When my son, Jake, was a little boy, we often watched movies and shows together and talked about the moral and ethical implications. We started very early. I remember when he was five asking him if it mattered if the jackals or the lions fed on the animals in “The Lion King.”
American Heroes.
A few days ago, I saw some clips from the mini-series (I believe it is an ITV production.) “Hornblower.” I am a big fan of C.S. Forester. When I was a teenager, I read all of the Hornblower stories. I have to admit as a very young person, their lessons of leadership and the importance of enduring injustice and unfairness were generally lost on me. That is one reason I think it is important to watch these programs with your children. The series is brilliant in its exposition of the moral choices confronting the young Hornblower and the choices that he made.
So, I asked Jake (now 31) what he got out of the series when we watched it so many years ago. Surprisingly he didn’t recall it that well. He told me that he felt that the most important ethical teachings he absorbed were from Star Trek. In particular, he talked about “The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine.” But then the conversation turned to the one program that we both found abundant lessons from: “Babylon Five.”
Jaks, specifically mentioned Londo Mallori’s descent into evil and eventual redemption in death as one lesson in morality that he had never forgotten. I have to agree that the show delivered up a healthy dose of moral lessons and the hard, cold difficulties inherent in doing what is right. I could write a dozen articles easily about its teachings.
And so, I have decided to encourage my kind readers to spend at least one night a week watching a program with moral implications with their children. And not just that, from time to time, I will talk about specific recommendations that I want to make and suggestions about what moral lessons can be drawn from specific programming.
Let us begin with my strong recommendations for “Star Trek, the Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine,” and “Babylon Five” as well as “Hornblower.”
Let me state firmly at the beginning of this essay, I don’t know if anyone can make any sense of AI.
If you journey across the Internet, there are a vast number of explanatory articles and a truly amazing variety of claims made about AI. You can find articles and quote for almost any point of view.
(The coming edifice of AI according to its propagandists.)
Let me tell you what we do know.
Number One, it destroys jobs. I have seen estimates of 85,000 jobs destroyed over the last year. A very fascinating question that comes from this: “Does AI adequately replace a human being in a job?” And let me tell you, I have real doubts. I see a lot of an attitude you might call, “Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead,” when it comes to AI. For many it seems that whether is works well is beside the point if we can just get rid of so many jobs.
Number Two, everything that AI has done so far can be described as mediocre or barely adequate. AI is building an Internet of useless garbage and while it does simple things well, claims of Ph.D. level intelligence have never been successfully demonstrated.
Number Three, “our” government is rushing this technology into nation wide use without any real understanding of what it is and what it does. It may well be that this government’s profound stupidity and lack of intelligent thought is leading to a technological revolution they simply don’t get.
Number Four, corporations see a golden opportunity to get rid of millions upon millions of workers and are so pleased with this concept, every sign of danger, economic damage and just whether or not the thing works are just being ignored. The lack of concern in the business community for the likely problems with this new untried technology is astonishing. It is just like the fabled lemmings running off a cliff.
Number Five, we are being force fed AI. It doesn’t matter whether you want it or not, you’re getting it. A massive conspiracy between government and business has resulted in a situation where you are completely unprotected from AI in anything you buy, rent or come near. I experienced this when Office 365 added AI to my subscription for thirty dollars added to my charges with no other option available, just take it or leave it.
Number Six, these three entities of government, business and the tech bros are expecting a massive and unprecedented increase in their power because of AI. (My emphasis, jp) It is truly frightening.
Number Seven, the profits from this AI revolution will be counted not in billions of dollars but in trillions upon trillions of dollars. The main reason this is all being so rushed is the naked greed for all this money. It is expected to be the most profitable technological change in history. This will have profound effects on all of our lives.
After I went through three News Networks I came up with twenty eight business ethics topics that merited my comment and analysis.
There are all current, happening now. There are not subjects on long term business ethics tragedies like global warming or the collapse of the moral order in the current administration or the cowardice of our major institutions and our ruling class.
For the love of a Merciful God, what has happened to this nation and the larger world?
When I started writing this blog almost twenty years ago, I could depend on two or three topics a day. This wasn’t a gradual collapse of national morality. It is tied directly to the 2016 election of Donald Trump and his unfortunate re-appearance in 2024. There was a massive acceleration in business ethics problems and it continues to accelerate.
Twenty-eight sounds like a lot of topic but you must understand I haven’t completed my usual gazette of news sources. I still have the financial news and the foreign press as well as some specialty publications on tech and science.
I can easily be looking at sixty to seventy-five topics after my usual examination of the news.
One of the parables in the New Testament is about the absence of the necessary workers to harvest the crops, a thinly veiled reference to spreading the word of God. It concludes with the exhortation to pray that the Lord sends more help.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Well, we need a hundred business ethics writers to cover this amount of material.
If the United States and its democracy end as so much evidence indicate is happening, it will not matter if there are any writers or any concern over business ethics.
We will just have a gangster government. Money and influence will eclipse any moral values. Those at the Heritage Foundation and the writers of Project 2025 will have attained their goals in creating a nation when a tiny minority of depraved self-interested ideologues make decisions for the rest of us.
If democracy survives, those of us who believe in the promise of the United States, the importance of actual Christ based Christianity and morality, will be more important than ever.
There will be much to repair, much to recover and many, many to be brought to the bar of justice and punished for their crimes.
Down in the article referenced below, Ms. West-Knights, said that as thoroughly as Prince Andrew’s scandals have been covered, a new book is like taking “a thousand daggers to a corpse.” It is a very eloquent and appropriate line.
But then she goes into some of what the books says. I have been following the sorry story of Prince Andrew, a man given every advantage who then tossed them all away for trysts with women and a desperate need for money he hasn’t in anyway earned. He could have been a symbol of nobility and kindness but that would have required him to think about someone beside himself and he is unable to do that.
What does the book say? In spite of my interest in the subject and the many articles I’ve read there was much to see. This book has many new revelations about this fellow’s pitiful behavior.
I can’t say enough about the Imogen West-Knights’ writing. It is delicious, biting and loaded with so many things I want to quote that choosing any particular paragraph or line is hard.
Imogen West-Knights writing for Slate discusses the new book called “Entitled.” The article she wrote is linked to below and called It’s Hard to Imagine a Book More Damning About the British Royal Family Than This.
Usually find a good quote from an article is very straightforward. I chose the most damning paragraph but this is article is well worth reading and you should read it in full. There is deadly acid in almost every line.
… Lownie (the book’s author) reportedly approached about 3,000 people for this book, of whom he says only a tenth replied, but that is enough. And what these people—drawn from Andrew’s love life, his professional life, his staff, and his sometime friends—have to say about him is damning beyond belief. Here follows just some of the claims Lownie makes about Andrew, all of which are backed up by testimony from people who know or knew the prince, but still just allegations, I suppose: He had a member of the royal staff moved from his job for wearing a nylon tie, and another because he had a mole on his face. He had 40 women brought to his hotel room in Thailand over a five-day visit. Aged 26, he had dozens of stuffed animals on his bed, one of which wore a vest that read “It’s tough being a prince.” He missed his daughter’s 12th birthday party to hang out with Epstein at his Miami beach house. He ran up a bill of £325,000 on helicopters and planes in 2005 alone. He let a Libyan gun smuggler pay for a holiday he took to Tunisia and accepted a present of a bugged MacBook Pro from an attractive woman who turned out to be a Russian spy; he later tried to get himself a free Fabergé egg on an official Kremlin tour. In his role as a special representative for the United Kingdom, he earned, in the diplomatic community, the nickname “His Buffoon Highness” by refusing to follow his briefs and perhaps even read them in the first place. Once, driving his £80,000 Range Rover to Royal Lodge in Great Windsor Park, he found that the gates’ sensor was broken, so, rather than taking a 1-mile detour, he rammed them open, causing thousands of pounds’ worth of damage.
Based on this single paragraph and the rest is equally damning, the book’s title, “Entitled,” seems at best a cruel understatement.
It has been written that those to whom much has been given, much is to be expected. Seldom has so many benefits and honors been given one man with so little return.
Environmental destruction is a world wide problem. Some nations are taking the problem seriously. I don’t live in one of those. I live in the United States where environmental rules and regulations are on the chopping block, victims of dark money, ruthless corporate officials and the right wing media machine.
