When a government abdicates its responsibility in regulating the economy (as did the U.S. government), capitalist greed accompanied by all sorts of illegal amassing of wealth by the few, at the expense of the majority in society takes place. In other words, policies of neo-liberalism compel governments to abandon regulation of the economy, so that only profit- making becomes the law of the land. Society be damned. The citizen is only a consumer. The government is only a facilitator of business exploitation.
A government as a body that has the power to enforce environmental, labor and consumer laws was required by neo-liberal philosophy to abandon its most critical responsibility of social policy to “market forces”. While it is true that Democracy gives ordinary people a significant voice in government, at the end of the day, who makes the policies that the U.S. government pursues, is what matters. When that question is properly answered, then, we will find out who has power in America.
David Yamada is a crusader against workplace bullying. I read his blog regularly and this is his latest post. I think you should read it.
I find his rationale for dropping the service to be compelling. Why don’t you go to his site, read the full post and see if you agree?
James Pilant
Why I cancelled my Amazon Prime account « Minding the Workplace
I cancelled my Amazon Prime account earlier this week, and until working conditions for their employees improve, I won’t be shopping there nearly as often as I have previously.
Amazon Prime is a premium membership service that guarantees two-day shipping on almost every item ordered. For frequent customers such as myself, Prime offers easy, dependable, click-and-ship ordering, with hardly any waiting time for delivery.
However, revelations about Amazon’s labor practices have become increasingly disturbing, more specifically the working conditions in its vast merchandise warehouses. For me, the final straw was a recent Salon investigative piece by Simon Head, “Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon’s sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers,” detailing how the situation is much worse than I imagined …
• Cheap books are really publishers and authors receiving less: this doesn’t support the future of book publishing and quality writing. Amazon can offer “discounts” because they are cutting other costs: taxes, publisher payments, author payments, and safe-labor practices.
• Amazon has strong-armed many publishers into reducing the prices of their books and eBooks. In some instances when publishers have refused, Amazon has removed the “buy” button from the pages of the publishers’ books. This tactic threatens the ability of publishers to survive in an industry with an already low profit margin. (Read more: Books After Amazon)
• Amazon uses “loss leaders” to gain an unfair pricing advantage over their bookselling competition. Selling certain books (or Kindles) at a loss or no profit entices customers to their website to buy big ticket items (often non-book items, like electronics, since books are only a tiny fraction of Amazon’s Walmart-esque business model).
• Amazon refuses to pay taxes in most states, even when they have a physical presence there. By not paying state sales taxes, Amazon gains an advantage in pricing perception over independent bookstores because their prices seem lower by 5 to 8% (the sales tax rate in most states).
Working in an Amazon warehouse literally means working in a sweatshop
• Amazon’s Pennsylvania warehouses get so hot in summer months that Amazon keeps ambulances outside of the buildings to rush employees to the hospital. Employees must keep a brutal production pace even during heat waves or they risk being terminated. (Read more: Inside Amazon’s Warehouse)
As I wrote with some foresight years ago, the Fukushima disaster is going to last for decades. As a business ethics disaster, Fukushima gives fracking a good run for its money, and here’s how: We keep finding out new ways that TEPCO screwed up. That’s right, after enormous failures in management, truth telling and just basic competence, all of them staggering, we keep finding new ones.
Read below about the new one and relish their utterly responsible reason – they were real busy. That is precisely one step above “the dog ate my homework.”
We’re talking Strontium 90, an isotope of the element. Our bodies mistake it for calcium and thus incorporates it into our bone structure. And that’s because we all need silvery radioactive metals deposited right next to our bone marrow so that our production of blood cells can be illuminated by the glow.
So, it seems they got real busy and lost track of how much strontium 90 was being released. No big deal. After all, what is it going to do? – Deposit itself in the bones of adults and in particular children giving them enhanced opportunities for cancer and leukemia?
Nah. Don’t let that kind of thing worry you. After all, these are the kinds of people running nuclear power all over the world. They’re competent, cool, collected, well-educated businessmen. Not flaky environmentalists, no government officials, no liberal arts trained thinkers, just savvy businessmen who understand the real world, the world of competence, of money, the important stuff. Genetic structure? Screw it. It’s not on the balance sheet. Won’t cost the investors a dime, and that’s where the action is, after all.
