Category: Ethics in Government

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

Dear American people:

These are some names I’d love to see in the next President’s Cabinet. Who are your choices? Do you know visionary thinkers, with strong Green, ethical, and social justice credentials, who are also good administrators? Add your choices (or echo mine) in the comment section. (And speaking of ethics…Obama’s transition team has an excellent ethics mandate that is a welcome change from the corruption of the last couple of administrations–I expect to blog about it in detail when I get a chance.) Meanwhile, here’s what I’d suggest to Senator Obama, who might actually listen.

Dear Senator Obama,

On the strength of your call for change, your overall vision, your coolness under fire, and lots of other reasons–you are likely to become the next President of the United States. Here are some people who can really implement that change we will elect you to bring.

Secretary of State
Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations. (I could find nothing requiring that Cabinet Secretaries have to be U.S. citizens.)

Secretary of the Treasury
Hazel Henderson, futurist, ethicist, and Green economist. Alternative: Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate and NY Times columnist.

Secretary of Defense
Gene Sharp, America’s foremost researcher on nonviolent alternatives to military–shifting the focus to actually defending the country. Alternate: Cindy Sheehan.

Attorney General
Michael Ratner, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights and one of the leading lawyers defending against the radical right-wing abrogation of rights at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Secretary of the Interior
Winona LaDuke, Native American (Ojibwe) and environmental activist, extremely smart. Nader’s running mate in 2000.

Secretary of Agriculture
Annie Cheatham, former director of Communities Involved in Sustainable Agriculture in Deerfield, Massachusetts, one of the most successful community organizations nationwide in promoting local, sustainable farming, and one that grew enormously during her tenure.

Secretary of Commerce
Judy Wicks, restaurant owner and founder of Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, a national group working to support local business.

Secretary of Labor
Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director of Coop America/Green America.

Secretary of Health and Human Services
Cynthia McKinney, former member of Congress from Georgia, strong crusader for the rights of poor people, for an economy based on peace and sustainability.

Secretary of Homeland Security
Juan Gonzalez, Pulitzer and Polk-winning investigative journalist, co-host of the award-winning news and public affairs show Democracy Now, New York Post reporter, former Visiting Professor in Public Policy and Administration at Brooklyn College, and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, author of three books including one on the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack, who has covered both terrorism and police issues for many years. Alternate: Richard Clarke, former security advisor to President Bush.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Ron Dellums, long-time Congressman and Mayor from Oakland, CA. Alternate: Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Secretary of Transportation
A mass transit advocate willing to learn from the amazing example of Curitiba, Brazil, which created a bus system as efficient as any train system, at a fraction of the cost.

Secretary of Energy
Amory Lovins, energy visionary who understands not only the need to convert to renewable, nonpolluting resources, but the need to do it in ways that come out of abundance and not deprivation–that actually increase business profitability AND quality of life. Has been on the forefront of this movement since at least 1975.

Secretary of Education
Senator Hillary Clinton: Smart, aggressive, and a long-time leader on education.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Michael T. McPhearson, Executive Director of Veterans for Peace.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Ethics in Government

Guest Blog By Lauren Bloom

[Note from Shel: Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday of atonement and forgiveness, starts tonight, and I’m pleased to post this timely commentary on the economy, forgiveness, and Yom Kippur from my new friend Lauren Bloom]

This week marks the observance of Yom Kippur, or the “Day of Atonement,” the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Yom Kippur offers practicing Jews the opportunity to request and receive forgiveness for their mistakes and broken promises throughout the year. It’s a lovely tradition, and one that recognizes a fundamental fact about each and every one of us: We all make mistakes and, when we do, we need to apologize for them.

Just this week, we’ve seen what colossal damage corporate greed and dishonesty can do. As Shel Horowitz observed in this blog less than a month ago, the financial crisis gripping America could have been avoided if Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and other investment banks had followed common sense ethical principles. But because they let avarice overcome their good sense, American taxpayers are out $700 billion that may never be recovered, thousands of people have lost their jobs, retirees have watched their pension assets dwindle, the credit markets have dried up, homeowners across the country are facing foreclosure, and there’s no end to the crisis in sight. Somebody – the greedy financiers who created this disaster, the regulators who let them get away with it, the corporate Boards who failed to ask tough questions -– owes the rest of us a huge apology.

