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.

Skeels Rebukes LA Times’ Klein for Late Awakening; I Disagree

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I’m going to side with Robert Skeels in this matter. I’m not that forgiving either. James Pilant

dianeravitch's avatarDiane Ravitch's blog

Yesterday I gleefully reported that Karen Klein, who writes editorials about education for the Los Angeles Times, had opted her own daughter out of the state test. The Los Angeles Times has supported most aspects of what is called “reform ,” so I was glad to see that Klein had realized how the current overuse of testing had undermined the love of learning , not only for her child, but for all children. Far be it from me to criticize anyone for changing their mind. Klein has a powerful role, and her epiphany could signify a recognition by the LA Times of the harm that standardized testing inflicts when allowed to become both the measure and the goal of education.

Robert Skeels was not so forgiving.

He writes:

“I’m glad that you’re sparing your own child the abject effects of this year’s test. However, I recall sitting across a…

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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.

Are Women Too Emotional to Make the “Tough” Decisions?

On By southwerkIn business ethics4 Comments

010Are Women Too Emotional to Make the “Tough” Decisions?

Michael Hayden thinks that torture thinking requires unemotional detachment. Quite right, when you are performing illegal acts only appealing to those with the most deviate of sexual perversions, you probably want to keep emotions out of it as much as possible. Nevertheless, the implication that women are just too soft to make the tough decisions is a relic of a bygone era.

Both women as “too emotional” and torture are business ethics issues. The “too emotional” label is used like a club against women who want to promote or move into male dominated professions. It is the most simple of business ethics to hire the most qualified person from the job. As for torture, private contractors were used in many parts of the program. This makes torture a lucrative business opportunity and there were businesses that participated wholeheartedly in the program.

James Pilant

 

Michael Hayden accuses Dianna Feinstein of being too “emotional” to judge the CIA’s secretive interrogation programs.

Is sexism playing a role in efforts to keep hidden the details of the CIA’s secretive and harsh interrogation programs? That’s the conclusion of the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson, who denounces Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA, for trying to discredit Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s criticisms of the programs by saying the senator is too “emotional.” Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that she wants to declassify a Senate report on the CIA’s secretive interrogation programs to “ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.” Hayden scoffed at this to Chris Wallace on Fox News this weekend, saying:

Now, that sentence, that motivation for the report, Chris, may show deep emotional feeling on part of the senator. But I don’t think it leads you to an objective report.

Contrasting thoughtless lady emotions with hardened male objectivity: It’s not just a trick your ex-boyfriend used to win arguments. As Davidson points out, this notion that emotions are a bad thing or that they cloud judgment is applied very selectively and quite unfairly. She writes:

There are really two issues here: One is the reflexive tendency to disparage or dismiss a woman in politics (or in business, or anywhere) with a remark about her supposed susceptibility to emotion. The other is the way a certain femininity—the wilting kind—is ascribed to those who doubt that torture is good for America.

via Michael Hayden accuses Dianna Feinstein of being too “emotional” to judge the CIA’s secretive interrogation programs..

From around the web.

From the web site, Matrignosis: A Blog about Inner Wisdom.

http://jeanraffa.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/what-do-men-mean-when-they-say-women-are-too-emotional-2/

In my recent posts about the role of feelings and emotions in gender relationships, I raised the questions, What do women mean when they say men are out of touch with their feelings? What do men mean when they say women are too emotional?

In the last post, “Falling Through: One Man’s Fear of Feeling,” author and poet Rick Belden shared a powerful poem about emotions. He wrote “fear is much too mild a word for what I feel when I get close to my grief, sadness, and pain. A far more accurate word would be terror. The source of this terror is not a mystery. I clearly remember the words I heard countless times as a child: Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” For Rick, “Any open expression of grief, sadness, and pain was a potential threat to my very existence, and over time I learned to hold those feelings tight, deep inside myself, to survive.” This reinforces Episcopal priest Matthew Fox’s observation that men are rarely rewarded, and often mocked, for openly expressing their deepest feelings of joy, sensitivity, and pain.

