Category: Economic Justice

When We Destroy Forests, People Die

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Economic Justice

In Brazil, organized crime and a wave of loggers and prospectors have murdered and raped their way across the Amazon Basin. In Asia, forest destruction and the immense fires that resulted have devestated many lives. These are terrible, terrible crimes but a twenty year study finds that there is collateral damage in the form of heat related illness.

(This is from a book of detective stories from more than 120 years ago. It is dramatic and indicates important issues are about to be resolved. I am using it for my writing on this occasion.)

In the United States, we have the largely unpunished and uninvestigated murders of indigenous women although there is a local, state and federal preference of a kind of quasi-legal seizure and destruction of natural resources. Of course, no intelligent human being can fail to mention the massive corruption of our current regime, its wholesale destructions of regulations and enforcement agencies, not to mention the “open for business” attitude that if a corporation has a problem, arrangements can be made.

I want you to understand that I am well aware that greed and evil are international problems and that while deforestation is a more dramatic crisis in east Asian and South America, the United States and its corruption are in no way exempt for causing and profiting from forest destruction.

What kind of collateral damage are we talking about? Over the last twenty years, over half a million have died from heat related illness and many, many millions more have suffered such illness.

I don’t see much need for a business ethics analysis. Destroying huge swaths of the planet to make money is wrong.

There should fines, imprisonment and shaming. The people who do these horrible things should have their pictures published and their names removed from colleges, dorms and cultural institutions. They should at all times be exposed for the destructive cockroaches that they are. But be well aware, a good and moral society would not just rely on shame but would punish them for their crimes.

James Alan Pilant

Jonathan Watts writing for The Guardian has an article: Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/27/deforestation-has-killed-half-a-million-people-in-past-20-years-study-finds

Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.

Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.

Deforestation is responsible for more than a third of the warming experienced by people living in the affected regions, which is on top of the effect of global climate disruption.

About 345 million people across the tropics suffered from this localised, deforestation-caused warming between 2001 and 2020. For 2.6 million of them, the additional heating added 3C to their heat exposure.

A One Billion Dollar Fine!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Economic Justice

Environmental destruction is a world wide problem. Some nations are taking the problem seriously. I don’t live in one of those. I live in the United States where environmental rules and regulations are on the chopping block, victims of dark money, ruthless corporate officials and the right wing media machine.

But other nations have not given up the struggle and one of them is Sri Lanka.

I want you to know that fines as in this case are a good way of punishing miscreants who do severe harm. Money is useful in repairing environment damage and making victims whole.

But a message that resonates requires imprisonment and other directly personal penalties. It is one thing to require a corporation to pay a billion dollars but another to make the CEO pay money out of his own pocket, suffer travel restrictions and and an inability to do financial transactions or serve on corporate boards. Those kinds of penalties will get corporate officials’ attention. Corporations have a lot of money. What they don’t have are officials willing to suffer.

We can also destroy corporations who sin against the nation’s collective interest. The corporate death penalty where the corporation’s legal existence is ended and its assets sold as a penalty would also serve to get the attention of the wrong doers.

Corporations are creations of the state. Their charters can be revoked and they can be ended. It is a choice we should have. Corporate incompetence and villainy have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, billions upon billions of dollars in damages and massive destruction eco-systems. If we “killl” a few, they might do less harm. We might at least get the idea across that we take their destruction of the planet seriously.

We have a responsibility as patriots to protect our nation. That includes the land, the water and the air. It is a profoundly moral duty. For those of us who believe in Christianity, we also have a responsibility to act as stewards of God’s creation. That also calls us to action.

Let us go forth armed with righteousness and a willingness to confront and defeat evil.

James Pilant

(Probably the proper attitude for hauling a dangerous cargo and chemicals and microplastics.)

In an article written for The Cool Down, Alexis McDonell, writes in an article entitled:

Shipping giant hit with $1 billion fine after causing one of worst marine disasters in history: ‘Unprecedented devastation’

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka found a shipping company liable for a billion.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/shipping-giant-hit-1-billion-194500541.html

In June 2021, the MV X-Press Pearl caught fire and sank off the coast of Colombo while carrying a cargo of chemicals.

The Supreme Court described the result as “unprecedented devastation to the marine environment of Sri Lanka,” citing the deaths of 417 turtles, 48 dolphins, eight whales, and countless fish that washed ashore. Debris from the ship, including several tons of plastic pellets used to manufacture bags, spread across beaches and into the ocean.

“This marine environmental disaster … resulted in the widespread release of toxic and hazardous substances into the marine environment, poisoning ocean waters, killing marine species, and destructing phytoplankton,” the judgment stated.

What Comes After Trump?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Economic Justice

(The Great Seal of the United States is a public domain image.)

Several articles have been written about what comes after the current regime ends. One recommended that we create a “truth and reconciliation commission” in the manner of South Africa to restore civility and union. I deeply appreciate the sentiment but I do not believe that is possible in the United States, not any more. Another one I read called for mass prosecutions and prison sentences for the massive fraud, self-dealing, and law breaking that is a daily part of our news perpetrated by this administration and its sympathizers. That is very likely to happen and I expect it will happen.

Before I write any further, I want to make it clear that I do not believe that victory over these neofascists and their dim-witted followers is in any way guaranteed. I have to admit there are days when I think they just can’t be stopped. The lies, the impudence, the confidence and their unrelenting attitude of righteousness would cause all the saints of history to lose their composure. Some days it certainly ruins mine.

But let us assume for a few moments of optimism that we, the good guys, prevail over this scum. We know that we must act whenever and wherever possible to protest and throw barriers in the way of this regime. But let us talk just now of what comes after victory, after Trump is done, perhaps condemned and imprisoned.

I have been reading a book pictured below, a picture which I have borrowed from the internet. I believe this is okay under a fair use exception and since I am mentioning both that I read it and recommend that others buy it and read it, that I may perhaps be forgiven for using it.

This book by Daniel Todman is a very detailed history of Britain at war before the entry of the United States.

Why mention it here? Because just after the British had stopped the Germans from gaining air superiority over England, a number of people from the labor party as well as a group of the intelligentsia began to agitate for and develop a plan for after victory.

And that plan was very largely enacted and put in place when victory was won.

Can you imagine?

Great Britain stands alone. They are being bombed nightly by the Luftwaffe. Hitler has not yet invaded the Soviet Union and the United States seems to see no urgency in joining the conflict. And yet they assumed eventual victory. They had faith. I wish I had that kind of faith now. I wish we all did.

But in any case, what their example shows is that planning for after the struggle is vital and every bit as important as the struggle itself. There must not only be a cause worth fighting for but a set of goals to be achieved, a further set of purposes beyond simply prevailing.

I have some simple suggestions. But I want you to know that I am going to research and think about what is possible and what can achieved, so I may very well return to the topic on multiple occasions.

But here goes –

  1. Fix the mess at the Supreme Court. Add six justices, impose term limits and a code of ethics – it has to be fixed.
  2. Raise the minimum wage.
  3. Universal Health Care, it’s time.
  4. The end of the Imperial Presidency, a comprehensive set of laws and perhaps a couple of constitutional amendments to prevent this kind of power grab from ever happening again.
  5. A complete overhaul of campaign law and among many other things no dark money ever again.
  6. A National Guaranteed enforceable right to vote. No more of this gerrymandering nonsense.
  7. A graduated income tax
  8. Free college education
  9. Free vocational training
  10. And as 8. and 9. imply, a national never ending focus on the development of human capital in American.
  11. We should be building a society devoted to the development of each individual so they they can live a full life of achievement.

At least, that is my poor opinion about what is necessary.

I am going to write about this more at length.

You may share your thought if you wish, but I have approval on all comments so post accordigly.

James Pilant

Business Ethics Roundup: Sept. 6th – 12th

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Corpoorate Social Responsibility, Economic Justice, Editorial, morality

We begin with the wave of fires creating waves of destruction in the American West. Governor Gavin Newsom says the debate over climate change is finished. He says in these California fires you can see the results of climate change with your own eyes. I strongly agree but I felt that the fires in Australia last year should have ended the debate. This is further evidence.

Climate change is going to be a continuing issue in business ethics. How are businesses, particularly, the international corporations, going to act on this issue? Their responses will be as important as that of many medium size nations.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54128872

Sir David Attenborough tells us in his latest documentary that 60% of the vertebrate animals have disappeared since 1970 and the rate of natural extinction has been accelerated 100 times.

Many businesses impact species extinction. The international trade in animals and animal parts is savagely destructive of the earth’s species. And we have only a limited time to act.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54118769

Let’s segue to a somewhat nostalgic and yet current note, that is, vinyl records have outsold CD’s for the first time since the 1980’s. That may be just a chimera though since streaming services are seizing the lion’s share of the market.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/13/tech/vinyl-records-cd-sales-riaa/index.html

There is a famous insurance fraud case making the rounds on social media. A woman in Slovenia cut off her hand with a band saw claiming it was an accident that happened while cutting branches. Unfortunately for her claim, she had just taken out five insurance polices which would have resulted in an award of more the equivalent of more than a million US dollars. This was certainly suspicious but her boyfriend’s internet searches on artificial hands done before the loss clinched the case for fraud.

Apparently another case of stupid criminals but a very sad one (although the hand was reattached).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54125770

California’s legislature faced with a shortage of firefighters and inmates showing bravery and tenacity fighting the wave of fires has passed a law making it easier for them to expunge their records and become firefighters.

As a form of positive business ethics, I am impressed by the act. It seems to me simple justice that those on the frontline of fighting these terrible and now increasingly regular fires should be rewarded.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/9/12/21433678/wildfires-california-law-inmate-firefighters-fire-departments-release

Rio Tinto’s CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques, is going to resign following the destruction of sacred aboriginal sites. The company attempted to deal with the crisis by canceling bonuses but considering the harm done this was a non-starter.

This was an appalling crime and there is no real penalty. Under the law, they could destroy at will any cultural artifact on the land they controlled. The Juukan Gorge rock shelters had shown evidence of continuous human habitation for 46,000 years. They were an irreplaceable evidence of human history completely unique.

What kind of people are these to disintegrate and destroy cultural artifacts at will? And what kind of nation allows its cultural treasures to be annihilated without a hint of caution or penalty?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54112991

And finally, I would like to add my voice to Emily Stewart‘s writing in Vox. She is calling for providing all citizens of the United States with Internet. I strongly agree. If we are going to advance as a nation, that is a minimal requirement. Further, in a crisis like the current pandemic we have already seen the importance of being connected.

But please read the article, the author is detailed and impressive.

James Pilant

 

 

Teaching is a Calling

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
Teaching is a Calling

“If you don’t like the money, you can find another job,” A college administrator once told me.

lotr_09thThere was no concern about the process of de-professionalization of college teaching. There was no concern about an adjunct salary slightly above a fast food worker. There was no concern about the likelihood of having to rely on the charity of food banks and government services when you possess a terminal degree.

Do something that pays more. That’s the answer to any complaint, anywhere in the society, anytime. Such is the prevailing conventional wisdom.

If the free market produces just and perfect results and it must by the nature of its neo-religious believers, than the status and pay that you receive must by the very nature of a competitive society be just and honorable.

It isn’t. It is neither just nor honorable, and it is not based on any known concept of fairness. It is simply a matter of the strong taking from the weak in pursuit of a set of policy objectives.

This process takes its toll on those of who try to work in this profession. I tell my colleagues that just as soon as the students understand our actual salaries and our relative importance to administrators and legislators, they are going to treat us with the same contempt we receive from them. They’re going to wonder that since they paid good money to be taught, why a glorified fast food worker should have any authority to question them as to their understanding of the subject matter. For after all, if your salary is the primary indicator of your value, we’re only worth a fraction of the likely salary of our students while our lack of salary is a clear indicator that our work has little importance and that in a capitalist society, we are over-educated failures.

Why do we hold on in the face of the contempt of the politicians, the beltway media, the “very serious” people and every sort and breed of businessman? Because we care about our students. Because when we teach we feel important and empowered. And that feeling is legitimate because as teachers we are in a real way, the creators of our nation, the shapers of the next generation, and the architects of a democratic society.

It is highly likely that in the times to come, history books will discuss education in the United States in this period as the last candle light before the darkness, the last time in which significant academic freedom existed before college and universities became testing centers based on a purely standardized set of programs dictated by corporate needs.

Read below the thoughts of one teacher as she struggles to teach in a difficult environment. –

http://academeblog.org/2015/11/09/and-this-is-why-i-teach/

I’ve often said that the classroom is my “happy place.”  The one place where I can be present; where I can forget about Wisconsin politics, committee meetings, campus and departmental bureaucracy, and just do what I love.  It’s that time of year where most of us are exhausted.  Where we have students who may just now be realizing they’re failing a class and asking for extra credit.  Where we’re already burnt out and we’ve still got 7 weeks left in the semester.  Where we’re counting the days to finals week because we are all so tired.  I’m in that space, too.  I’ve been there before.  But I am grateful, and always will be, to the students now and in the past who remind me why I teach.  Who remind me how much I love doing my job.  And who have clutched me out of the depths of sadness, especially this semester.

Mother Dies in Jail

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice3 Comments

095-1Have You Ever Been in Jail?

Read the headline below.

Impoverished Mother Dies In Jail Cell Over Unpaid Fines For Her Kids Missing School

Have you ever been in jail? I have. No, I didn’t do anything. I’ve worked in criminal justice. I was an intern in a U.S. Probation office and I worked with juvenile delinquents. I’ve visited jails. I didn’t mind the little town jails. They seem almost friendly. But the city jails, especially the big cities. They were awful. I always wanted to leave as quickly as humanly possible.

The big city jails are crowded. The clientele varies from next to nothing in terms of offenses (not being able to pay a fine) to people who can’t make bail for major offenses like murder. There are always prostitutes. And they don’t look like the ones on television. They aren’t pretty and they don’t have hearts of gold. They look beat up and worn. They talk nasty and think it’s funny. The atmosphere is oppressive and the facilities limited.

People used to tell me about how they wish they could live the life of the jailed or the inmate of a prison – free medical care, free dental, three squares a day and you don’t have to work – paradise. It takes an incredible absence of knowledge and poor judgment to believe that about one of these places. In one big city jail I visited, the cells housed twenty four prisoners each. That’s 24 beds and two steel toilets out in the open. (The seasoned professional I was with told me to keep my eyes open. Sometimes the inmates throw excrement at you.) There’s a television posted out of reach at the end of the cell. If you’re not in the bed nearest it, it’s a little difficult to see and hear, and if you are at the far end, it’s about the size of a postage stamp. And that was a brand new model installation that was not overcrowded and run down.

They took a mother of seven away from her children and put her in one of these places for non-payment of a fine. She didn’t commit a crime and they put her in there. She owned money and they locked her up – debtor’s prison – you know, those things we abolished in the United States.

She was scared. She was stripped and cavity searched. It’s not in the article but that’s what happened. It’s standard procedure. It should only happen to people who committed crimes. It’s demeaning and humiliating.

They put her in there with real criminals. Being a mother of seven is probably not a good preparation for jail. She had high blood pressure. She was middle aged. She was a law abiding citizen trying hard to raise her children.

She had 55 truancys that she owed thousands of dollars for. That sounds like a lot. But it’s not. The offenses date from 1999. That’s fifteen years. For one child that is an average of three and one half offenses per year. For seven children, that’s an average of one-half a truancy a year. I’m not sensing Al Capone here.

She’s dead. End of story. A county in Pennsylvania has criminalized non-attendance in school and chosen to punish the parents with thousands of dollars of fines. And when they don’t pay, they go to jail.

But the story gets better. You see, if you read the article, it’s obvious the court knew she was on welfare and had no money. She didn’t bring her paperwork showing her lack of income. The court was punishing her for not having proof of what was obvious.

Obviously, that’s justice. Well, in Pennsylvania.

Where’s the business ethics?

This isn’t a business? The city uses the truancy law to impose thousands of dollars of fines which it extracts under fear of imprisonment. Isn’t that policing for profit? More and more cities and counties are using these kinds of fines to generate revenue. It’s deliberate policy. It’s a recent development historically and my understanding is that it is increasing in use across the nation.

If a city or a county uses fines for a revenue stream, justice is not a real consideration. Getting the money is. They’re using the jail to make money.

I appeal to your judgment – are fifty-five truancys over fifteen years worth thousands of dollars of fines? And isn’t it obvious that these fines and the penalties for non-payment are going to fall most heavily on the poor?

Jails and prisons are supposed to be for criminals. They are not supposed to be tools for cash strapped municipalities to balance the budge on the backs of the poor.

When the courts are no longer dealing justice but making money for the government, the central purpose of the criminal justice system is perverted and forgotten. The inmates are people being punished for committing crimes. They are living, breathing revenue streams who must be subject to fines and stacked penalties to squeeze out that last dime.

Justice is the goal we should aim at as a society, as a nation and as individuals. There are other ways to raise money. There have to be.

