Category: Ethics in Government

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government Tagged with , , , , , ,

According to Democracy Now yesterday, big polluters including BP and Dow have been exempted from environmental oversight on more than 179,000 stimulus-funded projects. You can read the entire very short item here.

My first reaction is “say it ain’t so, Joe.” But a little Googling shows it’s actually worse. According to the Center for Public Integrity’s original statement, the Obama administration was so eager to get stimulus-funded projects into the pipeline that it even granted a waiver for BP’s notorious Texas City refinery (site of a horrible accident in 2005), and claims…

…the administration has devised a speedy review process that relies on voluntary disclosures by companies to determine whether stimulus projects pose environmental harm. Corporate polluters often omitted mention of health, safety, and environmental violations from their applications. In fact, administration officials told the Center they chose to ignore companies’ environmental compliance records in making grant decisions and issuing NEPA exemptions, saying they considered such information irrelevant. [emphasis added]

Surely, there are better ways to restore our economy.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

Massachusetts Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker has gone over the edge. Rather than attacking incumbent governor Deval Patrick on his record, Charles Baker pulled a number out of a hat and claimed Patrick could raise the income tax from 5.3 to 7 percent. Patrick has never announced such a proposal.

According to the Boston Herald story,

During a press conference at Fenway Park [map], Baker said he felt comfortable with his conclusion, which he printed on a poster that was used as a prop, because of Patrick’s record of passing tax increases and the lack of specific plans from Patrick to solve next year’s $2 billion projected budget gap.

Here’s what Baker has done in my household: I have been weighing the merits of voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, whose politics are much closer to mine than Deval Patrick’s, or voting for Patrick, the Democrat, because he could win and would be far better than his two other rivals. Patrick has been a decent, but uninspiring and sometimes clumsy governor. Baker not only has views I find icky, but this latest faux pas has me questioning his core ethics (and where is the outrage from Fox News, dare I ask?) Cahill, the independent candidate, has made a series of remarks that make me extremely uncomfortable, including some that I and many others interpret as bigoted.

Thus, between hearing a recent Patrick speech and finding myself agreeing with almost everything he said, and my deep concerns about living under either a Baker or Cahill administration, I will be marking my ballot Tuesday for Democratic governor Deval Patrick. Charles Baker can take at least some of the credit for my vote.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Diversity, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,

Came across this article, “Why Are The Feds Banning E-Readers?” by Pat Archbold, on National Catholic Register:

Sometimes the federal government does something so laughably moronic, that one has to stop and ask the question “Are they really that dumb or is something else going on?”

Here is the setup. Recently a number of universities around the country decided to take a look at using some modern technology in the classroom in an effort to save money. These universities took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks. As you know, many people now use e-readers like the Kindle or the Nook as a replacement for traditional printed books. There are many reasons for this including cost, environmental impact, and convenience. Further, anyone who has gone to college understands the high cost of textbooks and would likely support any way to reduce this large expense.

Here is the pathetic punchline. For conducting this experiment with the Kindle, Obama’s Department of Justice threatened legal action against the universities. The ridiculous contention of the Obama administration is that the Kindle and e-readers violate the Americans With Disabilities Act. Why? Because the blind can’t easily use them.

Now the first thing that would pop into the minds of anybody with a third grade education and that does not work for the government is this simple question. If e-readers discriminate against the blind, do not traditional textbooks discriminate equally? The obvious answer is yes.

The obvious solution, in my mind, is to require the universities to offer a suitable alternative for blind and visually impaired users—NOT to prohibit the devices entirely. E-book texts are easily converted to voice, so the only issue is giving those who don’t see a way to navigate into the right e-book.

But his article, and the comments it drew, amazed me with their various “evil conspiracy” theories. Yes, there were some that argued rationally about the legitimate difficulties blind users have with these devices (and pointing out that they have much more difficulty with a printed book). But there were also a number of comments speculating that this is a way for the Obama administration to control dissent and silence conservative voices.