When a mistake is this enormous it can be tempting to say that an apology wouldn’t do any good, but nothing could be further from the truth. The bigger the mistake, the more an apology becomes a necessary first step toward healing. This week of Yom Kippur offers a wonderful opportunity for everyone who contributed to the financial crisis, regardless of their religious affiliation, to step forward and ask the American people for forgiveness.

Thank you, Shel, for the opportunity to guest on The Good Business Blog.

Lauren Bloom is an attorney who speaks and consults on business ethics and the author of The Art of the Apology – How to Apologize Effectively to Practically Anyone. Visit Lauren online at www.businessethicsspeaker.com and www.artoftheapology.com.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

These two items from the Center for Media and Democracy may leave a real strong “eeeewww!” taste in your mouth. At least they did for me:

1. The US Food and Drug Administration let an industry front group do its new consumer-information website–and the front group calls the effort “EthicAd”

2. A supposed poll was actually designed to spread very negative lies within the Jewish community about Obama, according to Politico.com. You’d think McCain, having been targeted by similar disgusting tactics in the 2000 election, would have killed this effort by the “Republican Jewish Coalition.”

Aren’t we better than this? Yuck!

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

Apparently there’s a serious proposal on the table to limit public access to Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, and sell space to the highest bidders as corporate sponsors. This is what I wrote on the comment page:

The First Amendment is part of what makes America great. Taking away the right to assemble at the Presidential inauguration is a bad idea, and selling off to the highest bidder is just plain un-American. This is part of our heritage–to watch, and perhaps to p0eacefully protest.

As a business owner, a writer, and a concerned citizen, I urge you to maintain Pennsylvania Avenue for all citizens who wish to see the inaugural.

Deadline for comments is Monday. Make yourself heard.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics, Politics, Web 2.0/Social Media

A certain popular website, that I will not name or link to, posted a bunch of Sarah Palin’s government-related e-mails posted through private, non-government, non-archived accounts.

This is, to put it mildly, not according to Hoyle, and especially because there was even a conversation about how to keep prying eyes away from these posts by using “private” email.

Of course, as Palin found out, e-mail is never really private. It’s not a secure medium. It’s also not particularly reliable. and you shouldn’t expect to have any privacy.

However…while Palin had absolutely no right to conduct state business over non-government e-mail–and certainly no right to delete the emails and the account and thus destroy evidence of possible wrongdoing in the Troopergate scandal, I have just as big an ethical bone to pick with the site that unmasked her.: it listed the emails of her correspondents, in big print, and in hackable form.

I’m sorry, but it is not anybody’s right to have the personal e-mails of her kids and others who corresponded with Sarah Palin. These people will have to go through a lot of time and trouble to change their addresses, notify correspondents, etc.

Palin was wrong. But so was this website.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

So Obama used the phrase “lipstick on a pig.” He’s used it before and so has McCain, according to this morning’s NPR news report. In fact, they both used it long before Palin was on the scene.
It’s old and tired and clichéd, and Obama can do better. But if McCain’s people think this is an attack on Sarah Palin, let it be noted that this infers that McCain’s people, and not Obama, are the ones who think Palin is a pig.

Yet the same camp that wants to pretend Obama called Palin a pig has no shame about a really horrible distortion in a McCain-approved ad–that tries to paint Obama as teaching sex to kindergarteners because he supported a measure to help children distinguish between proper and improper touching–a measure that can actually reduce pederasty and help bring pedophiles to justice.

And that is truly vile. Oh yeah, wasn’t McCain the “maverick” who stood for ethics?

Karl Rove may be proud. But I am disgusted.

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

These people have no shame! The Central Intelligence Agency actually had a table on the exhibition floor of Unity ’08, the conference for journalists of color organized jointly by (in alphabetical order) the Asian-American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Native-American Journalists Association!

As the article points out, this is not an appropriate place for journalists to work. Here are two of the people interviewed on the segment:

JOE DAVIDSON: I don’t think that the CIA should recruit at conventions for journalists. I think that CIA members have pretended to be journalists in years past. They might still be doing it, I don’t know, but they certainly have done it previously. And I think that the knowledge that CIA agents have used journalism as a cover puts legitimate journalists in danger.

It’s certainly known that in other countries, journalists will report to their governments. That certainly is not the case, or certainly generally has not been the case, for American journalists. But we don’t want that perception. I think there really has to be a long distance between the role of a spy, even someone who does research in Langley, Virginia, and a journalist.

and

DENNIS MOYNIHAN: You know, in a climate where journalists are being laid of en masse by the media corporations, I think it’s unfortunate that an agency like the CIA can prey upon people. I mean, what are they going to be doing? Of course, they’re talking about open source intelligence gathering.

Well, that’s exactly how they gather names of alleged socialists or labor sympathizers in Indonesia, by forming lists. They’re going to be reading other reporters’ work and identifying subjects of interest to the U.S. security apparatus. I don’t think it’s good work for a journalist. There’s just a massive abuse of data collection that’s happening by the United States, principally.

The ACLU released a press report, a press release about waterboarding and CIA’s involvement in authorizing and coaching waterboarding. You know, why isn’t this guy being asked about it? I think some journalists here actually have confronted this recruiter, but this is one of the most controversial agencies functioning on the planet today, and it’s shocking that here, with between five and ten thousand journalists, and the guy isn’t getting grilled continually.

Several other attenders also comment. Go read or listen to the whole segment.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, media-general, Peace and War

It’s all over the blogosphere–but not in the mainstream news: Cheney’s office considered sending in heavily armed Navy Seals on boats disguised as Iranian craft to create an artificial incident so the US could go to war against Iran, according to Seymour Hersh. The project was rejected, as Americans killing Americans didn’t sound appealing. But that they even considered it makes you wonder–this goes beyond even the deceptions used to get us into Iraq.

And why is the msm so silent on this?

Hersh is one of the most distinguished investigative journalists of our time–the person who broke the My Lai massacre story during the Vietnam war, more than 30 years ago, and who has broken several stories about various nefarious deeds in the Bush administration.

If this allegation is true (as I suspect it is), it is without question grounds for impeachment and probably criminal prosecution. But where’s the investigation?

In the first five pages of Google results for hersh hormuz seals, there is exactly one bit of coverage of Hersh’s very serious allegation in the mainstream media, from WQXT, St. Augustine, Florida. There was a story on today’s Democracy Now, which is where I heard about it–but that’s not the mainstream media.

Today, my local paper had an article about Britney Spears’ father continuing legal oversight over her finances. Why is this news, while a plot to take an illegal action and disguise it as the work of a hostile government in order to enter a war goes unmentioned?

I don’t give a flying f about Brittney–but I sure do care about actions on the part of our government that lead to lives lost, decrease the effectiveness of our diplomacy, channel the resources of the US government into all the wrong places, etc.

Video clip and transcript of Hersh’s interview at the Campus Progress journalism conference. Here’s a quick bit:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

Philly.com (online edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News) reports that the mayor of Atlantic City was sentenced to three years probation for veterans-benefits fraud.

What I find most interesting is that the city government as an overall entity seems to have a problem with ethics:

Levy resigned in October from the mayoralty of the beachside resort city, concluding a year in which three City Council members were convicted on corruption charges, another was arrested for driving drunk in a city vehicle and a fifth was indicted for his part in an attempt to blackmail a sixth councilman.

Hmmm…could it be that legalized gambling fosters a climate where money counts more than virtue? Gambling has been Atlantic City’s major industry for decades.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

Remember when Bush Ran in 2000, saying he’d be “a uniter, not a divider”? Hint: it was well before he started saying anyone who isn’t with us is against us.

Yet from Day One, this illegal administration has run the most partisan White House in my memory–and yes, I remember Johnson and Nixon. The latest partisan scandal (among too many to count, including the firing of US Attorneys, the persecution of Alabama’s Democratic governor, the packing of the supreme court and the entire federal judicial system with ideologues, the outing of Valerie Plame to get even with Joe Wilson, and about a hundred other examples) is the report that prospective hires at the Justice Department were screened for political conformity.

This made the mainstream news (I saw it in my local paper)–but I didn’t find a mainstream source quickly. Here’s the story as it appeared on Huffington Post.

Here’s a little excerpt:

As early as 2002, career Justice employees complained to department officials that Bush administration political appointees had largely taken over the hiring process for summer interns and so-called Honors Program jobs for newly graduated law students. For years, job applicants had been judged on their grades, the quality of their law schools, their legal clerkships and other experiences.

But in 2002, many applicants who identified themselves as Democrats or were members of liberal-leaning organizations were rejected while GOP loyalists with fewer legal skills were hired, the report found. Of 911 students who applied for full-time Honors jobs that year, 100 were identified as liberal–and 80 were rejected. By comparison, 46 were identified as conservative, and only four didn’t get a job offer.

The real mystery is why the Democrats haven’t been in open rebellion. Any Democrat who tried 1/10 of Bush’s shenanigans would have been impeached long ago.

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