Political MoJo

Is Corporate Responsibility Here to Stay?

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| Wed Aug. 10, 2005 10:12 AM PDT

Businessweek has an interesting story about corporations that are trying to engage in "social responsibility" in order to stay competitive:

Take Sewell Avant. The 25-year-old senior procurement analyst graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002. During college, he cleaned churches and did regular social projects with fraternity brothers. Now he's carrying on that tradition at Home Depot. He took a day off, without pay, to help mix concrete at the playground project in Marietta. His entire department will do more kiddie-park construction on a weekend in August. For Avant, volunteering adds meaning to his day-to-day job. "Employees are trying to marry their work and nonwork lives. If the company gives them a chance to do that, then they're happier," says C.B. Bhattacharya, associate professor of marketing at Boston University's School of Management.

That's why younger companies are baking the social responsibility concept into their culture -- and demanding investors accept the cost. Costco Wholesale Corp. has long offered generous compensation to its workers, to the scorn of Wall Street and the detriment of its stock price. In the 1980s, networking giant Cisco Systems Inc. opened its first office in East Palo Alto, Calif., a run-down neighborhood amid the prosperity of Silicon Valley. Cisco Chairman John Morgridge worked as "principal for the day" at a school next door. "We're in business to get results. This is just a different currency," says Tae Yoo, Cisco's vice-president for corporate affairs.

Interesting, though it seems unlikely that the "social responsibility" trend will spread too far. Not so long as Wall Street continues to punish any sort of behavior that deviates from profit-maximization. A few rogue CEOs here and there, like Costco's James Sinegal, will have the nerve—and ability—to buck the stock market, but they seem the exception rather than the rule. From a political point of view, meanwhile, some corporations may be getting antsy at the fact that most voters—including many conservative voters—increasingly distrust the power of large corporations, and that fear could spark an outburst of "social responsibility." But in truth, business interests have very little to fear from a political backlash—not so long as they have Congress by the thumbs.

And at most, consumer activists can only train their attention on a small subset of corporations at any given time; so the relatively few companies under fire, like Nike and, perhaps someday, Wal-Mart, may clean up their practices in order to sidle out of the spotlight, but I'm not sure that all adds up to a growing trend. That's not to disparage the companies that are becoming kinder and gentler; it's just to say that it seems very unlikely that corporations will do something that can conflict with their bottom line for largely haphazard reasons.

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Darfur Won't Go Away

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| Tue Aug. 9, 2005 5:05 PM PDT

The ICG's John Pendergast—who was interviewed a while back here at Mother Jones—had an important op-ed on Darfur yesterday that kicks down the idea that the genocide will somehow just go away on its own: "The crisis in Darfur is deepening, not abating. New numbers from the United Nations reveal that 3.5 million Darfurians are in need of emergency aid, a sharp increase over what the misguided optimists expected. Mass rapes continue; lifesaving humanitarian aid is frequently blocked; and impunity for those responsible remains intact."

(Via Coalition for Darfur, which is also essential reading for the ongoing crises in Congo and Niger.)

In Defense of NARAL

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| Tue Aug. 9, 2005 4:49 PM PDT

I'm pretty sure I've posted something similar before, but in light of this misguided swipe at NARAL today over at Daily Kos, it seems time for another go. Kos isn't happy because the abortion-rights organization would dare endorse a pro-choice Republican, Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, over a pro-life Democrat, Jim Langevin (who eventually dropped out of the race). Kos sees this as precisely the wrong strategy, and argues that NARAL should stick with Democrats come hell-or-highwater: "[T]urning the Senate Democratic is far more beneficial for their issue (women rights) than anything the Republicans can muster." Well, no. That's not necessarily true.

A quick finger experiment. Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that it's Chaffee (pro-choice R) vs. Langevin (pro-life D) in a Rhode Island Senate race, and that NARAL's endorsement makes a shred of difference. Here are the scenarios that pro-choice advocates face face:

1) Republicans keep the Senate in 2006 and Chaffee gets elected. Well, that's bad news. But notice, whenever the Republicans slap down some bit of legislation restricting abortion rights, Chaffee will be voting against it (remember, he votes pro-choice 100 percent of the time. 100 percent!).