My question to them: what have you been smoking?

Here’s Archbold:

I posit another and perhaps more nefarious reason. I think that the federal government is adamantly opposed to the use of e-readers as an alternative to textbooks for fear of loss of control. This loss of control is not so much at the university level but at much younger levels. The universities just happened to be the first ones to try.

Here’s one of the comments, from “Frank”:

A great deal of control over curriculum nationwide is exerted through textbook control. Education is critical to progressives. Remember, those who control education, control the culture. (Now , think of Obama’s childhood development, i.e. Indonesian grade school;, contact with Frank Mitchell Davis during high school years;, professors at Occidental College and Columbia University;, Alinsky acolytes in Chicago; social/political training in Hyde Park, Chicago South Side; Chicago political cauldron. Put it all together, what else can you expect but what we have experienced since January 20, 2009?)

To me, the ruling that e-readers are out of compliance with ADA—and I speak as a disability advocate who served on my city’s official Disability Awareness committee for six years—is nothing more than the typical heavy-handed over-response of large government entities. No malfeasance, just bureaucratic inability to see past a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s the same mentality that, here in Massachusetts under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40B, allows developers to ram through inappropriate and out-of-character housing projects that violate local zoning, in the name of increasing the ratio of affordable housing. Affordable housing is a worthy goal, and I spent about ten years doing a lot of volunteer work to address that issue—but 40B is a cannon shot fired against a mosquito: the wrong tool, with lots of unintended and undesirable consequences.

The same mentality that thinks every road improvement—even our local bikeway—has to include over-widening, over-straightening, and often removing trees, stone walls, and other vital features.

Big governments are slow and clumsy creatures with limited intelligence, even when they’re headed by very smart people. Over time, we as a society will realize that conditions vary in different locations, and one size really fits no one at all, only breeds resentment.

Progressives can make common cause with the Right on this issue: local control is the preferred alternative whenever practical.

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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Media Ethics, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , ,

Right-wing bloviators spewing bile and calling it “news” have been a fixture on the political scene for quite a few years now. And they’ve had influence far beyond the numbers of “true believers.”

While it’s hard to understand why anyone would pay attention to these mouthy masters of misrepresentation (take that, Spiro Agnew!), we see their influence in the raucous but marginal Tea Party gatherings, in the intransigence of the “Party of NO” in moving any policy agenda forward, and in such incidents as the forcing out of the amazing Van Jones as Obama’s Green Jobs advisor and the defunding of a national community organizing group based on the actions of a couple of idiots (even though most of those approached in the sting refused to go along)–by that logic, we could have defunded Congress centuries ago.

So it’s with gladness that I report that as soon as it became obvious that the widely circulated video of black official Shirley Sherrod making what sounded out of context to be racist remarks–and which forced her unwilling resignation–turned out to be just the opposite–a story of how she overcame her internal racism and did the right thing to help a white family–Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made a public apology and offered her a job again.

The hatemongers lose this round. Now…how aobut revisiting the Van Jones incident.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Peace and War, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , ,

Africa (South Africa, in particular) gave us the Sullivan Principles, which outlined investment strategies to move toward ending apartheid. At the time (1977), I thought it was way too little, way too late, but I came to appreciate that for its time, it was revolutionary: perhaps the first declaration by corporate America that they had a clear role to play in improving conditions around the world. And this was not so long after the US has been involved in such disgusting maneuvers as (to ame just two among dozens of equally awful examples) overthrowing the democratically elected governments of Mossadeq in Iran (1953, in the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) and Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), on behalf of United Fruit)—actions that have had horrific consequences down to the present day in Iran and through at least 1996 in Guatemala.

Now, Ron Robins, of Investing for the Soul, postulates that Africa is on the brink of an explosion in socially responsible investing. It’s a very interesting article, and among his points are these:

Worldwide, SRI now accounts for 1 of every 9 dollars invested. However, even though Africa was a pioneer in this field (not just with the Sullivan Principles but also the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s first-in-the-world SRI index), it has lagged—but rapid growth appears to be imminent.

