Author: southwerk

I am a 53 year old teacher. I have double major in Speech and Criminal Justice resulting in a Bachelor's degree from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and a law degree.

PBS is a Worthy Investment

On By southwerkIn Politics
paula kerger

Image by kthread via Flickr

Paula Kerger, PBS Chief, Calls For Views To Oppose Mitt Romney’s Stance Towards TV Funding

PBS chief Paula Kerger said Wednesday that she recognizes the United States has to make tough budget decisions but defended PBS as an effective public-private partnership.

Paula Kerger, PBS Chief, Calls For Views To Oppose Mitt Romney’s Stance Towards TV Funding

Watching regular television is a depressing experience. A constant barrage of ads designed to magnify every insecurity to sell products. I tend to believe modern television viewing exacerbates psychological problems.

But we in the United States have an alternative. We can watch public broadcasting. We can be enlightened. Our children can watch television without a constant barrage of sugar cereal ads and pleas to buy the latest toys.

I use some of their shows like Frontline for my classes. They deal with subjects with a great deal of documentary skill. I enjoy the History Channel and the like but sometimes their work is more a hash of history cliches than well assembled stories.

Some of the best viewing experiences of my life have been PBS programs. That’s where I learned about Kurosawa and Goddard. I absorbed a lot of history and learned to think outside the intellectual limits of rural Oklahoma.

There are those that believe that the free market produces the best possible outcome. They haven’t watched “Two and a Half Men,” a weekly half hour about a libertine whose impulses are out of control, a neurotic brother with a son so dumb, you wish the father has satisfied his fatherly urges by getting a pet. The show features discussion of unusual sex acts, fart jokes and a parade of easy women. Thus, the free market in action; a show aimed at a horny 14 year old.

Once this is published, someone is going to write me about the poor souls who do not watch public television and argue that they shouldn’t bear a burden of taxation for what interests me.

Yes, let’s excuse people from paying property taxes for schools because they don’t have any children. or pay for roads, police, firemen, soldiers they don’t use unless there’s war, etc.

Having a country in which there is a certain degree of belief in scientific beliefs, some investigative reporting and knowledge of common cultural and historical heritage is also a worthy goal.

That there are many people who have a philosophy of “if I can’t figure out how much money it’s worth, it’s a pointless activity,” is a sign of a declining civilization gradually descending into a third world status of ignorance.

While there is art, culture and literature, there is still some hope that the experiences of Americans will be respected, the we might be able to live lives of significance, and there might be a common cultural heritage of something more than fart jokes and quotations of corporate quarterly profits.

James Pilant

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The Writings and Speeches of the Founding Fathers are FREE!

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
Benjamin Franklin

I was on the web looking at one of my sites and ran into a thing called the Founding Fathers Collection. For the sale price of $300, you can the works of the great men of the colonial period.

Don’t pay any money. Those writings are all public domain. I can’t imagine anything they’ve written isn’t available on the Internet.

Let’s just take Benjamin Franklin as an example.

You can go to the Franklin Papers at Yale University and read all of his works.

How about the Federalist Papers?

Here they are at Project Gutenberg.

If you want to hear them spoken, go here.

You don’t have to just settle for their writings. At Project Gutenberg, there are usually biographies of the founding fathers. Here is a link to a biography of each of these founding fathers –

George Washington

Benjamin Franklin

Alexander Hamilton

Thomas Jefferson

John Adams

Samuel Adams

John Hancock

Thomas Paine

Build your own library of the great works of American History. If the writing is before 1900, it’s all public domain, so freely available. I recommend you start with Project Gutenberg and then begin examining college and university collections.

If you load these in a popular word processing format, you can annotate them with your own thoughts, mark key pages and publish your favorite selections to the Internet.

English: I took photo with Canon camera of Ben...
Image via Wikipedia

American history, its stories, the speeches, the papers, – they are our common heritage and we should cherish them.

James Pilant

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Sign a Petition; Stop a Foreclosure

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics
Scrooge and Bob Cratchit illustrated by John L...

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Lauren Bloom writing in her blog is asking her readers to help a disabled woman keep her home. I join in this effort and ask you to sign a petition in the woman’s behalf.

Note to First Mortgage – don’t be a Grinch!

Ms. Chappell has posted a petition on Change.org asking First Mortgage Corporation to do the decent thing and let Ms. Bourchard pay off some of her mortgage through the Hardest Hit State Fund. It’s not as though First Mortgage Corporation wouldn’t get paid, folks – it just means that the company would have to do a little more paperwork. HUD currently has First Mortgage Corporation on hold while everyone works to find a more compassionate solution. Come on, First Mortgage! It’s Christmas, for pity’s sake – have a heart and don’t evict a disabled schoolteacher from her home. Even Ebenezer Scrooge would know better.

