Category: Ethics in Government

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Politics

David Patterson, New York’s new governor will never need to stand, ashen-faced, and admit that he cheated on his wife–as his predecessor, Elliot Spitzer did.

Why? Because, knowing that skeleton was in his closet, Patterson pre-empted it with an act of transparency. He openly admitted, at a time, place, and manner of his own choosing–actually on the very day he was sworn in as governor–hat he and his wife had both had affairs during a difficult time in their relationship. He maintained control of the discourse, and the admission can never be used as a weapon to destroy him, as it would very much do if he’d been suddenly, unexpectedly, “outed.” As Spitzer found out very quickly.

For all we know, the Pattersons may have even had an agreement that theirs was an open relationship–in which case, the word “cheating” wouldn’t even apply. It’s not cheating if you have permission from the cheatee.

Transparency is a good strategy whenever there’s an ethics issue. It means you can’t be blackmailed. It means you minimize the hurt to other people. And you stay in control of the situation.

Almost four years ago, I wrote about a utility company that handled a gas explosion with rare good sense. Like Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the Tylenol poisoning scare years earlier, this company was both transparent and extremely customer-centric, and thus enhanced rather than destroyed its reputation.

Gay and lesbian activists have understood this for almost 40 years, since the 1969 Stonewall riots. The closest thing to a rational reason for keeping gays out of sensitive jobs (say, those that expose the employee to highly sensitive information) is the fear of blackmail. But when the gay employee is already out of the closet, that weapon fizzles away.

I’d say that transparency, combined with Nelson Mandela-style reconciliation, creates powerful momentum in favor of the person making the confession, whether in business or politics. Plus, as the Catholics with their confession ritual have understood for centuries, there’s tremendous personal release in not bottling up secrets.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

Well, what’ya know–Nancy Pelosi actually showed some leadership and got the House to pass a somewhat weak measure establishing a special office of ethics, as many states have had for years. And against strenuous opposition (WHO are these people?) from both parties. The New York Times headline says it all:

Kicking and Screaming Toward Reform

If you want to thank her, visit MassPIRG’s page set up for the purpose, here. If you have autofill in your browser, it takes under 30 seconds.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

Wooo-eee! Columnist Greg Palast has a powerful commentary on the difference between the trashing of Elliot Spitzer, crusader for consumers in the mortgage mess, and do-nothing Republican Senator David Vitter.

Spitzer, says Palast, was pretty much the only one standing in the way of a Federal reserve $200 billion bailout of banks who lost money in subprimes. Does this help the overmortgaged householder in any way? Nope.

And Spitzer was ready to take on the Bush administration over this, and in fact that’s what he was doing in Washington on that fateful night.

Fascinating reading. Here’s a little taste:

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure – and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bail-out. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.

Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.

And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

Funny–one thing I haven’t heard discussed at all, is that Spitzer built his reputation as a consumer advocate, yet he was willing to pay far more than the going rate. Forgetting for a moment about morality, about idiocy, about hypocrisy (this guy was a prosecutor before he became governor, and he even went after some of the high-end “escort” operations), about throwing your entire career away for a few minutes of pleasure–you really do have to wonder how someone who works so hard at stopping consumer ripoffs would pay, on multiple occasions, $5K to spend an evening with a call girl. I’ve owned cars that cost me less than that!

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government

The danger in being an ethics warrior is that if you get caught with your own pants down, you’re in trouble. You’ve lost all the credibility you spent all those years building up.

It happened to John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods last year. This week it happened to the crusading anti-corruption New York State Governor Elliot Spitzer, who apparently uses a high-end call girl service similar to those he investigated as Attorney General.

It’s really a shame. There’s been much to admire in the public positions of both men. But if you make your living touting honesty, you should, quite frankly, know better. I’m not trying to sound self-righteous here, really I’m not–but from a marketing point of view, if you stake out your reputation on being the best and then get caught dealing in lousy product, you’re going to fall a lot harder than if no one expected any better from you in the first place.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

Even after seven years of the long night of the GW Bush administration, I can still be shocked by how low he is wiling to go. His latest and continuing embrace of torture just makes me sick. This mini-item from Democracy Now, “Bush to Veto Bill Outlawing CIA Use of Waterboarding”:

President Bush is expected to soon veto a bill that would have required the CIA and all intelligence services to abide by the same interrogation standards as outlined in the US Army Field Manual. The Army manual specifically bans waterboarding, mock executions, the use of electric shocks, beatings, forcing prisoners to perform sexual acts and depriving prisoners of necessary food, water or medical care. President Bush says the Army rules are too restrictive.

