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6. John Nash. Under 10 % of top salesmen were classified as getting high amounts of discouragement and being frequently overcome with sadness. On the other hand, 90 % were categorized as going through infrequent or only periodic sadness.

Selling Style Impact: Competition. In casual surveys I’ve carried out through the years, I’ve discovered that the high area of top entertainers performed organized sports in senior high school. There appears to become a correlation between sports and purchasers success as top entertainers can handle emotional disappointments, recover from deficits, and psychologically prepare themselves for the following chance to compete.

7. Insufficient Self-Awareness. Self-awareness may be the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The consequence of an advanced of self-awareness is bashfulness and inhibition. Under 5 % of top entertainers had high amounts of self-awareness.

Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salesmen are comfy fighting for his or her cause and don’t fear rankling clients along the way. They’re action-oriented and unafraid to call full of their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects.

Not every salesmen are effective. Because of the same sales tools, degree of education, and tendency to operate, so why do some salesmen succeed where others fail? Is a better suitable for sell the merchandise due to their background? Is a more charming or simply luckier? Evidence indicates the personas of those truly great salesmen play a vital role in identifying their success.

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As I expect you know, volunteer work is a great way to help build stronger communities and in the same stride assist the poor. But scheduling this can be a mite time consumung in its own right, and before you know it you don’t have nearly as long left to actually do some good. And you’ll have more fun volunteering when your co-workers are pitching in right along with you! By way of solving this issue, a number of firms are creating points of organization to help their employees support the community through volunteer activities. One of the leaders in this is Adaptive Marketing LLC who also offer shopping programs including Leisure Exclusives (MVQ*LSUREXCLUSIVE) to consumers. If you think of company-supported charitable effort, you probably think of giving blood, perhaps a Christmas donation drive, nothing more, but that’s simply not true in today’s world. Tennis shoe recycling initiatives and more active work like tree-planting weekends — these and other activities have been arranged for its workforce by Adaptive Marketing. Once all the information — time, date, location, details, etc — had been clearly announced it is a simple matter for staff to decide the precise amount of time they’d be giving and how they’d be using it. Making sure volunteers have their say in what programs are available is essential. Staff members from Adaptive Marketing, the firm who developed the membership program Leisure Exclusives (MVQ*LSUREXCLUSIVE), select from among a number of drives. When looking for possible projects you see so many, after all; taking part in the education of children and young adults, helping with environmental programs, or improving the area’s aesthetic through artistic projects to list a few that have already been tried. The result is that Adaptive Marketing volunteers are presented with the opportunity to use their time as efficiently as possible and enjoy getting involved. Usually a company supported charity project — getting involved with a local school, say, or helping out at a homeless shelter — is either for a one-off event or on a regular schedule designed to achieve a bigger goal. There may be people who assert they don’t have the time, but even they may be able to squeeze in a Saturday morning park clean-up or the public library’s sale of used books.

It has always been a regular practice for firms to help out the people living around their premises. Like many other businesses, Adaptive Marketing supports volunteer programs in part to spread goodwill through the local community through its members of staff actions. Another upside is, the benefits of volunteer work include a sense of generosity and accomplishment — an upbeat feeling that influences the entire corporation. Helping your members of staff to find the time to volunteer can be its own reward.

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Yaz side effects range from quite moderate to critical. The most common side effects appear to be weight gain as well as complete loss of sex drive. Other Yaz side effects include but are not limited to vaginal discharge, increased appetite, and yeast infections. All of these side affects appear to take place far too often and can perhaps have deadly consequences. The more serious Yasmin side effects include loss of vision, depression, migraines, and heart attack. Even though less common, these side effects are far more critical.

Although Yaz went through clinical trials and obtained FDA approval in the United States, the competitive promotion of the oral contraceptive for its effect of cutting back the incidence of PMDD and acne led to its popularity and exposure. This exposure was to a much larger array of young ladies than were initially involved in the clinical trials and subsequently, far more sufferers of the Yasmin side effects were identified. The more serious side effects include stroke, kidney failure, and gall bladder disease. Among the modest and far more average side effects are headaches, increased appetite, and reduced sex drive.

