What’s in a Name?

Did Richard Holbrooke personally profit by lending his name to this award? Did he cut a deal with Chevron or Levi Strauss to give either company preferential treatment in the executive or legislative branches in exchange for his name on this award? Did Levi Strauss or Chevron promise Richard Holbrooke some sort of monetary or other gain if they received this award?

No?

Then there is no ethics violation for Holbrooke, Chevron, or Levi Strauss.

The fact that Chevron has questionable business practices with regard to the country of Ecuador may well be an ethics violation - it certainly seems to be a moral one - but it has nothing to do with Holbrooke, an award with his name on it, or AIDS work.

And the fact that Chevron ravages the Ecuadorean landscape with one hand while doing philanthropy with the other may be morally repugnant, but it is also the corporate American way.

Chevron is a greedy, evil corporation that will do anything for money and do even more not to lose what they already have. Which includes exploiting the native populations of Ecuador and other South American countries they have ravaged with their unabashed and unregulated drilling. The governments sell out to this company and they let them do whatever they want. And its the native peoples problem after that who need clean water and land still able to grow food. But to Chevron these are not even people, they are just savages who are their to be exploited and destroyed with bad practices. CHEVRON is a terrible company who no one should support and should actually protest at every chance.

This is an absurd. One of our largest and best companies is making a $30M contribution to find a cure for aids, and what do we read, a story about the greed of a company. Being an employee of Chevron, I can tell you first hand the seriousness of finding the cure for aids. This company truly is one of the best in the country, if not the world. With 65,000 employees worldwide, and actually spending more than last years total profits to find new sources of the oil we need to keep our economy and lifes going in the right direction, my company is a keeper. That is the fact of the matter, and no amount of naysaying by Michael Isikoff is going to take from that fact. We (US Citizens) should uphold and support OUR companies and try to stop the embezzlement attempts of these countrys trying to meet their national budget requirements through nonsense lawsuits. Why do we smile and support such obvious attempts by Equador to force a $27B theft from one of the best companys our country has made? Shame on us if we do. I support my company, and all I am is a simple worker, not an officer of the corporation, and I know the truth.