My question, “What do men mean when they say women are too emotional?” elicited the observation from katsoutar that between men and women, “the term ‘emotional’ seems most used to describe weepy, passive emotion, i.e. women cry too much, men, not enough.” In response, Amy Campion shared the research finding that, “women’s tears contain a chemical substance that though undetectable consciously, has the power to reduce a man’s testosterone when inhaled.” Lorrie Beauchamp added that this dampening effect reduces men’s sexual attraction and increases their empathic response. As she said, “a true-to-stereotype male would not want his testosterone messed with in this way, which might explain why men get annoyed by tears, and why tears become part of manipulative behavior in children and women.”

Matt Taibbi Writes About the Courts!

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

010eMatt Taibbi Writes About the Courts!

Taibbi has a new book out about the American judicial system. Below is an excerpt from a review featured in the magazine, In These Times. I always enjoy Taibbi’s work and I recommend both his book and the review of it.

James Pilant

Judges Blind To Justice – In These Times

Matt Taibbi’s The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap is a book about what happens in American courtrooms. Immigrants are deported for traffic violations. Lawyers retained by relatively honest billionaires to defend themselves against attacks from more classically psychotic billionaires are treated by judges with a contempt typically reserved for telemarketers. Wrongful termination lawsuits filed by corporate whistleblowers are thrown out. Bail gets set just high enough to feed prison contractors hordes of accused loiterers, and just low enough to ensure bail bondsmen won’t take the business. Day after day, megabanks win the legal authority to repossess the car or house or bank account of this or that alleged debtor on the basis of her failure to show up in court to answer a summons she never received, because in lieu of actually delivering that summons, the megabank paid some bucket shop four dollars to produce a signed affidavit swearing one of its employees had physically delivered it, while in fact depositing it and thousands like it in a dumpster, a technique known in the business as “sewer service.”

And day after day, five o’ clock rolls around and thousands of alleged jaywalkers, obstructors of pedestrian traffic and open-container possessors are instructed to show up again next month because the arresting officer was too preoccupied with nabbing fresh loiterers to show up to court that day, or because there are simply too many defendants—50,000 marijuana possession cases, 80,000 disorderly conduct cases and 140,000 open container cases a year in New York City alone. Cases rarely go to trial: Innocent 99 percenters admit guilt, and guilty financial crime syndicates shell out millions for the privilege of admitting nothing.

via Judges Blind To Justice – In These Times.

From Around the Web.

From the web site, New York Post.

http://nypost.com/2014/02/23/film-details-teens-struggles-in-state-detention-in-payoff-scandal/

Hillary Transue, 14, created a fake, humorous Myspace page about her school’s vice principal.

Justin Bodnar, 12, cursed at another student’s mother.

Ed Kenzakoski, 17, did nothing at all.

It didn’t matter.

As we see in the documentary “Kids for Cash,” which opens Friday, all three Luzerne County, Pa. teens met the same fate for their minor infractions.

They were hauled into court with their parents, sometimes ­after being persuaded — coerced, according to at least one parent — by police to waive their right to ­legal counsel.

They were brought before Judge Mark A. Ciavarella and, without warning or the chance to offer a defense, found themselves pronounced guilty, shackled and sentenced to months of detention in a cockroach-infested jail.

They were trapped in the juvenile justice system for years, robbing most of them of their entire high-school experience.

Judge Ciavarella, who sentenced around 3,000 children in a similar manner, was later sentenced himself to 28 years in prison for financial crimes related to his acceptance of $2.2 million as a finder’s fee for the construction of a for-profit facility in which to house these so-called delinquents.

The scandal was called “Kids for Cash,” and it rocked the state in 2009 — for the accusation that Ciavarella was happy to tear families apart in exchange for the payoff.

Psychopaths and the Financial Crisis

On By southwerkIn business ethics

The connection between psychopathology and the Financial Meltdown needs further research.

Ian | disorderedworld's avatardisorderedworld

This article first appeared as a guest blog on Dr Alf’s Blog.

Moral Defects in the Financial Machine

The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil – human greed.

Gandhi

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A Bourgeois Appropriation of the Workers’ Lockout

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Homophilosophicus and his associates are some of my favorite people. If you want something new and different about that mysterious land of Ireland, this is a good place to go.

