I am a proponent of Restorative Justice. I have a friend in Ireland. I’m going to see how he feels about the subject. I have discovered that having a common language is no guarantee that you are saying the same things.
James Pilant
We are pleased to welcome this guest post from Diarmuid Griffin, Lecturer in Law at NUI Galway. You can read more about Diarmuid on our Guest Contributors Page.
The National Commission on Restorative Justice published its final report in December 2009. The Commission, announced in March 2007, was set up to examine the wider application of restorative justice within the criminal justice system. The Commission was established following the report of the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women’s Rights which recommended the development of a restorative justice programme for adult offenders in the Irish criminal justice system.
Restorative justice programmes can already be seen in operation in Ireland for juvenile offenders through the Garda Diversion Programme or a court-referred Probation Service Conference and ad hoc programmes dealing with adult offenders in Nenagh and Tallaght. While there are various different models of restorative justice, the practice generally involves…
Forensic Reform, A Critical Criminal Justice Issue
Forensic Reform: On the Agenda in the New Congress « Failed Evidence
I’ve written a number of times (here and here an here, for example) about the problems with forensic science laboratories in this country. Just in the last few months, we’ve seen scandals hit labs in Massachusetts, St. Paul, Minnesota, and in Mississippi. It seems that the parade might never end.
But today, news emerged that indicates that, just maybe, forensic reform might be on the national agenda.
The new Congress will, of course, be preoccupied with budget and fiscal matters, and also with the President’s efforts on gun control and an expected push for immigration reform. But Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has announced that he intends to put forensic reform onto the long list of issues he will examine. According to The BLT (the Blog of the Legal Times, which covers law and government in Washington), Leahy’s committee will be working on an ambitious agenda: immigration, national security and civil liberties issues (including the use of drones in both foreign and domestic contexts), and gun control policy, but that isn’t all. “The committee will also focus on promoting national standards and oversight for forensic labs and practitioners,” BLT says.
It is time for national standards in the field of forensic science. We have had forensic labs across the country involved in serious scandals and forensic testimony in some jurisdictions more comic than useful.
A front-page article in yesterday’s Washington Post underlines the importance of establishing a substantive defense right to expertise in the US.
The article says, “Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.” The DoJ begin investigating in the 1990s “after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials.” As the Post article chronicles, the investigation was very narrowly drawn in spite of evidence that problems were likely more widespread. When problems were identified, the FBI gave notice to the relevant prosecutors, but not to defendants or their legal representatives. To judge by the sample the Post was able to track down, prosecutors notified defendants in only about half the cases. This is not the first case of slow or inadequate notification.
Oversight is a common prescription from those who recognize problems with the system. I have expressed my preference for a different approach, one that chooses checks and balances over hierarchy. The Post article points to a big problem with oversight. It quotes University of Virginia School of Law professor Brandon L. Garrett saying, “You can have cautious standards, but if no one is supervising their implementation, it’s predictable that analysts may cross the line.” Garrett favors oversight, and he seems to be calling for more of it in the quote.
The FBI announced some time ago that their “bullet lead analysis,” in use for approximately four decades, was of no value. They sent letters informing the @2,500 involved prosecutorial entities. Those prosecutorial entities did nothing. Law enforcement nationwide was aware of the FBI’s admission, and did nothing. The American Bar Association was aware, and did nothing. Aware that no reasonable reaction to their announcement had transpired, despite their color-of-law mandates, the FBI took no further action; a second letter to the actual inmates involved would have cost next to nothing.
There are only carrots and no sticks for law enforcement, prosecutors and agencies responsible for their oversight to ignore forensic advances. Case law and legislated immunities allow all to put their personal career paths ahead of delivering justice, and the vast majority demonstrably choose to appear to have always been right in arrests and prosecutions, regardless of the harm done.
The worst case law immunities were born of Imbler v Pachtman and Van de Kamp v Goldstein. Both clearly establishes unequal justice; fines, suspension and/or disbarment are punishments unbefitting deliberately framing an innocent. And as light as those punishments are, the Bar rarely administers them. Recent USA Today articles addressed the rarity without noting that Congress needs to override civil immunities – they are unconstitutional, and they have killed. I refer to Imber v Pachtman as the Bicentennial Blight. It needs to be eradicated, its damage is bloody and incomprehensibly voluminous.
