Category: Politics

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.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in People Helping People, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice

Charles Hayes is one of my favorite commentators. Coming from a very conservative background, he nonetheless has a very progressive slant. He first came to my attention as a client several years ago, seeking publicity help for his brilliant book on self-education and liberalism, Beyond the American Dream.

I’ve just read two of his essays posted here: “Liberal vs. Conservative: Peace at Last.” and “Did the Cold War Condition Us to Fear Democracy?”

Like everything I’ve read by Charles, these are very thoughtful pieces. Not an easy read, but certainly within all of our grasp, and worth the effort.

Charles sees five pillars holding up society, but the liberals lean on two and conservatives on the other three, causing a great deal of friction. In typical Charles fashion–a brilliant and very well-read self-educated man–he quotes many sources, including George Lakoff (whose analysis I think is vital for an understanding of the liberal vs. the conservative mind.

And Charles’ perspective on this is especially fascinating because he was raised a southern conservative, is a veteran (Marines), and came to liberalism much later in life. Personally, I think liberals have at least as much need for community as conservatives, but they seek a *different kind* of community. And both liberals and conservatives can support caring communities; evangelical churches and fundamentalist Muslims have often been actively involved in homeless shelters, feed-the-hungry, and other social service ventures.

I’ve been having a correspondence this week with a very conservative Muslim friend who’s active on a publishing discussion list that I frequent–a retired state trooper who now runs a press that publishes American Muslim fiction, especially by women. She and I value many of the same things, but the expression of those values takes very different forms. Yet we have a great deal of respect for each other. Today, she proposed an Israel-Palestine peace idea that would make any liberal proud. And yet she repeatedly razzes on a listmate who is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, accuses him of hating America, and tells us that we have a great deal to fear from radical Muslim extremists, even though she sees them as violating key precepts of Islam.

One of the things I’ve learned to do well is to seek common ground with people who are different from me. They can hear me a lot better that way, and perhaps some part of my message of peace and social change gets through. My dialogue with this woman is an example of that, the sort of dialogue that Charles says is entirely too absent from the discourse.

And I think he’s right. We spend so much time shouting at each other and so little time listening., Yet we make big progress when we do engage, and listen, and talk.

My greatest successes as an organizer/activist always come when I’m able to help people find unity. It gave me huge satisfaction back when I did Save the Mountain (2000) to drive around the neighborhood and see our lawn signs sharing lawns with signs for Gore, Nader, *and* Bush. We had found the common ground–and we involved thousands of people and won a nearly complete victory. And I find, over and over again, for 30 years, that when we listen respectfully to each other, we not only find common ground, but we grow in our thinking a our analysis is challenged.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

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.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Why wasn’t this all over the media?

    George W Bush has signed an Executive Order giving broad powers to seize property and block financial transactions from anyone who even donates money to any person or group that the government feels is opposing an orderly reconstruction in Iraq.

    How Big Brother can you get? This is a serious threat to the liberty of activists nationwide. George Orwell must be spinning in his grave.

    Go and read the order: https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html

    And then tell people about it.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    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.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, Politics, Uncategorized

    Kristol thinks GWB is a successful president and that we’re on track to win the war in Iraq. Hmmm–could’ve fooled me!

    Can you say “hubris”? Gawd, what chutzpah. Arianna Huffington calls him “delusional”–and I think she is right!

    Kristol writes in the original article:

    What about terrorism? Apart from Iraq, there has been less of it, here and abroad, than many experts predicted on Sept. 12, 2001. So Bush and Vice President Cheney probably are doing some important things right. The war in Afghanistan has gone reasonably well.

    What planet is he ON? Let’s see: subway bombings in London, commuter rail murder in Madrid, kidnappings and warlordism in Afghanistan (and Karzi hanging on for dear life), the most recent attempts in Glasgow…and let’s not even count Israel in the equation.

    It’s this kind of very dangerous thinking that got us into a war we had no business being in, and made a complete shambles of things once we went in.

    One place I agree with Kristol–this burden will be laid on the shoulders of the next president. Hopefully someone with the vision and strength of character to get us the heck out of there.

    tags: Bill Kristol, William Kristol, Iraq, Afghanistan, Terrorism, George W. Bush, Arianna Huffington, Washington Post, Huffington Post

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    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.”

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    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.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    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?

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Politics, Uncategorized

    Seven-year sentences for Richard Scrushy, former HealthSouth CEO, and his enabler, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (a Democrat).

    Fraud during Scrushy’s reign is estimated at $2.7 billion (with a b).

    Ken Lay may have gotten around jail time by conveniently dropping dead, but it’s good to see at least some of these scoundrels doing time.

    Speaking of scoundrels…The Washington Post has run an amazing series on VP Cheneythis week–must reading for anyone who cares about politics and the future of the US.

    Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail