Pigs at the Trough or Humanitarianism in Question

Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America

Author: Arianna Huffington

Who filled the trough? Who set the table at the banquet of greed? How has it been possible for corporate pigs to gorge themselves on grossly inflated pay packages and heaping helpings of stock options while the average American struggles to make do with their leftovers?

Provocative political commentator Arianna Huffington yanks back the curtain on the unholy alliance of CEOs, politicians, lobbyists, and Wall Street bankers who have shown a brutal disregard for those in the office cubicles and on the factory floors. As she puts it:

“The economic game is not supposed to be rigged like some shady ring toss on a carnival midway.” Yet it has been, allowing corporate crooks to bilk the public out of trillions of dollars, magically making our pensions and 401(k)s disappear and walking away with astronomical payouts and absurdly lavish perks-for-life.

The media have put their fingers on pieces of the sordid puzzle, but Pigs at the Trough presents the whole ugly picture of what’s really going on for the first time—a blistering, wickedly witty portrait of exactly how and why the worst and the greediest are running American business and government into the ground.

Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski, Adelphia’s John Rigas, and the Three Horsemen of the Enron Apocalypse—Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andrew Fastow—are not just a few bad apples. They are manifestations of a megatrend in corporate leadership—the rise of a callous and avaricious mind-set that is wildly out of whack with the core values of the average American. WorldCom, Enron, Adelphia, Tyco, AOL, Xerox, Merrill Lynch, and the other scandals are only the tip of thetip of the corruption iceberg.

Making the case that our public watchdogs have become little more than obedient lapdogs, unwilling to bite the corporate hand that feeds them, Arianna Huffington turns the spotlight on the tough reforms we must demand from Washington. We need, she argues, to go way beyond the lame Corporate Responsibility Act if we are to stop the voracious corporate predators from eating away at the very foundations of our democracy.

Devastatingly funny and powerfully indicting, Pigs at the Trough is a rousing call to arms and a must-read for all those who are outraged by the scandalous state of corporate America.

Book Magazine

This wicked broadside on American capitalism from syndicated columnist Huffington targets corporate ubercriminals such as Enron's Ken Lay and Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski, who allegedly stole millions of dollars from their companies. Whatever happened, Huffington asks, to the safeguards designed to check corporate greed? How did accountants, formerly the most boring people in the world, become dangerous and sexy henchmen? From offshore tax shelters and corporate-financed loans to "restatements of earnings," Huffington gives away the secret book-cooking recipes Martha Stewart never taught you and exposes the incestuous relationship between business and politics in twenty-first-century America—and she names names. It's a delicious and educational read about how this country really works. And there are fun quizzes that test your CEO IQ.

Publishers Weekly

Nationally syndicated columnist Huffington's greatest dilemma while writing this scathing indictment of the corporate and political culture that brought the "new economy" '90s crashing down must have been how to choose among the plethora of examples of greed, corruption, hypocrisy and political manipulation. So unsavory are the CEO villains, so unfathomable is their greed and monstrously callous is their disregard for the thousands of employees who lost jobs and savings because of them, that even the most worldly activist and most cynical political observers will be shocked by what they read here. And Huffington's indictment of the corporate culture of greed, one that she believes undermines democracy, goes far beyond the high-flying corporate figures featured in congressional investigations. Among her accusations are that U.S. drug companies allowed the African AIDS epidemic to rage in the interests of corporate profits, and that President Bush is a conspirator in the corporate disregard of the interests of the American public. This is a powerful book, brimming with wit and sulphurous satire that connects the dots among politicians, lobbyists and corporations, and demonstrates their destructive effect on the well-being of average Americans. She may well be on her way to achieving her goal of convincing readers "to join forces to storm the control room of the S.S. America." (Feb.) Forecast: With this book, Huffington should find readers among people who never thought they'd read her. On her Web site (ariannaonline.com), she explains her disillusionment with the political right, though she hasn't turned left, she says, but "beyond the standard left-right paradigm." Readers will eat this up. Look for a PW interview with Huffington in February. Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

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Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics

Author: Michael Barnett

Years of tremendous growth in response to complex emergencies have left a mark on the humanitarian sector. Various matters that once seemed settled are now subjects of intense debate. What is humanitarianism? Is it limited to the provision of relief to victims of conflict, or does it include broader objectives such as human rights, democracy promotion, development, and peacebuilding? For much of the last century, the principles of humanitarianism were guided by neutrality, impartiality, and independence. More recently, some humanitarian organizations have begun to relax these tenets. The recognition that humanitarian action can lead to negative consequences has forced humanitarian organizations to measure their effectiveness, to reflect on their ethical positions, and to consider not only the values that motivate their actions but also the consequences of those actions.

In the indispensable Humanitarianism in Question, Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to address the humanitarian identity crisis, including humanitarianism's relationship to accountability, great powers, privatization and corporate philanthropy, warlords, and the ethical evaluations that inform life-and-death decision making during and after emergencies.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     vii
List of Abbreviations     ix
Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present   Michael Barnett   Thomas G. Weiss     1
The Rise of Emergency Relief Aid   James D. Fearon     49
The Imperative to Reduce Suffering: Charity, Progress, and Emergencies in the Field of Humanitarian Action   Craig Calhoun     73
Saying "No" to Wal-Mart? Money and Morality in Professional Humanitarianism   Stephen Hopgood     98
Humanitarian Organizations: Accountable-Why, to Whom, for What, and How?   Janice Gross Stein     124
The Grand Strategies of Humanitarianism   Michael Barnett   Jack Snyder     143
The Power of Holding Humanitarianism Hostage and the Myth of Protective Principles   Laura Hammond     172
Sacrifice, Triage, and Global Humanitarianism   Peter Redfield     196
The Distributive Commitments of International NGOs   Jennifer C. Rubenstein     215
Humanitarianism as a Scholarly Vocation   Michael Barnett     235
Humanitarianism and Practitioners: Social Science Matters   Peter J. Hoffman   Thomas G. Weiss     264
Contributors     287
Index     291