Senator Leahy’s forensic science reform bill appears to be short on specifics and long on template. Problems with forensic science are no doubt ‘low-hanging fruit’ for political purposes. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that the 2009 NAS report is in fact on Washington’s radar.
The Bill’s primary concern is with the following NAS report findings: problems with scientific validation of processes, and lack of uniform and unassailable standards regarding accreditation, certification, and testing procedures. Notably missing is perhaps the most discussed recommendation of the NAS report: the call to take forensic science laboratories out of the hands of law enforcement. Bias (intentional and otherwise) is likely at the heart of many if not all of the issues in forensic science. While there is no easy solution, this particular recommendation is no doubt the gorilla in the room that needs attention.
The ‘Criminal Justice and Forensic Science Reform Act of 2011’ seeks to establish an Office of Forensic Science and a Forensic Science Board. By the way, this Office is proposed to be within the Office of the Deputy Attorney General in the Department of Justice. This may be a naïve observation, but placement of the new Office within the AG’s office at least academically again ignores the NAS suggestion of separation from law enforcement. Apparently there needs to be no further discussion of this issue according to Leahy’s Bill.
Geoff Burch – American vs UK Business – funny because it’s true! – YouTube
This brief video is very funny and something of a compliment to the Frito-Lay company and its marketing practices. Of course, Geoff Burch is well known both in comedy and business circles for his wit and judgment,
As part of the staff mentoring process that we undertake at Balance, Ashley has recently asked me to read a book called The Way of the Dog by Geoff Burch. The reason behind this was to try to help me to develop management skills and thinking, rather than just being a number cruncher!
When I started to read the book I was in for a bit of a shock…there were no technical management terms (as I would have expected), in fact the book was written as a story.
The story was about a double glazing salesman called Derek who wasn’t very good at his job. One day, Derek was magically transformed into a sheepdog! Derek almost instantly fell into a bad crowd of sheepdogs (in this new world it was every sheepdog for himself)!
Even the best idea without enough follow-through will end in failure, but a poor idea with total commitment to follow-through will get good, or even great, results. Hence business success is so often 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.
This came back to my mind this evening while I watched “All Over The Shop”, the BBC2 programme featuring business coach Geoff Burch visiting retailers in a selected city (Bristol this time) to give them tips to improve their fortunes. Of the three shops I saw him visit, one of them did very little, even though the changes suggested were clearly going to improve his sales.
I do not have a lot of favorite writers, but there are a few whom I just love. One of them is Geoff Burch. So far I’ve read 4 of his books and learnt something from each of them. But my ultimate favorite book written by him is The Way of the Dog. Let me explain.
First of all, you should know that GB’s style is a bit unusual to those used to reading self help and business books. Funny is a bit of an understatement. And describing him as a person thinking outside the box (such a cliché) is just a way of underestimating the power of his charm. Did I mention that he wanted to name this book Doing’ it Doggy Style?
Enough about the author who, by the way, is brilliant.
Jason Silverstein: Should Citizens Have the Right to Fire a Police Officer?
Here are the facts. On September 22, 2011, Officer Richard Schoen stopped Jeanine Tracy, because she made a sudden lane change without the proper signals. She was handcuffed for disorderly conduct and driven to District Seven police station. During the ride, she cursed, spat at the car’s partition, and stomped on the backseat. When they arrived at the station, she did not get out. With his left hand, Schoen grabbed her shirt. With his right hand, he punched her repeatedly in the head. He grabbed her by the hair, dragged her out of the car, threw her on the ground, and struck her with his knee. These are the facts and we know they are facts, because there is video from the squad car’s dashboard camera.
Here’s what happened next. Schoen was fired on May 1, 2012, because he violated the department’s code of conduct. That code says a police officer must use the minimum force necessary to accomplish his or her purpose. But the story doesn’t end there. Schoen had been a police officer for nine years. He had a positive record, and only praise from superiors. Before he joined the MPD, he gave ten years of his life to military service. So, when he appealed the case to the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, they held a two-day hearing. On December 3, the Commission reinstated him, deciding sixty days without pay was a better punishment.
Briefly – The police department fired Schoen for excessive use of force. The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission reinstated him with a three month suspension. Then after public protests, the Commission decided that firing was more appropriate. So, who decides?
I teach criminal justice courses, and this is a fascinating piece of writing and it is an interesting if painful situation. I don’t take any pleasure from watching police officers punch handcuffed individuals. And I do understand that being cussed at by a suspect who is stomping and spitting for five minutes is going to get on my last nerve.
