Zombie Housing Apocalypse Arrives

On March 31, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics

English: U.S. Household Property Foreclosure Chart 2007 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Foreclosed ‘Zombie’ Homes Exceed 300,000 Properties: Study

A national survey found 301,874 “zombie” properties dotting the U.S. landscape in which homeowners in foreclosure have moved out, leaving vacant property susceptible to vandalism and degradation.
Florida tops the list of zombie properties with 90,556 vacant homes in foreclosure, according to a foreclosure inventory released on Thursday by RealtyTrac, a real estate information company in Irvine, California.
Illinois and California ranked a distant second and third with 31,668 and 28,821 zombie properties respectively on the list.
The number of homes overall in foreclosure or bank-owned rose by 9 percent to 1.5 million properties nationally in the first quarter of 2013 compared to a year ago, according to RealtyTrac.
Another 10.9 million homeowners nationwide remain at risk because they owe more than their property is worth, according to company vice president Daren Blomquist.
RealtyTrac for the first time analyzed data on zombie properties after a Reuters’ special report in January examined the special problem of zombie titles, Blomquist said.
Reuters revealed the plight of people who walked away from their homes not realizing that their names remained on the deed and that they were financially liable for taxes and other bills related to the abandoned property.

Foreclosed ‘Zombie’ Homes Exceed 300,000 Properties: Study

The zombie apocalypse has arrived but it’s not people risen from the dead, it’s houses. Our broken, ill administered foreclosure system has produced this mess. But don’t worry, Congress will quickly and simply fix the problem. Whoops! I forgot who I was talking about, the greatest band of malingerers since George III sent appointees to run the colonies.

Vital housing that could be used to shelter the nation’s homeless and unfortunate is decaying into wreckage while the homeowners – a colloquial phrase for those driven from their homes by a mortgage industry as calculating, cold and inhuman as the Martians in H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds.

See if I am mistaken: (From the opening paragraph of the book.)

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.”

The law has not kept up in this relationship between predator and prey, and we all suffer for it. Foreclosure should pass the duty of care to the banks and not compound the misery of losing one’s home with an avalanche of fees to shatter any remnant of security and pride.

James Pilant

From around the web:

From the web site, Foreclosure Defense Group:

GG has been successfully fighting the banksters since 2008 and continues that battle today. She is still in her happy home, but the capitalist onslaught is relentless. On February 14th (although a judge had promised her personally that it wouldn’t happen), the court sent an eviction order to the Alameda County Sheriff to evict her, her roommate and all furniture and personal belongings.

The eviction is set for February 26 (next Tuesday) at 6 am.

GG is no stranger to the fight against capitalist imperialists. Her parents demonstrated for Tom Mooney at the 1932 Worlds Fair. Her mother got 6 months and her father got a year in prison. Her father was in the historic heroic general strike in San Francisco in 1934. Her father later organized the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) local in Sacramento. He was a union leader and was paid the same as the workers. The Workers always said “he’d give you the shirt off his back”

From the web site, The Foreclosure Detonator:

Values declined not because of the market, they declined because those very same banks who oppose these write downs created this mess by providing mortgages to almost anyone creating a housing boom that was destined to crash. Yes, they know what they were doing but greed took control of corporate governance and patriotic spirit. The attitude of let’s rake in as much cash as we can then when it all fails we can take back all those homes and rake in even more cash for homes we have no investment in.

The housing crash was created by the banks unlike what New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg says. He says blame it on Congress (and Fannie Mae who he says makes loans – wrong!). Yes, while I believe it was a direct mandate from the White House beginning with Bill Clinton, the banks could have and should have used their better judgment and declined the push from above. But GREED is a very dangerous intoxicant. Given the green light by those high up in our political circles – the ones in charge – they quickly did what they believed was their patriotic duty to comply and fill their own pockets.

And from the web site, Foreclosure Testimony /:

What is a Wrongful Foreclosure Action?