This is the same man who claims to be strongly influenced by his Christian faith. Did he maybe skip the sections in the Bible about the golden rule, turning the other cheek, and treating even those at the very bottom of the social ladder with utmost respect. Harumph–endorsement of torture strikes me as within the impeachable category of “high crimes and misdemeanors”!

Oh, and didn’t occur to him that he is putting American servicemen and servicewomen at severe risk? If we torture those we capture, what happens when our people are captured?

Meanwhile, a perceptive piece by Marty Kaplan in Huffington Post on this issue:

When Dana Perino told the White House press corps that the Field Manual is “perfectly appropriate… for young GIs, some so young that they’re not even able to legally get a drink in the states where they’re from,” but not for trained intelligence agency “professionals… with an average age of 40,” it’s a wonder she wasn’t asked a follow-up about how tall you have to be to ride the Constitution.

The same piece has some speculation on why John McCain, long a champion of treating prisoners right, and himself an ex-POW, is now willing to go along with torture.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

Whole bunch of links in the Citizens for Legitimate Government e-bulletins this week, all pointing to different aspects of the real, not-in-the-spotlight John McCain. And it’s not a pretty picture, especially since this is the “straight shooter” who claims to be focused on ethics. Mainstream media is not doing a good job of looking at these stories, even when they’re published on big wire services like Reuters.

A few of the news bites:

  • McCain retracted his statement that he has to convince the public that the Iraq war is going well, in order to win (Reuters)
  • McCain is implicated in an influence-peddling scandal involving a broadcaster in violation of ownership-concentration rules. His formerly unheard plea for assistance suddenly went to the top of the pile after he became a $40,000 client of McCain’s lobbyist friend Vicki Iseman and made a $4000 contribution directly to McCain (WorldNetNews)
  • As I noted earlier this week, McCain has been sued by the Democratic Party over his lack of compliance with a federal campaign finance program. It appears that McCain is using public financing as collateral, yet he wants to withdraw from the program in order to spend money faster than the law allows.
  • McCain’s personal wealth may have a lot to do with his father-in-law’s involvement in organized crime (for which the in-law was convicted in 1948) (WorldNetNews)
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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

    Straight from the horse’s mouth:

    “The crucial issue here is John McCain’s integrity. John McCain poses as a reformer but seems to think reforms apply to everyone but him,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. “He used taxpayer money to guarantee a loan so he could raise money from lobbyists and special interests – it’s the height of hypocrisy. This is just the latest example of his do as I say, not as I do double standard, and it’s unlikely to be the last. McCain financially benefited from this legally binding contract – he got free ballot access, saving him millions of dollars, and he secured a $4 million line of credit to keep his campaign afloat by using public financing as collateral. He should follow the law.”

    This is from a Democratic National Committee press release sent today.

    Ironic, isn’t it. “Straight shooter” McCain doesn’t seem to be shooting very straight these days. This is the lead sponsor of the rather mild McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

    Added to the questions the New York Times raised last week (see my previous blog post)…it does make you wonder. This is their ethics guy???

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics, Politics

    To me, the biggest news of the highly critical New York Times story on John McCain is that a man whose entire campaign for the presidency is based on being “Mr. Straight Shooter” is caught in an obvious, blatant, easy-to-check, and dare-I-say spectacular lie. And it’s not about whether or not he slept with this lobbyist (he and she both deny it, and from what I’ve read it appears that staff were getting nervous that the affair might happen not that it was happening.

    Anyway, the New York Times ran a long profile about a number of instances of questionable judgment on John McCain’s part–and McCain’s office issued this rebuttal:

    It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

    (emphasis added).

    And that is the lie. McCain was one of the infamous Keating Five. Here’s the Keating Five section of his hometown newspaper the Arizona Republic’s bio of McCain.

    In fact it was his brush with ethics censure over Keating that led McCain into campaign finance reform, a place where he’s had a bipartisan leadership role. Yet it seems like

    Meanwhile, Kelly McBride and others at the journalism/ethics think tank Poynter Institute took the Times to task both for the timing of the article, and for leading with the allegations about the inappropriately close relationship with this lobbyist, Vicki Iseman (an attractive blonde over 30 years his junior).

    Says the Times,

    Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)

    Says Bob Steele of Poynter:

    The New York Times had the obligation to apply rigorous, exacting, substantive standards of reporting, editing and ethics on the McCain story. Times’ editors clearly believed this story was important, given its strong play and length. The Times could have and should have given readers more information about why and how they developed, reported, vetted and edited this story. They should have revealed proactively the story behind the story. They should have better explained the decision to use some unnamed sources, better explained the timing of the publication.

