The New Pope is Wonderful.
This has got to be one of the shortest quotes I have ever used and one of the best. The pope wants pastors not bureaucrats. How sublime. Sometimes, the world changes for the better. It’s always nice to be watching at just that moment.
James Pilant
‘He Wants Pastors’ | Crooks and Liars
“The pope doesn’t want bureaucrats,” Galeazzi said. “He wants pastors.”
Culpable Homocide?
I’m not familiar with the term but it sounds like the reckless behavior associated in the United States with one of the degrees of manslaughter. Will any justice be done here? I don’t know. I intend to wait and see but I am confidant there were no real penalties for the American companies misusing this vulnerable population.
James Pilant
Bangladesh Factory Owners Charged In Deadly Fire
Police charged the owners of a Bangladeshi garment factory and 11 employees with culpable homicide Sunday for alleged negligence leading to the death of 112 workers in a raging fire that engulfed the factory last year.
It was the first time Bangladeshi authorities had sought to prosecute factory owners in the world\’s second-largest garment industry. A series of recent deadly disasters — including the Nov. 24, 2012, fire and a factory collapse in April that killed more than 1,100 workers — exposed how harsh and often unsafe conditions can be for many of the country\’s 4 million workers providing clothing to major Western retailers.
The New Word for 2013 – Affluenza!
Affluenza: the latest excuse for the wealthy to do whatever they want | Jessica Luther | Comment is free | theguardian.com
The prosecutors had asked for Couch to receive 20 years in prison. Instead and as a result of the defense\’s argument, Judge Jean Boyd ordered Couch to a long-term, in-patient facility for therapy, no contact with his parents, and 10-years probation. His attorneys have stated that his parents have offered to pay for him to do his in-patient therapy at a center in Southern California that costs $450,000 a year. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Judge Boyd said that \”she is familiar with programs available in the Texas juvenile justice system and is aware that he might not get the kind of intensive therapy in a state-run program that he could receive at the California facility suggested by his attorneys. Boyd said she had sentenced other teens to state programs but they never actually got into those programs.\” Ethan Couch, therefore, will spend no time behind bars for killing four people and paralyzing another despite admitting guilt and despite the fact that the diagnosis the defense centered their case around – that of \”affluenza\” – is not even recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as an actual mental illness. On top of it, it appears that the judge found therapy and probation to be valid because his parents could pay for an expensive c
Pope Not a Marxist
Pope says he is not a Marxist, but defends criticism of capitalism | World news | The Guardian
Pope Francis has rejected accusations from rightwing Americans that his teaching is Marxist, defending his criticisms of the capitalist system and urging more attention be given to the poor in a wide-ranging interview.In remarks to the Italian daily La Stampa, the Argentinian pontiff said the views he had espoused in his first apostolic exhortation last month – which the rightwing US radio host Rush Limbaugh attacked as \”dramatically, embarrassingly, puzzlingly wrong\” – were simply those of the church\’s social doctrine. Limbaugh described the pope\’s economics as \”pure Marxism\”.\”The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don\’t feel offended,\” Francis was quoted as saying. Defending his criticism of the \”trickle-down\” theory of economics, he added: \”There was the promise that once the glass had become full it would overflow and the poor would benefit. But what happens is that when it\’s full to the brim, the glass magically grows, and thus nothing ever comes out for the poor … I repeat: I did not talk as a specialist but according to the social doctrine of the church. And this does not mean being a Marxist.\”
via Pope says he is not a Marxist, but defends criticism of capitalism | World news | The Guardian.
Monday was the last night with the flu. My sinuses are still swollen but that is my usual lot in life. I feel washed out like old denim but I will begin posting tomorrow night (Wednesday). I thank you, my kind readers, for your loyalty and forbearance.
James Pilant
South Korea has become the center of a nuclear corruption scandal. Basically, parts that meet the safety requirements of a nuclear plant are expensive. Sub standard parts can save a plant operator millions upon millions of dollars. So, they faked the required documents and used sub standard parts on what appears to be a gigantic scale.
Now, I’m one of those foolish people who keep pointing at the record of problems with nuclear safety. I have the perception regarded by many, even some modern environmentalists as foolish, that nuclear power has been distinguished by lies, exaggerations, safety violations and the occasional complete disaster during all of the history of its use.
Isn’t this a cautionary tale when many reactors in the fourth most powerful economic power in Asia are found to be using parts that in an emergency will fail?
What worries me is the enormous sums of money to be made by evading the safety standards. If a nuclear plant melts down, thousands of square miles can be unusable for human habitations for tens of thousands of years. In fact, the exclusion zone at Chernobyl is 1,006 square miles. For comparison, Benton County in Arkansas is roughly 880 square miles. Oklahoma City is 612 square miles. it’s a lot of real estate to lose permanently unless you consider twenty thousand years or so a reasonable amount of time to wait.
I believe that the temptation to make millions of dollars by evading the regulations in nuclear power plants makes a nuclear disaster inevitable.
James Pilant
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/10/us-korea-nuclear-idUSBRE99905O20131010
October 10th, 2013 South Korea
has indicted 100 people, including a top former state utility official,
of corruption in a scandal over fake safety certifications for parts in
its nuclear reactors, authorities said on Thursday.
Asia’s fourth largest economy
has faced a series of shutdowns of nuclear reactors due to fake
documents going back to late 2012. Of its 23 reactors, six remain
offline, including three halted in May to replace cables supplied with
bogus certificates.
“We
hope the so-called nuclear mafia style behavior would be rooted out if
strict investigations and law enforcement and system reforms continue,”
Kim Dong-yeon, a top government policy coordinator, told a news
briefing.
October 28th, 2013 It started with a few bogus safety
certificates for cables shutting a handful of South Korean nuclear
reactors. Now, the scandal has snowballed, with 100 people indicted and
Seoul under pressure to rethink its reliance on nuclear power.
A shift away from nuclear, which generates a third of South Korea’s
electricity, could cost tens of billions of dollars a year by boosting
imports of liquefied natural gas, oil or coal.
Although helping calm safety concerns, it would also push the government
into a politically sensitive debate over whether state utilities could
pass on sharply higher power bills to households and companies.
Gas, which makes up half of South Korea’s energy bill while accounting
for only a fifth of its power, would likely be the main substitute for
nuclear, as it is considered cleaner than coal and plants can be built
more easily near cities.
“If the proportion of nuclear power is cut, other fuel-based power
generation has to be raised. If we use LNG, the cost will definitely go
up,” said Hwang Woo-hyun, vice president of state-run utility Korea
Electric Power Corp (KEPCO).
November 7th, 2013 Selling nuclear equipment is a point of pride for a nation that has
made stunning gains in technology in a single generation. South Korea
also has planned to step up nuclear power at home as a way to reduce
fossil-fuel imports and burnish its green credentials. Eighteen plants
are supposed to be built before 2030.
“That’s going to be in jeopardy,” said Katharine H.S. Moon, professor
of political science at Wellesley College. However, “if the government
can correct this efficiently and quickly and transparently, they will
have a better chance of resuming their export ambitions.”
The investigation isn’t the first problem to hit the South Korean
nuclear sector this year. Two reactors were temporarily shut down last
month after malfunctions, and corruption charges hit employees at the
state nuclear power agency earlier this year. In the latest scandal,
South Korean media reported that the forged safety certificates only
came to light because of an outside tip, which has added to the public
unease.
“I don’t think you can have confidence that the system is working
until the agencies catch these things on their own,” Lyman said.
From the web site, Counterfeit Parts.
South Korea has been forced to shut down two nuclear reactors to replace components provided with fake quality certificates…
Jerry Stahl: Government has a “fascist-adjacent” devotion to business – Salon.com
Hard to pick one thing – but of late the delusional nature of the American psyche can get to me. The America is No. 1 insanity, as likely to be perpetrated by Chris Matthews as Sean Hannity. I mean, No. 1 at what? Domestic spying? Fascist-adjacent governmental devotion to banks and business? Stripping its citizens of dignity, hope and food stamps? Letting industry poison the water and air? (Though that title might to go China, too.) I get particularly angry – now that I have a baby in the house again – about drones. Don’t the people who keep blowing up grandmothers in Afghanistan and Yemen and God knows where else realize that, one of these days, those poor bastards are going to start sending drones in our direction? And if they’re as random and inaccurate as ours, it’s not going to be pretty.
via Jerry Stahl: Government has a “fascist-adjacent” devotion to business – Salon.com.
You Have To Prosecute Individuals
There has been much anger in the financial press about JPMorgan having to pay a multi-billion dollar fine. It has been strangely charged that this is a government attack on capitalism. No, actually the bank broke the law and failed over and over again to act in an intelligent manner about its investments or its clients. But Gretchen Morgenson is absolutely right. This kind of fine isn’t really getting tough with the banks. It’s merely carrying on the long tradition of banks paying some proportion of the losses they caused while criminal prosecution as individuals is off the table.
There is no real penalty here. The billions are just the cost of doing business. The bank has paid out fines before. The bank will pay out fines again. The fun and enormous profits of reckless speculation will remain.
There will only be an effective deterrent when wrongdoers are punished personally by fine and imprisonment.
You can’t attack prevent crime by attacking organizations with minor financial penalties. You could effectively if you were willing to pull the corporate charter from the bank and destroy it, or seize all of its assets. But I see no willingness to do that. The only effective tool present is the power to prosecute individuals.
It is bizarre to tell students to act with business ethics when they can read everyday in the news of the incredible money being made by individuals under the cover of banks deliberately, knowingly breaking the law. But even that is eclipsed by the simple and horrible fact that we do not impose penalties on individuals.
Without justice, how we expect people less favored than bank executives to believe in the law?
James Pilant
Why JPMorgan May be Getting off Easy
In a criminal investigation, JPMorgan Chase is facing action from federal authorities who suspect that the bank turned a blind eye to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. That’s yet another headache in a week of migraines for America’s largest bank; last Friday JPMorgan Chase reached a tentative $13 billion settlement with federal prosecutors for its alleged manipulation of mortgage securities, which helped trigger the Great Recession. There may be more pain to come as the megabank faces litigation on a number of fronts.
And JPMorgan Chase is not alone – it is one of several banks being investigated by the government for mortgage fraud. While many headlines in the financial press accuse the government of conducting a witch hunt, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson offers a different perspective: “If the Justice Department were being tough on Wall Street they would be talking about bringing criminal cases against individuals who helped to perpetrate this immense crisis.” she said. Morgenson adds that the investigations into JPMorgan Chase show that it and many other financial institutions are still ‘too big to fail,’ which means taxpayers could once again be forced to bail them out.
From around the web.
From the web site, Democracy Now!
Stakeholder Pets?
Are pets stakeholders under business ethics analysis? Yes. Why is that? Theoretically a pet cannot buy a product. However, a pet does express preferences in products, particularly what they eat. So, pets do exercise choices as consumers as pet owners all know.
But they are stakeholders in another sense, by their existence they establish a need. So, when a manufacturer of pet treats kills pets, he kills his market.
I do not believe a rational argument can be made on behalf of pet killing by purchased treat. It might be a Friedman type thing where profit is foremost and you don’t kill enough of the market to mar your income. Of course, once again, that would suggest that businesses are not any good at or are very bad at self-regulation.
Simple business ethics, and I’m talking very simple here, very basic says, “Don’t kill the client.”
When businesses fail this basic test, and do not act to fix the problem, then the government has to step in. While this government action is late, it is welcome. I hope it works.
James Pilant
Amid pet deaths, FDA finally proposes new food safety rules – Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/25/amid_pet_deaths_fda_finally_proposes_new_food_safety_rules/
As the Food and Drug Administration continues to come up short on a possible explanation for the deaths of nearly 600 pets nearly six years after they were first linked to imported jerky treats, the federal agency is at last getting around to passing rules for pet and animal feed that would help prevent contamination before it begins. The Associated Press reports:
The proposed rules would require those who sell pet food and animal feed in the United States — including importers — to follow certain sanitation practices and have detailed food safety plans. All of the manufacturers would have to put individual procedures in place to prevent their food from becoming contaminated.
The rules would also help human health by aiming to prevent foodborne illnesses in pet food that can be transferred to humans. People can become sick by handling contaminated pet food or animal feed.
via Amid pet deaths, FDA finally proposes new food safety rules – Salon.com.
From around the web.
From the web site,
On Sunday, Senator Brown held another news conference at the Ohio Humane Society in Hilliard Ohio about tainted chicken jerky treats from China. It was Brown’s second public statement to the Food and Drug Administration regarding the treats that are reported to have been causing illness and death in pets across the country.
The conference on February 19 came in the wake of 400 new complaints to the FDA about pets becoming ill after eating the treats. Although the FDA has been trying to find the contaminant causing the illnesses, they have been unable to pinpoint the specific toxicant. As a result, manufacturers have not been required by law to remove the products from store shelves, keeping the potentially dangerous treats readily available to the public.
In December of 2008, when pets began falling ill in Australia, University of Sydney researchers made an epidemiological connection linking the illnesses to the consumption of chicken treats imported from China. Australian dog treat importer KraMar withdrew its Supa Naturals Chicken breast strips from the Australian market as a precaution, even though a specific toxicant wasn’t pinpointed.
TV Goes Downhill
The lowest common denominator. That apparently is the demographic television programming is looking for if these reinventions are to make any sense. Of course, maybe doing real programming is hard. After all, how much brains does it take to do “Shark Week?”
