Category: Ethics in Government

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, General Commentary

https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/fema.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/politics/10policy.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/national/national special/10contracts.html

These three articles together paint a deeply disturbing picture. I see a very chilling future, in which the poor are shipped off to gulags, the tattered remains of the once-vaunted safety net go up in smoke, and war profiteers get richer on the backs of those in the camps.

It sounds alarmingly similar to some of the events during the
German occupation of much of Europe in the 1940s.

The first link is apparently the journal (with photos) of a member of a conservative Southern church who tried to bring supplies in to a refugee camp in Oklahoma–a camp that she knew, because her church had a cabin there. Not only were her supplies refused, but she saw and documented evidence that detainees will not be allowed to leave. And there have been wide reports of help and supplies refused; as one example, our local paper yesterday ran an interview with a local doctor who flew down and had to cool his heels in Baton Rouge while exactly one doctor was trying to handle the entire medical needs of the New Orleans Convention Center evacuees. (To view the story, you’ll have to register)

As a journalist, I’m trained to be skeptical, and that this detainee camp journal is posted on a conspiracy site makes me suspicious. But as far as I can tell (I’m no Photoshop expert), the pictures and the narrative are genuine.

If this is really true, it would appear the government is setting up prison camps for the poor and homeless people who were unlucky enough to live in Katrina’s path.

This is simply unacceptable. Those who lived near the Soviet Gulags and the Nazi extermination camps claimed they did not protest because they did not know. If this turns out to be true, we must protest loudly and consistently.

The second and third links are stories from the New York Times. First, that some people in the GOP have seen the storm as an opportunity to advance their social policy: tuition vouchers for evacuees attending private schools, an attack on “prevailing wage” laws, and a fast-track green light for industry. Given that we have made no informed decision as a country on how and where to rebuild New Orleans, the other overdeveloped coastal areas, and the wetlands between the city and the Gulf of Mexico, the fast track for new construction is a concern.

Don’t get me wrong. Like everyone else, I want to see jobs created, infrastructure rebuilt, and some sense of normalcy restored. But I want to make sure we treat these delicate and storm-prone coastlines and wetlands with respect, and that we think long and hard about how and where to build without just rushing blindly forward to destroy more of the barrier islands and wetlands and places where no sane person would build.

Coming on the heels of what we now know about how first, the Bush administration repeatedly slashed budgets for shoring up the levees, second, stood idly by as the hurricane swept in, and third, completely mismanaged the disaster response (where they do share the blame with local officials), it’s particularly scary. Did you know that while the government was doing essentially nothing to get ready, Wal-Mart mobilized a fleet of trucks, filled them with relief supplies, and positioned them close by but outside storm range so they could respond instantly? I am, to put it mildly, not generally a fan of Wal-Mart–but in this case they were terrific. And if they could be so organized, surely the federal, state, and local governments could have done a lot to minimize the catastrophe.

Finally, the article about high-powered well-connected lobbyists lining up to make sure their clients have a place at the trough. The story, by John Broder, says,

Hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts have already been let
and billions more are to flow to the private sector in the weeks and months
to come. Congress has already appropriated more than $62 billion for an
effort that is projected to cost well over $100 billion.

Some experts warn that the crisis atmosphere and the open federal purse are
a bonanza for lobbyists and private companies and are likely to lead to the
contract abuses, cronyism and waste that numerous investigations have
uncovered in post-war Iraq.

Not surprisingly, Halliburton has already pushed to the front of the line; its Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary landed a $500 million contract. Yes, these companies are capable of doing the work. But the ethics questions are, to say the least, troubling given the sordid history of these companies in Iraq and elsewhere, and their close ties to the Bush administration.

All in all, the whole thing–the situation that these three articles each reveal one slice of–is very troubling: a triple attack on America’s core values of decency, democracy, and charity.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

https://www.proliberty.com/observer/20050805.htm

Here we go again: the interplay of ethics scandals in the corporate and government worlds.

While I take this source with a grain of salt, I see no reason to doubt the allegations that a drug company pushed through approval of aspartame despite some serious health risks. Nor does it surprise me that Donald Rumsfeld was apparently involved. It would be in keeping with the amoral mentality he has shown over and over again in his current position.

