Grytting

 

Fairness For Logging
Companies

In the past few years, environmental groups have
adopted a tactic of bidding on Federal timber lands to
preserve old growth trees from rampaging chainsaws.
Clever strategy you say? Completely legal? Wrong,
according to an "unauthorized" letter from
Agriculture Undersecretary James Lyons denying the
acceptability of "non-harvesting bids." The
draft letter with Lyons’s signature pointed out two
devastating flaws barring the non-logging of public
forest tracts. First, it costs money to produce
environmental impact statements on logging. The letter
points out that "It would be a wasteful use of
public monies and contrary to the public interest,"
to produce reports on logging impacts and then sell the
land to non-loggers. (Think of the bureaucrats whose
feelings would be hurt.) Secondly, we might be
encouraging unfair competition because
"non-harvesting bidders would have few, if any,
operating or personnel costs…" Hardly fair to send
Weyerhauser up against the economic clout of Earth First.

(AP 5/15)

Fellowship in High
Places

For those who’ve worried that national
politicians have been skimming all the corporate payoffs,
there’s good news. A select group of 100
corporations has been giving millions to the National
Governor’s Association. These corporate
"fellows," as they are called, include firms
like AT&T, Exxon, General Motors, Dow, and Phillip
Morris. In return for their largesse, they receive
special briefings, their own work and meeting space at
annual conventions, and the opportunity to help shape
policy in staff meetings. According to an NGA fact sheet,
this allows executives to "become better acquainted
with governors’ staffs and to share common
interests." Like backgammon and stamp collecting, I
presume. The Governor’s group defends this practice
as being perfectly legal and "aimed only at getting
the best advice on important issues." What ogres
would want to deprive our governors of the wisest
counsel? NGA meetings are open to the public, although
unfortunately, possibly due to a lack of publicity, only
lobbyists have bothered to attend.

(NYT 5/17)

New Wine Into Old Bags

Michael Bromwich, inspector general for the U.S.
Justice Department, demonstrated in testimony before the
House why we need trained professionals running our
government. While discussing allegations that FBI lab
technicians deliberately gave false testimony in major
trials, Bromwitch brought sharp clarity to two phrases
often carelessly bandied about—perjury and
fabricated evidence. Although he said the Justice
Department "found instances where examiners gave
inaccurate or misleading testimony," it turns out,
luckily, this is not perjury. Nor were the instances of
"testimonial errors, substandard analytical work and
deficient practices" or the fact that "three
explosives unit examiners altered, omitted or improperly
supplemented…internal reports," to be read as
signs of fabricated evidence. Even when they all favored
the prosecution. Could be coincidence. It’s
refreshing to find such creativity in our government
officials.

(AP 5/13)

Elvis To Be Resurrected

Elvis Presley Enterprises has announced plans to bring
the singer back to life. To accomplish this feat they
have signed on International Creative Management, a firm
looking to "broker" Presley’s image. ICM
president, Jeffrey Berg, promises to create "more
resonant relationships" with ETE’s marketing
partners by taking advantage of new digital imaging
technology allowing the reborn Presley to, in the Wall
Street Journal<D>’s words, "display
products and interact with them in television ads."
Thanks to the digital technology, as demonstrated in a
recent Dirt Devil Vacuum commercial with Fred Astaire,
many of us will be able to look forward to a useful
afterlife filled with "resonant relationships"
and interactions with commercial products on TV. (Who
said God was dead?) ICM is reportedly looking beyond just
commercials for Presley. In the works: an Elvis cable
channel, an Elvis stage musical, Elvis on ice, and an
Elvis theme casino in Las Vegas.

(WSJ 5/12)

The Son of Reefer
Madness, Part II

Buried somewhere in last year’s welfare reform
bill was $250 million to teach children sexual
abstinence. This money is given to local government
programs teaching that sex outside of marriage "is
likely to have harmful psychological and physical
effects." How harmful, you ask? A joint report by
the Applied Research Center and the Public Media Center
found these gems. In a funded educational video, a
student asks, "What if I want to have sex before I
get married?" An instructor answers, "Well I
guess you’ll just have to prepare to die. And
you’ll probably take with you your spouse and your
children." (Much worse than the blindness
masturbation used to cause.) Another educational effort
warns of the link between abortion and child abuse,
stating "after one has aborted a child, an
individual loses instinctual control over rage."
Fortunately, according to Amy Stevens of Friends of the
Family, "These programs are not fear-based
efforts…" Thank heaven for small favors. To be on
the safe side, do lock your doors securely against
possible hordes of crazed women.

(NYT 5/8)

Sin Runs Rampant in
Brigham City

Parents in Brigham City, Utah, unearthed a plot to
indoctrinate their children in "pro-gay ideology and
same sex marriage." Before an emergency meeting of
the school board and the city council, they brought forth
evidence that kindergarten teacher Renee Mott had been
leading her class in the game, The Farmer in the Dell,
and had allowed girls to play the part of the farmer.
But, it gets worse. Since there were more girls than boys
in her class, Mott let some of the girls dance together
when it came time for the line, "the farmer takes a
wife." But her ploy did not escape eagle-eyed
parents like Janabell Millett, who declared, "I know
these things may happen in other places, but this is
Brigham City. We can’t let that kind of pollution
into our town." Another parent, Lisa Perkins,
revealed The Farmer in the Dell game was "upsetting
the natural order of things." The city council
concurred and ruled "the farmer" must be a boy,
although "the cheese" that stands alone at the
end will be a girl.