2) Republicans keep the Senate in 2006 and Langevin gets elected. Worse news. Republicans are still in charge, but now whenever they slap down abortion restrictions, Langevin will likely vote for them, giving pro-life legislation one extra vote and making it more likely to pass. Clearly outcome #2 is worse for NARAL than #1. But then we have...

3) Democrats retake the Senate and Chaffee gets elected. Hooray! Now whenever Democrats want to push through some legislation expanding abortion rights, Chaffee votes for it, making it more likely to pass. Which is still better, from NARAL's perspective, than...

4) Democrats retake the Senate and Langevin gets elected. This scenario is worse than 3, since that legislation expanding abortion rights suddenly becomes harder to pass—at the very least, you'll have to do Langevin some favor elsewhere to get him to vote for it. But odds are, he won't vote for it!

So NARAL's preferences here are ranked: 3, 4, 1, 2. Endorsing Chaffee, then, is a pretty optimal choice—it makes either 3 or 1 more likely, rather than 4 or 2. The wild card here, of course, is the scenario in which control of the Senate actually hinges on who wins in this race, Chaffee or Langevin—in which case, the choice would be between outcome #1 and #4. But the probability of that seems pretty small, all things considered. So, yes, it makes sense for NARAL to endorse the pro-choice Republican over the pro-life Democrat. Meanwhile, in light of various liberal intellectuals getting ready to throw abortion rights overboard in order to win more elections, NARAL certainly has every reason to worry that it needs to hold the party's feet to the fire. Traditionally, interest groups that get too cozy and complacent with one particular party—see, for example, unions with the Democratic Party, or evangelicals with the Republicans—get taken advantage of pretty easily.

Building Worse Mousetraps?

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| Tue Aug. 9, 2005 2:59 PM PDT

This rat-poison story seems a bit arcane, but here's a noteworthy paragraph from the Washington Post's coverage:

The battle over how to regulate rat poison started in August 1998 when the Clinton administration approved its use as long as manufacturers added a bittering agent and a dye that made it more obvious if a child ingested the poison. Three years later, Bush administration officials rescinded the requirements, on the grounds that they would make the poison less attractive to rats and could damage household property.

Let's see, dead children or stained rugs? Guess we know which one the Bush administration would pick. Meanwhile, Joshua Kurlantzick reported the backstory on this whole affair for Mother Jones earlier this year:

[The Environmental Protection Agency]'s career scientists began preparing a full assessment of the dangers [of rat poison], which was completed in September 2001. In keeping with standard procedure, the report was to be made available to the pesticide industry and the public for up to 90 days, allowing interested parties to review it. The document, which said rat poisons were toxic to "nontarget species" -- that is, humans and other animals -- presented strong evidence for limiting the sale of some of the chemicals to licensed users.

But in a departure from normal procedures, the EPA held the comment process open for more than a year. During this period, it allowed the pesticide industry, organized in a coalition called the Rodenticide Registrants Task Force (RRTF), to go well beyond making the usual technical corrections.

Read the rest for details. "Bush administration privileges industry buddies over scientific evidence" isn't exactly a new story, but that doesn't make it any less important.

Bad Religion, Too?

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| Tue Aug. 9, 2005 1:36 PM PDT

Permit a hit-and-run post here, but Cosma Shalizi has written one of the best broadsides against intelligent design I've ever seen: "The thing is, this leads to bad science, and, if an unbeliever can say so, bad religion. The stakes are more serious here than with silly 'devotionals with mathematical content,' but the issues are not that different. Doing what you must know is shoddy science, in the hope that it will provide cover for propagating the gospel, shows a poor opinion of your fellow creatures, of the gospel, and of God. Of your fellow creatures, because you are resorting to trickery, rather than honest persuasion or the example of your own life, to win converts. Of the gospel, because you do not trust its ability to change lives and win souls. Last and worst, of God, because you are perverting what you believe to be the divine gift of intelligence, and refusing to learn about the Creator from the creation. And for what? To protect your opinion about what measure you think it fitting for God to employ."

Nicely put. For more on the subject, see this post from ThomH.