James Pilant

On the Same Subject.

http://antzinpantz.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/mom-dies-in-jail-for-not-paying-school-fines/

More than 1,600 people have been jailed in Berks County alone – two-thirds of them women – over truancy fines since 2000 …

http://mybraincage.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/mother-dies-in-jail-cell-where-she-was-serving-a-two-day-sentence-for-her-childrens-absence-from-school/

 

DEP, “Don’t Expect Protection”

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
DEP, “Don’t Expect Protection”

pennsylvania-enviornment_0Fracking’s Toxic Secrets: Lack Of Transparency Over Natural Gas Drilling Endangers Public Health, Advocates Say

Some frustrated residents and anti-fracking activists are finding new names to call the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) — “Don’t Expect Protection,” “Department of Energy Production” — according to Dana Dolney of ShaleTest, a nonprofit that provides free air and water quality testing for low-income residents near natural gas wells.

The department is taking heat for providing what critics see as incomplete water quality test results to property owners who are concerned about pollution from nearby fracking operations. Withholding such information, the critics say, could endanger residents’ health.

“Based on what is happening in the Marcellus Shale, we saw a huge desperate need for this kind of testing,” Dolney said. “We wouldn’t have to do what we do if it wasn’t for the failures of the DEP.”

The DEP and natural gas companies are defending the testing methods, asserting that the contaminants most likely to be associated with fossil fuel extraction are included in what is shared with the DEP and, subsequently, with homeowners.

Still, critics suggest the purported “filtering” of testing data is just one of the ways people are left in the dark about the assortment of heavy metals and other toxic contaminants that may be in their air and water as a result of drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other phases of natural gas production. Recent studies have identified more than 600 chemicals used throughout the process of natural gas production, and often left undisclosed by companies. Additionally, natural but equally hazardous substances can be released from the wells.

Fracking’s Toxic Secrets: Lack Of Transparency Over Natural Gas Drilling Endangers Public Health, Advocates Say

Not telling people the information you don’t want them to have is lying. It’s just easier to justify to yourself. This is what happens when an agency is captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate.

James Pilant

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Are Your Children Likely to Make More Money than You?

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

No. The statistics are clear.  The ability to change class to move upward is very, very limited. Most people on average and most commonly will make about the same money as their parents.

Why are we in this situation? Well, education is no longer a likely venue to higher income. The privileged have access to Ivy League schools and privately educate their children from the nursery to college. Currently we have what is essentially two education systems in the United States, one for the upper class and public education for everyone else. God help anyone self-educated like Abraham Lincoln. People like that aren’t even in the ball game.

What else? Well there’s hiring practices. The upper middle class reassured by such books as “Emotional Intelligence” hire on the basis of comfort. And comfort by and large means hiring your own social class. It diminishes the importance of ability and makes skilled work annoying to others.

Contacts are another critical factor. I’ve heard many people say, “It’s not what you can do, it’s who you know.” I don’t think that knowing the plant manager is that big a deal down in the lower class where I dwell. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about access to Congressmen and Governors. I’m talking about the heads of corporations and the deans of business schools. I’m talking about knowing the players in the financial sector, of knowing where the levers are when it comes to getting loans, jobs and influence. Those are the contacts that make a difference.

Tell me, what’s all A’s at state U, compared to Harvard or Georgetown? What is raw ability when you don’t golf, wear the right clothes or speak the language of the upper class? What is your chance of moving up in the world when maybe you know a state representative and the other guy has a letter from the White House?

We can do better.

Ability should be the measure of success. Social class shouldn’t be a burden borne only by the workers. The cozy club atmosphere of the privileged should be open to all comers.

James Pilant

Here is the article title and a paragraph explaining the numbers behind my claims.

The Rise and Consequences of Inequality in the United States
Alan B. Krueger
Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers
January 12, 2012

More research has been done on intergenerational income mobility. Studies find that your
parent’s income is a good predictor of your subsequent income. Studies that use income data
averaged over longer periods of time for parents and children tend to find higher correlations
between parental and children’s income. A reasonable summary is that the correlation between
parents’ and their children’s income is around 0.50. This is remarkably similar to the correlation
that Sir Francis Galton found between parents’ height and their children’s height over 100 years
ago. This fact helps to put in context what a correlation of 0.50 implies. The chance of a person
who was born to a family in the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution rising to the top 10
percent as an adult is about the same as the chance that a dad who is 5’6” tall having a son who
grows up to be over 6’1” tall. It happens, but not often.

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A Womb with a View?

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

i_192A Womb with a View?