One day, perhaps, we will have evolved as a species to the point where people will read this sort of thing in the history books and laugh, knowing how far we’ve come. Meanwhile, we can reach for our handkerchiefs

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

Buying Journalists: A 70-Year Tradition of Dishonor and Corruption

With all the news about Armstrong Williams and other paid lobbyists masquerading as pundits, it’s important to note that this disgusting practice has been going on for years, both in industry and in government.

All the way back to 1936 and 1937, Hill & Knowlton was paying journalists to write favorable stories for its steel-industry clients, as chronicled in the new book, The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations, by Karen S. Miller (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1999), and reported by Eveline Lubbers of Spinwatch.

She writes:

Hill and Knowlton sponsored antiunion messages appearing in the news media. George Sokolsky, a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly received $28,599 from H&K from June 1936 to February 1938, chiefly for consultation to the American Iron and Steel Institute. When writing against the steelworkers union, his articles failed to mention his connection to H&K or the Institute.

A decade later, the New York Times on a Pulitzer for its post-Hiroshima reportage–a series of articles lauding the nuclear program, written by William Laurence.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, along with her brother David, are calling for the Times to be stripped of its Pulitzer, because…

It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was “to explain the intricacies of the atomic bomb’s operating principles in laymen’s language.” Laurence also helped write statements on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

(And for those who might accuse me of an anti-GOP bias, please note that this was during the Democratic administration of Harry Truman.)

Censors as Well as Spinners

Meanwhile, another disturbing trend: government policy wonks are inviting large corporate interests–or bureaucrats who came through the revolving door and used to work for the industries they’re supposed to regulate–to edit repots before they’re made public. We saw this in the widely-reported story about White House staffer Philip Cooney editing out “negative” references (i.e., those that gave credence to the idea that global warming is a serious problem).

Turns out similar things are going on at the international level, in a climate change report prepared for the G8 summit that not only removed unfavorable references but presented nuclear power (the worst energy generation system ever invented, IMHO) as the shining knight of sustainability. Eeeeew!

But wait–there’s more! Can you believe that Andrew Gallagher, the spokesperson for West Virginia’s Environmental Protection department, had to run a press release on DuPont’s toxic emissions by the company first? And that he first softened the statement and then withdrew it entirely as a result? And that it was official state policy to give DuPont a shot at all such materials before their release?

And let’s not forget the US Department of Labor’s blatant attempt to help push through the CAFTA agreement by censoring its own contractor’s report on working conditions in Central America.

Do we have a problem with foxes in the henhouse, or what?

Note: I discovered all these stories reading one of my favorite blogs, “The Weekly Spin.”
I especially like it because it’s available in e-mail form. Sign up or read on line at

https://www.prwatch.org/

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

Lawrence O’Donnell claims in the Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/lawrence-odonnell/rove-blew-cia-agents-cov_3556.html (Ariana Huffington’s open blog) that Bush’s senior strategist and Chief of Staff Karl Rove was the leaker who blew CIA agent Valerie Plame’s cover–an apparent act of revenge after her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was asked, in the run-up to the Iraq war, to investigate claims that Iraq was buying weapons-grade uranium from Niger. Wilson found no truth in the allegations, said so publicly, and then conservative columnist Robert Novak put Plame’s name and true occupation in his column. And that he, O’Donnell, has known this for some time.

His documentation is a bit thin, but he says it will be in the next Newsweek, now that Time magazine has turned over reporter Matthew Cooper’s sources, after the Supreme Court declined to give reporters protection.

A lot of permutations here:

1. Let’s start with the most obvious: revealing the name of a CIA agent is a federal crime, and rightly so–it puts the operative’s life in danger, and endangers others who may have had dealings with the operative. Coming from a White House Chief of Staff, it could conceivably be considered an act of treason, a very high crime indeed.

2. The Administration attitude of “don’t tell us anything unless you can tell us good news, on the party line” is suicidal and homicidal. This is part of how we got into the Iraq mess in the first place–because when the top strategists received reports that weren’t what they wanted to hear–that Saddam had nothing to know with 911, that he wasn’t buying uranium, that he no longer had WMDs, and that the war would not be winnable–they either ignored them, doctored them, or excerpted the small parts that lent themselves to “positive” spin.

3. The Supreme Court ruling was on Matthew Cooper from time and Judith Miller from the New York times–neither of whom actually used the news leak in their reportage. If you’re going to investigate anyone, why not Novak, who actually wrote the column? And it’s particularly odd that the goon squad went after Judith Miller, who was perhaps the most influential cheerleader for the war, and whose failure to verify was so embarrassing that the Times eventually–two years late–issued an apology to its readers about misleading them on the validity of the pro-war arguments.

4. Meanwhile, the war drums are beating again. Having made a complete mess of Iraq, they’re now looking at Iran. I have to wonder whether the stories about Iran’s new president and his possible membership in the terrorist group that kidnapped 20 Americans in 1979 is another disinformation campaign. I believe it was the Times that ran the allegation, but also ran interviews with two of the known hostage takers who said the guy hadn’t been involved, though he’d asked to join them.

5. And let’s not forget the departure of Sandra Day O’Connor opens a fight for the lifeblood of this country. If that seat goes to a radical-right head-in-the-sand friend of GWB such as torture apologist (and now Attorney General) Antonio Gonzales, it’ll be time to make sure your passport is in order. And time to reread Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Don’t think it can’t happen here.

If the Rove allegation is true, this is yet another reason to stop cooperating with this government. It means the President either knew or should have known. International law, and the Watergate precedent in our own country, both show clearly that the chief executive can be held responsible for the actions of subordinates. Of course, the same principle should apply with the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture, among other abuses.

It was only a few months ago that the people of the Ukraine brought down their government and demanded a new election, with far less cause than we have here.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News

An interesting week in the news, for sure.

This from Jack O’Dwyer’s PR-industry newsletter, which I hadn’t seen before but picked up at a PRSA event in New York. (I’m actually writing this from New York, in fact–where Book Expo America starts tomorrow.) O’Dwyer reports that the White House press corps, tired of their role as “props,” boycotted a May 23 press conference with President Bush and Afghani President Hamid Karzai–because the events are so tightly controlled that they’re only allowed two questions. I imagine they mean two questions total, rather than two apiece.

So as usual, the Bush administration appears to be afraid of an open and free press, and for once the 5th Estate is showing a little muscle. More power to them! The charade that has passed for Washington journalism the last few years is badly in need of a shakeup.

This is a particularly nice nugget considering that after 33 years, we’ve learned the identity of Deep Throat–the most vivid case study for the idea that undisclosed sources have a place in legitimate mainstream journalism, and that journalism has a responsibility to investigate the powers-that-be. To my knowledge, no one has ever challenged the authenticity of Mark Felt’s reports back then, and for 33 years, his identity was unknown. He helped to bring down a crooked government, and it wouldn’t have happened if journalists Woodward and Bernstein had been forced to disclose their sources.

Newsweek, are you listening? (See my two previous blog entries, May 18 and 25)

The same newsletter also bore an item about the PR industry, trust, and the bill that was passed forcing media to identify government video news releases (VNRs, a/k/a/ propaganda) when they use them: A little spat between the president of PRSA and a former PRSA/NY board member, in which the latter said that the former’s contention that PR has a high level of trust (and didn’t need regulation of VNRs) was ridiculous.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

The real scandal of the Newsweek incident isn’t that the magazine issued a retraction. It’s the incredible pressure brought to bear by the White House and the Pentagon to stifle dissent and cover up problems. Big problems. And it’s the cowardice of American mainstream journalism in he face of that pressure.

Earlier this week, a query from a journalist crossed my desk:

“I’m looking for experts to comment on the issues surrounding this story, including, but not limited to: 1) The White House says the apology is not enough and Newsweek needs to do more to repair the damage. What is the magazine’s obligation? 2) Is it any surprise, given recent reporting errors, that Americans don’t trust journalists? 3) Newsweek is a highly respected news magazine. How could this happen? 4) What is happening in the journalism profession? Why are journalists and the field in general losing regard among the public?”

Here’s what I wrote back:

” I think there’s a deeper story, and a different set of questions. Newsweek’s retraction was made under enormous pressure form the federal government. Is there actually truth to the allegations? Why does this government take such a consistent role as squelcher-of-the-press? (Two examples: the refusal to let TV cover returning coffins; the 1999 pressure brought to bear on St Martin’s Press to recall and destroy a critical biography of Bush, later re-published by the courageous independent house Soft Skull) And why is the media so complicit in its own strangulation? Why was the Dan Rather scandal allowed to divert attention from the far greater scandal–well known long before the forged memos came to light–of Bush’s AWOL problem?”… That the government was able to force the retraction of an apparently true story is cause for deep concern–and as someone who focuses on ethics, something I’m particularly alarmed about.

