George Bailey and Family

I dunno, kids. That headline feels wrong, somehow. William Alden understates that something is amiss, “Critics note the disparity between banks’ earnings and the state of the real economy.” (Huffington Post)  That’s the beauty of ethics. One need not be Aristotle nor the proud owner of an on-line kindergarten degree to know that something is not cricket. The observation of a moral violation starts in the gut and travels, quick like, up to the head, where the brain concludes that something is not rational, it’s not right.

Here’s a quick test. These are quotes from some guys after their firms received TARP money (Reported by Matt Apuzzo, AP)^[i]:  

Which statement(s) would inspire Mother Theresa to box someone’s ear?

1) “We’re not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking,” (Barry Koling, Sun Trust);

2) “We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it. We’ve not given any accounting of, ‘Here’s how we’re doing it,’” (Thomas Kelly, JP Morgan Chase);

3) “We’re choosing not to disclose that,” (Kevin Heine, Bank of NY Mellon)

If you chose all three, your Ethics-O-Meter is perfectly calibrated.  If you had any other answer, please let me know. I’m utterly fascinated by the dark side…and Snookie.

“Sloshing around”.  That’s how an NPR guest recently characterized the movement of excess cash in capital markets thanks to TARP (re: taxpayer) money. A quick ask- is your wallet wallowing in cash? Any sloshing going on as you and yours head into Christmas? Didn’t think so. Outrageous fortune has cast her charms upon the boys and girls of Wall Street and I’m now considerably more torqued than I was two years ago when the horribly euphemistic TARP (re: a gazillion dollar Wall Street welfare check) came into play.  

On December 22, 2008, I wrote an open letter to Congress and Elizabeth Warren, the erstwhile head of the TARP oversight committee, such as it was.  The letter had the tone of the Welcome Wagon lady who feels compelled to tell you that your children may not run around with poorly ironed clothes.  It suggested that they take a page out of George Bailey’s book, “Now just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter”… before writing a morally and functionally uncollateralized checks to, shall we say, people who created troubled assets. (For those of you unfamiliar with esoteric cinema, George Bailey is the protagonist in “It’s A Wonderful Life”ii). In the letter, I suggest that we use an abacus, card reader or, maybe even one of those new fangled computers that Al Gore invented, to keep a tally of all those damned dollars. Once they leave the house, it’s a tricky thing to track them.

A friend-slash-constructive critic and political strategist Dan Casey suggested that only kooks and the highly esteemed write open letters. Given that I fall into the wrong category, I put the letter in a drawer. Silent no more, this rather rabid kook is airing her long brewing woes.

Open letter to US Congress and Elizabeth Warren:

As an ethicist and a taxpayer, I am baffled about the no-account status of the Wall Street bailout.  I have refused to believe that honest government is a naïve notion and I aspire for ubiquitous transparency. Note that 25 years ago, many executives considered quality & technology peripheral to the business of business.  Pollution and safety were fringe issues. The unimaginable has become commonplace. Yet, my fidelity to the principle of transparency in a capitalistic democracy is getting wobbly.  (Ref- aforementioned hoodlum’s quotes.)

Please consider my proposal to help you track your, my, and our money.  I propose that we utilize Wall Street’s technology platform as a template for tracking bailout dollars.  No, I am NOT suggesting that Congress outsource IT to Wall Street.  Wall Street technology is amazing. It is able to track staggering amounts money with stunning speed, down to a teensy, a fraction of a penny. Combined with the right processes and procedures, we could have a confidence that you is fulfill your stewardship responsibility to taxpayers and know the whereabouts of EVERY DOLLAR DONATED IN THE BAILOUT-all 750,000,000,00.This technology gives you the power to say, “No tracking? No bailout.”  This is simple. The technology is available. Does Congress, do you, have political will to use it?

I expect you to affirm that accountability trumps politics.  Please take a George Bailey, “It’s A Wonderful Life” moment under advisement: “Now just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter”…

Sigh. The innocence of youth and the sweet belief in the right and the good.

As I went out into the world, I observed that gift exchange, like Peter Pan, can have a dark side, riddled with a subtle manipulation, desire for approval and fear of rejection.  In a recent article about Amazon’s ability to neuter any hope of giving gift-giving meaning, Why bad gifts are a good thing for our humanity | Reuters[i]  Mary Mitchell wanders back to when she was 13 and had given her aunt the stunning gift of a huge, red, oblong scarf. She noticed that Auntie never wore it, so Mary asked if she liked it.  After replying that the scarf was beautiful yet did not pair well with anything currently in her wardrobe, she closed the conversation with, “You know, Mary, giving a gift is the easiest way to impose our taste on another person.”  Yes, there is an element of truth in the sentiment, yet saying it in such a way does not make it right. Not a great example of gift exchange.

About five years ago, I started seriously thinking about the ethics of holiday gifts while writing a paper on live donor organ transplantation (in my defense as a first-rate nerd, it was December and the holiday season. Sniff.).  A typical transplant scenario is that of a sibling or spouse who donates a kidney with the intention to gift the organ freely and without coercion.  This isn’t always true.  In an  absurd divorce[ii] case, a NY doctor, represented by a profoundly repugnant lawyer, requested that his ex-wife return his kidney, the one he donated to her. Oh, or give him $1.5 million.  While this situation is extreme, there are cases in which coercion plays a role in organ donation. Weighty stuff. Back to the paper.

Ignoring the given assignment, I based my paper on O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi”[iii], the story of  Della and Jim, aka the James Dillingham Youngs. This Christmastime story takes place in the Depression.  The couple does not have any cash to buy gifts but each possessed one thing of great value. So, she sold her extraordinary head of hair to buy him a fob for his heirloom watch; he sold his watch to buy her a set of tortoise hair combs.  While functionally useless, the gifts ennobled the young couple through their integrity and selflessness. Their reaction upon the discovery of how the gifts were purchased was not utter despair. Rather, they glimpsed into a future with re-grown hair and another watch, purchased in prosperity. The gift exchange was simple, sweet, pure love. A stellar example of the gift-giving ethic.

I hold a rather strident position with regard to expectations and gifts.  Perhaps the reason is that I am allergic to drama. With few exceptions, the question, “Where’s that (fill-in-blank) I gave you for (fill-in-blank)?” will lead to drama as the giver is emotionally tethered to the “gift”.  Any expectation beyond “Thank-you” means that there is a quid pro quo. The giver wants something back. Sometimes, a simple bow will do or a Facebook post that is dripping with delight and eternal gratitude.  That  is not a gift as much as it is an unnegotiated barter and that, my friends, usually leads to drama.  Gift issues quickly leak into the foundational cracks of a relationship  and manifest in comments such as, “You never like anything I give you”, which really means, “You really don’t much like me”. 

When givers are attached to the “perfect” gift, it is treacherous to be the recipient. The giver begins to ask after the gift, as if it were a sick pet. The giver may drop a hint about the great expense and effort related to the acquisition of the gift.  These hints are as welcome as the dreaded fruitcake and holiday brag letters.  Gifts can also fill a post-holiday break-up quiver with arrows of rage. You can hear the venom pouring from your co-worker’s lips come January. “I bought Fred a cashmere sweater and he gave me a flippin’ oven mitt.  Cheapskate. Creep. Pedophile. ”  And then, of course, there are those who want the – diamond earrings, golf clubs, Winnebago, sea monkeys- back.  Asking for a gift back is one rung below bestowing a self-serving gift, like a case of wine to a teetotaler. Here’s a helpful holiday hint: If you have any level of wistfulness or anxiety in the transfer-of-ownership, Do. Not. Give. Object. Away.

Granted, asking after a gift can be a completely innocent conversation starter. “So, dear. How does that beautiful mu-mu that I gave you fit?  I thought it might be a bit snug but hoped for the best.” Ooof.  Be assured, I have not always been the Gandhi of gift giving. I have hunted down reasons for gift neglect like a starved coonhound.  Occasion after occasion, I chose the “perfect” gift for my ex-husband. These gifts went ignored, which broke my heart- a perfect metaphor for an imperfect marriage.  (Note- I was no picnic.)

Yes, there are exceptions to zero-expectations gift exchanges, youth being one of them. Over the years, the children in my life have given me an enviable collection of baubles, jewel-encrusted sweatshirts, and aggressively glittered and glued pins.  Their gifts embody the spirit of giving.  A child’s expectation that their gift is going to get some airtime is appropriate and necessary. It is in the overdoing of praise that kickstarts this whole gift-equal-affection-equal-power business. Simply state the facts, “Timmy, you made this feather pin just for me and it makes me feel special. I will smile when I wear it.” Oh, yeah, and wear the pin.

A child, in fact, gave the best gift in the world, to another child.  He became known to me through our trusty RCA record-player (we were not a fancy people- “phonograph” was pretentious).  Our one Christmas album was trotted out with the lights every December and it papered the air with all sorts of magical music like “Silent Night” (a gift in and of itself).  I would lay my head on my arm, with my face about two inches from the player, moving the needle over the vinyl, again and again, smelling the pleasant acrid heat that the player threw off as it produced crackle-infused music. That album held within its grooves the essence of a pristine gift exchange. It is the moment when Baby Jesus smiles in gratitude to the little drummer boy, who courageously and confidently played his best for Him.  Then, as now, I considered that exchange the perfect gift.

I have come to know this quote through the Veterans Administration (VA). The VA has a robust healthcare ethics program and I am interviewing for an ethicist position. The interview process has promoted lots of reflection on Veterans and our responsibility towards them, especially as we commemorate Armistice Day, now known as Veterans Day.  The first one was in 1918 to “remember” those who served in WWI. As an inadvertent nod to my first blog on numbers  (click here 10/10/10), Woodrow Wilson called to the world to two minutes of silence on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”.  Next year is  11/11/11.

I grew up in the ‘60’s and I paid attention to everything but the nuns.   So, I have had the opportunity to observe veterans from the WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands (wait- that was the Brits and all of the soldiers looked like Margaret Thatcher). Memorial Day parades were a big deal in my little town.  At 9:00 a.m., it started at the American Legion and ended a few blocks later at Memorial Park, a grassy knoll which ordinarily hosted games of tag and general mischief.  In fact, I chipped my front tooth on the large granite and bronze war monument. My sisters, brother, and I ran home, for some odd reason, looking for sympathy. My mother, after her usual proclamation of “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” (think brogue), sent us back up to find the tooth.  She no doubt had images of me as the next cover of MAD magazine and she as the mother of the next cover of MAD magazine. She no doubt was right.  

On parade days, however, a blanket of silence fell on Memorial Park. Taps played and a men’s quartet sang solemn, unfamiliar songs.  The quartet leader was a curiosity to me. He appeared to be single and neither Irish nor Catholic which put him in the exotic, slightly dangerous, category.  He drove a convertible MG.  He was jaunty. He was quite short, a bit round, had slicked hair, a wattle in place of a chin, and began each song by extracting a single, perfect note from a pitch pipe. He looked like he’d smell of Bay Rum. I was five. He was irresistible.  

The Veterans, working class, calloused men, were another matter.  When the songs were sung and the names of the fallen called, each man, regardless of service, had a look of teary recall.  The veterans of foreign wars stood with dignity, straight-backed or twisted with time, and peered beyond the park, beyond the moment, perhaps beyond the pale, into a formidable reverence.  It was something I couldn’t see.  These men came back from the war, welcomed by the GI bill and communities that feted their very existence.  While their dreams were haunted by the nightmares of combat, they could pick-up the thread of their pre-war lives and carry-on with the celebrity of having served their country.

As time went on Vietnam vets, in stark contrast, joined the ranks.  The ones I remember were shroud in camouflage and sadness. I know that many vets came back from Vietnam, proud of their service and went on to have productive lives.  My father-in-law was one such man.  In my little world, though, those vets had a whisper about them, their service tainted by the moral indignity that many Americans felt about the draft and US foreign policy. Their parade was the drumbeat count of guerilla deaths on the CBS news and burned babies.  The few that I knew appeared like ghosts among us, walking to the backbeat of vilification that they were co-conspirators in an unjust war.  They were boys. They had something about them that felt wrong but I had neither the experience nor the vocabulary to describe it.  Still don’t.  I do know that they were treated  raggedly and unjustly. They deserved, and still deserve, better.  The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC is an elegant, dignified wailing wall.  A start, I suppose.

