Ethics Newsline®

Want proof that one vote — your very own, single vote — can entangle the electoral mechanism, change legislative priorities, and throw a governor into a flurry of ethical dilemmas? You don’t have to go to Florida’s hanging chads, or Louisiana’s close and still-contested race for the U.S. Senate. Look at the state of Maine’s Senate District 16 in Lincoln County, stretching from the Windsor fairground to Monhegan Island.

On November 5, voters here cast nearly 18,000 ballots for the Senate seat. Result: Democratic state representative Christopher Hall of Bristol beat Republican school board member Leslie Fossel of Alna by two votes. A recount raised Hall’s margin to nine. But 63 ballots remained in dispute, and four more were challenged.

Ordinarily, that might not matter much. But this is no ordinary year. Maine Governor Angus King, an independent prevented by law from seeking a third term, is being replaced by U. S. Representative John Baldacci, a Democrat. Maine’s House of Representatives is also solidly Democratic. The 35-member Senate, however, is evenly divided right now: 17 Democrats, 17 Republicans. Whoever wins in District 16 will tip that balance, determining whether — for the first time in 16 years — all three lawmaking entities in the state are in Democratic hands.

And that winner will be established by votes you can count on the fingers of two hands.

Even that might not seem so strange, given some close tallies across the nation. But look at the process ahead. The Secretary of State’s office submits to the governor the official result of a recount carried out in a garage at Maine State Police headquarters. The governor, by November 26, certifies that result and summons the elected legislators to meet.

But what about those 63 ballots? Some were filled out in pen, though the law requires pencil. Some voters made the wrong choice between circling a name or placing an X in a box. Some ballots had extraneous marks or other physical abnormalities. Republicans have already filed suit over the recount. And when a Senate election is in dispute, the law says that the Senate decides the winner.

But who controls the Senate? Whichever name the governor certifies will determine whether the 18-to-17 majority will be for the Republicans or the Democrats when the Senate meets to resolve this issue. And that, very likely, will determine which candidate wins — and, therefore, which party gets to select the leadership, appoint committee chairs, and set the agenda.

No wonder the governor has called on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to determine what powers he actually has. Does he again, as in the past, routinely sign off on the findings of Secretary of State Dan Gwadosky, a Democrat elected by the legislature? Or must the governor examine the disputed ballots himself, draw his own conclusions, and certify whomever he feels has won?

King, in fact, faces not just one but an entire sequence of tough right-versus-right dilemmas:

1. Does he intervene or keep his distance? The law appears unclear. So what’s right? Is intervention merely a busybody intrusion into what should be a more impersonal process? Or would failure to intervene constitute a lack of leadership and moral courage? How does he resolve this individual-versus-community dilemma?

2. What does it mean to intervene? Suppose his review of the ballots raises more doubts than it settles? Can he certify a name other than the one sent forward by the Secretary of State. What if he feels strongly that the recount went off the rails and anointed the wrong candidate. Should he, despite a court ruling, take a civilly disobedient stand to correct this apparent injustice, or hold his peace in deference to due process? Does he speak the truth without regard to consequences, or restrain himself out of loyalty to the process?

3. And what if, having forwarded one or the other name, that single act determines whether a host of tough issues facing Maine — health care, security measures, job creation, computers in the classroom — sails through or faces challenges? Is it fair for any outgoing governor to cast so long a shadow over his successor? What must he do about this standoff between the needs of the short term and the demands of the long term?

Tough dilemmas, these, and not easily resolved. But whose vote put Governor King in that position? Was it you, Bruce, down in Bristol? Or you, Cassie, over in Wiscasset? We’ll never know.

But this we do know: Somewhere, somehow, a few someones bungled one of the most precious privileges that democracy can bestow. Tired, distracted, uninformed, belligerent — we don’t know why they handed in compromised ballots. But their actions caused this mess. If you’ve ever wondered whether you had a moral obligation to learn how to register your vote in the proper way — and whether your one little vote mattered — now you know. By such tiny actions is legislation shaped for years to come. That’s how democracy works.

(c)2002 by the Institute for Global Ethics

“Rush Limbaugh and all of the Rush Limbaugh wannabes have a very shrill edge. And that’s entertainment. We were told that even people who don’t agree with them listen because they’re entertaining. But what happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren’t satisfied just to listen. They want to act because they get emotionally invested. And so … the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically, on our families and on us, in a way that’s very disconcerting…. You know, we see it in foreign countries and we think, ‘Well, my God, how can this religious fundamentalism become so violent?’ Well, it’s that same shrill rhetoric, it’s that same shrill power that motivates. Somebody says something and then it becomes a little more shrill the next time. And then more shrill the next time. And pretty soon it’s a foment that becomes physical in addition to just verbal.”

– U.S. Senate minority leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota), speaking last week to CNN about the rhetoric and commentary coming from some talk show hosts in the United States. Limbaugh, a key figure in conservative talk radio and politics, dismissed Daschle’s comments, saying the Democrat is simply a sore loser after November’s elections. (”Daschle Says ‘Shrill’ Talk Radio Spurs Threats,” CNN, Nov. 20.)

SACRAMENTO, California
Three major offshore firms came under pressure last week from the nation’s largest public pension fund, which accused the companies of moving their operations off U.S. soil in order to skirt taxes and obligations to shareholders.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), a massive fund manager for state employees, urged the three firms to repatriate, saying it would cosponsor proxies to that effect in 2003.

CalPERSs announcement allies the powerful group with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which is spearheading the effort to call attention to offshore firms, reported the Associated Press.

The firms named in last week’s action are diversified manufacturer Ingersoll-Rand, energy contractor McDermott International, and embattled manufacturer Tyco International.

CalPERS, which holds sizeable stock in all three companies, said it would cosponsor shareholder proxies for 2003, giving stockholders a voice in saying whether headquarters should be moved back to U.S. soil.

Currently, Tyco International and Ingersoll-Rand are based in Bermuda, while McDermott International is based in Panama — an arrangement that curbs shareholders’ rights and largely eliminates U.S. tax liabilities.

Last week, CalPERS said the current crisis in corporate management — and the consequent lack of trust by the public — can only be remedied by businesses’ efforts to do the right thing.

Part of that effort, CalPERS insisted, is stepping up to the plate and paying taxes instead of doing predominately U.S.-based business while maintaining titular offshore status — a strategy recommended as a tax shelter by many of the nation’s leading accountants, according to the New York Times.

In light of the current lack of leadership from the federal government, especially at the Securities and Exchange Commission, private shareholders must step forward to fill the void, warned California State Treasurer Phil Angelides.

Investors are beset by “a rudderless federal regulatory system, so we have to stand up as investors and owners to enforce some discipline in the market because no one else is going to do it,” Angelides, a member of the CalPERS investment committee, told the Times.

NEW YORK
Five of Wall Street’s largest banks agreed last week to pay $8.3 million for failing to retain emails that prosecutors say might have been useful in prosecuting the firms for wrongdoing.

Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Piper Jaffray, and Salomon Smith Barney will each ante up about $1.65 million, according to the tentative settlement with the government.

The firms had allegedly failed to follow existing law, which requires them to retain emails for a period of three years, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Instead, they had been destroying emails — a practice eyed with increasing suspicion by investigators in light of the role emails have played in highlighting recent coporate abuses among executives.

While regulators and executives had been preparing to compromise on a shorter email retention policy, the Journal says such changes now are unlikely.

Last week’s agreement comes as a likely prelude to a larger settlement between Wall Street firms and the government, which is investigating charges that the firms funneled lucrative IPO deals to favorite clients, reported the Financial Times.

WASHINGTON
A secretive appeals court last week gave the U.S. Justice Department the green light to broaden its use of wiretaps and other surveillance in the hunt for terrorists, rejecting concerns that the new policy infringes on civil rights.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had ruled against such expansion in May, but last week reversed its stand after U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft argued that the U.S. Patriot Act, passed quickly by Congress after the September 11 attacks, gives him wide latitude to conduct intrusive surveillance on U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism.

