Month: January 2006

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

One could almost feel sorry for Wal-Mart. For all its vaunted IT structure, a theft as easy to spot as this, and so high up the ladder. Read the CNN story about former vice-chair Thomas Coughlin’s guilty plea. For falsely obtaining and using half a million bucks’ worth of store gift cards!

Just got to wonder what’s going on.

But
then again, this is the same company that routinely hires contractors
who use illegal aliens in near-slave-labor conditions…has a long
history of generating environmental lawsuits…exports jobs from the US
to China by demanding its suppliers cut prices substantially every
year…uses the US government to subsidize its employees’ healthcare,
and even then tries to get rid of workers who are most likely to submit
health claims. Oh yes, and runs roughshod over the local populace that
doesn’t want them. In my own town, we’re engaged in a battle to block a
Super-Wal-Mart that by the company’s own studies will completely
gridlock the main artery between the two college towns on either side
of us. There are already three Wal-Marts within ten miles of my house,
including one half a mile from this new project (that they will close
https://www.blogger.com/img/gl.spell.gifand likely abandon) and an
existing Super Wal-Mart two towns south. The proposal is to pave over
50+ acres of farmland and wetland with the largest building ever
constructed in our town (that’s a town with several shopping malls and
a large sports/concert venue). And did I mention that our town, Hadley,
Massachusetts, is considered to have the absolute best farmland in the
entire country?

The list of what’s wrong with Wal-Mart could go on much longer; there are several books on the subject.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll praise Wal-Mart when praise is due. It’s happened once so far, in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

But I do find it very enlightening to compare its business practices with Costco’s. Not surprisingly, Costco’s bottom line is more attractive, too.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

Some historical perspective on spying, as recorded in the New York times obit for Frank Wilkinson, McCarthyite scapegoat and First Amendment activist who went to jail to defend his principles

But
Mr. Wilkinson was not finished with the federal government. When he
discovered, in 1986, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been
compiling files on him, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request
for their release.

He was sent 4,500 documents. But he sued for
more, and the next year the F.B.I. released an additional 30,000
documents, and then 70,000 two years later. Eventually, there were
132,000 documents covering 38 years of surveillance, including detailed
reports of Mr. Wilkinson’s travel arrangements and speaking schedules,
and vague and mysterious accusations of an assassination attempt
against Mr. Wilkinson in 1964.

Meanwhile, yet
another right-wing extremist, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has entered a
plea bargain and promised to implicate a number of his buddies in
Congress. He admits to influence peddling–and former Republican
Senator Ben Knighthorse Campbell accuses him of trying to rig elections
on Indian reservations, as well. Abramoff has close ties to former
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, current House Speaker Dennis Hastert,
Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, and other ultra-right honchos. The Wall
Street Journal has said the number of US Representatives implicated
could be as high as 60, most of them on the Republican side, but so
far, only Robert Ney of Ohio has been specifically named. (Sorry, WSJ’s
website structure doesn’t allow me to copy the link)

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By Posted on Posted in Events, General Commentary, Shel's Personal Life

​​​​This blog was launched on December 29, 2004, which means it just
turned one year old. So allow me to wallow in a bit of reflection,
please.

I’d delayed blogging for a long time, because I’d
thought that to be taken seriously, a blogger needed to post daily. I
even tried to organize a group of non-blogging marketing pundits to
each take a day of the week in a communal blog. That effort went
nowhere, but I think at least three of us now blog regularly. Once I
realized that many bloggers post once a week or less, I knew I could
handle it.

I started the blog with a few agendas. I wanted to:

  • Create a platform for my ideas and rants, of course
  • Open a doorway to a syndicated op-ed newspaper column (a dream I’ve had for decades) Support the Business Ethics Pledge campaign
  • Become more widely known in the worlds of business ethics and progressive politics
  • Develop new readers who would then buy my books, subscribe to my newsletter, etc.

    And
    in fact, in the spring, I went through my blog entries, selected seven
    or so, polished them, and submitted them to four different newspaper
    syndicates–all of whom turned me down. But I’ll keep trying.

    The
    blog has veered away more often than I’d have expected from what I’d
    originally thought of as its core topic: business ethics. But I already
    have a platform to talk about that: my newsletter, Positive Power of Principled Profit.

    It’s
    also hard to tell what impact it has, or where people are learning
    about it. I get very few comments, and many of them are from people
    I’ve steered to the blog via a post to a discussion list or one of my
    newsletters.

    So, this year, one of my goals is to build more traffic to the blog, which will be mirrored both at blogger.com and on my own PrincipledProfit.com site.

    There
    have been a few signers of the Pledge that I believe found me via the
    blog, and a few useful contacts. Hopefully, over the next 12 months,
    I’ll be able to know for certain that the blog is helping to shape the
    discourse.

    And meanwhile, there’s revamping the PrinProfit site,
    hosting my radio show (which I hope to syndicate as well), getting
    publicity for the Pledge, selling more foreign rights, and tons of
    other stuff. somehow, I find time to do at least some of it, between
    client copywriting and consulting projects.

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