Then the Gulf wars began in 1990.  US involvement continues today in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Americans, upwards of 60%, oppose these wars.  Yet society has adapted a “hate the war, love the soldier” position.  That is a blessing for us all. I suppose that Gulf war veterans are a hybrid of the WW’s, Korea and Vietnam experience.  We support our local soldiers yet we are against the circumstance that created soldiers.

However, I fear for this generation of Veterans.  I am not sure that we have an appreciation for the sacrifice involved in extended and repeated tours of duty.  Babies who were born to soldiers at the time of the Persian Gulf War are now ten years old.  Daunting, isn’t it? Families are scattered and the familial/social network, which may have existed in previous generations, does not exist today.  Two soldier families, low wages and the sword of Damocles hovering over the house is a good way to use a lifetime of adrenalin by the age of thirty. Incidents of suicide, PTSD, and mental illness are skyrocketing among soldiers and vets. We need to take care of our soldiers, Vets and their families and we need to do it now.

So, back to Abe Lincoln and the men and women who serve these United States.  The quote harkens back to Hippocrates. The Hippocratic Oath requires a doctor to hold the mentor who taught him medicine in the same regard he would hold his parents.  There is a moral equivalency of doctors to soldiers.  Both professions are called to defend and protect us.  In fine, we are called to honor our Vets and their service to our country.  War is a nasty, abhorrent business and why we get into them is a debate for another time. Today is 11/11/10.  For those who serve today, thank you.  For Veterans, in gratitude, I always buy a poppy. It is the right thing to do and I gladly oblige.

Arianna Huffington TAKEAWAYS FROM RALLY

Being an Independent, I get itchy cavorting with zealots.  In fine, I was a bit nervous when “they” forced me to remove my anonymity-preserving ski mask before I could board the bus.  I obliged, slunk in my seat and we headed south to DC.  Eventually I settled into gadfly mode and it turns out that I knew a lot of people on the bus through sports, church, and business (mostly monkey).  I found myself with a diverse, funny, and above average (in the Prairie Home Companion sense) group. I was soon standing my full height.

I was impressed and puzzled by the other sojourners political single-mindedness, so I queried “Why are you (still) a Democrat?” They good-naturedly responded. Not a thin-skin in the bunch. Generally, they were anti-Tea-Party and pro-Obama.  The prevailing sentiment was that the President and our Congressman, Patrick Murphy (D-8^th) need more time to undo the harms of the Bush administration.  Foreign policy issues, namely the war in Iraq- were top of mind. Intermingled with political discussion was IPOD sharing (we heart you, Mavis Staples) and the question of whether or not I was a Republican spy.

Snap!  We were in DC before we knew it.  Led by LisaBeth Weber and her awesome sign (Thomas Jefferson meets Dr. Martin Luther King), we headed to the Mall from RFK stadium. DC was packed. Back in the day, I worked on the Hill for a Gypsy-Moth Republican (akin to a Blue Dog Democrat) and  am a frequent DC visitor (most recently as a job hunter).  I’d never seen such a festive spectacle on the Mall.  We could see little and hear less, but man, oh, man, it was great.   

Stewart and Colbert stuck with a vaudeville format and innocuous skits.  Both men are funny.  Colbert, clad in Haband-esque, kind of tight, starry, sweat-slacks cut an amusing, if not vaguely icky figure.  They left (No, right. No, left) the screeds to ill-tempered pundits. Kudos all round (the Huffington Post people served as well-received hall monitors) on the logistics, the entertainment and the platform for the US to take a collective breath.  All we needed was Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam and “Breathe”.