Go and read it.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

A self-styled “Don Quixote,” Juan Del Rio ran for County Board of Supervisors in a conservative district near San Diego. These are his reflections just before the election (he lost, but the Democrats cumulatively got enough votes to force a November vote).

Guest blog by Juan Del Rio

May 28, 2010

Dear friends and supporters,
There’s a great write-up about my campaign on the front page of today’s La Prensa (Click here to read it). Daniel Muñoz compares me to Don Quixote – he even says I look the part! I’ll take that as a complement. These days, as I watch the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico unfolding, exacerbated by the deceit and greed of multi-national corporations and the failure of our government to protect us and our planet, before, during and after this man-made catastrophe, I think we will need an army of thousands of Quixotes to fix the mess we’re in.

As we move into the final week of my first foray into politics as a candidate, I have my doubts about “fixing the mess” via our election process. This experience has given me a more realistic perspective about how our democracy works, a new respect for those few who go into the electoral battle for the right reasons and a heightened disgust for the deceitful machinations used to manipulate the outcome of our elections. Here are some of the lessons I’ve reluctantly learned over the past few months:

Lesson #1: Elections have little to do with qualifications to perform the job. 

One might think that the job of running our county would require someone well-versed in urban planning and social services, who understands and cares about the present and future ramifications of decisions on human beings and the environment, and who has the proven ability to quickly size up a situation and to propose fair and viable solutions. But that’s not what wins elections. In order to win an election, a candidate must have money, time, connections, charisma and public speaking skills. Actual experience, qualifications and genuine concern are helpful but not essential.

During the course of my career in public service, I have been appalled by the pervasive incompetence of most of our elected officials. Government is supposed to exist to serve the people, but decisions are more often made based on what will advance an official’s political career than what’s the best solution. I understand now why so many unqualified people occupy public office. A campaign should be a job interview where voters get to evaluate which candidate is best qualified to perform the task, but that’s not how it works – see Lessons #2 -4.

Lesson #2: Campaigns cost gobs of money and how you get that money may be limited by the law, but not the true spirit of fairness.

There are only two ways to get the funding you need for a campaign – put in your own money or beg other people for contributions. If you are a working-class person who is running for office because you think you might be able to do a better job than the lying, scheming, arrogant slimeball who is currently in office, the first thing you need to do is to find people willing to give you the money to finance your campaign. Unless they share your altruistic motives, you’ll be hard-press to convince anyone to invest in wistful windmill chasing. That’s why I strongly support Prop 15, which would be the first step toward public campaign financing.

Needless to say, since I am campaigning to represent the needs of the poor (including unemployed and under-employed workers), I haven’t raised much money. I’m painfully aware that my supporters’ $5 contributions are a stretch for them and their faith in me keeps me going, but it won’t cover the cost of yard signs, or mailers, or much else. You might have noticed that there is no candidate statement for Juan del Rio in the Sample Ballot – that’s because it costs $1,310 to have your statement listed (in addition to the $1,430 filing fee). That was my first tip that the odds are decidedly stacked against a candidate who has an intimate understanding of what life is like for the majority of citizens. If you have a few dollars to invest in this campaign, it would really help in these final days. Please send your check to Juan del Rio for Supervisor 2010, 6675 Linda Vista Rd. #2, San Diego, CA 92111 (include your occupation and employer if your check is $100 or more!)

Lesson #3: Campaigning is a full-time job.
If you are a working person who needs to work a full-time job to pay the bills (or like myself, a person holding down two jobs just to make ends meet) you probably shouldn’t even consider running for office. I haven’t had the luxury of time to walk precincts, and to make things worse, many interviews and events are scheduled during the 9-to-5 workday, so participation means the loss of a day’s pay. I can’t help but wonder if these things are planned this way to cull the working class from public life. In any case, I now appreciate the personal sacrifice candidates and their families make to run for office. I think I’ve come a long way in my public speaking skills and I really enjoy talking to voters, especially when I have a conversation with Spanish speakers who are delighted to talk with a bilingual candidate. I can see where this would be much easier if I was retired or wasn’t trying to keep up 2 jobs.

