Category: Editorial

The Crisis of Capitalism, Connect the Dots?

On By southwerkIn Editorial2 Comments
The Crisis of Capitalism
The Crisis of Capitalism

The Crisis of Capitalism, Connect the Dots?

Reading the business news and political commentary over time clues you see certain controversies over and over again. In time, you begin to see the relationships between those controversies. Below are listed six links to stories about the economy. They cover different subjects in different ways sometimes in different formats. For instance the lead article on median household income is a statistics based economics analysis, while the second item is a professional discussing what attitude he should take in encouraging his students to pursue higher education. Nevertheless, they all tie together. They tie together evidencing the crisis of capitalism. And by this I mean capitalism as practiced in the United States. Let me explain how. ( The essay will pick up after the six links.)

Middle-Class Death Watch: The Median Household Is Now Poorer Than in 1984

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/07/31/middle_class_poorer_than_in_1984_housing_wealth_has_crash_debt_has_risen.html

American Dream Fraud: Confession of a Stupid Idealist

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-strauss/college-costs_b_5641798.html

The Frightening Growth of Suburban Slums

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/08/01/suburban_poverty_it_s_becoming_more_concentrated.html

Is There Any Way That Weak Employment Numbers In Europe Might Bolster Concerns That Most Economists Are Right About Government Stimulus

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/is-there-any-way-that-weak-employment-numbers-in-europe-might-bolster-concerns-that-most-economists-are-right-about-government-stimulus

Wall Street Has Raked In Almost A Billion Dollars Helping Companies Move Overseas To Dodge Taxes

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/07/29/3465206/wall-street-inversions-overseas/

Think everything on a dollar menu costs a dollar? Think again.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/08/01/think-everything-on-a-dollar-menu-costs-a-dollar-think-again/

Median Household Wealth Falls.

The first story is a economic tragedy, an incredible one. The middle class wealth of Americans has fallen below the level of 1984. And it didn’t fall a little bit, it is twenty percent less, one fifth.

Let me put this in perspective for you. The Gross National Product in 1984 was a little more than four trillion dollars. As of 2012, it was sixteen and a half.

That means that this nation increased the amount and value of its good and services roughly by a factor of four and during that time of growth, the middle class actually lost ground. Where did all that money go? And why did the bedrock producers of wealth, the American worker, get less and less of it?

Currently the one percent hold 38% of the nation’s wealth. Their income rose from 1979 to 2007 at a rate of 275%.

Well obviously, it must be that the one percent produce enormous economic gains while what workers produce is worth less and less. Do they really? Between 1979 and 2007, worker productivity in the United States went up 240 percent. American workers more than doubled their productivity and were rewarded by declining income.

So, from the first story we can conclude that the middle class is becoming poorer while the wealthy accumulate more and more wealth.

Is College Worth It?

The second story is by Larry Strauss.  He’s a teacher and he begins the essay talking about his family coming to America in years past believing in the American dream and through hard work and brains made it into the middle class. But now he finds himself in a quandary. Is a college education a road to the middle class for his economically disadvantaged students? It’s hard to encourage a student from that background to take on an incredible amount of student loan debt on a promise of economic advantage when the job market is so hideous and whole idea of economic advancement may be questionable. His students from four or five years back talk abut owing massive student loans while being lucky if they can find any job at all. Some have moved back in with their parents.

He is confronting with courage and commitment a new conundrum of our age. While college becomes more and more expensive while becoming more and more a corporate form based on profit and dubious numbers, the promise of upward mobility may be overblown if not a mirage. It is entirely possible that large groups of Americans will in the future be permanently consigned to the class they were born in.

Poverty in Suburbia

A new phenomenon, the urban slum, is appearing all over America. First reported during the dot.com burst, by about the year 2000, there were significant numbers. But now their population outnumbers those in the inner city slums. Poverty has moved from the underclass to the middle class.

If the news that urban poverty had increased dramatically wasn’t bad enough, that it is in the suburbs is a human tragedy in itself. An inner city can get services to people easily by comparison with an urban environment. In an inner city, you can walk from one place to another, public transportation is common and facilities such as soup kitchens, government offices, etc., can be centralized for greatest access. The urban landscape was designed around the automobile. Housing developments were laid out between broad sweeping roads with access to home with lots of parking and big garages.

Poor people have trouble keeping cars and if they have a car, the cost of maintenance, insurance and fuel will often make it unusable. So, the urban often go without food and government services. And the scattered community and its implied culture of success makes the support of neighbors and even friends difficult. It’s hard to maintain self-respect in a culture which even in the darkest of economic times blames unemployment and poverty on defects of character.