Remember the free market can solve all problems. Government interference damages the free market and thus produces inefficiencies which cannot be tolerated. So, therefore, these gentlemen at TEPCO are heroes being unfairly stigmatized. We should get out of their way and let market forces naturally solve the problem.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) is re-analyzing 164 water samples collected last year at the wrecked Fukushima atomic plant because previous readings “significantly undercounted” radiation levels.
The utility known as Tepco said the levels were undercounted due to errors in its testing of beta radiation, which includes strontium-90, an isotope linked to bone cancer. None of the samples were taken from seawater, the company said today in an e-mailed statement.
“These errors occurred during a time when the number of the samplings rapidly increased as the result of a series of events since last April, including groundwater reservoir leakage and a major leak from a storage tank,” according to the statement.
Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) is pleased to announce plans for the construction of a new solar power plant* in Iwaki City, Fukushima. The largest of its kind in the Tohoku region, the 12,000-kilowatt facility is expected to start operating from mid-2014. The project forms part of MC’s overall strategic focus of developing its business in the renewable energies sector.
Known as one of the foremost industrial areas in the region and as well for being a major sightseeing area, Iwaki receives the highest amount of sunlight annually within Tohoku. MC is developing the mega solar project with full support from Nippon Kasei, as well as cooperation from the Fukushima Prefecture and Iwaki City governments. MC is simultaneously developing a 6,000-kilowatt mega solar project at the site of Onahama Petroleum Co., Ltd, a joint venture between MC and Tepco in Iwaki. Together, the two projects will constitute 18,000 kilowatts of solar power generation in total at Onahama.
For the first time since the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant three years ago, the government is lifting an evacuation order in a restricted area, allowing residents to return to their homes.
Residents of an eastern strip of the Miyakoji district of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, are being allowed to return as of April 1, the first day of the 2014 fiscal year, government officials said at a meeting Feb. 23. The area lies within 20 kilometers west of where the accident occurred.
One reason the government is rushing to lift evacuation orders for communities affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster is cost. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which is being lent money by the government’s Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund to compensate evacuees, is required to continue compensation one year after an evacuation order is lifted. Lifting the orders will hasten the end of those payments.
According to the industry ministry, 1.5 trillion yen ($14.63 billion) has been paid in compensation to evacuees from 11 municipalities as of February.
In addition, decontamination costs will snowball if the government tries to achieve its long-term goal of lowering annual airborne radiation doses to 1 millisievert or less in areas where evacuation orders are in place.
A Reconstruction Agency official said it is unclear whether the long-term goal can be achieved even if the government continues decontamination work.
Prior to the Feb. 23 meeting, a senior Reconstruction Agency official asked Kazuyoshi Akaba, a senior vice industry minister, to explain the government’s policy to evacuees “even if it means rising to your full height and standing firm before residents.”
Akaba and Tamura Mayor Yukei Tomitsuka were tasked with explaining the new policy to the residents.
During a previous meeting in October, Tomitsuka had proposed lifting the evacuation order by November, but residents complained, saying too much contamination remained.
Some evacuees requested additional decontamination work because the radiation levels remained above 1 millisievert in some areas. The government promised to deal with residents who are still worried about high radiation levels on a case-by-case basis.
“If this abnormal situation continues, residents will lose attachment to their hometown and the community will collapse,” Tomitsuka has said.
Cleaning guru Jolie Kerr: “The legacy of housework being the domain of women continues” – Salon.com
Housework is traditionally gendered — but as someone who writes for Gawker media sites directed at men and at women, and as someone who wants a wide audience for your book, do you think that’s fading out?
I do think that there are changes — and I think that’s a very good think. I think it’d be Pollyanna-ish of me to tell you there isn’t a gender construct in cleaning. The legacy of housework being the domain of women continues. And it’s going to continue for a long time, probably well after my lifetime. I wish that wasn’t the case, but that’s reality. You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of socializing the perception of housework as women’s work. And women are more socialized, to this day, to think about cleaning and be aware of cleaning. They’re trained to clean. It’s less true now than it was forty years ago.