A wrongful foreclosure action is an action filed in superior court by the borrower against the servicer, the holder of the note, and usually the
foreclosing trustee. The complaint usually alleges that there was an “illegal, fraudulent or willfully oppressive sale of property under a power of sale contained in a mortgage or deed of trust.” Munger v. Moore (1970) 11 CA.App.3d. 1. The wrongful foreclosure action is often brought prior to the non-judicial foreclosure sale in order to delay the sale, but the action may also be brought after the non-judicial foreclosure sale. In most cases, a wrongful foreclosure action alleges that the amount stated as due and owing in the notice of default is incorrect for one or more of the following reasons: an incorrect interest rate adjustment, incorrect tax impound accounts, misapplied payments, a forbearance
agreement which was not adhered to by the servicer, unnecessary forced place insurance, improper accounting for a confirmed chapter 11 or chapter 13 bankruptcy plan. Wrongful foreclosure actions are also brought when the servicers accept partial payments after initiation of
the wrongful foreclosure process, then continue with the foreclosure. Companion allegations for emotional distress and punitive damages usually accompany any wrongful foreclosure action.

Zombie Housing Apocalypse Arrives

Holocaust Bigger than Thought

On March 25, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics1 Comment

Holocaust Bigger than Thought

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking – NYTimes.com

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.

“We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking – NYTimes.com

Just when you thought it was too big in the first place, we find out it was even bigger. There was, obviously, a lot more participation from the average German. After all, it takes a lot of personnel to run tens of thousands of facilities.

Is this a business ethics question? Of course, it is. The thousands of work camps, the huge shipments of human beings in cattle cars, the identification of the Jews and the other victims by IBM punch cards, the creation of the death factories, etc. etc., were all business endeavors utilized by the state to destroy the perceived enemies of the states. Without the, “It’s just business.” attitude, how difficult it would have been. Without the psychological distance provided by modern management techniques, would so much suffering have been so simple?

People tend to draw from the Holocaust the lesson that racial prejudice and hatred are wrong. But another lesson might be that business in the service of the state has incredible possibilities for the most extreme evil.

What crimes can be committed to make a profit ( or in the free market) ? What do we mean by “It’s just a job, if I don’t do it, someone else will?” The ultimate moral abdication?

Let’s draw fully on the lessons of the holocaust by doing a full analysis. It was a complex phenomenon and deserves study as such.

James Pilant

From around the web –

From the web site, Holocaust Research Project:

Hugh Greene

Daily Telegraph correspondent in Berlin during 1938

“I was in Berlin at that time and saw some pretty revolting sights – the destruction of Jewish shops, Jews being arrested and led away, the police standing by while the gangs destroyed the shops and even groups of well-dressed women cheering.

Maybe those women had a hangover next morning, as they were intoxicated all right when this was taking place. I found it, you know, really utterly revolting. In fact to a German journalist who saw me on that day and asked me what I was doing there, I remember I just said very coldly, “I’m studying German culture.”

From the web site, Paolosilv’s Blog: (He’s explaining motive not glorifying Hitler. jp)

Hitler in his own words:

“we are well aware that this war could eventually only end that they be out-rooted from Europe or that they disappear.They have already spoken of the breaking up of the German Reich by next September, and with the help of this advance prophesy, and we say that the war will not end as the Jews imagine it will, namely, with the uprooting of the Aryans, but the result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews. Now for the first time they will not bleed other people to death, but for the first time the old Jewish law of ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ will be applied. And the further this war spreads, the more antisemitism will spread. It will find strength in every prison camp, and in every family, which will understand that its sacrifices are because of this antisemitism. And the hour will come when the enemy of all times, or at least of the last thousand years, will have played his part to the end.” [Sportspalast speech, Adolf Hitler, 1942]

From the web site, A Journey that will Change My Life:

My trip to Auschwitz with Eva has changed me. I feel inspired and refreshed. I want to take her message of peace and forgiveness and use it to change the lives of others. I want to spread her message to anyone who will listen. I hope in the coming weeks that I will have some quiet time to sit down and continue processing and writing about my experiences in Poland. Until that time I will keep working and always remember this journey that changed my life.

From the web site, Lo Lewis’ blog – Holocaust Perpetrators: (I really like this one! jp)

The cover of this film suggests that it is about the downfall of Hitler as well as the Third Reich. “April 1945, a nation awaits its…” which described to me that it is also Germany’s downfall. From what I have seen so far, it is clear that the title of this movie suggests that it is the downfall of a nation rather than a leader. Although Downfall does capture the demise of Hitler as a powerful leader, it also depicts the downfall of other Nazi officials such as Goebbles. Everything in Germany has fallen apart and though at first I blamed it on Hitler’s death, it cannot be solely put on him. Hitler was a single man who could have done nothing without the support of millions of people who carried out the horrible things he preached about. It was also the German peoples fault..the downfall of Germany/The Third Reich that is. The downfall refers to more than just the downfall of one man, it symbolizes the downfall of a way of life. Hitler planted an idea into the minds of millions of people and they took care of killing 6 million people. Hitler was a perpetrator but he was a representation of all normal Germans who carried out his master plan. Everyone who was involved with the holocaust was at fault. This is another example of holocaust perpetrators being portrayed not as monsters, but as real people, similar to Eichmann in Jerusalem and The Reader. They chose this way of life, and essentially through the Jews under the bus in order to take part in a mass genocide. They would rather kill than be killed and took the easy way out. The holocaust perpetrators may have been “just doing their job” but they had the power to say no and they did not. Examples of this are Adolf Eichmann and Albert Speer. The Downfall of the Third Reich, the holocaust perpetrators and Hitler are all represented within the title of this movie.

The Private Prison Problem

On March 24, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics1 Comment

The Private Prison Problem

New Hampshire Dems Stick It To Greedy GOP | Addicting Info

On Friday, the Democratic controlled New Hampshire House voted 197-136 to ban the privatization of the state’s prison system. Whether this passes the Republican held (13-11) Senate is debatable but considering that last year there was movement to hand the prison system over to for-profit corporations, the move is significant.

From further down in the article –

The problem with private prisons is that they have absolutely no incentive to rehabilitate or even release prisoners. Early parole is bad for business. Reducing recidivism is really bad for business. Even more disturbing is the amount of money and effort the private prison industry puts into creating more jailable offenses, lengthening sentences and introducing mandatory sentencing for crimes as small as having a half-smoked joint in your pocket. That the industry is a big supporter of the War on Drugs goes without saying.

Private prisons cost more, have terrible safety and health records and several have been implicated in scandals to bribe judges to hand down harsher sentences in order to keep the prisons filled. This reprehensible behavior has even extended to the juvenile justice system. The logic is clear: kids that go to juvie tend to become adult criminals. Get’em while they’re young and you’ll have a customer for life.

Another dark facet of the Prison Industrial Complex is the push for “immigration crack-downs.” The industry is a major force behind the “sudden” urge for Republican-controlled states to arrest every person with brown skin they can find. Arizona’s now-infamous SB1070 was specifically created to make money for prison corporations who would then “share” their good fortune with the state. If you thought parking tickets were a nuisance, imagine being locked up for the sole purpose of closing your state’s budget shortfall.

New Hampshire Dems Stick It To Greedy GOP | Addicting Info

“no incentive to rehabilitate or even release prisoners” I remember more than a decade ago when I was reading about a legislative attempt to soften the drug laws in New York state, when the rural members strongly objected. They objected on the grounds they would lose jobs from the private prisons, the principal employers in their districts. I was shocked. I thought the discussion should be about justice and what was right. Instead the legislature wound up talking about jobs and economic development in depressed areas.

We are at a turning point in the history of American criminal justice. Imprisonment rates are dropping for the first time in decades. There is considerable reconsideration of the “war on drugs.” There is increasing controversy over standards on forensic testing. We are confronted on a regular basis by the innocent who have spend years (often decades) behind bars for crimes they did not commit. We are dealing with the issue of prosecutorial overreach and misconduct (the Swartz case).

Change is in the air.

But the kind of changes being considered are hobbled by the fact that private industry makes a profit every day they keep a person in a private prison. After Citizens United, we are beset with corporate money damaging the chances of having an intelligent discussion and lobbying for even more incarceration as a panacea for all criminal justice problems.

Citizens United endangers every form of intelligent policy perverting every discourse into a discussion of who profits. There are other values besides money. One of our more precious values is to not be imprisoned without good reason.

One of the intelligent changes we need is the abolition of private prisons across the board in this nation, everyone of them. The precious right to freedom cannot coexist with a profit in denying it. It is long standing principle in American justice that a monetary interest in finding someone guilty is wrong. That is why we don’t have organ donors from death row. It would make sentencing people to death a more attractive option.