In Kansas, legislation is under consideration that will require doctors to report all miscarriages to the state health department.

One would think a womb would be more private.

This information could be used as an investigative tool for prosecution of the mother for harming or killing the fetus as in the Mississippi case of Rennie Gibbs. This could mark a new approach to diminishing women’s reproductive rights. Medical problems like miscarriage can be converted from personal medical problems to law enforcement issues. And, of course, once an investigator begins looking at a possible prosecution all the other medical records have to be examined as well.

The marginalization of women has been principally embodied in culture and custom. But now through the magic of legislation, it’s one woman at a time, one reproductive system at a time. In 2013, the idea of invasive ultrasounds ran its course but like all its ilk is only awaiting the right moment to return.

In the past, a woman’s reproductive system was considered a matter of some privacy. Now, it is an arena for manipulating, prosecuting and even mythologizing women. Manipulating by putting women in fear of their conduct during pregnancy, prosecuting by actively seeking charges against women for reproductive “felonies” and mythologizing by making women sacred hosts, carriers of genetic treasure; who must be treated with the utmost respect – and regulated.

It’s second class citizenship writ large. Right now, it’s a slow laborious chipping away at the base of women’s equality. The intent is clear – control. Once patriarchy is the rule, women and their issues will no longer be problems. Equal pay, child care, family leave, voting, reproductive rights, all will disappear into those subjects not covered by the media, not discussed in the restaurants and private clubs of the beltway, and not manipulated for political contributions in the halls of power.

Women’s rights are a continuing struggle. Women will not gain equality in our lifetimes and just holding on to the rights possessed now will be difficult. The current tool to put women in their “place” is fetal personhood. What the next one will be is germinating in the minds of those to whom women’s natural functions are paramount over their status as human beings.

James Pilant

From around the web.

Walsh, S. (2014, March 26). If stillbirth is murder, does miscarriage make pregnant women into criminals?. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/26/stillbirth-murder-miscarriage-pregnant-women-criminals
Seven and a half years ago, a Mississippi teenager named Rennie Gibbs went into premature labor and delivered a stillborn baby girl named Samiya. Initially, experts attributed the baby’s death to the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. But when traces of a cocaine byproduct showed up on the autopsy report, a medical examiner declared the stillbirth a homicide and cited cocaine toxicity as the cause. Shortly afterward, the 16-year-old Gibbs was charged with murder, specifically “depraved heart murder”, a charge that can carry a sentence of up to 20 years to life in prison.

Since her grand-jury indictment in 2007, Gibbs’s team of attorneys has been fighting for the charges to be dropped on both technical and legal grounds. The defense argues that there’s no scientific proof that cocaine use can cause a stillbirth – and that the “depraved heart murder” statute did not apply to unborn children at the time of Samiya’s death. A decision is expected any day now as to whether the Gibbs case will finally proceed to trial or get dismissed. If it does go to trial, and Gibbs is convicted of murder for being 16 and pregnant, then a dangerous precedent may be established that should make anyone with a uterus feel very afraid.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/26/stillbirth-murder-miscarriage-pregnant-women-criminals

From around the web.

Marcotte, A. (2014, March 26). Kansas moves to defund planned parenthood and force doctors to report every miscarriage. Slate, Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/03/26/kansas_moves_to_defund_planned_parenthood_and_force_doctors_to_report_every.html

It’s not just women who are trying to avoid pregnancy who are under attack in Kansas. A bill winding its way through the state’s legislature would require doctors to report all miscarriages to the state health department, no matter how early they occur in a pregnancy. The requirement was tacked on to a bill that was supposed to be about reporting stillbirths, and it is so extreme that even some anti-choice Republicans have balked. It’s clear that this amendment is about conflating early pregnancy loss with post-20 week fetal demise and stillbirth. “The whole point is to further the idea of the fetus as a person. It’s a way of establishing the groundwork for making abortion harder to get, and eventually illegal,” Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute told ThinkProgress. Currently, no state requires doctors to report miscarriages early in pregnancy, because they are a common and usually minor medical issue.

