Category: ethics

Bob Cesca – Are Progressives Losing Touch With Reality?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, President Obama

(I want you to know that I recognize that this essay is going to offend readers. I am sorry about that. I wanted very much over the last two years to write about how home owners were saved from foreclosure, how the banks were stopped from paying bonuses with public money, how thorough investigations were conducted into the banking practices which resulted in the financial meltdown, how the financial regulation of the 1930’s was reinstated to prevent future disasters, how white collar criminals were frog marched from their fancy offices and incarcerated, and how the President called on Americans particularly in the business world to act ethically, morally and responsibly. I didn’t get to write those essays.)

This is a response to Bob Cesca’s essay in the Huffington Post

Bob finds the President’s ability to sacrifice core beliefs that he asserted a few days before to be admirable displays of negotiating ability.

The President agrees to extend the Bush tax cuts after unequivocally saying he would not.

Losing touch with reality? Those funny people can read newspapers, observe blogs and understant ideology and facts.

The facts are clear. The President has no principle he is willing to stand for. None. Nada. Zero.

You expect a President to occasionally give up an ideogical point for negotiation. With Obama, whoops, excuse me, Mr. Cesca, I mean President Obama, everything is on the table.

Watching him eaten alive by Republican piranha is hardly the political vision held by Americans when he was elected.

Let me make it absolutely clear to you, Mr. Cesca. Lyndon Johnson said he knew the difference between chicken s**t and chicken salad. We’ve been fed a steady diet of chicken s**t by this White House.

It’s time for something different. It’s time for a primary challenge.

It would be better to have some exercise in actual belief than continual surrender.

It would be better to have a human being with some sincerity, some vestige of belief, some commitment to his own words, than this.

You want political reality, Bob? You want some straight talk, Cesca?

Try this. A good section of the Progressive movement are fed up and disgusted. They are not coming up with money, knocking on doors and doing all that other stuff that paid off with exactly, precisely zero. Progressives worked for this President. Oh, did I get that right, Bob, saying President? Does that make you feel more comfortable? Progressives are the cutting edge of the blade. They are the people that organize and fight for a candidate. No, they are not a majority of the Democratic party, just the part that gets out and fights. What are you hoping for? That Palin is the nominee, and all the Progressives will say they are sorry and come flocking back to fight?

What if it’s not Palin? What are you going to do then? Will you write how Progressives are out of touch while they sit at home?

This is rage, Bob. This is what you get when you get betrayed over and over again.

This is what you get when you watch banks bailed out to the last dime and watch the HAMP program (run by a twenty year veteran of Citibank) go down in flames having helped less than a million Americans of whom more than twenty percent are going back into foreclosure.

Oh, I guess that doesn’t bother you, Bob. See those are real, breathing, walking around Americans having the largest investments in their lives seized and turned into quick cash by those same bailed out banking institutions.

I teach business law and business ethics. Did you ever walk into a class and try to explain how a privileged class can crush the economy by gambling on derivatives and playing with home mortgages like monopoly money and walk away with their millions (billions) intact. No criminal investigations, no action taken to recover the money, the President constrained from even light criticism. All I have to do is explain that virtue is its own reward. Hard sell, Bob?

But morals, ethics, campaign promises, they can all be dispensed with for pragmatism. After all, cutting a deal, however bad, is what it is all about. Right?

Losing touch with reality? Lord God, I wish. This is a nightmare.

If anyone had told me two years ago, this would be the result of the election, I would have thought they were mental.

There was a lack of contact with reality. But it was then, not now. We know what we have now and it’s not much.

James Pilant

Workplace bullying 2010: “Bullycides,” Breakthroughs, and Backlash (via Minding the Workplace)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure2 Comments

Bullycide
“Bullycide” deserves admission to the Oxford English Dictionary. Let David Yamada explain this from a post on his web site, Minding The Workplace.

