AN ESSAY ON ETHICS

RE: Roger Lisi
Office of the Pennsylvania Commissioner of Insurance

Thoughts on ethics (a mini essay on Commissioner Ario's decision to not ask, or inform 142,000 seniors)

It is exceedingly easy and convenient to tilt the scale in favor of convenience rather than take the high ground. A person in public office might thus be cajoled by an easy solution rather than struggle with a more ethical one.

Or perhaps the official is more easily tempted by power, the Powerful holding out a garland of roses. Of course one can never navigate the motives of another's mind, never know its true intention.

Does the exhilaration of high decision corrupt? Very decidedly so. Just look at the parade before ethics committees! And the pleas of jurisdiction, and the spread of responsibility to the thickness of a micrometer.

An official in a power position may have disturbing thoughts over having made the right decision, the more moral one. A decision that settles calmly in the gut.

A decision that throws a calculated blanket over disclosure, may be necessarily legal; but is it the right decision?

This is a measure of the distance one will go to do the right thing.

Bill Silverman