Since writing my response (which actually has resulted in two interviews so far), I did a little digging on the story. And I found some very interesting information.

1. Koran abuse is an old story. It was broken nine months ago by Britain’s The Independent, and unlike Newsweek, that paper attributed its sources. Why did it take American journalists nine months to dig it out? The Independent’s site only has the very beginning of the article:
https://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=548033

but the whole thing is posted in several places, including
https://www.sfimc.net/news/2004/08/1700888.php

2. According to a story in Democracy Now today, not only was abuse of the Koran rampant at Guantanamo, as part of a general culture of trashing and profaning all things Muslim (forced shaving, defiling male prisoners with what they thought was menstrual blood, and other psychological abuse), but several Kuwaiti prisoners filed a lawsuit about this.

The whole sordid tale can be found at https://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/1434259&mode=thread&tid=25

It does not make me proud of the American government. Desecration of religion has been considered bad karma at least as far back as the Maccabees of ancient Palestine, 165 years before the birth of Christ, whose defeat of the defilers–who ordered pigs, considered unclean by religious Jews, slaughtered n the holy temple–created the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

Is it any wonder Americans are hated when they do everything in their power to desecrate the entire culture of the lands they occupy?

And isn’t it deeply ironic that White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said, “The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged.”

I decry the loss of life. It is a human tragedy on the mound of vast human tragedies this war has sprung on us. But Scott–didn’t it ever occur to you that far more lives were lost, and our country’s reputation was far more damaged, by the “you’re with us or against us” rhetoric, the refusal to wait for the United Nations, the blatantly false justifications for the war (anyone remember that this was supposedly about WMDs? Or remember President Bush joking about looking for them behind the White House furniture?) Engage in unethical and illegal behavior for years, and then blame the messenger?

Something is very wrong with this picture.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

I’ve long held that politicians, like business owners, do better when they remember their backbone. On March 12, I blogged about the Democrats’ refusal to go along with new House Ethics rules that seemed to be designed specifically to protect House Speaker Tom Delay from having to face up to his many ethically questionable actions.

For once in their too-often-spineless lives, the Democrats held firm. And they won! Yesterday, all but 20 members of the House voted to reinstate the previous committee rules, and that’s likely to mean an investigation of the ultra-rightist Delay and his hanky-panky around lobbyist-paid travel, intimidation, and other “might makes right” shenanigans.

Bravo!

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

As a copywriter, I’m always looking to better my skill set—so I read a whole lot of copywriting newsletters and books. One of them is Ivan Levison’s “Levison Letter.”

Ivan’s latest issue expressed surprise at the results of an A/B split—a test that changes one variable in a copywriting piece. He had advised the client to format the letter in an old-fashioned typewriter-style font, like Courier–because, in the old days, letters that looked hand-typed usually pulled better. (Direct marketers measure absolutely everything–the number, kind, and quality of the results; it’s as much science as art.) But the client was adamant about doing it in Times Roman. So they did an A/B test: 25,000 letters in each font, no other variables changed.

It was a dead heat, and this shocked Ivan. But it doesn’t shock me. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the typeset-looking version had outpulled the classic Courier.

Why? Because to the current generation, Times New Roman represents hand-typed. It’s the default font in Microsoft Word, the word processor that completely dominates the market. Many people never even touch their font settings. There are probably a lot of people under 30 who’ve never seen a letter typed on a real typewriter. What Ivan forgot to adjust for is that the principle behind his original conclusions is sound: people respond better to a letter that looks like it was created just for them–but the parameters of what makes that true have changed.

I’m betting that in the last ten years, the only letters you’ve seen that were typed in Courier were marketing documents, done by direct marketers who didn’t realize the territory has shifted. Unless, maybe, you have an elderly aunt who never got a computer and doesn’t hand-write her letters.

Now, this got me thinking about a famous situation where several careers were dramatically altered because of the difference between Courier and Times Roman: Rathergate.

You’ll remember that in the run-up to the election, a memo was leaked that seemed to prove the longstanding allegations that President Bush had not only used his family privilege to get a precious–and safe–spot in the Texas National Guard, but then skipped out on his responsibilities, didn’t show up for a required physical, and lost his pilot status.