The Intellectual Poverty of the Ruling Class

The response of the government in the United States and Europe to the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression was austerity. This was an odd response. The great body of economic thought in both the United States and Europe was that in a time of economic calamity the government should step in and stimulate economic activity while alleviating the suffering of the people. This was ignored. A handful of economic studies and a privileged band of economists gave credence to the idea that austerity promoted growth. It was a bizarre theory now and after its continued disastrous failings, even more bizarre now.

Look at the problem from the perspective of the people. The collapse was caused by a relatively small group of banks on Wall Street. Once this catastrophe happened, millions of people lost their jobs and the businesses that served those people perished as well. They suffered while having no responsibility for what happened, and when it might be expected that the government well aware and having aided and abetted the actions of these investment bankers would take some pity on their plight, they were thrust from the concerns of the government, abandoned to the invisible hand of the market which was intent on preserving and maintaining their suffering. Many unemployed people felt that it was strange that the banks did not suffer while they were considered to have failed in a fundamental way, that if only they were more ambitious, more careful and displayed more grit, they could lift themselves out of the economic crisis, and thus shift from “takers to makers.”

In the United States, the cash strapped local and state governments cuts services, while the President created a stimulus package half the size of what was necessary. After that the President began making cuts joined by Congress. Nevertheless, the United States has done better than the European Union which intent on punishing the “unworthy” imposed draconian cuts on its weaker members, many of which have suffered terrible economic losses. Meanwhile, the so extravagantly promised wonder growth from austerity has failed to materialize.

Why did a doctrine contrary to basic economic theory gain such traction? It was convenient. In the United States, the “very serious people” as well as the economic elites had wanted to cut benefits such as social security for many years. They wanted to impose discipline on the people. Newspapers, in particular the Washington Post and to a lesser extent the New York Times provided (and still do) a constant diet of horror stories about deficits and the costs of benefits. For elites, disaster, catastrophe, human suffering, even calamities caused by or enabled by their actions are opportunities to enact their agendas. And they saw the economic disaster as an opportunity. So, on fragile but well publicized evidence, they proceeded to impose austerity. Their actions produced human suffering on a vast scale while crippling the recovery.

Facts, evidence and expertise are not important in Washington. When facts and evidence prove inconvenient, they are ruthlessly attacked. The attacks often verge on the hysterical.

The ruling classes in the United States place little importance on objective evidence and reasoning when creating public policy. Their disregard has produced great human suffering and bodes ill for the continued existence of the middle class.

The Wages of Sin are almost a Billion Dollars

The next story concerns the movement of American companies’ headquarters overseas to avoid taxes. It’s called inversion. A large American company purchases a small foreign company and then takes on their tax identity and from then it does the same things it did before just without paying taxes in America.

Here we have corporations, created in the United States, its employees trained in American institutions, its rights protected by the laws of the United States, moving to  foreign country not actually but symbolically – just enough to avoid taxes. Millions of Americans have suffered and died for this nation. Millions more have paid taxes to support the legal and physical structures (like roads and schools) that made these corporations possible. Their profits are often subsidized by government contracts and by a myriad of laws that support established businesses.

And yet they abandon any responsibility to the United States, to simple morality and the demands of patriotism.

This is a tragedy, perhaps in a real way, the first direct evidence of nation in the throes of self destruction. But the greater tragedy right now, is that no one is going to do anything about this. There has been a bill submitted to Congress to end the practice but it is dead on arrival in the House of Representatives. No one is going to do anything about this, the people who are evading these taxes are more important than the interests of the American people.

Right now, a compliant press is busy churning out pro-tax evasion articles. Because no matter what a business does in the United States, it has stalwart defenders in the press if only in the business press.

A Dollar Menu, it depends how you count.

Many workers in the United States make little money. A full time worker on minimum wage gets 290 dollars a week. The United States has the highest proportion of low paid workers in the developed world. Seventy-three percent of those on food stamps are working Americans. And of these working Americans a good number work in fast food. Since their salary is insufficient to support a family they have to resort to state and federal aid. This is in a real way a subsidy paid by the taxpayer to companies paying the minimum wage. If the workers had little chance of meeting basic human needs while working at one of these places, they are hardly likely to stay. Fast food businesses as well as big box retailers are able to maintain their work force through federal and state benefits for the poor and their children.

So, what does a dollar hamburger cost? And what would it cost if the worker were paid enough and given enough hours to not need benefits to have a decent life?

Summing Up

Those are the stories I found in one day on the web

Here are the factors we seen in the stories:

1. The middle class has been denied a share of the growth in production and profits from 1984 to the present time.

2. The traditional route of social and economic advancement, education, is losing its capacity to generate social mobility, and the crushing burden of student loans calls into question, whether or not higher education is worth pursuing.

3. The traditional middle class environment, the suburbs, once a symbol of economic success, are now suffering the same blight as the inner city.

4. The governing elites no longer concern themselves with issues related to the population at large but focus their concern on the “wealth producers.” And in that pursuit, facts and ideas that contradict their goals are simply ignored.

5. The corporate movement to avoid taxes is organized, profitable and continuing.

6. Many corporations are paying such low wages that government benefits are necessary to provide basic necessities to their workers, and that this constitutes a massive de facto transfer of money from the government to these corporations.

This adds up to a bleak picture of the future. We have a middle class declining in numbers and wealth while the means of upward mobility increase in expense while becoming less useful. The leadership we have is unconcerned with these problems and in fact, these kinds of issues are peripheral to their interests. Corporations are no longer content with their privileges and power but have abdicated all responsibility for participation in an organized society. These organizations now live by the philosophy, “It’s just business.” And that justifies any crime and any breach of duty with the nation that sired you.

In conclusion I believe that the crisis of capitalism is upon us. I believe that capitalism as practiced in the United States is concentrating wealth and income among a very small group of people while diminishing wages and opportunities gradually diminish the middle class resulting in a huge permanent underclass locked into permanent income insecurity.

George Will Crosses the Line

On By southwerkIn Editorial

George Will Crosses the Line of Decency

I had pondered for a number of days whether or not to discuss the Will column on campus rape and his claim that Progressivism had transformed rape into a “coveted status.” I was upset, but he has said many foolish things as have many other writers on the Washington Post. So, I was leaning toward skipping the topic and discussing the oligarchy of internet providers. But today, the Washington Post responded to criticism, and it was a remarkable response.

According to Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt he welcomed the column and it “was well within the bounds of legitimate debate.” Really, that’s what he said.

What are the facts?

George Will downplayed the seriousness of campus rape, suggested that women claimed rape when it was not an appropriate charge and out of political correctness. I am familiar with the studies done on campus rape.  Here is one from the National Institute of Justice, an arm of the United States Justice Department. It indicates that on a campus of 10,000 female students, there will be an average of 350 rapes a year. The report indicates that five percent of the women in college are likely to experience rape in any given year (page 11). I can go on and tell you more findings, but does it appear to you that campus rape is a made up crisis? or that it was brought about by Progressivism run amok?

The Business Ethics of the Situation

The Washington Post is a newspaper, a business. It is supposed to provide news and commentary. Many things are debatable and a good newspaper provides a platform for vigorous debate over the great issues of the day.

But some things are facts. And trivializing facts about the nature of rape and suggesting that women are willing to decide later that it wasn’t consensual and that being raped is a positive status would seem in my mind to be in a real way a defense of the rapist, the poor misunderstood male who interpreted a woman’s “No” as part of a twisted game, who may have felt that if a woman dresses suggestively, drinks or invites him into her living quarter, she’s just asking for it.

It was to be hoped that these few men, for the statistics are clear – only a small proportion of the male population rape, could be deterred by more vigorous administrative action or at the very least they could be subject to more vigorous punishment. But this is now rendered more unlikely by George Will and defenders of a status quo which celebrates past custom and male aggression. For the poor, much put upon males, it was in his mind one indignity too much.

This issue brought forward by the commentary page of the newspaper is about crime. I firmly believe that if Will had trivialized armed robbery or shoplifting, he would have been fired yesterday. A great newspaper does not ignore facts or imply that a crime is okay because it has been the custom in the past – so was slavery and wife beating. Times have changed and George Will likes the old way.

But crime is crime, and the newspapers twisted ideas on what constitutes fair comment distorts a horrible act into a matter of dispute. That’s not responsible commentary.

James Pilant

On the same subject:

https://fishershannon.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/a-letter-to-george-will-in-response-to-his-june-6-2014-opinion-piece/

http://tpfleming.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/george-will-lashes-out-at-rape-victims/

http://barrystuartlevy.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/george-will-being-a-victim-of-sexual-assault-is-a-coveted-status-that-confers-privileges/

Dan Bodine Has a New Post

On By southwerkIn Editorial4 Comments

abom11thDan Bodine Has a New Post

It is with great pleasure I post a portion of Dan Bodine’s new post at the Desert Mountain Times. Please go to his web site and read it. Sign up as a follower and enjoy being part of a real writer’s experience.

James Pilant

All this talk about Texas being “backwards” is a conspiracy

Want to pass along a link to a new HBO film series that includes Texas’ “religiosity” – vis a vis its “backward” political culture – that’s guaranteed to ruffle some feathers! Even has my favorite congressman in it.

Maybe the picky theme should be why should climate denialists, science denialists, far-right conservatives, religious extremists, and a backwards religious and political culture all have to do with our beloved, great state of Texas?

You lookin’ to buy a car, young man?

Yeah, I’ve mellowed some. Twenty-five years ago in Johnson County as my first-career world was collapsing on me, loveboat and all, one of the memorable conversations that arose in it was with my business pardner, the late Don R. McNiel. I’d disappointed him in a writing piece.

Don, a wealthy Republican entrepreneur who Barton listens to testimony during a hearing on synthetic genomics by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Capitol Hill in Washingtona year or so earlier had unsuccessfully challenged House Speaker Jim Wright of Fort Worth for his house seat, accused me of “taking a cheap shot” at our GOP Congressman Joe Barton for his whole hog support of capitalism. …

http://desertmountaintimes.com/2014/05/all-this-talk-about-texas-being-backwards-is-a-conspiracy/

From Around the Web.

From the web site, Rethink, Renew, Revive.

http://rethinkrenew.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/meet-rep-joe-barton-he-understands-global-warming/

This is paraphrased, the full quote is: (Joe Barton’s)

“Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.”

Not as cringe worthy, as he made the thought hypothetical, but clearly doesn’t have a grasp of the scientific principles here.  Yet, he would tell you that there is NO way that humans are POSSIBLY responsible for Climate Change.  He would say it’s something more like Noah’s flood.

I Will Miss Bob Hoskins

On By southwerkIn Editorial

I Will Miss Bob Hoskins

It was the movie, The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish, that made me a Bob Hoskins fan. Through comic circumstances his character winds up dubbing pornographic films. His female counterpart, making the “other sounds,” is played by Natasha Richardson. Through this unlikely partnership, he falls in love with her. The comic situation had me laughing until tears came to my eyes. There is something delightfully bizarre in two people making the sounds of sex and then falling in love.

I always look for actors who I think would be likable in real life. I always sensed a genuineness in him. I would have like to have met him. I’m sure he would have said something funny.

I saw him in a lot of movies. The first time I became aware of him was as the crusty sergeant in Zulu Dawn. Whatever he played he always stood out, a real individual.

He’s going to be missed. I’m going to miss him.

James Pilant

Bob_hoskins_filming_ruby_blue_croppedR.I.P. Bob Hoskins 1942-2014 – Salon.com

Bob Hoskins made Hollywood movies at the peak of his fame in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, but that wasn’t really who he was. As every obituary of the English actor published this week will note, Hoskins’ most widely seen role was probably Eddie Valiant, the toon-hating L.A. private eye in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” Robert Zemeckis’ influential hybrid of live action and animation. But Hoskins drawling his way through an American role never felt (or sounded) right to me. As a man and an actor, Hoskins was a Cockney down to his soul, a product of a bygone working-class London who grew up to become a key figure in the British film renaissance of the ‘80s.

If you look at Hoskins’ bio it will inform you he was born in the country, in the agricultural county of Suffolk, northeast of London. But the year was 1942, and any British person above a certain age will understand the context immediately. London was being bombed daily by the Luftwaffe, and a German invasion still seemed imminent. Pregnant women were routinely evacuated to small towns to give birth, and at the age of 2 weeks, infant Bob returned to the north London neighborhood of Finsbury Park (which, somewhat later, would produce John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten).

Hoskins’ dad was a truck driver (and reportedly a member of the British Communist Party) and his mom taught nursery school; like most working-class British kids of his generation, Hoskins received only a very basic formal education and left school at age 15 to go to work. According to his own hyperbolic-sounding tales, he picked fruit on an Israeli kibbutz and took care of camels in Syria. An English teacher had apparently implanted a passion for the theater, and in 1972, at age 26, Hoskins accompanied an actor friend to an audition and wound up getting the leading part. He had never acted before in any context and had no training; the method acting so beloved by professionals, he would say later, was “a load of bollocks.”

via R.I.P. Bob Hoskins 1942-2014 – Salon.com.

Watch a short scene with Bob Hoskins!

From Around the Web.

From the web site, Pensive Digression.

http://pensivedigression.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/bob-hoskins-passing/

A great actor has passed away at the age of 71 from complications brought on by Pneumonia. I’m serious by the way. Bob Hoskins may not have been appeared in as many films as Christopher Lee or be able to lay claim to the same level of fame as the great classical actors, Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff for example but I have fond memories of his movies from my youth. I want to talk about two in particular here. An ode to you Mr. Hoskins.

The first of his films that I loved as a child was the semi-animated, semi-live action comedy “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”. This films was and still s hilarious. Bob plays the role of a surly investigator with a grudge against cartoons. This proves to be quite a problem when he lives in a world where the “toons” co-exist with real life people every day. He is the only hope of a cartoon rabbit called Roger to prove his innocence after being accused of murder.

What I loved about this film was the humour, which wasn’t afraid to go dark, the lighting, the music, the way the actors blended seamlessly with the animated characters, but most of all it was probably just the animated characters themselves. All the famous animated characters from way back made appearances, Buggs Bunny and Mickey Mouse even shared the screen for a scene, it was awesome! Now that I’m older I still find myself easily watching it anytime I need a laugh. Appreciation for a certain character in particular increased as I matured. Ohh Jessica Rabbit… Damn!

There’s a New Blog Called Big Business Out of Government!

On By southwerkIn Editorial

029There’s a New Blog Called Big Business Out of Government!

The blog’s first post is dated April 27th of this year. I like what they have said so far and have my own reservations about corporate control of government. I’ve noticed that they tend to be “outspoken.” Some would use the term, shrill. But I’ve been called shrill myself and sometimes it is very difficult not to be outraged by the things going on in this country.

Please go have a look at this new blog and see what you think. As an example I’ve reprinted their first posting below.

James Pilant

The US government isn’t here for you anymore Princeton study finds.

http://businessoutofgovernment.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/the-us-government-isnt-here-for-you-anymore-princeton-study-finds/

Our blog should start with a bang, and what bigger bang is there than a peer reviewed paper that outlines how the US is now an oligarchy?

To put simply, an oligarchy is a government that is ran by a handful of people. In the case of the US, the government is ran by the 1%. Those “Americans” who can open their pocket books, resources, and offer 6 to 7 figures positions to legislators, judges, cabinet members, and so on, in exchange for massive deregulation, bailouts, and even wars in order to feed their insatiable appetite for profit and power. These “Americans” pull the strings in the US and they don’t give a shit about you.

http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf

From around the web.

From the web site, A Philosopher’s Blog.

https://aphilosopher.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/the-american-oligarchy/

One of my lasting lessons from political science is that every major society has a pyramid structure in regards to wealth and power. The United States is no exception to this distribution pattern. However, the United States is also supposed to be a democratic society—which seems rather inconsistent with the pyramid.

While the United States does have the mechanisms of democracy, such as voting, it might be wondered whether the United States is democratic or oligarchic (or plutocratic) in nature. While people might turn to how they feel about this matter, such feelings and related anecdotes do not provide proof. So, for example, a leftist who thinks the rich rule the country and who feels oppressed by the plutocracy does not prove her belief by appealing to her feelings or anecdotes about the rich. Likewise, a conservative who thinks that America is a great democracy and feels good about the rich does not prove her belief by appealing to her feelings or anecdotes about the rich.

What is needed is a proper study to determine how the system works. One rather obvious way to determine the degree of democracy is to compare the expressed preferences of citizens with the political results. If the political results generally correspond to the preferences of the majority, then this is a reasonable (but not infallible) indicator that the system is democratic. If the political results generally favor the minority that is rich and powerful while going against the preferences of the less wealthy majority, then this would be a reasonable (but not infallible) indicator that the system is oligarchic (or plutocratic). After all, to the degree that a system is democratic, the majority should have their preferences enacted into law and policy—even when this goes against the wishes of the rich. To the degree that the system is oligarchic, then the minority of elites should get their way—even when this goes against the preferences of the majority.

Knights in Armor and Americans Weigh about the Same?

On By southwerkIn Editorial

002Knights in Armor and Americans Weigh about the Same?

Percherons are being used for Americans who want to be entertained by riding horses. Percherons, the horses bred as war horses for the heavily armored knights of Europe are necessary to move obese Americans. Historically, in America during the old west, they were used for pulling stage coaches. Now they are necessary for moving single Americans.

James Pilant

Big riders mean bigger horses on US’s western trails | World news | theguardian.com

Wranglers in the US west who have for decades cashed in on the allure of getting on a horse and setting out on an open trail say they have had to add bigger horses to their stables to help carry larger tourists over the rugged terrain.

The ranches say they are using draft horses, the diesels of the horse world, in ever greater numbers to make sure they don’t lose out on income from potential customers of any size who come out to get closer to the west of yesteryear.

“Even though a person might be overweight, or, you know, heavier than the average American, it’s kind of nice we can provide a situation where they can ride with their family,” said wrangler T James “Doc” Humphrey.

Humphrey’s 10-gallon hat, goatee, black vest and spurs are a tourist favorite at Sombrero Ranches, east of Rocky Mountain National Park, where they have 20 draft horses, including Belgians and Percherons, and 25 draft horses mixes.

Ranch operators say they began adding the bigger horses in the 1990s, but the pace has picked up in recent years. Over the last 20 years, obesity has increased to more than a third of adults and about 17% of children age 2 to 19, according to federal statistics.

via Big riders mean bigger horses on US’s western trails | World news | theguardian.com.

From Around the Web.

From the web site, Obesity Study.

http://churchillobesitystudy.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/downsizing-in-the-big-apple/

Downsizing in the Big Apple

New York was one of the first US cities to propose a tax on sugary drinks – it was never implemented.  However, in recognition of the problem of overweight and obesity among NYC residents, the city health department has a strong focus on addressing this issue. There is an impressive range of strategies and programs in place to encourage people to reduce the amount of unhealthy food consumed, create environments to support people to eat healthy food and to encourage active living.  Sugar drinks have been singled out for attention because of their large contribution to added sugar in the diet, the calories they provide and resulting overweight and obesity.  The city is one of a number in the US which has run a social marketing campaign since 2009 around sugar drinks to change behavior, particularly in adults and highlight how much sugar is in these drinks and their impact on health.  The aim is to highlight the impact of sugary drinks on their risk of developing diseases like diabetes and heart disease,  and to encourage people to switch to beverages without sugar instead.

Life and Meaning

On By southwerkIn Editorial

!!@@#dddddd444hmlbr49Life and Meaning

I found this while I was searching for African web sites on business law. I was moved by the sentiment and I hope you will be too.

James Alan Pilant

AfricanHadithi: On Solitude: Life And Meaning

I do not worry about the future in terms of career. I worry about it in terms of how long I will live. Few days ago, my roommate saw off a friend. He was twenty-two years old just like me. When he passed on, I did a lot of thinking – soul-searching. I always asked what if it was me. What would I have left behind?

A story is told of a Kenyan philosopher who whilst going to teach a class, went along with a cylinder, sand and stones. When he got to the class, he asked his students to fill the cylinder with sand first and then the stones. He then asked them to do the reverse. When his students were wondering what the exercise meant, he interrupted their thoughts with the meaning. He explained that life is the cylinder, stones are family and sand is work, school, career and the likes. If you make stones (family) the foundation of your life, the sand will maneuver through it easily and find their place. If you makesand (the others) the foundation of your life, the stone can not find its place in it. There will be no stability. Only chaos. I trust the wisdom of the master that this is what life means.I have come to understand that life is transient. I shall do my best to enjoy it whilst it lasts.

I shall work hard for the betterment of humanity, this generation and my continent. I shall believe in the future and continuously work for it. So on that day when the Lord Almighty will be calling me back into his fold, I will sing hymns with the grandchildren sitting on my bed. They will sing for me SDAH 427.

First stanza –

‘’In the land of fadeless day lies the city four-square; it shall never pass away. And there is no night there’’

Better still, they should write that as my epitaph.

via AfricanHadithi: On Solitude: Life And Meaning.

From around the web.

From the web site, The Meaning of Life.

http://saraminna.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/chelsea-fagan/

When we’re drunk, though, when our cheeks are flushed with rosé, something changes. There is an almost palpable feeling of defenses coming down, a sudden compassion and joy for the women around you. We make immediate friendships waiting in lines, we compliment uninhibitedly, we laugh and cover for one another while going to the bathroom. We tell secrets and hug and even kiss. We tell one another how beautiful we are, in a very sincere, if somewhat slurred, kind of way. It’s a joyous scene, the kind of unedited girl love we always imagine we should be having but never do. The instinctive prickliness with which we often confront new women is replaced by a kind of curious sweetness, a desire to make one another feel good because life is too short to feel any other way.

Buy Matt Taibbi’s New Book!

On By southwerkIn Editorial
Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi

Buy Matt Taibbi’s New Book!

I share Taibbi’s outrage over what American justice is becoming. I recommend you buy the book and become aware of how we have two systems of justice.

James Pilant

 The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.