Due to the high occurrence of numerous Yasmin side effects, it is crucial to know what do if you are going through them. The absolute foremost step is to consult your physician and if necessary to obtain a second opinion. Most doctors who have the updated histogram on their patients will be able to determine if a specific drug would not be recommended. If your doctor should confirm that your symptoms are indeed caused by Yaz then you should immediately stop taking your birth control pill and consult with a lawyer.

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A volunteers’ camaraderie can strengthen the local community spirit, and of course it will help those incapable of supporting themselves. It’s a lot more straightforward to get involved when a volunteer event is pre-planned. Of course you’ll have more fun volunteering when your colleagues are pitching in by your side.

Companies like Adaptive Marketing LLC, that developed financial and shopping benefits programs such as Passport to Fun, are stepping up to become the organizing points enabling their employees to make time for reaching out.

Fortunately, company sponsored charitable work is more than blood drives and annual collections for charity. To take one example, Adaptive Marketing has provided its staff with a chance to help with anything from athletic shoe recycling campaigns to tree-planting events. By centralizing the organization the initiatives grew into larger programs, with specific times, dates, and locations published in advance to make time management easy for those signing up.

Of course, it’s important to let volunteers support projects in line with their own preferences. At Adaptive Marketing, the company behind Passport to Fun, staffers are given the chance to choose from a diverse list of projects. You’ll soon see your members of staff environmental initiatives etc. The result is that Adaptive Marketing volunteers are presented with the opportunity to find the most effective way to work and love joining in the process.

Most often a company supported charity project - fundraising with a local school or helping out at a homeless shelter - is either for a one-off event or on a regular schedule designed to achieve a bigger goal. There are people who assert they don’t have the time, but even they may be able to arrange a Saturday morning park clean-up or the public library’s sale of used books.

It has always been a fairly common practice for business firms to help to support the community in which they’re based. A sense of community goodwill is created by the projects undertaken by Adaptive Marketing’s employees over the course of company-sponsored initiatives like the ones touched on above. The fact is, one of the benefits of volunteer work is feeling better about yourself - a positive feeling that leaves not just the employee but the whole company more upbeat. Encouraging your members of staff to find the time to volunteer is beneficial in some very real ways, as we hope we’ve shown.

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In the last two weeks, two non-senior US officials indirectly called on Israel to start planning on cancelling its nuclear weapons programs. Even though they said this is not intended for ‘the foreseeable future’, their publicly terming Israel a nuclear power on a par with India and Pakistan might be a sign that the US perceives of nuclear issues as too serious to condone the double standards it employs freely on other issues.

US-Israeli relations at high level are however unlikely to be subject to much change over the issue. Much to the chagrin of the rest of the international world, which wants the US to apply pressure on Israel to actually make good on its signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention by ratifying it. Israel might also be called up to sign the Biological Weapons Convention, which it would do if it were serious about its endorsement of the objective to creating a nuclear free zone in the Middle East.

At the highest level, the US tends to avoid the Israeli nuclear issue as an element of its foreign policy toward the rest of the Arab world, but perhaps the Iranian developments no longer render this position indefinitely tennable.

Israelis, always on their guard for potential threats of size, appear a little bit nonplussed at the US’ officials remarks. An article in the daily Haaretz newspaper, where diligent reporters make note of two instances -as if they are in need of counting- of official comments by US policymakers that might indicate the end of bilateral hush hush on this core issue.

Referring to a the five yearly NPT review conference next month, Jackie Wolcott Sanders, who is the ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament and the special representative of the president for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, wrote in the State Department’s electronic journal that the goal of universal NPT adherence ought to be highlighted. She said that it should be ‘reaffirmed that India, Israel and Pakistan may join the NPT only as non-nuclear-weapon states.’ Thereby implicating that Israel is a nuclear power, something the US officially doesn’t do very often.

This instance might have be brushed aside as clumsily worded, but the rest of Sanders’ words leave nothing to the imagination; ‘Just as South Africa and Ukraine did in the early 1990s, these states should foreswear nuclear weapons and accept IAEA safeguards on all nuclear activities to join the treaty. At the same time, we recognize that progress toward universal adherence is not likely in the foreseeable future. The United States continues to support the goals of the Middle East resolution adopted at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, including the achievement of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.”

Almost concurrently, another State Department official, Mark Fitzpatrick made similar comments Fitzpatrick speaking at a security conference of the Organization of American States (OAS).

Both spokespeople made it look as if the US is starting a harsher line on Israel. US official recognition of its nuclear arsenal is certainly a fact now. At least, that’s how the message is taken in Israel, where the Al Haaretz newspaper reports a ‘[contradiction] in the custom of senior administration officials to avoid any possible confirming reference to Israeli nuclear weapons. Instead of referring to Israel’s ‘nuclear option’, officials placed the country on par with the similar nuclear powers of India and Pakistan, thereby bluntly referring to Israel’s estimated arsenal of an estimated over 20 nuclear bombs as its ‘nuclear capability’.

The officials though low and mid level ranking, could very well be indicating a change in stance by Washington. The call on Israel to ‘accept international Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on all nuclear activities’ lacks any urgency, but then it would. If the US foreign policy were to clearly steer in this direction, possibly to reduce Iranian risks, its early start would only be very subtle like this.

Applying pressure on Israel now does make sense because it would capitalize on the momentum achieved in Iraq and Libya, which has direct bearings on the credibility of telling Iran to stop what it is doing. Both Libya and Iraq have recently disarmed, Libya voluntarily in what’s cited as a major coup d’etat for the International Atomic Energy Agency and UK and US diplomats. Israel’s nuclear weapons also are the pretext for Arab nations to continue their efforts to create a nuclear device and their disposal would create trust.

The US, keen to see Iran get rid of its entire arsenal, is under criticism all round because of its perceived double standards on this issue. The US has long been seen to be taking clauses of the NPT only seriously as and when they suit its international program and so shortly after the Iraq debacle could’t for shame be seen to be careless in Iran. An Iran as a nuclear power doesn’t fit in the US picture of the wider world one single bit however. The dilemma now is how to contain Iran -which is not cooperating adequately with international weapons inspectors and therefore not fulfilling its obligation as an NPT signatory- and not to create a situation of urgency.

Next Monday, EU negotiators and Iranian officials are meeting up to continue negotiations they started late last year. The US is not taking part in them, but is carefully watching over the backs of the three European countries conducting the talks, France, Britain and Germany. Iran has indicated it has warm feelings for the French. Discussions will center on a proposal that the Iranians have drawn up.

Meanwhile, the US’ Israel policy will have to be seen to be somewhat in tune with its wider efforts in the region during the key five year NPT conference in May. US comments that it is working on making the Middle East nuke free are conditioned by the statement that this is not going to be happening in the foreseeable future. This makes sense; the biggest threat to destabilising the Middle East region is Iran’s acquiring of nuclear weapons (which it might well be in the process of or have completed) and Israel’s non compliance to treaties it has signed. Both issues require patience and tact.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, Iranian born, recently said that the Jewish state would follow Europe in adopting diplomatic measures to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear capabilities, opening the way for diplomacy rather than going along US lines that might be tougher.

Angelique van Engelen is a freelance writer who has lived for over three years in the Middle East. She runs http://www.contentClix.com and also contributes to http://www.clixyPlays.blogspot.com. You can email her on angeliqueve@contentclix.com.

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Those who are above the law or act as such are a problematic situation for civilizations. Maybe this is why the CIA is so effective in screwing up other nation’s government. There is a problem when these ladies and gentlemen retire. They often use contacts from the government and agency to network and work the system. This is a problem because invariably it hurts an honest and law abiding citizen.

We can fix this easy enough. Simply chip them. We put a satellite RFID - Radio Frequency Identifier and track them wherever they go. We know the many ex-CIA are involved in the drug trade in our nation. This is bad because these illegal drugs coming into the country that they make money on, tend to cause an increase in law enforcement, rehabilitation and health care costs. It would be cheaper for us to simply pay them a lifetime pension. Track them and then hold them to the full extent of the law times five in the case of any misdeeds in the country.

When you hire someone to lie, cheat, manipulate and show them how to operate outside the system, you have created a real negative dynamic in the system. Many of these people end up with juicy contracts, employment and above the law lifetime status and as any human well trained in the arts of Machiavellian technique we are finding them abusing the privilege. Some are calling for the killing off in the line of duty of such folks or kicking them out of the country after they are completed in their careers. I disagree, by using technology we can implant them with chips and allow them to integrate back into society without having to kill them.

Many politicians believe that many of the ex-CIA know too many secrets and know too much about the actual politicians which they use to bribe them with and prefer to have them killed as to not spill the beans on a shady or disreputable back door deal or government operation. There are plans a foot to do just that in some inner circles.

If all this sounds too much like a spy novel to you, it is okay for you to not wish to address this serious problem as it may or may not actually affect you personally, but it does affect our nation in a serious way. Since we are the land of second chances, let’s just chip the ex-CIA operatives and bureaucrats and be done with it. We own the government and as long as they wanted the job in the first place, we own them too. Think on this.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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Robert Davis made a mistake. And a busy intersection in the New Orleans French Quarter in twenty-first century America transformed itself into a street pitted by the hatred of decades ago, where he found himself gazing up at old-south bubbas confidently reconstructing him into a bloody mass of tissue as he writhed in his own blood.

The father of Khursheda Sultanova made a mistake and the elitist beasts still roaming the Russian landscape stabbed his 9-year-old daughter to death on an open street in the middle of a civilized society. In the presence of all of his social order, Yusuf Sultanov couldn’t protect his daughter from the murderous voracity of a group of attackers who in their racist insanity felt threatened by one little girl.

The parents of Anthony Walker made a mistake and allowed their teenage son to leave their home. They didn’t know that the day would bring him into contact with famished wolves racing among the sheep, hungry for the flesh of those it hadn’t been able to taste in a long time. But the color of the terrorists’ skin in London’s subway bombing unleashed the blood-lust long waiting and in one of the oldest civilizations in Europe their son’s head was cloven in two.

They, like Jean Charles de Menezes, the mother of Suzie Pena, Devin Brown, Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Anthony Baez and tragically numerous others, made the same mistake. The mistake of thinking they were equal and free in a part of the world where certain heinous individuals still questioned the validity of their continued existence. They believed they lived in societies civilized to the point that the enemies of mankind couldn’t rise up to harm them or their families and they were wrong.

In the beating of Davis we saw the beginnings of the process of death and in most of these others we saw the conclusions. And though some of these acts of violence upon the people named above were not all committed by police in uniform but by civilian mobs, I contend that the same spirit was just as much in the uniform as in the swastika-labeled clothing of the neo-Nazi skinheads who stabbed Sultanova to death. Just as it was there when Menezes and Pena lost their lives. It’s the same spirit wearing a black boot that will kick a man as he lies in the midst of his own blood. Violent, vicious, merciless.

This is the spirit of the bestial among us and they are not always terrorists or other so-called criminals, at least, not in the sense that we would define them. Unlike terrorists and criminals, these beasts are often officially and culturally-sanctioned and live freely and even honored among the societies. They populate our corporations, our law enforcement agencies, our cities, our towns. But in times of revelation, they are recognized by the spirit of the mob, a spirit that gets its strength and fuel from the small unaddressed hatreds that occupy men’s hearts but never finds place for expression except in the pack.

These beasts are also not always physically violent, but intellectually so. They occupy the highest echelons of governments and universities in extremists who tear and chew at the thoughts of any group or any one who demands equality in disagreement or freedom in dissent. They propagate and proselytize beliefs that outside the pack, they would never dare to condone.

Yet the most common and recognizable of them is found in the uniformed brutes who viciously assaulted Davis. They thrust themselves upon our worlds in rude and violent forms. Yet most often in the form of the mob.

A mob characterized by the violence it carries out in the light, in the light of the camera, in the sight of men, in the village square, it does not hide. It is this characteristic that subliminally frightens. Because most people know that some of the vices of the human heart are kept in check only by the light and and keeps many from sinking into the abyss of human depravity.

But in a bright and blinding light, the New Orleans police officers persisted. And in that one lone detail they reached a level of group brutality seldom witnessed before. They reached a level that the murderers of Sultanova and Walker and Pena didn’t reach.

They persisted, despite the presence of the AP producer. They persisted through screaming witnesses and rebukes. They persisted despite the glare of the camera. They persisted. What can be said about the characters of such individuals? If that kind of light will not deter them, nothing will.

Theirs was a persistence that shocked the soul. And we must not make the mistake of failing to recognize the source of it as some others who would twist reality. It finds its heart in the irrational, unremorseful, unrepentant spirit of the mob. And the mind-set and sadistic rule of the mob must not be tolerated.

http://www.thepoliticalview.com

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Edward R. Murrow is back in the nick of time, just when we need him the most.

“Good Night and Good Luck” is a feature film account of Murrow’s 1953 and 1954 “See It Now” broadcasts assailing Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the nation’s anti-Communist hysteria.

From the moment in a 1950 speech when McCarthy waved his infamous (and never-identified) “list of 205 Communists working in the State Department,” the senator exploited the country’s Cold War paranoia, relentlessly pursuing those he deemed Communist sympathizers. (San Fransico Chronicle, 10/8/05).

We are once again at this point, blacklisting the American known as the sexual offender. The collective “we” have allowed politicians to exploit our most vulnerable fear, the safety of our children, for personal political advantage. We are all responsible for allowing hysteria driven legislation, at the city, state, and federal level, to remain unchecked due to the manipulation of our emotional bonds to our children by politicians.

Journalists have not asked the hard-nosed questions and have not informed or educated the public about the relative ease of how one becomes an offender. This perpetuates the myth that all offenders are child molesters. The majority of offenders registered have been “convicted” of poor behavior choice offenses which involve no victim-teenage consensual sex, public urination, online “chat” with undercover police officers. Most charged persons lack adequate funding for a legal defense to fight such charges and deplete their personal funds at the median figure of $15,000. The resulting plea bargain is followed by automatic sexual offender registration as decreed by Florida Statute 943.0436 . Our politicians have even legislated judicial discretion, the power of a judge to impose a fair and just sentence. Registration is for life or 20 years, whatever comes first and permeates every aspect of the registrant’s life. I challenge journalists to stop editorializing about offenders and investigate the truth.

Politicians run unchecked with this issue, due to guaranteed press coverage and easy votes. Off the record, many politicians will admit their discomfort with these laws….but to do so publicly will result in political suicide. State Representative David Simmons of Longwood reflects this attitude quite blatantly with his recent comment regarding yet further proposed residency restriction proposals at the state level, “Who’s (going) to complain?” (Florida Today, 10/9/05). Although a group of Americans and their families are being blacklisted, banished, and segregated, our politicians will not come forward to their constitutuents with the truth.

The Palm Bay City Council was presented 10/6/05 with the most current data provided by the United States Department of Justice, which definitively determined in a 10,000 person study, the treated sex offender recidivism rate to be 5.3%.” Instead of tabling the issue for further research, the Council instead opted to schedule the proposed ordinances for second reading and public hearing 10/20/05. These ordinances will impact an offender’s ability to make a living and provide for family, which sets a dangerous unconstitutional precedent.

Voters have not demanded the truth from their elected representatives and have allowed politicians to legislate the safety of our children. Parents, that is your responsibility, not the federal government. Should your family endorse the registry, demand your politicians restructure the registry to reflect a tier level system of risk instead of “lumping” all offenders into one pot. Give them “permission” to revamp a law originally passed with only good intentions.

Should an offender live in your neighborhood, I challenge residents to educate yourself regarding the offense of your neighbor by obtaining a police report. The FDLE registry does not reflect the true nature of the conviction and is often, simply incorrect. Once educated with the real facts, only then are you and your family truly “notified” as the law originally intended.

As Edward R. Murrow indicated in his famous October 15, 1958 “Wires and Lights” speech regarding the duty of broadcast journalism to inform and educate the public,
“There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference….We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.” It is our duty to question authority because without scrutiny, authority remains unchecked and corrupt

Sharon Wilson is a free lance writer and a member of SOHopeful International.

http://www.sohopeful.org

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In every national budget, there is a part called “Public Procurement”. This is the portion of the budget allocated to purchasing services and goods for the various ministries, authorities and other arms of the executive branch. It was the famous management consultant, Parkinson, who once wrote that government officials are likely to approve a multi-billion dollar nuclear power plant much more speedily that they are likely to authorize a hundred dollar expenditure on a bicycle parking device. This is because everyone came across 100 dollar situations in real life - but precious few had the fortune to expend with billions of USD.

This, precisely, is the problem with public procurement: people are too acquainted with the purchased items. They tend to confuse their daily, household-type, decisions with the processes and considerations which should permeate governmental decision making. They label perfectly legitimate decisions as “corrupt” - and totally corrupt procedures as “legal” or merely “legitimate”, because this is what was decreed by the statal mechanisms, or because “this is the law”.

Procurement is divided to defence and non-defence spending. In both these categories - but, especially in the former - there are grave, well founded, concerns that things might not be all what they seem to be.

Government - from India’s to Sweden’s to Belgium’s - fell because of procurement scandals which involved bribes paid by manufacturers or service providers either to individual in the service of the state or to political parties. Other, lesser cases, litter the press daily. In the last few years only, the burgeoning defence sector in Israel saw two such big scandals: the developer of Israel’s missiles was involved in one (and currently is serving a jail sentence) and Israel’s military attache to Washington was implicated - though, never convicted - in yet another.

But the picture is not that grim. Most governments in the West succeeded in reigning in and fully controlling this particular budget item. In the USA, this part of the budget remained constant in the last 35(!) years at 20% of the GDP.

There are many problems with public procurement. It is an obscure area of state activity, agreed upon in “customized” tenders and in dark rooms through a series of undisclosed agreements. At least, this is the public image of these expenditures.

The truth is completely different.

True, some ministers use public money to build their private “empires”. It could be a private business empire, catering to the financial future of the minister, his cronies and his relatives. These two plagues - cronyism and nepotism - haunt public procurement. The spectre of government official using public money to benefit their political allies or their family members - haunts public imagination and provokes public indignation.

Then, there are problems of plain corruption: bribes or commissions paid to decision makers in return for winning tenders or awarding of economic benefits financed by the public money. Again, sometimes these moneys end in secret bank accounts in Switzerland or in Luxembourg. At other times, they finance political activities of political parties. This was rampantly abundant in Italy and has its place in France. The USA, which was considered to be immune from such behaviours - has proven to be less so, lately, with the Bill Clinton alleged election financing transgressions.

But, these, with all due respect to “clean hands” operations and principles, are not the main problems of public procurement.

