Human beings are born with the consciousness of knowing right from wrong. When making choices people use ethics, values, and morals to guide them throughout their daily lives. So what makes a person choose to commit an ethical wrong against another person? Or what makes a person do what is ethically right? One way to help people make the right decisions is to have an ethics committee in each state that provides laws with ethic guidelines to regulate behavior and consequences. Most government agencies have an ethics committee that they send all alleged violations, but the committee does not have the authority to send someone to jail. Each state should pass a new bill, so if an ethical violation is committed then the penalty should be severe enough that the person who committed the ethical wrong would not want to commit another violation.
Not many people agree with a new bill to enforce every violating a person can commit. Richard Foglesong, a professor of politics at Rollins College, disagrees with a new ethical bill that lays out the law in detail. Foglesong states, “First [the government] should not begin by identifying every imaginable ethical violation and writing a law against it. Rather, they should take an educational approach, adopting an ethics mission statement that is value-based rather than punitive, saying what public officials should do instead of what they should avoid.” The mission statement would be a start, but we still need more. After we come to an educated conclusion that a value of ethics was violated, then what? What good is a mission statement going to be, if we have no law to penalize the violators? What about the actual law that a person has violated? We need to hold the violator responsible for hurting ...
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...uld be less second offenses because people would think twice about the consequences. We the people need to come together and push the legislature to make a bill for the ethics committee. The bill would stop the corruption in office, make people deal fairly with one another, and there would be fewer violations.
Works Cited
Deslatte, Aaron. “Ethics Reform Stirs Heated Debate in Senate.” Orlando Sentinel 30 Mar. 2011:
A3. Newsbank. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.
“Ethics Rules Need Kick – County’s Reforms Lack Touch Enforcement.” Editorial. Orlando
Sentinel 5 June 2010: A16. Newsbank. Web. 1 Apr. 2011.
Foglesong, Richard. “Lessons to Share from Ethics Reform in Winter Park.” Orlando Sentinel
17 Dec. 2007: A23. Newsbank. Web. 1 Apr. 2011.
“Samson Scandal Leaves Stain on the Legislature.” Editorial. St. Petersburg Times 2 Apr. 2011:
4A. Newsbank. Web. 2 Apr. 2011.
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