And one thing I love hearing about is women who are in their 20s and 30s saying “My mom never taught me to clean, and now I’m turning to a feminist website to teach me to clean.” That statement was made when I was working for the Hairpin. I’m hesitant to put words in the mouths of Jezebel readers, but I’m sure some Jezebel readers feel that way too. That personalization of women being the ones to clean has gone away to some extent. We like that, right? What isn’t so great is that the socialization of people to know how to clean has gone away. But cleaning is a human problem, not a male or female problem. I try always to act as if it is the case that cleaning is a human problem.
Well, how about this? The pro-fracking governor of Pennsylvania says that fracking has created 200,000 jobs but there is an analysis by a state newspaper indicating a number of 30,000 and that the number of these kinds of jobs is falling.
Who’s telling the truth? On one side we have an industry devoted to secrecy and non-disclosure on a scale not seen since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This sides also includes pro-natural gas groups and politicians who have benefitted from generous campaign contributions. On the other we have a state newspaper doing an analysis as part of its news gathering.
I’m going to go with the newspaper. The other guys will profit and advance based on their stance while the best the newspaper can do is get increased circulation. One side has more motive to lie.
What’s more, I have some experience with fracking as an issue. What I have read and seen is that fracking creates a lot of jobs during the initial stages of drilling but then the jobs move on to the next drilling sites and there is little permanent job creation.
Based on my knowledge, since the state has had much of the drilling done, those jobs are moving on while the wells and the problems remain.
I believe that fracking could have been done in an environmentally protective way that took care not to destroy water resources or endanger the stability of the earth’s crust. But since fracking was exempted from a host of environmental laws and has operated in the realm of secrecy, I don’t see them having much reason to act responsibly.
Is it not written: John 3:20: For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
James Pilant
Pennsylvania fracking-related jobs numbers questioned | Al Jazeera America
Facing a daunting re-election year, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has been touting his all-out support for natural gas drilling as a job creator in his state.
But economists and environmentalists are questioning his claim that the industry props up more than 200,000 Pennsylvania jobs. They say that the governor’s administration has greatly inflated the number and that it may be getting lower every day.
A new analysis by The Allentown Morning Call newspaper and published Monday indicates that growth in the industries associated with drilling in the Marcellus Shale — one of the country’s main areas for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — fell by 29 percent from 2010 to 2013. There are now just under 30,000 that can directly be linked to the Marcellus.
Industry supporters say that the decline is a temporary fluctuation and that ancillary jobs created and supported by shale gas development — including ones in trucking, engineering and construction — boost the number to more than 200,000.
But as Corbett continues to support natural gas development in his bid for re-election, those job numbers have come under more scrutiny. Activists and economists say that while there is no doubt natural gas has contributed to the state’s economy, it is likely the practice’s impact has been exaggerated, perhaps for political gain.
Supporters of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale have promised new drilling could create up to 100,000 jobs in Pennsylvania this year, but actual job creation appears to be falling well short.
According to a report last year by Penn State University’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Marcellus Shale drilling directly and indirectly created more than 29,000 jobs in Pennsylvania in 2008 and 48,000 jobs in 2009. The report, commissioned by the Marcellus Shale Gas Committee, predicted drilling operations would create at least 107,000 jobs this year.
Critics say those numbers are not borne out by reality. According to a report released last month by J.M. Barth & Associates, a New York-based research and consulting firm, the number of jobs in the oil and gas extraction industry has remained virtually flat in recent years despite increased investment in the Marcellus Shale.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that Pennsylvania’s mining and logging sector gained 2,500 jobs over the past three years, growing from 20,800 jobs in February 2007 to 23,300 jobs in February 2010.
“There’s a lot of wishful thinking out there,” said Jannette Barth, president of J.M. Barth & Associates. “They’re not [accurate] — or at least, they’re biased. They leave a lot of things out” (Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 9). – GN
On August 30, the Hazleton School Board delayed approval of the proposed course on Natural Gas Drilling until they learned more about it. The proposed course was presented as being taught by volunteers from Junior Achievement and Cabot Oil & Gas would be paying for the materials.
I learned tonight, the Hazleton School Board met last night (9/26/13), and said thanks by no thanks and voted down Cabot’s Fracking Class by a 6-1 vote.
