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Our favorite journalists have been MIA. Or so we thought.
Elie Mystal, head writer at Abovethelaw.com, is in his bed at home with tonsil and sinus challenges. Ana Marie Cox, no longer in Washington D.C., is writing for Guardian.co.UK. Yesterday her articles was on Mitt Romney.
Can a book, even if it gets prime media space such as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, turn back time? We will soon find out.
Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has published his memoirs "In My Time." This is at a time in GOP politics which is no longer his. Out of the White House and wanting to return, the party has become almost like the Democrats. There is public fighting. There is radical ideology. There is the embrace of charisma [which hadn't been around since Ronald Reagan].
Do Cheney and the rest of the old guard such as Karl Rove matter much any more? It sure doesn't appear that way. Could this be Cheney's Hail-Mary pass to maintain influence, both on front stage and behind the scenes?
Actually this book, with all the tales told out-of-school, could reinforce any distrust the current BigFoot GOP players might have regarding left-overs from the Bush Administration.
Some characterize the memoir as a spiteful strategy of getting-even. If that take catches on, this one-time power broker could find himself in the political wilderness. The new meme is forgiveness, sucking up how we ourselves were partly or even primarily at fault in the adversity visited on us. Cheney's mind and heart clearly are not aligned with letting go of resentments and figuring out how to make it, maybe even in an extraordinary way, in the now.
More than 200,000 state and local government full-time government employees lost their jobs in 2010, according to the U.S. Census. Hardest hit, reports POLITICO, have been Rhode Island [home of the lead paint public nuisance litigation which was supposed to fatten state coffers], Connecticut, and Idaho.
But the manpower cuts may not be over. The recovery could be totally stalled. If consumer confidence is at around 90, the economy is perceived as all-right. It's now in the 40s. For both fiscal and public relations reasons, the powers-that-be could continue laying off.
Labor Day will only remind those government employees who still have jobs to watch their backs. That one-time relatively secure sector has become as Darwinian as the private one.
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is writing a book about Ricky Langley.
The latter is a client of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, a nonprofit representing the convicted on death row. A sex offender, he had been found guilty of killing a child. The Center is suing, reports Karen Sloan in THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, to bar the book from being published. It contends that the author, while a law clerk at the Center during her education at Harvard Law School, releases confidential and privileged information, in the book.
The plaintiff might be apprehensive because in an article Marzano-Lesnevich published in BELLINGHAM REVIEW, she stated about her experience at the Center, "I knew that most of our clients were guilty." If the tone and the content of her book align with this sentiment, the Center could be whacked with a monster hit to its reputation. That could undermine its credibility in working on behalf of clients. Also, its funding could dry up, abruptly.
The Center is hardly the first organization to encounter a negative situation in which former employees, contract workers, or interns disclosed what they perceived was happening. There were the babblings of Monica Lewinsky. More recently, Dick Cheney is having his say.
To some it might seem a good idea to mandate those associated with the organization to sign non-disclosure agreements. However, as we know from Oprah's use of the practice, in itself it can generate negative publicity and create hard feelings among the rank and file.
A more common-sense approach might be simply to operate according to practices and policies which can be defended, should they be outed. In this era of citizen journalism, leadership has to assume that the organization is being "spied on," including from the inside. Should the ball be dropped on core values, the organization might be shrewd to self-disclose, apologize, and explain how this will be prevented in the future. Such an approach can reduce the incentive for insiders to plan or actually execute exposes.
Work is no longer a place. It's a state of mind, says Rick Segal in FORBES. Everything is connected.
And, from those intersections come the new business development, rising revenues not just rising profits, and branding that still serves a commercial purpose. Because of this new reality, those employment lawsuits scream negative messages about that state of mind.
That's why employment lawsuits are receiving so much attention in the media. Of course, some such as "Nelson v Jones Day" provide excellent entertainment. Most, though, are scrutinized because they provide insight into the state of mind of a law or consulting firm. If the state of mind seems ossified, mean-spirited, or fraudulent, why should anyone want to be do business with it?
Saddled with three employment lawsuits this summer, Booz Allen Hamilton will be closely observed. Will its business take a hit?