Some alert bloggers in the Republican camp noticed that the memo had been done in Times Roman, and appeared to be produced on a modern word processor, and not a 70s-era typewriter. Yes, proportional-font technology existed back then–I even used a funky IBM compositor in 1975–but no sane person would use it to produce a casual memo. It was hard to wrestle with and expensive to purchase and operate, and it was designed to create finished typeset documents for publication. I saw a PDF of the memo at the time, and recognized instantly that it was a forgery. This caused the firing of several people at CBS, and advanced Dan Rather’s retirement to several months earlier than planned.

The interesting side result was to deflect all the piled-up criticism about Bush’s highly questionable service record. Mary Mapes got fired; Bush held on to the presidency.

The question I asked then, and continue to ask, is who really benefited from Rathergate, and who was really behind it? No one has ever really tied this scandal to either the Democrats or the Republicans–but actually, the Republicans had far more to gain. In fact, this story completed deflated the various investigations into the actual military service record–a record which, in a time of war, and a war whose purpose and justification were tangled in a web of deceit (does anyone remember that we were supposed to be preventing Saddam from using his non-existent weapons of mass destruction?), was a valid and crucial election issue. The various trails running through this sordid story are starkly relevant to the election and its outcome. For starters, it would be worth looking at how quickly people were able to trace these memos back to the same source. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we found out Karl Rove had a hand in this.

If that turns out to be true, will the mass media, cowed into submission by this and other instances, raise its collective head, remove the tail from between it legs, and call strongly for impeachment?

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4562664

Going a bit off the topic of ethical marketing here, but this is important.

In the schoolyard, if a bully didn’t get his way (usually it was a boy, back then), he would “take his toys and go home,” ending the game.

Rep. Steve King apparently wants to do the same, only his “toys” are the pillars of American democracy. Threatening to defund the entire court system because you don’t like their decisions is schoolboy bullying taken to extreme, and with dire consequences for the careful and elegant system of checks and balances created over 200 years ago. They already have the Executive and Legislative branches, and a big part of the Judiciary, and have had the luxury of a consolidated media empire that has largely forgotten that its role is to question. But apparently, that is not enough for these unpatriotic extremists who would dismantle democracy.

I believe that ethics and integrity and fair play still mean something; in fact, I’m organizing a grassroots international movement to take a stand for ethics in business (at www.principledprofits.com ). And I believe this attempt to undermine one of the three pillars of the federal government utterly fails the sniff test.

I am old enough to remember when Barry Goldwater, who would be decried as a weak and moderate liberal in today’s climate, was called an extremist. Rep. King’s plan is an attack on the fundamentals of our government, and must not be allowed to proceed.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ethics12mar12,1,4171595.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

“If you aren’t going to create an ethics committee right, don’t create it at all,” says Rep. Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia. “Otherwise, it is a great farce on the body, not to mention the American people.”

Mollohan’s concern is that the US House of Representatives has eviscerated its own ethics rules. While I usually write about ethics in the business sphere, and it seems to me that business has been cleaning up its act, the political dirty tricks seem to get worse and worse with time. We thought Nixon’s people were the masters of political dirty tricks–but we hadn’t met the late Lee Atwater or Karl Rove, who have “elevated it to a high art”–which is to say, debased themselves to the point where one wonders how they can sleep at night. And the Democrats are not so clean-handed either, as witness some of the dirty pool regarding Nader’s presence on the ballot or their lack of willingness to face protestors at the convention (that particular spinelessness extended to both major parties).

This particular chorus of “I didn’t do it, or at least you didn’t catch me” seems largely to benefit House honcho Tom DeLay, who was up to his ears in ethics problems last year. So now the Committee wants to procedurally sandbag any investigation just by stalling for 45 days. Yuck! DeLay’s ethics problems are so widespread that a search for [ethics rules “tom delay” “house of representatives”] (without the square brackets) brings up 12,400 hits on Google, many from within the last few days that the House has been discussing this.

Well, some of us are watching, and we are not pleased.

2. https://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-050604ruhllecture_lat.story

Lecture by John S. Carroll, Editor of the Los Angeles Times: A remarkably candid, if somewhat rambly, look at journalistic ethics, the importance of disclosing a financial relationship, and the monster Orson Welles created by inventing pseudojournalism with his famous War of the
Worlds broadcast.

I happened to notice this as I was clicking on the above story, and went back to have a look afterwards. I liked it enough that I’m going to ask for permission to put it up on my Ethics Articles page at https://www.principledprofits.com — but whether or not I get permission, you can follow the link. (You may have to be registered.)

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