Social Conscience Essential In Making Business Decisions

This is the last column I will write for The Spokesman-Review that offers perspective on business-related issues.

I have a new assignment that I will say more about below.

But first I want to thank readers. Not just those who generally saw it my way, but also those who disagreed with my point of view more often than not.

No matter where they stood, 99 percent of readers with whom I came into contact understood and appreciated the difference between hard news reporting and the rendering of opinion or analysis. That, to me, is most gratifying.

How many times I have heard someone say, “I don’t always agree with you, but I always read you.” This is the sincerest form of praise a columnist can receive.

It was of little moment to typical readers that we might disagree on a particular issue. It mattered more that issues of interest to them got a good airing.

Again, thanks, and my compliments.

This marks 20 years of writing business-related opinion pieces and analysis for the Spokane papers.

My first column was for the now-defunct Spokane Daily Chronicle. That column lit into fast-food joints for ripping off teenagers on their hours and fringes.

From the start, my columns for business readers delved into issues not strictly business in the narrower sense. Many years ago a young naval officer assigned to Spokane with whom I lifted weights in a gym said he saw in my columns a reflection of the “social conscience of the Spokane business community.”

His penetrating observation, as I came to realize fully much later, was early recognition of a nascent conviction in me that society’s socio-economic milieu is part and parcel of the workplace.

Not surprisingly then, critics have felt at times that my columns strayed too far into the realms of social commentary and political debate. I confess to an agenda that I felt needed pursuing.

For quite some time, I sought to express the conservative point of view in an information medium which many have maligned as being controlled by the liberal elite.

Until just the past couple years, I approached any discussion of values with great trepidation, ever mindful that the media had attacked former Vice President Dan Quayle with a vengeance.

Now, it’s OK to have values again. And people can talk about real issues.

“The debate is opening up,” says the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Feulner.

“For years, it was ‘politically incorrect’ to condemn the country’s illegitimacy rate,” says the president of the conservative think tank. “Not today.

“It was taboo to point out the enormous debt we are piling on our children,” he goes on. “Not anymore.

“And it was reactionary to suggest racial preferences are harmful to the ideal of a colorblind society. No more.”

I subscribe to most of what the above paragraphs say. The national dialogue certainly has changed.

My views have not changed. But politics have gravitated to the far poles. I still favor conservative agendas for the most part, but I take strong issue with extreme positions right and left.

I fear the righteous right will ruin the last best chance for a successful second American revolution.

I am a child of the ‘50s, that golden era when, Labor Secretary Robert Reich observes, business executives accepted their responsibilities to workers and the larger society as a matter of course. Today, just the opposite is true. “We are acting as if the economy had nothing to do with values,” says the designated spokesman for American workers. “We need a serious discussion about corporate responsibility.”

But for me it’s time to move on to other things.

In my new assignment, I will be writing columns that appear Sundays and Wednesdays.

On Sundays, the challenge is to develop a retirement column. I invite readers to contact me with their experiences, ideas, tips, issues, information.

The second column, appearing Wednesdays, will be a “notes” type of column. It will offer business readers brief glimpses into breaking news of regional interest - people, products, practices.

The more interaction the column receives from readers and news sources, the more it will connect with what’s happening and anticipate what’s on the horizon.

Thanks again.

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel can be reached at 459-5467, or you can fax him suggestions at 459-5482.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review