Yet that great experience did nothing to temper the unshakable and horrible memory of Nancy Pelosi’s leadership as Speaker of the House. She and Harry Reid led a lemming-like Democratic Congress to the passage of the Patient Portability and Affordable Care Act.  Emblematic of her arrogance during the legislative process, she contemptuously spat, “Are you serious? Are you serious??”, at a reporter who legitimately asked about the Constitutionality of the provision for the mandate for Americans to purchase insurance. 

She kitchen-sinked the legislation, claiming that the bill had to pass before you know what is in it. I happened to be in Washington when she made that comment. I was listening to the Congressional hearings on the radio (stop laughing) and remember thinking, “Did she really just say that? Is she serious?”  Yes, she did (Ref: Speaker Pelosi Press Release March 9, 2010). 

She went on to claim that healthcare reform would:

• Provide preventative care with no deductible, no out-of-pocket charge
• Create a healthier America
• Get Americans focused on diet not diabetes
• Soon add 400,000 jobs.

Really? Um, I don’t see it.  If the leadership doesn’t know what is in the bill, or doesn’t want to take the time to tell taxpayers, than it is reasonable to conclude that Congress passed legislation without understanding the bill.  I expect my  Congressman to read and understand legislation prior to voting. I also expect my legislators to push back on irresponsible party leadership that demands member’s compliance rather than thoughtful legislating. (Newt Gingrich ring a bell?) Then there is the issue of the sneaky Christmas Eve vote. Ugh. I’ll stop.

Here’s where the ethics of how I vote come into play.  It is also reasonable to conclude that Congress did read the bill, could not make heads nor tails of it and deferred to party leadership. So, which scenario is more reasonable? For a two-term Congressman to buck the system, ignore the horse-trading and his assignment to the powerful Ways and Means committee and risk a primary loss or publicly denounce the bill as 2,000 pages of pork and beans? Hmmm. Tap. Tap. Tap.

A word about policy. Legislating “ideals”, as healthcare reform is positioned, is bad policy.  Lyndon Johnson pursued the Great Society -ideal-based policy- as a way to fulfill JFK’s legacy.  The result?  The beneficiaries of the Great Society communities-South Bronx, Watts, Mother Cabrini- continue a brutal fight against poverty and crime, lower life expectancy, and negligible advances in education, in spite of $$ billions.  In fact, Clinton’s Welfare-to-Work legislation in the 1990’s aimed to undo the Great Society.  While the analogy between healthcare legislation and the Great Society is imperfect, it is close enough for…well, you get the point. Beware of unintended consequences.

Legislating in support of policy and ideals, with very specific budget, regulatory, funding and tax implications, is responsible legislating. (Dang, I wish I could think of an example.)  I’m pessimistic as to where we will be in 2012 when the PPACA dust settles. Hope I’m wrong.  I will happily eat my low-sugar, gluten and fat-free hat if we have healthy, diabetes free population and 400,000-healthcare jobs by 2012. 

I also question Obama’s judgment and motives in pursuing a healthcare agenda without constituent consensus, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  Healthcare, writ large, does need some reform, starting with insurance.  Obama’s approach, however, through the baby out with the bathwater, the bathwater out with the tub and the tub out with the house.

An alternative? The Republican party, which is in shambles.  It’s been hi-jacked by Tea Partiers behaving like hoodlums.  This is not the party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.  In fact, the prospect of a reactionary Congress, with little evidence of intellectual clockspeed, restraint and world view (Sara Palin. Alvin Greene. Christine O’Donnell) is as depressing as is a tin-ear Congress playing fast and loose with deficit spending and our future.  They are campaigning with a boatload of promises without a boat anchor voting record. 

So there you have it.  I have mixed feelings about this election but less so having gone through the “Well, on the one hand…” exercise.  I delight in my Democracy and will do my part to preserve it.  So, I vote.  Oh, yeah. And breathe.

My motivation for going is  to help quell the voracious, ubiquitous appetite for rhetorical indecency that has plagued this election season. (Oh, and I get to hang with w/ my friends- always a noble cause.) I’m going as an American citizen who is deeply concerned about the direction of the country yet who is insistent that a modicum of dignity serve as a rudder for righting the ship. The Über-Ugly negative backlash against (fill-in-the-blank), a la Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Tim Profitt and countless donkey-or-elephant-toting talking heads is wrong, wrong, and wrong.

