Should Americans Have a Say in What They Want?

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

You would think that in a democracy what a majority of the people want would matter. You’d think. But very often it seems that the distance between what Americans wish for and want to happen and what our government does is wider than the Grand Canyon.

Can I give you an example? Quite a few but let us do just one. Do Americans want subsidies for solar energy?

Let us look at the link below!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/survey-reveals-americans-overwhelming-opinions-120500351.html

(Quote from the article above.) An Instagram Reel by EnergySage — a platform that helps homeowners save up to $10,000 on rooftop solar panels — shared the stunning results of a recent study.

“Nearly 90% of Americans are in favor of government programs to help homeowners go solar,” the video says. “That includes 78% of 2020 voters for President Donald Trump.”

The clip also cites a survey from 2019, in which 92% of respondents said America should expand solar power. The lack of partisan split was equally encouraging: 86% of Republicans and 96% of Democrats backed the idea. The clip finishes with a map of the United States, highlighting the states that installed the most solar power in 2023, the year the Inflation Reduction Act went into full effect. Seven of the 10 backed the Republican candidate in 2024. (End quote.)

Those number would seem to suggest with great certainty that the American people want solar energy to be subsidized and it implies that they believe the future is going to be one of sustainable energy. So, how are their views reflected in the actions of their “democratically” elected government.

The federal government abolished a major tax credit for solar energy. See the link below.

https://www.energysage.com/news/congress-passes-bill-ending-residential-solar-tax-credit/

President Trump signed the “Big Beautiful Bill” into law on Independence Day, cutting the 30% residential solar tax credit by December 31, 2025—nearly a decade ahead of schedule. 

But that wasn’t the only thing cut. The current administration used its power to destroy a solar energy program of quite a large size in Ohio. Note the link below.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/the-war-on-sunshine-how-federal-cuts-just-stripped-ohio-of-156-million-for-solar-energy/ar-AA1KjTP8?ocid=BingNewsSerp

The abrupt termination of a $7 billion federal solar energy program has dealt a serious blow to Ohio’s renewable energy plans, with the Today in Ohio crew ruing the state’s loss of $156 million that would have powered thousands of homes with solar arrays.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to end the “Solar for All” grant program – created by the Biden administration – has eliminated cash that would have provided solar power to over 900,000 homes nationwide. For Ohio, the impact is severe.

But don’t the American people want solar energy? What’s happening here? What happened to the a government “of the people, for the people?”

It was purchased.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/big-oil-donations-trump

According to the report, Big Oil’s total known spending in the last election cycle amounted to “an astounding $445 million.”

“Importantly, however, the oil and gas industry also routes undisclosed funds through dark money groups that do not have to reveal their donors, making it nearly impossible to understand the full scope of their impact,” the report notes.

So, not so much a government of the people as a government purchased and operated for the benefit of giants corporations like the associated group know as “Big Oil.”

That explains a lot.

It explains why the President and his crawling minions in the House and Senate are entirely comfortable with defying the will of the people.

In terms of business ethics, it is a catastrophe. Morally wrong, it not only subverts democracy, it has the government enacting laws that results in policies that make money for contributors but in the long term are disastrous for the nation and the larger planet as well.

And it is a symbol to every student in the United States who sees that human beings educated in the finest institutions and elected by the American people sell themselves, their honor and their votes for money.


James Alan Pilant

I’ve Been Writing this Blog Since 2006

On By southwerkIn corruption

(An 17th Century version of me? Perhaps, but in any case a public domain picture from a book of the 19th Century.)

This blog, Pilant’s Business Ethics, will soon be twenty years old, and I have hardly published in it for some years now.

Why is that? Well, I had retired from teaching and had many other projects going. I actually worked hard on a number of novels. And writing about business ethics day after day continually exposes you to the undersides of human endeavor. In other words, it was a depressing subject.

So, why would I, much older now and very much retired, return to a blog once very popular and now seldom seen? Especially at at time when I just want to be left alone with my books and my studies. I was expecting to gradually fade away, an old college professor who had done his duty and earned his rest. But I am coming back to write and to fight — why?

Because I’m enraged. I’m angry. I’m disgusted.

Every single day I look at the news and find myself in an America I don’t recognize governed by mediocrities, criminals and the very dregs of the world of the internet conspiracy mongers.

I can’t stand to sit by idly and watch while morality and goodness are endlessly ridiculed by the President and his crawling lickspittles.

