Category: Ethics in Government

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

Journalist and political analyst Naomi Wolf, a trenchant critic of the bush Administration’s attack on civil liberties, has shown up with four Ss on her airplane boarding passes since 2002. Which means delays, searches, and a whole lot of annoyance, just to go about her speaking in support of her books.

She is eventually allowed to fly, since she’s actually on the “watch” rather than the actual “no-fly” list. But needless to say, she finds this frustrating.

And she looks further–to the way the Bush Administration uses this list as an instrument of social policy–to harass its obviously harmless critics such as herself. A chilling step toward totalitarianism, she believes–and I tend to agree.

So far, luckily, I haven’t gotten the dreaded four Ss. But I have noticed, as everyone has, how humiliating and unnecessarily inconvenient flying has become, and I, for one, don’t feel safer because “terrorists” can’t bring a water bottle on board. I was even prevented early one morning from bringing my lunch on a plane–leftover rice noodles and broccoli–because I’d made the mistake of putting it in a cottage cheese container! Yeah, my noodles were such a security risk that I had to choke down a few forkfulls at 5 a.m. and throw the rest away, so I was pretty hungry when I arrived.

Travel writer Christopher Eliott has suggested replacing this inane policy with making passengers prove the safety of their foods and drinks by eating or drinking some. That, apparently, is too much common sense.

My local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton, Massachusetts, ran Wolf’s full op-ed under the title “Kafka Revisited. This link is subscription-only, but you can see the article at Alternet.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

It’s been ten years since they were ordered to comply with basic accounting practices–and still, neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Homeland Security–two of my least favorite government entities, as it turns out–can come close to passing an audit.

It’s downright embarrassing–and it has major consequences for the safety of our tax dollars.

An Associated Press review shows that the two departments’ financial records are so disorganized and inconsistent that they have repeatedly earned “disclaimer” opinions, meaning that they simply cannot be fully audited.

This is an open invitation to “waste, fraud, and abuse.” To squandering our money, in other words.

I’m old enough to remember the Reagan-era $800 toilet seats and $500 coffee makers.

Our tax dollars at work. It’s been decades.

Isn’t it time to say, enough is enough? Isn’t it time for the GAO to shut down these behemoth agencies, the same agencies that are so cavalier with our and Iraqi civil liberties, until they comply with at least the most basic standards about whee all the money is going?

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

Am I the only one who finds it deeply ironic, after the Lincoln Bedroom scandal during her husband’s administration–essentially selling off sleepovers at the White House–that Hillary Clinton would raffle off a personal lunch to her contributors?

This is the e-mail I got last week (I deliberately waited to post it until after her deadline):

Dear Shel,

Let’s do lunch. Let’s talk, you and me — about whatever you’d like. Our hopes. Our goals. Our work. The weather. Maybe even politics.

I think it would be fun to have you over for lunch, at my table, in my home in Washington. You and I both know that we need a serious change of direction in this country. So let’s sit down for a meal and talk about exactly the best way to make that change a reality.

Of course, that change can’t happen if we don’t win. So I’m asking you today to demonstrate your commitment to real change by supporting my campaign with a contribution. We’re going to choose one supporter to come to my house in DC, along with a guest, to share lunch and talk. And if you contribute between now and midnight Friday, September 7, it could be you

It keeps going, but let’s cut to the bottom:

I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I’ll pick up the groceries before you get there. Let’s sit down and talk about how to change America!

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

A day later, this follow-up e-mail, from none other than Bill Clinton. Here’s a chunk of that one:

I hear you might be having lunch with Hillary — do you mind if I drop in?

I’ve met some of the greatest people of our time from every walk of life. But of all the people I have ever shared a table with, I still learn the most when I sit down to a meal with Hillary.

There’s no one smarter, no one better informed, and no one whose conversation I enjoy more. So if you have the chance to sit down and talk with Hillary — like you do right now — you don’t want to miss it. That’s why I’m going to join the two of you.

I know Hillary would be the best president, and you know she’s ready to change America. So why not help her win today? The campaign will choose one supporter to have lunch with Hillary and me — along with a guest — and if you make a contribution by midnight tonight, it might just be you.

Now let me get something straight: I would personally enjoy having a meal with the Clintons. They are two extremely intelligent policy wonks with a strong grasp of issues and the intellectual ability to explore them fully. They are also people who can demonstrate that they’ve had a big effect on the world. It would be fun to challenge them, to learn from them, and to push them to consider some additional slants. And to see if they could convince me to voter for Hillary even after she repeatedly sold out progressives, not just on Iraq but on the Patriot Act and other issues.