Sources stated the board felt uncomfortable with a corporate designed and financed course. They were especially uncomfortable with Session #7 which simulates a town meeting with carefully prepared profile cards and positions each “character” was to take.
If you read the story below you will discover that large corporations are receiving enormous sums of money from state and local governments. Apparently, free market neo-liberalism is good for the common folk like us but we must not speak the dire word, competition, when it comes to large corporations. After all, why should a multi-national organization with billions of dollars in resources do the hard thing like compete in a free market when they can milk state and local governments?
So, it is neo-liberalism for us and corporate welfare for them. Can you say, “Hypocrisy?”
What does neo-liberalism for us mean? It means depressed wages, direct competition with workers in undeveloped nations, continued decline in what we can expect in terms of education and any other government benefit, and that we will be forced into ever more dire circumstances of economic insecurity.
What does neo-liberalism mean for multi-national corporations? In terms of the company itself, nothing. They don’t do neo-liberalism. They do it to others. In terms of the environment of the company, it means they pay less in wages, less in taxes and can exert ever increasing control over their workers while maintaining a loyal and servile class of would-be courtiers who bow and scrape before them while uttering the sacred phrase, “Job Creators.”
Yes, job creators. You can ship American jobs overseas by the millions, play havoc with the American dream of owning a home, almost destroy the world’s economic system and you win the title of “job creator.”
We live in a strange country where people can believe in this kind of nonsense.
James Pilant
The shocking numbers behind corporate welfare | Al Jazeera America
State and local governments have awarded at least $110 billion in taxpayer subsidies to business, with 3 of every 4 dollars going to fewer than 1,000 big corporations, the most thorough analysis to date of corporate welfare revealed today.
Boeing ranks first, with 137 subsidies totaling $13.2 billion, followed by Alcoa at $5.6 billion, Intel at $3.9 billion, General Motors at $3.5 billion and Ford Motor at $2.5 billion, the new report by the nonprofit research organization Good Jobs First shows.
Dow Chemical had the most subsidies, 410 totaling $1.4 billion, followed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway holding company, with 310 valued at $1.1 billion.
The figures were compiled from disclosures made by state and local government agencies that subsidize companies in all sorts of ways, including cash giveaways, building and land transfers, tax abatements and steep discounts on electric and water bills.
So…when the corporations, and their toadies in Congress, are spewing forth the lie that corporations pay too much in taxes, inhibiting job growth, you can cite this.
S&P 500 members citing effective tax rates of 0% in past twelve months, ranked by market value (in billions):
In 2011, an $8 million tax break for a new Washington DC Whole Foods development raised questions of return on public investment and why public money was even needed:
And why does this project require a special subsidy to move forward in the first place? This Whole Foods already would qualify for a set of tax incentives for grocery store development, including a 10–year property tax break on the store itself. Moreover, while some projects near Nationals Park have languished in the recession, this area is likely to be part of the emerging rebound, thanks in part to prior public investment by the District. Finally, if a Whole Foods will revitalize this neighborhood as it did in Logan Circle, why won’t private market interests step up to make it happen?
The documents, obtained by the Chaldean News under the Freedom of Information Act and provided toCrain’s, show that Whole Foods is asking for $4.2 million in city, state and federal incentives to open a store in downtown Detroit.
According to the exchanges, the 21,000-square-foot project is expected to get $1.5 million in local and community foundation funds, $1.2 million in federal tax credits under the New Market program and $1.5 million in state incentives.
Michael Sarafa, president of the Bank of Michigan and co-publisher of The Chaldean News, questions the use of incentives to lure a national grocery chain to Detroit. He said there are 83 independently-owned grocers in the city, many of them owned by Chaldeans, who did not receive incentives.
At the time of his election, it would have been expected that the presidency of Barack Obama would have created a climate more favorable to business ethics. This did not happen. Business ethics were not in any way part of the White House’s agenda. Under Obama, even mild interest in prosecuting business crime is absent. Under Obama, corporate cooperation with the White House has been a continuing priority from the Affordable Healthcare Act to the bizarre HAMP plan to “help” struggling homeowners. Both were business ethics nightmares. The President had run on a platform of open government, and yet a few months after taking office met with the insurance companies and cut a deal insuring their participation and profits in the new healthcare act. HAMP was turned into a deadly and devastating weapon to be used against homeowners, the banks ceaselessly manipulating the rules to force homeowners out while collecting billions of dollars in fees.
I could go on. Where this President could have sided against corporations, but he has avoided this, and is an advocate of enhanced corporate power. If the trans-pacific trade deal were to go into effect, corporations would gain many of the powers of sovereign nations. As if, giant corporation do not have enough influence in the government, the treaty would allow them to sue nations to prevent rules such as regulations on pollution from going into effect.
This President has failed in his duty to protect the American people from corporate villainy, in particular the great Wall Street investment firms.
The lesson of the Obama administration is that influence is better than righteousness, connections than a commitment to the public interest and expediency more powerful than morality.
James Pilant
What the hell is Barack Obama’s presidency for? | Gary Younge | Comment is free | The Guardian
If there was a plot, he’s lost it. If there was a point, few can remember it. If he had a big idea, he shrank it. If there’s a moral compass powerful enough to guide such contradictions to more consistent waters, it is in urgent need of being reset.
Still this resistance may be changing. In an article in the New York Times (NYT), entitled “Obama Urged To Back Plan To List Owners Of Shell Firms”, Ravi Somaiya reported that “Anticorruption activists have urged President Obama to back a plan to publicly register the owners of shell companies in the United States and around the world, a move they say is essential to thwart corrupt government officials, tax evaders and money launderers who rely on an opaque financial system.” This problem has existed for several years in the US. Somaiya reported that “The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the Treasury Department, estimated in 2005 that as much as $18 billion in suspicious transactions were made using international wire transfers that used shell companies in the United States.”
Somaiya also quoted Jack A. Blum, a lawyer and the chairman of Tax Justice Network USA, who said “These anonymous shell companies are used by everybody who steals money. Tens of thousands of shell corporations have been set up within the United States, he said, primarily in four states — Delaware, Montana, Nevada and Wyoming — that have loose regulations.” We know that the bad guys are selling the U.S. as a place to set up companies,” Mr. Blum said, citing its “aura of legitimacy.”
How does all of this relate to due diligence as the US problem would not seem to impact a company covered by FCPA? First of all, a company should know with whom they are doing business, and more pointedly a US company which is subject to the UK Bribery Act needs to recognize that any agent, distributor or other type of representative here in the US, is a foreign entity under the Bribery Act and needs full due diligence. While the jurisdictional scope of the Bribery Act has yet to be fully fleshed out, such a US company needs to consider its due diligence here in the US and may need to strengthen its investigations and background checks on such parties to comply with the Bribery Act.
See, the banks are not in the mortgage business to loan, they are in it to default and profit by defaults; to collect servicing fees and bid on defaults in the market and to sell a house multiple times… until their investors got wise and wanted their money back. Thus, the creation of TARP, and then HAMP, a scam to support the banks by foaming the runway, deceiving the mortgagors that they could actually get a modification while they paced the timing of their foreclosures. These bailout plans were never for you and me.
The banksters’ eyes must have burst into tears of joy when they realized they could use the already deceptive HAMP program to confiscate even more homes. The homeowners were promised modifications which neither the federal officials nor banks intended to give as the only intent was to slowly foreclose and parallel a modification program which they knowingly had no intention to approve. They went one step farther and found if they lied to the homeowner who was not in default or behind in payments and just wanted a modification, that they would gain the homeowners’ confidence and tell them to stop making payments for 3-4 months in order to qualify for the modification.
The banks knew full well that the homeowners would rely on the banks to be telling them the right thing to do. After the homeowner was in default (per the banks’ instructions – all verbal of course), the banks would foreclose on the homeowner instead of approve the modification.
The present system has failed the poor and those living paycheck to paycheck (often the same group). Millions of people pay exorbitant fees for cashing checks and short term loans for family emergencies. We can end that right now by using the Post Office as a bank.
Why is this an issue for me, business ethics writer? It’s very simple. The conflict here is between human intelligence and neo-liberalism. For the neo-liberal, it is obvious that the free market is always better than anything else. For me, evidence should be used to decided what works and what options society should choose to solve its problems. The current banking system and payday loan industry have failed and failed spectacularly in taking care of the needs of a great part of our people.