Jason Michael's avatarhomophilosophicus

A Facebook PostIreland, or at least the cultural talking-heads of Ireland, has or have declared the coming ten years a Decade of Centenaries. Depending on where each participant stands this might refer to either the centenaries of 1911 – 1921 (from the 1911 census of Ireland), or of 1913 – 1923 (from the Dublin Lockout). Whichever way we look at this, it is absurd; for no matter where we stand in the stream of human history, unless one happens to be a Young-Earth Creationist, it will always be one hundred years since something happened. Regardless, the upcoming centenaries are important for the national nation-creation myths or history of Ireland. We have the sinking of RMS Titanic, the colossal industrial agitation around the city of Dublin in the Lockout, the Great War, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, and the Civil War. All of these things are important, but one hundred…

View original post 1,676 more words

The Ethics Sage Talks Medical Conflicts of Interest

On By southwerkIn business ethics

 The Ethics Sage Talks Medical Conflicts of Interest

Steven Mintz has a new post. It concerns conflicts of interests, in particular those involving academics sitting on the boards of drug companies. It’s a critical problem and he paints the issue in the bright colors of ethical perception that such an issue deserves.

I recommend this essay and suggest you visit the web site and read more of The Ethic Sage’s posting.

James Pilant

The Ethics Sage
The Ethics Sage

Academic Medical Center Leaders’ Position on the Board of Directors of a Pharmaceutical Company Can Create a Conflict of Interest – Ethics Sage

The danger of the practice of allowing leaders of academic medical centers to sit on the boards of drug companies is more than just the perception that independent judgment may be tainted by these relationships. Academic medical centers should serve the public good. How can they be expected to do so if a situation arises, for example, where the pharmaceutical product is of questionable value and the center is dependent on funding from the company? After all, the deans and directors who sit on boards are only human and just as board members of corporate entities might be biased toward the interest of the company and not the public interest, these academic leaders might overlook a problem with a drug that could threaten the public health.

via Academic Medical Center Leaders’ Position on the Board of Directors of a Pharmaceutical Company Can Create a Conflict of Interest – Ethics Sage.

From around the web.

From the web site, UCDenver.edu.

http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/administration/alumni/CUMedToday/features/Pages/Conflict-of-Interest-Rules-Tightened.aspx

A headline in The Denver Post was a reminder that health care providers, and the schools that teach or employ them, need to remain vigilant about conflict-of-interest issues.

 

The Post declared: “Docs limit drug-firm ties.” The ties refer to payments to doctors from pharmaceutical companies and medical-device manufacturers.”

The smaller headline tells another important part of the news: “Payments must pass ethics muster ….”

The story underscores changes that have occurred recently at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The school has had conflict-of-interest (COI) rules on the books for years.

But in 2011 those rules were both tightened and clarified—the “ethics muster.” The guiding principle is this: faculty cannot accept money to help a company market or promote a product.

The main target of the change was what are called “speakers bureaus.” Companies set these up to pay for speeches by physicians and others. CU now bans such participation.

“We’ve made explicit what always was our intention,” says Steven Lowenstein, MD, an emergency department doctor and associate dean who helped shape the new policy. “Our doctors can’t promote products. Drug companies can’t tell our doctors what to say or require them to use the companies’ slides or other instructional materials. And speaking requests will be reviewed by a new committee.

“The committee review is designed to separate truly educational talks and research-related talks, which are permitted, from talks that are about marketing and promotion.”

Lowenstein notes that research collaboration and research-related talks are allowed because they advance the science and practice of health care and benefit patients. For example, a doctor might have a contract with a pharmaceutical company to assist in developing, testing or assuring the safety of a new drug or device.

The issue of payments to physicians has gained prominence because of reporting by the organization ProPublica. In October 2010, they published a report called “Dollars for Docs,” based on pharmaceutical company payment disclosures that recently had become available.

Chris MacDonald Discusses Loophole Flouting

On By southwerkIn business ethics

 Chris MacDonald Discusses Loophole Flouting

Chris MacDonald writing from The Business Ethics Blog is discussing Japanese whaling practices as these actions connect to the larger moral and ethical framework of the nation at large. It’s a good read. I recommend it. If you have time, go to his web site and read the full post (and then sign yourself up as a follower!).

James Pilant

Chris MacDonaldJapan’s loophole flouting is bad for business | The Business Ethics Blog

Japan has flouted the 1986 moratorium on whaling, making use of a loophole that allows whaling for scientific purposes. In effect, the country’s fleet kills whales for what it claims are “scientific” purposes, and sells the meat for human consumption. You don’t have to be an ardent defender of the world’s whales to see the problems inherent in an having a key player in the world’s economy flouting an international standard.

And just think for a minute about that approach to compliance. It effectively means adopting the credo, do what you want, spirit of the law be damned, as long as you can find even the narrowest of loopholes. What example does has the country’s leadership been setting for the business community? How can government ministers look business leaders in the eye and encourage them to cleave to the meaning and intent of regulations? How can the government ask business, without risking hypocrisy, not to make cynical, self-serving use of loopholes?

Naturally, the government of Japan is not alone in this dilemma. The demands of political expediency often mean that political leaders get caught in a do-as-I say, not-as-I-do self-contradiction. But Japan’s stance on whaling seems a particularly blatant example. And the future of the issue still remains unclear. Japan has only committed to cancelling its whale hunt for this year. Time will tell whether the Japanese government, on this issue at least, demonstrates character worthy of emulation, or instead goes back to an approach aimed merely at securing short-term gains.

via Japan’s loophole flouting is bad for business | The Business Ethics Blog.

From around the web.

From the web site, Ethics and the Environment.

http://ethicsandtheenvironment.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/the-purpose-of-this-blog/

The Australian government has taken legal action against Japan over concerns Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean was not done for scientific purposes.

According to BBC news, the case is been held in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, with Australia arguing that Japan’s scientific whaling program (under which it kills whales) is commercial whaling in disguise. A moratorium which bans commercial whaling was put in place in 1986 by the International whaling commission.

According to The Age, a Melbourne based newspaper, Australia Government counsel Bill Campbell told the court, “Japan seeks to cloak its ongoing commercial whaling in the lab coat of science.”

Mike Double from the Australia Antarctic division told AlJazeera Japan’s scientific whaling was not scientific because whales do not have to be killed to be study.

“We simply do not need to kill whales for the science,” he said. “We can collect all the information we need to conserve and manage these whales through non-lethal methods.”

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who is representing Australia in court, said that more than 10,000 whales had been killed by Japanese whalers since the moratorium was introduced.

He said Australia wanted to see whaling practices halted “once and for all.”

SEC Member Doesn’t Like Shareholder Democracy

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

108-1SEC Member Doesn’t Like Shareholder Democracy

Some things are the way they are supposed to be. Some things are not. An excellent example is shareholders and corporations. The perspective that most people have in a capitalist, private property system is that if you own a company, your decisions should determine what the company does. And this does happen when the stockholders control very large amounts of stock, for instance, in close corporations. But the influential and powerful corporations often have thousands of stockholders. When the stockholder base is diffused among so many players, it is very difficult for the stockholders to exert effective control.

As a result of this very large corporations tend to operate under CEO leadership with little input from shareholders.

In very large corporations, control by management (a combination of the directors and officers) is maintained with a very small percentage of stock ownership through the use of corporate records and funds to solicit proxies. (Reed, 2010)

Now let’s take a look at the Reuters article.

Any investor who owns at least $2,000 or 1 percent of a company’s stock for a year or more can bring a shareholder proposal, so long as it meets certain requirements. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved Fredrich’s pitch because it was designed to financially benefit all GE owners and not just him.

That, at least, distinguishes it from resolutions involving environmental, political or social issues that may not serve the interests of shareholders generally. SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher, speaking to the annual confab of M&A practitioners last week at Tulane University in New Orleans, argues that “it’s time we asked whether the shareholder proposal system as currently designed is a net negative for the average investor.”

Gallagher, one of two Republicans on the five-member SEC, claims it’s too easy for investors to get resolutions on company ballots. As a result, activists and corporate gadflies “hijack” elections, he says. The commissioner cited statistics showing that a third of proposals come from organized labor and a quarter from social or policy investors and religious institutions.

The upshot is a system that encourages “taking money out of the pocket of someone investing for retirement or their child’s education and using it instead to subsidize activist agendas,” according to Gallagher. The SEC’s rules, he says, should ensure that these activists do not “crowd out every-day and long-term investors” or advance causes “inconsistent with the promotion of shareholder value.”

http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2014/04/01/rob-cox-ge-should-put-itself-up-for-sale/

Cox, R. (2014, April 1). Rob cox: Ge should put itself up for sale. Reuters, U.S. Edition, Retrieved from http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2014/04/01/rob-cox-ge-should-put-itself-up-for-sale/

Daniel Gallagher doesn’t like the current system because it’s too easy to get resolutions on company ballots. That is a fascinating conclusion to reach considering the facts.  There 10,033,130,000 shares of GE stock and this year there will be six resolutions for the stockholders to vote on. That number (6) would seem to imply that it is not that easy to get a resolution approved for a shareholder vote. Now, it is not publicly disclosed by the company how many actual shareholders exist but since the number of the shares exceeds the population of this planet by a comfortable margin, there are probably a lot of them. So, a disinterested observer might well think the system wasn’t broke at least in the direction of too many resolutions.