Should the public have influence over hiring and firing decisions concerning police officers?
The situation here was complex but I find the amount of citizen action appropriate and the commission response appropriate. However, it is easy to see where there could be situations where police were more immune to public discontent or where public opinion was allowed to influence matters of professionalism. I’d like to see some more writing long these lines.
In 2009, Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Sgt. Scott Krause punched a handcuffed suspect in the face in the back of a squad car. In 2011, Milwaukee police Officer Richard Schoen did the same thing. Both incidents were captured on squad car video.
Krause was fired, convicted of a felony and served 18 months in prison.
Schoen ended up with a 60-day suspension and no criminal charges.
Amid an outcry from elected officials and members of the public, the Fire and Police Commission will meet Tuesday to review its decision to overturn Chief Edward Flynn’s firing of Schoen. But civil rights advocates continue to question the decision by the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office not to charge him in an incident they say is strikingly similar to the earlier case against Krause.
There are a few obvious differences in the cases: Krause worked for the Sheriff’s Department and struck a white male. Schoen worked for the Police Department and struck a black female.
If Schoen had been convicted of felony misconduct in public office, as Krause was, the commission would not have had the discretion to reinstate him because people convicted of felonies cannot serve as law enforcement officers in Wisconsin.
We all recognize the difficult job with which Milwaukee police officers are tasked. The City of Milwaukee spends significant taxpayer resources on ensuring the department can deliver quality, professional services. When officers get it right, we must applaud them. When officers exercise the kind of brutal disregard for regulations and human well-being displayed by Officer Schoen, we must hold them accountable. This ensures the protection of our citizens’ most basic rights, as well as the ability of the rule-abiding, vast majority of police officers to ensure residents’ safety.
The digital video recorders installed in Milwaukee Police Department squad cars are experiencing “unacceptable” rates of failure and 136 will have to be replaced at a cost of up to $900,000.
As a result, the Common Council will consider a plan to spend that money from the city’s contingency fund to replace the devices purchased in 2006 and 2007.
The disclosure comes as videos from those devices have played a critical role in at least two recent cases involving allegations of police misconduct.
In one high-profile case, Derek Williams died in July 2011 after gasping for breath and begging for help for about eight minutes in the back of a Milwaukee police squad car. The incident was recorded on the car’s digital video recorder.
An inquest into Williams’ death will be held Feb. 11.
In another case, the Fire and Police Commission voted to fire Officer Richard Schoen this week after a squad-car video showed he punched a handcuffed woman in the face. The decision was a reversal of a decision to suspend the officer for 60 days.
That video shows Jeanine Tracy stomping her feet, spitting and cursing before Schoen punches her, drags her out of the car by the hair and strikes her in the stomach with his knee after she is on the floor of the police garage.
What They Don’t Teach in Business School about Entrepreneurship – YouTube
This is from the Stanford School of Business, a panel discussion from the 2010 Conference on Entrepreneurship. This video is deliciously titled “What they don’t teach you in Business School about Entrepreneurship.”
The discussion about “ants and lions” comes along about thirty minutes in. Don’t miss it. It’s perceptive. The panelists are Mike Cassidy, Chuck Holloway, and Nazila Alasti.
The previous blog introduced two important questions any time-management process starts with. Here are a few tricks I found useful when aligning our time investments to our core objectives and principal goals.
But, the challenge of an entrepreneur and change leader is she is pulled in all different directions at the same time, which makes it extremely difficult to continually create success. Instead of racing and gaining, the entrepreneur lies on her back and is trampled by ants. Every day is filled with tens and hundreds of actions and activities all of which seem important somehow, but together nearly immobilize her. Like with so many, the passion slowly drains out of the entrepreneur, and her goals start fading. Instead of looking to the big goals, moving forward, the small things in life take over.
From the web site, Arnonuemann – Thought Leadership: (I highlighted the text beneath the pretty graph and the graph came with it. It looks nice, so I’m keeping it but if there is a problem, let me know and I’ll pull it immediately. jp)
Lessons from the ants : all for one ( mission ) and one is there for all ….
