Good writing – good thinking!
This Business of Food
Good writing – good thinking!
Donald Sterling – Sometimes Business Ethics Means Shutting Up
Donald Sterling – Sometimes Business Ethics Means Shutting Up
Self awareness is an important skill. Sometimes, individuals lack any perspective on themselves. The advantage of this is that you feel good about yourself with little or no justification. You have a golden and continuous opportunity to project all of your inferiority and weaknesses on everyone else. Thus it is for Donald Sterling who is undoubtedly wondering out loud to his wealthy friends even as you read this how unfair all this news coverage is. He is no doubt explaining to his friends that the media just won’t stop saying he’s a racist when everybody who knows him, anyone with half a brain knows he’s no more a racist than Martin Luther King.
If you think I’m being cruel – watch the interview, the level of self-deceit is incredible. In his mind, his beliefs are “factual.”
And that in the end is the benefit of being a member of the .01 percent, you have the privilege of being stupid. Because in that comfortable world, there is no countervailing reality to have to deal with. You can believe any set of comforting nonsense. It is a pity that Anderson Cooper didn’t ask him about voting rights or taxes.
Before business ethics can be exercised there has to be an understanding of facts and reasoning. There has to be a firm connection to reality. That is harder than it sounds. There are many individuals who have a difficulty telling opinion from facts, and many more who don’t understand how logic and reasoning are exercised.
When I was very young man, I worked at a store. One day the owner explained to me that doctors had told her that black people were arranged differently on the inside – their organs were in different places. When I appeared surprised, she was surprised that I didn’t understand something so obvious. It has been more than thirty years now and I have not yet ran into a “black” physiology textbook. I’m not expecting it to happen soon.
Her “facts” were different from reality, and when such is the case, business ethics are often irrelevant.
James Pilant
Donald Sterling’s interview disaster: Rich old racist self-destructs to Anderson Cooper – Salon.com
Donald Sterling, in all his reprehensible anti-glory, is officially representative of only one person, Donald Sterling. But it was hard not to think about the insularity and cossetting the super-wealthy enjoy, once they get super-wealthy, watching the maligned Los Angeles Clippers owner self-destruct with Anderson Cooper Monday night.
Sterling is a man who is obviously used to holding forth on his mind-blowingly prejudiced views without challenge. He wants us to think V. Stiviano entrapped him with her magic lady parts — “I don’t know why the girl had me say those things,” he told Cooper — and got him to launch a paranoid racist rant out of lust. But clearly that is not true, unless he’s lusting after Anderson Cooper.
“I’m not a racist,” Sterling told Cooper. “I made a terrible, terrible mistake. And I’m here with you today to apologize and to ask for forgiveness for all the people that I’ve hurt. When I listen to that tape, I don’t even know how I can say words like that…. I mean, that’s not the way I talk.” Actually, it seems to be exactly the way Sterling talks.
It’s hard to know where to start with the NBA franchise owner’s outrageous remarks. He called Stiviano “a street person” and said Magic Johnson “ought to be ashamed of himself.” No, that doesn’t do Sterling justice. This is what he said about Johnson:
Here is a man, he acts so holy. He made love to every girl in America in every city and he had AIDS. When he had those AIDS, I went to my synagogue and I prayed for him.
“Those AIDS”? (For the record, Johnson has HIV, not AIDS). But it got worse:
What has Magic Johnson done? He’s got AIDS. Did he do any business? Did he help anybody in south L.A.? I think he should be ashamed of himself. What does he do for the black people? I’m telling you he does nothing. It’s all talk.
I spent millions on giving away and helping minorities. Does he do that? That’s one problem I have. Jews, when they get successful, they will help their people.
And some of the African-Americans, maybe I’ll get in trouble again. They don’t want to help anybody. What has Magic Johnson really done for Children’s Hospital which kids are lying in the hallways. They are sick. They need a bed. What has he done for any hospital? What has he done for any group?
via Donald Sterling’s interview disaster: Rich old racist self-destructs to Anderson Cooper – Salon.com.
From Around the Web.
From the web site, Abagond.
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/donald-sterling/
Donald Sterling (1934- ), an American billionaire, is best known as the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, a basketball team. It accounts for a third of his wealth. On April 25th 2014, a recording of what seems to be him talking to his girlfriend, Vanessa Stiviano, was made public on the Internet. In it he tells her not to be seen in public with Black people.
We do not know where the recording came from, when it was made or whether it has been edited. But it is probably all too true: In 2009, for example, Sterling was made to pay $2.725 million for discriminating against Blacks and Latinos at his apartment buildings in metropolitan Los Angeles. It is a matter of public record that he has said stuff like this:
Is she one of those black people that stink? […] Just evict the bitch.
…
On racism:
Sterling: It’s the world! You go to Israel, the blacks are just treated like dogs.
Stiviano: So do you have to treat them like that too?
Sterling: The white Jews, there’s white Jews and black Jews, do you understand?
Stiviano: And are the black Jews less than the white Jews?
Sterling: A 100%, 50, a 100%.
Stiviano: And is that right?
Sterling: It isn’t a question – we don’t evaluate what’s right and wrong, we live in a society. We live in a culture. We have to live within that culture.
No Free Pass for Lying Politicians
Please visit Talking Ethics and add your thoughts or even better sign up as a follower.
When we conducted an informal survey last year asking people when it’s okay to tell a white lie, a large majority, 71%, came down hard on politicians, saying it’s wrong for them to shade the truth, even when it’s just a matter of emphasizing facts that support their point of view and ignoring those that don’t.
But lying by politicians remains rampant.
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What is “Postcapitalism”?
This is the very first post of a brand new blog. I find what is being said of interest and I hope you will take a look at this blog with as high a hope as I have for it.
So I realize there are quite a few different uses and meanings of this term, but I’ll be focusing on one that was developed by Gisbon-Graham in their book A Postcapitalist Politics.
For the purposes of this blog, postcapitalism will refer to a space, place, moment, project, etc. that does not lie “within” the capitalist mindset. It doesn’t rely on free-market money making principles but instead reminds us that we have other values– we’re a community oriented, environmentally minded, sharing, creative, and caring society.
It’s time to change the current discourse from one that is “capitalocentric,” one where “other forms of economy (not to mention noneconomic aspects of social life) are often understood primarily with reference to capitalism: as being fundamentally the same as (or modeled upon) capitalism, or as being deficient or substandard imitations; as being opposite to capitalism; as being the complement of capitalism; as existing in capitalism’s space or…
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Oh, BTW, Crushing Student Debt is a Huge Drag on the Economy
I would suggest that it is unethical to burden students with the costs of their education. Education is a society wide benefit, and we should all share the burden.
The Long Road to Solvency
The outstanding debt held in student loans, estimated at over one trillion dollars, is now the second largest class of debt held by consumers — second only to home mortgages. The dangers posed by this debt may not be as great as the mortgage debt and its role in the ensuing financial system crash of 2008. But it is consequential for the economy, not to mention it’s devastating personal effects. You can read about the dimensions and find the relevant data here.
While this news isn’t “buried,” in the sense I’ve been using the term here in Page Seven, it does not receive the attention it deserves by economists or business writers as a major factor in the sluggish recovery, or in the prospects for long term growth. Nor is it prominent in the scripts and talking points of the two major ideological…
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Protectionism and Paternalism Brewing in Florida – “I believe I know what’s best.”
Definitely a case where some businessmen have decided to use political muscle to deal with a competition. Crony Capitalism.
Closing Generating Plants to Manipulate the Market
Closing Generating Plants to Manipulate the Market
I remember when Enron closed generating plants for “maintenance” back in the good old days of extorting money from the citizens. These maintenance periods coincided with peak demand in California and helped Enron generate billions in profits. And I remember that many public officials were shocked that anyone would think something suspicious was going on.*(see below)
An ethical businessman makes money by selling a service or a product. An unethical businessman manipulates the market to make money. Making money the ethical way is too slow when you can lobby regulators to look the other way while you cut the supplies of electricity to raise the price. It is fast profits, a high return on an investment, good results for the next quarter, and it leaves in the dust the ethical businessman.
If this process is not regulated, then the unethical manipulators will drive the ethical producers out of the electrical business. This is a kind of Social Darwinism in which the unprincipled and immoral displace their competitors producing a mediocracy of the ethicless. A society that values simply making money by whatever means necessary will embrace such mediocracy since only a fool would act ethically when money can be made. So in time, all producers will act to manipulate and cheat as opposed to making an honest dollar.
The dishonest profit destroys the moral fabric of a society?
Probably not the best place to raise children?
James Pilant
Enron-style price gouging is making a comeback | Al Jazeera America
The price of electricity would soar under the latest scheme by Wall Street financial engineers to game the electricity markets.
If regulators side with Wall Street — and indications are that they will — expect the cost of electricity to rise from Maine to California as others duplicate this scheme to manipulate the markets, as Enron did on the West Coast 14 years ago, before the electricity-trading company collapsed under allegations of accounting fraud and corruption.
The test case is playing out in New England. Energy Capital Partners, an investment group that uses tax-avoiding offshore investing techniques and has deep ties to Goldman Sachs, paid $650 million last year to acquire three generating plant complexes, including the second largest electric power plant in New England, Brayton Point in Massachusetts.
Five weeks after the deal closed, Energy partners moved to shutter Brayton Point. Why would anyone spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the second largest electric power plant in New England and then quickly take steps to shut it down?
Energy partners says in regulatory filings that the plant is so old and prone to breakdowns that it is not worth operating, raising the question of why such sophisticated energy-industry investors bought it.
The real answer is simple: Under the rules of the electricity markets, the best way to earn huge profits is by reducing the supply of power. That creates a shortage during peak demand periods, such as hot summer evenings and cold winter days, causing prices to rise. Under the rules of the electricity markets, even a tiny shortfall between the available supply of electricity and the demand from customers results in enormous price spikes.
With Brayton Point closed, New England consumers and businesses will spend as much as $2.6 billion more per year for electricity, critics of the deal suggest in documents filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
That estimate will turn out to be conservative, I expect, based on what Enron traders did to California, Oregon and Washington electricity customers starting in 2000. In California alone the short-term market manipulations cost each resident more than $1,300, a total burden of about $45 billion.
via Enron-style price gouging is making a comeback | Al Jazeera America.
From Around the Web.
From the web site, CBS News.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-jpmorgan-owes-410m-for-energy-price-manipulation/
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) agreed to pay $410 million in penalties on Tuesday to settle accusations by U.S. energy regulators that it manipulated electricity prices.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the bank used improper bidding strategies to squeeze excessive payments from the agencies that run the power grids in California and the Midwest in 2010 and 2011.
The penalty includes $285 million for the federal government, and $125 million for ratepayers.
FERC’s enforcement staff said its investigation had found improper trading practices were used at Houston-based JPMorgan Ventures Energy Corp.
JPMorgan said in a written statement that it’s “pleased to have reached an agreement with FERC to put this matter behind it.” JPMorgan didn’t admit or deny any violations.
FERC recently levied a $453 million penalty on Barclays, Britain’s second-largest bank, for manipulating electricity prices in California and other Western states. Barclays is disputing the allegations.
FERC claimed JPMorgan’s energy unit used five “manipulative bidding strategies” in California between September 2010 and June 2011, and three in the Midwest from October 2010 to May 2011.
The Blogger from “Why We Are Screwed” Has a Comment!!
The Blogger from “Why We Are Screwed” Has a Comment!!
I am delighted to have found the blog, Why we are screwed. The owner/operator has very kindly given permission to use the comment below. It was made and is still attached to the blog post – https://southwerk.com/2014/05/08/higher-education-in-crisis/
Thank you for visiting my blog but please take an extra few seconds and visit my colleague at “Why we are screwed” and sign up as a follower
James Pilant
The Comment
Thanks for posting these two articles. Although I do realize that the scope of the articles were more on teaching, public funding for science and engineering research has steadily been declining for decades, but teaching and research go hand in hand. When looking at the National Science Foundation (USA) data; however, in terms of private research money available (adjusting for the Recession), things have never been better! And, job security and good salaries are in place for tenured professors in scientific domains. I’m talking about those who are typically male, 50-65ish.
The problem we have now is underemployment for scientists say, under 50 years old in specific domains that don’t ‘suit’ private interests, and with sparse public funding, professors at the top of the pay scale are skimming off the top, leaving less available for new tenure track positions. As such, these ‘younger’ scientists can’t find suitable employment and many are caught in a never ending postdoctoral cycle, of which older generation profs can easily take advantage now more than ever (cheap labor = more publications with better authorship opportunities for the tenured prof). Not all older generation professors have the skills necessary as it is to provide students with the technology skills needed for future employment because the amount of knowledge required and technology available in computing has really been exploding in the past 10 years or so. Yet students are paying more than ever for education.