    Says I, however,

    Actually, to me the timing makes a lot of sense. It’s part of a series by the Times profiling the major presidential candidates still left standing. And it’s early enough that if McCain becomes an untouchable from the fallout, there’s plenty of time for someone else to ride in on a white horse. Though it would be ironic indeed if it turned out to be the smarmy flip-flopper Mitt Romney, who seems to focus on the politics of expedience.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government

    Lest you think collusion between corrupt government and dubious business interests happens only in the US–read this article on the firing of Linda Keen, until recently the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

    Keen was fired for having the temerity to insist that the 50-year-old Chalk river nuke in Ontario stay closed until safety concerns were fully addressed.

    Now, let me disclose my biases. I’ve been studying about nuclear power going back to a college report I did in 1974–and my first book, in 1980, was an expose of the nuclear power industry. In my mind,

  • there is no such thing as a safe nuke (and a wide swatch of the Ukraine is still uninhabitable, more than two decades after the accident at Chernobyl)
  • waste storage will cause problems for thousands of years
  • counting the entire fuel cycle, nukes are a net consumer of energy–so we’re not actually gaining anything by using them
  • solar, wind, and other nonpolluting, renewable technologies make a lot more sense

    • Why was the plant ordered to stay shut?

    In the inspection process, the CPSC regulators found something at the 50-year-old reactor that was terrifying:

    …the reactor had been operating for 17 months without two cooling pumps hooked up to an additional emergency back-up power system capable of withstanding a severe earthquake.

    And yes, there have been earthquakes in the vicinity. And this plant is only two hours from Ottawa, Canada’s capital city.

    But still…here is a woman who was fired because she didn’t want this ancient and probably crumbling nuke to have an accident! Best of luck, Linda in your wrongful termination court case. And thanks for doing what’s right.

    (my thanks to The Weekly Spin for alerting me to this story).
    Business and government ethics violations that directly put life and property at risk are more than just crooked collusion. They are criminal acts.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics, Politics

    Well, it looks like McCain will be carrying the banner for the Republicans this fall, after so many previous tries, and after being essentially written off by the pundits just a few short months ago. That was when Giuliani was considered the front-runner.

    This is one among many reasons why we shouldn’t rely on pundits. Once the voters started speaking, it was clear that Giuliani was a non-starter. I heard one commentator say this week that he had the worst dollars-to-delegates ratio in the history of politics: $50 million to get one lone delegate. Ouch!

    McCain is much, much better than his competitors on some issues, notably torture and campaign finance reform. But on war (for me, the dealbreaker issue), he’s the worst of the lot–even more hawkish than GWB. Yikes! And his own shady past on ethics issues–he was one of the infamous Keating 5, after all–makes me wonder how sincere the reform really is.

    Still, he’s certainly less of a flip-flopper than Romney, who would have made a great used car salesman. And far less scary than our American Ayatollah Huckabee, whose election would make me seriously consider leaving the country; as a non-Christian with progressive politics, I’m not sure there would be room for me in a country governed by someone who equates homosexuality with necrophilia.

    Much less clarity on the Democrat side. For me, the real question now becomes who could beat McCain. For reasons I stated here, I believe that in a McCain-Clinton contest, McCain would win, although I think she might beat Romney. But some of my friends believe that Obama hasn’t yet shown he can attract enough white voters to prevail against any opponent in November.

    I know that I personally would not vote for Hilary Clinton–but I have the luxury of living in a state where my vote doesn’t count anyway: no matter what I do no matter who the candidate, Massachusetts will go for the Democrat.

    The real shame for me, yesterday, was standing with my ballot and looking at Dennis Kucinich’s name right next to Barack Obama’s, thinking about what might have been. Kucinich has withdrawn, of course, and I’m not going to waste my vote on a candidate who’s no longer interested. But I think it’s a crime that the media–the same media that annointed Giuliani–decided for itself that it would not let us hear the voices of any of the candidates whose positions actually represented progressive change, and gave us a media blackout on the candidates who should matter most. They refused to cover Kucinich, Gravel, Dodd, and Ron Paul, among others–all of those bringing forward substantive reforms on a host of issues. This, to me, is a serious ethical breach and somehow we need a mechanism to address this that doesn’t interfere with the First Amendment.

    For broadcast media, at least, the solution may lie with their licenses to use the public’s own airwaves for profit. For print media, the solution is probably intense public pressure in the form of letter-to-the-editor campaigns, pickets in front of their stockholder meetings, and so forth.

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