Imprisonment is a public function not a private one. It is a common burden on society because of a joint shared decision to use confinement as a means of justice.

It constantly needs rethinking because of its critical importance as an issue.

James Pilant

From around the web –

From the web site, National Prison Divestment Campaign:

Over the past decade, Wells Fargo Bank has advertised to Latinos through community outreach, Spanish-language advertising and programs that allow immigrants, without U.S. identification, to open bank accounts.

However, Wells Fargo has also invested in the GEO Group, the nation’s second largest private prison company, which operates private prisons and immigration detention centers, reports Univision and Salon.com.

Mary Moreno, the communications director for the National People’s Action Campaign, told Univision: “They’re trying to win over all these Latino customers, but at the same time they’re promoting prisons for immigrants. Profits should never be a motive for incarcerating people.”

From the web site, Prison Pork:

In the wake of the announcement that Florida Atlantic University would name its football stadium after private prison corporation GEO Group for a hefty price, an executive at the company is disseminating false and misleading information about the firm’s practices and documented abuses at its facilities.

In both a statement to reporters and an op-ed, GEO Vice President for Corporate Relations Pablo Paez has falsely claimed that horrific abuses at a GEO juvenile detention facility in Mississippi described by the Department of Justice as “systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls” occurred before GEO took control of the prison, even though both DOJ and court documents clearly show otherwise. …

From the web site, Capital Weekly:

In three years, a private-prison construction and management company, the Corrections Corporation of America, has seen the value of its contracts with the state soar from nearly $23 million in 2006 to about $700 million three months ago – all without competitive bidding. Even in a state accustomed to high-dollar contracts, the 31-fold increase over three years is dramatic.
During the same period, the company’s campaign donations rose exponentially, from $36,750 in 2006, of which $25,000 went to the state Republican Party, to $233,500 in 2007-08 and nearly $139,000 in 2009. The donations have gone to Democrats, Republicans and ballot measures. The company’s largest single contribution, $100,000, went to an unsuccessful budget-reform package pushed last year by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

From the web site, Spikes Mind:

How would you describe an industry that wants to put more Americans in prison and keep them there longer so that it can make more money? In America today, approximately 130,000 people are locked up in private prisons that are being run by for-profit companies, and that number is growing very rapidly. Overall, the U.S. has approximately 25 percent of the entire global prison population even though it only has 5 percent of the total global population. The United States has the highest incarceration rate on the entire globe by far, and no nation in the history of the world has ever locked up more of its own citizens than we have. Are we really such a cesspool of filth and decay that we need to lock up so many of our own people? Or are there some other factors at work? Could part of the problem be that we have allowed companies to lock up men and women in cages for profit? The two largest private prison companies combined to bring in close to $3,000,000,000 in revenue in 2010, and the largest private prison companies have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade. Putting Americans behind bars has become very big business, and those companies have been given a perverse incentive to push for even more Americans to be locked up. It is a system that is absolutely teeming with corruption, and it is going to get a lot worse unless someone does something about it.

From the web site, Friends of Justice:

In the wake of the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional facility scandal, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) announced that GEO Group — one of the largest private prison corporations in the U.S. — will no longer operate three correctional facilities in the state. By July 20, the corporation will no longer manage the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional, East Mississippi Correctional, or the Marshall County Correctional facilities.

In 2010, reports emerged of sexual abuse, improper medical care, extended prisoner isolation, and violence among inmates at the Walnut Grove facility. These reports sparked a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The lawsuit resulted in the removal of youth from the Walnut Grove facility. According to the Associated Press, MDOC also had concerns about incidents that occurred at the other GEO Group facilities in the state.

And from the web site, Wickersham’s Conscience:

By determining that an Alaska prisoner doesn’t have the right to recover money from a private prison contractor, the court has cut off the best single way to get a private prison contractor’s attention: by nibbling at their bottom line. In effect, the court is deciding that all prisoner litigation is chaff.

The mistake the court makes, WC thinks, is in treating public prisons and private prisons the same. They are not. As WC has argued before, a public prison has no motivation to keep a prisoner any longer than necessary. A private prison, paid a fixed amount per prisoner per day, has every incentive to keep the private prison census high, because it maximizes revenue. A private prison, for example, might be inclined to impose more discipline on prisoners because, under the system for credit for “good behavior,” it means the prisoners stay longer. And the private prison gets more money.

