Legal vs. Ethical

I swore I wouldn't use this blog to tackle serious topics or advertise my political beliefs but here we are again and I just can't help myself. As I was watching the news this evening (always an uplifting half hour of my life) the lead story was a discussion about the fact that our wonderful Governor is currently collecting TWO incomes from the state. One, a $50,000 pension from his time at DMU and two, a $130,000 salary for being the governor. Does anyone have a problem with this besides me????

Now the point made repeatedly by those representing The Mustache and the Republican view on the situation is that what he is doing is not illegal and so should not be a big deal. This however brings me to the title of this post. Just because something is not illegal does not always make it ethical.

On the heels of a speech given when he took office stating that we would all have to make sacrifices to get things back on track and announcing just a couple of weeks ago that he wants to provide no additional funding for education for the next two years the public finds out that he is collecting a whapping $180,000 annually from our state.

I think this should cause all of us to pause and consider who our Governor is looking out for. I find it hard to believe that he has the best interest of Iowans everywhere at heart when people across the state are loosing their jobs, unable to find another one, and struggling to make ends meet and he is collecting that much money from our state as payment for screwing us even more.

And what concerns me more than the lack of caring over this particular issue is that our definition of what is considered right and wrong has been reduced to legal versus illegal. Ethics are more than just legal versus illegal. Part of being an ethical person is holding yourself to a higher standard of conduct than our basic laws designed to protect people from harm. To be an ethical person you have to go beyond simply following the law. It requires behaving in a manner that takes the effect of your actions on others into consideration.

I firmly believe that if we are ever going to get ourselves out of the mess that we have created, we have to move away from the mentality that it is every man or woman for themselves and move back towards an attitude of helping your neighbor, and being there to give each other a hand up. And when times are tough all of us taking a smaller hit rather than dumping it all on one person or group of people. When we as a society and our leaders in government begin to behave with this attiude, then and only then will be able to stop spinning our wheels and get moving.

I will leave you with this final thought, since I know everyone that reads this are law abiding citizens, I challenge you all to be the most ETHICAL people that you can be.