Category: Ethics in Government

By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Ethics in Government, Uncategorized

The most famous Native American musician of my generation and a bit older is Buffy Sainte-Marie, singer and songwriter who was never afraid to be political. She had numerous songs about peace and about Indian rights. In the early 80s, I actually got to interview her at some length for a long profile that was published in a computer magazine (the focus of the story was the many unique ways she used her Macintosh.)

Now an article posted on the Indian Country website alleges that she was the target of a campaign of deliberate suppression by the US government. That in fact, there was a widespread campaign to suppress political rock music during the years of Democrat Lyndon Johnson’s presidency–and this campaign went so far as to at least consider assassination attempts.

Sainte-Marie says she was blacklisted and, along with other American Indians in the Red Power movements, was put out of business in the 1970s.

”I found out 10 years later, in the 1980s, that [President] Lyndon Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationary praising radio stations for suppressing my music,” Sainte-Marie said in a 1999 interview with Indian Country Today at Dine’ College…

In the United States, her records were disappearing. Thousands of people at concerts wanted records. Although the distributor said the records had been shipped, no one seemed to know where they were. One thing was for sure: They were not on record store shelves.

”I was put out of business in the United States.”

Sainte-Marie is someone who I don’t believe would make this accusation unless she truly believed it–she has always struck me as a person of great integrity. But she’s got her dates wrong. “Universal Soldier” was first recorded in 1964; Johnson, known as a strong-arm kind of a guy from his days as a leader in the Senate, was President from 1964 to 1969–a time when protest music and counterculture music filled the airwaves. While it wouldn’t be entirely out of character for him, this kind of action seems a bit of a stretch. Richard Nixon (of whom these accusations could more easily be believed) was president from 1969-74.

The Indian Country article focuses on a court suit by one Charles August Schlund III, who

…stated he is a covert operative and supports Sainte-Marie’s assertions that the United States took action to suppress rock music because of its role in rallying opposition to the Vietnam War.

However, Schlund has not established credibility in my mind, and comes across in this article as pretty flaky. He sees a vast conspiracy to replace rock with the (often politically conservative) country music genre, orchestrated by the Rockefellers in order to control the natural resources of Vietnam.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Events, General Commentary, Uncategorized

For several years, I’ve wondered about the failure to scramble fighter planes on 9/11 to intercept the hijacked jets. I’ve ready all the conspiracy theories, and agree that the series of coincidences is not plausible, and probably not random. However, now that the transcripts of NORAD’s Northeast control center (NEADS) have been released, it seems very clear to me that whatever conspiracies might have been in play, NORAD’s controllers weren’t a part of it.

Michael Bronner, writing in Vanity Fair, uses the actual transcripts of NORAD/NEADS control room operations on that fateful day, with his explanation and commentary. Bronner, an associate producer on the movie United 93, has the background to interpret what the cryptic military language actually means–and most of his commentary is simply explaining what we hear (yes, you can actually listen to several brief clips).

The article is long, and includes large sections of actual transcripts. I recommend printing it out and reading carefully (and listening to some of the clips).

What I come away with…

  • NORAD did absolutely the best job they could, given the lateness and dearth of information that should have been pouring into them from the first moment it was known that one plane had been hijacked
  • The government was completely unprepared for the possibility that planes would be hijacked by trained pilots who would know to turn off the transponder beacons that establish aircraft location for air traffic controllers
  • They only had four fighter jets to scramble, and they did scramble them, as well as call in additional resources so that by day’s end, 300 jets were patrolling American cities–but because of the late notice and the equipment’s failure to track planes with transponders disabled, they couldn’t intercept–and misinformation such as the belief that American flight 11 was still airborne and headed for Washington (not to mention that there were reports of over a dozen possible hijackings) didn’t help
  • There may have been a cover-up in NORAD’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission–but the incorrect testimony just as easily could have been faulty memory or misunderstanding rather than malice
  • Any order to shoot down civilian aircraft could only come from the President–and as we all know, GWB was reading children’s stories in Florida at the time
  • Dick Cheney lied about agonizing over the decision whether to shoot down Flight 93, which crashed in the Pennsylvania farm field within seconds of his first being notified that it was off course

    • What this article establishes in my mind is that NORAD’s people behaved phenomenally well under conditions more stressful than any in history–but they had antiquated and inadequate equipment, antiquated and inadequate and in some cases completely false information, and no chance to preemptively block the hijackers from reaching their targets.

    I commend their courage, and I thank Vanity Fair for running the article. Now…was there a conspiracy involving other aspects of 9/11?

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

    Remember the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle from high school physics? It’s the idea that the act of observing something can alter the organisms or events being observed.

    A fascinating article by Thomas Kostigen on Dow Jones MarketWatch looks at how media coverage changes the behavior of governments and corporations, specifically dealing with ethical concerns. The article cites the work of Luigi Zingales, professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business–who found that businesses will often improve their behavior when the media spotlight shines on them.

    As an example, when the media jumped on the excessive-compensation reportage regarding the salary of former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso, he lost his job.

    However, government is a different matter, at least these days. Kostigan sees the media, in its coverage of both corporate and government issues, as irresponsibly unwilling to go deep, late in its reportage, and too eager to sail in the perceived political wind:

    Too often the media plays patsy and is meek in the face of challenge, as was the case with the reporting on the events leading up to the war in Iraq. Or it trails intrepid government inquisitors such as Elliott Spitzer. Or it gets the story wrong — weapons of mass destruction, President Bush’s National Guard record. Or lies about it — Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley

    On the business front, the media lagged inquiry on just about every corporate scandal in recent memory; its business is to break news, not merely report it.