In the May rejection of expanded spying powers, the FISC slammed the Justice Department and FBI for a long history of deceiving the court in an overzealous effort to conduct wiretaps and surveillance.

But when ruling on the appeal, a three-judge panel appointed to act as the appellate division of FISC said that Congress had broadened the Justice Department’s reach with the Patriot Act, and that Congress would have to amend the measure if it impinges on civil liberties.

An editorial from the Washington Post contends that the court’s decision was regrettable but unavoidable, blaming Congress for too hastily signing away civil liberties in the emotional weeks following the terrorist attacks.

“The court’s opinion should be understood as one more part of a kind of alternative legal system that is emerging to handle terrorism cases,” the Post wrote, “a system that lets Americans be investigated and locked up without any of the normal protections of the justice system.”

Ashcroft praised last week’s ruling, saying it “revolutionizes our ability to investigate terrorists and prosecute terrorist acts.” He also promised he has no intention of intruding on civil liberties.

MONTGOMERY, Alabama
A federal judge last week rebuked crusading Alabama chief justice Roy Moore for trying to force his religious beliefs on others by installing a granite monument to the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of Alabama’s judicial building.

The two-and-a-half-ton monument, paid for by an evangelical Christian group and installed by Moore in the middle of the night without permission, must be removed within 30 days, according to the ruling.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson said Moore, a conservative Christian who claimed that the Ten Commandments reflect the “the sovereignty of God over the affairs of men,” pushed his religious agenda in a public space.

“The evidence is overwhelming and the law is clear that the chief justice violated the Establishment Clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which bars the government from promoting one religion over another, Judge Thompson wrote.

The monument is “nothing less than an obtrusive year-round religious display intended to proselytize on behalf of a particular religion, the chief justice’s religion,” Judge Thompson ruled, according to a report from the New York Times.

While not all Ten Commandments displays violate the Establishment Clause, Moore’s monument — with its size and obtrusive placement — crossed the line “between the permissible and the impermissible,” he wrote.

Moore has vowed to appeal last week’s ruling, testifying during the trial that the Ten Commandments form the “moral foundation of American law.”

The decision met with approval from the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who told the Washington Post, “It’s high time Moore learned that the source of U.S. law is the Constitution, not the Bible."

“It is not the job of government to single out one religious code and hold it up as the state’s favorite. Promoting the Ten Commandments is a task for our houses of worship, not government officials,” Lynn added.

WASHINGTON
The head of AmeriCorps, the service-based program subsidized by the federal government, last week said that that the program is planning to modify its service oath to include references to God and defending the Constitution.

The changes, expected to be approved by Congress next year, have sparked an outcry from current and former AmeriCorps members, who say the infusion of religion into national service is unnecessary, according to a report from the New York Times.

“Respondents were concerned that the new pledge would have the effect of dividing people rather than uniting them,” Michael Meneer, executive director of AmeriCorp’s alumni group, said.

The pledge, expected to be updated to more closely match the oath required of U.S. federal workers, will include the coda of “so help me God.”

While AmeriCorps director Rosie Mauk said the new pledge “will not be mandatory,” a spokesman last week admitted that the optional nature of the new oath was actually unclear, noted the Times.

AmeriCorps, established by President Clinton in 1993, provides a stipend and education funds for people who work through the program, devoting themselves to community service for one or two years.

NEW YORK
Members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) have the right to protest while wearing masks in order to conceal their identities from onlookers, a federal judge ruled last week, overturning a ban placed on the group in New York in 1999.

The ruling comes after the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan sued the city of New York, which barred them from wearing masks in a 1999 protest. The group said it feared retaliation should its members be identified.

New York refused to back down and let the KKK wear masks, arguing that masks could impede law enforcement efforts in the case of violent or illegal acts, reported the New York Times.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Harold Baer said that while such concerns were legitimate, the city had inconsistently enforced the no-mask policy, apparently singling out groups — like the KKK — whose beliefs the city did not support.

In addition, Judge Baer said that masks, when used as part of a political demonstration, are sometimes protected by the public’s First Amendment right to free speech.

“No one disputes the fact that (the) plaintiff is a notorious racist organization, at least not this court,” Judge Baer wrote. “The focus here, however, is on constitutional protections.”

Beth Haroules, of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represented the KKK in the case, agreed, saying that while the KKK’s racist viewpoint may be repugnant, its right to masked demonstrations must be protected.

Last week’s decision, Haroules told the Times, “stands for the proposition that the appropriate response to hateful ideas can never be suppression of those ideas.”

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) filed 32 charges against two senior civil servants at Health Canada, the former head of the blood collection program at the Canadian Red Cross, and Armour Pharmaceutical Co. (APCO), based in Bridgewater, New Jersey, as well as one of its vice presidents in connection with the worst tainted-blood scandal in Canada during the 1980s.

The Canadian Red Cross Society was also charged with endangering the public by creating what is called a “common nuisance” under Canadian law.

Contaminated blood and blood products infected thousands with HIV and hepatitis, leading to many deaths, billions of dollars in lawsuits, and the establishment of the Krever Commission of Inquiry led by Mr. Justice Horace Krever.

The commission, which reported its findings in 1997, laid blame for the tragedy on almost everyone involved in the blood collection process in Canada.

The RCMP then commenced criminal investigations that led to the present charges that included counts of criminal negligence carrying a possible 10-year prison sentence.

Part of the charges stem from the fact that the Canadian Red Cross did not start screening for HIV until eight months after a test was available on the market and did not screen for hepatitis C until long after a surrogate test was available. APCO and one of its vice presidents have been charged over a blood product that allegedly was inadequately treated to eliminate the HIV virus in the product.

TOKYO
Despite a growing number of tobacco-related deaths, the Japanese government refuses to flag cigarettes as a deadly product — and actually promotes cigarette use among Japanese citizens, according to an exposé last week in the Los Angeles Times.

The report cites alarming statistics that chart a population poised to suffer a health crisis while government officials remain silent about the dangers of tobacco, which provides lucrative revenues to the government.

Forty-nine percent of Japanese males smoke, as do 14 percent of women, with men in their 30s and women in their 20s most likely to smoke.

While lung cancer became the leading carcinogenic killer of Japanese citizens in the 1990s, the government’s Health Ministry does not have a single full-time official working on smoking-related issues.

Add to the mix the government’s 67-percent majority stake in the nation’s leading tobacco firm, Japan Tobacco (JT), and observers predict a troubled and deadly future, warns the Times.

The government also blocks studies of youth who smoke, disputes claims linking cigarettes to disease, and keeps the price of cigarette packs low, promoting a deadly habit that pulls in $19 billion a year to government coffers, according to the Times report.

JT, the world’s third largest tobacco producer, purchased U.S.-based R. J. Reynolds’ overseas operations in 1999, and produces Marlboros for Philip Morris. At the same time, the company has invested millions into drugs to fight lung cancer.

And while other industrialized nations slap cigarettes with dire warning labels, Japan’s warnings urge smokers to, “not overdo it.” “Please remember to follow good smoking manners,” they warn.

“Japan’s policy is not only a mistake, it’s criminal,” attorney Yoshio Isayama told the Times. “Smokers are totally deceived by the government into thinking it’s just an ordinary product and a matter of individual choice rather than an addiction.”

Isayama’s group, the Lawyers Organization for Nonsmokers’ Rights, is representing the first smokers’ lawsuit to challenge the Japanese government for its longtime stance in support of tobacco.

While three of the case’s seven plaintiffs have died in the five years since the suit was filed, 75-year-old Teruo Araki said the effort is worth the price and social stigma.

“This is what smoking did to me,” Araki, who has been hooked to an oxygen tank since 1981, told the Times. “And I hold the Japanese government responsible.”

A verdict in the suit is expected next year.

TOKYO
The head of Japan’s largest consumer credit firm stepped down last week, taking the fall for the errors of eight other executives accused of paying blackmail to gangsters who threatened to disrupt corporate meetings.

Yoji Yamada, president of Nippon Shinpan (known as Nicos), said he felt “an unlimited responsibility for the scandal” that has beset the Japanese flagship firm, reported the BBC.

Two weeks ago, eight Nicos executives were arrested on charges of paying up to $650,000 to gangsters since 1991.

The executives were accused of succumbing to a blackmailing scheme popularized by Japanese mafia in the 1980s, when mobsters began looking for new ways to shake down the nation’s corporations.

The result is a practice known as “sokaiya,” the word for racketeers who buy token shares in a firm, then threaten to harass and disrupt shareholder meetings unless they are paid to keep quiet.

While such payments were outlawed in 1997, the practice continues, according to the BBC.

Last week, Yamada said he had not been aware of his firm’s involvement, but — in a move typical of Japan’s corporate culture — said he would take responsibility nevertheless.

In addition to resigning his post as company president, Yamada also stepped down as chairman of the Japan Federation of Consumer Credit Companies and resigned from the board of the Japan Business Federation, reported the Japan Times.

NEW YORK
Plaintiffs who say they are victims of South African apartheid filed suit last week against some of the world’s most powerful firms, accusing the companies of propping up the nation’s racist regime when it began foundering, effectively enabling continued violence against blacks.

Named companies include Citigroup, IBM, JP Morgan Chase, ExxonMobil, Ford, and General Motors in the United States; DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Bank, and Dresdner Bank in Germany; Credit Suisse and UBS in Switzerland; Barclays Bank and British Petroleum in Britain; Total-Fina-Elf in France; and Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands.

According to the suit, those firms failed to heed a call from the United Nations, which in 1962 asked all member states to sever diplomatic, trade, and transport relations with South Africa, reported the Associated Press.

Rather than boycott the racist government, the companies allegedly aided its oppression by supplying financing, technology, and revenues to South Africa, undermining international pressure to end apartheid.

The suit charges the companies with aiding “in the commission of crimes of apartheid, forced labor, genocide, extrajudical killing, torture, sexual assault, unlawful detention, and cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment.”

U.S. tech firm IBM was named, for example, for allegedly supplying the South African government with the technology to create identity “passbooks” used to track and control the movements and activities of blacks.

“These global industrialists and financiers acted in conscious disregard of or with deliberate indifference to these dangers by providing substantial assistance or encouragement to the apartheid regime of South Africa,” Washington-based law firm Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld and Toll alleged last week.

Representatives from the firms were largely dismissive of the suit, saying that while they opposed South Africa’s apartheid policies in the past, they were not responsible for the government’s actions.

UBS Group president Peter Wuffli issued a statement denouncing the lawsuit as “groundless and unjustified,” noted the Reuters news agency.

Oil superpower Royal Dutch Shell struck a more conciliatory tone, saying the firm “remained in South Africa during the apartheid era because we felt that to leave and support sanctions was not the best way to bring about change and development.”

The suit, similar to a separate action filed in June, seeks an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages, which observers expect to reach into the billions of dollars.

From Catalyst:

“Even as the economy continues to stagnate, women in corporate America are experiencing upward movement. In Catalyst’s 2002 Catalyst Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top Earners, women currently represent 15.7 percent of corporate officers in America’s 500 largest companies up from 12.5 percent in 2000 and 8.7 percent in 1995, when Catalyst began counting.

“‘In down economies women have been generally hit harder than their male counterparts in the workplace, but in the Catalyst Census, we find the numbers of women at the top are increasing, however slowly,’ said Sheila Wellington, President Catalyst, ‘2,140 out of 13,673 corporate officers are women. That’s up from 1,622 out of 12,495 women in 2000.’

“For the first time the Catalyst census sponsored by the AT& T Foundation and The Coca-Cola Company is reporting the numbers in two additional areas where there is a high concentration of women in the corporate power structure: chief financial officer and general counsel. In 2002, women comprise 7.1 percent of the 496 Chief Financial Officers (CFO) and 16.1 percent of the 453 General Counsels (GC) compared to 5.6 percent of the CFO positions and 13.7 percent of the GC positions in 2000.

“Although women are moving up, men still dominate the earnings race. Almost 95 percent or 2,141 of the top earning corporate officers are men compared to only 118 or 5.2 percent of women top earners in the Fortune 500. This represents an increase from 1996 when 1.9 percent of the top corporate earners, were women.

