Article by Katherine Landergan, Globe Correspondent –
A stray cat who was befriended by workers at Wentworth Institute of Technology is recovering from a severe case of frostbite that nearly claimed the animal’s life, according to the Animal Rescue League of Boston.
From the Detroit Free Press –
A drawstring on the stroller can get wrapped around a child’s neck, posing a strangulation hazard. The firm has received one report of an 11-month-old who got entangled in the cord at her neck. She was freed by her mother.
Did the company pull the strollers out of the good of their hearts or out of fear of law suits? It was the law suits.
The right to sue is one of the great American rights, that right most people would have to be prompted to list, but it’s critical to our health and safety.
If there is anything we have seen from the 2007 financial crisis, it is the willingness of major companies to damage hundreds of millions of lives in the course of business while blaming the victims. I promise you if Congress has not been continuously limiting the right to sue these huge financial companies over the last twenty years, the 2007 debacle would never have happened.
James Pilant
James Pilant
From SFGate – (San Francisco Chronicle)
LinkedIn Corp. was being blocked in parts of China on Thursday after members in that country began using the professional social networking service to discuss the revolutions that have toppled governments in the Middle East.
The Mountain View company doesn’t have a major presence in China, which has about 1 million of LinkedIn’s 90 million members worldwide.
However, the blockage may be further evidence that the Chinese government is now even less willing to reopen its firewall to social networks Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., which have played key roles in anti-government upheavals spreading through the Middle East.
“What would they have to do to become less threatening than LinkedIn currently is?” said Andy Smith, a social media marketing expert in Lafayette.
No Irish Spring: Emerald Isle as Credit Crunch Microcosm (via The Big Picture)
Unemployment is now 13 percent in Ireland; it would be higher if 5 percent of the working-age population (principally the young and well-qualified) had not emigrated over the last two years.
Bankers Apoplectic Over Arizona’s Republican Dominated Senate Passing Chain of Title Bill, 28-2…by Martin Andelman (via ForeclosureBlues)
Frankly, I don’t know where to begin. There’s just so much to say. It’s like a cornucopia of… well, lots of stuff to say. Bankers everywhere must be walking in circles, muttering to themselves, perhaps breaking out in hives.
(Foreclosure Blues is just the best site for foreclosure news – If you want the best coverage of the foreclosure crisis, there’s no better place.)
Wall Street Cash Bonuses Fell in 2010; Average $128,530 (via Business Ethics, The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility)
Cash bonuses paid to New York City securities industry employees declined by nearly 8 percent to $20.8 billion in 2010, as Wall Street firms shifted toward more deferred compensation and higher base salaries, according to an estimate released by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
For the average Wall Street worker, however, that still translated into a 2010 cash bonus of $128,530, according to DiNapoli’s estimate. And although cash bonuses were down, it’s estimated that total compensation on Wall Street rose 6 percent last year, DiNapoli said.
Only $128,530.
Democracy in the Workplace (via Richard D. Wolff)
Wolff has some very interesting idea and some sharp commentary.
Blogoversary and Why I Blog (via Compliance Building)
Mostly, I publish because the information is useful to me. This blog is a personal knowledge management tool. It’s all about trying to capture information that interest me and has relevance to my day-to-day work. I find that writing my thoughts adds some clarity to my thinking. By putting all of that information into the blog, it’s in a place where it is easy to find.
I promise you when I am tired – when my allergies are bothering me or just feeling a little out of it, I wonder why I blog. Compliance Building has a good handle on why it is important.
James Pilant
From AJC – Cherokee County News:
Fields, 62, became a poignant reminder of the housing bust’s impact on thousands of lives across metro Atlanta, where almost 100,000 properties were foreclosed on in 2010. Property owners are not the only ones hurt; so are people, such as Fields, at the end of a ruinous process set in motion by recession.
“I was foreclosing on the homes of people I have known my entire life,” Fields said Monday, two weeks after he walked away from his job but still carrying its burden. “I tried to do all I could to help them. But there’s only so much you can do. Your job is to collect taxes.”
In the good times Fields said he seldom dealt with bad news. “There were almost no foreclosures, and the tax digest was in great shape,” he said. “We would have collected 97 percent of taxes by the end of the year.”
Then, about a year ago, the gravity of the downturn gripped him and wouldn’t let go. A man who described himself as “normally happy and upbeat” was suddenly nauseated all the time. He didn’t have any energy. Daily events he once took in stride turned into crisis after crisis.
“I would talk to somebody or deal with something, a foreclosure or a lien, and I would just have to step out of the office to regain my composure,” he said.
Sometimes, our bodies or our minds tell us to stop doing what we’ve been doing. This appears to be one of those cases.
Many of us believe we live in a world of hard, cold facts and reasonable decisions arrived at after due consideration. Well, guess what, the heart has its own rhythms and its own needs. Sometimes those take precedence.