    As someone who writes regularly about ethics and media, I have to agree with him, at least as far as the mainstream press goes. Most important stories these days are broken by the underground press, or by people like Greg Palast who is an American working for British journalism companies that are less afraid to go after the truth.

    I’m still hoping that the Business Ethics Pledge will help change that unwillingness to question. Questioning–questioning everything, and digging deeper–is what journalism should be about.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Uncategorized

    Here in Massachusetts, the failure of the massive road project in central Boston known as the Big Dig has been front-page news for about a week. A recently-married motorist was killed when a tunnel ceiling collapsed on her car; her husband managed to crawl out a window and escape.

    To his credit, Republican Governor Mitt Romney cut short an out-of-town trip, stepped in, assumed (long-overdue) control over the project, and began immediate inspections–inspections that revealed thousands of glaring safety errors in many parts of the project.

    Throughout its decades-long construction, the Big Dig has been plagued by cost overruns, corruption, allegations that inferior materials were used, and other problems. And almost as soon as the tunnels under Boston Harbor were opened (not that long ago), they began to leak. We already knew it was a boondoggle. Now it seems that both the design and engineering were deeply flawed and the largest/most expensive single road project in US history has been a failure.

    One has to question whether proper government oversight, complete with thorough inspections at every step of the way, would have shown the shoddy materials and flawed engineering without someone having to die.

    Meanwhile, here’s another example that corruption has human costs.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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

    Want to learn about corruption and influence-peddling on the House Appropriations Committee–one of the very most powerful committees on the whole of Capitol Hill?

    David Sirota has quite a bit to say on the subject, in a wide-ranging article covering everything from Jack Abramoff to Mad Cow Disease. Highly recommended.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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

    You may also like this site: https://www.consortiumnews.com/: Easily scannable word and natinal headlines and articles from a progressive-politics viewpoint.

    h, and if you’re not familiar with Democracy Now, this hard-hitting and highly ethical one-hour news program airs five days a week and has broken story after story. The show has an excellent website, too.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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

    It doesn’t seem fair–all these years before the trial, Lay and Skilling found guilty…and then, because the verdict was under appeal, Lay’s record is apparently to be cleared (at least in the legal system) just because he happened to drop dead.

    The Houston Chronicle reports that not only will his conviction be vacated, but the government’s efforts to recapture $43 million of ill-gotten gains are likely to be stymied.

    Cynic that I am I have to wonder if that was really Ken Lay’s corpse; it just seems a little too convenient. I hope there’s confirmation via DNA testing.

    I am not a vengeful person–but I am galled that not only did this criminal continue to live high on the hog but he escaped justice in the end–while thousands harmed by his greed were not so fortunate. Even as late as his trial, according to a widely reported news story,

    Lay also defended his extravagant lifestyle, including a $200,000 yacht for wife Linda’s birthday party, despite $100 million in personal debt and saying “it was difficult to turn off that lifestyle like a spigot.”

    I do take some comfort in knowing that death will not save his reputation, even if it protects the fortune of his estate (which, according t some rumors, is still a large fortune–while other sources say he was heavily in debt and there isn’t anything left).

    Meanwhile, GWB’s appearance on Larry King Live puts to rest any question about the relationship between the president and Lay–a relationship that the White House tried to minimize earlier in the week:

    KING: Because I mean you knew it pretty well from Texas, right? BUSH: Pretty well, pretty well. I’ve known him — I got to know him. People don’t believe this but he actually supported Ann Richardson in the ’94 campaign…Yes, he’s a good guy and so what I did — then did was we had a business council and I kept him on as the chairman of the business council and, you know, got to know him and got to see him in action. One of the things I respected him for was he was such a contributor to Houston’s civil society. He was a generous person. I’m disappointed that, you know, that there was — betrayed the trust of shareholders.

    In that same transcript, Lay himself offers this rather telling bit:

    We were competing with the very best and biggest companies in the world for the best talent and they loved working at Enron just like I did. But I grieve for all that they’ve lost and we, I mean even having lost what we’ve lost, I mean we are so much better off. My family is so much better off than most of them and it just, it pains me each and every day of my life.

    The transcript is worth reading. While superficial as TV so often is, it gets in some very interesting quotes from a wide range of sources: Lay family friends (including the former mayor of Houston, who lauded Lay for his charitable work), employees who were cheated out of their retirement, and Skilling’s lawyer, who I found incredibly unctuous.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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

    The poster boy for crooked business, Enron’s Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay, died today, just a few weeks after he was found guilty in the massive fraud/ethics case.

    Already, the White House is denying that there was a genuine friendship (sound file) between Lay and George W. Bush. But Bush was a long-time high-end fundraiser for GWB, and it was in fact GWB who started calling him “Kenny Boy.” So the denials don’t have a lot of credibility.

    But the real question is not whether Lay and Bush were close personal friends; the real issue is what kind of future business climate can we create together, where future Enron scandals simply don’t gain any traction.

    If you’d like to help create that climate, I invite you to sign the Business Ethics Pledge.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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

    Bush also told federal prosecutors during his June 24, 2004, interview in the Oval Office that he had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson, the sources said.

    There it is–right from the pages of the National Journal. The government has known for a year and a week that GWB directed Cheney to embarrass Wilson by illegally disclosing classified information. Cheney chose to carry out this directive, through the help of Scooter Libby and probably Karl Rove, by leaking Plame’s CIA status to friendly reporters. A total violation of the law, on top of hundreds of other violations.

    Will someone please tell me why both parties aren’t setting up impeachment hearings? Some independent voices have been calling for impeachment for years–if you’d like to join them, click here. GWB and Cheney have repeatedly engaged in criminal activity. When will enough be enough?

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail