By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Uncategorized

Count on the Politicians to find ways around every ethics rule ever introduced. Sigh!

PRWatch found a New York Times story that shows the latest scam: legislators accept lavish gifts worth thousands of dollars, but they channel these gifts through PACs and fundraising committees. And at overpriced federal government prices, too–like $2500 for a pair of concert or theatre tickets.

Talk about meeting the letter of the law while completely violating the spirit…Is it any wonder why there are always cries to “throw the bums out”?

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Events, Politics, Uncategorized

Huffington Post’s Eason Jordan nailed the problem with recent Iran “revelations”:

After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning “dossier” of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?

That’s disgraceful and unacceptable.

Yeah, you got that right. Disgraceful and unacceptable. There’s a book coming out about the coming war with Iran: “From the Wonderful People Who Brought You Iraq” by Craig Unger. I was listening to him on Democracy Now this morning, along with General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–in other words, a major big cheese in the US military–who doesn’t believe the “evidence” incriminates the Iranian government (of which I am no fan, and nor was I a fan of Saddam–but that doesn’t mean we go charging in with guns blazing and brains left behind).

Scary stuff. Once down that dangerous and foolhardy road is apparently not enough for the Bush League. Or for the New York Times, which ran a Page One story yesterday with the unsourced allegations–by none other than Michael Gordon, co-author with Judith Miller of some of the worst pro-war propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

To its credit, today’s Times features a much more skeptical article:

Even so, critics have been quick to voice doubts. Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that the White House was more interested in sending a message to Tehran than in backing up serious allegations with proof. And David Kay, who once led the hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq, said the grave situation in Iraq should have taught the Bush administration to put more of a premium on transparency when it comes to intelligence.

“If you want to avoid the perception that you’ve cooked the books, you come out and make the charges publicly,” Mr. Kay said.

The article goes on to quote General Pace, who also gets his own article on the subject.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Uncategorized

Chris Owens has a really interesting blog post about Obama and Giuliani, about the power of an individual who thinks for himself and surrounds himself with advisors who raise questions versus the mentality of groupthink where advisors aren’t willing to question

As a black American, Owens also discusses–and dismisses–perceptions in the black community that Obama is “not black enough.” Fascinating.

I’m certainly not ready to make my choice just yet, but it’s early. Still, I see a lot of hope in the Obama candidacy–because he at least says all the right things (though his record doesn’t show so much leadership), he will attract capital and media, and he is a clear alternative to the warmongering, Patriot Act-supporting Hillary.

Democrats take note: If Hillary is the candidate, I and probably a lot of other progressive Democrats are likely to vote Green. The right will come out in droves to vote her down, but the left will not show enthusiasm, and she’ll be buried.

The candidate who most closely represents my own politics is Dennis Kucinich. I was thrilled to vote for him in the ’04 primary and will probably do so again. Unfortunately, he was ignored by the media and wildly underfunded. In short, his candidacy was utterly marginalized, to the continuing shame of the American media.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Uncategorized

Among some very intelligent calls, such as the inventor of the life-saving MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technology, the National Inventors Hall of Fame has named John E. Franz, inventor of the herbicide Roundup.

Pardon me while I puke.

Roundup has been linked to cancer and many other diseases, as well as some severe pollution issues:

Roundup is toxic to earthworms, beneficial insects, birds and mammals, plus it destroys the vegetation on which they depend for food and shelter. Although Monsanto claims that Roundup breaks down into harmless substances, it has been found to be extremely persistent, with residue absorbed by subsequent crops over a year after application. Roundup shows adverse effects in all standard categories of toxicological testing, including medium-term toxicity, long-term toxicity, genetic damage, effects on reproduction, and carcinogenicity.

This kind of “fame” we can do without. Infamy is more like it.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

I knew there was a company called jigsaw.com. I assumed it was for puzzle lovers. Then I stumbled on my colleague David Batstone’s blog entry about it. (Author of the WAG newsletter and the Right reality blog, David is another blogger on corporate ethics; I’ve been on his newsletter list for a couple of years.)

To say I was horrified is an understatement. This company actually pays people to gather business cards and punch the information into a for-sale database!

I don’t know about you, but I find that extremely creepy. I give a business card to someone because I’m interested in facilitating that person’s ability to stay in touch with me. As public as I am, and I’m pretty public, I don’t really want people exploiting me by selling my contact info. As it is, I am cursed, as an early adopter on the Internet, with the dubious honor of being included on every blankety-blank list of contacts that spammers buy and sell already.

Let me say categorically that if I ever find out that someone has mined my information in that way, I would *never* do business with that person again. It is an invasion of privacy and a very bad business model.

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By Posted on Posted in Publishing, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

Well, my seventh book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, is finally done, at the printer, and due to ship back to me shortly. Finally.

My original expectation was that I’d have copies in late July for an official publication date of September. Ha! The universe had other plans in store for me, apparently, and even delaying the official date to March 15, I’m only coming in about a month ahead–far closer than I’d like.