The first order problem is the allocation of scarce resources. In other words, prioritizing. The needs are enormous and ever growing. The US government purchases hundreds of thousands of separate items from outside suppliers. Just the list of these goods - not to mention their technical specifications and the documentation which accompanies the transactions - occupies tens of thick volumes. Supercomputers are used to manage all these - and, even so, it is getting way out of hand. How to allocate ever scarcer resources amongst these items is a daunting - close to impossible - task. It also, of course, has a political dimension. A procurement decision reflects a political preference and priority. But the decision itself is not always motivated by rational - let alone noble - arguments. More often, it is the by product and end result of lobbying, political hand bending and extortionist muscle. This raises a lot of hackles among those who feel that were kept out of the pork barrel. They feel underprivileged and discriminated against. They fight back and the whole system finds itself in a quagmire, a nightmare of conflicting interests. Last year, the whole budget in the USA was stuck - not approved by Congress - because of these reactions and counter-reactions.

The second problem is the supervision, auditing and control of actual spending. This has two dimensions:

• How to make sure that the expenditures match and do not exceed the budgetary items. In some countries, this is a mere ritual formality and government departments are positively expected to overstep their procurement budgets. In others, this constitutes a criminal offence.

• How to prevent the criminally corrupt activities that we have described above - or even the non criminal incompetent acts which government officials are prone to do.

The most widespread method is the public, competitive, tender for the purchases of goods and services.

But, this is not as simple as it sounds.

Some countries publish international tenders, striving to secure the best quality in the cheapest price - no matter what is its geographical or political source. Other countries are much more protectionist (notably: Japan and France) and they publish only domestic tenders, in most cases. A domestic tender is open only to domestic bidders. Yet other countries limit participation in the tenders on various backgrounds: the size of the competing company, its track record, its ownership structure, its human rights or environmental record and so on. Some countries publish the minutes of the tender committee (which has to explain WHY it selected this or that supplier). Others keep it a closely guarded secret (”to protect commercial interests and secrets”).

But all countries state in advance that they have no obligation to accept any kind of offer - even if it is the cheapest. This is a needed provision: the cheapest is not necessarily the best. The cheapest offer could be coming from a very unreliable supplier with a bad past performance or a criminal record or from a supplier who offers goods of shoddy quality.

The tendering policies of most of the countries in the world also incorporates a second principle: that of “minimum size”. The cost of running a tender is prohibitive in the cases of purchases in small amounts.

Even if there is corruption in such purchases it is bound to cause less damage to the public purse than the costs of the tender which is supposed to prevent it!

So, in most countries, small purchases can be authorized by government officials - larger amounts go through a tedious, multi-phase tendering process. Public competitive bidding is not corruption-proof: many times officials and bidders collude and conspire to award the contract against bribes and other, noncash, benefits. But we still know of no better way to minimize the effects of human greed.

Procurement policies, procedures and tenders are supervised by state auditing authorities. The most famous is, probably, the General Accounting Office, known by its acronym: the GAO.

It is an unrelenting, very thorough and dangerous watchdog of the administration. It is considered to be highly effective in reducing procurement - related irregularities and crimes. Another such institutions the Israeli State Reviser. What is common to both these organs of the state is that they have very broad authority. They possess (by law) judicial and criminal prosecution powers and they exercise it without any hesitation. They have the legal obligation to review the operations and financial transactions of all the other organs of the executive branch. Their teams select, each year, the organs to be reviewed and audited. They collect all pertinent documents and correspondence. They cross the information that they receive from elsewhere. They ask very embarrassing questions and they do it under the threat of perjury prosecutions. They summon witnesses and they publish damning reports which, in many cases, lead to criminal prosecutions.