But other nations have not given up the struggle and one of them is Sri Lanka.
I want you to know that fines as in this case are a good way of punishing miscreants who do severe harm. Money is useful in repairing environment damage and making victims whole.
But a message that resonates requires imprisonment and other directly personal penalties. It is one thing to require a corporation to pay a billion dollars but another to make the CEO pay money out of his own pocket, suffer travel restrictions and and an inability to do financial transactions or serve on corporate boards. Those kinds of penalties will get corporate officials’ attention. Corporations have a lot of money. What they don’t have are officials willing to suffer.
We can also destroy corporations who sin against the nation’s collective interest. The corporate death penalty where the corporation’s legal existence is ended and its assets sold as a penalty would also serve to get the attention of the wrong doers.
Corporations are creations of the state. Their charters can be revoked and they can be ended. It is a choice we should have. Corporate incompetence and villainy have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, billions upon billions of dollars in damages and massive destruction eco-systems. If we “killl” a few, they might do less harm. We might at least get the idea across that we take their destruction of the planet seriously.
We have a responsibility as patriots to protect our nation. That includes the land, the water and the air. It is a profoundly moral duty. For those of us who believe in Christianity, we also have a responsibility to act as stewards of God’s creation. That also calls us to action.
Let us go forth armed with righteousness and a willingness to confront and defeat evil.
James Pilant
(Probably the proper attitude for hauling a dangerous cargo and chemicals and microplastics.)
In an article written for The Cool Down, Alexis McDonell, writes in an article entitled:
Shipping giant hit with $1 billion fine after causing one of worst marine disasters in history: ‘Unprecedented devastation’
The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka found a shipping company liable for a billion.
In June 2021, the MV X-Press Pearl caught fire and sank off the coast of Colombo while carrying a cargo of chemicals.
The Supreme Court described the result as “unprecedented devastation to the marine environment of Sri Lanka,” citing the deaths of 417 turtles, 48 dolphins, eight whales, and countless fish that washed ashore. Debris from the ship, including several tons of plastic pellets used to manufacture bags, spread across beaches and into the ocean.
“This marine environmental disaster … resulted in the widespread release of toxic and hazardous substances into the marine environment, poisoning ocean waters, killing marine species, and destructing phytoplankton,” the judgment stated.
There is a big sell off in AI related stocks at the moment. But don’t worry. After reading several dozen articles in the business press once again asserting that AI is the future of, well, everything and more, the investors will be back.
So, far AI has produced a vast wasteland of crappy video’s on You Tube and countless poorly written novels, essays, short stories, editorials, love notes and much else. This doesn’t give you a lot of faith in the thing.
It has enabled talentless and vapid people everywhere the ability to write at a modicum level which is scary. But that isn’t the real scary part. The part that worries me is the sheer volume. A ten year old with an AI writing program can write tens of thousands of articles, the same is true in regard to fake images and much else.
And it is happening now. AI is producing countless short films, an infinity of pictures and articles without count. These all consuming devices are devouring the internet and all of social media as I write this (without I might add a shred of AI – I don’t use it – I won’t use it.).
It is my business, Business Ethics, that keeps me reading article after article about the coming “revolution.” Some of it sounds scaremongering. I hope that it is just hype but after watching the flood of material the thing is already producing, it is hard not to have some worries.
Even if AI operates at the level of a functional moron, businesses in the hope of replacing their human workers and making enormous profits are plugging it into all kinds of uses. It is the magic wand that will fix business problems and propel us into a sort of corporate nirvana, at least, according to the hype. I have serious doubts.
When it is late at night and I want something intelligent to listen to while I am drifting off to sleep and search the internet and find wall to wall AI content which is usually just exaggerations, lies and fantasies with a tiny amount of actual data, when I do that, I worry about our future and those that think our future is going to be based on this stuff.
(Trying to understand AI and failing.)
From Fortune Magazine below is a link to an article called – An MIT report that 95% of AI pilots fail spooked investors. But it’s the reason why those pilots failed that should make the C-suite anxious
Ok, now let’s look at what the report actually says. It interviewed 150 executives, surveyed 350 employees, and looked at 300 individual AI projects. It found that 95% of AI pilot projects failed to deliver any discernible financial savings or uplift in profits. These findings are not actually all that different from what a lot of previous surveys have found—and those surveys had no negative impact on the stock market. Consulting firm Capgemini found in 2023 that 88% of AI pilots failed to reach production. (S&P Global found earlier this year that 42% of generative AI pilots were abandoned—which is still not great).
