A Closer Look Here, There and Everywhere
by Trish PurcellHardly a day goes by without a new tale of some kind of illegal or unethical shenanigans in business or government. There are unbelievable and outrageous stories about wasteful spending of millions of taxpayer dollars; of corporate officers and elected officials using their power and position for personal gain leaving employees, stockholders and taxpayers to pick up the tab; of political figures skirting the law by redefining words or simply claiming rights they do not have.
What we don’t hear much about are these people reaping the consequences of their actions. There are a few sacrificial lambs that pay the price for their dastardly deeds, but there are many more who walk away unscathed. The public reaction seems to be a collective head shaking or tsk, tsking, accompanied by acceptance that this is just how it is.
Do we, as a society, no longer value integrity or have we simply forgotten that actions speak louder than words? No matter what we say, young people will be more influenced by what they see than what they hear and the example we are setting is abysmal. .
The young people of America see that lying and cheating to get ahead are acceptable if you don’t get caught. If you do get caught you just keep lying. If that doesn’t work, the next step is to fight like crazy to avoid the consequences - even when justly convicted, appeal, appeal, appeal. Evidence of this lack of integrity is rampant in private lives, in business practices and especially in government. If we are not involved first hand, many of us are at least guilty of silent acquiescence.
Every time we “get away” with something in front of our children, we are saying, “its okay since I didn’t get caught. “ It may be a small thing, but each small misstep makes the next and larger misstep more likely and easier to justify. Dishonesty is cumulative and grows easier with each commission and rationalization. Those of us who make no objection when corporate and government officials betray our trust, are complicit in their corruption. As common wisdom says, all evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
Do we not have a responsibility to insist that our government act ethically? We elect these people, and by extension, those they appoint to government positions, to represent us. If they are representing us, it stands to reason that we bear some responsibility for what they do. And just look at some of what they are doing:
In a recent court decision* $101.7 million was granted in restitution to four innocent men who were convicted of murder. The verdict that sent these men to prison was not due to misleading evidence, but rather to testimony the FBI knew was blatantly false. In the civil suit filed by the families of the four wrongly convicted men, federal Judge Nancy Gertner wrote in her 223-page decision, “FBI officials up the line allowed their employees to break laws, violate rules, and ruin lives.”What kind of justice does our Department of Justice seek?Two of the men died in prison, the other two served 30 years before they were released from prison and exonerated of all charges. 30 years! Think about your family and what you and they would miss if you dropped out of their lives for 30 years – the skinned knees, first experiences, birthdays, graduations, weddings, and funerals. No amount of money can give back to the families of these men, the years that were taken from them. To do anything except apologize and pay the award in a timely manner is adding insult to injury. And yet our Department of Justice is set to appeal this decision.
At the request of the International Joint Commission** (IJC) the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention undertook a study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states. The report on this study was scheduled to be released in July 2007 but publication was blocked because it “needed further review.” However, University of Illinois School of Public Health professor, Dr. Peter Orris, one of the three experts who reviewed the study said, “This report, which has taken years in production, was subjected to independent expert review by the IJC’s Health Professionals Task Force and other boards, over 20 EPA scientists, state agency scientists from New York and Minnesota, three academics (including myself), and multiple reviews within ATSDR. As such, this is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of.”
The Center for Public Integrity*** says the study warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.” Researchers found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer.
Canadian biologist Michael Gilbertson, a former IJC staffer and another of the three peer reviewers, proposes that the study has been suppressed because it suggests that vulnerable populations have been harmed by industrial pollutants. “The whole problem with all this kind of work is wrapped up in that word ‘injury.’ If you have injury, that implies liability. Liability, of course, implies damages, legal processes, and costs of remedial action. The governments, frankly, in both countries are so heavily aligned with, particularly, the chemical industry, that the word amongst the bureaucracies is that they really do not want any evidence of effect or injury to be allowed out there.”
How does suppressing these results fulfill the CDC’s mission "to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability."?
And of course, the big question is: What are we the people going to do about it? Are we just going to stand by and let it continue?,
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* http://www.aim.org/aim-report/aim-report-did-mueller-know-hoovers-dark-secret/
** The IJC is an independent bilateral organization that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on the use and quality of boundary waters between the two countries.
It's a very sad commentary on our society indeed Trish. It's funny to even see the word "integrity" in any title.
In light of the past seven years in the USA, and everything the Bush Administration has helped us focus on, as far as the corruptibility of our government and nation, one can see more clearly how advanced we are not. It would behoove a lot of people to look more closely, and very quickly, at what we are becoming versus what we claim as a nation. What is most surprising is that the downfall of our society might be very rapid in historical terms.
Unfortunately, Stephen, it is not just the Bush years which have been our undoing. These past seven years may have accelerated the process or perhaps just made it more obvious. But the more I read about the things we have been involved in throughout the world, the more appalled I become.
At some point in the history of our country those in power, unbeknownst to the general public, seem to have decided that the advancement of our country, especially in areas that benefit the wealthy, took priority over the welfare of everyone else. Most of the damage was done in other countries as we continued to grow and develop but now the damage has come home to roost. I have not yet found the starting point for this thinking but it goes back a long way and has continued through both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Reprehensible actions have been hidden behind a mask of surface goodness and giving which misled the common people here and in other countries. But the giving has always been from our surplus and never from our own need. And it was never allowed to interfere with the agenda of the powerful. However, rot has a way of rising to the surface and the ascendance to the top spot of a man incapable of complex thinking, sped up the process.
As discouraging as all this is, I have an unshakable faith in the spirit of the American people and believe that as they awaken to the truth, they will turn things around. It wasn’t too many years ago that I was complacent in my belief that the country I love is good and does good. Now I know that is not always true and that we have done things that many of us don’t want to hear about or acknowledge. But the time when we can stick our heads in the sand has passed. To correct our mistakes we first have to own them and that is an uphill battle with those who confuse sentimentality with love. A battle made harder by those who want the people to remain uninformed and therefore inactive.