James Pilant

The year 2010 was a significant one for the emerging American movement to stop workplace bullying. Here is my attempt to characterize major developments of the past year. "Bullycides" An unfortunate but apt term entered our lexicon this year, "bullycide," referring to suicides linked to bullying at work and schools. In the workplace context, two such deaths became especially prominent. One involved the July suicide of Kevin Morrissey, an editor a … Read More

via Minding the Workplace

Stick Shift Foils Car Jacking

On By southwerkIn ethics

From the Wichita Eagle –

A man’s attempt to carjack a vehicle in south Wichita Tuesday night was foiled by an unexpected complication: He didn’t know how to drive a stick shift.

Police say a 20-year-old man had filled up his car at the QuikTrip at Seneca and 31st Street South and had returned to his vehicle when a stranger approached him at about 7:35 p.m.

The stranger demanded that the victim surrender his car, and began to reach behind his back as if to produce a weapon, police said. The victim bolted from the car and ran toward the store, and the suspect got in and tried to drive off.

But he didn’t know how to work the manual transmission and the car stalled, police said, so he abandoned the car and ran east from the convenience store.

Video surveillance captured the suspect climbing out of a maroon Ford Taurus prior to the incident, police said, and officers are now looking for that vehicle.

Studies indicate that the prison population averages an IQ of about 80. This guy may lower the average.

James Pilant

Irish And Greek Bailouts Won’t Work!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure

James Saft
James Saft writing on his blog discusses the strange bailouts of Ireland and Greece. “What’s strange?” They are unsustainable. They are disastrous. They are a bandaid that won’t hold. This essay uses the word, bizarre. That is correct.

James Pilant

From Reuters –

So let’s recap, because this is truly bizarre: Lenders to Ireland or the other troubled states won’t take a hit now but if they stick around until 2013 then they will take losses along with the taxpayers. Oh yeah, and the current round of bailouts are aimed at seeing Ireland and Greece through the next couple of years, at which point it will become extremely dangerous to lend to them, as their economies will have shrunk, their debt burdens bloomed and private lenders will be on the hook.

To add to this, the European Stability Mechanism, the name of the new fund, will be senior to all creditors except the International Monetary Fund, meaning that in the event of a bankruptcy it would be paid first. Ratings agency Fitch looked at this provision and quite rightly said that it might lead to lower ratings on shaky euro zone sovereigns.

The only way you could make this policy mix work was if you could find a very rich lender with no ability to conceptualize the future. Hmm, let’s see a rich entity with limited ability to fully imagine a future state – it must be the European Union!

Few private lenders will stick around, they will sell their bonds and the only buyers will be the EU or ECB, which itself as it understands this predicament is hugely unwilling to play along.

Germany and France are both so unwilling to both have principles and pay for them that they are refusing to act on proposals for common European bonds and are expected to resist moves to increase the size of the European Financial Stability Fund, the vehicle now being used for bailouts.

Okay, do you get it? These aren’t solutions. They are designed to tide things over until someone new is in office to take responsibility. And especially, they are designed to appear as decisive action when they are nothing of the kind.

It is important that both Greece and Ireland elect new governments charged with challenging these horrendous plans that smack only of disaster. Those countries deserve better, and their citizens should demand better terms. These are sovereign nations not American homeowners subject to the whims of banks.

Let democracies exert the power of the people, the one and only thing that banks fear.

James Pilant

Why Aren’t American Financial Criminals Going To Prison?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics

Take a look at this and ask the same questions they are.

James Pilant

Nation On Wrong Track? – COMMENT by Jayaraman Rajah Iyer

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure3 Comments

Jayaraman Rajah Iyer comments on one of my recent posts. Being down with a sinus infection (it’s still hanging on), I wasn’t able to do it justice in my comments, so now I remedy that by letting you all see it as a direct post.

James Pilant

Yes all nations are in the wrong track. Quote from my book:”When the priority is already set, the hungry man accepts
the inevitability of the human race which is non-reacting,
non-acting, non-responding, inert-like entity. The change that
is needed from a Government to shift the gear from
advanced technology and space exploration to a mundane
agricultural economy is a process very tough to implement in
a short notice, even if one realizes that more than a billion
people are below poverty line. Nuclear submarines,
armaments, security initiatives of trillion dollar valued
business enterprise have precedence over morality and
therefore prudence is what the government feels they should
adopt. Not because it is not the priority but effecting change
in increasing the arable lands, increasing the yield per
hectare, linking satellites facilities for better farming,
conclusion on Genetically Modified seeds, advanced
agricultural machinery, increasing the total agricultural
production etc. involve a clear long-term strategy of many
years to implement.