Lesson #4: Anything goes – except, it seems, honesty.
Judging by some of the trickery going on with Ron Roberts, you’d think elections were all about winning and keeping the people in power who will preserve the status quo. Every day I get another slate mailer in my mailbox that makes me furious. These are designed to look like they come from the Democratic Party. They have titles that say “Voter Information Guide for Democrats” and “Democrat Election Guide”. They have almost all Democratic Party candidates featured, so it’s easy to think that the mailer is coming from the Democratic Party. One even said: “OFFICIALLY Featuring Every Statewide Candidate and Proposition Endorsed by the CA DEMOCRATIC PARTY”! The catch is that the Supervisor’s race is NOT a “Statewide” race, and it’s not even a partisan race. So the fact that these mailers all have Ron Roberts listed as the candidate for Board of Supervisors, implying that he is: 1. a Democrat and 2. endorsed by the Democratic party, is as close to outright fraud as you can possibly get without getting arrested. Unless a voter is actively involved in politics, they probably won’t realize that they are being deliberately misled. That’s what money buys you in politics. But what does it say about Ron Roberts, that he has to resort to such fraudulent, deceitful practices?

Remember all that stuff they taught in civics class about how even a poor kid can grow up to be president… that a democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people… that we have a say in our government… As I said, this has been a very enlightening experience and I think Mr. Muñoz nailed it; I do feel a bit like Don Quixote! If you live in District 4, you can vote for this windmill-tilter of San Diego – Juan del Rio.

Warm regards,
Juan del Rio

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Ethics in Government, Protests and Crackdowns, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , ,

My online friend Christopher Elliott of the full TSA directive following the explosives incident last week, ordering pat-down searches of passengers as they board, and telling airline personnel to impose the equivalent of a lockdown the last hour of flight: no access to a host of conveniences from bathrooms to blankets to our own carry-on.

Next thing he knows, boom, he gets a subpoena!

Excuse me, but this is the kind of petty vindictiveness I’d expect from the George W. Bush administration. Some one rats out a stupid policy by telling the truth, and that someone gets squeezed.

I’m reminded of the old line from “We Don’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who:

Meet the new boss/
Same as the old boss

On issue after issue, the Obama administration acts far too much like “the old boss.” On climate change, Guantanamo, Afghanistan…and now on abusing imaginary enemies. And even when there’s a victory for “change,” like the watered down corporate giveaway they’re calling “health reform,” it’s a hollow, compromised one.

If Obama wants a second term, he darn well better start causing some positive change–and turning his back on both the small-minded get-even tactics and the egregious radical-right extremist policies of his slimy and self-righteous criminal predecessor.

Where is the change we voted for?

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Politics

Is it possible for Sarah Palin to get any more distasteful?

Here’s another example of her viper-like turning on old allies when they cross her, as Geoffrey Dunn writes in Huffington Post:

But perhaps the nastiest and most duplicitous passages of all in Going Rogue are those directed at Andree McLeod, the longtime Republican watchdog out of Anchorage who filed many of the Alaska Ethics Act complaints that, by Palin’s own admission, hounded her from office.

Because McLeod has some Lebanese heritage, Palin dubbed her “the falafel lady.” And claimed she’s some sort of left-wing nutcase, because she had the chutzpah to call Palin to account for numerous ethics violations.

Dunn proceeds to quote from several gushing e-mails of praise that Palin wrote to McLeod, back when she was in Palin’s good graces. Here’s one of them:

That was a great letter to the ed. this week Andree. I haven’t had time to call but wanted to tell you it was, again, insightful & educational & good writing. I’m still disenchanted with the whole issue of RR and state politics and am not even very optimistic about the call for an independent investigation. We’ll see. I guess I’ll believe it when I see it. Hope you’re doing well, staying warm & staying on top of all these state issues I’m hearing about on the news! Love, SP

Dunn, whose book The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power will be published next year by St. Martin’s Press, is a frequent critic of the colorful ex -governor. Here, for instance, is his look at the first ten lies in Palin’s ghostwritten-but-not-credited memoir, which has no index and apparently doesn’t mention the ghostwriter on the cover, title page, or copyright page (great ethics, there, Sarah–all you needed was the usual “as told to” line in small print).

