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.
Is it ethical to establish a “maternity hotel” in the United States to accommodate Chinese women who want to give birth to their children in the U.S. solely to reap the benefits for their child of U.S. citizenship? The question is real as “birthing tourism” in the U.S. has become the destination of choice. According to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution (ratified in 1868), anyone born in United States automatically becomes an American citizen and obtains access to public education, university loans, voting, and so on.
Steven Mintz has a good article on “birthing tourism,” the practice of visiting the United States to give birth to citizens. It’s a fascinating article and should a college student be accidentally peering at my site, an excellent topic for a paper.
Once that child is 21, a petition can be filed to obtain legal U.S. residency for the parents. Another immigration loophole that no one had bothered to close.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics the mothers of 7,719 children born in the United States in 2010 reported that they lived overseas, an increase of almost 55 percent since 2000.
And this practice has become even more common in California, where there are now more than 40 maternity operations hosting around 1,000 foreign women in the Los Angeles area alone, according to the Bee.
The Harper government is considering changes to the citizenship rules to target so-called birth tourism — where a foreign national comes to Canada to give birth so the baby can get Canadian citizenship.
But critics say closing the loophole will deter bona fide immigrants and harm the economy in the long run.
“We don’t want to encourage birth tourism or passport babies, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told the CBC’s Power and Politics in an interview. “This is, in many cases, being used to exploit Canada’s generosity. The vast majority of legal immigrants are going to say this is taking Canada for granted.
“We need to send the message that Canadian citizenship isn’t just some kind of an access key to the Canadian welfare state by cynically misrepresenting yourself.… It’s about having an ongoing commitment and obligation to the country.”
Lance Armstrong’s Oprah interview: His threats and bullying are the real story. – Slate Magazine
Armstrong couldn’t deny all the lawsuits he had filed and all the times he’d accused people of lying. So he attributed these intimidation tactics to fear, a rough childhood, and his cancer. He had vilified witnesses who told the truth because he saw them “as a friend turning on you.” He had attacked any threat because when he was a kid, his family “felt like we had our backs against the wall.” And, tragically, “my diagnosis … turned me into a person” who was resolved to “win at all costs,” since cancer compels you to “do anything I have to do to survive. … And I took that attitude, that ruthless and relentless and win-at-all costs attitude, and I took it right into cycling.”
That seems to be the game plan Armstrong brought to this interview. Downplay your power over others. Deny issuing explicit orders to dope. Convert any such story into a matter of setting a poor example. Take responsibility for yourself, but suggest that others—those who claim you pressured them—must do the same. Recast your threats, retributions, and demands for silence as products of a hard life. Reduce your sins of coercion to a sin of deceit. When Winfrey asked Armstrong “what made you a bully,” he answered: “Just trying to perpetuate the story and hide the truth.”
That’s Armstrong’s message: Everything he did, no matter how domineering, menacing, or manipulative, was a desperate effort to protect a single lie. “I tried to control the narrative,” he says. And he’s still trying to control the narrative. Which is a good reason not to believe it.
Armstrong seemed to be exposing himself the most when he confessed to bullying Emma O’Reilly, the former massage therapist who tried to expose Armstrong’s doping in 2003. “We ran over her, we bullied her,” he said. But then when Oprah asked if he’d sued O’Reilly, he couldn’t remember even the basic details—who he’d sued, for example. His admissions stopped exactly at the point when it turned from a character trait to real adult, legal action, which caused actual measurable harm in another person’s life. Yes, sure, we agree with Lance Armstrong he was a bully. As team leader and megastar cyclist, he had far more power than the people around him, and he used it to make their lives miserable when they did things he didn’t like, especially exposing the cheating and lying that allowed him to build his own myth and stay on top. But bullying hardly covers it. More like, “he assaulted people with intent to absolutely destroy,” as a Twitter user named Brian G. Fay wrote to me last night.
I went online and had a look at the various opinions about Lance Armstrong. To my surprise, my first searches pulled comments on his behalf. And then worse, there were the “so-what” comments. “Everybody does it.” “The sport of cycling is corrupt.”
Yes, cycling is corrupt. If there is any one individual who made it impossible to compete without cheating, it’s Lance Armstrong.
I don’t think, people are getting the picture here of a long term criminal conspiracy to subvert a sport. Yet, that is exactly what was going here. Armstrong is the Bernie Madoff of cycling. He didn’t just cheat, he used such a wide variety of banned substances, the only way he could’ve broken the rules further was by riding a motorcycle, or putting in a double.
He didn’t just steal money. He stole our ideal of what a sports figure should be. He cheapened heroism, and made a world of high athleticism, cheap and tawdry.
His victims include those who deserved those medals, those endorsements, the keys to the city and the honorary degree. We’ll never know their names or respect their accomplishments because he stole their glory.
He’s a villain, and he deserves to be treated like one.
Just go away and shut up already. You have done more than enough damage. Just fuck off. Everybody is tired of your BS. Just go. We know you don’t mean what you say. We know you’re just a liar who kept lying right up until the entire house of cards was pulled down, torn up and set on fire. I know this because I was a similar person the last few years, lying to and cheating on and not appreciating the man that loved me unconditionally. I was not a tad bit remorseful, contrite or altruistic about it at all until the ultimate realization of all the pain I had caused him and the awareness that I had let go of somebody that I was important to, a once in a lifetime thing, hit me in the face.
We expect Lance to be completely truthful and forthcoming in his interview and with all of us in the cancer community. We expect we will have more to say at that time. Regardless, we are charting a strong, independent course forward that is focused on helping people overcome financial, emotional and physical challenges related to cancer. Inspired by the people with cancer whom we serve, we feel confident and optimistic about the Foundation’s future and welcome an end to speculation.”
I never bought the fact that he was not using. Call me a skeptic if you must, but it never made sense that that these athletes could do what they did and then turn around and do more the next day – for three weeks. Sorry, I think they’re all using. With that said, what’s the problem? How different is the use of PED’s from say the actress that has plastic surgery to enhance her performance? I would never endorse or do either, but I guess I just don’t want success that badly. At the same time I am not in any position to judge anyone’s decision on what they do.
As far as I care what he did is still a great accomplishment. Like I said, everyone was cheating and he was clearly the best cheater. So hats off to Mr Armstrong on those seven yellow jerseys.
Meaning that to look at the whole picture of a person is to see the truth about their material reality. Peter used the idea that behind closed doors, Hitler may well have been a ‘really nice guy’, when he was playing the piano and people were drinking tea and having dinner with the polite house painter. But the material reality of Hitler – the totality of his existence, the big, whole picture was that he sanctioned and ordered the ethnic and elitist ‘cleansing’ of Germany and the killing of over six million Jews.
Which led me to the thought that, if Lance does admit to the doping allegations, then no matter who interviews him, we have already seen the ‘real Armstrong’. The ‘real Armstrong’ is in the totality of his material reality, not in the soft, contrite and repentant man that we might see on a tv screen attempting to win back the favour of the public.
If the allegations are true, the ‘real Armstrong’ has already revealed his hand and shown his true colours: someone who is ruthless, prepared to systematically cheat his way to the top of a sport, push others out, lie repeatedly about it, bully his way through to rule the peloton and bully a number of journalists on the way as he churned out untruth after obfuscated distraction over and over again (I’ve heard many of the interviews over the years). Someone who has to be in control and on top and will stop at nothing to get there.
That pretty much sums up my feelings towards this whole confession. He sued dozens and dozens of people that said he was doping. Test after test proved without a doubt he was doping all those years. Eventually once the USADA took all his Tour De France wins away, banned him from the sport for life, and all his sponsors dropped him, did he finally admit his guilt. Really, what choice did he have? That is as rock bottom as one can get. Some might commit suicide, others might just live in a cave the rest of their life. He obviously is the type that wants to move on, and this was the only thing that could be done. If not, he would be treated horribly anytime he was seen in public, I’m sure of that. Disgraced is a good word I would use. But on the flip side, he did play a part in raising millions and millions for cancer research. And if so many other people are doping just like he was, it still shows his performance was superior to theirs. Coming back from being diagnosed and treated for cancer, that is very impressive.
What They Really Think About Us | homophilosophicus
Surviving the post-apocalyptic landscape that Ireland has become in the wake of the Celtic Tiger is difficult enough for most people. The economic downturn and the past number of lean years and a governmental programme of austerity have exposed the serious divisions in Irish society. The years of plenty have spawned no small number of Tiger Cubs who feel no shame in flaunting their wealth and privilege in the faces of those who have been most affected by recession and hard times. As economic depression speeds the transfer of wealth from the working poor to the idle wealthy the mood of triumphalism in Ireland’s bourgeoisie reaches fever pitch. All the while the class war moves on from one middle class offensive to another: cheap ‘reality’ television shows depicting the fecklessness of the working classes, the publication of one ‘rich list’ after another, and the continual and propagandistic highlighting of social welfare fraud in the lowest economic brackets of Irish society. At no time since the Great Famine has the inequalities in this society been as acutely felt as they have these past few years. The poor have been despoiled of any platform from which to defend themselves as the attacks against them become ever more comprehensive and savage. Yet right in the heart of this darkness a red rag is waved before the bull. A young and wealthy woman was caught on video ranting and raving about the ‘losers’ who worked for minimum wage, and how she was ‘too rich’ for them.
Hubris is pride on a cosmic scale, and that is what we have here. I’ve heard this kind of thing myself. And, of course, here in the United States, we can see Honey Boo Boo on television, an American we can only understand through subtitles, a savage caricature of lower class Americans, who apparently doesn’t even realize she is being made sport of. I have heard those well off say the most amazing things about the unemployed, the poor and the homeless. They never seem to find it in their hearts to consider them fellow Americans but merely find them wanting in every regard.
But there is a just God, and there will be a reckoning in this world or the next.
On one level, the question of whether benefit cuts lead to higher income inequality is simple to answer. Poorer people are more likely to claim benefits, ergo cutting benefits has less effect on people with high incomes – and from the 2010 Emergency Budget to the 2012 Budget, there were £19bn of net cuts due by 2014-15.[1] Prof John Hills, the former chair of the National Equality Panel, calculates that £1000 of deficit reduction spread equally over all benefits and services will cut incomes of the poorest fifth by 12%, but less than 1% for the richest fifth.[2] In contrast, deficit reduction through equal rises across all taxes has roughly the same effect (a 3.5% reduction) on all.
However, the answer becomes more complex when we see the different ways that deficit reduction can be enacted. Both benefit cuts and tax rises can be particularly targeted on the poor or rich; the Coalition can point to greater means-testing of Child Benefit as a benefits cut that is not targeting poorer people. (This ignores the long-term political impacts of cutting universal benefits, (Baumberg, 2012)). David Cameron has therefore argued (back in March 2009) that “fiscal responsibility needs a social conscience, or it is not responsible at all.”
One can begin to unpack Lim Ewe Ghee’s logic by questioning if the hard earned innovations that triumph in a market economy, by virtue of the wealth they generate, do in fact serve us better.
For one, there are a lot of things a free market economy would welcome that is profitable without necessarily improving society as a whole. Cigarettes are widely purchased and consumed without leading to improvements in anyone’s health or finance. Whatever virtues there may be of having, among other things, pornography, prostitution or firearms in the open market cannot be confirmed purely on the basis of their potentially high demand.
How and why such things can be said to “serve humanity” must take into consideration a host of other factors, above and beyond what market forces or individual whims suggest.
One can extend that line of thinking to even more basic goods. The genetic modification that now routinely goes into the manufacturing of our everyday meats and vegetables has all to do with the necessity of rapid production in a competitive profit driven food economy.
The motivation in such cases is not the happiness, well-being or health of others, but the size of the product and the speed and quantity of production. So by that logic, it does not matter that the meat we eat is injected with cancer causing chemicals so long as an edge is gained by the producer to triumph in a rapidly competitive market.
Aaron Swartz at a Boston Wiki Meetup (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Aaron Swartz is Dead
Aaron Swartz suicide: Prosecutors have too much power to charge and intimidate people for their crimes. – Slate Magazine
The underlying point Boyd is making, I think, is that the government doesn’t understand hackers and isn’t good at distinguishing between miscreant vigilantes like Swartz who are trying to free information systems and profit-driven or diabolical hackers who are trying to bring down those systems. That’s when an expansive law like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act becomes dangerous. Prosecutors persuaded of their own righteousness, and woodenly equating downloading a deliberately unprotected database with stealing, lose all sense of proportion and bring in the heavy artillery when what’s in order is a far more mild penalty.
I’d like to tell you that the prosecutorial overreach that took place in Swartz’s case rarely happens. But that’s not true. There are many principled prosecutors who only bring charges they believe they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. But there are also some who bring any charge they can think of to induce a defendant who may be guilty of a minor crime to plead guilty to a major one. These cases usually are hard to call attention to: They’re not about innocence, easy and pure. They’re about the muddier concept of proportionality. If any good at all can come from Swartz’s unspeakably sorrowful death, maybe it will be how this case makes prosecutors—and the rest of us—think about the space between guilt and innocence.
There are some real villains here. The federal prosecutor, Carmen M. Ortiz and, of course, MIT.
I’m disgusted by the government’s and MIT’s actions in the case. There is nothing that Swartz did that was worthy of a day in prison much less 35 years of prison time. MIT did everything they could to actively push the case while giving the public the impression that they weren’t. Nice try, but the simple fact is, that without MIT’s heavy cooperation, the government would have had great difficulty making a case at all.
A few days ago, the government decided not to prosecute HSBC, a bank, that laundered nine billion dollars of money for drug cartels but they were pursuing a case against a man who “stole” documents that should have been accessible to the public for free, a man who sought no monetary profit at all.
James Pilant
I find these remarks by Lawrence Lessig to be dead on point:
Aaron had literally done nothing in his life “to make money.” He was fortunate Reddit turned out as it did, but from his work building the RSS standard, to his work architecting Creative Commons, to his work liberating public records, to his work building a free public library, to his work supporting Change Congress/FixCongressFirst/Rootstrikers, and then Demand Progress, Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good. He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.
For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House — and where even those brought to “justice” never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled “felons.”
This is the most shocking news for the Computer and Internet industries, a deafening blow for all those campaigners who demand internet freedom and for technology enthusiasts in general. Aaron Swartz is dead. Worst still is the fact that he has committed suicide. As the web mourns the demise of a computer prodigy whose body of work had very few parallels, the injustice done to him by the US prosecution and the MIT is very visible and very disheartening, and that’s putting it mildly.
Aaron was facing criminal charges for stealing more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service. And if found guilty he faced 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. But then he was also the face of the struggle against US laws of SOPA and PIPA as well as other government imposed sanctions that threatened to restrict internet freedom and which have been opposed by all major internet organizations including Google and Wikipedia.
A lot of people close to Aaron smelled foul play on the part of the US prosecution and the MIT because even JSTOR decided not to press charges against Aaron.
The Guardian quoted the statement given by Aaron’s family, “Aaron’s death in not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.”
As Aaron said, ” Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.” It is really painful to see someone brilliant – in fact, an enfant terrible going by what Aaron had done in a span of handful years – heeding to Plato’s injunction, “The punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to take part in Government, is to suffer under the Government of bad men”, ” making an attempt to change the modern powerful structures, go down.
RIP.
P.S : One of the talks by Swartz How to Get A Job Like Mine, basically his personal story, bookmarked in my folder some time back, is a real classic with “just the facts.”
As I wrote a while ago, the feds decided to push for internet censorship via their last best hope: the free markets.
Big telecom companies are coming up with their own means by which to wipe certain people with certain ideas off the “internets”. I guess it’s payback for all that retroactive immunity they got from the Bush and Obama administrations when they could have been sued out the ying yang for allowing the feds to spy on us.
The idea is basically this: Verizon will tell it’s customers when someone files a claim against them for copyright infringement. Verizon will give their users “x” amount of warnings then reduce their internet speed to something like a dial-up connection which will basically take them off the web for all intents and purposes.
As Aaron pointed out in a lecture he gave a year or so ago, the use of the ubiquitous “copyright infringement” charge is a dangerous and sweeping tool to use to shut down certain people. Everything is copyrighted by someone out there and the laws governing how much of what one can use are mirky at best.
Verizon claims they will set up a review panel with the American Arbitration Association and if you pay them $35 bucks they will review your case and find in favor of Verizon.
I find it very odd that Aaron just happened to take his own life when Verizon was about to launch this new SOPA/PIPA program of theirs own their own customers. I also find it odd that he was going to try his hacking case in court which would have brought tons of negative publicity down on JSTOR, portraying them as the guardians of knowledge for the elites.
Geoff Burch – American vs UK Business – funny because it’s true! – YouTube
This brief video is very funny and something of a compliment to the Frito-Lay company and its marketing practices. Of course, Geoff Burch is well known both in comedy and business circles for his wit and judgment,
As part of the staff mentoring process that we undertake at Balance, Ashley has recently asked me to read a book called The Way of the Dog by Geoff Burch. The reason behind this was to try to help me to develop management skills and thinking, rather than just being a number cruncher!
When I started to read the book I was in for a bit of a shock…there were no technical management terms (as I would have expected), in fact the book was written as a story.
The story was about a double glazing salesman called Derek who wasn’t very good at his job. One day, Derek was magically transformed into a sheepdog! Derek almost instantly fell into a bad crowd of sheepdogs (in this new world it was every sheepdog for himself)!
Even the best idea without enough follow-through will end in failure, but a poor idea with total commitment to follow-through will get good, or even great, results. Hence business success is so often 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.
This came back to my mind this evening while I watched “All Over The Shop”, the BBC2 programme featuring business coach Geoff Burch visiting retailers in a selected city (Bristol this time) to give them tips to improve their fortunes. Of the three shops I saw him visit, one of them did very little, even though the changes suggested were clearly going to improve his sales.
I do not have a lot of favorite writers, but there are a few whom I just love. One of them is Geoff Burch. So far I’ve read 4 of his books and learnt something from each of them. But my ultimate favorite book written by him is The Way of the Dog. Let me explain.
First of all, you should know that GB’s style is a bit unusual to those used to reading self help and business books. Funny is a bit of an understatement. And describing him as a person thinking outside the box (such a cliché) is just a way of underestimating the power of his charm. Did I mention that he wanted to name this book Doing’ it Doggy Style?
Enough about the author who, by the way, is brilliant.
Jason Silverstein: Should Citizens Have the Right to Fire a Police Officer?
Here are the facts. On September 22, 2011, Officer Richard Schoen stopped Jeanine Tracy, because she made a sudden lane change without the proper signals. She was handcuffed for disorderly conduct and driven to District Seven police station. During the ride, she cursed, spat at the car’s partition, and stomped on the backseat. When they arrived at the station, she did not get out. With his left hand, Schoen grabbed her shirt. With his right hand, he punched her repeatedly in the head. He grabbed her by the hair, dragged her out of the car, threw her on the ground, and struck her with his knee. These are the facts and we know they are facts, because there is video from the squad car’s dashboard camera.
Here’s what happened next. Schoen was fired on May 1, 2012, because he violated the department’s code of conduct. That code says a police officer must use the minimum force necessary to accomplish his or her purpose. But the story doesn’t end there. Schoen had been a police officer for nine years. He had a positive record, and only praise from superiors. Before he joined the MPD, he gave ten years of his life to military service. So, when he appealed the case to the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, they held a two-day hearing. On December 3, the Commission reinstated him, deciding sixty days without pay was a better punishment.
Briefly – The police department fired Schoen for excessive use of force. The Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission reinstated him with a three month suspension. Then after public protests, the Commission decided that firing was more appropriate. So, who decides?
I teach criminal justice courses, and this is a fascinating piece of writing and it is an interesting if painful situation. I don’t take any pleasure from watching police officers punch handcuffed individuals. And I do understand that being cussed at by a suspect who is stomping and spitting for five minutes is going to get on my last nerve.
Should the public have influence over hiring and firing decisions concerning police officers?
The situation here was complex but I find the amount of citizen action appropriate and the commission response appropriate. However, it is easy to see where there could be situations where police were more immune to public discontent or where public opinion was allowed to influence matters of professionalism. I’d like to see some more writing long these lines.
In 2009, Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Sgt. Scott Krause punched a handcuffed suspect in the face in the back of a squad car. In 2011, Milwaukee police Officer Richard Schoen did the same thing. Both incidents were captured on squad car video.
Krause was fired, convicted of a felony and served 18 months in prison.
Schoen ended up with a 60-day suspension and no criminal charges.
Amid an outcry from elected officials and members of the public, the Fire and Police Commission will meet Tuesday to review its decision to overturn Chief Edward Flynn’s firing of Schoen. But civil rights advocates continue to question the decision by the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office not to charge him in an incident they say is strikingly similar to the earlier case against Krause.
There are a few obvious differences in the cases: Krause worked for the Sheriff’s Department and struck a white male. Schoen worked for the Police Department and struck a black female.
If Schoen had been convicted of felony misconduct in public office, as Krause was, the commission would not have had the discretion to reinstate him because people convicted of felonies cannot serve as law enforcement officers in Wisconsin.
We all recognize the difficult job with which Milwaukee police officers are tasked. The City of Milwaukee spends significant taxpayer resources on ensuring the department can deliver quality, professional services. When officers get it right, we must applaud them. When officers exercise the kind of brutal disregard for regulations and human well-being displayed by Officer Schoen, we must hold them accountable. This ensures the protection of our citizens’ most basic rights, as well as the ability of the rule-abiding, vast majority of police officers to ensure residents’ safety.
The digital video recorders installed in Milwaukee Police Department squad cars are experiencing “unacceptable” rates of failure and 136 will have to be replaced at a cost of up to $900,000.
As a result, the Common Council will consider a plan to spend that money from the city’s contingency fund to replace the devices purchased in 2006 and 2007.
The disclosure comes as videos from those devices have played a critical role in at least two recent cases involving allegations of police misconduct.
In one high-profile case, Derek Williams died in July 2011 after gasping for breath and begging for help for about eight minutes in the back of a Milwaukee police squad car. The incident was recorded on the car’s digital video recorder.
An inquest into Williams’ death will be held Feb. 11.
In another case, the Fire and Police Commission voted to fire Officer Richard Schoen this week after a squad-car video showed he punched a handcuffed woman in the face. The decision was a reversal of a decision to suspend the officer for 60 days.
That video shows Jeanine Tracy stomping her feet, spitting and cursing before Schoen punches her, drags her out of the car by the hair and strikes her in the stomach with his knee after she is on the floor of the police garage.
What They Don’t Teach in Business School about Entrepreneurship – YouTube
This is from the Stanford School of Business, a panel discussion from the 2010 Conference on Entrepreneurship. This video is deliciously titled “What they don’t teach you in Business School about Entrepreneurship.”
The discussion about “ants and lions” comes along about thirty minutes in. Don’t miss it. It’s perceptive. The panelists are Mike Cassidy, Chuck Holloway, and Nazila Alasti.
The previous blog introduced two important questions any time-management process starts with. Here are a few tricks I found useful when aligning our time investments to our core objectives and principal goals.
But, the challenge of an entrepreneur and change leader is she is pulled in all different directions at the same time, which makes it extremely difficult to continually create success. Instead of racing and gaining, the entrepreneur lies on her back and is trampled by ants. Every day is filled with tens and hundreds of actions and activities all of which seem important somehow, but together nearly immobilize her. Like with so many, the passion slowly drains out of the entrepreneur, and her goals start fading. Instead of looking to the big goals, moving forward, the small things in life take over.
From the web site, Arnonuemann – Thought Leadership: (I highlighted the text beneath the pretty graph and the graph came with it. It looks nice, so I’m keeping it but if there is a problem, let me know and I’ll pull it immediately. jp)
Lessons from the ants : all for one ( mission ) and one is there for all ….
“But ants aren’t nature’s only high-functioning teams. Packs of wolfs, pods of dolphins, and prides of lions all share remarkable strategies in terms of leadership, connectivity, execution and organization. For nature’s teams, mission matters most. Bioteams are the physical manifestation of a mission. They organize on the fly, adjust strategies in real-time and redefine membership based on environmental demands. Just Google “unicoloniality” to learn more about how some of nature’s teams inherently understand what many human teams essentially do not: membership is a function of achieving the mission and not the other way around.”
There is so much confusion in the air. A lot of people do not even know what they want in Nigeria and you can’t really blame them! Do people have ambitions any longer or they just want to work and get salaries on pay day? Are there counselors aiding, guiding, and moulding the interests of young students in primary and secondary schools; and in Universities? Are parents interested in, and supportive of their children’s ambitions or they just want to bask in the vicarious “glory” of those big names (Engr, Esq, Dr, Pharm, Arch…) for their own ego fulfillment? Are there still career fairs in our secondary schools and tertiary institutions? The system is so dysfunctional that we are busy struggling to accept anything slapped on us simply because there is a salary. Each time I watch National Geographic Channel, the question I keep asking myself is: “how is it that a human being dedicate his / her life time to studying butterflies, ants, birds, lions etc if not passion?” Let s/he who has a passion to bake cakes go on to become a brand; let s/he who loves flowers go on to become a brand florist; let s/he who loves to bake bread go on to become a household baker; let s/he who wants to be a great restaurateur go on to cook great meals; let s/he who sees a niche in mobile toilets go on to fill the void, let s/he who wants to be a great photographer go on to capture the memories etc. That will be Entrepreneurship and it won’t matter if you have chains of degrees or not. Passion would be the catalyst but certainly not running to grab a steering out of frustration from not getting relevant jobs.
I listened to this video and enjoyed it, particularly the discussion of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman early in the lecture.
Dean Guthrie’s background in Chinese studies is particularly interesting to me, since I also have a great interest in the nation’s culture. I am less sanguine about that nation’s prospects than he is. China’s long term geographical and political ambitions are not compatible with continued economic cooperation with the United States.
There’s no way to appreciate fully the contributions of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006), who would have turned 99 years old this weekend, to the growth of libertarian ideas and a free society.
This is the man, after all, who introduced the concept of school vouchers, documented the role of government monopolies on money in creating inflation, provided the intellectual arguments that ended the military draft in America, co-founded the Mont Pelerin Society, and so much more. In popular books such as Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose, written with his wife and longtime collaborator Rose, he masterfully drew a through-line between economic freedom and political and cultural freedom.
The federal government appears to be under the impression Wall Street CEO’s are better at managing the United States Treasury than trained economists.[26][27][28] America has over two centuries of proof that bankers and legislators cannot be trusted with the people’s money,[29] yet, despite forewarnings from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, Washington ignores the experts and continues helping itself to the Treasury.
America has gained and lost many times,[30] learning repeated lessons the central government continues committing: monetary stupidity. In truth it is useless to wonder why Washington continues creating and wreaking economic havoc when it is obvious that human nature has proven those with power will continue doing harm[31] as long as mankind exists. It is for this reason economics was invented, is practiced and taught: too often, lack of common sense has been in charge of money and the need for fiscally wise minds analyzing trade and industry is cost effective to society overall. That being said, financiers tend not to listen to the money-wise discussed here: men who forewarned disaster if certain fiscal policies were not implemented, and devised solutions to resolve and repair monetary failure.
To all fellow men and women out there who may have deep fondness for the liberal capitalist model of economic adaptation, I hope that you can make some adjustments in your cognitive banks. Capitalism is not a permanent facet of human life, but merely one among various epochs that will come to pass. Only impermanence is sacrosanct in the cosmos, so please refrain from singing hallelujah to a world system that is on its death knell as I articulated in a previous article.
