Wiretapping Compromise: All I Can Say is "I Agree"
Boston Globe op-ed on why the “compromise” on domestic spying is not a compromise but a surrender to the anti-democratic forces. Interesting reflections on the role of the Roberts court.
Category: Ethics in Government
Media's Coverage Alters Corporate and Government Ethics Issues
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.
Is the Big Dig Fatality Related to Corruption?
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.
Waht Really Goes On in the House Appropriations Committee?
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.
If You Like "Democracy Now"
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.
With Enron, Justice Delayed Really Was Justice Denied
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.â€
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.
Ken Lay's Death
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.
How Many More Smoking Guns do We Need? Bush Initiated Plame Leak
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?
"Power Grab" by Elizabeth Drew
An excellent article describing the Bush Administration’s various major usurpations of power. Long but worth the read. From last week’s New York Review of Books.
One More Way the GOP Stole the 04 Election
BBC/The Guardian Investigative reporter Greg Palast first broke the story about the disenfranchisement of over 90,000 heavily Democratic Florida residents of color prior to the 2000 election–without which Gore would have been the clear victor and thus become President.
Now, he tells us that the GOP around the country systematically sent do-not-forward letters to the home addresses of soldiers stationed overseas who lived in mostly black, mostly Democratic precincts, and then when they came back as undeliverable, challenged these soldiers’ right to vote. Also targeted: residents of homeless shelters.
There’s quite a bit more, but here’s a little excerpt:
What about black soldiers? Here’s what they did. They sent, we found out – here’s now what we’ve just found out. They sent first-class letters to the homes of African-American soldiers shipped overseas. They wrote on the envelopes “Do not forward. Return to addressee.” Well, of course, they’re shipped overseas, so the letter can’t be forwarded, to Baghdad or Germany, or wherever. Letters are sent back to the Republican National Committee, filtered back out to the state committees, and then elections officials are told, ‘These people don’t live at that address. We have evidence that they’re falsely registered.’
Now, here’s the trick. You send in your absentee ballot. That is a great act of faith, probably the greatest religious act of faith since Moses walked across the Red Sea, you know, hoping that he wouldn’t get drowned. You just mail in that ballot, and soldiers – this is, remember the Republican Party made a big deal about Al Gore complaining about soldiers’ illegal absentee voting. These people knew that these soldiers couldn’t defend themselves, would not know that their ballot would not be counted, would be challenged. And there’s no way, I mean you could – from Baghdad you can fight George’s war, but you can’t fight for your ballot – massive, massive, nationwide challenge.
In places like Wisconsin, by the way, we’ve just discovered – How did they even know how to challenge these people? They were using Blackberries loaded with the names. This is one expensive multimillion-dollar operation, and by the way, Amy, it’s illegal, okay? One of the reasons why the Republican Party didn’t ‘fess up when we showed them the sheets and they said, ‘Oh, it’s donors,’ is that if you target black people, or Jewish voters, as they did in a few districts, because that’s a democratic demographic, if you challenge these people, that’s against the law. That’s against the voting rights act of 1965. It’s a felony crime, you know.
WHY do we still let these thugs and crooks stay in office?
Aside: Isn’t it ironic that Palast, an American, works for two of the most well-respected British journalism outlets. Why won’t any major US media hire him? His website and books are accessible to us, though.