I did feel a bit sheepish signing up for the event, with the feeling that I hadn’t quite vetted the rally and could be involved with a mob not of my ilk. I like to hand pick my ilks and my mobs, thank you very much.  There was also this niggling fear that I’d end up under the hot, naked lights of a Congressional hearing room getting grilled by the likes of a Joe McCarthy in a skirt (God- there are so many who fit that description) for doing something profoundly un-American.

The email confirmation that I was “on the bus” for the rally was great news (the buses are full). Yet, the greeting, “Fellow Democrats” caused me to flinch.  I’m an independent (although in the great Commonwealth of PA, one can’t vote in a primary as such) and chafe at being given a party label. My understanding is that this rally is politically agnostic. If that’s not the case, I’d like to know.

Going is the right thing for me to do. I chatter on about good governance, live near DC and will have $25 bus fare after I shake down my sofa. Doing nothing, for me, is wrong. If this were a civil rights march, circa 1965, I would be strident about the moral necessity for feet on the street. This rally does not have the same moral heft.

The moral gravitas of going to the voting booth, however, trumps just about everything in the civic arena. Booty in the booth is imperative. Voting is our civic duty (remember 4th grade?) Not voting is unethical. So please, put Tuesday, November 2 on your calendar and enjoy the privilege, right and duty (arguably, all apply) of voting. In the meantime, I’ll cool my heels on the Mall, gaze up at Honest Abe and ponder the notion that I am at a sanity rally. Man, that’s crazy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-fineman/rally-to-restore-sanity_b_774525.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=102710&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily+Brief

My burning platform, to begin the blog, was the auspicious date of 10/10/10. Why? Well, a number of reasons, the first of which is my fascination with numbers.  I’ve always had a kinship with numbers, always looking for a mystical connection of disparate parts through the glue of numbers. My favorites are 7 and 9.  Odd, like me.  My birthday, which I love, is a study in evenness, 2/24.  The ying and yang of odd and even are as good a definition of me as anything.  I bought a lovely cottage with the address of “9996” and learned, at closing, that the actual address was “6669″.  “Sorry,” says I to the realtor, “No can do. The sign of the devil.” She told me to get over it and sign the papers.  I did.  I lost the house in a flood two months later, after having a hen party on 6/6/06 as an act of defiance. Yikes.

It turns out, I believe, that I am not alone.  There is a universal obsession with numbers- dates equalize us. December 7 ~ 9/11~ Y2K~ 12/25~ 01/01~ our birthday’s~anniversaries~the death of a parent~ the birth of a child.  Numbers distill the most complex emotions and situations into a few characters.  I cannot think of a more simple and elegant vector of monumental moments. It is rather beautiful- regardless of race, gender, age, sexual persuasion, education, W2 (hah!), we are bound by the power of numbers.  Ironically, most of us are not fans of math but we love our numbers.

A dear friend and I sat in a New York diner, December 2008 (I don’t remember the exact date).  She had set out to achieve a goal, which would consummate on 10/10/10. We napkined our way through a marathon strategy session in which we identified the component parts of her successful completion of the goal.  The goal involves matters of the heart, so the calculus of her control over the matter nets to zip, nada, nothing. Turns out that the goal was not achieved but I say, “let’s go for 11/11/11″ and I’ll join her in the pursuit of the goal.  And if for some odd (a-hem) reason, 11/11/11 is a miss, we’ll go for 12/12/12 (the date that my son believes the world is going to end).  And if we miss yet again, I assure you that I’ll contrive a powerful combination of dates, times numbers that involve a series of 13’s. Good Lord, that’s almost more delicious than three 6’s.

So what does all of this have to do with ethics?  More than you may imagine.  The ethics of life is a cloudy, murky business. Your right is my wrong and  it plays the other way.  We like numbers because they are a fact, morally agonistic (i.e. 9/11/ is celebrated by Al-Qaeda and vilified by the West), and relatively universal.  The aspiration of this blog is to wade into the weeds of our everyday, kitchen table ethics and distill the most vexing of issues to  1+1=2.