Pilant’s Business Ethics Links 8-14-2016 Ghostbusters Busted Edition

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Ghostbusters Busted Edition

We start with the claim that the new all-female Ghostbusters movie is a box office bomb and then move on into the much more serious waters of who gets to fire our nukes and should we even be having Olympic Games. I would ask you to pay particular attention to the Justice Department report on Baltimore – it is an alarming and disgusting analysis of a police department badly off the tracks. 

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James Pilant

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Ghostbusters Busted Edition

The New Ghostbusters Film a disaster? 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie is heading for a loss of around $70 million. Maybe more. As of right now, the movie has only made $180 million worldwide, with a reported production budget of more than $140 million. That, coupled with a massive marketing budget almost ensures that the movie is going to take a pretty big hit. However, a studio rep disputed the high figure in THR’s report.

Maybe the President shouldn’t be able to launch nuclear weapons? 

The possibility of Donald Trump winning the presidential election this November has renewed media and public interest in one of the most important responsibilities of the president: commanding America’s massive nuclear arsenal and averting nuclear war.

Yet what has been lost in the angst that Mr. Trump might soon have the authority to launch nuclear weapons is the equally unnerving reality that the U.S. nuclear posture is already unnecessarily dangerous and redundant. Neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton have explained how they would seek to put U.S. doctrine on a safer footing and reduce global nuclear weapons risks.
Should the Olympic continue? 
Although hosting the Olympic Games is prestigious, it’s rarely lucrative — the 1984 Games in Los Angeles is often described as the first since 1932 to turn a profit. Many countries, meanwhile, have taken years to pay back their debts — and often at the taxpayers’ expense. The 1976 Games in Montreal ended up costing far more than originally planned, while the summer Games in Athens in 2004 — which cost the country about $11 billion by some estimates — was widely seen as symptomatic of the kind of economic mismanagement that led to Greece’s subsequent economic collapse.
The implications of the Justice Department’s report on Baltimore
The criminal justice system’s denigration and dehumanization of black life represents the great moral crisis of our times. The report’s unspoken context is the nation’s painful history of slavery, Jim Crow and racial violence that contours contemporary American social, political and civic life. Black life in America continues to be subject to racist, institutional forces that deny access to citizenship and the rule of law and then, in an outrageous rhetorical sleight of hand, criminalize African-Americans as being undeserving of citizenship or legal protection.
We are a long way from being a color blind nation – a long way from a nation in which being White is penalized. This is an example of long term institutional racism and for the residents of Baltimore, a day to day experience. 
In my mind, the most alarming part of the report is the “good ole boys” network in the sex crimes division where all rapes are false charges or the woman’s fault or both. It takes a cold and heartless mind to arrive at those conclusions. jp
Trump voters vary from portrayal? 
The study also suggests that while blue-collar workers with low levels of education are significantly more likely to support Trump, those workers are not, for the most part, factory workers who have been hit by trade and the decline of American manufacturing. “The Gallup analysis shows that Americans who live in places where employment in manufacturing has declined since 1990 are not more favorable to Trump,” the Washington Post’s Max Ehrenfreund and Jeff Guo write. “Rothwell did not find a relationship when he focused only on white respondents, either, or even specifically on white Republicans.” In fact, Rothwell writes in the study that Trump attracts less support in regions where trade has had a greater impact on manufacturing. “Surprisingly, there appears to be no link whatsoever between exposure to trade competition and support for nationalist policies in America, as embodied by the Trump campaign,” he says.

Guns are a potent tool for males to maintain dominance

“Megan Short, who died alongside her husband, Mark, and the couple’s three children in an apparent murder-suicide over the weekend, had been planning to leave her husband, ” read the follow-up report at NBC 10. The story went on to detail that the couple had started dating when Megan was only 17 years old and Mark was 24, and that Megan had been communicating with friends about her desire to leave and her belief that her husband was abusive.

While there’s no way to confirm for sure what happened here, the entire story is a potent reminder that while mass shootings where madmen attack strangers grab the most headlines, the much larger problem in this country is people, mostly men, killing partners and family members — and then often themselves — in a desperate act to maintain dominance and control.

“In approximately 70% of domestic violence homicides (current or ex-intimate partners) there has been prior domestic violence against the female (not necessarily reported to police) ,” Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell, a domestic violence researcher at Johns Hopkins University explained over email, adding that “leaving the abusive relationship increases risk” of domestic homicide occurring.

Do the Democrats need White Working Class Males? 

In fact, in the last three presidential races the Democratic candidate lost among non-college educated whites by an average of 22 points. In 2012 it was a record 26 points. However, you’ll notice that the Democratic candidate won those last two races pretty handily. Nonetheless, despite their winning record and a diverse coalition that looks like 2016 America, the Democrats are still seen to have a big “problem” because they are allegedly ignoring the plight of the white working class and failing to attract their votes. This season, with Trump electrifying this cohort with his calls for deporting Mexicans and banning Muslims, the genre is especially plentiful.

Free markets and dictators?

Yet it is not just contempt for democracy that one will find in some libertarian literature. Even more troubling is how leading free-market thinkers have actively upheld authoritarian countries as positive examples of governance.

The so-called “economic miracles” that took place since the rise of neoliberalism in countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile and China are often admired. In 2015, libertarian economist John C. Goodman published an article in Forbes warning that democracy could threaten the free-market economies of Hong Kong and Singapore.

“The right dictator — one who appreciates the power of free markets to lift all boats — seems to outperform democratic government in what we might consider the most enlightened parts of the world,” he said.

CHAUNCEY DEVEGA gives his opinion on Trump’s Assassination remarks. 

During a political rally in North Carolina on Tuesday, Donald Trump told his followers that:

“Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish — the 2nd Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the 2nd Amendment people —  maybe there is, I don’t know.

But — but I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day…”

Despite efforts by his minions to deflect and spin Trump’s comments to some other meaning, his intent was clear: Hillary Clinton should be targeted for gun violence if she dares to nominate judges who would properly interpret the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The meaning of a given speech act is heavily dependent on context. Donald Trump’s rallies routinely feature misogynist and sexist language where Hillary Clinton is described as a “bitch.” Hillary Clinton has also been threatened with death by Donald Trump’s adviser Roger Stone. At Trump’s political rallies, people have also shouted that Hillary Clinton should be “hung” and put in jail. To deny that Donald Trump’s comments were incitements of violence against Hillary Clinton is to ignore the facts.