“But women are gaining prominence in organizations; Catalyst found women holding clout titles have increased from 7.3 percent in 2000 to 9.9 percent this year. Catalyst defines clout titles as those positions that wield the most corporate influence and policy making power including, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Vice Chairman, President, Chief Operating Officer, Senior Executive Vice President, and Executive Vice President.

“‘I am always impressed by the 60 companies where 25 percent or more of their corporate officers are women…,’ said Wellington. ‘But what continues to amaze me are the 71 companies who in the 21st Century still have no women in their corporate officer ranks.’

“When Catalyst looked at changes by region since the last Catalyst census, there were some surprising differences. The regional numbers on women corporate officers show:

• “The Western region lags far behind the rest of the country with 13.4 percent vs. the national 15.7 percent
• “The South is the region farthest ahead with 16.2 percent
• “The Midwest comes in second with 16.1 percent
• “The Northeast is a close third with 16.0 percent

Women of Color Corporate Officers and Top Earners

“Catalyst finds the percentage of women of color officers has increased in 2002 to 1.6 percent compared to 1.3 percent in 1999 and 2000….”

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.”

– James Madison (4th U.S. president, 1751-1836)

There are new warnings from the FBI about potential terror attacks, and new threats from Osama bin Laden. Is America losing the war against terrorism?

U.S. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle posed that question last week. A year after the Bush administration set out to bring in bin Laden “dead or alive,” he argued, no one knows where he is — or which he is. “We haven’t found bin Laden,” said Daschle. “So by what measure can we say this [war] has been successful so far?”

His comments drew a vigorous riposte from the administration. National security advisor Condoleezza Rice rebutted the suggestion that a focus on Iraq had siphoned off attention from the war on terrorism. “The part of the war on terrorism that is going after al Qaeda,” she said, “is fought aggressively every day, every hour, by this administration.” As evidence, the administration announced still another capture of a top al Qaeda operative.

Daschle posed a good question. The administration gave a good response. Yet their exchange missed the mark. Why? Because this isn’t a war about personalities. It’s about ideas and values. The danger lies in the assumption that, if only we can “get” bin Laden, we’ll be successful.

That assumption isn’t limited to getting bin Laden. It extends to getting Saddam Hussein — or, if you’re an Islamic radical, to getting George Bush. It’s the assumption that what drives the world is personality, the peculiarities of individual habits and attitudes acting in and of themselves. It discounts the broader trends of culture, religion, and ideology that shape individuals and cultures. It holds that everything is determined by personalities rather than by concepts, events, or values. Too often the result is a simplistic objective: Get rid of the personality at the top, and all wrongs will be righted.

Don’t get me wrong: People in leadership play powerful roles. But they play them contextually, in relationship to ideas larger than themselves. Reducing those ideas to personalities — either to blame them or praise them — has the same damaging influence as a misconceived scientific theory. You can no more assess reality by thinking the world is made only of earth, air, fire, and water than you can gauge human progress by thinking it is driven only by personalities.

This penchant for focusing on personality is taken so much for granted that it’s almost invisible. It’s not new, but modern life exacerbates it. Before audio technology, the only way to hear someone speak was to be there. Now the recorded voice goes on forever for you to memorize. Before motion pictures, society gave neither opportunity nor permission to stare up close at a stranger’s face. Now the face looms a full story tall at a cinema near you, inviting that staring. Before twentieth-century mass-market publications, there was little commerce in the invasive, celebrity-based stories and photos that sustain People magazine and supermarket tabloids. Now the entire world knows Bill Clinton’s preferences in underwear.

It all adds up to an intensification of personality. Harmless? Hardly. The price is sometimes obvious: Think of Princess Diana, killed in a high-speed chase by paparazzi gunning for her personality through their lenses. But more often the costs are hidden. The real cost of this lust for personality is that it steers us away from real causes and real solutions. It lets us attack an individual rather than think seriously about reform. It indulges in idolatry, turning leaders into icons with impossible expectations placed upon them. It makes it easier to shift responsibility onto others. And it becomes formulaic. “Got a problem? Find who did it and get rid of them!”

