By Posted on Posted in Other, Shel's Personal Life

I just got back from the twice-a-year Town Meeting in my small farm town of Hadley, MA, USA. Town Meeting is a New England tradition where the citizenry engages in direct democracy. Any registered voter can show up speak about any item on the agenda (one article at a time), and cast a vote for or against. The vote, in most situations, is binding on the town (sometimes the vote is only to put something on the next election ballot, and then it’s only binding if the citizens vote for it the second time.)

It’s an imperfect and often cantankerous process, but it actually works amazingly well.

Tonight, we finally got to vote on the town’s Long Range Plan: a massive document compiled over the last five years, with tons of citizen input including surveys sent to every household, numerous meetings, and so forth. And those surveys had something incredible like a 63 percent response, so this document really does reflect the people’s will. The town wants controlled, appropriate growth, in ways that do not throttle are already overcrowded roads, sewers, etc.

Unfortunately, while we’ve been waiting for the plan, a whole lot of commercial and large residential development proposals have come forward, and they threaten to chew up our farmland–considered by experts to be the best in the entire country–choke us in traffic, and draw down our wells. We’re facing about a million square feet of new retail, in three separate massive projects, all within a half mile of each other–this in a town with fewer than 5000 residents, extensive existing mall development, and narrow two-lane roads leading through that intersection.

I got up and made a passionate speech about my experience revisiting a town some 130 miles east of here after 28 years, and not even recognizing it in the acres of concrete and parking lots and big box stores and fast food restaurants and slow food restaurants. Then I asked that we send a strong statement by adopting the plan unanimously.

Land-use issues have often been controversial in this town–but amazingly enough–I got my wish! I am hoping that this will prove a powerful weapon in the struggle to protect our town’s rural agricultural heritage. And that the people who live in a town have as much right to control its destiny as the out-of-town profiteers who try to squeeze our lifeblood away.

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By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics

William Powers of the National Journal says the Judith Miller caper, and the Times’ earlier handling of Jayson Blair’s distortions of the truth, show the responses of a self-protective power structure much like the Church’s response to the priest-abuse scandals.

A fascinating perspective, and one that continues to force us to ask the questions about what Miller knew, who else at the Times knew, was she given a security clearance, and is she in any way a paid and/or covert propagandist of the government a la Armstrong Williams?

If it’s been archived, the date on the column is October 21, and here’s some text you can search for at Google:

On October 12, as a frustrated media establishment (plus a few scattered readers) was waiting for the paper to explain the role played by reporter Judy Miller in the case of outed spy Valerie Plame, The Times published a front-page, above-the-fold news scoop.

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By Posted on Posted in Events, General Commentary

Sigh. Why is it that so often after there’s a natural disaster, if you dig deeply into the cause of the death toll, you find humans taking unconscionable shortcuts in construction…and other humans in charge of safety oversight looking the other way?

Last week, I happened to sit next to a very intelligent and politically aware Pakistani gentleman at a Bruce Springsteen concert. In the hour before the music started, we had a long talk. My new friend just sent me a link to the work of a Pakistani ethics writer, Ardeshir Cowasjee. His latest weekly column is all about the direct responsibility for fatalities in the recent earthquake…on the shoulders of those crooked builders and didn’t-see-nuthin’ officials.

Read it and weep!

But then turn to another of Cowasjee’s columns, and see an example of the triumph of the human spirit.

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By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics

I finally got around to reading Judith Miller’s account of her Grand Jury testimony, as published in the New York Times three days ago.

When I was growing up, the Times was “the paper of record.” But in the decade of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, you’ve got to wonder.

Where were her editors? How could they allow this rambling, repetitious essay to waltz into print? Then again, these are probably the same editors who did not question her reportage in the run-up to the war, in which she served as the Bush administration’s #1 print media cheerleader, engaging in press release journalism and insider-secret journalism that was a major force in advancing support for the war that–we all know, now–did not even begin to be justified by the stated claims of weapons of mass destruction.

And then there are some other very interesting hints in this piece:

I would still like to know what really happened in that Grand Jury room–and in the numerous meetings Miller had with White House sources before the button was pushed for “shock and awe.”

I’d also like to know why she deliberately misled her editors and the public by identifying Cheney’s adjutant Scooter Libby as a “former [Capitol] Hill staffer, rather than as a top white House aide.

And finally, what does Miller mean in her comments about security clearances and being privy to classified information? Media critic Norman Solomon, in a strongly worded piece covering Miller’s entire sordid history on Iraq, points out a big problem:

There’s nothing wrong with this picture if Judith Miller is an intelligence operative for the U.S. government. But if she’s supposed to be a journalist, this is a preposterous situation…

Interestingly, I’m more amused than bothered by the numerous inaccuracies she reports from the pages of her own notebooks. I’ve done journalism, I know what it’s like to take notes in the field, and these sorts of bloopers are normal and unavoidable. However, a good journalist goes back over the notes while the interview is still fresh, and makes the necessary corrections. No evidence of that here!

And Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize winner, too. Sheesh!

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By Posted on Posted in Other

I spent this past weekend at an amazing and energizing conference: Bioneers By the Bay, in Dartmouth, MA. This was one of 17 Bioneers conferences held on the same weekend around the US, plus the “main event” in San Rafael, California.

At the Massachusetts gathering, some of the most creative thinkers of our time gathered with 550 activists to discuss climate change and peak oil, personal lifestyle choices and organized social action, and nonpolluting/sustainable alternatives.

