I hereby confess to you all: I hate those “How Am I Driving?” bumper stickers that you see on so many commercial vehicles.
The point of the bumper sticker, evidently, is to indicate that the company that owns the truck or van deeply cares about the views of the other poor unfortunates on the highway and will take stern action if it receives complaints about reckless or otherwise crappy driving by its employees. (The alternative explanation — that the drivers themselves are incredibly needy people who crave constant reinforcement from complete strangers about their driving abilities — is too disturbing to contemplate.)
Was there ever an emptier effort by a business to establish a positive civic profile? Has anyone ever actually called the number shown? I’ve got to believe you get a recording and a confusing set of different push-button options — if the number is even a real number in the first place.
Are you supposed to call while you are driving, or are you supposed to somehow jot down the phone number while you are driving, as well as the number of the particular vehicle, and then call later? Either way, the bumper stickers seem designed to hinder highway safety, rather than promote it. And, even worse, isn’t it awfully presumptuous for the business owner to think that I’ll waste my precious time giving them feedback on their employees? Who in the world would care so little about the value of their free time that they would spend it calling a number to tell some flunky about about somebody else’s driving?
If a company wants to be a good member of the community, let them treat their customers fairly, pay their employees a reasonable wage, and support civic institutions. They shouldn’t try to skate by with some meaningless bumper sticker.
The Nieman Journalism Lab looks to future trends in journalism. Last month, 
The latest example of this reality is the news that 
The Dragon capsule therefore becomes the first privately owned space vehicle to reach the ISS. This morning the astronauts on the space station opened the capsule and entered it, conducted a quick inspection and found no sign of any problems with the interior, and indeed reported that the capsule had that familiar “new car smell.” So far, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket and its Dragon capsule have performed flawlessly — reaching orbit, conducting the maneuvering tests that showed that the capsule could safely be brought near the ISS, and then ultimately delivering the payload.
Eh? A drive-thru dry cleaners? Intrigued, I drove to the side of the dry cleaner shop, where there was an open door rather than a drive-thru window. I summoned the clerk, gave her our name, and then watched for minutes as she moved the moving hanger line around for several loops, looking for our clothing. It was vaguely embarrassing to see into the rear of the store as she searched, like looking through an open door into a stranger’s kitchen and seeing them eating at their table. After she found our clothing, the clerk came back over to the open door and handed me the hangers.
At that point I realized that the drive-thru concept really didn’t work. Unlike a bag of burgers or a Coke, clothes on hangers aren’t easily passed through the driver’s side window. You have to wrangle the hangers through, dragging the clothes against the side of the car. And once they are inside, what do you do? Leave them bunched up in your lap? Toss them into the passenger seat? From a sitting position in the driver’s seat, only a contortionist could reach around and hang them on the hooks above the back seat windows. So, I had to open the door, clumsily get out with the clothes — which, of course, defeats the entire purpose of a drive-thru — and hang them properly. The lady watched my fumbling performance, probably chuckling inwardly at a show she’s seen over and over again.
How in the world does Transparency International get the data on which it bases its rankings? It 
I’m a bit skeptical of the “stakeholder” approach. For starters, I disagree with the notion that a “maniacal focus on shareholders” caused the financial crisis. Instead, I think the breakdown occurred, at least in part, because Boards of Directors weren’t really paying attention and approved compensation packages that gave CEOs economic incentives to favor exceptionally risky, but in the short term lucrative, transactions over long-term investment and sustainable growth. I therefore question a model where CEOs are given some vaguely defined charter to try to do good for society. Who knows what they might decide, and why should corporate money be used for anything other than developing and marketing better products, increasing market share, and increasing profits to the benefit of shareholders? If American companies don’t focus on their business they are going to get their clocks cleaned by foreign competitors who are ruthlessly focused on the bottom line. I also think that people who are upset with the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance decision would be uncomfortable with Nooyi’s formulation. If corporations are expected to advance social causes as part of their charter, they will have even more incentive to participate in political campaigns. Why should we encourage such behavior?
India not only is balking at agreeing to limitations on carbon emissions, it also apparently is 
If countries like India and China refuse to agree to reducing greenhouse gases because they don’t want to saddle their growing economies with the costs that would accompany that effort, the impact of those decisions would obliterate any carbon emissions reductions achieved in Germany and Japan. Obviously, if any significant percentage of the 600 million new Indian citizens uses electricity generated by coal-fired power plants, wears clothing produced in smoke-belching factories, or drives a car powered by fossil fuels, the impact on India’s carbon footprint will be tremendous.
