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.
I would have preferred there be some reference to business ethics in the article because taxing corporations has moral implications. Nevertheless, my good readers are certainly capable of reading between the lines and getting the implications here. James Pilant
In the last post I talked about why so many people endorse the idea of completely scrapping corporation tax. To briefly reiterate the main arguments:
We don’t know who mostly bears the costs of corporation tax. So if what we really want to do is tax the rich beneficiaries of corporate profits, then we’d be better off raising capital gains and dividend taxes (or even the personal income tax at the high end).
Corporation tax doesn’t work very well to discourage negative externalities like carbon emissions – a specific carbon tax would do this more effectively.
As I said last time, it seems to be economic gospel, even on the left, that the corporation tax is a ‘bad’ tax.
‘Revenge Porn Bill Signed in California: Another Sign of Declining Civility in Society
Are ‘Revenge Porn’ Postings Protected Free Speech? On October 1, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that would make it illegal for people to humiliate ex-lovers by posting indecent photos or videos online. California is the second U.S. state to criminalize the act of revenge porn, though as a misdemeanor. New Jersey considers it a felony. Under the new California law targeting “revenge porn,” distributing sexual images “with the intent to cause serious emotional distress” would carry a fine of as much as $1,000 and as long as six months in jail — even if the pictures were originally taken with consent. The law bans only images taken by the person posting them, meaning that self-photos aren’t protected. That’s good news for Anthony Weiner, I guess. The posting of ‘revenge porn’ photos by a disgruntled ex of a past partner illustrates a new low in civility in our country. It seems as though all too many have lost their sense of right and wrong — they act only in their own selfish interests. And, all too many have lost the ability to reason ethically, assuming they ever possessed that skill. Whether it’s random and senseless violence against another, road rage, cyber-bullying, or other offensive acts that are occurring with increased frequency in our society, the U.S., as a country, has lost its moral compass. Whether it’s gratuitous violence, sexually-charged images, hateful speech, and downright rudeness, the U.S. has morphed into a narcissistic country that values self-indulgence above common sense and common decency. Some will say the generalized examples I cite are the exception to civil behavior and not the rule. I say it is becoming the norm with increasing frequency and the fact that we tolerate it as a society reflects our willingness to go along with declining ethics rather than fight the good fight. The fact that Hollywood and the social media continue to spark the flames of hedonistic behavior simply means that these institutions believe they are giving us, or being used, in ways that we want. What about the First Amendment issues? The First Amendment guarantees you the right to post naked pictures of your exes on the Internet. Here’s exactly what the First Amendment of the Constitution says: The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Despite this guarantee, courts have established exceptions to free speech, notably defamation and child pornography. Revenge porn could be held up as another exception, since it obviously wasn’t considered by the framers of our Constitution (even if courts have ruled that some “speech” such as Facebook ‘Likes’ is protected by the Constitution.) Victims of vindictive pornography distribution, aka revenge porn, are often women who originally shared naked pictures of themselves with their boyfriends. The distribution of the photos online can be thoroughly humiliating for the woman in those pictures. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the right to some pretty offensive behavior including, in March 2011, that that noxious, highly offensive protests conducted outside solemn military funerals are protected by the First Amendment when the protests take place in public and address matters of public concern. In that decision, America’s highest court ruled the Westboro Baptist Church has a Constitutional right to hold hateful protests outside military funerals. In order to withstand Constitutional challenge, the ‘revenge porn’ law in California was narrowly construed to require the person who posted revenge porn to do so with the intent to “cause serious emotional distress.” The final law also says the other person had to actually experience emotional distress. Well that’s great news. More money for the lawyers to hash out in court exactly what these terms mean. The bottom line is ethical behavior cannot be legislated. Our desire to act ethically comes from within and not because of an externally exposed measure of acceptable behavior. Each individual must monitor his or her behavior and always strive to act in accordance with societal norms. No one is perfect. However, the ethical person constantly questions his or her own behavior and evaluates against the norms including honesty, integrity, fairness, respect, and responsibility. As for our First Amendment right, there is a difference between what we have a right to do and what the right thing to do is. Blog posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on October 3, 2013
In America, the very notion of a relatively safe and secure retirement is under relentless attack, and much of this broadside is coming from well-monied corporate interests, aided by supportive far-right politicians.
This is not by accident. Only when you connect the dots do you see a unifying force, and it’s very, very political. We haven’t been comprehending how the pieces come together because, frankly, concerns about America’s retirement funding crisis tend to be examined in silos, such as (1) Social Security; (2) public employee pension funds; and (3) 401(k) balances.
I’ve written a lot about the retirement funding crisis on this blog, but I’ve never pulled together some of the interrelated political threads. Here’s a start:
1. Attack on Social Security
Let’s open with the attack on Social Security. In reality, Social Security is among our most stable benefit programs. Although some of the concerns about the future stability…
We are living in an unequal, plutocratic society, and it is feeding an emotional dimension characterized by a dismissive lack of caring by many of the super rich and an angry, dog-eat-dog worldview for everyone else. So many of the employment policy issues I write about on this blog must be viewed against this broader, ugly canvass.
First, let’s establish the factual baseline: America’s wealth gap has reached extreme proportions. As Connie Stewart reports for the Los Angeles Times:
If you feel you’re falling behind in the income race, it’s not just your imagination. The wealth gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99% in the U.S. is as wide as it’s been in nearly 100 years, a new study finds.
For starters, between 1993 and 2012, the real incomes of the 1% grew 86.1%, while those of the 99% grew 6.6%, according to the study, based on Internal Revenue Service…
Lauren Bloom is an interfaith minister and attorney who focuses on professional and personal integrity. Her career has been devoted to helping business professionals earn and maintain the trust of their clients, cutomers, colleagues and associates. An internationally-recognized expert on business and professional ethics.
I follow Ms. Bloom’s page. If you have a continuing interest in business ethics, I would recommend you follow the web site as well.
Working in a corporate environment is a two-way street. The leaders have to respect the team and vice versa. This involves knowing the correct way to behave in a professional setting. Many younger team members may come to the team with fewer boundaries than their older counterparts and there have been clashes in the corporate environment due to these differences. Most of the time, this includes comments that are too personal or inappropriate, taking breaks that are too long or coming in late every day. For a business to operate at its full potential, the employees have to be on the same page about what is expected, encouraged or discouraged. This helps to create harmony and expectations that everyone can live up to.
I fully agree. There can be few in business who would not benefit from following the Ethics Sage’s writing.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work these simple principles out. So why do highly educated professionals and seasoned businessmen and entrepreneurs make the mistake of forgetting business ethics? It requires the courage of your convictions and a good moral base in the individuals. Dishonesty does give you cash in the short term, much like sawing off the branch that you are sitting on gives you timber for a short time. So it will always be a temptation to those with weak morals coupled with financial pressure. In many cases it takes raw courage to be honest, but out of the troubles that businesses go through, its reputation grows, and businesses with good reputations are successful businesses. Naturally, you still need a good business plan and a hungry market, as well as ethics, to be successful. But good ethics are vital to keeping you successful.
From the web site, The Importance of Ethics for Professional Accountants
As accounting requires skills and ethical familiarity to a great extent for that ethics are most important for professional accountants. The concept of right or wrong can be cleared by learning about ethical terms thoroughly. To make correct decisions, they help you to make your personal guts strong. The Winnipeg accountants seem familiar in ethical terms and you may take a look at their ethical behavior to explore your knowledge. You may get aware just by searching out Winnipeg Business Directoryand choosing the accountant’s category will lead you to all accountants of Winnipeg. When an accountant keeps ethical factors in his mind, he can easily come out from any pressurized situation. After being a proper professional accountant by applying ethical condition at yourself, you will never give your big attention in satisfying investor by keeping up income growth. This attitude make you think for long term as all successful organizations manage for long terms, not for short term. In case of fraud, your ethical behavior makes you able to confront your special relations. You get an inner strength by concentrating on ethical factors and any fraud point you do never ignore. As an accountant, ethics becomes your first priority you can confidently treat with ethical dilemmas and areas without focusing on black and white. You feel comfortable meeting with grey areas people. After getting informed about accountant’s basics and ethical skills you should present your services for public to be useful and popular as well. You can advertise your skills by using online business directory just get listed in Winnipeg Business Directory as this business directory is providing a gorgeous access its visitors to get in touch with each other regarding relevant business, service or product need. You never under represent your time for implementing required terms. You never compromise with ethical factors and will easily go along with the crowd to do what your managers tell.
27-year old gets 20 years for half an ounce of pot
While Colorado and Washington have de-criminalized recreational use of marijuana and twenty states allow use for medical purposes, a Louisiana man was sentenced to twenty years in prison in New Orleans criminal court for possessing 15 grams, .529 of an ounce, of marijuana.
Corey Ladd, 27, had prior drug convictions and was sentenced September 4, 2013 as a “multiple offender to 20 years hard labor at the Department of Corrections.”
Marijuana use still remains a ticket to jail in most of the country and prohibition is enforced in a highly racially discriminatory manner. A recent report of the ACLU, “The War on Marijuana in Black and White,” documents millions of arrests for marijuana and shows the “staggeringly disproportionate impact on African Americans.”
Nationwide, the latest numbers from the FBI report that over 762,000 arrests per year are for marijuana, almost exactly half of all drug arrests.
Even though blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates, black people are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than white people.
Yes, but is this case an anomaly in Louisiana?Apparently not – from further down in the same article –
In Louisiana, a person can get up to six months in jail for first marijuana conviction, up to five years in prison for the second conviction and up to twenty years in prison for the third. In fact, the Louisiana Supreme Court recently overturned a sentence of five years as too lenient for a fourth possession of marijuana and ordered the person sentenced to at least 13 years.
It’s time for a change. It’s time for some kind of sanity. Let’s start with tough sentences for people who hurt other people and gentler sentences for those who do not harm others.
Is this a business ethics issue? Yes, it ties in with the issues of private prisons and, in particular, the issue of policing for profit, the nauseating practice of police confiscating property often under the threat of filing charges.
The war on drugs had failed. It has filed monumentally, catastrophically; it is a self inflicted scourge upon this nation.
When policies fail over and over again, isn’t it time to try something new?
It’s time. It’s time to build a better nation, a better place to live. And we can do that by cutting our ridiculous rates of imprisonment and building the schools, the roads, the universities, the monuments and all the paraphernalia of a great nation. Let’s do it now.
James Pilant
Now, if you have fantasies of marijuana being one of the four horseman of the apocalypse in America – watch the film below and have your beliefs confirmed –
In claims that are in vast contrast to those of the Drug Enforcement Administrationand other government entities, the government-funded National Cancer Institute has a report published on its website which proclaims several benefits of cannabis and cannabinoids, citing numerous scientific studies to back their claims. The page was updated last month.
The report starts by explaining what cannabinoids are;”Cannabinoids are a group of 21-carbon-containing terpenophenolic compounds produced uniquely by Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica species”, the report continues, “These plant-derived compounds may be referred to as phytocannabinoids. Although delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the primary psychoactive ingredient, other known compounds with biologic activity are cannabinol, cannabidiol (CBD), cannabichromene, cannabigerol, tetrahydrocannabivarin, and delta-8-THC. CBD, in particular, is thought to have significantanalgesic and anti-inflammatory activity without the psychoactive effect (high) of delta-9-THC.”
The Louisiana House took a big step forward May 29 when it voted 54-38 to approve a bill that would have reduced marijuana possession penalties for second and subsequent offenses. House Bill 103, sponsored by Rep. Austin J. Badon, Jr., would have also removed marijuana possession from the list of offenses that receive mandatory minimum sentences. The bill was approved 4-2 by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Sen. J.P. Morrell, the bill was not debated on the floor of the Senate. Legislators adjourned for the year June 6.
Prior to this year, Louisiana legislators did not seem willing to consider reducing Louisiana’s draconian marijuana penalties whatsoever. HB 103 was a modest attempt at reform, but its surprising success could help Louisiana legislators see that reforming marijuana laws is good politics in addition to being good policy. Because HB 103 passed the House so late in the session, a supermajority was needed in the Senate to even bring the bill up for debate. We’re very hopeful that next year the legislature will take a serious look at excessive marijuana penalties.
Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the world and a Department of Corrections with a budget of almost $700 million – almost twice the budget for the entire LSU system. Yet we still have a high rate of violent crime, which is not solved by the increased penalties we impose on people who are not violent and pose no danger to society. In Louisiana, unfair three-strike laws have landed individuals in jail for life without parole for simple marijuana possession. Someone with two prior convictions, which can be for things as minor as calling a parole office a day late, can send someone to prison forever for simply possessing a small amount of marijuana for personal use. Laws requiring Mandatory minimum sentences generate disproportionately long sentences and often tie judges’ hands in considering the individual circumstances of a case. Meanwhile, nonviolent people who pose no danger to society risk spending their lives in state prison.
The seal of the U.S. National Security Agency. The first use was in September 1966, replacing an older seal which was used briefly. For more information, see here and here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Speaking in the wake of a series of revelations in the Guardian about the extent of the National Security Agency’s surveillance operations, Rusbridger said: “Orwell could never have imagined anything as complete as this, this concept of scooping up everything all the time.
“This is something potentially astonishing about how life could be lived and the limitations on human freedom,” he said.
Rusbridger said the NSA stories were “clearly” not a story about totalitarianism, but that an infrastructure had been created that could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.
“Obama is a nice guy. David Cameron is a nice social Democrat. About three hours from London in Greece there are some very nasty political parties. What there is is the infrastructure for total surveillance. In history, all the precedents are unhappy,” said Rusbridger, speaking at the Advertising Week conference.
I heartily share Alan Rubbridger’s concern about later governments. The possibilities for abuse are so incredible that it is difficult to wrap your mind around them.
But what about Business Ethics? What are the implications there?
The government is tracking all financial transactions, so they know who invests, in what and for how much in any and every American business. That’s power. Since they monitor all e-mails, they have every kind of inside information including promotion and firing decisions. They can do something no government has been able to do before: understand the inner workings of a corporation in detail and in real time. Since corporations have incredible power, this check to that power’s implications are hard to measure. But we could be on the edge of an era in which government management of data enables corporations both domestic and foreign to be brought to heel.
Of course, they know enough personal information to blackmail millions, discredit millions more and by implication of knowing silence tens of millions of others. I find these implications disturbing.
It may be that Obama will not abuse this power but where is the guarantee for those who will come in the future?
A number of high-profile websites will be taking part in an online protest tomorrow against the National Security Agency (NSA)’s surveillance of online activity and phone calls. The protest is organized by non-profit organization Fight for the Future, and will see participation from thousands of sites, including WordPress.org, Namecheap, Reddit, 4chan, Mozilla, Fark, TOR, Cheezburger, Demand Progress, MoveOn, and EFF, among others.
However, none of the tech companies – like Facebook or Google – whose cooperation with the NSA was outed in the PRISM reveal will be involved in tomorrow’s events.
Look, if this had been a once-off, or a first offense for Searls I might not be as upset. But, it wasn’t, and it’s not. He worked his con three times over the course of two years. That’s not making a mistake, or a single offense. He intentionally targeted people in and around the autism community. Let’s face it, autism research just isn’t sexy. The people who typically buy fund-raising raffle tickets are those with loved ones diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, or someone who knows someone like that. These are people who are already financial stretched. And he did this with the promise that the proceeds would go to fund autism research. Which also gives false hope to those buying the tickets, as well as to the charity expecting the money.
In addition to Searles’ scam not being an isolated incident, this isn’t the fist time he’s been caught with his hands in the proverbial cookie jar. According to the Olympian article, “ In 2011, Searles was the subject of a court order in Washington barring him from acting as a mortgage broker because he violated the Mortgage Broker Practices Act.” He was also issued a cease and desist order in regards to any kind of solicitation in the state of Washington.
I’m unhappy with the sentence in this case, 90 days home confinement and a $5,000 dollar fine. He’s a repeat offender and he gathered up 277 thousand dollars with this scam. I have seen white collar crime punished more lightly than virtually any other crime imaginable over the course of my life. It is so unfair. Shouldn’t penalties be assessed in some measure on the harm done and less on the social class of the perp?
The next mayor of New York, if he or she is to do a good job, will have to say “no” a lot. “No” to public employee unions who want a retroactive raise the city can’t afford. “No” to city councilmembers who will try to spend every tax dollar that comes in instead of rebuilding the city’s reserve funds. “No” to NIMBYs who don’t want anything new built in their neighborhoods. “No” to commuters seeking relief from fare increases, bridge tolls, parking fines, and an alleged “war on cars.”
Now, I will note that as far as I know, Josh Barro has not personally killed any kittens. He merely advocates that others do it, a candidate for major in particular, pointing out the “real New Yorkers” don’t care about this. I have had the pleasure of meeting New Yorkers and those have I met strike me as a compassionate and worthy lot. Perhaps he meets a different group.
New York does not need a mayor with the “resolve” to kill kittens. New York is not yet a business theocracy where order is preferred over the democratic rabble. Those kitten lovers, those unions, those neighborhoods are constituents in a democracy. They have a voice. They deserve that voice. They participate in society. They pay taxes and obey the laws. That they don’t meet the standards of Josh Baro is not a legitimate reason to disenfranchise or ignore them.
There is a certain implication here that killing kittens, ignoring unions and overruling local populations is a matter of courage. I often hear that acting in defiance of the wishes of those that elected you, for instance, cutting medicare and social security, is a matter of resolve and courage. No, it’s a matter of acting anti-democratically. It’s a matter of denying necessary benefits long proven successful because it disempowers millions of Americans and making them subject to the whims of our “betters.”
We can safely assume that the title of the article is meant to be provocative. I’ll buy that. But I think he means it. And I have seen a number of kitten hating blogs take up the cry and I find this depressing. There is a place for compassion and kindness and I believe that what “real New Yorkers” believe is far more varied than Josh Barro’s friends in the business community.
How can we have business ethics if we live in a country where order and profits (saving time by running over kittens with subway trains) trump moral and compassionate concerns? We might as well fold up our ethics tents and drift away in the night.
I have seen a good number of ethics professors and textbooks explain that business ethics is actually profitable. Businesses that practice ethics have greater customer trust and loyalty, and over time this and other ethics practices produce profits. I don’t doubt this for a moment but it misses the point of ethics. We do it not because it is profitable but because it is right. We do it because we want to live with some sense of purpose beyond counting our money and giggling like Bond villains.
Ruthlessness and profits above all other values are popular right now with the one percent. That you and I are not wealthy is a sign of our unworthiness. But we in the middle class, who do the work, who sacrifice for our values, and who do the jobs of fireman, teaching and policeman are the heart of the nation, the ones that make this country work. I have nothing but pride for being one of those citizens.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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