October 15. 2008 Page A4 Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views o f the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. . W tL Ìo N T o Y INVEST ÍNNEVJ ÖREfcN TECHNOLOGIES T o SAVE THÈ PLANET AND C R Q O e TONS OF 3O SS ? / y 2 û O BILLION T o rebuild rpads B «it>6E S AND PUT AMERICA BALK T o \N O K K V . 2 35 BILLION F p R health CARE FOR A O R T A 'S P oor B il l io n a ir e s CEOs fail in every catagory \N E CANT AFFORD NOT To DO tt ; 2. , XX HO WRECKED ZV Y THE ECONOMY/ I bailout children ? The Truths about Class Warfare Spare us the offensive rhetoric B ob K eener W hy do right-wing com m en tators get to say it’s class w ar fare to su g g e st th a t w ea lth y people should pay more in taxes? I’ll tell you w hat’s class w ar fare. It’s class w arfare to pass two sets o f m assive tax cuts that ben efit mostly the w ealthy as Presi dent Bush did during his first term. These two frontal assaults on working folks, transferred almost $100 billion to the top I percent, w hile helping to turn a $5.1 tril lion 10-year federal budget sur plus into a $3.7 trillion deficit. This devastating debt is already a crushing burden on future gen erations o f average taxpayers. It’s class warfare for presiden tial candidate Sen. John M cCain to propose making the Bush tax cuts perm anent - a coup de grace for struggling Americans who al ready saw the median household income go dow n from 2000 to 2007. This proposal would give raises next year o f 4.4percent in after-tax income to the top 0.1 by percent and 3.4 percent for the top 1 percent. Com bat pay, we assum e? It’s class warfare to spend years deregulating the financial se r v ic e s in d u s try as B u sh an d M cCain have done and then he "sh o ck ed " w hen a speculative zeppelin-sized balloon, fueled by outlandish greed, bursts like an atomic bomb, putting the entire global econom y at m ajor risk. It’s class w arfare to prop up a few irresponsible Wall Street g i b u sin e ss e x e c u tiv e s ta x p a y e r subsidies totaling more than $20 billion per year that in truth en courage unlim ited pay packages. It’s class w arfare to oppose the E m ployee Free C hoice A ct as both Bush and M cCain do. This law would begin to bring a small am ount o f pow er balance back into the w orkplace by making it a bit easier than it is now to form a labor union. F urther, it w ould com pel mediation and arbitration if m an ag em en t and the union don’t agree on a contract in 90 days. Let's put the suggestion that wealthy people should pay more in taxes in perspective. ants with $200 billion in aid pack ages in the form o f brand new taxpayer-supplied loans, while the A m erican H ousin g R escue & Foreclosure Prevention Act, d e sig n e d to a s sist h u n d re d s o f thousands o f hom eow ners suf fering under subprim e loans is blockaded. It’s class w arfare to give big It’s class w arfare to oppose in creasin g the federal m inim um w age as both Bush and M cCain have done. By 2006, w hen a proposed in crease was last voted down, the value o f the m inim um wage had fallen to its low est level in over 50 years. Even today, after in creases pul in place in 2(K)7, there Palin Around with Terrorists even though the W eather U nder ground that O bam a's buddy Bill Ayres helped found n ever tar geted civilians. T he only person they ever killed was one o f their own in a fatal bom bm aking blun d e r in a G re e n w ic h V illa g e tow nhouse. Check out your own pals, Sarah by T om H . H astings Sarah Palin is right to criticize Barak O bam a for ’palling around with terrorists,’ as she puts it. A smart politician would nol hang around w ith people w ho have been connected to bom bs that might have hurt civilians. A f r ic a n A m erican A l l i a n c e f o r H om eow nership (AAAH) Presents 10 th annual HOMEOWNERSHIP FAIR Ms. Avila The Johnson's J ohn B ernard T he w o rld ’s m ost pow erful econom y is in peril thanks to an other bout o f deception, denial, greed and collusion. Tw o pow erful forces - the p ressu re to c o n tin u a lly grow earn in g s co u p led w ith w ildly c o m p e titiv e m a rk e ts s u p e r charged by the internet -h a v e revealed a fissure a mile w ide in C E O m orality, leadership and m anagem ent skills. W hat happened at W ashing ton M utual that caused its co l lapse? And, what w as going on at C hase that has allow ed them to prosper in the m ortgage loan crisis? T he price o f those who failed will affect every American, so I believe we m ust understand the root cause. P re ssu re to grow q u arte rly earnings dem ands organizations c o n tin u a lly im p ro v e p e r f o r mance - and one o f a CEO s most important jo b s is to put in place an engine to drive that perfor mance. If the CEO s expectation is that everyone w orks harder as o p posed to smarter, the top has set the tone. W hen the organization honors and rew ards the top per form er based purely on numbers - w ithout regard to how they were achieved - th e real moral ex pectations are revealed. Com peti tive pressures are great at reveal ing every ethically grey twist and turn, and after aw hile, norm ally ethically people begin to q u es tion their ow n sense o f right or wrong. W hen we set our moral com pass by looking at what our com petitors are doing w e're in trouble. T he internet has done n o th ing but heighten the com petitive pressure, but it also has added another dynam ic. T he w eb has c r e a te d th e e ra o f m a ss custom ization; today as buyers we have m any m ore sellers to choose from and so to com pete, the sellers custom ize