What’s troubling about the bill is that it’s a needless invasion of a woman’s privacy, and it would reinforce the dangerous idea that the mere act of failing to complete a pregnancy is so serious that it requires state intervention. We’ve already seen states making moves to criminalize women for stillbirths, even when the evidence suggests that the woman’s behavior had no impact on the pregnancy’s outcome. We also know that if a woman terminates a pregnancy by taking misoprostol she bought on the Internet, that doesn’t actually look any different from a regular early term miscarriage. Cataloguing every woman who has an early term miscarriage opens the door to investigating women who officials suspect might have deliberately caused those miscarriages. There’s already been one woman prosecuted for inducing an early term miscarriage in just this way, so it’s certainly possible that such a law could result in women having to endure criminal investigations if they dare show up at a hospital miscarrying at eight weeks. Just from your life experience, you know that’s a lot of women.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/03/26/kansas_moves_to_defund_planned_parenthood_and_force_doctors_to_report_every.html

From around the web.

Marcotte, A. (2014, February 24). Virginia lawmaker calls pregnant women “hosts”. Slate, Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/02/24/steve_martin_of_virginia_on_abortion_state_senator_calls_pregnant_women.html
In text citation: (Marcotte, 2014)

Minimum Wage is Pathetically Low

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice2 Comments

c27aMinimum Wage is Pathetically Low

You can read it below: last years banker’s bonuses were twice the entire income of all those making the minimum wage.

Certainly, this should be considered evidence that the minimum wage is set too low. A good argument can be made that the social utility of what minimum wage earners do is far superior in benefits for our larger society than investment banking and some of the practices of regular banking.

It’s important to think about fairness and just deserts when dealing with this issue. In this country, the game is tilted toward those with influence and power. The minimum wage workers hardly register on either of those scales.

It is for the rest of us to add to their voice, to sometimes be their voice. What isn’t fair for our fellow Americans is a part of our responsibility.

We are not individual atoms floating in some kind of cosmic vacuum. We live, work and thrive with other people and those connections are important and a big part of what we consider civilization.

James Pilant

New report: Bankers’ bonuses more than double full-time minimum wage workers’ pay – Salon.com

The $26.7 billion spent on Wall Street bonuses last year was greater than the entire 2012 income of America’s full-time minimum wage workforce, according to a new report from the progressive Institute for Policy Studies.

Had that $26.7 billion instead gone to increased wages for the country’s 1,085,000 full-time minimum wage workers, writes report author Sarah Anderson, those workers’ wages ($15.1 billion total in 2012) would have more than doubled. Anderson estimates that such a raise for minimum wage workers would have done much more than bank bonuses to spur economic growth: In contrast to a $10.4 billion multiplier effect from the payouts to bankers, she calculates a $32.3 billion multiplier if the cash had gone into the pockets of those now making $7.25.

via New report: Bankers’ bonuses more than double full-time minimum wage workers’ pay – Salon.com.

From around the web.

From the web site, Arindrajit Dube.

http://arindube.com/2014/01/22/the-poverty-of-minimum-wage-facts/

So to take stock, if you consider the Sabia and Burkhauser simulation results  as “facts” you also are claiming that no worker reporting a wage below the old minimum will get a raise, and no one above the new minimum will get a raise. These are not very good assumptions, and they certainly are not facts.

Of course, you don’t have to make these assumptions. You could allow for spillovers. You could allow for wages to rise below the minimum. You could allow for measurement error in reported wages and other sources of income. But then you are not in a world where tabulating survey data gives you simple facts that are beyond reproach. You need to make additional assumptions to make causal claims. And we have not even begun to talk about behavioral effects—be they on labor demand side, or on labor supply side such worker search effort, etc. (And by the way those do not all go in the same direction.)  So you could add a lot more assumptions and continue with the simulation route, or you could use quasi-experimental approach used in almost all of applied micro-economics to empirically estimate the effect of minimum wages on poverty and other outcomes.  Of course, you would want to subject your identifying assumptions to specification checks and falsification tests to ensure you have reliable control groups; and you would account for possibly confounding policies such as state EITCs. And when you do all of that, and some more, you would probably end up with a paper like this one.

So where does this leave us?   As I said in my paper, policies like cash transfers, food stamps, and EITC are better targeted to help the poor, although even there minimum wages are better thought of as complements and not substitutes. More generally, however, motivations behind minimum wage policies go beyond reducing poverty. The popular support for minimum wages is in part fueled by a desire to raise earnings of low and moderate income families more broadly, and by fairness concerns that seek to limit the extent of wage inequality, or employers’ exercise of market power.  And the evidence suggests is that attaining such goals through increasing minimum wages is also consistent with a modest reduction in poverty, and moderate increases in family incomes at the bottom.