Among the speakers:

  • Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived for two years and eight days in a 1000-year-old California redwood tree–until an agreement was reached to safeguard that tree’s life–and who has been continually on the road as an activist since returning to the ground
  • Gunter Pauli, former CEO of Ecover who realized that his ecological detergents required destruction of rainforest–and embarked on a remarkable reclamation project
  • Anna Lappe (daughter of and co-author with Frances Moore Lappe), who travels around the world collecting and sharing wisdom from social change movements in developing countries
  • Dennis Whittle, who left the World Bank to start Global Giving, and shares the story of how a $5000 public bathroom changed the whole culture of a village

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be synthesizing the abundant notes I took at this conference and posting them to my various webzines. Probably most of that will happen in late November. In any case, I’ll posannouncementsts and links here when I start putting up the content. Meanwhile, you can see what you missed (including blogs and podcasts from the event) at the conference website, https://connectingforchange.org/

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

Sometimes it seems those of us who care about ethics are fighting a losing battle. My colleague, Chris Bauer, reports on some shocking findings in a survey conducted by the well-known accounting firm KPMG:

  • Of 459 executives at US companies with revenues above $250 million, 75% had experienced fraud
  • The fraud had cost 36% of the companies surveyed at least $1 million
  • For those companies experiencing fraud in the area of financial reporting, the average cost was $257,923,000 (other types of fraud had less dollar impact)

I believe the only way we can turn this around is to show businesses that ethical behavior is ultimately profitable–that’s the position I advocated in my book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and I continue to advocate that position in the Ethics Pledge campaign and elsewhere. The costs of the fraud itself, the hit the company takes when it’s discovered, the environmental, workplace harassment, and other lawsuits that tend to crop up against fraudulent companies, etc. etc. make this a very obvious conclusion. But apparently the business world can’t see it.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

I’m reminded of the old Doonsebury book title, “But The Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There!”

The above link is a Toronto Globe & Mail article about convicted embezzler Paul Coffin, who stole $1.55 million from the Canadian government. Somehow, the courts decided that partial restitution ($1 million) and community service were an appropriate punishment. So now he’s in front of a class of 180 McGill University undergraduate business students.

He described Ottawa’s sponsorship funds as a “cookie jar” that kept on giving.
“I seemed to just keep going back to the cookie jar that seemed to have no bottom and no lid,” he said, according to several students.

He said the program failed to provide checks and balances. “The carte-blanche system played to my weakness.”

Duh! It’s not exactly rocket science that any government or private entity should have strong accounting safeguards, and that crooks will exploit weaknesses of those that don’t.

Surely, having talked his way out of prison with community service, this man should be expected to provide some value for his “students”–and lessons applicable to the wider world.

I hope someone is holding him accountable–this time.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/opinion/22thur3.html

Hoo, boy! They just really think the public is asleep at the switch! The above editorial castigates the Senate for sneaking a provision into a transportation bill that would allow incumbent senators to raise:

…An incumbent’s donation to the national party would be free for recycling right back through the new loophole as found money for the donor’s own campaign. Allowing that would circumvent the three-year-old reform limits and establish dual campaign standards: a free and easy one for incumbents, and a tight one for challengers, barred from running “leadership” kitties. Challengers would be restricted to collecting $4,200 per person for a campaign, while a senator could collect $34,200 per donor for the same race.

Hello! Earth to Senate: this is not OK! Can you say “double standard?” Incumbents already have a tremendous advantage, including the ability to send out vote-for-me propaganda disguised as constituent newsletters, at taxpayer expense; this would skew the field beyond anything that could be called a democracy.

Action time: call and write your Senators. Let them know you want this provision stripped out of this bill, and that you’ll be watching the vote

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

As Dennis Kozlowski, former Tyco CEO, heads off to a well-deserved extended “rest” in the slammer, and news reports show that a billion dollars was stolen from the Iraqi people in the form of crooked contracts, it’s time to remind ourselves that corporate theft is not a victimless crime.

Real people–innocent people–get hurt. Like the unfortunate former Enron employees whose pensions were wiped out.

In the case of the Iraq story, people will die because a well-organized fraud ring left soldiers to fend off attacks in decrepit armored cars that can’t even resist an ordinary bullet. In New Orleans, people died because a cronyistic corrupt appointment left someone in charge whose previous experience had nothing to do with disaster planning, and because a legalized theft of the money–and the National Guard personnel–that should have been going to repair and protect the levees was siphoned off into a certain unjustified and very expensive war. Yes, add to the nearly 2000 US dead and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed in an empty chase of WMDs, hundreds of New Orleaneans whose lives could have been saved if the money hadn’t been stolen from flood control, and if the Guard were at home where they belong, helping in a domestic crisis.

Oh, and speaking of cronyistic corrupt appointments, did you see what happened when the Bush administration tried to name a veterinarian as acting Director of the FDA’s Office of Women’s Health? They backed off in three days, and then denied they ever did such a thing. This is to replace the principled Dr. Susan Woods, who resigned because she could no longer publicly represent an agency that was stonewalling on a reproductive freedom issue. At least the new appointee, Theresa A. Toigo, has a 20-year background at the FDA and knows health issues. Good luck, Theresa–you’ll need it.

Back to Mr. Kozlowski: My question to you and your ilk: was it worth it? Were those ill-gotten gains that you enjoyed for a few years worth utterly destroying your company, your reputation and for the next 8 to 30 years, your own personal freedom? You were already one of the highest-paid executives in history. Did you really need to plunder beyond that? Couldn’t you have still afforded a $6000 shower curtain, if that’s how you wanted to waste your money?

In spite of these clowns, I still believe that nice guys don’t finish last, and that in the long term, business success means building a company (or a government) based on ethics and on building real long-term relationships created with honesty, integrity, and quality. Please visit my website if you’d like to know more.

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