Matt Taibbi: U.S. Should Be Ashamed It Treats Pot Smokers Worse Than Wall St. Criminals

A Wall Street bank accused of laundering money for drug cartels only had to pay a fine. Meanwhile, a man caught with a joint in his pocket had to spend 47 days in jail.

For that, journalist Matt Taibbi thinks prosecutors should be “ashamed.”

The former Rolling Stone writer — who recently announced he’s leaving the magazine to join an as-yet unnamed publication at First Look Media — railed against the Department of Justice Monday night for its failure to criminally prosecute HSBC after the bank admitted to laundering billions of dollars.

“They [HSBC] admitted it. They did it,” Taibbi said during an appearance on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” “If you have a malefactor who is admitting to laundering $850 million for the Mexican drug cartel and he’s not going to jail, you should be ashamed if you’re a prosecutor.”

This isn’t news. HSBC agreed back in December 2012 to pay $1.92 billion to settle accusations that it laundered money for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. But the HSBC story is one nugget Taibbi uses to illustrate inequality in the nation’s justice system in his new book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.

via Matt Taibbi: U.S. Should Be Ashamed It Treats Pot Smokers Worse Than Wall St. Criminals.

From Around the Web.

From the web site, 2013, What’s the Real Truth?

http://jhaines6.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/today-is-my-last-day-at-rolling-stone-by-matt-taibbi/

oday is my last day at Rolling Stone. As of this week, I’m leaving to work for First Look Media, the new organization that’s already home to reporters like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras.

I’ll have plenty of time to talk about the new job elsewhere. But in this space, I just want to talk about Rolling Stone, and express my thanks. Today is a very bittersweet day for me. As excited as I am about the new opportunity, I’m sad to be leaving this company.

More than 15 years ago, Rolling Stone sent a reporter, Brian Preston, to do a story on the eXile, the biweekly English-language newspaper I was editing in Moscow at the time with Mark Ames. We abused the polite Canadian Preston terribly – I think we thought we were being hospitable – and he promptly went home and wrote a story about us that was painful, funny and somewhat embarrassingly accurate. Looking back at that story now, in fact, I’m surprised that Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana gave me a call years later, after I’d returned to the States.

I remember when Will called, because it was such an important moment in my life. I was on the American side of Niagara Falls, walking with friends, when my cell phone rang. Night had just fallen and when Will invited me to write a few things in advance of the 2004 presidential election, I nearly walked into the river just above the Falls.

At the time, I was having a hard time re-acclimating to life in America and was a mess personally. I was broke and having anxiety attacks. I specifically remember buying three cans of corned beef hash with the last dollars of available credit on my last credit card somewhere during that period. Anyway I botched several early assignments for the magazine, but Will was patient and eventually brought me on to write on a regular basis.

It was my first real job and it changed my life. Had Rolling Stone not given me a chance that year, God knows where I’d be – one of the ideas I was considering most seriously at the time was going to Ukraine to enroll in medical school, of all things.

Women of Strength

On By southwerkIn Editorial

Women of Strength

 Jean Raffa of the blog, Matrignosis, commented on an earlier post and suggested that I call your attention to this post of hers. I read it, enjoyed it and agree that it should be shared with a wider audience. So, here is an excerpt from the blog post, Caryatids and Queens. Please go to Ms. Raffa’s web site, read it in its entirety and then stay and browse her many other posts.

James Pilant

005Caryatids and Queens | Matrignosis: A Blog About Inner Wisdom

Femininity is universally associated with beauty, softness, tenderness, receptivity, relationship, and caring. While some equate these qualities with weakness, Spirit Warriors know they make us stronger than we ever imagined possible. Of the many symbols suggesting this kind of strength, none speaks as strongly to me as the caryatid.

Caryatids are gigantic columns or pillars in the form of beautiful, fully draped females. A very old architectural device, they were originally used to support immense entablatures in sacred public buildings. In ancient times it was said that seven priestesses founded major oracle shrines. These priestesses had different names in various parts of the world. In the Middle East they were known as the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, hence their common usage as columns holding up temple roofs. These same pillars are referred to in Proverbs 9:1: “Wisdom [Sophia] hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” On the Acropolis at Athens, caryatids are associated with the strong and independent goddess, Artemis Caryatis, from whom they get their name.

My first glimpse of caryatids at the British Museum filled me with awe and wonder. In them I saw feminine beauty, gentleness, independence, spirituality and mystery blended with majestic, connected, immovable strength. I was looking at the Queen archetype.

