Category: Ethics in Government

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

As a Massachusetts taxpayer, I resent this. The Boston Globe reports that several Boston-area hospitals have wildly overcharged the state on charges for caring for indigent patients.

Two among several examples cited:

[Cambridge Health Alliance] charged the pool $6,469 for 100 tablets of the anticholesterol drug Lipitor, for which it should have charged $224. In total, overcharges for Lipitor amounted to $1 million.

Boston Medical Center dramatically marked up charges for CT scans: $2,677 for a specific type of scan compared to $272 to $436 that Medicare or a private HMO would pay.

Hmph. It almost sounds like these folks borrowed some procurement “experts” from the Pentagon. You’d think the Mitt Romney administration, which ran on a campaign of fiscal responsibility, would pay more attention.

Now, keep in mind, these are only allegations–note the question mark in my headline. But they’re serious allegations, and I hope the Riley probe is thorough and fast.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

George C. Deutsch worked at NASA until yesterday. This was the guy who didn’t want to let reporters talk to NASA scientists who believe that there is in fact a climate change problem–or other science issues that did not follow the Bush administration line. He’s also the one who would not let the agency utter the phrase “Big Bang” without following it with “Theory.”

According to his resume, he graduated from Texas A&M University in 2003. According to the university, however, in a document released yesterday, he did no such thing. He attended, but never finished.

He’s only 24, but you’d think by now he’d have figured out a cardinal rule: never lie on your resume. Not only is it unethical, but it’s awfully easy to catch if anyone bothers to check.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

My congratulations to Noel L. Hillman, chief of the Department of Justice’s public integrity division, and until the other day, lead investigator in the Abramoff scandal. President Bush just named him to a judgeship.

Unfortunately, this rather too conveniently leaves this crucial probe, which has reached into many corners of the Washington bureaucracy, a rudderless ship.

Is this a coincidence? I rather doubt it. I am in no way impugning the integrity of Mr. Hillman, but I do wonder if he would have been promoted had he not been uncovering this nasty bit of business.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

The New York Times reports that China
pressured Microsoft to take down a blog that mentioned a journalist
strike at a Chinese paper following the firing of a journalist. The blog was hosted on a server in the U.S.

Mr.
Zhao said in an interview Thursday that Microsoft chose to delete his
blog on Dec. 30 with no warning. “I didn’t even say I supported the
strike,” he said. “This action by Microsoft infringed upon my freedom
of speech. They even deleted my blog and gave me no chance to back up
my files without any warning.”

Tacky, to be sure.
But some bloggers speculate this could lead to much worse: Gridskipper
claims the Chinese threatened to convert the whole country to Linux and
Movable Type, e.g., non-Microsoft. That site won’t let me copy and
quote, but here’s the link.

And
I’ve just spent ten minutes trying unsuccessfully to locate the comment
I saw that wondered if MS would be equally cowardly in the face of
illegal requests from our own US government–which, considering all the
stuff coming out about illegal White House-authorized spying, etc., is
not such a big leap.

One of Microsoft’s own most public bloggers, Scobleizer, the “Microsoft Geek Blogger”, had this to say:

OK,
this one is depressing to me. It’s one thing to pull a list of words
out of blogs using an algorithm. It’s another thing to become an agent
of a government and censor an entire blogger’s work. Yes, I know the
consequences. Yes, there are thousands of jobs at stake. Billions of
dollars. But, the behavior of my company in this instance is not right.

He
goes on to talk about moral courage, his grandmother who stood up to
the Nazis in Germany, and his own action contacting higher-ups at
Microsoft about this issue. Good for him!

Meanwhile, a message to all bloggers, and all who rely on any outside hosting for your data: Keep backups on your own system!

I maintain this blog on two different servers–but maybe I should keep a file on my hard drive, as well.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

Some historical perspective on spying, as recorded in the New York times obit for Frank Wilkinson, McCarthyite scapegoat and First Amendment activist who went to jail to defend his principles

But
Mr. Wilkinson was not finished with the federal government. When he
discovered, in 1986, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been
compiling files on him, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request
for their release.

He was sent 4,500 documents. But he sued for
more, and the next year the F.B.I. released an additional 30,000
documents, and then 70,000 two years later. Eventually, there were
132,000 documents covering 38 years of surveillance, including detailed
reports of Mr. Wilkinson’s travel arrangements and speaking schedules,
and vague and mysterious accusations of an assassination attempt
against Mr. Wilkinson in 1964.

Meanwhile, yet
another right-wing extremist, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has entered a
plea bargain and promised to implicate a number of his buddies in
Congress. He admits to influence peddling–and former Republican
Senator Ben Knighthorse Campbell accuses him of trying to rig elections
on Indian reservations, as well. Abramoff has close ties to former
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, current House Speaker Dennis Hastert,
Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, and other ultra-right honchos. The Wall
Street Journal has said the number of US Representatives implicated
could be as high as 60, most of them on the Republican side, but so
far, only Robert Ney of Ohio has been specifically named. (Sorry, WSJ’s
website structure doesn’t allow me to copy the link)

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

To me, the most scandalous part of this latest Bush administration scandal–that GWB personally authorized and oversaw illegal spying on American citizens–is
not event he spying itself, though that’s certainly bad enough (and one
more reason why these dangerous and immoral people ought to be
impeached). This program is so “out there” that a lot of prominent
Republicans, including Arlen Spector and John McCain, are deeply
concerned.

