Ward on Words

"Scandal Mushrooms" says a headline in today's Chicago Sun-Times . What sounds like a recipe for salmonella-infested fungi is instead the story about how Rod Blagojevich (when still governor) got Roland Burris' son a job prior to the elder Burris' appointment to the senate. (Sounds like Blagojevich served as an excellent employment agency for the Roland Burrises.) Roland Burris II (the senator's "mini-me") was facing foreclosure on his own home last summer when he was appointed ( and I am not making this up ) to a $75,000 job at the Illinois Housing Development Authority. His home was in foreclosure because he apparently owed ( again, I'm not making this up ) more than $30,000 to the IRS. Let's see if we can sum this up neatly... A governor arrested for trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat then appoints a man who has not only raised money to purchase the seat hosted "fundraisers" for Blago, but whose son owes his job to the...

The first hint of confusion came for me when reading about the banking CEOs who recently appeared before congress. As live-blogged by the Wall Street Journal , several of the executives claimed no need for TARP funds; that they in fact had rather unwillingly taken billions of dollars from the feds at the request of the Treasury Department. The executives made statements like, "...we did not seek TARP funds..." and "we were strongly encouraged to participate [in TARP] and we did." And now Northern Trust. This is the Chicago-based bank now made famous to most Americans through a story brought to us by TMz.com - the online gossip rag. As most of us know by now, thanks to the impeccable reporting of TMZ, the bank, which had received $1.6 billion in TARP funds, threw a lavish party recently as part of its commitment to host the Northern Trust Open charity event. In an " open letter to Northern Trust Shareholders, clients and staff " issued to defend...

"Government is not the solution to our problem," said Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address almost 30 years ago. "Government is the problem." I keep thinking about those words of Reagan's as we see government forking over trillions to failed American banks and bankrupt car manufacturers. And we see bailout funds getting used for things like bonuses and things of that nature. And we see millions of Americans lose their jobs each month. And I think that I'm really not sure that government can provide the solution that is needed to solve a crisis of this magnitude. But more disturbingly, business isn't providing the solution either - at least business as we know it today, thirty years after Reagan spoke those words about the evils of government. In fact, it would appear that in today's political landscape, business is itself a significant problem. A Bleak, Golden Fog The landscape of American business today is pockmarked by bad...

On February 11, CEOs of eight debt-ridden banking firms appeared before Congress. The WSJ live-blogged the proceedings . To see what these leaders have to say is an eye-opener. It seems like no TARP was ever needed or wanted by these executives, according to their testimony.... J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon: “While we did not seek the TARP funds…to strengthen our already-strong capital base…we are using that money to expand the spirit of TARP.” (It was my understanding the spirit of TARP was to inject capital into firms that were desperately undercapitalized - so one must wonder why JP Morgan felt compelled to put the hand out for federal funding...) Bank of New York Mellon chief executive Robert Kelly (whose bank was apparently profitable throughout 2008): “We were strongly encouraged to participate [in TARP] and we did, very quickly.” (Who encouraged this savvy leader to take money his company didn't need? And why did he comply?) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: “...

Shock of shocks - Republicans define Obama's first month on the job as "disappointing." CNN has the scoop here . According to the CNN story, the GOP finds fault with Obama in a number of areas: -Lack of bipartisan support -Wasteful spending -Questionable ethics. From where I sit, if the Republicans look in the mirror, they'd see a remarkably similar visage....

The NY Times has a story today commemorating the centennial of Wallace Stegner's birth. For most people, Wallace Stegner is probably the least famous award-winning author they've never heard of. Though he won the the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, his books are not easy to obtain and most students today have never heard of him or been assigned any of his books to read in class. When I was a teenager, my father handed me Stegner's novel, Big Rock Candy Mountain. It had been one of my father's favorite books, and upon first read, it became one of mine. It's loosely based on Stegner's life, in that the significant events of the book also happened to Stegner's family. Like the fictional Bruce Mason, Wallace Stegner was left to care for his dying mother alone after his father ran away from the situation. Like Bruce Mason, Stegner had a father who killed himself after murdering a girlfriend. Like Bruce Mason, Stegner was the only survivo...

There is a lovely story in today's Washington post about a doctor who turned to writing to help heal himself of the stress that came from treating AIDS back in the 1980s. The writer is Dr. Abraham Verghese, an AIDS specialist who cashed in his 401K nearly 20 years ago to become a writer. He is a physician and a published author who lectures on the pen and the stethoscope: what writing can teach us about medicine. His primary thesis: that "...harried doctors must understand that to every patient, illness is a story." Verghese is an Indian-Ethiopian who now lives in America. And given his diverse background and his work with AIDS patients, he understands that doctors dispense healing , not necessarily cures . The narrative of medicine. The narrative of life. When dealing with the terribly ill, words matter. And Verghese is a doctor who understands the importance of the narrative as it relates to the patient. For more, check out the story here. And you'l...