If Perotti’s “segregation” for ”investigation of possible possession of escape paraphernalia” results in Perotti serving more time, even if the “investigation” was baseless, CCA is a net winner. Perotti – and the State of Alaska, which is paying CCA – are net losers. By failing to take into account or even to acknowledge the different situation presented by a private prison contractor.

American Journalists for Sale

On March 24, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics

American Journalists for Sale

Covert Malaysian Campaign Touched A Wide Range Of American Media

A range of mainstream American publications printed paid propaganda for the government of Malaysia, much of it focused on the campaign against a pro-democracy figure there.

The payments to conservative American opinion writers — whose work appeared in outlets from the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner to the Washington Times to National Review and RedState — emerged in a filing this week to the Department of Justice. The filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act outlines a campaign spanning May 2008 to April 2011 and led by Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, who received $389,724.70 under the contract and paid smaller sums to a series of conservative writers.

Trevino lost his column at the Guardian last year after allegations that his relationship with Malaysian business interests wasn’t being disclosed in columns dealing with Malaysia. Trevino told Politico in 2011 that “I was never on any ‘Malaysian entity’s payroll,’ and I resent your assumption that I was.”

According to Trevino’s belated federal filing, the interests paying Trevino were in fact the government of Malaysia, “its ruling party, or interests closely aligned with either.” The Malaysian government has been accused of multiple human rights abuses and restricting the press and personal freedoms. Anwar, the opposition leader, has faced prosecution for sodomy, a prosecution widely denounced in the West, which Trevino defended as more “nuanced” than American observers realized. The government for which Trevino worked also attacked Anwar for saying positive things about Israel; Trevino has argued that Anwar is not the pro-democracy figure he appears.

Covert Malaysian Campaign Touched A Wide Range Of American Media

Josh Fox Under Attack

On March 23, 2013 By southwerkIn Economic Justice

Josh Fox Under Attack

“They’re the Birthers of Fracking.” A Conversation with Josh Fox.

Earlier this week, a group of House Republicans were treated to a screening of FrackNation—a KickStarter’d documentary that aims to debunk the Oscar-nominated, fracking-skeptical Gasland. I reported a bit on the screening (which ended with free DVDs for attendees) and reviewed the movie, paying notice to how filmmaker Phelim McAleer appeared to frazzle Gasland director Josh Fox. Early in the film, McAleer shows up at a Q&A with Fox and asks him why his movie didn’t explain that methane has been in some water supplies for years, and that shocking video of water being lit on fire wasn’t as shocking as it looked. Fox asks for McAleer’s credentials and calls the question “irrelevent.” McAleer, duly inspired, makes a movie.

It’s a bit much, says Fox. “I gave the guy, not knowing who he was, a long, academic answer,” he explains. “I’d just gotten off the plane, and I just found out somebody robbed my house! I wasn’t thinking about it in a media context, and unfortunately there was nobody else in the room taping. So they pulled a kind of Shirley Sherrod thing where they completely misrepresented the Q&A session.”

Since making Gasland, Fox has become a sought-after speaker and activist for the anti-fracking movement. With that comes criticism, and with that occasional, judicious pushback against the allegation that the water-on-fire scene is misleading. “I’d been asked the same questions before, and answered them before,” says Fox. “I’ve been part of something like 250 debates around the U.S. and the world. At almost every one, some oil and gas shill says something like this. They’re the birthers of fracking. This argument about biogemic and thermogenic gas is one of the things that the oil and the gas industry brings up as a distraction. Both biogenic and thermogenic gas can be released by drilling, and the industry says so.”

“They’re the Birthers of Fracking.” A Conversation with Josh Fox.

FOCUS | The Birthers of Fracking

Radioactive Products

On March 22, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Radioactive Products

How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer – Taylor Orci – The Atlantic

Beginning in the 1910s, the girls instructed to put radium in their mouths didn’t bat an eyelash. They worked for the United States Radium Corporation painting the numbers and hands on watch faces and military instrument panels. Since the work required great detail, the women were told to “point” the small brush head with their lips, thus ingesting a small amount of radium every time. Each woman would repeat this hundreds of times a day. If there was any uneasiness with this process, the good money they got from the job alleviated it. The young women, many fresh out of high school, would playfully paint their nails and teeth with the luminous paint, known as UnDark. About ten years later, these “Radium Girls” would start to die.