(AP 5/8)

TV Fills the Void

Finding a mere seven hours a day of television viewing
leaves nine underutilized hours, TV networks are reaching
out to help give viewers something to do wherever they
go. People in shopping mall food courts can watch the
Cafe USA channel. At the bowling alley you can watch
Strike 10 and then go to the video arcade for Channel M.
Or if you decide to golf, you can catch Pinpoint Golf
Advertising at our better courses. At the airport, the
CNN Airport network is there to meet your viewing needs,
as will the Better Health Network at your doctor’s
office. There’s even a kid’s network called
Cartoon Cuts for those wasted 15 minutes spent getting a
haircut. Better hotels, like Hilton’s, now have TVs
in their elevators because it breaks up a socially
"awkward situation." Answering critics’
complaints of being forcibly bombarded by TV, John
McMenamin, Turner Private Network’s CEO said,
"We don’t think of it as targeting captive
audiences. We only want to do this where there is a
meaningful fit between environment, audience and the
content of the programs." Who could argue against a
"meaningful fit?"

(WP 5/5)

McChildcare

Business is taking an interest in the poor, thanks to
the Welfare Reform Bill which eliminated the word
"nonprofit" from the requirements for
childcare. The $3.8 billion a year the government spends
on foster care for a half million children has drawn a
flood of big corporations from Lockheed Martin to Youth
Services International (established by the founder of
Jiffy Lube). This opening of childcare to major
corporations is described by its chief lobbyist, the head
of the Au Clair school, Kenneth Mazik, as a minor
adjustment that "levels the playing field."
It’s reassuring to know that Lockheed Martin will
have a level playing field when competing against church
groups. For-profit companies promise to introduce new
efficiencies into foster care. For example, Youth
Services International promises to reduce costs by having
the children do more of the work. Child labor, I believe
it’s called. It’s this kind of innovative
thinking that makes the entry of airplane and auto lubing
companies into childcare so necessary.

(NYT 5/4)

Ten Commandments For
Sale

There’s good news for supporters of Judge Roy
Moore’s campaign to allow prayer and the display of
the Ten Commandments in his Alabama courtroom. With
Governor James threatening to call out National Guard
troops in his defense, Judge Moore has, in the words of
the Christian Family Association, openly "defied the
ACLU." And lived to tell about it, we might add. Now
for the good news. To aid Moore’s cause, the
Christian Family Association is now selling 20-inch
versions of the Ten Commandments, carved in stone (not
the original stone), for only $149.95. Or you can order
smaller versions for $49.95 or $24.95. And for a mere $5
you can purchase "a beautiful full color print of
the Ten Commandments." Unfortunately the bonus
slicers and dicers are all sold out. Hurry now and help
support a judge who "will not bend to (the
ACLU’s) wishes…"

(AP 5/9, http://www. judgemoore. org/)

Employees Gain
Recognition

A survey of 900 corporations by the American
Management Association found that employers are taking a
keen interest in the work of their employees. In fact, 67
percent of the firms were so interested in their workers
that they practiced surveillance. The most widespread
practice was monitoring phone calls, practiced by 37
percent of the firms. Growing in popularity are the
practices of videotaping employees at work (16 percent)
and reading e-mail and computer files (15 percent). Many
companies (23 percent) assist their workers by not
informing them of the surveillance and thus not adding to
their information overload. Critics of these management
tools say it amounts to spying. But this is a simple
misunderstanding according to Eric Greenberg, author of
the AMA study, who "bristled" at the use of the
term "spying." "The focus here is on
security and employee performance," Greenberg said,
"not on spying." He suggests the term
"monitoring" be used instead. Or you may prefer
Bellsouth Corp.’s more delicate
"observations."

(AP 5/22, WP 5/24)

Big Brother in the
Washroom

Corporations can now ensure their employees have clean
hands thanks to an invention called Hygiene Guard. For a
mere $1,500, Hygiene Guard can be installed in any
washroom. Employees need only wear a small badge. When
they enter the restroom an infared sensor is triggered. A
second sensor at the washstand is triggered if the
employee stands in front of it for at least 15 seconds.
This information is then relayed to a computer. Failure
to use the soap dispenser causes the badge to blink,
alerting all to the unhygienic condition. NetTech
International says this system will alert employers to
"miscreants who don’t enter the lavatory all
day or use it too much." NetTech CEO Glenn Cohen
defends their invention on public health grounds,
actually declaring, "Our belief is its time for Big
Brother to be concerned." Well, he is.