James Pilant
Can your bank tell you to get out of your home and then … do nothing. Yes. This couple was told to leave but the bank decided not to take possession of the property!
What happens then? Read this fascinating story from the web site, From the Ruins.
James Pilant
via From the Ruins
The report is issued by CEPR, the Center For Economic and Policy Research.
It is authored by Dean Baker.
This is from the last page – The Conclusion –
The shortfalls facing most state and local pension funds have been seriously misrepresented in public debates. The major cause of these shortfalls has not been inadequate contributions by state governments, but rather the plunge in the stock market following the collapse of the housing bubble. Given the low PE ratios in the stock market, pension fund assumptions on the future rate of return on their assets are consistent with most projections of economic growth and past experience. Furthermore, when expressed relative to the size of their economies, most states are facing shortfalls that appear easily manageable.
That’s not what you’re being told? I’m so surprised. No, you’re being told that this is a first-rate economic catastrophe and we have to do some horrible things to these state employees who foolishly believed the government of the state when it said they would have pensions when they retired.
James Pilant
I have been arguing that the deficit should be second in our concerns. I want our first concern to be getting people back to work. But right now, it’s deficit hysteria news cycle hour after hour.
From John Talton writing in his column, Sound Economy –
Amid the deficit hysteria, it’s important to remember its two major causes: The worst recession since the Great Depression and two wars, along with many other military commitments, that have lasted longer than World War II. As in 1945, the year the war ended and the deficit was even higher. Such was one of the reasons that taxes were above 90 percent on the rich in the 1950s: To pay off that debt.
(Why don’t we add the totally irresponsible tax cuts of the Bush administration? They made a lot of people very, very rich and devastated the budget.)
More from the essay –
Nobody in power is talking about seriously taxing the richest, really closing corporate tax loopholes, eliminating tax breaks on mergers, and returning to a more progressive tax system to hold down what is now historic income inequality. Cutting Social Security and Medicare are much in favor, and not only among Republicans or crusty old Alan Simpson, co-chairman of Obama’s deficit commission and a Social Security hater from way back. If this happens, will the deficit hawk elite ensure jobs are available for those once quaintly called “retirees”? Jobs with benefits? Also, nobody in power is talking at all about stopping the unsustainable military adventures that are helping drive up the deficit.
Discussing the issues is not in fashion. Any rational discussion of the deficit would have to arrive at the simple, obvious conclusion that it its much easier to pay off debt in a society with high employment, therefore you spend what it takes to get full employment and then work on the deficit.
We are instead going to pretend that paying down a deficit during an economic catastrophe makes sense.
Is doesn’t.
James Pilant
From the Associated Press story – Senate passes broad aviation bill:
(One of the list of laws passed was the one below) –
Make it a federal law that airlines can’t keep passengers trapped in planes on airport tarmacs for longer than three hours without giving them the opportunity to get off. Airlines also would have to provide passengers with water.
The provision is nearly identical to rules already adopted last year by the Transportation Department. But the provision’s sponsors said putting the passenger protections into law makes it more difficult to roll them back in the future.
“We don’t know what the next president will do,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Airlines oppose the three-hour limit, which they say has led to more flight cancellations and more inconvenience.
Airlines do what? They oppose a three hour limit on trapping passengers in a plane on the ground?
Let me get this straight – Airlines are so hopelessly incompetent that unless we let them hold Americans in captivity in the belly of an airliner for hours at a time, they are going to take it out on all the rest of us by cancelling flights and imposing “more inconvenience?”
What would “more inconvenience” look like? Are they going to hire a mime and an accordion player to entertain during the hours of entrapment?
It takes a lot of chutzpah to admit in public that keeping your clients trapped for more than three hours at at time is sometimes necessary for your business to function at its best.
James Pilant
This is from a Reuters article entitled –
All over the United States, cities, counties and entire States are sinking into bankruptcy. A working America beset by ten percent unemployment has little tax paying ability left to pay for roads, schools, police and fire. But the other beneficiaries, corporations and banks are doing well. On the whole, large corporations are having a great year. The upper class, those over a quarter of a million dollars a year are doing very well indeed. In fact, statistically, they are not experiencing a recession.
Why aren’t these organizations paying taxes?
Can you tell me?
The upper half of the nation is booming. Profits are great. Banks are paying out enormous bonuses.
Why can’t we tax them?
Look, if you haven’t noticed, a middle class that has had an 8% increase in real income over the last thirty years cannot be squeezed for more taxes.
If you are going to tax go where the money is.
It would be wrong to ask banks and other corporations to pay taxes if they didn’t get any benefits. That’s not a problem. The roads, bridges, the educational system, the sacrifices of soldiers, the day to day protective work of firemen and police, not to mention the constant payments made by millions of Americans, make bank and corporate profits possible.
They owe this nation and they owe it big.
I don’t want to be relieved of my tax burden. I want the people and organization who are not paying taxes to pay their fair share.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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