So, I’m An Imbecile, Am I? Or Is It, Paranoid Zealot? Can I Choose?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics2 Comments

William Saleton wrote this on Slate –

Ignore these imbeciles. Their plan would clog security lines and ruin your holiday for no good reason. They don’t understand the importance of the electronic scans. They’re wrong about the scanners’ safety. And from the standpoint of dignity, their advice is insane. If you opt out of the scan, you’ll get a pat-down instead. You’ll trade a fast, invisible, intangible, privacy-protected machine inspection for an unpleasant, extended grope. In effect, you’ll be telling TSA to touch your junk.

This is what he says he is reacting to –

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big holiday coming up. No, I don’t mean Thanksgiving. I mean the day before it. Wednesday is the busiest air travel day of the year, and a horde of paranoid zealots—techno-libertarians, Tea Partiers, rabble-rousers, Internet activists, and congressional demagogues—has decided to make it even worse. They’re calling it “National Opt-Out Day.” Rather than endure an electronic scan of your body at the security gate, they want you to “opt out” and force the Transportation Security Administration to physically inspect you. Their hero is John Tyner, the man who recorded himself a week ago as he warned a TSA officer not to “touch my junk.”

Guess what?? Now, I’m either no longer just an imbecile but paranoid zealot as well!

Now, I am also referred to as an Internet activist, but that sound kind of cool, I mean, not in the women liking you way but more out there on the edge. It’s like not having the Harley Davidson but having the jacket.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Saletan is not trying to persuade me. His idea here is that if he can make me appear to be foolish (or ugly for that matter), it will destroy the force of my argument. This is a logical fallacy, nevertheless I am heartbroken to be called an imbecile and a paranoid zealot. I’m going to shut down my internet site and turn myself in for confinement in an asylum for paranoid delusionals. Yeah right, and I going file for Cambodian citizenship too.

This is not a legitimate strategy for persuasion. I admit he does throw in what he would term facts.

But really all temptation for me to criticize him was erased when I read the comments on his post. As of 8:16 PM, Central Standard Time, the comments number 593. I looked at them. Around 400 would be willing to participate in a lynch mob.

Now, I don’t want you regular people commenting, just my fellow a) imbeciles, b) paranoid zealots or C) internet activists. But if you guys want to, you can go here and let him know your opinion. My semi-insane comrades and I will comment too!

James Pilant

Is Bin Laden Laughing At Our Airport Searches?

On By southwerkIn ethics, Government Failure

William S. Lerach thinks so. In an article in Huffington Post he writes –

I recognize that many people believe this is necessary to assure safe flying and are willing to put up with it. But I believe it is wrong. I do not want to debate intricacies of whether the Fourth Amendment allows government bureaucrats to impose these kinds of searches daily on millions of Americans who are demonstrably honest, law-abiding people who pose no threat to anyone. I’m pretty sure it does prohibit this, but even if it doesn’t I am offended at a government that does this to its people. If conservatives and Tea Party types object to centralized power in Washington they should certainly hate this situation. If liberals treasure in our constitutional guarantees of freedom of movement and protection from unreasonable searches they should certainly hate this situation.

Everybody ought to be concerned with what is being done to us by a government that is seizing more power and stripping away more of our individual freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism. Face it — the terrorists have already won. Look what they have turned this country into. That bin Laden must be doubled over in laughter in some cave over in Pakistan when he contemplates how he has disrupted the life of the people in this country. There has to be a better way — a way that is less offensive to our notions of privacy and individual liberty — to keep bombers off airplanes.

If you’ve been following what I’ve said, you’re hearing the same things. We are making ourselves a terrorist laughing stock by giving in to our government’s bizarre ideas of protection. As long as we live in fear the terrorists and our government can lead us around like puppy dog on a short chain.

Do you like that vision of yourself? – not a man, not a woman, not an American but a small helpless animal. That’s what we’re becoming.

I’m not that frightened. Are you?

James Pilant

Mrs. Clinton, Would You Submit To A Pat Down?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure1 Comment

From the Huffington Post –

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she thought “everyone, including our security experts, are looking for ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public.” She told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “striking the right balance is what this is about.”

However, when asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” if she would submit to a pat-down, Clinton responded: “Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?”

Do you think that the White House may have miscalculated in bringing her into the discussion?

She doesn’t sound like the President’s emasculated staff. It adds credence to recent comments as to who has balls.

She said what she thought.

Let this be our meek but vital battle cry against the TSA – “NOT IF I COULD AVOID IT. NO. I MEAN, WHO WOULD?”

James Pilant

President Obama Understands Your Frustrations!

On By southwerkIn ethics, Government Failure, President Obama

From Huffington Post –

President Barack Obama has asked security officials whether there’s a less intrusive way to screen U.S. airline passengers than the pat-downs and body scans causing a holiday-season uproar.

That is not what he asked. Further down in the article, they say what he actually asked, which was, “Is there another way to catch a bomber like the Nigerian man who had explosives in his underwear?” And his experts said no.

For now, they’ve told him there isn’t one, the president said Saturday in response to a question at the NATO summit in Lisbon.

But there are some other questions, President Obama could be asking. For instance, should the American security establishment always focus on the last attack? Since that enables terrorists to literally “call the tune.” They decide what security we deploy. You think that’s overstated?

Let me try it out on you. I take a toothbrush into the lavatory and with the sharpened decorative star off my cowboy boots cut it into a makeshift but entirely effective shiv. I then cart this thing back into the plane and get caught. Do you think you’ll be carrying a toothbrush onto an American plane for the foreseeable future? Don’t get me started on the cowboy boots.

I want you to picture five guys, Middle Eastern or not, having those kinds of discussions, not what will succeed in harming an aircraft but what will make the Americans do stupid things ceaselessly demeaning their citizens.

“I understand people’s frustrations,” Obama said, while acknowledging that he’s never had to undergo the stepped-up screening methods.

He feels your pain but not directly.

Passengers at some U.S. airports must pass through full-body scanners that produce a virtually naked image. If travelers refuse, they can be forced to undergo time-consuming fingertip examinations, including of clothed genital areas and breasts, by inspectors of the same sex as the passenger.

My general perception is that body cavity searches are the one frontier left for the intrepid explorers of the TSA.

Obama said he’s told the U.S. Transportation Security Administration: “You have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through, are there ways of doing it that are less intrusive.”

He implied to them that they should make it better.

At this point, that agency and counterterrorism experts have told him that the current procedures are the only ones that they think can effectively guard against threats such as last year’s attempted Christmas-day bombing. A Nigerian man is accused of trying to set off a bomb hidden in his underwear aboard a flight from Amsterdam with nearly 300 people aboard.

So, let me get this straight, we have organized our entire TSA screening process as if another person was going to wear a bomb in his underwear?

Obama said that in weekly meetings with his counterterrorism team, “I’m constantly asking them whether is what we’re doing absolutely necessary, have we thought it through, are there other ways of accomplishing it that meet the same objectives.”

For now it sounds like there aren’t, and travelers will face potential pat-downs and scans.

“One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us,” Obama said.

No, you are creating a vast security apparatus and you’re not asking the right questions, just the conventional ones.

The President has the power to say, stop. The President has the power to say, “This is one step too far. We don’t have to sacrifice our dignity and our honor to our fear.”

Don’t hold your breath for that one.
James Pilant

The Ethics Sage Comments On The Post – Who Owns Your Mortgage? Or Anybody’s For That Matter!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Philosophy of Business

By the Ethics Sage –

Dan’s flow chart is both masterful and scary at the same time. It makes you wonder whether anyone really knows who owns a mortgage. When one party sells it to another as a securitized asset, it transfers the risk to that party. Given that the original holder of the mortgage no longer bears the risk of default, it can make unsupportable mortgages to undeserving parties and not worry about the probability of repayment. Multiply that by the number of times a mortgage is sold and you have a chaotic system that encourages bad behavior.



(The “Ethics Sage,” aka Steven Mintz, has been writing, speaking out, and blogging about a lack of ethics in business and society by attacking the decline of moral values in society, a vanishing work ethic, pursuit of self-interests mentality, and a tone at the top of organizations that tolerates and even encourages wrongdoing.

Dr. Mintz enjoys an international reputation for research, teaching, and speaking on ethics in business and accounting. He has published two textbooks and dozens of research papers on business and accounting ethics, and corporate governance. He teaches a course on accounting ethics at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo.

Dr. Mintz is a widely sought out speaker at ethics, professional and academic meetings. He has presented at: The Board of Director and Corporate Governance Research Conference in Henley, England; Global Finance & Research Conference in London; The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Trinidad & Tobago; Association of Asian-Pacific Accountants in Bangkok, Thailand; and the Asian International Business Association in Shanghai, China.