their solu tions to m eet our needs. C o m peting in this environm ent d e mands flexibility - and that flex ibility com es in many forms. I believe that in the mortgage crises, the com petitive pressures by $ 4 T R ILLIO N y ? T o FUR THER. FEATHER THE NESTS OF 'WALL. S T R E E T / CANT AVPOKD v r/r Capitalism without Ethics CANbr /\TVoKV if . is no state in the nation w here a family or even an individual can cover the basic cost o f living on a full-time minimum wage. So let’s put the suggestion that w ealthy people should pay more in taxes in perspective. It’s a tac tic to address econom ic inequi ties. It was em ployed after the robber baron days o f the early 20th century and served us well as a society until it was repealed bit by bit, starting in the 1970s and increasingly in recent times. W hat’s good about it is that it’s em bedded in how we pay for governm ent - a benefit we all share. It’s based on the u nder standing that w e’re all in this to gether and that extrem e inequity is bad for a dem ocratic society. D isagree with the idea if you want to, but spare us the offen sive rhetoric. Average Americans arc on the front lines o f the real class w ar and have been losing long enough. Bob Keener is communica tions director fo r United fo r a hair Economy, an independent organization raising awareness about the dangers o f growing economic inequality. O f course, those bom bs o f the W eather U nderground hack in the late 1960s and early 1970s were a stupid but understandable response to the infinitely larger n u m b e rs o f b o m b s th at w ere d ro p p e d on p u rp o se by Jo h n M cCain and others into civilian neighborhoods and w orkplaces in Vietnam. In d e e d , M c C a in w as sh o t dow n as he was bom bing Hanoi, a city, not a m ilitary base nor a m ilitary supply line such as the Ho Chi M inh Trail. This was pa tently illegal then and it’s illegal now. It s a war crim e. It was a war crim e when it w as done by Japa nese to Chinese and M ongolians, when it was done by G erm ans to the British, and in turn when we ta rg e ted c iv ilia n s in D resden, H am burg, C o lo g n e, F rankfort, Tokyo. Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. were so great that mortgage loan professionals began to “look the other way” with regards to finan cial qualifications o f their buy ers - after all, everyone else was doing it. So, how does the pressure to make earnings combined with the mass custom ization realities of the internet point to a failure in C E O m orality, leadership and m anagem ent? It’s pretty simple: it’s their jo b to understand these sophisticated dynam ics and to lead their com panies through the maze. I believe the pressure to grow earnings each quarter, com bined with a m ass custom ization m ar ketplace, dem ands a new kind of organiz<ftional thinking on the part o f the C E O - not only to succeed com petitively, but also to do so w hile living up to a d e cent set o f moral standards. The failing,! believe, is rooted deeply in outdated leadership and m ana gerial practices. Leaders are obligated today to create a healthy "being” environ ment for their organizations. Well- crafted values w on’t suffice - the key is the environm ent the leader creates through his or her own behavior. Contradictory behav ior by the CEO - or tolerance o f it - reverberates as truth through the organization. Additionally, leaders must manage the “doing” environment. To ensure ethical behavior is in place in their mana gerial capacity leaders m ust cre ate a m anagerial system where appropriate controls establish the boundaries o f actions to ensure business effectiveness and ethi cal responsibility. In the end, the credit crisis is the direct result o f leadership not effectively creating a culture o f e th ic a l a c tio n an d sy stem o f m anagem ent that dem ands ac countability. W hile the w ords are there, the look-the-other way ethic that lives up and dow n the corporation's layers is the direct responsibility o f its leader. The credit crisis was caused by a lead ership lapse o f epic proportions. John Bernard is a founding partner o f ¡Ox Incorporated, a Portland-based organization. At least, how ever, there w as a c h a n c e to d efe n d th e m se lv es justification for being at war with against the bom bings o f hospi G erm any and Japan. There was tals, civilian neighborhoods, and none for our war on Vietnam just the infrastructure that kept their people alive. as there is none now in Iraq. Were the Vietnamese a threat to We pretend that the rest o f the world cannot tell that our bom bs the U.S.? No. Were they a threat are just as terroristic as anyone to a neighboring country ? No. Did else’s. We pretend that they m is the UN decide that a military inva interpret any civilian deaths as sion was necessary to stop a geno somehow Am erica's intent to kill cide or other major human rights people w ho are not armed. We violation? No. The U.S. unilater pretend that John M cCain wasn't ally decided to step in to seize a colony the French lost in 1954. a terrorist. So let's not be quite so fast, He was. There was absolutely nothing Sarah. C heck out the character noble about w hat M cCain did to and history o f your pals. Your Vietnamese. He was one o f the running mate murdered Vietnam least likely to pay any price for e s e c iv ilia n s . N e ith e r B arak his actions, bom bing them into O bam a nor even Bill Ayres, his fireball oblivion from thousands pathetic ‘pal,’ did. Tom H. Hastings teaches con o f feet in the air. 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