If there is anything I write about consistently, it is the need to use intelligent, reasoned decision making. Doctrinal rules like the idea that the free market is always best are better used in the world of religion.
I’ll go with the facts.
James Pilant
Return to Lender: Postal Banking Can Bring Equity to Communities | Michelle Chen
Your friendly local post office may have an honorable history, but it’s facing tough times, including a fiscal crisis and, more generally, a struggle to keep pace with growing digital communication technologies. Conservatives have increasingly dismissed the United States Postal Service as a clunky relic of old-fashioned America, with right-wing lawmakers seeking to phase it out through service cuts and privatization. Now, some progressives are trying to save the USPS by rebranding it as a financial vehicle: a place for you to pick up your mail and deposit a paycheck in one stop.
Some officials have pitched the idea of the postal service expanding into “non-bank” financial services, carefully designed to complement rather than directly compete with Wall Street. In a recent white paper, the USPS Inspector General’s office suggested that local post offices could offer products such as international money transfers, small short-term loans, and prepaid debit cards for bills or everyday purchases. To fulfill needs unmet by big banks, these financial services would ideally be targeted toward “low-income areas like rural communities and inner cities.”
Ultimately, though, many advocates want to see the postal service be bolder and actually delve into full-scale banking services. Labor and consumer advocacy groups like AppleSeed say the USPS is excellently positioned as a government-supported, publicly accountable institution to fill a longstanding gap in the financial system by offering interest-bearing accounts and other basic banking services. In addition, branching into the affordable finance business would offer the USPS a steady revenue stream.
For free-marketers who fear the USPS would steal big banks’ customers, advocates point out that low-income groups that stand to gain the most from postal banking have already been marginalized as a bad business prospect. Some 68 million Americans are considered “underbanked”: In other words, they lack access to mainstream banks and essential services like savings accounts. “Banking desert” neighborhoods are typically full of people of color, immigrants and unemployed workers — and there may be no full-service bank in sight for them, because massive firms like Merrill Lynch do not see those areas as “profitable.”
USPS is one of the most trusted organizations in the United States. Its reputation and world-class services are well known, and its customers know that there is no better value for their shipping solutions than their local Post Office. Reintegrating banking services into the Postal Service could have the effect of increasing its revenue base from financial services while simultaneously expanding its mailing business from increased foot traffic in its local branches.
The endeavor wouldn’t be a quick solution to increasing postal revenue as there are many infrastructure enhancements and procedures to establish to ensure necessary financial rules and regulations are followed. Still, the long-term prospects of a renewed Postal Savings System could be lucrative enough to reestablish the once thriving service.
I think Paul Steven Stone has some good points here. I am also outraged at the very successful effort by legislatures all over the United States to limit the right to vote. It’s viciously, nakedly undemocratic, and is simply evil both in intent and effect. We all have a basic right as Americans to vote, and that should be something that can’t be taken away.
James Pilant
I Am a Ukrainian | Paul Steven Stone
How can you not stand up and cheer at what we’ve just witnessed in Eastern Europe? To see an entire populace rise up against injustice, autocracy and the armed lackeys of a corrupt police state reminds me of what real courage looks like, especially when it’s bolstered by the adrenaline of outrage and moral authority.
I couldn’t watch this impoverished proletariat fighting so valiantly — and risking so much — for their rights, their country and for the future of their children’s children without thinking about how far we Americans have drifted from our own revolutionary and democratic ideals. So far that we would allow George W. Bush to twice steal the presidency of the United States (see here.) staring impotently with our mouths open, too afraid of the consequences that might come from shouting out the truth and fighting for our rights. Too comfortable, in all likelihood, with our material possessions and modest success to risk any of it by standing up and shouting “Fraud! Thief! Liar!” as we should have done — as we have an obligation to do as legatees of our revolution and its democratic values!
And so we turned over in bed, having taken a sleeping pill to deal with any discomfiting after-effects of watching our country hijacked by these lackeys of disgruntled billionaires.
Yes, we’ve fallen so far from our American ideals that we would allow almost every state legislature controlled by Republicans to institute laws designed to deprive citizens of their voting rights in the name of preventing voting fraud. A fraud admittedly non-existent and clearly invoked as a fig leaf to conceal the pathetic conniving of a fastly-shrinking political minority.
Branded extremists, radicals, criminals and foreign agents. This is how Ukraine’s bandits in power (or the so-called government) see protesters of Euromaidan. Hundreds of thousands of open-minded and freedom-seeking demonstrators, for whom dignity, human rights and liberty are not just plain words, are apparently terrorists. At least, this is how yesterday’s horrifying developments, claiming at least 20 innocent lives in Kyiv, were justified – as anti-terrorist operations. Clubs, tear gas, flash grenades and Molotov cocktails are again a reality after almost 3 weeks of a standstill in Ukraine’s capital.
What began as a protest against Ukrainian President Yanukovych’s decision not to sign an Association Agreement, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, with the EU in late 2013 has spiraled into much bigger demands. Seen as a pro-European uprising in the East, the latest dynamics highlight a much more complicated political scene. Current demonstrations represent a fight for democratic values, rule of law and a change of the country’s corrupt political system. In fact, the EU’s inaction and inability to broker a solution diminishes, to some extent, local support for the European Union. The absence of a decisive Western stance definitely harms the image of a flexible Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU. Coupled with expressions of concern that are not backed by real actions, this only irritates Ukrainians more .
I have been to Ukraine numerous times. Lectured there. Received honorary doctorates from their Universities. Published books and articles in Ukrainian. Worked with Ukrainian business executives and their managers. But in all my experience working worldwide, I have never heard of or come across such blatant, open, shameless, corruption as I have encountered in Ukraine.
Don’t misunderstand. I know there is a lot of corruption everywhere. Even in the United States. Even in my home city. If you want a license to build a house in Santa Barbara you need a permit, which might take a year or more before it is approved by the bureaucracy. So you hire a “middleman” who used to work at the department of urban planning and who knows the ropes. He is called an expeditor, and for a fee will make sure that your request for a license is granted in less than a year.
To me that is corruption… though everyone considers it a normal way of doing business.
There is corruption of course in every nation-state. You will find it in Israel, in India, in Brazil. Name any country and you will find traces of corruption. But Ukraine is a different story. It represents a paradigm shift in the magnitude and nature of corruption. A sizable jump to a different level of corruption that places it in a league all of its own.
Does this sound more military than police? Overwhelming force and an over adherence to rules when an intelligent person would use judgement. I teach criminal justice and I emphasize over and over again that judgment is the key to a good criminal justice professional. Did you notice there was a certain element of “Do you have your papers? ” Sounds like Casablanca.
Watch above. It’s an Austin Police Department training film.
James Pilant
An Austin, Texas woman was arrested for jaywalking while jogging, not having I.D.
An Austin, Texas man was sitting in a downtown Starbucks when he noticed police handing out citations for jaywalking. The police shouted at a young woman who was jogging with her headphones and apparently didn’t hear them. They grabbed her and immediately handcuffed her. When she couldn’t produce identification, she was arrested. Who jogs with state-issued identification? Live Leak user “Oneirishman” picked up his camera and began filming. His eyewitness account, posted at Live Leak:
Sitting at Starbucks, on the corner of 24th and San Antonio, I noticed a particularly odd situation.Two Austin Police Officers standing outside the Castilian just lingering. Every time I looked back there was a different student holding a carbon copy of what looked to be a jay walking citation. Suddenly one of the cops shouts at an innocent girl jogging with her headphones on through West Campus. He wobbled after her and grabbed her by the arm. Startled and not knowing it was a cop, she jerked her arm away. The cop viewed this as resisting arrest and proceeded to grab both arms tightly, placing her in handcuffs. She repeatedly pleaded with them saying that she was just exercising and to let her go. She repeatedly cried out, “I did not do anything wrong…just give me the ticket.” The%2
Finally an admission. An Austin Police Officer admits in court yesterday during a pre-trial hearing, that almost from the Beginning, Occupy Austin was infiltrated by Police, who acted as instigators. Officers also had role in making possible illegal device used in Occupy Houston protest.
An Austin police officer has testified in a pre-trial hearing in Houston about allegations he encouraged criminal behavior as an undercover agent in the Occupy movement.
We did some digging and found court documents from Houston that reveal activists’ allegations that Austin Police Department Detective Shannon Dowell pushed them to break the law.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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