Integrity In Life Creates More Than Is Known.

What with all the fiascos in banking, government, even personal life, there is one theme I have noticed. A serious lack of personal integrity.

There is the old story of porkbarrelling in politics, and that goes to even the city or village level. When someone in an office is more interested in buying friends and buying influence than becoming a good leader, the whole of society suffers. Add to that secrecy and you have a very volatile mix.

The most obvious examples are those of Idi Amin, George Bush, and many others who abused the office of leader. What most everyone forgets is that there are really NO secrets that will remain secret. The truth will always come out, somehow, somewhere. Perhaps it is revealed from simple, honest, and wondering curiousity, perhaps it comes from wanting to find that very truth.

There have been people who have lived openly, honestly, with few, if any secrets, and they find that integrity is easy, almost automatic. What most people who keep things secret find out is that telling someone, even a stranger, of the secret, will take away the power, the condemnation that the secret holder fears. Try it! When you reveal a secret, most of the time people will shrug, maybe be surprised, but there is also a feeling of release of the power of the secret to bind us up, make us fearful.

The contrast between two people can be very stark. We instinctively know when someone is NOT telling us the entire story, the real truth, and we become suspicious, less trusting and definitely want to know the truth. When we try to keep something secret, we develop a habit of keeping more and more of those secrets. Yes, we can do this from very good intentions, to avoid hurting someone we love, to avoid revealing the whereabouts of someone who can be killed (think of the Holocaust and Schindler) and sometimes those secrets have to be kept. BUT, unless there is a literal life and death situation, secrets can cause more problems than just being honest enough to reveal what we know.

Integrity means taking these chances, taking the risk that someone may just understand and learn a lot by us being honest enough, strong enough, to allow someone to know what we may THINK is the worst of us. Again, think of Schindler. After the war, his story was revealed, the truth did come out. So, again, the secrets do become revealed.

Now, think of someone like O.J. Simpson. The evidence, for me, gives compelling truth that he did kill. He may have been found, in a court, to be innocent, but the underlying instinct we all use makes us want to avoid him, to question every word he utters. Our instincts may be far more accurate than any jury, court, or other official institution.

Integrity is part of our human heritage. We rely on it when we go to buy a new car, find a flawed product and expect to have the product either taken back or replaced. We rely on integrity to form a basis of our personal relationships. So where do things to haywire? When we try too hard to please, perhaps our parents, or our bosses and let our own integrity fail. When it comes to things like politics and business, integrity is often ruined, denied, and the outcome is that we find out the truth and feel betrayed.

This may be the one lesson that the world needs right now. That huge, deep, painful sense of being betrayed by Wall Street hogs, presidential secrecy in several countries, and above all the betrayal of the very people we choose to stand up for us in our elections has become pandemic, or so it seems.

Leaders are rare, it seems. Leaders will be honest enough to tell what we need to know, even if it shows our own failings, or our own successes. Leaders will be the ones who LISTEN more than talk, and actually want to understand the situation from all points of view, then take the path of BEST choice, not necessarily the most expedient, the easiest, or even the most profitable.

Business needs LEADERS, people who work and demand integrity within and from those who work with them. The plumber who is known by the locals as being the best, the honest person, is often the busiest, yet we will wait. The food server who is good, honest, and works to the goals of doing the best they know how, with honesty and integrity, are the ones we ask for. The business man who stands by his company, who works to improve not only the bottom line, but the working conditions, the spirit of his company, the integrity that will be his own bottom line, we all want to work for. Why? Because THEY LISTEN! They grow and learn!

Now, to the dark side of this. Torture, no matter where or who does it, violates all of us in some way. It violates our sense of integrity, our sense of human being. When someone like Cheney or Bush or Idi Amin or anyone else chooses to use their power to try to keep things like this secret, we find out, one way or another. The ripples of this DO go out, tarnishing the countries, the people, and, like each individual in any relationship, we feel betrayed, soiled, and the instincts of others around the world become suspicious, mistrusting and the entire population of whatever country has tortured is lessened in integrity. Not fair, maybe, but that is the price of living with a democracy, with elected officials. Idi Amin being the exception here.

The dark side is less obvious when it comes to business, because we don’t elect those people, but rely on them to be honest. But the ripples STILL go out. We all mistrust a company that will pollute then keep that a secret. We feel betrayed by companies that will hide dangerous practices, such as hiding the dangerous chemicals they use on our food, our land and put into our water.

So, for each individual, no matter whether you are president, prime minister, premier, or the local farmer, truck driver, student, teacher or business owner, take the time to check on your integrity. Are we living up to the goal of being honest and open? Are we listening and learning?

We WANT to have the farmer who will NOT use hormones that screw up our health, we WANT the teacher who demands the best from themselves and us, we WANT the business owner to have a decent company that we can trust, we WANT leaders to be open with us, to LEAD, not be bought out because of some monetary rewards or status. we WANT integrity.

Obama, Slam Those Salaries, Now!

I knew at least two months ago that the CEO’s and other fat cat exec’s would find a way to circumvent the ceiling on their bonuses, their income, and get the money.  Quelle Surprise!