How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer – Taylor Orci – The Atlantic

Big Banks Immune to Prosecution

On March 21, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Big Banks Immune to Prosecution

Mike Lux: Holder Confesses

I rarely agree with Chuck Grassley, but when he calls this “stunning,” he couldn’t be more right. This is the ultimate Big F’ing Deal: the nation’s top prosecutor openly admitting that some people and institutions are so big, wealthy, and powerful that it is the policy of the United States to hesitate to prosecute them no matter how terrible their crime. And it isn’t just American banks, either: HSBC, while operating here, is a foreign-based bank.

Look, that this is the policy of the U.S. Justice Department has been pretty obvious for quite a while. The unwillingness to prosecute the big banks in spite of some of the most egregious and obvious financial fraud in American history in the run-up to 2008’s financial collapse has become legendary. But the HSBC case, where thousands of emails over many years along with a great deal of other evidence proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bank was laundering money for some of the most murderous and evil drug cartels and terrorists on the face of earth, made it crystal clear that once your bank becomes a certain size, the DOJ considers you beyond prosecution. For anything. Too Big To Jail, to the hundredth power. And the penalty they did get? A fine worth approximately five weeks worth of profits — after raking in massive profit from these drug cartels and terrorist-linked groups for many years.

So, yes, it has been obvious that this is the unspoken policy of the DOJ. Now, in front of a Senate committee, fully on the record, it is the official stated policy of the American government that if your bank is big enough, and the judgment is that prosecuting you will have a negative impact on the economy, DOJ will be “inhibited” in, and will find it “difficult,” to prosecute you.

We have truly crossed the Rubicon here. This is a tragic moment in the history of our nation, that we are willing to say on the record to some of our richest and powerful people and institutions that no matter what you do, you will not be prosecuted. What kind of society have we become? How corrupt are we as a nation?

Mike Lux: Holder Confesses

Justice for Occupy Protesters

On March 20, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Justice for Occupy Protesters

Judge acquits Occupy Philadelphia protesters in bank sit-in – Philly.com

They were charged with “defiant trespass.”

But after a Common Pleas Court jury on Tuesday acquitted the 12 Occupy Philadelphia protesters arrested in a 2011 bank sit-in, the trial judge shook their hands and called them the “most affable group of defendants I’ve ever come across.”

“I think what this really shows is that when the people of Philadelphia make a decision, they want someone accountable,” said Aaron Troisi, a 26-year-old working toward a master’s degree in education at Temple University. “Accountability and justice is not what they experienced with banks like Wells Fargo.”

Troisi and 11 fellow Occupy demonstrators were acquitted of conspiracy and defiant trespass in the Nov. 18, 2011, sit-in inside a Wells Fargo Bank branch at 17th and Market Streets in Center City.

From further down in the article:

Last July, Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, agreed to pay $175 million to settle allegations by the U.S. Justice Department that independent brokers originating its loans charged higher fees and rates to minority borrowers than they did to white borrowers with similar credit risks.

The verdict left the Occupy protesters with a sense of vindication.

“If this jury has found us innocent, then it must mean that Wells Fargo is guilty,” said 71-year-old Willard R. Johnson, one of the 12 on trial.

“We have proof of the importance of free speech in a democracy, especially taking on corporate power,” said defense attorney Paul Hetznecker, one of seven lawyers who represented the protesters without charge. “It’s about speaking truth to power and it’s part of a long-standing tradition in this country.”

Judge acquits Occupy Philadelphia protesters in bank sit-in – Philly.com

Electronic Monitoring Not Just for Criminals

On March 19, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Electronic Monitoring Not Just for Criminals

Tesco accused of using electronic armbands to monitor its staff – Business News – Business – The Independent

Tesco workers are being made to wear electronic armbands that managers can use to grade how hard they are working.

A former staff member has claimed employees are given marks based on how efficiently they work in a bid to improve productivity and can be called in front of management if they take unscheduled toilet breaks.