“The new pledge to commit $20 billion to global
agricultural development.. has the potential to dramatically
improve the livelihoods of more than 700 million of the
world’s poor living in rural areas, so says Catherine Bertini,
former executive director, UN World Food Program; and Dan
Glickman, former secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture.”
$20 billion is a minuscule amount, given the defense
expenditure and the estimated sum tax evaders who have
effectively squirreled away between 7 and 11 trillion dollars
in safety deposit boxes and offshore bank accounts, as
Lesley Curwen reports in BBC, it gives the state of
affairs of the economy driven by forces beyond the control of
the world governments. Agricultural production gets stagnated for years but world, if ever takes cognizance of
increased production in agriculture, then the society as a
whole has to be brought into action. The canvas is much
larger, expansive, broad and comprehensive in its strategy
to execute. Without involving many in the society it is
conceptually difficult to materialize major results.”

Recent visit by Obama to India has again pushed defense equipment for sale that would at the most protect a few jobs. India is stagnated at 300 million tonnes agricultural produce for too long and there seems to be no strategy to scale up to 500 million tonnes. Leadership is very much needed lest those who remain hungry takes the leadership in their hands – at the street level.

ADAM LEVITIN…21% HAMP First Year Redefault Rate (via Foreclosureblues)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure

Just when you thought the President’s HAMP program couldn’t be any worse, it is. I teach my classes that just when you think you’ve reached the bottom that there is always more down. Here is solid evidence from the gentlemen at Foreclosureblues.

James Pilant

ADAM LEVITIN...21% HAMP First Year Redefault Rate 21% HAMP First Year Redefault Rate Today, December 13, 2010, 1 hour ago | Adam Levitin The Congressional Oversight Panel has a new HAMP report out.  Like all COP reports, it's long and chock full o' analysis.  There's an executive summary up front, but some of the most important points are only in the report proper (especially pp. 100-111).  I think there are three big things to take away from the report: First, 21% of HAMP permanent modification … Read More

via Foreclosureblues

Elderly Face Future Near Poverty Line

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics1 Comment

From MSNBC –

Nearly half of elderly Americans will face a future with at least one year below or close to the poverty line, according to a new study that showed a huge racial divide in prospects for the elderly.

Mark R. Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said the results of his research contradict popular beliefs about the economic stability of America’s elderly population.

“We have an image of the elderly as doing pretty well,” he said, adding that data spanning 35 years does not support that assumption.

Nobody is safe. Nobody is secure. We face an economic future in which those that have created value, those that have worked for a living, are just pawns in a game of financial monopoly.

James Pilant

Nation On Wrong Track?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure2 Comments

From Yahoo News –

A majority of Americans feel that America has is “on the wrong track,” and that they are worse off than they were in 2008.

In a sweeping poll released by Bloomberg today, 66 percent of respondents said that they felt that “things in the nation…have… gotten off on the wrong track,” compared to just 27 percent who felt the country was heading in the right direction. 51 percent of respondents said they were worse off now than they were two years ago.

We need leadership and we need someone in power whose first concern is the welfare of the middle class. Period.

James Pilant

Elderly Hit Business With Automobiles Twice In Five Hours

On By southwerkIn ethics1 Comment

The picture is not directly related to the story (but is fun anyway).

From the Wichita Eagle –

Tammy Hatley stopped to ask a doctor whether he wanted a refill on his coffee before she continued to the front desk this morning.

It may have saved her life.

An elderly patient arriving for an appointment at Lakewood Chiropractic, 2434 N. Woodlawn, shortly before 10:30 a.m. hit the gas pedal instead of the brake, propelling her car through the wall and into the office.

Five hours later, it happened again — this time an elderly man broke the freshly replaced front window with his car.

“It’s been a pretty exciting day,” said Tammy Hatley, a chiropractic assistant.