But what’s really shocking to me is that the New York
Times apparently knew at least a year ago, and chose to hold back on
the story. Yes, of course, they’d need to thoroughly check their facts,
in case it was another attempt to entrap and discredit journalists, a
la the Dan Rather situation. But once they were sure, I would think the
story of a US President knowingly and deliberately breaking the law
would be considered news.

It’s unclear to me whether the story
was in the Times’ hands before the 2004 election–but surely, if they
knew, going public with that data might have changed the course of
history, given that the results were already not only close but highly
questionable.

The Times utterly failed in its responsibility to
its readers and the world. Is this the same newspaper that was so
active in reporting on the Pentagon Papers and Watergate?

Moral
choices in business lead to business success, says Shel Horowitz in his
award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People
First.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

I suppose we should be grateful: this time, it’s not the government who’s paying pundits being. Still, it is disturbing to find out from both Business Week and the NY Times’ Paul Krugman that Tom DeLay’s good friend Jack Abramoff has been paying off think-tankers at the Cato Institute and elsewhere to spin op-eds that benefit his clients. And once again, there was no disclosure. Cato op-ed writer Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley, took payments of up to $2000 for each of at least 12 and as many as 24 columns promoting Abramoff’s clients.

At least he has the good sense to say he made a mistake, as does his boss. What’s truly disturbing is the statement by another of Abramoff’s beneficiaries, Peter Ferrara (a noted architect of Social Security policy), who is completely shameless: “I do that all the time. I’ve done that in the past, and I’ll do it in the future.”

Oh, and Ferrara’s boss at the Institute for Policy Innovation, Tom Giovanetti, hasn’t figured out the problem either. Giovanetti accuses critics of a “naive purity standard…I have a sense that there are a lot of people at think tanks who have similar arrangements.”

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, General Commentary

Another must-read speech by Bill Moyers, one journalist who is not afraid to tell the truth and doesn’t try to hide it under “nice.”

Moyers
notes that, like the run-up to Iraq, intelligence leading to the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution (that opened the way to massive escalation of the
Vietnam war) was faked–but not, he said, with LBJ’s knowledge. Moyers
was working in the White House at the time.

But then he looks at
the Bush II administration’s penchant for secrecy, for deception, for
rewarding its corporate cronies–and for interfering with the few
remaining institutions in journalism that have any backbone left–and
the results aren’t pretty.

Ethics in both business and government is crucial–and achievable. Visit Shel’s site, https://www.principledprofit.com, to learn more.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

Some good news: The Wall Street Journal reports, in its December 1, 2005 issue,* that the Norwegian Petroleum Fund, in charge of managing the income from Norway’s rapidly increasing oil revenues, has hired Henrik Syse, a professor of ethics and philosophy, to be its “moral compass.”

Syse cheerfully admits he hadn’t even known the difference between a stock and a bond. And he’s totally happy to go to work on the tram, no fancy limousine for him.

Norway has adopted the corporate governance standards of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It’s Syse’s job to implement new ethical rules that prohibit investments that might put the fund in the position where it “may contribute to unethical acts or omissions.”

I find this refreshing and delightful. And I’d love to see more companies and government organizations embracing the idea that they need a moral compass. In my own small way, with the Ethical Business Pledge campaign, I’ve tried to provide a tool for finding that compass.

* The article, “Oil-Rich Norway Hires Philosopher As Moral Compass: State Seeks Ethics Lesson On Investing Its Bonanza,” by staff reporter Andrew Higgins, is available to non-subscribers for $4.95–or ask your local librarian to locate it for you.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

That’s what 8-term Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham said in his resignation speech, after pleading guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes. Oh yes, and then talk about chutzpah, listen to this:

The
tax evasion charge came after Cunningham reported joint income with his
wife of $121,079 for 2004 and claimed he was due a refund of $8,504.
Prosecutors said his income was $1,215,458 and he owed $385,077 in
taxes.

(You won’t find that in the above link, but it’s in the copy of the AP story a friend sent me.)

Hmmm, yet another GOP Congressional scandal–this makes the fourth one
(DeLay, Frist, Bob Ney), not counting Plamegate and other White House
scandals. One Democrat, William Jefferson of Louisiana, is also under
investigation.

The Washington Post reports,

Democrats
have vowed to make what they have called the GOP’s “culture of
corruption” a major theme of a 2006 congressional election campaign
already unfolding under the twin clouds of the Iraq war and high energy
prices.

The Post kept a sense of humor in its report:

For
a gruff war veteran, Cunningham emerges from the court documents as a
man with surprisingly delicate tastes. Among the gifts he accepted were
a $7,200 Louis-Philippe commode, circa 1850; three antique nightstands;
a leaded-glass cabinet; a washstand; a buffet; and four armoires. After
paying $13,500 toward a Rolls-Royce in April 2002, one of Cunningham’s
benefactors tossed in $17,889.96 toward the car’s repairs less than a
month later.

Rep. Randy

Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) talks to reporters in San Diego after pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion. (By Lenny Ignelzi — Associated Press)

Now
he’s forced out of not only the House but his ill-gotten house, and
will probably go to jail. You’d think these people would figure out by
now that crime doesn’t pay–unless, perhaps, the President calls you
“Kenny-boy.” Lay’s trial was supposed to start over a year ago, and
even that was years late. Why are they waiting?

And whatever
happened to the days when public office was a public trust, and CEOs
saw their mission as stewardship of shared resources rather than
feathering their own nests? It’s important to note that those who paid
the bribes, and received vast return on their investment, are just as
tarnished as the fallen Cunningham.

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