By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics

These two items from the Center for Media and Democracy may leave a real strong “eeeewww!” taste in your mouth. At least they did for me:

1. The US Food and Drug Administration let an industry front group do its new consumer-information website–and the front group calls the effort “EthicAd”

2. A supposed poll was actually designed to spread very negative lies within the Jewish community about Obama, according to Politico.com. You’d think McCain, having been targeted by similar disgusting tactics in the 2000 election, would have killed this effort by the “Republican Jewish Coalition.”

Aren’t we better than this? Yuck!

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Social and Economic Justice

Michael Moore’s 10-point bailout plan is better than anything I’ve seen from an economist. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it far, far better than anything being talked about in the halls of Congress (except by people like Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Dennis Kucinich)? I certainly think so.

Here’s a piece I especially like:

4. IF YOUR BANK OR COMPANY GETS ANY OF OUR MONEY IN A “BAILOUT,” THEN WE OWN
YOU. Sorry, that’s how it’s done. If the bank gives me money so I can buy a
house, the bank “owns” that house until I pay it all back — with interest.
Same deal for Wall Street. Whatever money you need to stay afloat, if our
government considers you a safe risk — and necessary for the good of the
country — then you can get a loan, but we will own you. If you default, we
will sell you. This is how the Swedish government did it and it worked

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By Posted on Posted in Politics

For months, of course, the McCain campaign has been an embarrassing collection of blunders, bloopers, mean-spirited ad hominem attacks, and recantation of everything he used to claim to stand for. But the last few days make me wonder if he and his advisors could pass a sanity test administered by a competent psychiatrist:

  • This absurd and desperate ploy to cancel both the presidential and vice-presidential debates on the grounds that McCain wants to roll up his sleeves and save the economy–the same economy that he said just the other day ws fundamentally sound. Does anyone really believe this is not just a pathetic attempt to duck out on the challenge form a better informed and more articulate opponent who can clean McCain’s clock on the economy and seems to actually have a better grasp of McCain’s supposed area of strength: foreign policy
  • Acting like the press, once a strong sector of McCain support, is some kind of enemy to be starved of information–and then being surprised when the press turns negative
  • Claiming that an initiative Obama supported to help children differentiate between appropriate and abusive touch was “sex education for kindergarteners”

    Conservative columnist George Will today said that McCain has been acting like a “flustered rookie” and that he’s not fit to be president. And Will noted that McCain’s peculiar idea to replace SEC Chair Chris Cox with Andrew Cuomo even attracted the ire of the Wall Street Journal:

    “McCain untethered” — disconnected from knowledge and principle — had made a “false and deeply unfair” attack on Cox that was “unpresidential” and demonstrated that McCain “doesn’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does.”

    But the best commentary I’ve seen was a scathingly hilarious piece by Bob Cesca on Huffington Post called “McCain’s foreign Policy: Blurt Out Random Crap.” I would not want to get on the bad side of this guy.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Social and Economic Justice

    Yikes! Seven hundred billion of our tax dollars to bail out Wall Street–and that’s on top of what’s already been spent on Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG.

    That’s $700,000,000,000. Now, I might support a bailout if we got our money’s worth out of it–but not this bailout–not only doesn’t it give us what we want, it includes one of the most dangerous and far-reaching clauses ever included in any legislation in this country:

    “Decisions by the Secretary [of the Treasury] pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

    That’s worse than a mere blank check. It’s complete and total immunity from oversight.

    What on earth is the rush to pass such a bill? No one should have that kind of power.

    Then let’s look at the rest of the bill. As I understand it, it…

  • Passes bad debts and other liabilities to the taxpayers, but not good assets–or control
  • Sets no limits on CEO compensation, so the same people who wrecked the economy get to take home annual compensation packages in the tens of millions
  • Allows the government to subcontract out the management of these firms…probably to the same bunch of ethical midgets that broke them in the first place
  • Doesn’t do much to help homeowners facing (or already in) foreclosure

    In short, this is a free gift: break our economy and bring home a prize. Can you say, “corporate welfare”? And rather than paying for it out of general revenues, forcing those who never benefited to cough up the dough, let’s look at the bailout funding plan proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders, taking the revnue from a surtax on those who made their killing and now want to get off with no consequences–yeah, it was OUR economy that they killed.

    If it were up to me, I’d say the public should gain equity in the rescued companies, and any CEO compensation package should not exceed a percentage of the net profits to the company, and layoffs or bankruptcies mean automatic forfeiture of all bonuses. And salary, as opposed to bonuses, could be set at something realistic, say, $200,000-$500,000 (or as a reasonable multiple, say, 10-20x, of the lowest-paid full-time worker’s income). That’s still far more than most Americans have to live on. Bonuses beyond that should be based on performance: creating profitable companies, jobs, investments in renewable energy, etc. This system of rewarding the worst behavior and the worst performance is just plain crazy.

    I’ve already told my Congressional representatives. Have you?

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Okay, so it’s bad enough that McCain picks a running mate who has only been out of the country once, visiting her state’s reservists–and has the chutzpah to claim Ireland as a place she’s visited because her plane paused to refuel there. And it’s horrendous that someone running for VP had no clue what the Bush Doctrine was and shows amazing ignorance of the situation in Iraq. Presumably she’d have a year or so to get up to speed before McCain’s heart gives out–or maybe he’ll be lucky like Cheney and actually live out his term.