The good news is that much of that delay was involved in making the book better. This was supposed to be an “easy” book that I could spin off quickly from my 2000 publication, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. But as soon as I started writing realized it was going to be a whole different book. I simply know too much about book marketing to shoehorn it into an excerpted little box. Still, every aspect of this project kept dragging on–tearing up the cover I thought was done once I got (very negative) peer feedback on it, demanding that the indexer do a far better job on the index than was represented in her irst draft, and on and on in went.

I guess I’m spoiled because book #6, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First–a book that I think could actually change the world–really was on the fast track. Even though I didn’t even have a title until the manuscript was finished, and it took two months to get an appropriate cover, and I lost six weeks having to switch printers unexpectedly, it was still just ten months from the time I wrote the first word (and about six months after I completed the first draft) until I held finished books in my eager hands. Without the delays, it would have been eight and four–phenomenally fast by publishing industry standards (not counting barely-edited “instant books” that surface within weeks of some event like Princess Diana’s death). Yet despite the fast timetable, that book has gone on to win an Apex Award, be sold to foreign publishers in India and Mexico, and gain over 70 endorsements.

The new book has been getting great reviews and endorsements, from some of the top names in the independent publishing world–among them Dan Poynter, John Kremer, Fern Reiss, Marilyn Ross… I’m sure it will do well. But I think I’ll wait a while before I tackle another book–and when I do, I’ll try to be more realistic.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Uncategorized

The always-thought-provoking Washington Spectator has a very good article in the January 15 issue, explaining exactly why it’s not enough to provide paper-based audit trails to electronic voting machines–that instead we need actual paper ballots.

Among the reasons:

  • If the ballot is initially generated electronically, it is still hackable. If the ballot is generated by the voter marking a durable paper and then electronically counted (the system that has been used in my own town of Hadley MA for years), it is not.
  • Electronic machines that generate a paper receipt have various problems with paper jams, difficulty of data retrieval from a huge spool, etc.
  • Many of the receipt systems use thermal printing–that same icky unstable technology that becomes unreadable after a week in your wallet!
  • Electronic ballot systems with paper backup have caused numerous problems in actual elections, where voters reported that their choice didn’t show up on the screen, where tens of thousands of ballots didn’t register a vote (as in Sarasota County, Florida, or simply where the system is not well designed to enable voters to easily check their wishes against the receipt (and what happens when a voter wants to report problems anyway?). None of these issues even occur if we start with a marked paper ballot.
  • Most importantly, the physical paper ballots can always be recounted by hand if there is suspicion of problems. If they were generated electronically, however, and there’s fraud or error in the set-up, we have much less of a guarantee that the ballots represent actual voter intent.

    • Of course, scanners and tabulators can be hacked as well. Thus, I would hope for nationwide legislation not only specifying paper ballots on durable stock with durable ink, but also mandating a hand-count before certification; electronic scanners, counters, and tabulators should be considered nothing more than a preliminary, unverified, indication of the results–good for generating news reports but not to be relied on to actually elect people.
    Oh yes, and I think the cost of switching to these much more reliable systems should be borne by the companies that brought us these unreliable machines in the first place. It should not fall on the taxpayer to pay for the clean up of this very preventable mess.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Media Ethics, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

    An article in today’s SpeakerNet News (scroll down to “Do book testimonials work? — Ian Percy”) posits that many, if not most, book blurbs are signed by people who’ve never examined the book.

    I surely hope Mr. Percy is wrong! Certainly, when I’m asked for a book blurb I spend some serious time with the book and read at last several sections as well as the Table of Contents, index, etc. I will confess–I don’t generally read the whole thing–but I read enough of it that I can comment accurately. I find it scandalous that some people apparently consent to blurb a book without looking at it at all.

    Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to them that ultimately, it’s *their* reputation at stake as well as the author’s. To endorse a book you don’t actually believe in is asking for trouble on both moral and practical grounds.

    And when I request a blurb from someone else, I want that person to give me something based in honesty and a true appreciation of the content of the book. The blurbs I get, as a result, have enough substance that they actually do sway a sale. Yes, I believe readers can tell the difference between an honest enthusiastic blurb and a fake. (In fact, I spend some time explaining what makes a good blurb and how to get them, in my newest book Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers).

    Blurbs are a crucial tool in creating a marketing buzz, and one that helps equalize the playing field between those books published by big houses and those published by small independents. Let’s not cheapen them, please!

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    By Posted on Posted in Events, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

    I’m just back from the National Conference on media Reform in Memphis, where much honor was deservedly poured on Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated in that city just a few blocks from the conference (now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum).

    My reports on the 2005 conference in Saint Louis are posted on my Frugal Marketing site; I’ll try to get at least some of my ’07 coverage up this week.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized

    I’m a frequent reader of Chris MacDonald’s Business Ethics Blog, and through Chris, I found Joel Makower’s list of Top Green Business Stories of 2006.

    This is must reading for those interested in sustainability and how the business world addresses it/markets around it.

    Chris himself explored one of those 10 issues, Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail