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.

Felix Salmon Makes a Key Observation

On By southwerkIn Politics

Barack Obama and the limitations of probabilistic decision making | Felix Salmon

For Obama, if a decision doesn’t work out, he’s OK with that, since he reckons there’s a statistical certainty that a good third of his decisions will fail to work out. And he takes solace in the idea that so long as the process of arriving at the decision was a good one, by which he means that it was properly technocratic and probabilistic, then he did the best that he could have done.

But that kind of decision-making framework leaves very little room for ideals — for actually putting into practice the kind of vision you have for America. By making decisions on a case-by-case basis, you can end up missing out on building something bigger and much more coherent. In 2008, America voted for a man who was truly excellent at staring into the distance, a man looking at the big picture, and at a centuries-long legacy. Instead, hampered by the financial crisis and by a dysfunctional Congress, they got a man who spends his days weighing success probabilities: a tactician, rather than a strategist.

Barack Obama and the limitations of probabilistic decision making | Felix Salmon

“Little room for ideals:” Exactly, the President lacks the desire to fight on moral or ethical grounds but governs based on some kind of intellectual calculus, a bloodless exercise in which losses are measured in much the same way as a  a lost chess game.

Mr. Salmon hit on something I have long suspected, and I very much wish both he and I were wrong but we are not. The President lives in a world devoid of ethical calculus. He lives by the probability of the possible. We voted for a new direction for American democracy, a different vision, but we got a President who cannot envision a different reality – only manipulate the current one.

James Pilant

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What I am watching tonight: Wings of the Luftwaffe – Me-321 – Gigant (6 of 14) – YouTube

On By southwerkIn Personal1 Comment
Mussolini (left) and Hitler sent their armies ...

Mussolini (left) and Hitler sent their armies to North Africa and into Egypt against the British (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The Second World War has fascinated me since I was a teenager. I was born only eleven years after the end of that war and my early television watching contained a great deal of what were for many, the still burning issues of the war.

James Pilant

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Why You Can’t Comment

On By southwerkIn Personal

I got spammed through the comments section.

Not a little bit spammed, I got hit hard.  The comment section had a section where you had to enter a list of words and numbers from a scrambled set. I thought that would prevent spamming. Whatever they did, went through those defenses as if they weren’t even there.

So, no comments.

I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.

Reality is often bitter and this is one of those cases.

James Pilant

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Is Teaching Business Ethics a Waste of Time?

On By southwerkIn Teaching1 Comment
English: , Prussian philosopher. Português: , ...

English: , Prussian philosopher. Português: , filósofo alemão. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Business school and ethics: Can we train MBAs to do the right thing? – Slate Magazine

The only way we’ll get our students to integrate their moral compasses with the practical tools of business we teach them is to incorporate the topic of ethics throughout the curriculum. This will require the accounting and finance and marketing professors to grasp the ethical blind spots inherent in their respective areas, and to appreciate and recognize approaches to lessening them. Professors, in other words, need to be moral architects themselves.

When you stop and ask students whether they’d like their dying words to be “I maximized profits,” a wave of laughter ripples through the class, as all but the most callous have higher aspirations for themselves. When we ask MBA students why they might want to be a CEO, the first two responses are “I want to make a difference” and “I enjoy a challenge”; “Making gobs of money” always comes in third. We need to work harder to equip students to live up to those aspirations. And if we’re not going to make a better-faith effort in this endeavor, perhaps we should remove discussion of ethics from business schools altogether. Otherwise, it serves merely as empty PR for MBA programs and to appease the consciences of those who teach in them.

Business school and ethics: Can we train MBAs to do the right thing? – Slate Magazine

Maybe, but I don’t think so. I do think the way like the article says that the way business ethics is taught now is a failure and a disaster. The article recommends embedding ethics in every part of the business curriculum. That would be nice, but it is neither necessary or likely that will happen.

I recommend that business ethics be taught the way I do it. (I know, everybody does – however, hear me out.) I believe in giving business students the opportunity to develop their own moral landscape. I use moral problems, big ones, airline crashes, economic disasters, fires, murders, etc., as examples. Then I ask students the big questions: Who’s responsible and what should be done? They decide within a set of guidelines. I tell them that for every big open ended question, that there are usually around five or so really good answers, eleven to fifteen mediocre answers and an infinity of bad inadequate poorly thought out answers. I tell them to look for the five.

By providing the students with broad guidelines and by refusing to tell them the “right” answers, I engage their judgment. They write brief essays justifying their choices, and then we do it again and again. By the end of the semester, they have created a moral framework, that I hope lasts for their lifetimes certainly for many years. My perception is that self education, self creations in a real sense is the most effective means of education.

James Pilant

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Competition Takes It on the Chin in the Rental Car Market

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Hertz to buy car hire rival Dollar Thrifty for $2.3 billion | Reuters

Hertz Global Holdings (HTZ.N) agreed to buy rival Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group (DTG.N) for about $2.3 billion in a deal that puts about 95 percent of the U.S. car rental market in the hands of three companies.

The sale ends more than two years of on-off takeover talks for Dollar Thrifty involving Hertz, the No. 2. U.S. car rental company, and third-ranked Avis Group Inc (CAR.O) that have been plagued by disagreements over price and doubts about regulatory approval.

Avis could still make a further bid. The deal has no break-up fee and Dollar Thrifty is allowed to solicit another offer for 30 days, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

If it is confirmed, the deal will cement Hertz’s position as the number two and leaves Avis far behind in third. Privately held Enterprise Holdings, with its Alamo, National and Enterprise brands, is far and away the market leader.

Hertz to buy car hire rival Dollar Thrifty for $2.3 billion | Reuters

Isn’t buying out your competition and controlling most of the market moving toward a monopoly? Is that the free market in operation. No, but there will be many that claim it is. “Creative Destruction” is the rule – if you are a free market fundamentalist – religion without a God unless you can consider the filthy green, a deity.

Is it ethical? Well, it’s legal. For our corporate world that is quite enough.

Competing in terms of product or price or service is hard. Buying them out, easy.

James Pilant

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Thousands of Voters Kicked Off Rolls to Protect Against Nineteen Non-Citizen Voters

On By southwerkIn Politics
No-excuse early voting in U.S. states, as of S...

No-excuse early voting in U.S. states, as of September 2007. in-person and postal in-person only postal only none (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Voters Kicked Off The Rolls In New Mexico Include Voting Rights Activist, Wife Of State Representative | ThinkProgress

More than 170,000 people have been purged from New Mexico’s voter rolls — and among them are a prominent voting rights activist, as well as the wife of a Democratic state representative.

State Rep. Brian Egolf (D) told the AP that his wife received a letter saying that the state government considered her an inactive voter, and that she would need to, essentially, re-register before she could vote in the fall.

Voters Kicked Off The Rolls In New Mexico Include Voting Rights Activist, Wife Of State Representative | ThinkProgress

That 170,000 number is 14% of all the voters in the state. All this because of a handful of questionable votes. How few? Let’s take a look at an editorial from the Sante Fe New Mexican:

If nothing else, Secretary of State Dianna Duran deserves credit for getting to the bottom of that age-old, oft-repeated New Mexico folk tale about dead people voting. Not so much, it turns out.
And Duran can prove it, too. Once in office, she and her staff have taken the state’s voter list, torn it apart, put it back together and in the end, found almost no voter fraud in New Mexico. From the 64,000 voter registration records she once referred to state police as possible cases of voter fraud, we are down to 100-plus voters apparently registered illegally. Of those “illegally” registered, 19 possible non-citizens might have cast a ballot they should not have. Another 641 people, now believed to be deceased, remain on the rolls, although there is scant evidence they are voting. That’s out of 1.1 million registered voters, by the way.

Is something going on here that is not about voter fraud? I think I’ll just let the numbers speak for themselves.

James Pilant

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Is the Justice Department Gutless?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics3 Comments
How do we make sense of this? Goldman Sachs emails call their own investments “junk” and “crap,” and Goldman Sachs salespeople refer to clients as “muppets” and “elephants.” Yet the Justice Department says there is not enough evidence to bring a case on behalf of Goldman Sachs investors who lost vast sums of money.Seal of the United States Department of Justice

Seal of the United States Department of Justice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Goldman Sachs prosecution fails: Why can’t the Justice Department fight Wall Steet?

Now that that’s out of the way, I can say what we are all thinking: Really? Are you kidding me? Wall Street continues to get away scot-free? The Justice Department prosecutes Roger Clemens for perjury—spends countless resources, hours, and energy worrying about steroids in baseball—yet seems incapable of making cases against the big Wall Street firms that engineered the greatest lies, frauds, and scams in our economic history. I am as outraged, disappointed, and furious as you are. Have they no backbone, shame, or sense of what justice is all about? It does nothing for my already waning faith in this Justice Department.

Goldman Sachs prosecution fails: Why can’t the Justice Department fight Wall Steet?

Apparently the great “vampire squid,” is immune to prosecution. In their e-mails they virtually admitted they were committing fraud. What does the Justice Department need in the way of evidence to prosecute? It seems to me if you are well connected enough and big enough, an infinite amount of evidence would still not be enough.

This is another example of America’s two tiered justice system – one for regular citizens and another for the privileged. There is a certain irony in the phrase, land of the free. It seems that some are apparently more free than others.

Business Ethics – Did that play any role here? You bet it did. By systematically breaking the rules, abusing it customers and blatantly lying, Goldman Sachs made billions of dollars. It is a pure lesson in why the phrase, business ethics, often evokes sneers or knowing giggles. I’ve seen and heard them.This is a lesson in negative business ethics, the other side of teaching what is right, teaching to do what is wrong.

We are systematically educating our young to be financial criminals, to reject the values of the righteous and embrace less than the moral minimum.

Our society has an opportunity here to create a society fit for no one but the predators.

Is that where you want to live?

James Pilant

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Cheerleading Used to Defund Women’s Sports

On By southwerkIn Opinion
Quinnipiac University

Quinnipiac University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cheerleading is not a sport says the U.S. Court of Appeals, but is it?

Rachael Larimore: The court made the right decision. This was a cynical plan by Quinnipiac to keep the school within Title IX compliance while cutting women’s volleyball (and, incidentally, men’s golf and men’s track and field).

Competitive cheering might be an evolving sport—the Washington Post notes that the “activity” is growing more organized and has various outfits, such as the National Collegiate Acrobatics and Tumbling Association, working to make it a recognized sport. Cheerleading’s raison d’être is to root, root, root for the home team. If you take that element away, what’s all that yelling and cheering for, even during competitions?

Cheerleading is not a sport says the U.S. Court of Appeals, but is it?

This is pretty cynical. Title 9 says that colleges have to spend as much on women’s sports as on men’s. Quinnipiac is evading the rule by declaring Cheerleading a sport. Thus, they can count the money paid for it as money used for women’s sports and have more for the men.

I have no disagreement with the idea that it is tiring and a definite sign of social prestige but whether or not it’s a sport – well it seems it’s only considered a sport when you want to evade title 9 and that is not a good reason.

James Pilant

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Komen Charity Forgot Who Its Contributors Were

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Nancy Brinker resigns from Komen: Does the CEO’s departure even matter for the breast cancer organization?

Part of why Komen is likely to fail at picking up the pieces is that the entire battle exposed some tensions in its base of support—tensions that had largely been minimized by the genuine desire of a broad coalition to fight breast cancer. Part of what made the organization such a behemoth is that Komen was able to put together the traditional supporters of women’s health care, who are pro-choice and have feminist leanings, with more conservative women who had previously been afraid of the immodest implications of talking openly about breast health. They did this by pointedly desexualizing the issue in a sea of pink ribbons and teddy bears, something the more feminist supporters could ignore because of the greater good. Prior to the Planned Parenthood debacle, Komen seemed largely apolitical—not outwardly judging those of us who want comprehensive health care that includes an adult understanding that people are going to have sex. By crossing that line, they forced their supporters into a sluts vs. church ladies battle. Now the feminist side perceives the organization as swarming with prigs whose support for your health stops as soon as they know you’ve touched a penis, and a handful of prominent resignations can’t really do much to change that.

Nancy Brinker resigns from Komen: Does the CEO’s departure even matter for the breast cancer organization?

Was it ethical for Komen to embrace right wing politics and cut off funding to one of the most prominent sources of women’s health care? Apparently a great number of Komen’s event participants and contributors believe the organization’s decision was at odds with their own moral beliefs. What is interesting here is how Komen so misunderstood its base. Isn’t that one of the fundamental rules of any business organization – that you should understand who your “customers” are. By any measure, Komen failed this rule and the organization may never recover.

James Pilant

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Stock Market Increasingly More Casino Capitalism than Investment

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics1 Comment

Wall Street trading debacles raises fears | McClatchy

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, the top Democrat on the panel’s subcommittee that oversees capital markets, said she was very concerned about the volatility triggered by Knight. She supports hearings on the broader effects of the incident and other recent trading troubles.

“Like the problems with the Facebook initial public offering, events like this only further serve to undermine investor confidence in the markets,” Waters said. “Though we don’t yet know exactly what caused the problem with Knight Capital, with a drumbeat of financial market snafus continuing, it’s clear that the industry, with guidance from regulators, needs to strengthen their internal controls.”

Indeed, investors have stuck mostly to the sidelines after suffering crippling stock losses during the financial crisis. Many people have steered clear of sinking money into stocks, worried that big institutional investors and their high-speed tools can manipulate the market.

Knight’s losses reaffirmed Los Angeles retiree Robert Altman’s decision to pull nearly all of his investments out of stocks. Altman said his distaste for the market’s wild swings and technical glitches may confirm industry fears that recent Wall Street technical mishaps could scare off retail investors.

“I’m out of it,” said Altman, 73, who has plowed his savings into municipal bonds. “The little guy has no business in the market anymore.”

Wall Street trading debacle raises fears | McClatchy

Business ethics would seem to dictate that investors’ money should be handled with care. After all, the human beings  who invest have interests like long term returns to enable them to live a decent life. But as we can see from the headlines, stock market investment is more a matter of being sheared like a sheep than a fair deal . We’ve had enough scandals to call on the government to act. However, the interests that make money by these methods are well placed, very influential. If you want a safe investment, there are better places to go.

James Pilant

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