(WSJ 5/20, AP 5/20)

Union Relations,
Northwest

How does a hip, post-therapy aged Seattle latte
company view employees who protest working conditions?
Starbuck’s has been facing an "unstrike"
by employees in the province of British Columbia.
Unionized workers have continued on the job but have been
handing out leaflets to customers and wearing union
buttons. Senior vice-president Wanda Herndon says,
"It is very disappointing that we have a fraction of
our partners who want to have a third party that would
come between our relationship." The
"partners," as Starbuck’s calls its
employees, earn the minimum wage in British Columbia,
U.S.$5.15 an hour. The shameless "homewrecker"
is the Canadian Auto Workers, who now organize service
workers and have even threatened Starbuck’s with a
strike. In words that reportedly caused Henry Ford to
roll over in his grave, Herndon responded,
"(Starbuck’s Chair) Howard Schultz is
heartbroken that this has occurred because we have a
really wonderful and unique relationship with our
partners."

(Seattle Times 5/25)

Automating Willy Lohman

The Internet is finally developing a way to make
advertising work on the Web—search engines that
deliver customized ads. At Excite, a search for a word
like "car" will lead to the delivery of a
banner ad for Acura. Not only can sites trigger ads to
preprogrammed words, but they are developing the
capabilities to track people as they surf the Web to
determine which ads should be delivered to them. Even
more exciting is a development by a company called
BlackSun—automated spokespeople. BlackSun has
developed the software for 3-D chat rooms in which visual
cartoon-like characters interact. Into this arena they
send ad robots for participating companies, designed to
appear when specific words are used by chat room
participants. It’s "immersive
advertising." Just drop the word "clean"
into your discussion and ad robot Dusty the Dustbuster
will invite you for a private chat about his favorite
vacuum cleaner. Not only can you program the robot’s
dialogue, but says BlackSun, "you can program a
robot’s humanness." Programming humanness?
Spock, help me on this?

(Knight-Ridder 5/28, WSJ 4/24)

Ad Agencies Have
Worries Too

Advertisers in their search for emotionally compelling
ideas are running into a roadblock. It’s getting
harder and harder to reach consumers who are hit by an
estimated 245 commercial TV messages a day. David Lubars,
ad executive with the Omnicom Group, complains that
consumers "are like roaches—you spray them and
spray them and they get immune after awhile." A
truly humbling simile. Meanwhile, to get around this
resistance, advertisers have long relied on focus groups
to get at consumers real feelings about products. Now
even this approach is failing because, says the Wall
Street Journal<D>, over saturated consumers
"display an alarming tendency to regurgitate
ad-world lingo…" Ask and people will now say they
like Sanka because of its "full bodied aroma."
Apparently advertisers have done there work too well. In
the quest for spontaneous or "naked"
subconscious reactions to base new ad campaigns on,
researchers are now turning to scanning eyeball movements
and using hypnosis. It’s a tough job getting past
the conditioning your own ads have inflicted.  

(WSJ 5/30)

Brave New Health Care

Richard Scott has turned Columbia/HCA into the
McDonald’s of the health industry, with 348
hospitals flying its banner. Now the Wall Street
Journal<D> has been kind enough to make us
privy to Scott’s grand vision of the future of
healthcare. "It is a world," reports the WSJ<D>,
"in which diseases from cancer to diabetes to
manic-depression become profitable ‘product
lines’ for businesses like his…" Columbia,
for example, now offers eight "product lines"
for cancer, cardiology, diabetes, etc. Individual doctors
are to be replaced by disease management programs that
standardize treatment, thus allowing lower priced health
technicians to punch into a computer and come up with
treatment plans. In Scott’s world, executives
produce sentences like the following: "The disease
management approach would give the company a competitive
edge with managed care in marketing these lines."

(WSJ 5/28)

Cleanliness Is Next To
Godliness

The CIA found to its surprise that after promising to
open its files on our many overthrows of governments,
like that of Iran in 1953, the cupboards were bare. The
records had already been destroyed. Brian Latell, a CIA
official, revealed that CIA higher ups had told the
keepers of the Iran records that their "safes were
too full and they needed to clean them out." Few
people are aware of the CIA’s dedication to
cleanliness. And sadly the money-strapped agency could
only afford a few safes, so tidiness was of paramount
importance. But disregarding this reasonable
interpretation is a former CIA historian, Professor Nick
Cullaher, who claims the records were obliterated by a
"culture of destruction." The CIA harboring a
"culture of destruction?" I do hope he was just
referring to the paper shredding.

(NYT 5/29)

Respectable Panhandling

Congratulations are due to Rep. Susan Molinari for her
promotion from Congress to a Saturday morning news anchor
job with CBS. No more panhandling from multinational
media giants. But it raises an interesting question.
Given the daily fundraising politicians engage in and
their willingness to run errands for big corporations,
just how low has the job’s reputation fallen? Well,
Sam Walker, a professor of criminal justice and an ACLU
advisor, has a backhanded answer. He uses
politicians’ behavior to defend the rights of
panhandlers. "You cannot draw a line between making
a political speech and asking for money. Panhandlers have
a right to talk to someone else about their condition.
It’s like talking about a political party." It
certainly is. The once existing difference between public
representation and pandering to those with ready cash has
dissolved. The destitute pleading for spare change
certainly should enjoy the same rights as the
representatives they mimic.

(AP 5/30)