A defining characteristic of the caryatid’s strength is her queenly way of serving society. She is strong enough to support huge public buildings in which many activities take place every day, but never takes on more than she can handle, never gets crushed under the weight of her responsibilities.

Nor does she claim godlike perfection and omnipotence for herself: no savior complex for her! She simply receives what she is strong enough to receive; contains what she is large enough to contain; gives what is hers to give. Her strength is not based on compulsions to prove anything or pretend to be something she is not, but on a clear understanding of the nature of her gifts, dimensions of her interior space, and limits of her authority.

via Caryatids and Queens | Matrignosis: A Blog About Inner Wisdom.

From Around the Web.

From the web site, Lafillevintage.

http://lafillevintage.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/women-in-mythology-and-ongoing-projects-part-one/

I’ve always been a big mythology dork- I love stories about magic and wrathful deities and people having sex with gods pretending to be animals and producing cross-species babies. Recently I’ve been exploring the various archetypal roles women play in myths around the world.

While I’m no expert, I have noticed a trend for the roles women are usually given in myths and stories- “the mother,” “the virgin,” “the witch,” etc, etc. Some of these roles have other variations (example: “the virgin” is also often “the princess”), and seem to be reoccurring in every culture, be it Greek, Chinese, Germanic, Native American, brony, etc. The fact that these archetypal roles share similar characteristics over multiple cultures is really interesting to me, and might allude to anthropological evolutionary theories about the role of women in human society- I took an upper-level anthro class once, now I’m convinced I’m an expert.

The Ethics Sage Calls for Ethical Reasoning Skills

On By southwerkIn Editorial

The Ethics Sage Calls for Ethical Reasoning Skills

Steven Mintz, the Ethics Sage is calling for ethical reasoning skills to be added to teaching in the United States. It is an idea that carries real merit and deserves your consideration. Please read.

James Pilant

The Ethics Sage
The Ethics Sage

 Developing the Reasoning Skills through Education to Create a More Ethical Society – Ethics Sage

Late in life Adam Smith observed that government institutions can never tame and regulate a society whose citizens are not schooled in a common set of virtues. “What institutions of government could tend so much to promote the happiness of mankind as the general prevalence of wisdom and virtue? All government is but an imperfect remedy for the deficiency of these.” In other words, Smith knew that virtue, or traits of character as espoused by the ancient Greeks, are essential to making our free market economy work and deliver prosperity under our capitalistic system.

Now we learn that the College Board will overhaul the SAT in 2016. Saying its college admission exams do not focus on the important academic skills, there will be fundamental changes in the exam including ending the longstanding penalty for guessing wrong, cutting obscure vocabulary words and making the essay optional. The latter is disturbing at a time when both college professors and recruiters are criticizing the lack of writing skills of today’s college graduates.

I’m disappointed that the College Board chose not to use the opportunity to introduce ethical reasoning skills. It is the one way we have a chance, as a society, to reverse the declining work ethic that threatens our economic leadership position in the world.

via Developing the Reasoning Skills through Education to Create a More Ethical Society – Ethics Sage.

From around the web.

From the web site, Prime Network.

http://primenetwork.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/academic-dishonesty-and-ethical-reasoning/

Honesty and integrity are vital attributes of any physician or health-care worker, since our work involves dealing with vulnerable people who have to put their trust in us and our judgements.

They are also necessary integral parts of the academic basis for our professional practice – our science must be correct, and we must know what we are doing and be competent at it. Sadly however there is ample evidence to suggest that academic dishonesty remains an area of concern for academic and professional bodies. There is also burgeoning research in the area of moral reasoning and its relevance to the teaching of pharmacy and medicine, including how it is linked to academic honesty.

A just-published paper from the University of Auckland in New Zealand explored academic dishonesty and ethical reasoning in 433 pharmacy and medicine students.1 A questionnaire eliciting responses about academic dishonesty (copying, cheating, and collusion) and their decisions regarding an ethical dilemma was distributed. Multivariate analysis procedures were conducted. The findings suggested that copying and collusion may be linked to the way students make ethical decisions. Students more likely to suggest unlawful and inappropriate solutions to the ethical dilemma were also more likely to disclose engagement in copying information and colluding with other students.

Perhaps somewhat charitably, the authors say, ‘These findings imply that students engaging in academic dishonesty may be using different ethical frameworks’, and that ‘employing ethical dilemmas would likely create a useful learning framework for identifying students employing dishonest strategies when coping with their studies. Increasing understanding through dialogue about engagement in academic honesty will likely construct positive learning outcomes in the university with implications for future practice.’