Business ethics is everywhere in the world a joke, a subject to be despised. Everyone knows in America, from the smallest child to the most morally challenged CEO that the way to make money is to cut deals with the government after finding some convenient way to grease the skids by contributing to a new ballroom, the desecration of the Rose Garden, or buying worthless crypto currency.

The idea that human beings act the part of citizens and patriots is melting away like snow on a hot summer’s day. And I firmly believe in patriotism and in what it means to be an American, And my vision of what it means to be an American doesn’t include criminal activity or a craven obedience to the current administration.

Well, I’m not going to sit and take it. I am returning to blogging, enraged and fully of fiery condemnation for the incompetent, the crooks, the grifters and above all, the confident neo-fascists who intend the destruction of American democracy.

I’m back.

James Alan Pilant

Hardcore Culture or the Absence of Western Values??

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

Hardcore Culture, a shift away from company loyalty to a “market based” culture. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Market based: Yeah, based on market forces, that’s okay, right? Or is it?

John Stankey has been making people “return to the office.”

(Quoted directly from the article linked to below.) The increasingly strict return-to-office mandate that AT&T has rolled out in phases over the past year has also resulted in further reductions, multiple employees have told Business Insider, and Stankey signaled in his memo that he’s fine with more people leaving if they’re not on board with the company’s new direction. (End quote.)

The information that we have, that is, the facts, say that working from home and other such flexible work ideas have led to greater employee satisfaction and productivity. So, why would you make people return to the office. It’s pretty clear, isn’t it. It is a return to the dictator style boss, the kick them in the teeth style boss epitomized by the yuppies in the 1980’s.

Apparently the investors are eating this stuff up. They love reduced work forces, corporate mandates and divesting the company from previous endeavors. And none of it has to make any sense, they are like toddlers strapped in a car seat, they enjoy the motion of the vehicle and that is enough. Thinking logically, critically or even trying to protect their money is hard while reacting positively to the supposedly alpha male characteristics of hard charging decisions, commands rather than cooperation, lots and lots of forced resignations and an emphasis on the perceived toughness of the CEO, well, that’s easy.

If you get the impression I don’t think much of the investment community, you would be right. But there is something far more alarming here but first let me quote my article about our star of a CEO.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/t-ceo-john-stankeys-hard-202422959.html

(Quoted from article above.) As the company moves to sunset most of its copper network in the US by the end of 2029, Stankey has also instituted a broad cultural shift internally. He’s moved away from prioritizing 20th-century corporate values like loyalty and tenure in favor of a tech-style, “more market-based culture,” the AT&T CEO wrote in a sweeping memo last week that was first reported by Business Insider. (End quote.)

So, here’s my concern. Where are Western Values in all of this? A giant corporation like this one is also a political and cultural entity. In this article, there is an almost complete absence of any issue or topic related to Western Values save capitalism and market economics, and then only in its cruelest and simplest form.

What are Western Values? They fall into six categories: (From Wikipedia with my thanks!)

Does AT&T have any stance on obeying the law or participating in democracy or pledging to pay its taxes like a good citizen?

Why is a bald statement celebrating naked power and greed a positive for investors? And at the same time, the absence of any commitment to a better society, a greater nation or an improved civilization, and this absence does not trouble the investors at all. In face, I think they regard the evasion of human and moral values as a positive.

I think every corporation in the United States has a duty to the law and to its fellow citizens. I think we should all be invested with the responsibility of creating and maintaining a civil society and a program for human and cultural development because that is what a great people do and we should above all things strive to be a great people.

James Alan Pilant

Do Psychopaths Flock to Leadership Positions in Business??

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

(A public domain picture from a 19th Century book of fairy tales or in the present case an example of a psychopath.)

The answer may be surprising to you. Unfortunately old cynic that I am and having researched the subject in the past, I was not surprised.

Yes, psychopaths are attracted to leadership positions in business and are in those positions in large numbers in the United States. (My emphasis)

I was delighted to find the article below on the Internet and dismayed at what it reported and the implications of it reporting.

https://empatyzer.com/is-psychopathy-an-asset-in-business-facts-and-myths-about-ruthless-leaders/

(Quoted directly from the article above.) The statistics are surprising. While psychopathy affects about 1% of the general population, the numbers are significantly higher in the business world. According to research cited in “Philonomist,” psychopathy affects 4% to 20% of employees, with a particular concentration in leadership positions. Simon Croom, a professor and researcher at the University of San Diego, claims that about 12% of senior corporate leaders exhibit psychopathic traits, meaning “psychopathy is up to 12 times more common among executives than in the general population.” Recent studies suggest an even higher percentage: about 20% of CEOs may exhibit psychopathic traits. This overrepresentation is not accidental – psychopaths are attracted to power, and some of their personality traits can actually aid in advancing through the corporate hierarchy.

Twenty percent of CEO’s is a very high proportion of working CEO’s with a serious personality disorder. What are the implications? I have had the misfortune to encounter psychopaths in my work in criminal justice. As you might imagine they were wrongdoers, remorseless liars and miscreants without a shred of human feeling. It was best to lock them up and remove them from the larger population. And while we have this choice when their behavior results in criminality, what choices do we have when their behavior produces corporate success?

Not many. We live in a CEO worshiping culture where it is assumed that CEO’s are geniuses and swashbuckling entrepreneurs. I do find any of this to be true and my opinion of American CEO’s is barely printable or speakable in polite company. But in a culture where CEO’s are given free rein to commit economic havoc (and they do), the psychopathic CEO and all others are well protected from interference or any form of justice. I could point to hundreds of examples but Boeing’s decisions resulting in the crashes of two aircraft with more than three hundred dead resulted in no criminal charges.

You might say a psychopath functioning as a CEO has found his natural environment much like a lion on the plains of the Serengeti.

America’s wars have been a study of mine for some years. In the military it often said that you learn a great deal about a nation by the people who serve, their willingness to act bravely and on behalf of others. I can’t help but believe that our willingness as a nation to use psychopaths to run important organizations says a lot about us as a nation.

A sort of a post religious world sort of decision would be one conclusion. An utter emphasis on success measured in dollar amounts would be another.

It would seem that for much of our leadership in the United States, any consideration of religion, patriotism, or any other human quality like empathy or kindness is simply irrelevant. The only thing that matters is narrowly defined set of personal economic goals, you know, so much money, so many houses, the trophy spouse and the political influence. It creates and maintains a cruel and rapacious word where spouses age and must be replaced, neighborhoods go out of style so you have to move and friends and allies are little more than simple pawns to be discarded when convenient.

And of course, the planet itself is to squeezed like an orange for every last bit of use without any regard for sustainability or our posterity. In the world of the psychopath, things and people exist only for use.

From my point of view entrusting societal resources to the mentally ill is a bad idea. But apparently for many of our “leadership” class, they are too useful to give up.

I will return to the topic of psychopaths in business in later posts. The subject fascinates me and should concern you.

James Alan Pilant

The article above that was linked to and quoted from is entitled:

Is Psychopathy an Asset in Business? Facts and Myths About Ruthless Leaders

And I found it on a web site called:

https://empatyzer.com/

I am grateful for the article, its intelligence and hard hitting conclusions. For those who wrote it, “May blessings fall upon you from Heaven!”

Ninety Laptops!

On By southwerkIn crime

Christina Chapman became a front, that is, a “facilitator,” for a North Korean Operation in the United States. She found jobs for thousands of workers. The companies hiring thought they were hiring American citizens, instead they were hiring North Koreans. The money these workers earned was used for such things as the North Korean nuclear program.

Thousands of identities were stolen to make this fraudulent and illegal practice work. Chapman knew she was committing crimes but the money was very good.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/03/ninety-laptops-millions-of-dollars-us-woman-jailed-for-role-in-north-korea-remote-work-scam

(Quoted from the article linked to above.) To run the schemes, the North Koreans need facilitators in the United States, because the companies “aren’t going to willingly send laptops to North Korea or even China”, said Adam Meyers, head of counter-adversary operations for CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm. “They find somebody that is also looking for a gig-economy job, and they say, ‘Hey, we are happy to get you $200 per laptop that you manage,’” said Meyers, whose team has published reports on the North Korean operation. Chapman grew up in an abusive home and drifted “between low-paying jobs and unstable housing”, according to documents submitted by her attorneys. In 2020, she was also taking care of her mother, who had been diagnosed with renal cancer.About six months after the LinkedIn message, Chapman started running what law enforcement officials describe as “laptop farms”. (End Quote.)

She ran the scheme for about three years and it generated roughly seventeen million dollars for the North Koreans. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments. She was sentenced to more than eight years in prison and to pay fines.

Of course, the money the North Koreans made was one thing but the value of the information they got as employees of major American companies will never be known.

This was a betrayal, and COVID and hard times are not much of an excuse for committing massive fraud on behalf of a foreign nation.

What’s the business ethics analysis here? This is a set of crimes and the perpetrator was well aware that she was committing federal crimes. Breaking the law particularly in cooperation with a foreign power is an obvious ethics failure. No deeper reasoning is merited here. This was wrong and there is no defense merely a relative handful of mitigating circumstances.

J. Pilant

Should Police be Doing Mental Health Calls?

On By southwerkIn Government Failure

(One of Dante’s visions of Hell.)

No. It is a bad idea and has always been a bad idea.

Police are trained to respond to crimes and have resort to various means of restraint and violence. People with mental health problems are seldom criminals and often have no intent to cause a disruption but they lack the ability to discern the effects of their actions.

Police departments are ill equipped to handle mental health emergencies. These aren’t crimes. These are social problems we no longer treat in facilities because state legislatures got rid of the facilities in the half-baked loony idea that serious mental health problems could be handled on an outpatient basis. This was a massive failure and now the mentally ill wander our streets, are often homeless and provided continuous challenges for states, cities and counties. We’ve known this for years. When you are dealing with the mentally ill, untrained responses can result in death and injury.

This is wrong. The mentally ill should be dealt with by people trained and educated to do so.

Here is New York Mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, suggesting that police no longer bear the burden of mental health calls.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/zohran-mamdani-tells-audience-nypd-020500302.html

(Quoted from the article linked to above.) Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani — who has faced heat lately over years-old social media posts critical of the police — came face-to-face with an audience of NYPD officers Tuesday night and told them he would, if elected, spare them the responsibility of responding to most mental health calls.

“We must stop asking them to respond to nearly every single failure of the social safety net,” Mamdani said at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza as a contingent of cops from the nearby 78th Precinct flanked him for an annual “National Night Out” event. “We must stop making it impossible for them to do their jobs by asking them to do every other job we can think of.” (End quote.)

He’s right and I’ve written about this before. Police should not be doing this. If we are going to throw these people onto the streets we should create an organization with facilities to deal with the problems they make.

What is the ethics here?

How about the idea that when a heavily armed (militarized) police force is asked to deal with mental health calls without training or preparation that people are going to die?

Is that a moral problem? You bet.

Let’s build a better nation by dealing with mental health problems like these intelligently and capably.

James Alan Pilant

Listen to the Victims of Epstein’s Abuse

On By southwerkIn corruption

(The picture is in the public domain and does seem to have some satirical impact at this time!)

The victims of Jeffrey Epstein should have their time now.

Jeffrey Epstein had powerful friends who protected him again and again. Only after many years was he tried and sentenced to prison.

And now the question remains, should we publicize the names of those who received favors from him, namely young women and rides on his plane.

Historically I must tell you the names in these types of scandals never seem to get disclosed. I have read of cases of famous womens’ diaries, bordello madams customer lists and many other such scandals. The names never make it out.

Many years ago, one of my instructors was an old law officer in the State of Oklahoma. He told me lots of stories. Before election days, they’d raid the brothels to appease the Baptist voters. He laughed about finding all kinds of city and state officials in those raids — but their names didn’t get disclosed either.

But time has passed and perhaps things are changing. We as a nation have been talking about victim’s rights for quite some time with very variable results. (I have been more than a little disappointed.)

It is only just and honorable that we pay attention to the women abused in this case. The fact that powerful men and women participated in their abuse makes their memories, their testimony, all the more important.

And it is not happening. We get the occasional minor story but when are we going to get a major network interviewing fifteen survivors in a group and putting those interviews on television. Maybe I’m an amateur when it comes to broadcasting but isn’t that what television news was designed to do?

Where’s the print media? Are those who victimized these women so powerful that fear and cowardice grips the entertainment industry, the news networks and the great mass of journalists?

I have to wonder.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/epstein-victims-growing-political-threat-040042411.html

(Quoted directly from the article linked to above.)The women whom Jeffrey Epstein abused demand to be heard.

And their voices — long suppressed, but now emerging powerfully and with courage — could further fuel the maelstrom around President Donald Trump and aides who dig the scandal deeper each time they try to end it.

These are women who’ve been let down for years, at multiple levels, by a government that was supposed to keep them safe. Their families are victims, too, since abuse sows trauma through generations. (End quote.)

The main fact before us is simple, very simple. We may not have the lists of those who participated in the abuse but we can always just ask the women abused.

Why don’t we do it?

James Alan Pilant

Scott Bakula May Return In New Star Trek Series

On By southwerkIn Editorial

I watched all four seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise. I very much enjoyed it. And as a writer in business ethics, I could not fail to observe the intensely moral approach the show took to major idea like Fascism and tolerance for other races. It showed a society moving away from a capitalist outlook to a standard of individual achievement, a planet where wars were no long fought between the different nations where technology had brought all humans to a high standard of living.

A very optimistic show, you might say, a show that embodied the very American concept of progress, tolerance and justice continuing on the march, a concept very much in doubt as this time.

Should Bakula return, I have no doubt the new series will make me proud as an advocate of ethics and morality. And should it return I will do a moral analysis on episodes that draw my interest.

By http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Enterprise_(NX-01), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15537017 (Borrowed from my friends at Wikipedia with my thanks!)

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/20-years-star-trek-enterprise-220304144.html

(Quoted directly from the article listed above.) The premise for this potential show originates from the Enterprise episode “A Mirror Darkly Part II,” where the evil Mirror Universe read information about his Prime Universe counterpart found in the database of the USS Defiant, a Prime Universe ship previously seen the Original Series episode “The Tholian Web” that had been sent back in time. There was a graphic showing that Archer entered the political life after retiring as an admiral in Starfleet and eventually achieved his presidential position in the Federation, which founded six years after the main events of Enterprise, as seen in the controversial series finale. Well, it turns out it was Michael Sussman himself who came up with this piece of trivia. (End Quote.)

I hope Scott Bakula returns and that the new show is a big hit. We need more like it.

James Alan Pilant

The Economic Blackout, August 9th

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

I’m participating. I will not buy anything today as requested by the organizers!

https://www.newsweek.com/nationwide-boycott-economic-blackout-august-9-2109560

(Quoted from the article linked to above.) Multiple boycotts of major corporations have taken place this year, many of which have been led by Schwarz and The People’s Union USA. These have been driven by backlash against certain companies amending or scaling back their commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, but also a wider groundswell of anti-corporate sentiment.(End quote.)

It is vital that we show the government and corporate leadership that individuals matter and our anger and dis-satisfaction are manifesting more and more over time.

Let’s show them that consumers matter.

James Alan Pilant

Who Exactly is a “Patriot Donor?”

On By southwerkIn corruption

Picture above By David Maiolo – Own work, CC BY-SA (Borrowed from my friends at Wikipedia with profound thanks!)

We are engulfed in a tsunami of White House lies and misinformation. Not only that but the White House itself, an American institution is being remade apparently in imitation of the President’s resort in Florida. Language is important. Let us discuss where and how the term, patriot donor, appears.

Take a look at this news article from the online magazine, Salon.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-sending-dark-signal-white-103011111.html

(Quoted from the article linked to above.)That was the premise of a White House announcement last week claiming that the president “and other patriot donors” would be financing the full, approximately $200 million cost of a gaudy, gold-tinged pseudo-classical addition to his current residence in Washington, DC. With renderings that look an awful lot like a wing at Mar-a-Lago, the so-called White House Ballroom would be a 90,000-square-foot party venue located where the “small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits,” suggesting that historical preservation is not top of mind. (End quote.)

Patriot donor? Just what is patriotic about giving the President money so he can create a Mar-A-Lagos on the Potomac in place or in addition to the current White House? It seems more like an opportunity to curry favor or gain favorable access to the current administration to me. Am I too cynical or is any level of cynicism up to the rapacious greed of our current “leadership?”

Patriotism in my definition does not involve coughing up enormous sums of money for the President’s pet project, the desecration of the American White House.

Patriotism is doing your duty as am American citizen, something being redefined here in a crude and dollar tinged way.

It is unethical to claim that patriotism motivates a donation to the current administration. It is unethical to use the White House in many ways, the peoples’ house, as an excuse once again to flatter and ingratiate money givers into a system of influence peddling.

And finally, it is wrong to cheapen the word, patriotism, which is so important when discussing the real virtues of America, shared sacrifice, moral values and a history of progress.

James Alan Pilant