I have some old VHS tapes with programming from the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, powerful learned television shows with meaning. Now, my college students complain about the low quality of the programming and how little science or history is being covered.
Is there a business ethics issue here? Well, there is something wrong about advertising yourself as dealing with serious scientific, cultural or historical matters, and then producing junk designed for the inquisitive mind of, “Well, nobody.” Inquisitive minds aren’t wanted there.
And there is the lost opportunity of appealing to what is best in humanity, thrown away endlessly seeking higher ratings or a younger demographic. Whether that is a business ethics problem depends on your interpretation.
I don’t watch those programs anymore. I don’t think anybody should.
James Pilant
TV’s 10 most bizarre reinventions – Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/25/tvs_10_most_bizarre_reinventions/
All across the dial, cable networks have shed their identities in order to become things far stranger — and, often, a bit less highbrow — than they’d been initially. The network formerly known as History Channel (now it’s just History) has defined the academic subject as including ancient aliens and truckers; TV Land’s reruns have gone from old-school classics to stuff from 10 years ago; just about every fine-arts channel broadcasts reality TV now.
It makes sense — in a crowded market, no one’s going to subsidize a network that does something unpopular. All these networks once did slightly different things, but now many have shifted toward the same model: broadcasting unscripted shows depicting a particular corner of the American experience (trucking, pawnbroking, being a pampered wife of one variety or another). Still, there’s something a bit wistful about imagining each of these cable networks’ original iterations frozen in amber — rather than a dial full of similar-looking broadcasts, we could have a gleefully out-of-step Bravo and A&E doing British costume drama, and medical oddities all over TLC. Oh well–there’s always reading!
via TV’s 10 most bizarre reinventions – Salon.com.
From around the web.
From the web site, Blogs, Discover Magazine.
While there may be a debate about what “sightings” may be, there is one thing that scientists are sure of: Megalodon is extinct.
Part of me is furious with you, Discovery, for doing this. But mostly, I’m just deeply saddened. It’s inexplicably depressing that you’ve gone from “the world’s #1 nonfiction media company” to peddling lies and faking stories for ratings. You’ve compromised your integrity so completely with this special, and that breaks my heart. I loved you, Discovery, ever since I was a child. I grew up watching you. It was partly because of you that I became transfixed by the natural world and pursued a career in science. I once dreamed of having my own Discovery Channel special, following in the footsteps of people like Jeff Corwin. Not anymore. This is inexcusable. You have an obligation to your viewers to hold to your non-fiction claims. You used to expose the beautiful, magical, wonderful sides of the world around us. Now, you just make shit up for profit. It’s depressing. It’s disgusting. It’s wrong.
I won’t be watching the rest of Shark Week. I simply can’t.
From the web site, From New York to San Francisco.
http://gcaggiano.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/history-channels-chasing-tail-are-you-kidding-me/
I’m not even going to bother sliding into my regular shtick about how far the network has fallen, or how I would take the 24/7 Hitler and Nazi Germany program broadcasting of the 90′s any day over this garbage, because it is a fruitless effort. Apparently, I am in the minority when it comes to opinion on programming. I guess I should feel silly for wanting the History Channel to stop putting on shows where toothless red-necks blast alligator brains out with shotguns and then jump up and down in their little boats hootin’ n’ hollerin’ with unintelligible grunts like they just won the lottery. I am amazed, after seeing shows like that, at how surprised people from the Deep South are when they are looked at as being backwards hicks. Do not blame northern ignorance, my friends, blame the media and popular culture that has turned your society into a hole of filth and slime. At least Chasing Tail is going to do something to repair the damage done: it will show that northerners can be hicks too!
I do not know what is even left anymore. H2 used to always be the safe haven when the History Channel started going to hell, but even that is being corrupted with asinine, pseudo-historical shows like America Unearthed, where the host, Scott Wolter, can make an entire episode centered around a microscopic carving on a rock and lead the viewer on a baseless quest around the country to misrepresent far-reaching theories as fact, and then find absolutely no concrete evidence to back anything up. This show, in format and principle, is identical to Ancient Aliens. The latter attempts to say that everything the ancients built on earth was really built by aliens, while the former attempts to say that everything ancient Americans built on this continent was really built by foreigners. Is there a difference? I acknowledge that the history books are wrong and there is more than meets the eye, but without actual evidence, the shows are absolutely useless. Maybe if I carved a cross onto the tree in my backyard I could get the crew to come down to try to prove that the Knights Templar hid the Holy Grail in Hazlet, New Jersey. Maybe if I find a really big squirrel climbing that same tree I can get Monsterquest to come out of retirement and have a double whammy!
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.