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.

Why This Site?

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

076A2032Why This Site?

Why should you read my site and subscribe to it? What makes me different?

Business ethics is usually interpreted in a limited fashion. We talk about “on the job” ethics, that is, personal ethics. We talk about corporate ethics, that is, organizational ethics. And we discuss the ethics of economic systems.

That’s where I live – economic systems. That is where the big crises are.

1. Multinational corporations are on the attack on national sovereignty. They want to be independent of the nations where they exist and want the power to sue and overrule laws.

2. Businesses are continually, often successfully turning public resources into private money.

3. Free market fundamentalists are invading every sphere of endeavor with a doctrine as oppressive and odious as any totalitarian government.

Those are the big issues. They are hard to talk about.

It’s not popular. You don’t get hired as a consultant when you imply that businesses are unpatriotic, that they don’t have a right to public resources and that the free market is not the cure for all that ails society.

But I’m not going to shut up.

Join me – read my stuff. Join me in the struggle for justice and fairness.

James Alan Pilant

Do the American People Need to Become Re-introduced to Science?

On By southwerkIn Opinion7 Comments
Global warming ubx

Image via Wikipedia

Seth Mnookin: The Autism Vaccine Controversy and the Need for Responsible Science Journalism

Last January, Andrew Wakefield, the discredited British gastroenterologist whose 1998 paper sparked the first wave of fears that vaccines might be causally connected to autism, was further disgraced when the editors of the British Medical Journal declared his work “an elaborate fraud.” (By that point, Wakefield had already forfeited his medical license for a litany of moral, ethical, and professional misdeeds — including an incident where he paid children at his young son’s birthday party to donate their blood for his experiments.) With little left to lose, Wakefield seemed to fully embrace the fringe: In June, he headlined a rally titled “The Masterplan: The Hidden Agenda for a Global Scientific Dictatorship” with a cohort of 9/11 Truthers, One World Government conspiracists, and anti-fluoridationists.

So, how are the mighty fallen. This is one of the slender reeds upon with the anti-vaccination movement rests? Has the movement slidden into Internet Conspiracy Theory? (JP)

Seth Mnookin: The Autism Vaccine Controversy and the Need for Responsible Science Journalism

 

Do the American People Need to Become Re-introduced to Science

I’m beginning to wonder.

Last winter, I was getting my haircut during a snow fall and one of the clients said “I guess that global warming is going to get us all; the he hee-hawed like a jackass.

Didn’t hear quite so many jokes during the drought last summer when in the eight county Houston area, 66 million trees are dying roughly 10% of all trees in the area.

The evidence is clear. Get some bad research, a couple of bogus think tanks and compliant media with give you equal credit with internationally renowned scientists. Using this tool, you can confuse enough of the population to keep necessary legislation or in the case in the article above vaccinations from taking place.

I’ve been in college with students studying to be scientists. (My degree is in criminal justice and speech, and I have a law degree.) I was always amazed at how hard they worked to be precise in their conclusions. Their dedication was amazing. For many it was a love of learning, of discovering, and of making a difference. That’s why they became scientists.

Hearing and reading them described as some kind of international plot to disdain God and make people give up their cars is a pretty miserable experience. It’s like hearing a good friend maligned.

Let me tell you something. I was raised in a fundamentalist church. Do you know how many times I was lied to in their literature; how often the material was simply made up whole cloth? Do you know how often when I went and studied history and science and discovered that the things they told me were non-existent or distortions of the facts? It was a regular experience.

When I compare that to the number of times that scientists have deliberately misled me in my lifetime, there is simply no contest.

You make better decisions with facts and science than you do with wishful thinking. Whether it be secondhand smoke or global warming, I’ll line up with the best knowledge available.

James Pilant

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I have my big girl pants on – but am I a “real” adult? (via Ashley Cray)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

It’s a very gradual process as you mature. By maturity I mean developing your reasoning, intelligence, learning from experience, – getting a little wisdom.

You will discover if you haven’t already that men often have difficulty transitioning and, of course, some women. They will remain forever children in a very real sense – they learn nothing and the years of high school are the greatest years of their lives.

You don’t have anything to worry about. It’s obvious you’re thinking, that means you are still developing. Thinking people do quite well when it comes to maturing and developing their adult persona.

Of course, there is always going to be one problem.

Let me tell you a story. — I was at a home for the elderly. There was a man there about 75, very conservatively dressed. I actually seem to recall him wearing a Homburg. He was not a resident. He was a visitor. He was pushing his mother in a wheel chair. She was berating him for his shortcomings like he was ten years old. I remember sitting there thinking, “It’s nevery going to stop. There are going to be people who will never see me as an adult.”

You’ll have the same problem. There will always be people who don’t want to let that child transform into an adult. Indulge them a little. Old age is rough. If you have ever seen a fifty year old business man wearing leathers and riding a Harley, you have some idea of how rough it is for many people to adapt.

But once again, you’re not someone that I need to worry about.

Best wishes,

James Alan Pilant

I have my big girl pants on - but am I a "real" adult? The other day I stumbled upon a blog post from All Groan Up called “Ill feel like an Adult When…” This realllllly  got me thinking about being a “real” adult.  I dont look like an adult.  I dont act like an adult.  But my age deems me as being a “Young Adult.” I pay my bills. I have a mortgage. I have a car payment. I vote. I go to the Doctors office alone. My insurance is in my name. I do my own grocery shopping. I have a career-type job. … Read More

via Ashley Cray

New Zealand playing offside? (via Integrity Talking Points)

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Courtesy of KNOL Google

The problem of tax havens has worsened each year with more and more countries making relatively small sums of money protecting enormous sums from taxation in their home nations. It is hardcore unethical both for the nations doing it and for the people and corporations taking advantage of it.

The author here worries whether or not New Zealand will choose the ethical or the profitable path. It’s a good article.

By the way, I have read several entries from this blog. I am impressed and I added the site to my favorites.

James Pilant

15 April 2011 Is New Zealand a tax haven?   By opposing the conversion of the United Nations Tax Committee into a specialist enforcement body, New Zealand is seen as a supporter of tax havens and those who move illicit funds into such jurisdictions.  Nicholas Shaxson, a campaigner and author of books about tax avoidance claims New Zealand is “letting down the developed world” and within a few years will join rogue nations listed on the Financial … Read More

via Integrity Talking Points

DEP, “Don’t Expect Protection”

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
DEP, “Don’t Expect Protection”

pennsylvania-enviornment_0Fracking’s Toxic Secrets: Lack Of Transparency Over Natural Gas Drilling Endangers Public Health, Advocates Say

Some frustrated residents and anti-fracking activists are finding new names to call the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) — “Don’t Expect Protection,” “Department of Energy Production” — according to Dana Dolney of ShaleTest, a nonprofit that provides free air and water quality testing for low-income residents near natural gas wells.

The department is taking heat for providing what critics see as incomplete water quality test results to property owners who are concerned about pollution from nearby fracking operations. Withholding such information, the critics say, could endanger residents’ health.

“Based on what is happening in the Marcellus Shale, we saw a huge desperate need for this kind of testing,” Dolney said. “We wouldn’t have to do what we do if it wasn’t for the failures of the DEP.”

The DEP and natural gas companies are defending the testing methods, asserting that the contaminants most likely to be associated with fossil fuel extraction are included in what is shared with the DEP and, subsequently, with homeowners.

Still, critics suggest the purported “filtering” of testing data is just one of the ways people are left in the dark about the assortment of heavy metals and other toxic contaminants that may be in their air and water as a result of drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other phases of natural gas production. Recent studies have identified more than 600 chemicals used throughout the process of natural gas production, and often left undisclosed by companies. Additionally, natural but equally hazardous substances can be released from the wells.

Fracking’s Toxic Secrets: Lack Of Transparency Over Natural Gas Drilling Endangers Public Health, Advocates Say

Not telling people the information you don’t want them to have is lying. It’s just easier to justify to yourself. This is what happens when an agency is captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate.

James Pilant

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Are Your Children Likely to Make More Money than You?

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

No. The statistics are clear.  The ability to change class to move upward is very, very limited. Most people on average and most commonly will make about the same money as their parents.

Why are we in this situation? Well, education is no longer a likely venue to higher income. The privileged have access to Ivy League schools and privately educate their children from the nursery to college. Currently we have what is essentially two education systems in the United States, one for the upper class and public education for everyone else. God help anyone self-educated like Abraham Lincoln. People like that aren’t even in the ball game.

What else? Well there’s hiring practices. The upper middle class reassured by such books as “Emotional Intelligence” hire on the basis of comfort. And comfort by and large means hiring your own social class. It diminishes the importance of ability and makes skilled work annoying to others.

Contacts are another critical factor. I’ve heard many people say, “It’s not what you can do, it’s who you know.” I don’t think that knowing the plant manager is that big a deal down in the lower class where I dwell. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about access to Congressmen and Governors. I’m talking about the heads of corporations and the deans of business schools. I’m talking about knowing the players in the financial sector, of knowing where the levers are when it comes to getting loans, jobs and influence. Those are the contacts that make a difference.

Tell me, what’s all A’s at state U, compared to Harvard or Georgetown? What is raw ability when you don’t golf, wear the right clothes or speak the language of the upper class? What is your chance of moving up in the world when maybe you know a state representative and the other guy has a letter from the White House?

We can do better.

Ability should be the measure of success. Social class shouldn’t be a burden borne only by the workers. The cozy club atmosphere of the privileged should be open to all comers.

James Pilant

Here is the article title and a paragraph explaining the numbers behind my claims.

The Rise and Consequences of Inequality in the United States
Alan B. Krueger
Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers
January 12, 2012

More research has been done on intergenerational income mobility. Studies find that your
parent’s income is a good predictor of your subsequent income. Studies that use income data
averaged over longer periods of time for parents and children tend to find higher correlations
between parental and children’s income. A reasonable summary is that the correlation between
parents’ and their children’s income is around 0.50. This is remarkably similar to the correlation
that Sir Francis Galton found between parents’ height and their children’s height over 100 years
ago. This fact helps to put in context what a correlation of 0.50 implies. The chance of a person
who was born to a family in the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution rising to the top 10
percent as an adult is about the same as the chance that a dad who is 5’6” tall having a son who
grows up to be over 6’1” tall. It happens, but not often.

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Bible College a Scam?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

01Bible College a Scam?

One of the chief problems is business ethics today is the seizure of public resources by private interests. Hospitals, schools, public parks, etc. are all considered fair game for private ownership. Here we also have a conversion, public trust into private profit. It is not unusual for a minister or other church authority to misuse their authority, their standing in the community for profit. The story is not new but this episode is particularly cruel. This was not a case of embezzlement or working the elderly for a place in their will, this was a form of slavery using the power of the federal government as an enforcement mechanism to avoid compliance with the law.

Students from foreign countries came to the United States in the belief that they would receive a Christian education, instead they were given hours and hours of work each week while being denied decent housing and an education.

It is the understanding in this country that both churches and religions are not for-profit organizations. This is not always the case but it is the expectation. This “Christian” organization appears to have been a money making bonanza utilizing foreign labor at a small fraction of the minimum wage under the threat of expulsion from the United States for non-compliance.

This is a business ethics problem pure and simple. A Christian College was used as a cover for a racket. Religion was used as a cover for crime. Public respect and status were converted into cash. This college, if the testimony of these students is accurate, was as much about religion as Bernie Madoff was about legitimate investments. The scam played it from two angles, a reliance on the cover provided by both American respect for religion and college education.

This does little for the American image overseas that we treat visitors to our country so brutally. It is embarrassing but I am even more worried about the outcome of the case. This has become increasingly a nation with two tiers of justice, one for the majority of us and another for the well placed and influential. Our villain here is in the influential group. What will it be, probation and community service? Will they stall the sentencing until the public outrage subsides and something appropriate for an upper class member of society can be worked out?

I am not hopeful. I have seen who gets prosecuted and what sentences are given for a good number of years now.

We only get a little justice.

James Pilant

South Carolina Bible College President Busted For Slavery, Forced Labor | Crooks and Liars

The president of a South Carolina Bible college was charged last week with essentially treating foreign students as slaves by forcing them to perform work for little or no pay.

According to The Sun News, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Cathedral Bible College President Reginald Wayne Miller, accusing him of forced labor.

An affidavit included with the complaint said that students “described a pervasive climate of fear in which their legal status as non-immigrant students was in constant jeopardy, at the sole discretion of Dr. Miller, who threatened expulsion and therefore termination of their legal presence in the United States for noncompliance with his demands.”

Students told investigators that classes at the school “were not real,” and that the real purpose of the school was to force them to work over the maximum of 20 hours per week that federal law allows for student visas. The students alleged that Miller often forced them to live in substandard conditions without hot water, heat or air-conditioning.

via South Carolina Bible College President Busted For Slavery, Forced Labor | Crooks and Liars.

Some Additional Information: The Raw Story.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/25/sc-pastor-accused-of-turning-bible-college-into-forced-labor-camp-for-foreign-students/

Miller was arrested in 2006 on charges of lewdness and prostitution after he exposed himself to an undercover officer in a bathhouse at Myrtle Beach State Park. Records indicated that Miller participated in a pre-trial intervention program, allowing his record to be expunged.

During a Friday appearance at Florence Federal Court House, a federal judge set bail at $250,000. He was also ordered to stay away from Cathedral Bible College, and its students. The former pastor could spend 20 years in jail if convicted.

From Around the Web.

From the web site, World.Time.Com.

http://world.time.com/2013/02/20/irish-prime-minister-apologizes-for-forced-labor-in-magdalene-laundries/

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny made a historic apology on Tuesday to the survivors of the notorious Magdalene Laundries and the families of more than 10,000 women who were forced into unpaid labor from 1922 to 1996. In an emotional speech to the Irish Parliament, Kenny told the surviving women and their families “this is a national shame for which I say again I am deeply sorry and offer my full and heartfelt apologies.”

For more than seven decades in the 20th century, thousands of unmarried mothers, women who had been sexually abused and young girls who had grown up in the care of the state lived and worked in the Irish Magdalene Laundries operated by four orders of Catholic nuns. Ignored by Irish society, 26.5% of these “fallen women” were sent there by the Irish state to work without pay for an average of six months. The Irish government had previously denied playing a role in sending young women to work in laundries.

The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal (via The Council on Foreign Relations)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

 This article explains and summarizes the nuclear treaty between the two countries.

This treaty is the flashpoint for the controversy and public outcry over corruption in the Indian government. More than two years after the agreement was ratified by both nations, diplomatic cables from the American State Department detailed vote buying in the Indian legislature to get the treaty passed. Wikileaks published the cables and their impact in India has been major. It has been so important that it has pushed much of the coverage of the nuclear meltdown in Japan off the front pages.

Please read the summary.

James Pilant

The U.S. Congress on October 1, 2008, gave final approval to an agreement facilitating nuclear cooperation between the United States and India. The deal is seen as a watershed in U.S.-India relations and introduces a new aspect to international nonproliferation efforts. First introduced in the joint statement released by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 18, 2005, the deal lifts a three-decade U.S. moratorium on nuclear trade with India. It provides U.S. assistance to India’s civilian nuclear energy program, and expands U.S.-India cooperation in energy and satellite technology. But critics in the United States say the deal fundamentally reverses half a century of U.S. nonproliferation efforts, undermines attempts to prevent states like Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons, and potentially contributes to a nuclear arms race in Asia. “It’s an unprecedented deal for India,” says Charles D. Ferguson, science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “If you look at the three countries outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)-Israel, India, and Pakistan-this stands to be a unique deal.”

Barry Lynn at INET, Decoupling our Corporations (via Rortybomb)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I have been assigning some of my students the mission of discovering how the Japanese disasters are effecting the United States. This would be a good place for them to start.

The invaluable web site, Rortybomb, talks about the problem of specific parts made largely or only in Japan and what that lack is doing here in the United States.

Unfortunately it is likely we are only seeing the beginning of the dislocations caused by the loss of Japanese manufacturing.

James Pilant

If you are not subscribing to Rortybomb, you should be.

As you may know, Toyota has many plants in the United States. This kind of regional diversification has to be good for the company in the wake of the Japanese earthquake, right? Even though the Japanese plants are in trouble the US ones can up production, hopefully making as many cars as the Japanese-based plants cant, balancing out what is a scary time for the company. Well, no. The US ones cant run without specific parts from Japan, and since … Read More

via Rortybomb

Real White Male Privilege?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

042-1Real White Male Privilege?

I knew something like this was going on. I’ve seen my female fellow students get low level employment while the males went into management and other lucrative career paths. But I didn’t know it was this bad.

But there was an experience of mine that bears a little on this. I am a white male but one of my proudest accomplishments was being invited to join the Black Student Society where I went to college. You see, they had lost their certification as a campus organization and I worked to get it back – so I was invited. I was a member in good standing through thick and thin until I left for law school three years later.

And being very proud of it, I put it on my resume.

I think you can figure out the rest of the story. Only when I pulled that off my resume did I start getting responses to my job inquiries.

It’s not just women.

This is a continuing problem in business ethics. First, it’s not fair to penalize people in hiring and promotion because of their sex. Second, it’s foolish to not have your best in the most appropriate positions for skills.

Now, I want you to treat women fairly because it is right but do note that it also very foolish to discriminate in this manner.

James Pilant

For much more detail, please go to the web site below –

Female ‘A+’ Students End Up Making As Much As Male ‘C’ Students.

From Around the Web.

From the web site, Why Evolution is True.

There are some interesting comments here on the same subject.

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/new-study-shows-gender-bias-against-female-students/