Light-heavy-worth the read

I came across a piece entitled, “We Love the Pentagon’s ‘Encylopedia of Ethical Failure’” which is on medium.com.

The piece notes what we have all seen that the last few years have seen many ethical challenges for the military. Likely we know more about the specific cases because of The Internet and Google.

Individually, the cases are all bad news. The good news is that authorities often catch and punish government cheats, thieves and frauds. Penalties for ripping off the American taxpayer range from huge fines to hard time in prison.

The piece links to and has excerpts from the Encyclopedia, with a comment that, “It might be the most light-hearted official report anyone’s ever written about criminals.”

The encyclopedia is put out by the DoD Standards of Conduct Office as a learning and teaching tool. For us, it is both interesting and entertaining to read, but it some ways a research tool for comparison purposes, “According to the Standards of Conduct official I spoke with, the encyclopedia has been a great success. Other government agencies even like it. “They like the realistic examples,” he said. “It also helps address the concern that people hear about complaints … but they don’t often hear the final result.”

It’s true—one particularly useful aspect of The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure is its description of perpetrators’ punishments. The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failures is approaching 200 pages. Two-hundred aggravating and amusing pages. The office most recently updated the book in October. The big update usually comes in July.

You might take a look if you need to lighten the day.