My senator, Roland Burris, is speaking up on an issue top-of-mind these days - his integrity. It seems that people have questioned his integrity following his acceptance of disgraced Governor Blagojevich's senate appointment. They're beginning to wonder just how Mr. Squeaky Clean gained the attention of the poetry-spouting scam artist formerly known as the governor of Illinois. Apparently, there is a "major omission from his testimony...that appeared to contradict statements he made to a state House committee investigating former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's impeachment," says an AP article in today's Washington Post . Blagojevich's brother allegedly had asked Burris to host a fundraiser prior to becoming Senator, a fact Burris failed to mention in any hearings into the matter. Interesting - but not surprising - that a man seeking to sell the senate seat also sought to ask Burris to raise some $$s for him. The Chicago Tribune characterizes Burris...

Karl Rove says one of the most astonishing things in today's Wall Street Journal. You can read the entire story here . But check out what he says about Obama's stimulus plan: "The bill he signs will create a raft of new programs and be the biggest peacetime spending increase in American history, which will give us larger deficits and create pressure to raise taxes." (italics mine) "The biggest peacetime spending increase...." Has Karl Rove forgotten we're at war? On two fronts? Because we needed to stop Hussein from blowing us up with all those nukes he had - but when we found out the nukes were figments of the CIA's overactive imagination, we then shifted the purpose of the war to building democracy in a region not known for the love of personal freedoms? And we're still searching for Bin Laden? I knew the Bushies were going to offer up some revisionist history for us to digest, but this - wow! Rove's calling us a nation at pea...

Ragan.com offers "news, ideas and conversations for communicators worldwide," and today, one of their stories covers the nightmare on Wall Street. In the Ragan story , given that the audience is communicators, the nightmare is defined as a "PR nightmare." What can communicators do to help solve this "PR debacle"? As a communicator myself, I have to point out that this is not really a crisis of communication - this is a crisis of leadership. These companies have been following a business model that brought them to the brink of bankruptcy. So we're not seeing the result of "bad PR" right now. The actions of the corporate leaders themselves has proven to be indefensible. Recipients of federal funds took off for a $400,000 spa visit, tried to buy a corporate jet, paid out billions in bonuses. It's rarely easy for communicators to spin straw into gold. And now, instead of acting prudently, instead of conserving money, Wall Street...

Allan Brinkley, provost and history professor at Columbia University, has an article in today's Wall Street Journal focused on the rise of economic populism he fears is about to sweep over the nation. Brinkley brings up Huey Long, the Depression-era governor of Louisiana as a case in point - whose call for a radical redistribution of wealth was viewed by some contemporaries as "heroic," and he warns of the dangers we face right now: "Whether or not we are now entering a new Great Depression, we are almost certainly entering a period in which resentment of financial and corporate titans will increase, and in which many politicians will feel they have no choice but to join the chorus of denunciation -- perhaps even a president with almost unprecedented approval ratings as he begins his term." I'm here to say ordinary people don't resent people for being rich. They resent rich people for their sense of entitlement. For the idea that they can work the ...

There is the most absurd piece of information reported in the NY Times today. It's about the unexpected impact of establishing salary caps on executives at firms receiving TARP funds: "According to the latest cost estimate of the economic stimulus bill by the Congressional Budget Office, Uncle Sam will lose $10.8 billion in tax revenue that otherwise would have been paid by high-rolling Wall Street executives." I'd really like to know how the CBO determined that figure. The assertion that the Wall Street bigwigs were handing over 10 bil to the feds in income tax prior to the crash seems absurd. And it's also a ridiculous figure to toss around because the money they would have been using to pay themselves the salaries need to pony up such astronomical taxes actually would have come from tax revenues. So heads they win, tails we lose. I'll take the caps on salaries paid to federally funded CEOs over the income tax received on those same federally f...

"Greed Is Good" is the headline of a story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal , reminding me, of course, of Oliver Stone's wildly successful movie about the biz, Wall Street . "Greed is good," says Gordon Gecko at one point in the movie, but in true Hollywood style, the greedy guy gets sent to jail. In reality, the greedy gents on Wall Street pay themselves bonuses out of federal bailout funds. Roy Smith, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, is the author of the WSJ article. In it, he argues that "bonuses are an important and necessary part of the fast-moving, high-pressure industry, and its employees flourish with strong performance incentives." How I wish bonuses had provided adequate incentive for sustainable profit on Wall Street! And how I wish that these banks had flourished along with the employees! Perhaps if bonuses had been tied to performance, we wouldn't be in such a mess today. I love how when the Wall Street insiders sp...

The nation seems all a twitter about Obama's move to impose salary caps on the people who work at firms receiving substantial financial assistance from the federal government. In fact, reading some articles, one would think that the pay limits will ruin the free market as we know it. Dave Krasne, a partner at a private equity firm, says in today's NY Times that "it would be a bad thing if Congress sets the precedent of passing legislation that caps compensation, and consequently productivity." Evan Newmark, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal , goes to great lengths to explain why this strategy won't work. In his mind, "it's bound to end in disaster...because the Treasury pay guidelines run counter to the fundamental human truth that people act in their self-interest." Newmark continues to explain that "the split on Wall Street between the good banks and the bad banks, the shareholder-owned winners and the taxpayer owned losers, will...