“But ants aren’t nature’s only high-functioning teams. Packs of wolfs, pods of dolphins, and prides of lions all share remarkable strategies in terms of leadership, connectivity, execution and organization. For nature’s teams, mission matters most. Bioteams are the physical manifestation of a mission. They organize on the fly, adjust strategies in real-time and redefine membership based on environmental demands. Just Google “unicoloniality” to learn more about how some of nature’s teams inherently understand what many human teams essentially do not: membership is a function of achieving the mission and not the other way around.”
There is so much confusion in the air. A lot of people do not even know what they want in Nigeria and you can’t really blame them! Do people have ambitions any longer or they just want to work and get salaries on pay day? Are there counselors aiding, guiding, and moulding the interests of young students in primary and secondary schools; and in Universities? Are parents interested in, and supportive of their children’s ambitions or they just want to bask in the vicarious “glory” of those big names (Engr, Esq, Dr, Pharm, Arch…) for their own ego fulfillment? Are there still career fairs in our secondary schools and tertiary institutions? The system is so dysfunctional that we are busy struggling to accept anything slapped on us simply because there is a salary. Each time I watch National Geographic Channel, the question I keep asking myself is: “how is it that a human being dedicate his / her life time to studying butterflies, ants, birds, lions etc if not passion?” Let s/he who has a passion to bake cakes go on to become a brand; let s/he who loves flowers go on to become a brand florist; let s/he who loves to bake bread go on to become a household baker; let s/he who wants to be a great restaurateur go on to cook great meals; let s/he who sees a niche in mobile toilets go on to fill the void, let s/he who wants to be a great photographer go on to capture the memories etc. That will be Entrepreneurship and it won’t matter if you have chains of degrees or not. Passion would be the catalyst but certainly not running to grab a steering out of frustration from not getting relevant jobs.
Law and order is a tricky business and the best of us are sometimes tested and found wanting largely because of the ambivalence of the mandate of police. Law is codified, made formal in various acts-the IPC, CrPC, evidence, etc. But what is order? Is there a permanent, ordained, immutable order? A preferred order? An ideal state of order? The construction of the meaning of order is exclusively the area of police expertise.
The law obligates a police officer of appropriate rank present on the scene of trouble to do everything within his legal means to prevent trouble and disperse the mob. It is a responsibility, not a privilege and powers to discharge this responsibility inhere in him; he does not enjoy it during the pleasure of somebody. Now the DGP says it was on his orders that the police force did not react. That says it all. Law must take a bow before the dictates of order
I have great respect for the thinking of my colleague and friend, Manoje Nath. We in America should pay more attention to the ideas and philosophy of criminal justice. Surely, the experiences of policing in a nation of 1.4 billion people have have some valuable lessons.
The short excerpt above does not do justice to the article. It is constructed in a carefully designed pattern, very fine writing. So, I recommend you go read the article in its entirety. In addition, I couldn’t help but notice that his remarks were published in a good number of Indian publications.
James Pilant
P.S. This may seem off the pattern of business ethics but I also teach criminal justice courses and justice is a critical element in ethical analysis. (JP)
1. Need for Reforms
It is the duty of the State to protect fundamental rights of the citizens as well as the right to property. The State has constituted the criminal justice system to protect the rights of the innocent and punish the guilty. The system, devised more than a century back, has become ineffective; a large number of guilty go unpunished in a large number of cases; the system takes years to bring the guilty to justice; and has ceased to deter criminals. Crime is increasing rapidly everyday and types of crimes are proliferating.
The citizens live in constant fear. It is therefore that the Govt of India, Ministry of Home Affairs constituted the Committee on reforms of Criminal Justice System to make a comprehensive examination of all the functionaries of the Criminal Justice System, the fundamental principles and the relevant laws. The Committee, having given its utmost consideration to the grave problems facing the country, has made its recommendations in its final report, the salient features of which are given below: …
Way back in 1604, House of Lords Judge Sir Edward Coke ruled that “the house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose.” There was serious concern for the privacy of a living a being as the contested and universally acceptable verdict says “The midnight knock by the police bully breaking into the peace of the citizen’s home is outrageous in law’. Agreeing with him, Justice Douglas explained that the Free State offers what a police state denies – the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.
“That precious right to be left alone is violated once the police enter our conversations,’’ the two thinking judges said as they unwittingly laid the foundation of the hope for a nation “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high…”
It’s a pleasant surprise that Lord Coke’s concern was echoed recently by Indian Supreme Court judges AK Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar as they examined the significance of the Right to Information Act.
