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.

Ten Worst American Cities for Murder – from the Star-Telegram

On By southwerkIn News

I have criminal justice students and they tend to believe that the cities like Los Angeles or New York are the leaders in murder. Their television induced wisdom is a problem. It disguises the developing geographic picture of crime, and that picture is of the most violent crimes moving more toward the South and Central United States.

The data, in particular the top cities for murder list below, surprises most people. I was shocked by the ranking of Anchorage. I went and had a look at the overall stats and while murder is bad compared to much of the United States, the rate of forcible rape is much, much worse than the rest of the country.

Here you are presented for your information – the top ten –

No. 1 – Detroit

No. 2 – Memphis

No. 3 – Springfield, Ill.

No. 4 – Flint, Mich.

No. 5 – Anchorage, Ak.

No. 6 – Lubbock

No. 7 – Stockton, Calif.

No. 8 – Tallahassee, Fla.

No. 9 – Las Vegas, Nev.

No. 10 – Rockford, Ill.

Read more: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/crime_time/2011/10/which-texas-city-do-you-suppose-made-the-forbes-list-of-most-dangerous-in-the-us.html#ixzz1aGVKxCO7

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The Wall Street Protests – “This has the feel of something very big happening.”

On By southwerkIn Opinion

Is ‘Occupy Silicon Valley’ next?

This is an article from Reuters written by Connie Loizos. It is in large part an interview with Paul Saffo, a futurist.   I call your attention to this paragraph. –

Saffo doesn’t know where all of this economic dissatisfaction will lead, but he is worried. “I think there’s a sea change afoot that’s going to sweep over everything the same way,” he says. “I still think there’s a lot of uncertainty, but all my instincts as a forecaster tell me this has the feel of something very big happening. I’m standing on the beach and noticing the water heading back out toward the horizon.”

I feel the same way. It’s possible this is all just smoke and mirrors but I don’t think so.

James Pilant

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Wall Street Protests Picking Up Speed

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

The Wall Street Protests are starting to catch on in the media. One major factor is that the protests have spread to 250 cities.

Old story? I don’t think so. I’m seeing a lot more serious articles. The one at the bottom of the page is from the venerable publication, Reuters.

The early coverage suggested that the protesters were crazed lefty’s with no vision and no ideas beside the bizarre. This suggests that much of the national media are effete snobs who don’t know anybody that make less than 250k a year. Unfortunately that is probably true. Here is a quote from Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake. –

Unsurprisingly, the corporate media continue to ignore and deride this movement. It will take independent outlets like Firedoglake and citizen journalists like yourself to give these protests the attention they deserve.

FDL has been covering Occupy Wall Street since day one, and the Dissenter’s intrepid Kevin Gosztola has been the premier source of information for those following the protest. He’s in Washington D.C. right now and will be heading to New York to report live from Occupy Wall Street.

Here’s a quote from Glen Greenwald –

But for those who believe that protests are only worthwhile if they translate into quantifiable impact: the lack of organizational sophistication or messaging efficacy on the part of the Wall Street protest is a reason to support it and get involved in it, not turn one’s nose up at it and join in the media demonization. That’s what one actually sympathetic to its messaging (rather than pretending to be in order more effectively to discredit it) would do. Anyone who looks at mostly young citizens marching in the street protesting the corruption of Wall Street and the harm it spawns, and decides that what is warranted is mockery and scorn rather than support, is either not seeing things clearly or is motivated by objectives other than the ones being presented.

Well, they’re not laughing quite so much in the corporate media. They are less amused in the 24 hour news programs that long ago abandoned any attempt to inform the population resorting to popcorn for the mind – “If it bleeds it leads.” The moral bankruptcy of the journalist class is more and more evident every day.

I want change. The bottom 50% of this nation’s citizens have been shorn like sheep over and over again. It’s time for fairness and above all justice, long prison sentences for the malefactors who destroyed our economy, were bailed out by the government, and now enjoy huge profits. This is the antithesis of justice, a Bizarro society in which up is down and justice is for the “little people” (the ones that build and maintain this country by their hard work and honesty).

Here is Jack Shafer discussing his views of demonstrations. I suggest you go to Reuters and read the whole thing. Shafer is sort of a dinosaur from a different era but he does appear to be willing to learn from experience.

How to cover a demonstration. Or not. By Jack Shafer from Reuters –

The organizers of Occupy Wall Street (or non-organizers, as they would prefer it) have shown real media savvy by staging their demo where the network cameras and the New York Times are. Anything that happens in New York (especially Brooklyn!) is considered by New York media operations to be 100 times more interesting than anything that happens anywhere on the other side of the Hudson River. So what if the Occupy Wall Street message is muddled? The OWS pictures and energy are fresh, mostly because a mass, ongoing demo in New York is a relative novelty. How else to explain the New York Daily News‘ fevered blog coverage today: “Here’s the scene at Zuccotti Park. It is packed. There are about 3,000 people here.” No kidding?! 3,000?! That’s like the attendance at a Midwest high school football championship game!

The press corps would probably be doing more toe-dipping than immersion in its Occupy Wall Street coverage if not for the way it underestimated the rise of the Tea Party over the past couple of years. Just because a group’s message skews toward the inchoate and the emotional doesn’t mean that it doesn’t represent a worthy point of view. The non-organizers of the Occupy Wall Street have deliberately embraced this thought. As long as cameras are counting bodies and recording slogans, the harder work of defining the message can be postponed. The more important task is to introduce people who share frustrations to one another. One measure of OWS’s successful strategy is that labor unions are now joining the “movement.”

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Are Lion Burgers in Poor Taste?

On By southwerkIn News2 Comments

Sometimes something happens that catches your attention. This is it.

I laughed when I first heard this. Why the fuss, I thought, calling a fancy burger, a lion burger is hardly crime. Then I read the article. The burgers are 80% lion meat. I didn’t know you could get it. I can’t figure out why you would want to get it.

So, my second thought was, well maybe, a lion killed his sister and this is revenge. Not a good reason to eat lion, but better than nothing. Nope, no family losses to lions. What does that leave? Is he allergic to cats?

This is just a bad idea. Get a regular burger, call it a lion kill burger, a lion victory over some beefy animal. We have lots of beefy animals and very few lions.

I suppose we should ask at some point – is it ethical to eat lion meat or to sell it? If you believe that meat eating is okay, eating lion is probably okay save from an aesthetic point of view. Currently the lion is not an endangered species although I have confidence that human greed and incompetence will eventually get it there.

James Pilant

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Some You Tube Video’s You May Find Interesting in the Context of Business Law

On By southwerkIn Teaching

This first selection is a documentary telling the story of how General Motors bought out the public transit systems particularly cable cars and replaced them with bus lines. It’s an older documentary but it’s a good one. You should watch it if only for the scene of the cable cars being put to the torch.

Documentary Film Video General Motors History = Taken for a Ride.flv

This documentary discusses whether faults in the design played a major role in the loss of the ship.

Titanic’s Achilles Heel (2007) History Channel

This one is about an unusual fire in a high rise building in Hong Kong. If you are interested in fire investigation, this one is fascinating.

Blueprint For Disaster – S02E05 – Hong Kong Inferno

Try these three on for size. Remember the rules on tort liability from your business law class and see if you can tell which ones apply.

James Pilant

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Is a New Movement in American Politics Being Born?

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

I have been thinking about whether or not the Wall Street Protests now spreading nation wide are the beginning of a significant turning point in American history.

I believe the answer is “probably.” I would prefer a ringing “Yes, this is it!” but after the Obama campaign of 2008, I have lost faith in what are supposed to historical turning points. In that case, we elected a leader who promised real change but who turned out to be a pitiful caricature of his promises. I remember reading Will Durant, an essay he wrote after he felt the disappointment of Woodrow Wilson’s Administration. The Progressives, Durant among them, came out and fought for Wilson’s election only to find he had only limited use for them and their policies. He wrote that you can’t place dependence on any one man when you are part of a political movement. I forgot that lesson of history during the 2008 election. I promise I will not be so foolish again.

But this new movement has several things going for it. One is timing. The United States is suffering under a recession which is highly likely to turn into a full scale depression with the big D. The people of this country who are witnessing the day to day collapse of small businesses, they personally out of work or having direct knowledge of their friends and family out of work are not beguiled by the word of record corporate profits. That money does not flow to them and they are well aware of it. (You are aware the bottom 50% of the citizens of our great democracy have 2.5% of the wealth?)

My local paper is replete with stories of how the real estate market has turned or will turn around – all this while a rational person watches housing prices continue to fall. The local real estate captive paper is more useful for training a dog than as a provider of useful information.

Another thing the movement has going for it is the ability to use the new media effectively. I use a desktop computer and that is the end of my desire for electronics. I don’t want to be communicated with all the time. I like my privacy. But these individuals are quite clever with these new devices using them in a manner more advanced than those who advocated change this Spring in the Middle East and China. They have an amazing web presence.

My third and last reason for the movement’s likely success is the international political climate. The neoliberals of the Chicago School of Economics have been driven from South America and their policies found to be the height of madness and lunacy in Ireland and Iceland. The great philosophical adventure of free market absolutism is dying although I am well aware this beast of prey still has teeth to harm the middle class and poor. Their corporate support is unabated and the money they continue to receive from the looney billionaires who feel oppressed will continue. But being repudiated in much of the world is going to cause the movement many problems most of them long term.

So, I have some hope and a little faith. This may be a turning point in American politics.

James Pilant

Sara Kenigsberg writing in the Huffington Post has a new article:

Occupy Wall Street Protests Ignite Progressive Political Fire In Washington

Leaders at the conference also pressed progressives to focus their energy beyond Obama, highlighting broad dissatisfaction with an administration that has repeatedly derided liberals, dismissing many of the activists present at the conference as “the professional left.” The message from progressive leaders — who included Jones, economist Robert Reich and The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel, among others — was clear: Neither political party in Washington is listening to working Americans struggling through the worst recession since the Great Depression. Progressives will have to continue hosting events like Occupy Wall Street that bring voters into the streets and pressure political leaders to take action on the jobs crisis. Progressive members of Congress have already taken note, with the Progressive Caucus — the largest alliance of House liberals — endorsing Occupy Wall Street amid the conference cheerleading.

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Why Young Adults Are Walking Away From Church by Christian Piatt

On By southwerkIn Opinion

In a column in Huffington Post, Christian Piatt discusses the why behind the exodus of the young from church.

Here’s my favorite paragraph –

Alisa Harris’ memoir, “Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics,” reflects on the apparent cultural, spiritual and economic desert time in which we find ourselves. We have witnessed the carnage of a financial system that was intended to perpetually buoy a nation, but whose “invisible hand” has instead crushed the dreams of millions. We’ve watched as the two-headed political serpent attacks itself until it is impotent. We’ve seen religious figures scandalize their institutions empty, as a generation walks away in search of something more relevant to their daily struggle.

Church attendance has fallen dramatically over the last twenty years. In 2005, Protestants represented half those practicing a religion in the United States for the first time.

What’s going on?

I see two trends. The mainline Protestant churches continue to bleed membership. The evangelical movement has hit a wall in recruitment and can neither maintain its growth and or maintain its current numbers. The second trend is new. I suspect that it has a great deal to do with the impact of the political action on a church organization. It is probably a delight to go out and organize precincts handing out conservative literature instead of sitting through a boring sermon, after all, politics is a lot easier than Christianity. But for many the Christian call remains a powerful inducement and a church that acts as a political action committee has little time for gospel issues.

I do not see these trends reversing although I suspect the mainline bleed has to end at some point.

James Pilant

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Free Trade, What a Joke

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

Beat the Press has a wonderful comment which I print in full below –

Why can’t the NYT just call the trade agreements being sent to the senate “trade” agreements? Why does it feel the need to mislead readers in the headline and several times in the article itself by calling them “free trade” agreements?

These deals do not free all trade. There will still be plenty of protectionist barriers left in place that will make it difficult for doctors, lawyers and other professionals from these countries from working in the United States. Furthermore the deals actually increase protectionism in the areas of patents and copyrights, which is one of their main purposes.

Presumably the NYT approves of these deals which is why it blesses them as “free trade” agreements, but this sort of editorializing should be left to the opinion pages.

He’s absolutely right. Our wonderful corporate press has decided that we must be led by the nose to eat our oatmeal and swallow another free trade deal. The United States will insist that these nations observe our patent and copyright laws however ridiculous they have bccome and in return American corporations will move jobs and money to their countries to escape American law.

Now, if you’re thinking about this, you might say “James, they want to move somewhere with more American law but at the same time with a lot less American law?” Exactly. You see our giant corporate sleaze operation wants other nations to have to protect their intellectual property interests while using them to evade American environmental and labor law.

Some doctrinal looney decided that free trade is always a good thing, and since our media, government and corporate leadership tend to act as a group of not very smart but greedy second graders, we’re going to get shafted again.

James Pilant

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Richard Eskow Explains the Central Demand of the Wall Street Protests – SANITY

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

Richard Eskow has written an article describing the Wall Street Protestors’ demands in one word – Sanity. Here’s a small sample from the article –

Here’s Occupy Wall Street’s “One Demand”: Sanity

Here’s how insane this country has become. You can find “liberal” pundits and leaders from both parties on every channel who will condemn American homeowners as morally bankrupt and unworthy of help. But the banks they trusted, who sold them mortgages on the false promise that real estate values would rise forever, and who then when on a crime spree, walked away free. And their CEOs are broacast and quoted as they were legitimate, mainstream American voices.

That’s insane.

While the middle class dies and the ranks of the poor swell, this country is talking about cutting the government’s spending. While one home in four is underwater, this country’s worried about the financial health of banks. While we fight two unnecessary wars, war criminals like Dick Cheney are given television platforms as if they were simply representing a different political point of view.

That’s insane.

I find these words compelling. I was reading the news when I came across an article in which Dick Cheney suggested that Barack Obama owed the previous administration an apology for criticizing their abandonment of civilized rules and their willingness to torture suspects. That is the world we live in, a place where we have prosecuted and executed a Japanese during the Second World War for waterboarding Americans but have no historical memory to realize it is a war crime. Currently the new media treats things like war crimes as matters of opinion, not facts based on law.

He’s quite right about the media finding certain points of view unpalatable. If tea party republicans threaten to destroy the credit of the United States it cannot be just their fault but the fault of both parties because that is the media narrative – both sides are corrupt and incompetent, a plague on both their houses. My loathing for the ineffectual Democratic Party can be noted by any reader but I can’t help but notice that in earlier debt ceiling votes the Democrats had no held the country as hostage. However, this simple fact could not be mentioned in media accounts because both sides “must” by definition be at fault.

It’s time for sanity, for reliance on the facts and a willingness to speak them. No she said – he said narrative, in which a media personality with the brain power of a small flower explains the horse race elements of a policy dispute but a real discussion in which the impact on Americans of the middle class are honestly discussed.

We can live in a world where things make sense, where justice matters and the media has a legitimate role to play in the political discussion that does no involve false equivalencies.

I strongly sympathize with the Wall Street Protestors. There is going to be a lot more of this. This is just the beginning. Those that make fun of the American Spring are out of touch with America and history.

History is in motion, not with the tired policies of our current place holder in the White House but with the disaffected and the unemployed, those that know the system no longer works.

James Pilant

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Catherine Crier Attacks Conservative Dogma About Adam Smith

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
Adam Smith; engraving
Image via Wikipedia

In an article in Huffington Post, Catherine Crier finds the Tea Party and Conservative view of Adam Smith and his doctrines to be ridiculous. In her interpretation (and mine), Adam Smith was at one with the principles of the mixed economy, that is, some regulation and some economic freedom. Here’s two key paragraphs –

Just as Jeffersonian democracy operates best on a small scale, Adam Smith believed his self-correcting free markets were ideal for small businesses in a domestic economy. Integrated in their communities, these businesses would be influenced directly by the needs and demands of consumers, and any dangerous or abusive conduct would rarely affect the broader economy. But Smith treated large, powerful companies very differently. He said big business was led by “an order of men…that generally have an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public”, and he referred to powerful corporations (then known as joint stock companies) as “unaccountable sovereigns” that were as dangerous to free markets as tyrannical governments. Unrestrained, they had the power to shape society and governments for their own purposes, and consumers would pay for “all the extraordinary profits” while suffering from “all the extraordinary waste”, the inherent fraud and abuse, that accompanies such immense economic power.

Smith stated emphatically that a strong government, acting through democratic and legal institutions, was the only entity capable of challenging such corporate power. Smith supported necessary government regulations, labor and human rights, public education, and progressive taxation to ease the economic and social inequities he knew would occur in a capitalist system. Without these “liberal” measures, social and political unrest would threaten a nation’s stability and his free market economy could not survive.

I have often been surprised what conservative say writers mean and what I read when I study the same text. She appears to have had the same experience. Few individuals read the Great Works of the Western World with any focus. The material is difficult and often lengthy as well but the Great Books are worth the effort.

I have long been a fan of Robert Maynard Hutchins and his belief in the importance of books and skilled reading. I have read almost a third of the books he lists at the end of his book, “How to Read a Book.” Let’s have more reading and understanding and less dogma.

James Pilant

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