Meanwhile, Palin continues to cram her foot into her mouth. Even on the friendly turf of Sean Hannity’s TV how, Sarah Palin can’t tell the difference between Iran and Iraq. Though she scores a point for her excellent pronunciation of “Ahmadinejad.”

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Social and Economic Justice

This just in: Proponents of single-payer health care, a/k/a Medicare for All–the system used by almost every developed country in the world–will not get our promised floor vote after all.

If I were in Congress right now, I’d vote no. The bill has gotten weaker, more complicated, and more expensive with every turn. As I understand it, it is a giveaway to big insurers and might actually leave fewer people insured than we have now. A travesty!

President Obama–WHERE is the “change” you promised so loudly one year ago? As The Who sang in my very favorite song, “We Don’t Get Fooled Again,” “Meet the new boss…same as the old boss.”

Below is the public statement from Physicians for a National Health Program

November 6, 2009

Dear PNHP colleagues and friends,

We are disappointed to report that there will not be a vote on the Weiner amendment for single payer today in advance of the vote on the House bill tomorrow.

Two reasons were given by Rep. Weiner for withdrawing his amendment:

1. Speaker Pelosi said if she allowed debate on the single-payer amendment, she would have to allow debate on an expansion of the Hyde anti-abortion amendment, which the Democrats do not wish to do, and

2. There are at least 8 members who would vote against the House bill if they were given a chance to vote for Weiner’s single-payer amendment. At this point the Democratic leadership is desperately counting votes; they can only afford to lose 15 votes total, and according to the Washington Post, they are currently down by 25 votes.

Next steps and interpretation –

1. The fact that single payer got so far along in the House is a testament to the strength of our single-payer movement. The huge number of calls by single-payer advocates in support of single payer and the Weiner amendment in recent weeks have been noted by several members of Congress. Increasingly the public is learning what Harvard health economist William Hsiao told the New York Times, that “< #taiwan>[y]ou can have universal coverage and good quality health care while still managing to control costs. But you have to have a single-payer system to do it.”

2. It appears that nobody, particularly President Obama, expected our single-payer option to be alive in the Congress for so long. As you know, they attempted to keep it “off the table” from the very beginning.

3. The president was directly involved in the decision to not hold a vote on the Weiner single-payer amendment, and Weiner will be meeting with him later today. Stay tuned.

4. We need to increase pressure on the Congress and White House for Medicare for All through lobbying, speaking engagements, media outreach, grassroots organizing and civil disobedience. Senator Bernie Sanders will call for a vote on single payer in the Senate – this could come up anytime in the next month. Encourage your senator to support the Sanders bill (S. 703) and also an amendment he will offer for a state single-payer option. Our friends in the California Nurses Association/NNOC have already started lobbying visits to the Senate in D.C. Lobbying materials, slides, and other materials from our spectacular Annual Meeting in Cambridge are now on-line at www.pnhp.org/annual-meeting-2009

5. In the national office we are working on press outreach regarding uninsured veterans (we’ll have a release for you early next week on this) and civil disobedience by physicians in support of Medicare for All (see press release, below). Members are encouraged to continue to publish op-eds, letters to the editor, and articles in support of single payer (see articles in today’s Asheville, (N.C) Citizen-Times and the Palm Beach Post, below).

6. We have been asked how to tell members to vote on the House bill. Our response is that the bill “is like aspirin for breast cancer”. As noted by PNHP Past President Dr. John Geyman in his latest blog post “No bill is better than a bad bill,” even the public option in the House bill is a sham.

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