I rarely write about politics, but it’s that time of year; I live on the border between two states and have to listen to political ads from both. So please, if this post offends you accept my apologies and wield your delete key.

My feelings are driven by the smugness I see across the political spectrum irregardless of parties and beliefs.

Smugness regarding the rarity of corruption in the US vs. its prevalence in other countries.

The way I see it, corruption in the US is rare primarily because it’s been legalized in the form of lobbying and PACs.

Lobbying has long influenced legislation, but as of 2010, when the Supreme Court effectively eliminated restrictions on outside groups, elections themselves went up for sale.

If you doubt me look no farther than the Americans for Prosperity, owned and run by the Koch brothers, which will spend at least $125 million this year, and the growth of super PACs overall.

In 2000, outside groups spent $52 million on campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By 2012, that number had increased to $1 billion. (…) In 2014, as of early October, when the campaigns

had yet to do their big final pushes, overall spending was already more than $444 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Roughly $231 million was from the parties and their congressional committees, the rest from outside spending. The biggest chunk of that by far came from super PACs — more than $196 million.

What each of these wealthy individuals have in common is passion, but unbridled passion is the hallmark of the fanatic—and fanaticism paves the road to a closed mind—one that is evidenced by fear, hate and bigotry.

Legal corruption or not, voting is important—if for no other reason than not voting precludes your right to complain.

Or, as my mom used to say when faced with two bad choices, just “hold your nose” and vote against X as opposed to for Y.

And you can avoid the corruption by ignoring ads, whether pro or con, and evaluating candidates and issues in a holistic and pragmatic way that looks at what makes the most long-term sense.

Flickr image credit: DonkeyHotey

No theme today, just six features that will add to your education and are good for dinner table chat.

According to Anne Hardy, a vice president of technology strategy at SAP Labs, companies “are building on masculine norms.” Why should we care? What would it take to change and what would happen if we did?

Are you or your boss as good as you think you are? While “87 percent of managers rate their overall leadership skills as “excellent” or “good,” and 74 percent think they have a good understanding of their strengths and development areas” actual studies show a different story.

What do you think of the thesis that people prefer and companies prosper when they act like museum curators, e.g. Groupon, which provides “a very limited amount of choices at a time, along with a brief, engaging description of each offering,” as opposed to an abundance of choice? This is new research from Harvard’s Assistant Professor Ray Weaver.

What do you think of the idea of legalizing an illegal act as a way to root out corruption? That seems to be what is on the mind of Infosys co-founder and outgoing chairman Narayana Murthy. He contends, “If bribe giving, and not bribe taking, is made legal then the bribe giver shall indeed cooperate with the authorities to expose the bribe taker.”

What would you do if someone not only used his offer from your organization as a springboard for publicity for his own startup, but also showed himself as an alumnus of your organization before even starting? That seems to be what Mike Moradian is doing to the Harvard Business School.

Want to take a course in AI (artificial intelligence) from Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, two of the world’s best-known artificial intelligence experts for free? You can thanks to Stanford’s computer science department that wants “to extend technology knowledge and skills beyond this elite campus to the entire world…”

That’s it for today. Enjoy your reading and enjoy your weekend!

Flickr image credit: pedroCarvalho

In December I wrote a short post on Siemens culture of corruption where bribes were a line item in the budget.

I was ticked off that CEO Klaus Kleinfeld denied doing anything wrong and then had a very soft landing as CEO of Alcoa Aluminum.

I got angrier after reading that “KPMG exposed to top management staff of Siemens in the fall of 2003, how £4.12m in cash was brought into Nigeria by the communication division… investigators stated in their court papers that the employees identified in the report, including a Communications Division manager, which was the division that conducted business with Nigeria, “continued to pay bribes through a series of slush funds until at least November 2006,” when they were arrested at a raid on the German offices of Siemens in Munich.”

Siemens paid a $1.6 billion fine—big deal.

I have no idea what the current Justice Department would do, but at that time “the Justice Department allowed Siemens to plead to accounting violations because it cooperated with the investigation and because pleading to bribery violations would have barred Siemens from bidding on government contracts in the United States. Siemens doesn’t dispute the government’s account of its actions.”

Siemens admits the bribery, but our government doesn’t want to prevent a corporation that cheated dozens of American companies out of hundreds of millions of dollars of possible business from being able to bid on US government contracts.

Why am I bringing this up again? Because now I am raging.

It’s all of 90 days later and I’ll give you three guesses as to who’s bidding on stimulus money contracts and the first two don’t count.

“George Nolen, CEO of Siemens Corp., the U.S. subsidiary of the German giant, aims to win $75 billion of Washington’s $787 billion stimulus package.”If you’re not prepared,” says Nolen, “you will not be able to take advantage.””

Now, I know that Siemens does many things well, but I seriously doubt that they are the ‘only company in the world’ on anything.

I don’t have an MBA and I’m not a lawyer or a big time business person, so I would greatly appreciate it if one of you would explain why, at the very least, there couldn’t have been  a 12 month moratorium on their bidding for US business.

Image credit: flickr