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.

North Carolina Sold to Wealthy Conservative Activist? Could your state be next?

On By southwerkIn Politics

“State for Sale” reads the lead story on the Huffington Post this morning. It’s a very sad story –  how one man freed by the Citizen’s United Supreme Court to spend as much as he wants can essentially buy a state legislature.

That state legislature has now redistricted to favor conservative candidates and passed voter id laws to restrict the poor, college students and minorities from voting.

Is your state next? Of course, it is. All you need is one of the country’s wealthy “elite” and a little political ambition. Most state campaigns are only a few thousand dollars. Spend two or three times that much and the legislature will fall into your lap like a ripe apple.

What will the new legislature do? Cut university funding and repeal taxes? You bet!

This is the brave new world of Citizens United. Aren’t you glad you’ve lived to see the day when corporate personhood become the law of the land? It arms every wealthy conservative activist with the tool for victory – the power to use as much money as he wants.

James Pilant

A conservative multimillionaire has taken control in North Carolina, one of 2012’s top battleground

Even some North Carolinians associated with Jesse Helms think that Pope has gone too far. Jim Goodmon, the president and C.E.O. of Capitol Broadcasting Company, which owns the CBS and Fox television affiliates in Raleigh, says, “I was a Republican, but I’m embarrassed to be one in North Carolina because of Art Pope.” Goodmon’s grandfather A. J. Fletcher was among Helms’s biggest backers, having launched him as a radio and television commentator. Goodmon describes Pope’s forces as “anti-community,” adding, “The way they’ve come to power is to say that government is bad. Their only answer is to cut taxes.” Goodmon believes that Pope’s agenda is not even good for business, because the education cuts he’s helped bring about will undermine the workforce. “If you want to create good jobs, you need good schools,” he says. “We’re close to the bottom out of the fifty states in education spending, and if they could take it down further they would.” He says of Pope, “It’s never about making things better. It’s all about tearing the other side down.”

The article is written by Jane Mayer.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1ZjeqYjyI

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Ethics Roundup, October Second, 2011

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

I have four entries in the Ethics Roundup this week. I hope you enjoy them.

James Pilant

1. The Ethics Sage has a new post out called –

Deloitte Sued for $7.6 Billion, Accused of Missing Fraud

Steven Mintz writing as the Ethics Sage is appropriately outraged. Let me quote his concluding paragraph –

Are auditors finally going to be held accountable for their role in the financial meltdown? Time will tell but there can be no doubt some must have missed the red flags and, more important, ignored the changing business model and risks inherent in dealing with financial instruments such as sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps. Auditors are supposed to understand the environment in which their clients operate and use that knowledge and related risk assessment to determine proper audit procedures. It appears that Deloitte failed to do so and there may be other cases waiting in the wings.

2. Chris MacDonald writing in the Business Ethics Blog has a new post called –

Corporations as “People” vs. Corporations as “Persons.”

In this essay, Professor MacDonald explains corporate personhood in its two very different forms.

3. Lauren Bloom writing in her blog, deals with the downside of Henry Ford‘s creations.

Entitled – It’s amazing what can happen in 103 years.

Here’s my favorite paragraph –

Now, just a little over a century later, Americans take for granted the right to cross our country in the comfort of their automobiles, and we can make trips in hours that used to take days. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that our nation is crisscrossed with roads and bridges that require regular repair, millions are killed or injured annually in autmobile accidents, our cars are eating up the ozone layer with their toxic emissions, Americans drive instead of walking and, as a result, suffer from record levels of obesity and associated diseases, and traffic jams have become a daily nightmare. (Living in a city that’s earned the dubious distinction of having the worst traffic in America, I should know.)

4. Josephson on Business Ethics and Leadership has a fascinating article up on doctors’ conflicts of interest.

Dollars for Docs – How Industry Dollars Reach Your Doctors.

Best paragraph –

Even though such payments are legal, most medical policymakers agree that they are not ethical.  Special trips, meals, and “educational opportunities” are very common strategies that companies use to create stronger bonds with their clients, and to achieve the basic goal of any business — to sell more. In most industries, such gift-giving doesn’t raise any particular ethical red flags. But in medicine, the person getting the gifts isn’t the person taking the drugs. The person taking the drugs is you. And if your doctor has prescribed you that drug when a different drug – or no drug at all – might be the better choice, then it’s likely you’d want to know about it.

 

 

 

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California breaks from 50-state probe into mortgage lenders – via Los Angeles Times

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

This is very good news. The five major banks had been negotiating for a very broad immunity from their crimes during these last years of foreclosure. As I have pointed out many times before – here, here and here, signing false affidavits is a crime not a mistake. The banks were falsely swearing before a judge that the documents had been examined and everything was in order so that the cases could go forward. But by simply having a nobody sign a document they insured that people who owned their own homes and people that were up on the payments would be thrown out as well as those in default. That’s the idea behind affidavits, that we avoid injustice. The banks want immunity for having done these things.

The Obama Administration wants a quick settlement and no doubt is looking for “look forward, not back” scenario. I am too. I am looking forward to the day when I look back on the Obama years as an American aberration like the pet rock craze or maybe cabbage patch dolls.

The California Attorney General refuses to go along with the broad immunity agreement and wants more for the citizens of California so cruelly stolen from by these mortgage holders.  Justice has a small victory today.

James Pilant

From the Los Angeles Times –

California breaks from 50-state probe into mortgage lenders

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will no longer take part in a national foreclosure probe of some of the nation’s biggest banks, which are accused of pervasive misconduct in dealing with troubled homeowners.

Harris removed herself from talks by a coalition of state attorneys general and federal agencies investigating abusive foreclosure practices because the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers were not offering California homeowners relief commensurate to what people in the state had suffered, Harris told The Times on Friday.

The big banks were also demanding to be granted overly broad immunity from legal claims that could potentially derail further investigations into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage meltdown, Harris said.

“It has been  a process of negotiating and sitting at a table in good faith, but ultimately I have decided that we have to go our own course and take an independent path. And that decision is because we need to bring relief to Californians that is equal to the pain California experienced, and what is being negotiated now is insufficient,” Harris told The Times in an interview.

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Income Inequality Squeezes the Middle Class [via Beat the Press]

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
Inflation adjusted percentage increase in mean...
Image via Wikipedia

I couldn’t agree more. There is less of the pie for the poor and middle class. No matter what your talents and your willingness to work, how do you compete with a system that distributes income upward toward those who already have the money? Income inequality continues to squeeze the middle class perhaps eventually into its disappearance.

James Pilant

This brief comment is from a posting on Beat the Press entitled –

If Millennials Do Worse Than Their Parents, It Will Be Because Bill Gates‘ Kids Have All the Money

The Washington Post had a column by a millennial columnist complaining about the lack of opportunity. It is striking that the column never once mentioned income inequality.

There is no doubt that millennials will on average be far wealthier than their parents. Output per hour has roughly doubled over the last three decades, meaning that the real wage could be almost twice as high today as it was in 1980. Insofar as the typical millennial is not seeing the benefits of this productivity growth it is due to the fact that so much income has been redistributed upwards, not the result of any generational dynamics.

 

Here’s some more from Mother Jones, the New York Times, and Slate.

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Joe Mason for President 2012 – Strong Criticism of Obama’s Record

On By southwerkIn business ethics5 Comments

This video was not discovered by me but by James Fallows at The Atlantic. Here’s his take on the video –

The main complaint in this video is that Obama’s “conciliatory” and “reasonable” approach, far from being wise and strategically far-seeing, has proven to be simply weak and vacillating. This is related to the “chess master, or pawn?” debate about Obama’s strategy from earlier this summer.

(You should read all of Mr. Fallows comments. It’s a good essay.)

After listening to the video I was impressed. However, I am a little surprised at Joe Mason’s lack of a web footprint. For a would be presidential candidate, he barely exists in the world of the Internet. If my count is correct, I will be the third web site to feature this video. Please watch it now (just click on it).

Joe Mason for President 2012: Democratic Party Re-Nomination of Obama Challenged

(The Joe Mason video is also featured on Vote Third Party. Currently, the Joe Mason Campaign is apparently almost entirely a You Tube site.)

Whatever form, the Joe Mason campaign takes, it has a powerful criticism of the President’s leadership style. Many feel including myself that the President is a poor negotiator with few fixed beliefs of any importance.

Should this generate a primary challenge?

Absolutely.

Currently the Democratic Party essentially offers voters one thing only – they are not Republicans. Apparently, many Democrats think this is enough. They are so confident in this strategy that they toss their allies particularly Progressives and Liberals over the side with regularity and contempt. Further, they are absent any ideas on how to help the great middle class survive the current cycle of economic catastrophe.

The President is a pure example of this. The main and most effective threats as well as a flurry of vicious insults of his Presidency have been delivered to the liberal wing of the Democratic party to force them to get in line. They are apparently the only recipients of this kind of treatment, the Republicans hearing little but kind words.

You see, to politicians like Obama, those who have voted for the Democrats in the past have nowhere to go. Obviously, they have to vote for him, so they can be treated with disdain.

The fear of Rick Perry, Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann will bring the reluctant party faithful crawling back on their hands and knees to the only “adult in the room.”

I don’t believe that.

We don’t have to vote for Barack Obama and a good way to let him know that is a primary challenge.

The only way that Progressives and Liberals are going to have an effective say is when these kinds of politicians are humiliated at the polls and ridiculed by the party faithful.

As long as the Progressive wing of the party votes without question for a candidate there is no influence. He who can destroy a thing has power. There are easily enough Progressive voters whose defection would defeat Democrats at the polls.

That will be painful.

But is it as painful as watching Barack Obama yield time and again to the enemies of the Middle Class? Would it be as painful as having huge, almost without precedent, majorities in the House and Senate frittered away on half measures and simple inaction for two full years? Would it be as painful as watching the nation’s first real chance at health care reform thrown away for a surrender to the drug and insurance companies modeled on an old Heritage Foundation idea? Would it be as bad as watching the President ignore campaign promise after campaign promise, these superficial promises apparently only made to bamboozle the left-wing of the party to vote for him? Would it be as bad as watching a financial élite who plunged this nation into recession be rescued with taxpayer funds from their own folly?

I tell you truly, it is awful to watch the political victories of your enemies. But there is something worse, and that is to see the people you elected, you worked for, you believed in, act against your interest and call it victory.

James Pilant

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Fukushima : simulation of dispersed radiation throughout the northern hemisphere (via canadanewslibre)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This is nice. I love pictures and this one is beautiful. Unfortunately, it is similar to the beauty of organisms on a microscopic slide that might very well be killing you.

This dispersed radiation on this graph is certainly doing you no good.

I recommend you look at the graph full size and get a grasp of the seriousness of the matter.

James Pilant

Fukushima : simulation of dispersed radiation throughout the northern hemisphere Radioactive Materials Dispersion Model by Kyushu University Researchers Friday, September 2, 2011 Using the supercomputer program called SPRINTARS, researchers at Kyushu University and Tokyo University created the simulation of how radioactive materials from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant may have dispersed throughout the northern hemisphere. The researcher say their simulation fit the actual measurements. It was published in the Scientific Onli … Read More

via canadanewslibre

Goldman Sachs Hit With More Sanctions (via Axsmith Law Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

No firm deserves sanctions more!

James Pilant

Goldman Sachs is being sanctioned by the Federal Reserve related to illegal mortgage practices, specifically robo-signing. Robo-signing is when a person signs affidavits used in a foreclosure case using someone else's name. Often these employees of banks or law firms will sign hundreds of documents in a single day – with someone else's name. … Read More

via Axsmith Law Blog

Today is the Day – Pilant’s Business Ethics is now at a new location.

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

http://pilantsbusinessethics.com/

There Were a Lot of Reasons to Move the Web Site.

On By southwerkIn business ethics3 Comments

Probably some of you are thinking why has James moved? He’s going to lose his subscriptions, his Google ranking and part of his audience is going to be unable to adapt and move on to other blogs. I might add that the weakening entries of the last few weeks while the change is underway also undercuts traffic and causes me deep concern.

But the new blog offers multiple categories on the front page and incredible flexibility on how each of those categories appear. The pages in many cases program themselves. For instance, the archives page doesn’t send you to the last few pages – it gives you an entire page of post titles

You can incorporate RSS feeds into page categories. I have already successfully done this. Essentially this means that I can feature other blogs with their most up-to-date posts. It lets me set the number of the posts up to ten and provided a description of each automatically. It updates itself every ten minutes.

When you post, the blog automatically brings up public domain pictures to use, web sites on the same subject to link to and recommends the best search terms to attach. That’s nice – extremely convenient. When a post is up and it’s clicked on, at the bottom of the post three other related posts in the blog are listed.

I want to put up the best blogs in this subject, everyone from buddies like the Ethics Sage, to the great stalwarts in the business ethics field like Chris MacDonald’s Business Ethics Blog as well as Lauren Bloom’s blog on business ethics. But I want to be cautious, other bloggers may want to limit their presence on someone else’s blog, so I’m going to prepare a presentation showing the possibilities and put it out to people I would like to feature.

Currently the new blog site looks like this. It’s kind of a mess. I don’t have a proper RSS feed for it. I am having trouble organizing some of the sections. My search engine optimization is only partly done.

Nevertheless, I am gradually working my way through all of the training film and helpful advice from the web. I have confidence that I can make it work. It’s quite an advance and I want something more. I want more people to read the blog and through it, learn of the other important blog in the business ethics world.

James Pilant

The Location of the New Site

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

Pilant’s Business Ethics

James Pilant

It needs a lot of work but the prototype is up.

Be tough and criticize me harshly!! This new blog is supposed to be an improvement in terms of looks and performance to this one, so help me make it work by letting me know what you think.

However, remember it’s not really supposed to be ready until September 1st, and I have not got the categories straightened out yet. So, I am well aware I need to work on that.

Thanks!!

James Pilant

(An official and more elegant announcement will be made on the first of September.)