Don't Give the Public What it Wants

Tue Aug. 9, 2005 12:45 PM PDT

As John Tierney points out in today's New York Times, the public furor over meth usage is only the most recent fracas related to a long series of poor drug-policy decisions. And why are the policies created? Beating up on drugs, and drug users, is an easy way for the political class to score points with a crime-fearing public. When the media (including journalists) hypes the threat, they are only priming the pump. On this issue, good politics makes bad policy, and will until public perceptions about the efficacy of our drug laws come to match reality.

Mark Kleiman has a good post on why meth, as it stands now, is probably not a good candidate for legalization, as Tierney sort of suggests it might be. That step might work for say, pot, and not much else. But there are lots of reform possibilities, including decriminalization of small amount possession, that might go a long way towards helping addicts of more dangerous drugs. The point here is that even common sense steps like these fall victim to joint public-politician lust for the prohibition war.

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Federalism: The Big Issue

Tue Aug. 9, 2005 11:14 AM PDT

Of course most of the noise about what's at stake in this and other Supreme Court nomination battles concerns the hot-button 'cultural' issues: gay rights, abortion, etc. That's understandable: passions are high, motivated constituencies are well-formed, and the issues are clear, at least on a emotional level, to a wide swath of the public.

A couple of conservative nominees will of course, cause progressives headaches on all these issues, and with enough time reverse a lot of important gains that have come through the courts. But even more damage can be done if the Supreme Court starts chipping away at the federal government's authority to make laws for all states. There has already been some movement in this direction under this court, but another justice à la Thomas would firm up the anti-federalist block, and put 60 years of laws at risk.

So it is certainly good news that Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican Chair of the Judiciary Committee, has decided to bare his moderate chops and demand some answers from Roberts on his thoughts about how far Congress's authority to regulate interstate commerce ought to go. I have little doubt that Roberts will say the right answers. But at least he'll be asked the right questions.

When to Worry

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| Tue Aug. 9, 2005 10:45 AM PDT

A hint that the Bush administration realizes all is not well in economic recovery-land:

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow acknowledged yesterday that the fruits of strong economic growth are not spreading equally to less educated Americans, as he and the rest of President Bush's economic team prepared to meet today to discuss wages and income distribution in an otherwise surging economy.

Really? Does the rest of the White House also acknowledge that? That's a pretty big deal. Hm, a little further down in the piece:

Administration officials now acknowledge they have a problem, at least with voters' perceptions.

Ah yes, sound the alarm.

Watch the Incentives

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| Mon Aug. 8, 2005 3:35 PM PDT

In Slate today, Alexandra Starr has a marvelous take on those notoriously low test scores among American high-schoolers:

You could conclude from these exams that American high-schoolers are ill-taught and ill-prepared for the competitive global economy. But what if you look at these tests like a capitalist rather than an educator? Nothing is at stake for kids when they take the international exams and the NAEP. Students don't even learn how they scored. And that probably affects their performance. American teenagers, in other words, may not be stupid. It could be that when they have nothing to gain (or lose), they're lazy.

True enough. In a similar vein, one of the most innovative proposals that I've ever heard for boosting scores—and, one would hope, actual learning—among students in low-performing schools also involves incentives. What if students simply got paid for getting good grades? Recently, Roland Fryer, Jr., an economist at Harvard has been trying to do just that with a pilot program in low-income public schools in the Bronx. Third-graders get $10 per good test, and seventh-graders $20. Some have objected that this would mean the death of "learning for its own sake," but come on. A number of well-off parents reward their kids for doing well in school; this is no different, really.

CLOB is DOA

Mon Aug. 8, 2005 1:38 PM PDT

One of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations (PDF) called for the establishment of a board to monitor how civil liberties issues were being dealt with at the various federal intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. Today's Washington Post reports that the board, later established by Congress as the and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, hasn't met once since formally constituted in June. Of course, it's also under-funded and over-mandated. And as TalkLeft pointed out a while back, Bush's board appointments, including Ted Olsen (who as Solicitor General argued the administration's "enemy combatant" position before the Supreme Court), are conservative and don't exactly inspire confidence as civil libertarians. Oh well. At least it was a nice idea.

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