And finally from the web site, a PDF file, MEASURES FOR CRIME VICTIMS IN THE INDIAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM by Kumaravelu Chockalingam: (This is a very brief section from a 13 page paper. jp)
II. OVERVIEW OF THE INDIAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
India derived its criminal justice system from the British model. There is a clear demarcation of the role
and powers and functions of the Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary. The judiciary is independent and there
is a free press. The penal philosophy in India has accepted the concepts of prevention of crime and treatment
and rehabilitation of criminals, which have been reiterated by many judgments of the Supreme Court.
Victims have no rights under the criminal justice system, and the state undertakes the full responsibility to
prosecute and punish the offenders by treating the victims as mere witnesses.
I started out to write about gun control. Halfway through, I realized I know little about the issue. I should probably read more on it before I write on it. So instead, this is about Westerns. Django comes from a deep American tradition. Even though it is nominally based on the Italian form of that American tradition, the Italians like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci (who directed the original Django in 1966), were just borrowers. The classic American Western is built on classic American ideas: That the individual, and not the collective, is the most important component of a society, and that violence, especially gun violence, is the most legitimate way to settle both societal and personal grievances. Anyone wishing to have a meaningful dialogue with those who support gun ownership in this country had better understand that fundamental ethos.
I have often told my students that a great paper could be written tracing the last century of American culture by examining seminal Western films. From Stagecoach (1939) to The Searchers (1956); from The Wild Bunch (1969) to Unforgiven (1993), each says something profound about the way we see ourselves. John Ford’s Stagecoach was the first fully mature Western of the talking era, and its message is clear. The banker is evil, the bourgeois ineffectual. As the heroic couple (outlaw and prostitute) ride off at the end, they are said to be “free from the blessings of civilization,” perhaps the most succinct statement of the Western philosophy.
Our moral choices are very often not made based on reason and judgment but by habit and practice. American history has left us patterns of behavior that we habitually use. The history of the American West has left several problematic behavior patterns. First, we have a worship of outlaws. Vicious scum like Jesse James and Billy the Kid occupy volumes of complimentary literature, films and television.
I was interviewing a criminal once while I was working at a U.S. Probation office. I asked him why he committed crimes. He told me that he was an outlaw, a man who could not be limited in his behavior by society, a man outside the law. I was looking at a pathetic wrongdoer, a man who had brought misery and pain into the lives of everyone who knew him, but in his mind he was a heroic figure out of the Old West. It is not unusual in criminal justice to encounter criminals who consider themselves heroic figures, who were only doing what they “had” to do.
There isn’t much allure in doing the intelligent, rational thing when your culture prefers irrationality and violence.
Fortunately, America has counterbalancing traditions as well. Democracy, the ballot over the gun, is also a force embedded in this culture.
To act ethically and morally, reason is a critical factor, but there must also be an awareness of the cultural habits that often (always?) influence our decision making. Historically, Americans tend to lean toward gun use when confronted with problems. This may have been more appropriate in the Old West than now. It probably made more sense at the time.
Acting with reason, using logic, understanding history, will eventually undermine the culture of violence. We have advanced as humans by limiting the use of violence by ritualizing it, making it inappropriate in most circumstances. That struggle continues.
Business ethics is as much propelled by culture and habit as it is by intelligence.
We by our writing and our actions are creating a different perceived reality in ethics. It will one day take its place as cultural habit.
Let us live in the knowledge that our action and beliefs in many ways create perceived reality. That a heavy responsibility that we should take seriously.
I think most Americans – left, right and center – can at least agree that there is something disquieting happening at the core of American public culture these days. It’s something that often pops up as public displays of anger and vitriol that many times flirts with paranoid delusion. Maybe it’s always been there and we just never were exposed to it on a mass scale before the Twitterverse. Regardless, we live in a culture where violent rampages against strangers, though never condoned, are now simply not beyond the pale of American daily life. We call such acts unacceptable, and then by our continuing inability to address how to stop them, we quietly accept them.
Yeah so, humans are occasionally capable of unspeakable violence. News flash. Still, the nature of these incidents and their commonality suggest that this is an American thing, a revelation that puts an ugly stain on that old trope of American exceptionalism.
But I want to know why, as Americans, we tolerate and indeed seem to relish representations of violence, while at the same time we’re so fearful of actual violence that some of us are stockpiling weapons in our homes to prepare ourselves for the worst.