The armbands are worn by warehouse staff and forklift drivers, who use them to scan the stock they collect from supermarket distribution points and send it out for delivery. Tesco said the armbands are used to improve efficiency and save its staff from having to carry around pens and paper to keep track of deliveries. But the device is also being used to keep an eye on employees’ work rates, the ex-staff member said.

The former employee said the device provided an order to collect from the warehouse and a set amount of time to complete it. If workers met that target, they were awarded a 100 per cent score, but that would rise to 200 per cent if they worked twice as quickly. The score would fall if they did not meet the target.

Tesco accused of using electronic armbands to monitor its staff – Business News – Business – The Independent

It is possible to have all the meaning of life drained from one by despair. There are other ways to drain meaning from human beings. Work can be a blessing giving one purpose. I particularly enjoy teaching. But what would my job be like if I was continuously monitored? I’d probably survive but it would take a great deal of fun out of it, making class discussion a minefield of danger, and stifling any original content.

But I have other work experience. I worked in a factory for almost five years doing the most mundane chores for hours on end. Electronic monitoring my every move and penalizing me for bathroom breaks would taken an unpleasant and tedious situation and made it hellish. I suspect four or five years of electronic monitoring might have damaged me or anyone else in that situation psychologically. Certainly, it would have left me with a continuing undercurrent of thought related to my every working motion.

Are workers humans or something a little less? It is frightening to think of this kind of technology in the hands of a totalitarian government or a multi-national corporation.

Do we really want this kind of life for anyone? Is there any idea what the long term effects would be? And if you can think of any long term effects, are there any good ones?

This kind of monitoring needs careful analysis and regulation may well be necessary.

James Pilant

From around the web,

From the web site, Virginia Business Law Blog:

Emerging issues. An increasingly prevalent area of surveillance that the courts seem to be upholding is the hiring of private investigators to conduct surveillance on employees that are suspected of taking leave dishonestly under the Family Medical Leave Act. While still a relatively new development, this is one in which the courts are, so far, siding with employers. With that said, however, this is a very delicate topic as it deals with surveilling employees when they are not at work. In most cases, there are heavy suspicions of the employee abusing their FMLA leave before any surveillance is conducted, and it is highly encouraged that employers seek legal counsel before considering this option.

From the web site, ITBusiness.ca:

One serious concern that employers must consider, however, is that of employee morale. For some employees, an Orwellian fear of “”Big Brother”” exists in the workplace. Although most employers and employees recognize that the very nature of the employer-employee relationship denotes some level of monitoring, it is difficult to reach agreement on the level that is appropriate. The issue that ultimately emerges is how to balance an employer’s right to manage the workplace against an employee’s right to privacy.

Those advocating employees’ privacy rights often speak to various studies concluding that employer monitoring can have a detrimental impact on employees. Some studies suggest that electronic monitoring is a significant contributor to both psychological and physical health complaints. Workplace privacy proponents argue that monitoring creates feelings of paranoia and increases workers’ stress levels. On this basis, it is argued that monitoring is counterproductive to the result that employers are attempting to achieve.

And from the web site, bixnik: (760 billion a year? How was that number generated?)

Do you have any idea how many hours your employees spend online checking eBay listings, cruising social networks, looking for vacation deals, Googling old flames or (even worse) ogling porn or gambling? A survey by America Online and Salary.com concluded that employers spend nearly $760 billion a year paying employees to goof off on the Web. And with the ever-increasing popularity of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, the urge to goof off instead of working increases daily.

It’s no secret that the days of worker privacy have long since passed. With the serious potential of harassment lawsuits and security breaches that involve the release of company private information, most companies large and small have implemented Internet monitoring spy ware.

A recent Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey report has revealed that companies are “increasingly putting teeth in technology policies.” Workers have been fired from 26% of the companies surveyed for misuse of the Internet, and 25% have terminated employees for misusing e-mail.

A Post Office Bank?

On March 18, 2013 By southwerkIn Business Ethics

A Post Office Bank?

How to save the USPS – Salon.com

How bad have things gotten for America’s national mail delivery system? The US Postal Service lost $1.3 billion last quarter, and this was regarded as good news. The venerable agency has been saddled with significant financial problems since a 2006 law forced it to pre-fund 75 years of employee retirement benefits, something no other public agency or private company has to do. This cash crunch (the Postal Service gets no money from the federal government and must survive on the revenues it generates) has led to austerity measures for the nation’s second-largest employer (right behind Wal-Mart). Mass layoffs last year were followed, earlier this month, by the announcement that Saturday deliveries of first-class mail will cease come August.