Another form of review of public procurement is through powers granted to the legislative arm of the state (Congress, Parliament, Bundestag, or Knesset). In almost every country in the world, the elected body has its own procurement oversight committee. It supervises the expenditures of the executive branch and makes sure that they conform to the budget. The difference between such supervisory, parliamentary, bodies and their executive branch counterparts - is that they feel free to criticize public procurement not only in the context of its adherence to budget constraints or its cleanliness - but also in a political context. In other words, these committees do not limit themselves to asking HOW - but also engage in asking WHY. Why this specific expense in this given time and location - and not that expense, somewhere else or some other time. These elected bodies feel at liberty - and often do - intervene in the very decision making process and in the order of priorities. They have the propensity to alter both quite often.

The most famous such committee is, arguably, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). It is famous because it is non-partisan and technocratic in nature. It is really made of experts which staff its offices.

Its apparent - and real - neutrality makes its judgements and recommendations a commandment not to be avoided and, almost universally, to be obeyed. The CBO operates for and on behalf of the American Congress and is, really, the research arm of that venerable parliament. Parallelly, the executive part of the American system - the Administration - has its own guard against waste and worse: the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Both bodies produce learned, thickset, analyses, reports, criticism, opinions and recommendations. Despite quite a prodigious annual output of verbiage - they are so highly regarded, that virtually anything that they say (or write) is minutely analysed and implemented to the last letter with an air of awe.

Only a few other parliaments have committees that carry such weight. The Israeli Knesset have the extremely powerful Finance Committee which is in charge of all matters financial, from appropriations to procurement. Another parliament renowned for its tight scrutiny is the French Parliament - though it retains very few real powers.

But not all countries chose the option of legislative supervision. Some of them relegated parts or all of these functions to the executive arm.

In Japan, the Ministry of Finance still scrutinizes (and has to authorize) the smallest expense, using an army of clerks. These clerks became so powerful that they have the theoretical potential to secure and extort benefits stemming from the very position that they hold. Many of them suspiciously join companies and organizations which they supervised or to which they awarded contracts - immediately after they leave their previous, government, positions. The Ministry of Finance is subject to a major reform in the reform-bent government of Prime Minister Hashimoto. The Japanese establishment finally realized that too much supervision, control, auditing and prosecution powers might be a Pyrrhic victory: it might encourage corruption - rather than discourage it.

Britain opted to keep the discretion to use public funds and the clout that comes with it in the hands of the political level. This is a lot like the relationship between the butter and the cat left to guard it. Still, this idiosyncratic British arrangement works surprisingly well. All public procurement and expenditure items are approved by the EDX Committee of the British Cabinet (=inner, influential, circle of government) which is headed by the Ministry of Finance. Even this did not prove enough to restrain the appetites of Ministers, especially as quid pro quo deals quickly developed. So, now the word is that the new Labour Prime Minister will chair it- enabling him to exert his personal authority on matters of public money.

Britain, under the previous, Tory, government also pioneered an interesting and controversial incentive system for its public servants as top government officials are euphemistically called there. They receive, added to their salaries, a portion of the savings that they effect in their departmental budgets. This means that they get a small fraction of the end of the fiscal year difference between their budget allowances and what they actually spent. This is very useful in certain segments of government activity - but could prove very problematic in others. Imagine health officials saving on medicines, or others saving on road maintenance or educational consumables. This, naturally, will not do.

Needless to say that no country officially approves of the payment of bribes or commission to officials in charge of public spending, however remote the connection is between the payment and the actions.

Yet, law aside many countries accept the intertwining of elites - business and political - as a fact of life, albeit a sad one. Many judicial systems in the world even make a difference between a payment which is not connected to an identifiable or discernible benefit and those that are. The latter - and only the latter - are labelled “bribery”.

Where there is money - there is wrongdoing. Humans are humans - and sometimes not even that.

But these unfortunate derivatives of social activity can be minimized by the adoption of clear procurement policies, transparent and public decision making processes and the right mix of supervision, auditing and prosecution. Even then the result is bound to be dubious, at best.

About The Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of “Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited” and “After the Rain - How the West Lost the East”. He is a columnist in “Central Europe Review”, United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com

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