from Congress:

Expelling a member of Congress takes a two-thirds majority vote. The last time a House lawmaker was expelled was more than two decades ago, when the late former Rep. Jim Traficant, D-Ohio, was voted out of Congress in 2002. Prior to his ousting, Traficant had been convicted of 10 felony counts, including racketeering and taking bribes.

Santos has not been convicted of a crime, but he has been indicted on 23 counts related to wire fraud, identity theft, credit card fraud, and falsification of records. Santos has been accused of using campaign funds on a number of luxury goods and personal treatments such as Botox. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges he is currently facing.

It takes a 2/3 vote to expel a representative from the House. The 311 to 114 vote was strongly bipartisan, although slightly more Republicans voted to keep Santos than to oust him. It is important to note that the margin of majority in the House for Republicans is thin, so expelling Santos is a risk to the Republican majority while still a clear statement about the importance of ethics and public trust.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, argued to reporters that expelling Santos now would take away the presumption of innocence he is entitled to. He also referenced Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who was recently accused of taking bribes from and acting in the interest of Egyptian officials, and the fact that he is currently not being facing expulsion from the Senate. The presumption of innocence is an important one in America. Virtually all previous expulsions have followed actual criminal convictions, but the preponderance of evidence was substantial against Santos and were it not for political ego, the smart move would have been to resign. Only time will tell what if anything the Senate does with Bob Menendez.

My wife and I not only raised our own children, but through their friends had some influence on a lot of young people. Through all the lives we influenced we maintained one consistent standard and lesson; “Consequence Matter.” For us this meant that if you do good things, you can anticipate good consequence. Conversely, if you do bad things, you can expect bad consequence. Unfortunately, across our society these concepts are not universally accepted or enforced, especially in government and journalism.

In journalism, professional face-plants abound, from Russiagate to COVID-19 hysteria, and more recently a completely bogus story about Israel bombing a hospital in Gaza that the New York Times sourced to Hamas terrorists. …. Zero consequences.

In our public schools, test scores are plummeting throughout the country and, instead of improving education, many districts simply lower the standards, often while teaching a radical progressive agenda on race and gender that many parents find objectionable in lieu of basic skills like reading writing and math. These same educators win awards and union bosses like Randi Weingarten keep getting a hefty paycheck with zero consequences.

Pick nearly any institution and you will see the same pattern, but there is something else you will also see. In 1979, 34% of Americans surveyed by Gallup had a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in Congress. Today that number is an anemic 8%. In the same period, newspapers saw a drop from 51% to just 18% and public schools went from 53% to 26%.

Another word for confidence is trust, and today we live in a country where vast majorities do not trust the government, the news, or their kids' school. The institutions seem to not function against the same standards of consequence the rest of us live our daily lives by. This is not a sustainable path and may be one of the foundational elements of so much public discourse. Another way to think about trust in our institutions is as trust in a shared framework of reality, and without that we have no way of addressing festering problems such as education, or the southern border, or crime. This does not mean we need to march in lockstep expecting the same outcome.

We have no shared set of facts to put confidence in. Anything we disagree with can be dismissed by assuming it is misleading or offered in bad faith…. ” Fake News.” There is no substitute for trust in institutions, no technology or fact-checking system can hold them to account, and after all, why would we trust those any more than we do the ivory towers and halls of power?

Trust is not given freely, rather trust must be earned by the institutions themselves, and the only way to do that is with much-higher standards. Many of us as part of our professional experience need to attend annual training in various flavors of ethics and conduct. While well intentioned, this training really only teaches us what we are not seeing from the institutions we are supposed to trust.

If someone does get caught plagiarizing work, reporting a false narrative or miss using public funds a good public relations firm can make it go away faster than the next news cycle.

Maybe in the America of 1988, Biden’s plagiarism was a red flag – if he was capable of that, might he have been capable of other dishonest acts, such as, I don’t know, say, influence peddling?

Maybe, if you print a false account of Israel committing a war crime based solely on the word of Hamas butchers who burned babies alive a few days earlier, you shouldn’t have a byline ever again.

Maybe if you are leading an education system that struggles to teach kids to read or do basic math, you should be shown the door, not the glittering stairway to greater administrative power.

Maybe that high standard worked exactly as intended in 1988, and we need something similar now.

I’m an optimist at heart. I truly believe that expelling Santos is a good first step on a long journey. Menendez in the Senate should likely be next along with a host of others.
In our day-to-day lives we deal continuously with moral and ethical standards. We expect the grocery store to only sell meat that is safe to eat and our mechanic to not lie to us. When they fail at either effort, we take our business elsewhere. Trust is seldom given freely but must be earned. I would like to believe our public institutions including government, education and news understand the importance of trust and what they have to do ethically and morally to earn it back. But maybe they don’t know enough about ethics and trust to care.

Comments (0)                                                                                                                                                    [Add Comment]