As many have noted, this is a largely manufactured crisis. Simply relaxing the pre-funding requirement—as the postmaster general beseeched Congress to do this week—would wipe out virtually all of the Postal Service’s deficit. (Absent this heavy payment, the agency would have made $100 million in the last quarter.) But given the reduced use of letters in an age of digital communication, it’s nonetheless true that the Postal Service is due for some changes to its business model. Democrats from Sen. Tom Carper to Rep. Elijah Cummings have laid out various ideas. But there’s one idea they haven’t suggested that would kill two birds with one stone: make money for the Postal Service and level the financial playing field for some of the most vulnerable Americans. Namely: We should allow the Postal Service to return to the practice of offering simple banking services.

According to the FDIC’s 2011 National Survey, over 10 million US households are “unbanked,” with no access to the financial system. Another 24 million households are “underbanked,” meaning they have a bank account but they also rely on providers of “alternative financial services”: remittance or money order shops, payday lenders, check-cashing operations, pawn shops, or associated services. Many of these services are among the most unscrupulous in American society, preying on people with few other options and charging usurious interest rates or carving out large fees. These roughly 68 million unbanked or underbanked Americans represent a huge market for non-bank financial predators.

How to save the USPS – Salon.com

Why is Congress strangling the postal service? The most likely reason is to give up the postal service’s function to private companies. The destruction of this public service will add riches to certain firms. I don’t think I need to name any names. You know the names of the companies as well as I do.

This kind of greed can drive you to despair. A public service with a history of success duplicated by other countries around the world is being dismantled to make a few Americans richer.

Privatizing successful public functions and then destroying or exploiting them to the fullest for maximum profit has become an American preoccupation. A vicious outgrowth of Friedman economics, it’s predator capitalism at its worst.

Can any of this be stopped? I don’t know if there is the public will particularly with the enormous money thrown into the equation by Citizens United.

Public minded human beings are hardly significant compared to that kind of money.

James Pilant

From around the web –

From the web site, Center for Financial Inclusion (Nigeria):

Opening a new bank branch is expensive. It requires a substantive up-front investment, and to stay open, the institution has to maintain an ample volume of business. This poses a challenge when trying to reach the financially excluded – many of whom live in relatively remote rural areas, and many of whom don’t have financial needs that draw a high volume of banking transactions. Mobile money is one way to mitigate this cost of bricks and mortar. But it is not the only way.

In pursuing financial inclusion, more and more countries are turning to the post office to offer on-the-spot financial services. Using this preexisting network, financial institutions are teaming up with postal services, outfitting the post offices so that they can conduct financial transactions, and training postal employees. Post office banking is only one variation of agent banking, which is increasingly practiced around the world, turning supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmaceutical retailers, and even lottery outlets into banking outlets.

From the web site, Your Postal Blog:

PostFinance, the banking arm of Swiss Post, may soon be spinning off from its parent company in the summer of 2013. However, independence from the Post won’t place it on the same playing field with other banks in the industry, as certain restrictions still apply.

When PostFinance begins life as its own separate entity, Swiss Post will still, technically, own it. The Post will own all shares of the financial institution when it ventures out on its own. This places ownership of the bank squarely in the hands of the Swiss government, as they own the Post Office.

As a state owned entity, PostFinance will continue to be subject to restrictions that prevent it from engaging in certain competitive activities that could take business away from existing banks. This limitation is welcome news to competing banks, but that insulation may not last indefinitely.

And from the web site, Dandelion Salad:

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow may have stopped the Pony Express, but the nation’s oldest and second largest employer is now under attack. Claiming the Postal Service is bankrupt, critics are pushing legislation that would defuse the postal crisis by breaking the backs of the postal workers’ unions and mandating widespread layoffs. But the “crisis” is an artificial one, created by Congress itself.

In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA), which forced the USPS to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees, many of whomhadn’t even been hired yet. Over a mere 10 year period, the USPS was required to prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years, something no other government or private corporation is required to do. As consumer advocate Ralph Nader observed, if PAEA had never been enacted, USPS would now be facing a $1.5 billion surplus.