Dr. Mintz has his own blog on ethics issues under the name of Ethics Sage. The website address is: http://www.ethicssage.com.)

Listen To Nouriel Roubini!

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

Larry Swedroe writing for CBS Money Watch –

Nouriel Roubini gained fame for accurately predicting the financial crisis that began in the fourth quarter of 2007. As his descriptions of the crisis proved to be accurate, he became a major figure in the U.S. and international debate about the economy, regularly appearing on CNBC. People pay attention to what Roubini has to say.

According to Wikipedia, Roubini spends much of his time shuttling between meetings with central bank governors and finance ministers in Europe and Asia. In 2009, Prospect Magazine voted him No. 2 on its “list of the world’s 100 greatest living public intellectuals,” Foreign Policy magazine ranked him No. 4 on its list of the “top 100 global thinkers,” and Time magazine him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has appeared before Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Mr. Swedroe goes on in the article to criticize Roubini and talk down economic predictors of all sorts.

I don’t agree. Roubini is very good at what he does. No one paid any attention when he predicted our current morass.

Are we going to make the same mistake twice?

James Pilant

Dell Lawsuit Proceeds

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics2 Comments

Written by Erik Sherman at CBS Moneywatch –

The lawsuit is three years old and the story continues. When a company makes a colossal error, it can simply make a clear breast of it, take its lumps, and recover. Or, it can try to bury the story, protect itself by claiming innocence, and prolong the pain. That’s the route that Dell has taken.

In July, Dell tried to deny fault and simply ignore how it allegedly ignored customers who were having problems with computers plagued by bad parts. And some of the explanations in the past were real hoots. For example, Dell told the University of Texas math department that the machines went bad because intense calculations overtaxed them. Right, the machines were actually supposed to be coasters and were only missing the sign that said, “Warning, Don’t Use For Math.”

Apparently taking responsibility was too risky.

This seems to me to be an obvious case of thinking only as far as the next quarter.

Any kind of long term thinking or ethical thinking would have called for a different action.

James Pilant

Markets And Morality – Michael Sandel

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Philosophy of Business

This is fascinating. I was deeply impressed. You should give this a listen if you have any concern for the free market’s effect on morality.

James Pilant

Paid Pregnancy – India’s Newest Industry?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Philosophy of Business3 Comments

I’ll just let this speak for itself, although the temptation to speculate of what happens to a child that hears sitar music in the womb is difficult to overcome.

James Pilant

The Majority Is Against Me!

On By southwerkIn ethics

CBS News proudly reports that 4 out of 5 Americans are okay with the invasive searches by TSA. So therefore, there is really no problem.

Let me try and explain this.

If I am right, I am willing to stand alone.

If the entire world is of one opinion and I have another.

If I believe I am right.

I will stand alone.

As for this ridiculous poll – I would like to see a poll done of those actually flying on planes.

I would like to see a poll of those searched.

I would like to see a poll of the experts in the field.

In short, I would like to see a poll of those who know something about the issue and are not driven by the cold, naked fear so continually preached by the drones of this administration and this Congress.

A frightened public is a docile public, manipulatable in any way. A nation of chickens can be plucked at will.

An America that can only see as far as possible danger is a nation without vision, without courage and without an historical mission.

A “city on a hill” cannot be hidden. Well, we’re trying.

What’s the current vision of our besotted leadership – “the bunker under the hill,” perhaps “the frightened cattle bunched in a barn, the sheep shorn by our valiant Congressmen. Is that us?

Does Osama bin Laden rise in the morning in fear of this America? Or does he laugh at the frightened nation we’ve become?

Are the Americans who freed themselves from oppressive rule, the Americans who went forth and settled a wilderness, the Americans who took their courage to heart to fight against the Nazis and Japanese Imperialists, those who fought a cold war for fifty some years; are they looking down on us with respect?

Would they tolerate for a minute, for moment, for a milisecond, a wretched excuse for a Congressman proclaim that twenty thousand bandits hidden in caves are more dangerous than Hitler and his minions. That by the way would be 50,000 tanks, 12, 000 aircraft, 240 divisions and domination of roughly 85% of Europe. Who listens to that kind of obnoxious fool? Apparently most Americans. Just great.

Land of the free or land of the hopelessly frightened. The light of the world or the dim bulbs of a population hiding in back rooms with a years supply of canned goods. A nation so doubtful of its future that the purchase of gold in case of economic collapse is surging.

Is this it?

James Pilant