If you agree with me that Ms. Bouchard deserves the opportunity to stay in her home, you can sign the petition by clicking here.

Note to First Mortgage – don’t be a Grinch! | The Business Ethics Blog

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An Abraham Lincoln Story for the New Year, 2012

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

CREDITOR PAID DEBTORS DEBT.

A certain rich man in Springfield, Illinois, sued a poor attorney for $2.50, and Lincoln was asked to prosecute the case. Lincoln urged the creditor to let the matter drop, adding, “You can make nothing out of him, and it will cost you a good deal more than the debt to bring suit.” The creditor was still determined to have his way, and threatened to seek some other attorney. Lincoln then said, “Well, if you are determined that suit should be brought, I will bring it; but my charge will be $10.”

The money was paid him, and peremptory orders were given that the suit be brought that day. After the client’s departure Lincoln went out of the office, returning in about an hour with an amused look on his face.

Asked what pleased him, he replied, “I brought suit against ——, and then hunted him up, told him what I had done, handed him half of the $10, and we went over to the squire’s office. He confessed judgment and paid the bill.”

Lincoln added that he didn’t see any other way to make things satisfactory for his client as well as the other.

 

This story is from Alexander K. McClure’s collection of Abraham Lincoln Stories entitled: Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories.  It has long ago passed into the public domain.

James Pilant

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Ethics Bob Calls Out the Haredim for their Assaults on a Second Grader

On By southwerkIn International
Ethics Bob

Ethics Bob is not shy about calling out the Haredim for their ridiculous behavior. I put his first paragraph up. Please go read his whole article (and his follow up article which is also listed below).

Who would spit and curse at a second grader and call her a whore?

Who would spit and curse at a second grader and call her a whore? Haredim, that’s who. The Haredim are considered the extreme of orthodox Jews, although they reject the label: to them they are just “Jews,” everybody else is not. In the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, some Haredim spat and cursed at second grader Naama Margolese (pictured here with her mother), and called her a whore for dressing immodestly. Since the assault Naama.is afraid to walk to her religious school, even when her mother is with her, holding her hand.

Who would spit and curse at a second grader and call her a whore? « Ethics Bob

Ethics Bob follows this up with another article on a related topic entitled:

Israeli religious fanatics assault a female soldier for not moving to the back of the bus

I was going to add some comments of my own but I realized I was too angry to write well. I worked with children in the criminal justice system for some years. The idea of daily verbal assaults along with spitting against an 8 year old move me toward violence. So, I will stop here.

James Pilant

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Arizona Humane Society Kills Scruffy

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Humane Society; Sparks Outrage By Euthanizing Man’s Kitten Over Money

I was more than a little surprised by this. The Arizona Humane Society was unable to find the money to help Scruffy or take a credit card over the phone but was able to hire a publicist and scrub its Facebook site of all those nasty comments made by people who were obviously unaware of the souless minions running its operations. I went to the Facebook site for the organization and if you want to see professional damage control in action, I recommend it as a model. If it weren’t for their own carefully written remarks suggesting alternate places to write your complaints, you wouldn’t have know known that some poor cat had been wacked.

From the article –

Animal lovers threatened to pull donations to an animal rescue group and the public flooded the agency with scathing comments and calls after a man’s cat was euthanized when he couldn’t afford its medical care, prompting the Arizona Humane Society to go into damage-control mode Wednesday.

The group has hired a publicist, removed dozens of comments on its Facebook page and directed a team of five volunteers to respond to the overwhelming calls and emails it has received since The Arizona Republic published a weekend story about Daniel Dockery and his 9-month-old cat, Scruffy.

Humane Society‎ Sparks Outrage By Euthanizing Man’s Kitten Over Money

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New posts for the new year, James Pilant

On By southwerkIn Personal

I have posted seldom over the past several weeks. I have been in downward spiral due to severe allergies and sinus infections. It has been a painful time for me.

I am now using a prescribed nasal spray which is limiting the severity of my symptoms. But it does take time to work.

As part of my treatment, I have been tested for allergies and it has been discovered that there are no major allergens I am not allergic to. Just wonderful.

So, the plan is to start taking shots with the new year.

Presumably, I will be more active, intelligent and organized as time goes by. Certainly I hope so.

James Pilant

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The Documentary, Gasland was RIGHT!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics
Gasland

English: Councilman James F. Gennaro attends t...
Image via Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image via Wikipedia

EPA links fracking to contaminated water in Wyoming | McClatchy

I have used the documentary, Gasland, in my class. The EPA has found clear evidence that hydraulic fracking has contaminated the ground water in a large area. This is evidence that Josh Fox’s crusade against unregulated fracking is based on sound science and I think he is owed an apology by many in the gas industry.

From what I am seeing, Gasland is on its ways to becoming the most influential documentary in modern American history as state after state and region after region struggle with the issues Josh Fox had the courage to bring before the public.

James Pilant

From the McClatchy article –

The EPA initially gathered water from privately owned wells and municipal wells. The presence of methane and hydrocarbons, including diesel, in groundwater led to further testing, including the EPA’s drilling of two monitoring wells. The EPA also tested waste pits for possible contamination. In its two years of sampling of the pits and the monitoring wells, the EPA found benzene, xylenes, diesel and other hydrocarbon compounds, among a list of unusual agents in the water.

EPA links fracking to contaminated water in Wyoming | McClatchy

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We Win the War on Terrorism by Maintaining Our Ideals!

On By southwerkIn International
U.S. soldiers from Bravo Company, 1st Battalio...

Image via Wikipedia

Giving up long held American rights, attempting to copy the worst elements of repressive regimes like the Argentine and the Soviet, are not the way to victory in the “war on terror.” These attempts to discover how low we can go in our own behavior are counterproductive. The America whose ideas have become common across the world was a concept of idealism and possibility. People never turned to the ideals of America because of their similarity to totalitarian regimes and monarchies but because they were different.

We win wars of ideas by having better ideas. The Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus are persuasive ideas. Disappearing our enemies and holding them indefinitely without charges are the cowardly acts of frightened dictators and incompetent despots.

The great ideas that have made America a light to the world require courage, support and sacrifice. They are not cheap or easy.

But having such ideas is how societies win long term conflicts because having such ideas means that a people willing to hold on to its ideals even when threatened with destruction is a worthy people who live for more than just themselves.

James Pilant

Indefinite Military Detention Of U.S. Citizens Is A Win For Terrorists, Former Admiral Says

“As it turns out, our enemies’ greatest weakness is that they are bereft of ideals,” he added. “If we can maintain our ideals, our sense of justice, in the face of this, we can win. What the enemy, what the terrorists want to do — because they know they can’t beat us militarily — [is] they can try to change us. They can cause us to become more like them, and for them, that’s victory.”

The reason why, he argues, is that if the United States cannot portray itself as the holder of loftier ideals, then it is much harder to convince the rest of the world to stay on its side — and it’s harder to fight wars because even allies are less cooperative.

“Who’s going to surrender to the United Sates if they think they’re going to be detained indefinitely without a trial? Is anybody going to give up?” he asked. “Who’s going to say, ‘You know, maybe the United States isn’t as bad as we think it is, and maybe it’s al Qaeda and the Taliban who are the bad guys, and I’m going to side with the good guys?'”

Indefinite Military Detention Of U.S. Citizens Is A Win For Terrorists, Former Admiral Says

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Obama Over Rules His Own Experts – Plan B

On By southwerkIn Opinion1 Comment
I am a more than a little annoyed by this. Didn’t this guy promise to rely on the experts and instead we get some paternalistic crap about 11 year olds? This decision is going to have serious repercussions. Teenage girls are going to get pregnant with all that entails for their futures when they should have had a choice of contraception. We are not yet a nation of Baptists who believe ineffectual admonishments against having sex is an improvement over reality. Every day in this nation, particularly in the South, teenagers have sex, millions of them. They’ve been told not to. However, since the survival of the human species has depended on the young having sex for hundreds of thousands of years, it may well be possible that a church pamphlet and a pat on the head may not discourage them.
President Obama appears to be working his way through all of his campaign promises one by one, tossing them out like softballs at a little league game. I have been disgusted a long time. I don’t know what bothers me more, his fake populism or his gutless inability to negotiate.
Below are some thought from Salon.
James Pilant
Official photographic portrait of US President...
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Obama’s woman problem – Gender Roles – Salon.com

But as an American, I think it is important for my president not to turn to paternalistic claptrap and enfeebling references to the imagined ineptitude and irresponsibility of his daughters – and young women around the country – to justify a curtailment of access to medically safe contraceptives. The notion that in aggressively conscribing women’s abilities to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancy Obama is just laying down some Olde Fashioned Dad Sense diminishes an issue of gender equality, sexual health and medical access. Recasting this debate as an episode of “Father Knows Best” reaffirms hoary attitudes about young women and sex that had their repressive heyday in the era whence that program sprang.

Obama’s woman problem – Gender Roles – Salon.com

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