And please refrain from swallowing hook-line-&-sinker the contentious propaganda of Francis Fukuyama about the ‘end of history’, that accordingly history had concluded with the galvanization of liberal capitalism, that history makes no more sense. Fukuyama’s theory is a slapstick narrative of hyper-valuation of the ‘mad economics’ of late capitalism and hypo-statization of reality that has no relation at all to the real in the world out there. Fukuyama had taken as ‘real’ what is actually ‘virtual’, and froze time much like unto a fairy tale of timelessness, of history-less Nietzschean moment that is fit more for infants than for adult humans.
Foreclosure Review In New Settlement Leaves Homeowners In Banks’ Hands
For more than a year, housing advocates and their allies worried that a review of foreclosed loans managed by banking regulators was vulnerable to mortgage industry interference.
On Monday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Board — the two regulatory bodies that had taken the lead in making the nation’s largest banks accountable for rampant foreclosure fraud — announced that homeowners no longer need worry about the independence of the reviews. The regulators, essentially admitting that the reviews were too difficult to conduct, and that assigning appropriate compensation to those most harmed by the banks was no longer a priority, said the mortgage companies themselves will determine how to distribute $3.3 billion to more than 4 million homeowners forced into foreclosure in 2009 or 2010.
Housing advocates, while acknowledging that the foreclosure reviews were flawed, said they don’t understand how turning the process over to mortgage companies improves a system already insufficiently independent.
“The regulators have decided to replace the fox in the henhouse with the wolf,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a Washington-based housing nonprofit. “It is just incomprehensible to me that they could not find a third party that has the wherewithal and independence to fairly determine what the damage is to homeowners.”
Is this good business ethics? Well, let’s look at it from the mortgage companies’ point of view. They made an enormous profit by misleading courts and mortgage holders as to who actually owned the property. In many cases, they told clients that they should skip payments, usually three payments, explaining to them that they would then qualify for government programs like HAMP. Once the home owner had skipped the payments, the bank immediately foreclosed. It terms of money, it was an incredible success.
Let’s analyze based on the Social Responsibility. Social responsibility rests on four pillars: economic, legal, philanthropic, ethical, and philanthropic.
Did the mortgage companies profit? Yes, but it depends on which stakeholders you look at. The shareholders did well. The employees did very well. The customers, at least as far as mortgage holders, were crushed. They are unlikely to ever be customers again. It is very difficult for families to buy a home in the first place. A second bite after foreclosure is not likely. The community was hurt badly by the thousands of empty homes, the collapse of the housing industry and the larger economic bust.
But let us have a special look at our last major shareholder, the regulatory agencies. They came, they saw, they said it was too difficult and gave it all back to the banks after extracting a promise that the banks will be good and give back 3.3 billion of the money they stole in the first place. It would appear the regulators are doing okay. They have shed their responsibilities to the public, which is always much easier than doing your job.
Was it legal? No. The banks violated the law thousands of times, perhaps hundreds of thousands. They lied routinely in official documents requiring affidavits and, for all intents and purposes, were in the business of stealing homes. They have, however, walked away unscathed.
Was it ethical? You have lying on a cosmic scale and theft of the property in the many billions of dollars. I don’t feel further analysis is required here.
And finally, was it philanthropic? Did they give back to the community? This is a pure case of negative philanthropy. The banks often had no concept of what to with the homes they took. They often didn’t care for them. Sometimes, they found it cheaper just to bulldoze them. They took value out of the community and replaced it with negative costs.
This is another sorry episode, which I will wonder if it is wise to mention to my business students? Should I tell them that stealing people’s homes will make you enormously rich while you with virtually no penalties? I am honest. I will. But I would rather not have negative business ethics taught so well by the mortgage companies. It makes what I do look foolish.
Major banks have once again agreed to a settlement, this time worth $8.5 billion, to compensate homeowners whose homes were fraudulently foreclosed upon in 2009 and 2010 through practices such as “robo-signing.” JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and and Wells Fargo will pay $3.3 billion to homeowners, and the remaining $5.3 billion will reduce mortgage bills and forgive principals on homes that were sold for less than what the owners owed on their mortgages. 3.8 million homeowners will be eligible to receive compensation ranging from a few hundred dollars to a maximum of $125,000.
In another settlement, Bank of America has agreed to pay the federal housing finance agency, Fannie Mae, $11 billion for selling the agency bad mortgages that defaulted, causing Fannie Mae to assume all the losses. $3.6 billion will be used to compensate for the bad mortgages, and $6.75 billion will be used to buy back mortgages.
Both of these agreements are part of a process to mitigate the impacts of the housing crisis and to hold the banks accountable for their role in both creating the housing bubble and in using questionable, if not fraudulent, methods in servicing their loans and processing foreclosures. Having faced significant losses, Bank of America continues to move out of the mortgage market, and in the deal with Fannie Mae, it agreed to sell the servicing and collection rights for 2 million loans, totaling $306 billion. Some economists and analysts are concerned that as the major banks shift away from mortgage lending, the industry is being consolidated into the hands of a few banks. However, though the housing market is recovering slowly, banks, such as Bank of America, might not be in a position to compete, given the losses they’ve already incurred and the problems they’ve had in servicing loans.
Housing advocates, while acknowledging that the foreclosure reviews were flawed, said they don’t understand how turning the process over to mortgage companies improves a system already insufficiently independent.
“The regulators have decided to replace the fox in the henhouse with the wolf,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a Washington-based housing nonprofit. “It is just incomprehensible to me that they could not find a third party that has the wherewithal and independence to fairly determine what the damage is to homeowners.”
Regulators said the review process, which sought to determine if specific loans were unfairly foreclosed upon, was too costly and time-consuming. Under the new deal, 10 mortgage companies, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, will pay $8.5 billion. Of that, $3.3 billion is earmarked for direct payments to “eligible borrowers” whose foreclosures were handled improperly. The remaining $5.2 billion will help struggling borrowers with programs such as loan modifications.
And finally, from the web site, 4Closure Fraud (reprinted from ProPublica):
The Independent Foreclosure Review was supposed to be a full and fair investigation of the big banks’ foreclosure abuses, and it was trumpeted as the government’s largest effort to compensate victimized homeowners. Federal regulators, who designed the review, forced banks to spend billions to carry it out. Millions of homeowners were eligible and hundreds of thousands submitted claims. But Monday morning, the very regulators who launched the program 18 months ago announced that it had all been a massive mistake and shut it down.
Instead, 10 banks have agreed to pay a total of $3.3 billion in cash to the 3.8 million borrowers who had been eligible for the review. That’s an average of around $870 per borrower. But typical of a process that’s been characterized by confusion, delays and secrecy, regulators said the details of how the money will be doled out were not yet available.
The headline number for the settlement is $8.5 billion, but that includes $5.2 billion in “credits” the banks will receive for actions they take to avoid foreclosures, such as providing loan modifications. That’s very similar to the separate $25 billion settlement reached last year between five banks, 49 states and the federal government. That settlement has been criticized for awarding credit to banks for things they were already doing.
This is a brief video in which Robert Dolan, at that time, Dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, held forth on a number of issues particularly business ethics. He begins the discussion by talking about the slow down in hiring in the financial sector and the effect on the students, moves into a discussion of how business ethics should be ingrained into the courses rather than a set of separate courses, and he ends with a good discussion of executive compensation.
His idea of action-based learning is used at the Ross School of Business and explained in some detail on their web site. I recommend you watch the video and, if an educator, read the web site explanation.
The most commonly asked question–How is Ross going to maintain its competitive advantage with its action-based learning and what is the school’s high-level strategy going forward?–elicited this response:
“While there was some recent debate surrounding whether or not we should abandon our action-based learning as the cornerstone of our brand and pick a ‘new horse,’ the faculty has chosen to ‘feed and care for the horse we’ve got.’ In other words, the school recognizes that we do action-based learning better than any of our competitors and it should prevail as our primary differentiating factor. Moving forward, Ross looks to grow this strategy by taking it abroad.”
Dean Dolan is also committed to boosting Ross’s global footprint via the strategic placement of international offices, starting in India and then China, the MSJ reports. Having offices in Hyderabad, Mumbai or Bangalore will help Ross better source field-based Multidisciplinary Action Projects (MAP), and offices with local roots will facilitate placement of Ross students in India better than efforts based in the U.S.
Question: How does the Ross School integrate real world business problems in the classroom?
Robert Dolan: Well, there’s a number of ways. I guess I’ll start out by talking about the way that we do it is maybe as a little bit distinctive among business schools. I think the signature element of our school, our MBA program in particular, compared to others, is what we call action based learning.
So right now, for example, all of our 425 first year MBA students would not be found in Ann Arbor. They would be scattered around the globe in about 90 teams, working on real world problems. So what we’ve done to try to differentiate our students and really provide value added was probably about 10 years ago, slightly before I got to the school, we instituted what we called, this map project, which we call multidisciplinary action projects. So we, since, built that up and really invested in it as our point of differentiation.
For the second time in three years, the Stephen M. Ross School of Business has been named the No. 1 business school in North America by the Wall Street Journal.The Ross School is one of only two business schools to be ranked in the top four every year since the Wall Street Journal began its rankings in 2001.
“We’re happy the Wall Street Journal has again ranked us as the best MBA program in the country,” said Ross School Dean Robert J. Dolan. “The Journal’s ranking is particularly gratifying as it reflects the sentiment of hiring companies that see our graduates at work every day.”
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