Occasionally, of course, the problem is the person: Round up John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, and the Washington-area sniper attacks cease. But that’s rare. Do we really think terrorism will cease when we round up bin Laden? Will the demise of Saddam end the danger of weapons of mass destruction?

What’s needed is a shift in public focus from personalities to causes. Only as that begins to happen will we know we’re winning the war on terrorism.

(c)2002 by the Institute for Global Ethics

“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”

– U.S. statesman and orator Patrick Henry (1736-1799), as quoted in a Los Angeles Times editorial on President Bush’s plan to “transfer control of information management from the [centralized Government Printing Office] to individual Cabinet agencies.” The revolutionary move — part of Bush’s plan to privatize much of the federal government’s duties — could critically damage the public’s access to information, warns the Times. Instead of using a central bipartisan clearinghouse for data on government contracts, actions, and dealings, each Cabinet would control its own documents in-house, hindering ready access and heightening the possibility of quiet excisions, omissions, and loss, notes the editorial. (“Chokehold on Knowledge,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 8.)

WASHINGTON
William Webster, former head of the CIA and FBI, last week resigned from an accounting oversight board set up to bolster industry integrity following a series of corporate scandals.

Webster’s resignation makes him the third high-ranking Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official to step down in two weeks. Former SEC head Harvey Pitt and chief accountant Robert Herdman have also resigned their posts.

The resignation’s follow revelations that Pitt withheld information from other SEC members about Webster’s involvement with U.S. Technologies, a nearly insolvent firm accused of accounting fraud.

Webster, who served on the company’s audit committee during the alleged fraud, disclosed the information to Pitt, according to press reports. But Pitt kept silent about the matter while pushing Webster’s nomination to head the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, an SEC agency responsible for reforming the accounting industry and securing public trust.

The wave of resignations leaves the White House with vacancies in positions it badly needs filled to recover investors’ trust, noted the New York Times.

While U.S. law requires the new oversight agency to be up and running by April, experts say the SEC will likely be unable to meet the timetable, reported USA Today.

WASHINGTON
The nation’s tax collectors are being outmaneuvered by wealthy tax cheats and sophisticated shams, and crippled by an inadequate budget, senior officials at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) warned last week.

The officials, in comments to the New York Times, also complained that outgoing IRS head Charles Rossotti has been muzzled by the Bush administration, which barred him from voicing his concerns at a recent congressional hearing.

Rossotti, who canceled the scheduled hearing on sophisticated tax cheats, refused to comment on the Bush administration’s influence in the matter, explaining, “I am still a member of this administration.”

That status changed last week when Rossotti stepped down after five years as IRS commissioner — a period in which he was widely praised for reorganizing the agency, but criticized for failing to realize that enforcement efforts were lagging.

In an interview with the Times, Rossotti said he belatedly recognized the scale of the problem, but has received little backing in his efforts to corral the necessary resources to collar the tax cheats, many of whom are aided by complex shelters designed by accounting firms.

Since 1995, the agency’s auditing staff has shrunk by nearly 30 percent, while the number of filed tax returns has risen by 13 percent, noted the Times. Simultaneously, the IRS budget has shrunk by 10 percent when adjusted for inflation.

Rossotti and other IRS officials told the Times that the budget shortfall is costing the nation dearly, forcing IRS agents to abandon action against millions of known tax cheats simply because the agency lacks the funds to prosecute the cases — an estimated loss of roughly $7 billion annually.

“The tax system continues to grow in complexity, while the resource base of the IRS is not growing and in real terms is shrinking,” Rossotti told the Times last week. “Basically, demands and resources are going in the opposite direction.

“This is systematically undermining one of the most important foundations of the American economy,” he said.

The Bush administration insists that the IRS budget is sufficient to enforce the law.

“I am confident that these resources,” together with tax-code reforms, “will allow the IRS to effectively attack the serious noncompliance problems Treasury has identified,” Mitchell Daniels, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in September.

Rossotti, who leaves the IRS without a replacement being named, disagrees. “The IRS is simply outnumbered,” he warned.