In the old days—not that long ago, in the scale of human history—a whole town used to turn out for a festive viewing of a hanging.
Today in places where conservative Islam reigns, women are stoned to death in public spectacles of participatory violence.
But how different is that, really, from the great American past-time of engaging in virtual violence of the most vicious sort?
America is the most violent, militarized society on Earth and Americans are the greatest exporters of violence, both physical and virtual, to the rest of the world.
We need to start looking much harder at the way our culture encourages violence by selling us the story that real men enjoy violence and can handle it with insouciance.
The real solution however, Gilligan says, is treating violence as a public health issue or as part of preventive medicine.
“In preventive medicine, we learned 150 years ago that cleaning up the water supply and the sewer system was much more effective in preventing epidemics of cholera and other infectious diseases than all the doctors and medicines and hospitals in the world just dealing with people one individual at a time.
“And I say here too, rather than focusing on primarily, say, trying to identify which individuals are maybe most at risk of becoming violent, the more efficient method of reducing the level of violence in our society would be to look at our environment and change it,” Gilligan said.
It’s no easy task. Gilligan said a first step for him would be to ban assault weapons and large capacity magazines. But he said the bigger picture is to tackle socioeconomic issues.
“We do have epidemics of violence when the unemployment rate increases, when economic inequality increases … And these tend to come down when we either ameliorate the effects of unemployment — for example, unemployment insurance — or find ways to protect people from utter humiliation and loss of status,” he said.
He went even further, saying that society as a whole needed to adopt a perspective “that we will not abandon or neglect or ignore anyone, that we will regard ourselves as responsible for the welfare of everybody.”
“I realize this sounds like pie in the sky … But I think it is possible to create a less aggressive and less violent society,” Gilligan said. “It’s just that it’s a matter of generations. It’s not something that happens overnight.”
While all eyes are on Newtown for a few days, killings continue around the United States without much notice. Trigger happiness is an instinct difficult to separate from the ease with which guns can be obtained. Their availability in America is in abundance, price is cheap, the reasons to possess them many. To show off as trophies, to hunt, to “protect,” to satisfy one’s macho instinct; or because it is every American’s right to carry arms. Such mindset is absolutist. Such faith in the superiority of culture, which feeds on the idea of “American exceptionalism” that gives the United States a divine mission, is fatally flawed. For man cannot remain unaffected by what he does to fellow humans. At this time of sorrow, it would be appropriate to also think of the many young and the innocent killed in America’s foreign wars.
In a Boston Review article titled “The Power and the Glory: Myths of American Exceptionalism” in the Summer 2005 edition, Howard Zinn wrote these words: “Divine ordination is a very dangerous idea, especially when combined with military power (the United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons, with military bases in a hundred different countries and warships on every sea). With God’s approval, you need no human standard of morality.” It is this state of mind that haunts America today.
“The Tinkerers”: How corporations kill creativity by Alex Foege – Salon.com
In August 2010, Paul Krugman published a piece in the New York Times titled “America Goes Dark.” He described how the United States, “a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System” was now dismantling its infrastructure.
Krugman’s main point was that the U.S. government was not investing stimulus funds in the tools needed for our own economic growth. Three decades of antigovernment rhetoric had convinced many Americans that spending taxpayer funds on anything was a waste of taxpayer funds. But government—the US government, specifically—had built this country into an innovative economic powerhouse by investing in “lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.”
I would take Krugman’s point one step further and argue that the American government and people helped the country grow both by investing in innovation and by committing themselves to the traditional tinkerer spirit. A sophisticated, cutting-edge infrastructure was the perfect crucible for the kind of innovation the United States embodied.
The point about the devolution of tinkering in American life is not that we have lost a physical connection to the work that we do. It’s that the notion that we can fix any problem or achieve any goal that we set for ourselves has deteriorated into a sanitized, corporatized version of what constitutes achievement.
Corporate America has grown rigid as it has grown larger. Despite the dot-com era’s many images of creative whizzes reweaving the very fabric of innovation, it remains extremely difficult for the freethinking alchemists of today to perform their peculiar strain of magic and thrive while doing it.
This was a great article much longer than the brief excerpt I have placed here. If at all possible, please go to Salon and read the whole thing. The gentleman has several books out, so you might want to look into acquiring those as well.
Yet, these pressing needs seem to register very little as a governmental concern. We’ve already had collapsing dikes and bridges. What kind of crisis will it take to make this a critical issue that gets addressed?
Maybe the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak? Where’s that “can do” spirit that built buildings, monuments and wonders of technology? Where has that gone?
I like to read yearbooks from the 1960’s, Britannica, World Book, etc. and in them I find a spirit of optimism and a certainty of success that no longer is predominant in our culture. Much of our current angst can be traced to the thought that things are only going to get worse.
I agree with Mr. Foege, we need change.
We need to act and we can’t wait for the “road fairy” to repair out problems.
James Pilant
P.S. You could argue that there is no business ethics here. After all we aren’t speaking of deliberate sabotage of America’s infrastructure. Certainly I hope not. But business ethics is also a positive force. Good business ethics would embrace creativity and long term growth as manifested in infrastructure development and preservation.
In mid-January, the American Society of Civil Engineers (asce) convened a series of five roundtables in Washington, D.C., that were conceived as in-depth discussions of how best to address the nation’s significant infrastructure deficiencies, which threaten not only the safety and welfare of the public but also the nation’s economic growth and competitiveness. Each roundtable had its own moderator and slate of participants, and the participants included well-respected political leaders, policy leaders, and members of asce who are well versed on the subject of critical infrastructure. The starting points for these discussions were the five key solutions outlined in asce’s 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which was released in March 2009. In essence what these roundtables were striving to achieve was to develop a framework for giving full dimension to these solutions and securing for them positions of high visibility and high priority on the national agenda. which was released in 2003. The 2001 report card conferred an overall grade of D+; the 2005 report card, a D; and the 2009 report card, a D. The 2003 progress report also conferred a grade of D. These assessments have trained a spotlight on the fact that America’s critical infrastructure—principally its roads, bridges, drinking water systems, mass transit systems, schools, and systems for delivering energy—may soon fail to meet society’s needs. The underlying threats—and these threats are quite significant—are those of deteriorating economic strength within the global marketplace and a diminished quality of life across the spectrum of American society.
Now is the time to act to bring up the level of repair of our infrastructure. The reasons?
• the cost of borrowing the money to do this is approximately 0%. We will never get a better deal.
• the number of out-of-work construction workers is huge which has depressed the cost of labor.
• the money paid to the architects and engineers and laborers and suppliers of raw materials and truck drivers will be spent almost immediately by those folks which will stimulate the economy. Plus there is time for the money those folks spend to be spent again (by the subsequent recipients) before the next year is out, amplifying the effect. (Economists call this the multiplier effect. In this case $1 spend on construction creates well over $1 of economic activity.)
• the problems with our infrastructure will only get worse and will cost even more as time goes on. It is not like they will “heal themselves” like a cold will if you just wait.
• all of the expenditures will go to Americans and American companies. The jobs cannot be “outsourced.”
If China is willing to lend us the money to make this nation stronger, creating jobs that generate more than enough tax revenue to pay off those loans, we will be fools if we don’t act. The more we wait the more it costs us in the long run.
“Over the next several decades, Illinois’ infrastructure needs will likely exceed $300 billion, yet the state does not have a comprehensive plan to address this critical need. There are real costs associated with underfunding of infrastructure: shipping and travel delays, congestion, pollution, and diminished economic growth.” State Budget Crisis Task Force Illinois Report.
For the U.S. economy to be the most competitive country in the world we need a first class infrastructure system—transport systems that move people and goods efficiently and at reasonable cost by land, water and air; transmission systems that deliver reliable, low-cost power from a wide range of energy sources, and water systems that drive industrial processes as well as the daily functions in our homes. Infrastructure is the foundation that connects the nation’s businesses, communities and people, driving our economy and improving our quality of life.
ASCE urges the administration and Congress to focus on policies that will create jobs and continue to grow the economy. ASCE will work with the new Congress and the President to rebuild and revitalize the very foundation of our national economy. Roads, bridges, levees, and dams not only provide security, but also allow businesses to move goods, reach global markets, grow their market share and create new jobs.
This is Ethics Bob’s take on the recent movie, Zero Dark Thirty. As with all of his work, it merits reading.
James Pilant
Zero Dark Thirty: Did torture lead us to Osama bin Laden? « Ethics Bob
For many years before Zero Dark Thirty, arguments raged about whether torture was acceptable, and the arguments turned largely on whether torture—euphemized into enhanced interrogation because torture is illegal—was effective. Arguing for torture was the CIA; opposing it was most of the FBI. FBI agents reported that detainees that were treated decently, even kindly, were founts of valuable intelligence until CIA interrogators took over and turned to torture, at which point the detainees clammed up.
Bigelow’s and Boal’s sources were largely CIA, so it figures that they were told that torture played an important role. Had their sources been FBI the movie’s depiction of the interrogations would have different.
So did torture lead us to UBL? I’m inclined to think that it was of little help, but I can’t really know. See the movie and keep an open mind.
What’s my take? Torture is against American and International law. If an American uses torture, he should be prosecuted for the crime or handed over to international authorities for punishment.
Is it worth a come-see? Assuredly. By the fanatic long lines even late at night, this is the pic to see. And probably 90% went out satisfied. But is it /all that/? Not so sure. Bigelow earns her stripes/, *The Hurt Locker*/ won Best Pic of 2008, and merited it. Moreover, probably few directors could have landed this baby as well as she. But somehow I think the hype is selling this sizzle more than the steak.
Just to reiterate the consensus: torture did not help national security. The chairs of the Senate intelligence and armed services committees, in addition to a recent Republican presidential nominee and torture survivor, and the acting head of the CIA, have all publicly announced that the film’s depiction of torture exaggerates its usefulness.
In fact, as they have all confirmed, the information that led to the death of Osama bin Laden was gained through traditional intelligence methods, not the unconstitutional “enhanced interrogation” human rights abuses illegally concocted by former Vice President Dick Cheney, Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, and others.
Not only was torture unhelpful as an interrogation method, it was actively counterproductive: it fueled the recruitment of new terrorists by our nation’s enemies, and undermined our nation’s moral standing in the world, degrading the “smart power” that was responsible for our triumph over the Soviet bloc and the relative peace in the decades following WWII.
In my opinion, Zero Dark Thirty does not glorify torture. The film is very objective. It shows us what happened and it’s up to us to determine how we feel about it. I think a lot of people are used to being told what to think and mistake the clinical representation of these events as condoning torture. However, showing and endorsing are not the same thing. A lot of people are misinterpreting what’s happening in the film, have already made up their mind before they’ve seen the film, or worse, actively lie about what happens in the film to better support their own arguments. After all, how can we confront them when we haven’t seen the film? Many have claimed this is the sequence of events in the film: Chastain’s character and the CIA physically and mentally torture prisoners, get information, find Bin Laden. This is not true. Chastain and the CIA torture a prisoner in the beginning of the film, but he gives them no information. Over and over he refuses to tell them anything. They get the information from him by tricking him.
You can argue the film says they were able to trick him because of all torture he was subjected to, but in a scene where Chastain watches countless interrogation tapes that involve and don’t involve torture the film goes out of it’s way to show that she found the same information from many people who were not tortured at all. Every prisoner that was tortured in the tapes said nothing. Plus, the film shows multiple terrorists attacks that happen while the CIA is still using torture techniques. Wouldn’t a pro-torture film ignore those events to perpetuate their pro-torture agenda? In the context of the whole film it seems pretty obvious Zero Dark Thirty is not pro-torture. Furthermore, the idea that is glorifies torture is asinine. These sequences are disturbing and sickening. There’s nothing enjoyable about watching these scenes, and if you understand cinematic language it’s glaringly obvious we’re meant emphasize with the people being tortured. The CIA agents are the monsters.
The One Percent judge a member of the 47% percent.
The One Percent Manifesto (Tongue in Cheek)
I read with delight the article, “I am a job creator: a manifesto for the entitled.” Steven Pearlstein has a talent for satire. The article was wonderful. The piece lampooned the bizarre beliefs of many of the one percenters, the guys who believe the 47% are a raggedy band of freeloaders who need some Ayn Randian discipline. These are my favorite paragraphs below but I really think you should read the whole article to get the flavor of the writing.
James Pilant
I am entitled to a healthy and well-educated workforce, a modern and efficient transportation system and protection for my person and property, just as I am entitled to demonize the government workers who provide them.
I am entitled to complain bitterly about taxes that are always too high, even when they are at record lows.
I am entitled to a judicial system that efficiently enforces contracts and legal obligations on customers, suppliers and employees but does not afford them the same right in return.
I am entitled to complain about the poor quality of service provided by government agencies even as I leave my own customers on hold for 35 minutes while repeatedly telling them how important their call is.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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