But the best part is the quote from above: “taking money out of the pocket of someone investing  for retirement or their child’s education and using it instead to subsidize activist agendas.” So, when shareholders vote to use their control of their investment, their money, to do something they want rather than maximize profit they’re stealing from children and retirees. It makes one weep that people should vote to decide what to do with their investments.

Gallagher understands that the only reason a corporation exists is to enhance shareholder value, and when some vile activist or corporate gadfly persuades gullible shareholders to do things like invest in America, the natural order of things has been violated and shareholder control must be reined in.

But shareholders have rights in the control of the company because they own it. And democracy is messy. Some people will make illogical or unrealistic proposals. Some will  and have made proposals that Gallagher will not approve of. But investors should be able to make decisions about their company and voting – democracy is the best way to do that. There is no rule from on-high or anywhere else that shareholder value is the only or even the most important goal of a corporation. Stockholders can decide to do something else.

We have reached a point at which stockholders appear to gaining a little more control over the companies they own. There are people, as there always are, who think they know best what should be done with these companies even though they don’t own so much as a single share, because, well, they like Mr. Gallagher, just know.

James Pilant

*Reed, O. (2010). The legal and regulatory environment of business. (15th Edition ed., p. 420). Boston: McGraw Hill Book Company.

Analysis & Opinion | Reuters (There is some content also used above but if that content was removed, the section below wouldn’t make sense. jp)

Gallagher, one of two Republicans on the five-member SEC, claims it’s too easy for investors to get resolutions on company ballots. As a result, activists and corporate gadflies “hijack” elections, he says. The commissioner cited statistics showing that a third of proposals come from organized labor and a quarter from social or policy investors and religious institutions.

The upshot is a system that encourages “taking money out of the pocket of someone investing for retirement or their child’s education and using it instead to subsidize activist agendas,” according to Gallagher. The SEC’s rules, he says, should ensure that these activists do not “crowd out every-day and long-term investors” or advance causes “inconsistent with the promotion of shareholder value.”

He’s right, to a point. It is a waste of time for investors to vet proposals that have nothing to do with the stewardship of their capital. But stifling shareholder speech has consequences. Stricter limits may allow, say, GE to keep a silly measure calling for its sale off the ballot, but they could also prevent owners from voting on more intelligent notions, like splitting the chairman and chief executive roles.

The Supreme Court ruled four years ago that free speech rights apply to corporations under the Constitution, including the right to make campaign contributions to politicians that favor profit-making causes. Shareholders also deserve protection under the First Amendment – no matter how wacky they may sometimes sound.

via Analysis & Opinion | Reuters.

From around the web.

From the web site, Global Corporate Law.

http://globalcorporatelaw.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/shareholder-democracy-and-future-reform/

Writing on the corporate governance blog earlier this month, Bob Tricker observed that “serious”  interest in corporate governance is a recent phenomenon which only came to the fore following Sir Alan Cadbury’s 1992 Report. The dichotomy is that despite the existence of regulatory bodies such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission since the mid-1930s, it was not until problems such as the Enron scandal, the sub-prime crisis and more recent Libor scandal – that “corporate governance” became a buzzword in the business sphere, company law and regulation.

For Tricker, corporate governance  – to which constructs such as marketing, production, finance, operations research, and management information systems have only recently ceded ground – is quickly becoming the focus of a company’s organisational chart. Themes such as the board of directors, executive directors’ remuneration and their relationship with management are all now very much at the apex of the debate about issues such as shareholder democracy, accountability and transparency in the corporate sphere. It is often said that good corporate governance is about promises kept: Macey, Corporate Governance: Promises Kept, Promises Broken (2010). Conversely, bad corporate governance is considered “promise breaking behaviour”.

The UK – which is seen as a “laboratory” for shareholder activism – has high rates of executive remuneration and on average bosses earn seventy five times more than workers.