    But McCain…McCain is supposed to be the big foreign policy hotshot. This is supposed to be his core strength. Well, I am not impressed! He’s made at least three HUGE gaffes this campaign:

  • Had to have Joe Lieberman whisper loudly in his ear that he didn’t really mean Al-Qaida, just extremists (even Fox News picked up that one!)
  • Actually said, with a straight face,“In The 21st Century Nations Don’t Invade Other Nations.” John, my dear–has anyone ever mentioned Iraq or Afghanistan to you? Both invaded in the 21st century–by the U.S.
  • When asked by a reporter if he would meet with Spain’s Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, McCain said no, and didn’t seem to know who the reporter was talking about, even when she clarified it. He seemed to think it was something in Latin America. Either he’s really ignorant or so arrogant as to start destroying relationships with Europe even before the election. Of course, he has a history of this sort of thing in the run-up to the war, as the citations in the above link prove.

    Maybe I should run my dog for president. He understands a few things about foreign policy that McCain and Pallin apparently don’t: Start a conversation with diplomacy: in a dog’s case, sniffing butts. Ask for what you actually want, and not what your pollsters tell you. Being friendly wins you friends. And in imitation of Theodore Roosevelt, speak softly and carry a big stick–he likes to run down the mountain with his mouth wrapped around logs of six or eight feet.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Social and Economic Justice

    Apparently there’s a serious proposal on the table to limit public access to Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, and sell space to the highest bidders as corporate sponsors. This is what I wrote on the comment page:

    The First Amendment is part of what makes America great. Taking away the right to assemble at the Presidential inauguration is a bad idea, and selling off to the highest bidder is just plain un-American. This is part of our heritage–to watch, and perhaps to p0eacefully protest.

    As a business owner, a writer, and a concerned citizen, I urge you to maintain Pennsylvania Avenue for all citizens who wish to see the inaugural.

    Deadline for comments is Monday. Make yourself heard.

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    By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics, Politics, Web 2.0/Social Media

    A certain popular website, that I will not name or link to, posted a bunch of Sarah Palin’s government-related e-mails posted through private, non-government, non-archived accounts.

    This is, to put it mildly, not according to Hoyle, and especially because there was even a conversation about how to keep prying eyes away from these posts by using “private” email.

    Of course, as Palin found out, e-mail is never really private. It’s not a secure medium. It’s also not particularly reliable. and you shouldn’t expect to have any privacy.

    However…while Palin had absolutely no right to conduct state business over non-government e-mail–and certainly no right to delete the emails and the account and thus destroy evidence of possible wrongdoing in the Troopergate scandal, I have just as big an ethical bone to pick with the site that unmasked her.: it listed the emails of her correspondents, in big print, and in hackable form.

    I’m sorry, but it is not anybody’s right to have the personal e-mails of her kids and others who corresponded with Sarah Palin. These people will have to go through a lot of time and trouble to change their addresses, notify correspondents, etc.

    Palin was wrong. But so was this website.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics

    I can’t help wondering–would Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and other fallen giants be in such trouble if they’d followed common-sense ethical principles?

    My award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, suggests a number of reasons to say no to a sale, focused on core ideas of honesty, integrity, and quality. In other words, successful businesses have standards both for how they behave and for whom they choose to do business with.

    So many of the loans coming apart in the subprime crisis didn’t meet the basic criteria of quality–there was no assurance that the borrowers had enough resources to pay back the loans.

    Yes, these loans provided a path to home ownership for many Americans who could not have otherwise afforded them–a worthy goal. But those ownerships turned out to be temporary, and those forced from their homes are now in worse shape. Perhaps if proper lending criteria had been applied, the market would have responded by lowering inflated home prices–and those who got burned would have had a safer and more secure path to real home ownership, and the financial titans wouldn’t be fighting for air.

    Oh, and one more question: Why was Bear Stearns considered worthy of a bailout (something I wasn’t at all sure was a good idea) but not these latest casualties?

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    By Posted on Posted in media-general, Politics, Uncategorized

    How come we’re not hearing about this in the mainstream press? An on-the-scene blogger (and an articulate one who obviously has some journalism training) called it “the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state.” She’s got photos and videos on the link, too (as well as over 1000 comments, so give it some time to load)

    Yet, all three pages of unduplicated results of a Google for “AK Women Reject Palin” (the name of the rally) brought up 24 blogs and one story–it’s unclear whether it’s a staff piece or a hosted blog–at washingtonpost.com. And in the Post story, I learned the delicious irony that the anti-Palin rally was held in front of the public library. Nice!

    By contrast, the first page of a search for “Welcome Home” “Sarah Palin ” brings up a different, cheerleader story in the Washington Post, as well as a mildly critical story in the Boston Globe, and coverage in the L.A. Times and Miami Herald. In all, 59,200 results versus 113 for coverage of the protest.

    Of course, in sparsely populated Alaska, whose entire population is about equal to Boston’s, that only took 1400 people. Still, it dwarfed the 1000-attendee pro-Palin “welcome home” rally held the same day.

    And I find it hard to believe that such an important event could be completely ignored by the mainstream media. Yes, we have free speech in this country (if you don’t get too close to convention halls/corporate events and your skin is the proper color, and you’re not identified as Muslim)–but the media censors the message.

    Earth to mainstream media: stop feeding us “Soma” (to use Aldus Huxley’s term) and start reporting the news!

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability

    Here’s another entry in the Alice-In-Wonderland contradictions of our world: An auto-industry trade group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, launched a national campaign to cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, caled Eco-Driving.

    All well and good–except that this is the same group that bitterly resisted attempts to achieve a fleet average of 52 miles per gallon by 2030.

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