But…

Given the history here, this “invitation” leaves me feeling more than a little queasy.

And given her politics of appeasing the Bushies, I am not actually disposed to vote for her. Living in the safely Democratic state of Massachusetts, I have this luxury. If she is the candidate, I expect to vote for a third-party candidate.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International

No matter what your position on the Iraq war, I thought we could all agree that…

  • It’s a good idea to keep weapons out of the hands of insurgents
  • Fraud and corruption that costs taxpayers millions of dollars should be stamped out

    • Well, apparently the federal government doesn’t agree. A shocking AP article (as reprinted in the Santa Barbara News-Press) details severe repression against several whistleblowers who reported just such things in Iraq–ranging from demotion and harassment to 97 days in prison outside Baghdad!

    For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

    There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

    He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers – all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

    Shameful, absolutely shameful.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Ethics: General, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Politics

    Knowing that any entry in a Wiki can be changed by any reader, I’ve always been a bit suspicious of what I read on Wikipedia. Still, I find that Google often points me to Wikipedia articles, and most of the time, they seem pretty authoritative and accurate (if I’m at all suspicious, I verify with other sources, and it usually checks out).

    Now it turns out I was right to be suspicious. Virgil Griffith, a grad student at CalTech, invented a system to track the IP addresses of people who change Wikipedia entries–and the results are scary. While the majority of changes are innocuous–correcting typos and that sort of thing, a number of well-known entities have deliberately distorted facts. A few among many examples:

    According to the Wired article (one of several from mainstream news sources, including BBC and ABC),

    Griffith thus downloaded the entire encyclopedia, isolating the XML-based records of anonymous changes and IP addresses. He then correlated those IP addresses with public net-address lookup services such as ARIN, as well as private domain-name data provided by IP2Location.com.

    The result: A database of 34.4 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization’s net address has made.

    So who’s been playing fast and loose with the truth?

  • The CIA edited entries about Iranian President Ahmadinejad
  • Diebold, the voting machine company, removed incriminating material about its machines and faulty election results
  • Someone at a Democratic Party computer edited the entry about Rush Limbaugh to call him Limbaugh “idiotic,” “racist”, and a “bigot”–and about his audience, “Most of them are legally retarded.”
  • Microsoft listed its MSN as a “major competitor” to Google, whle adding deprecating material to Apple’s entry
  • Wal-Mart toned down criticism of its labor policies
  • Even the Vatican removed passages about Sinn Fein’s Gerry Addams that linked him to a 1971 murder.

    • Needless to say, this raises a lot of ethical questions. As a start, it would seem logical that Wikipedia should keep a running, public list of any IP addresses that altered a particular entry–right on that page. And also, perhaps, each page could display its history, so that previous versions would be visible and readers could draw their own conclusions.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Peace and War, Politics

    35 years ago this month, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers–embarrassing documents showing how successive administrations from both parties lies us into Vietnam and kept us there.

    Democracy Now had three of the players: Ellsberg himself, Senator (and current Presidential candidate) Mike Gravel, and the publisher of Beacon Press, which was sued by the government for doing the book version.

    It reads like a spy novel, with all sorts of unbelievable intrigues and secrecies and plot twists. Someone could make a great movie out of it.

    And of course, there are very relevant lessons for today’s society, as the Iraq war drags on and the pressure mounts to open yet another front against Iran.

    Read, listen, or watch at democracynow.org–both for the drama and the history/current events lesson.

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

    Wow! The editor of a major Methodist publication, while noting that George W. Bush is also a Methodist and “brother in Christ,” is sharply critical of Bush’s action to keep Scooter Libby for sending even a single day in jail.

    Cynthia B. Astle also cites several other commentaries condemning the action, including conservative sources. She doesn’t use the word “hypocrite” but she comes real close:

    If, as our denominational leadership repeats endlessly, the UMC’s mission is “To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” then we must analyze how the action of the United Methodist layman in the White House has deleteriously transformed the American legal system – to say nothing of the blot on his soul.

    You need not take my word for it. In the past four days, pols and pundits high and low have responded with incredulity and outrage to President Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentence, which Bush contends was “too harsh.” Most legal experts have said that Libby’s commutation has been 1) exactly the opposite of the arguments used by the U.S. Justice Department itself in nearly 3,000 other federal cases and 2) likely to set a precedent throughout the legal system that, in effect, completely overturns the U.S. ideal of “equal justice before the law.”

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

    Remember George W. Bush’s pre-election promises to clean up what he saw as corruption of the Clinton era?

    Already this administration held the dubious distinction of most corrupt in my memory. Now he’s granted clemency to Scooter Libby, shifting his prison sentence from 30 months to zero.

    This is the same president who said he would bring the leaker to justice. But even one day behind bars would apparently offend the sensibilities of Cheney’s good friend Libby.

    Some anti-corruption president, huh? What a lovely legacy.

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

    Remember a few months back, when we learned that Karl Rove had engineered the firing of several highly competent, high-performing U.S. Attorneys and their replacement by Bush loyalists who wouldn’t question their orders?

    One of those who got kicked out was Bud Cummins, who was replaced by a particularly disgusting hack named Tim Griffin–a good friend of Karl Rove’s.

    Griffin, according to BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast, left his cushy appointment in a hurry once the story broke about his criminal activities stripping likely Democratic voters, disproportionate numbers of whom happened to be black–including active-duty service men and women in Iraq!–of their right to vote, through a process known as “caging.”

    Palast says:

    “I didn’t cage votes. I didn’t cage mail,” Griffin asserted.

    At the risk of making you cry again, Tim, may I point you to an email dated August 26, 2004. It says, “Subject: Re: Caging.” And it says, “From: Tim Griffin – Research/Communications” with the email tgriffin@rnchq.org. RNCHQ is the Republican National Committee Headquarters, is it not, Mr. Griffin? Now do you remember caging mail?

    If that doesn’t ring a bell, please note that at the bottom is this: “ATTACHMENT: Caging-1.xls”. And that attachment was a list of voters.

    Two U.S. Senators have already formally asked Attorney General Gonzales to investigate.

    This, of course, is only one scandal. Just a week ago, I wrote two posts about Cheney setting himself up as above the law, again. If you want more background on that, I heartily recommend the Washington Post’s four-part series on Cheney’s various power grabs. And then of course there’s the stuff we’ve known for years–lying about WMDs, cooking up backroom deals with big energy corporations, suspending the civil liberties of Americans (including illegal wiretaps), intimidation and fraud in multiple elections, and on and on it goes.

    And still, the Democrats don’t talk about impeachment. Just what will it take to get these villains out of office?

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

    If you need more context, read my post from earlier this afternoon.

    As downloaded from the PDF on his website–scroll down to “Documents and Links.” The numbers at ends of paragraphs refer to footnotes in the original document:

    Since 2001, Vice President Cheney has made repeated efforts to shield the activities of his office from public scrutiny. These efforts include exempting his office from the presidential executive order governing the protection of classified information, challenging the right of the Government Accountability Office to examine the activities of the Vice President’s energy task force, and refusing to disclose basic facts about the operations of his office, such as the identity of the staff working in his office and the individuals who visit the Vice President’s residence.

    Exempting the Office of the Vice President from the Executive Order on Classified National Security Information. Over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from Executive Order 12958, which establishes a uniform, government-wide system for safeguarding classified information. In response to the protests of the National Archives, the staff of the Vice President proposed abolishing the office within the Archives that is in charge of implementing the executive order.1

    Blocking GAO Oversight. In 2001, Vice President Cheney headed a task force to develop a national energy policy. After GAO sought to learn the identity of the energy industry officials with whom the Vice President’s task force met, Vice President Cheney sued the Comptroller General to prevent GAO from conducting oversight of his office.2

    Concealing Privately-Funded Travel. Vice President Cheney has refused to comply with an executive branch ethics law requiring him and his employees to disclose travel paid for by special interests.3

    Withholding Information about Vice Presidential Staff. Every four years, Congress prints the “Plum Book,” listing the names and titles of all federal political appointees. In 2004, the Office of the Vice President, for the first time, refused to provide any information for inclusion in the book.4

    Concealing Information about Visitors to the Vice President’s Residence. The Vice President has asserted “exclusive control” over any documents created by the United States Secret Service regarding visitors to the Vice President’s residence.5 This has the effect of preventing information about who is meeting with the Vice President from being disclosed to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.

    Allowing Former Vice Presidents to Assert Privilege Over Documents. An Executive Order issued by President Bush in November 2001 provided the Vice President with the authority to conceal his activities long after he leaves office. Executive Order 13233 took the unprecedented step of authorizing former Vice Presidents to assert privilege over their own vice presidential records, preventing them from being released publicly.6

    Had enough? Click below to cast your vote in the national Cheney Impeachment Poll.

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