Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Once a hack, always a hack?
I received a letter this week from a fellow association executive in Wisconsin, annoucing that he and one of his association staff members are running a lobbying firm on the side and wondering whether WHO would like to hire their services.
I've known this guy for years and he's been a Republican party operative since long before I knew him. He wasn't just a hired gun, he was a true believer, so his sideline of lobbying intrigued me. Overlooking the obvious question (Might not his clients' interests conflict with his employer's interests, and might there not be ethical issues involved in accepting payment from both? Just askin'.), I wondered whether he would be able to remove the far-rightwing blinders he'd been wearing for so long and enable himself to see -- and represent -- the missions, causes and goals of those clients that did not fall on his side of the political spectrum. The answer was quick in coming.
The third and fourth sentences of his introductory letter read as follows: "There are many new faces in the Wisconsin legislature. New people with BIG ideas for our state, such as taxing medicaid (sic) funding or new regulations that can drive up the cost of your business." (You'll have to forgive that his fourth sentence was incomplete and failed to properly capitalize a proprer noun.) While all our ears perk up at the threat of new regulations, I call your attention to the earlier clause in this sentence fragment, in which he not only paints increased Medicaid funding as a threat in need of fighting, he blithely assumes that WHO -- and you -- will agree with this portrait.
Set aside for a moment the data that shows Medicaid funding is great for Wisconsin's business climate, let's take a look that moral implications of his assumption -- an assumption that is dripping with far-right political thinking. And let's be clear: It is not Republican thinking, it's "fringe" thinking.
He's assuming that everyone who runs a business is so fixated on increasing their own material wealth that they're willing to short-change funding for the health and well-being of our neediest citizens (including children), our disabled and our frail elderly. In short, he's assuming that our greed is so strong it's twisted us into a perverse caricature of human beings. Beyond being amused by that level of stupidity in a marketing letter sent to WHO, I take offense to the assumption about the state of your soul and mine.
Christmas is just around the corner and one of our best loved seasonal stories, "A Christmas Carol," contains an applicable and rather pointed scene between two main characters:
Marley's Ghost, explaining his chains, was despairing over "life's opportunities misused."
Scrooge, trembling with fear and beginning to share in Marley's guilt, said: "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob."
The ghost cried out in anguish and anger: "Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
These words stand as an eloquent expression of our grand human purpose. It is our inner thoughts and feelings, our motives, our priorities, which contribute to making our lives an emptiness or a fullness. What we are in our whole being is so much grander than anything we can measure by surface values. In Goethe's words, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love."
We can see what has shaped the soul of this hack, but what is shaping us? Let us neither sink to our lowest nature, not be swayed by those who appeal to our owest nature. The notion that running a business, making a living and taking care of our needy are mutually exclusive, or even contradictory, is unsupported by data, archaic and immoral. If we can't kill it off, let's at least ignore those who sell it.
I've known this guy for years and he's been a Republican party operative since long before I knew him. He wasn't just a hired gun, he was a true believer, so his sideline of lobbying intrigued me. Overlooking the obvious question (Might not his clients' interests conflict with his employer's interests, and might there not be ethical issues involved in accepting payment from both? Just askin'.), I wondered whether he would be able to remove the far-rightwing blinders he'd been wearing for so long and enable himself to see -- and represent -- the missions, causes and goals of those clients that did not fall on his side of the political spectrum. The answer was quick in coming.
The third and fourth sentences of his introductory letter read as follows: "There are many new faces in the Wisconsin legislature. New people with BIG ideas for our state, such as taxing medicaid (sic) funding or new regulations that can drive up the cost of your business." (You'll have to forgive that his fourth sentence was incomplete and failed to properly capitalize a proprer noun.) While all our ears perk up at the threat of new regulations, I call your attention to the earlier clause in this sentence fragment, in which he not only paints increased Medicaid funding as a threat in need of fighting, he blithely assumes that WHO -- and you -- will agree with this portrait.
Set aside for a moment the data that shows Medicaid funding is great for Wisconsin's business climate, let's take a look that moral implications of his assumption -- an assumption that is dripping with far-right political thinking. And let's be clear: It is not Republican thinking, it's "fringe" thinking.
He's assuming that everyone who runs a business is so fixated on increasing their own material wealth that they're willing to short-change funding for the health and well-being of our neediest citizens (including children), our disabled and our frail elderly. In short, he's assuming that our greed is so strong it's twisted us into a perverse caricature of human beings. Beyond being amused by that level of stupidity in a marketing letter sent to WHO, I take offense to the assumption about the state of your soul and mine.
Christmas is just around the corner and one of our best loved seasonal stories, "A Christmas Carol," contains an applicable and rather pointed scene between two main characters:
Marley's Ghost, explaining his chains, was despairing over "life's opportunities misused."
Scrooge, trembling with fear and beginning to share in Marley's guilt, said: "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob."
The ghost cried out in anguish and anger: "Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
These words stand as an eloquent expression of our grand human purpose. It is our inner thoughts and feelings, our motives, our priorities, which contribute to making our lives an emptiness or a fullness. What we are in our whole being is so much grander than anything we can measure by surface values. In Goethe's words, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love."
We can see what has shaped the soul of this hack, but what is shaping us? Let us neither sink to our lowest nature, not be swayed by those who appeal to our owest nature. The notion that running a business, making a living and taking care of our needy are mutually exclusive, or even contradictory, is unsupported by data, archaic and immoral. If we can't kill it off, let's at least ignore those who sell it.