They made over 100 of the upper echelon in one company “partners” to get around this,in others,  they just thumbed their noses at the taxpayer, the government and took the money anyway.

I have yet to see anything to get those damned Credit Default Swaps under control, and with the serious lack of legal recourse, the fat cats are eating out on the taxpayers of the entire world. Remember, most of the banks do have international branches or connections.

President Obama, put those ceilings into law, harsh penalties if they violate, and make damn sure they do give you full disclosure on every damn cent of taxpayer monies they are spending. No excuses, no hiding, nadda.

If necessary, put a full investigation using every federal agency, including the IRS, the FBI, and the Wall Street agencies. Stop this abuse of trust now.

As for our own government here, there is an equally apalling lack of investigation, oversight, accounting, so I can gather the same is happening in Japan, Korea, the U.K., Belgium, Germany, and virtually every country tied to this disastrous mess.

Here is where diplomacy comes in, there MUST be an international cooperation, an international accounting, and definitely an international effort to kick these guys where, obviously, they need it, in the wallet.

Damn this is a mess!

Tax Money, Whose Is It?

Town council, city council, state, province, federal, even tax for schools and roads, all depend on someone having to pay up. Lately I have noticed a laissez-faire attitude toward the spending, the use of those tax dollars, as if the supply will always be endless and plentiful. Bad attitude!

Whose dollars are those? Whose pounds, yens, pesos, are those? Often they come from the pockets of the poor, the fastest growing segment of most societies. This means children are often eating poorly, going without new shoes, clothing, so the taxes can be paid. Those taxes are coming from families with single parents working part-time, paying for daycare, rent and all those other daily expenses. Tax dollars come from the people who work in minimum-wage stores with no health plan. Tax dollars come from the small shops who make or sell things. Tax dollars come from welfare payments, retirement income, the small trust funds of children who have lost a grandparent. Tax dollars are seldom gained from those who live in the high-income brackets, because there are write-offs, tax deductions for stock losses, and other means to avoid paying taxes. For every 100 tax dollars, less than half of 1 % is from those who make the most.

Poverty bashing has been a growing game, with those who are forced to live on food stamps, unemployment payments, and welfare the people targeted for derision, scorn.  “Get a job!” “Come on, get off your butt and get out there, earn your own way!” “Stand on your own two feet, I am tired of you sitting there and collecting money, tax money, from my hard earnings!” Take a look at almost every industrialized country statistics and you will find a very ugly trend. Poverty is growing. One in ten children now live in poverty in countries that have huge wealth, why? Wages for single parents are usually low, college, university, even health care courses are all well out of the range for any children of single parents. Costs have risen consistently at all those higher education sites, putting the squeeze on money. How could any of those children even consider getting out of the poverty black hole? Food banks are a common sight now, when once, food banks were only seen in cities with huge populations.

This is where Barack Obama had it right, START AT THE BOTTOM! The real bottom. The middle class has virtually disappeared because of the huge gap between those earning the high wages and income and the lower. The middle class is quickly becoming part of the poverty class, the lowest rung on the ladder.

When the 3 auto makers showed up in Washington, for example, there was a severe public relations gaff they made. People were aghast that those CEO’s showed up via private jets to ask for the tax money. Hmm not a good plan, guys! This showed a complete lack of understanding and even comprehension about tax funds, where the money comes from.

This current shakeup is, in a way, ironic. Those who “invested” in CDS, who played funny-money with others hard-earned money, have lost a huge chunk of their own income from the stock market collapse, the losses in the real-estate speculations, the property bought as “investment” for rental. So, no longer are those people walking around looking like they “own” the world. But, those people are the very ones who distained the ordinary working person, the money and taxes from the growing poverty class, and spent like a lottery winner. CRUNCH!  Now maybe some people will realize that every person who is going hungry, who lives in misery, is directly connected to all of us, and in ways we don’t see, we are the ones who are hungry and miserable too.

The bottom line here is respect. We need to relearn respect for ourselves, to do what we know as well as we can. We need to have those who want to have our tax money learn to respect the work required.  Maybe, just maybe, we can then learn to respect those who live with the hardest struggles, those who have been scorned and derided, the Vietnam veteran, the father, the mom, the sister, the son or daughter who live on the cold streets.  Yes, they deserve respect too.

Most of all, we all need to respect our own lives, to realize that we do all have unique abilities, skills, and underneath, we all are sacred, no matter what religion or belief system we use. We also have to respect our world, making sure that we don’t create such a mess that animals starve or get sick and die from poisons we add to the world.

Every being alive looks for a better future, wants to create a better world, and every one of us is capable of doing that. What the definition of “better” is, is where we have to put respect, honour and care into choosing what we do.

Child and Family Poverty Growing in Canada

Little Change For 20 Years in Poverty Rates

Welsh Children and Families living in poverty

National Center on Child Poverty, Letting Poverty Remain Costs All Of Us

State by State Cost Of Child Poverty in the U.S.

As long as we all believe that we MUST be compared to others, we all lose perspective. Poverty WILL grow now, with job losses, houses foreclosed, debts rising, and support systems being slashed.