I wonder what will happen to quality of post secondary education when the older generation of professors retires in effect at the same time? There will be ever more students demanding a quality education in a breadth of subjects which is necessary to maintain a quality education (not just those that are of interest to the private sector) and there will be generally fewer top-notch academic folks around to fill the shoes of these professors.
I suspect at some point the tenure and publicly funded postsecondary systems as we know them will have to be revamped, but this is going to take years.
The language of political denigration: Kevin Andrews and disability pensioners.
We see the same games played in the United States.
Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews’ recent announcement that eligibility for the disability pension was to be tightened was a masterful demonstration of political weasel words.
Full marks to the speechwriter, it was a textbook example.
The first thing that Andrews did was to reclassify those on disability pensions. He did this by saying young people on the disability pension sat on couch all the watching television. The reclassification or label that comes with this description is “lazy” and this combines very nicely with “young”. So the new label is now “young and lazy.” It’s very easy for the idea of “young and lazy” to morph into the idea of “dole-bludger.” It’s also interesting to understand that and that the new labelling stresses the young and lazy idea and de-emphasises the idea of disability.
Once the re-labelling has been done it is necessary to construct a narrative to support it. This…
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Higher Education in Crisis
Higher Education in Crisis
College and University eduction is under attack while at the same time beset by internal crises. The dramatic changes in society over the last decades have changed our class makeups. The economic changes have made colleges more expensive while state and federal aid has declined. And most bizarrely, we are engaged in a debate on whether or not liberal arts education is worthwhile.
Below are two different points of view. Please visit their web sites and read their posts in full.
James Pilant
Leadership From the Ranks
http://facultydevelopmentdesign.com/2014/04/28/leadership-from-the-ranks/
Higher education also is in the midst of a crisis. Both citizenry and a growing number of work environments require the skills to navigate an increasingly rhetorical- and statistics-based world. But the social insistence on more college has expanded the number of student bodies with different needs, as well as redirected higher education’s focus to student retention and graduation rates. On one side, faculty now struggle not merely to deliver course content for diverse learning habits, but also to ensure diverse student engagement and in-depth content assimilation for an improved likelihood of continued student success. On the other side, academic professionals struggle to identify and resolve bottlenecks in the system and reach-out to previously ignored populations who could benefit from more education.
This re-imagining of higher education coincides with an economic crisis in which people need jobs and employers want higher-quality job candidates. In the face of rising student debt, students and their parents, legislators, and potential employers now question the value of higher education. Meanwhile, our computer-infused work environment demands greater technological and critical-thinking skills for even entry-level jobs — yes, even the jobs that can’t pay back the resulting debt. This conflict has resulted in new entrants in the market who then compete with at least the public colleges and universities, which have had to raise tuition to replace diminishing state funds.
From Around the Web.
From the web site, subtext2.
http://subtext2.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/higher-education-is-in-crisis/
Higher Education has, over the last year, been steadily and increasingly heading toward utter crisis. It is clear that this point has now been reached. Total cuts to university budgets will be over £1.5 billion. It is clear that the disaster set in motion by New Labour is being accelerated by the Conservative Coalition.
The Effects:
These are all stories reported by the BBC during the last five days:
Due to underfunding by Government, it is estimated that at least 250,000 university applicants will be refused a place for economic reasons. Spending cuts have reduced extra university places at a time when there has been a huge surge in demand. The number of applicants not getting a place will have doubled in two years.
Meanwhile, Colleges across Britain are suffering from the huge cuts to funding, from decreased student numbers (due in part to cuts), and from competition from new academies. Why the Conservative Coalition are investing in new buildings and new school colleges and not in exisiting facilities is certainly a cause for bafflement.
In response the Government has suggested (as did New Lab before them), condensing courses into two years. This from the party that, in recent memory, bemoaned “mickey mouse courses”. It seems, when the choice is between HE and big business, the Tories are happy to make fools of us all. UCU has emphatically voted against these “sweatshop” courses, but unfortunately that won’t stop a host of related trends, such as the move toward “distance learning”, “part-time” courses and other such thrift measures, which speak loudly of a lack of Government funding for Universities and of a lack of financial support for increasingly beleaguered students.*
As a result primarily of the financial meltdown, but also of other smaller factors – increased competition, for example – the Golden Promise that HE guarantees better employment has dissolved. At the same time that tuition fees have massively increased (and are set to increase more this year), students are finding that they are unable to find jobs. …
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