…
But where it gets interesting is what the NANDA study said about the apparent reasons for these failures. The biggest problem, the report found, was not that the AI models weren’t capable enough (although execs tended to think that was the problem.) Instead, the researchers discovered a “learning gap”—people and organizations simply did not understand how to use the AI tools properly or how to design workflows that could capture the benefits of AI while minimizing downside risks. (My emphasis.)
A LEARNING GAP! These people are spending millions of dollars and incorporating AI technology into everything humanly and inhumanly imaginable and they don’t “understand how to use AI tools properly.” I don’t even want to discuss “workflows.” I am depressed enough.
Here, let’s discuss the sell off we are at the moment observing.
From Futurism an article entitled – Meta Freezes AI Hiring as Fear Spreads, linked to below.
The AI industry as a whole is facing a critical juncture, with mounting concerns contributing to a massive tech selloff roiling the stock market this week. Shares of AI tech stalwarts, including Nvidia and Palantir, have plummeted — raising concerns that the hype had driven their valuations too high for the shaky realities of their current tech.
What is the above paragraph saying? Well, unlike virtually any element or aspect of AI, the paragraph above is straightforward. It is very simple. Nobody know what this stuff is worth. You can say things like the future of all technology and all of American business will rely on Artificial Intelligence and you can say it over and over again but what does it mean in dollars and cents? If all American businesses will become dependent on AI, how much will it cost to implement, to operate on a regular basis and are there going to be any profits? Not to mention its effect on investment and return itself. Will it replace buying and selling by humans and if so will business, industry and investment all become one united AI operation like one of those science fiction movies,(The Forbin Project)?
And then there are the little side issues, like a massive unemployment across multiple fields that will leave the economy as empty and useless as an old paper sack or the other little issue of destroying all life on earth should there bit a little misstep in the application of the thing in one small industry or maybe even one small laboratory.
Now if none of this concerns you and you find me alarmist, try reading this little tid bit below!
Joe Wilkins writing for Futurism has an article: OpenAI Chairman Says AI Is Destroying His Sense of Who He Is.
Speaking on the podcast “Acquired” earlier this week, the chair of OpenAI’s board, Bret Taylor, expressed his anxiety that AI chatbots like ChatGPT are redefining his relationship to technology, destroying — or at least making unrecognizable — the world of programming in which he built his career.
So, you think I’m alarmist. I think Bret Taylor is more scared than I am and since he has more knowledge, I find that worrying.
(I seem to recall the minister from “Plan 9 from Outer Space” saying that we should all be concerned about the future because that is we will be spending our time.)
To sum up. This AI stuff is dangerous, has already had deleterious effects and nobody anywhere seems to really understand what it can do or what is going to happen.
A few days ago, there was an attack on the CDC by a gunman. Our current regime hardly bothered to take note but the CDC is home to scientists and highly professional experts in their fields. These are the dregs of humanity in the eyes of our oligarch managed masses of barely literate malcontents currently occupying the highest offices in Washington. And so, the shooting did not trouble our government.
But those who have spent their lives working to protect and improve the lives of all Americans resent being shot at by crazy people and disparaged by their current “leadership.” That is not surprising. What is also not surprising is that they are publicizing their discontent.
They have published a signed letter demanding change and one of the changes is for Kennedy to stop spreading misinformation.
That first paragraph quoted from the letter found below is a mountain of eloquence and it may find its way into the future history books once we escape the clutches of the current regime.
(A picture from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes showing Sherlock and a criminal.)
Below is a report from Time magazine entitled Hundreds of Public Health Workers Call on RFK Jr. to ‘Stop Spreading Inaccurate Health Information’ After CDC Shooting written by Chantelle Lee.
“The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization—and now, violence,” public health workers said in the letter, which was also addressed to members of Congress. “CDC is a public health leader in America’s defense against health threats at home and abroad. When a federal health agency is under attack, America’s health is under attack. When the federal workforce is not safe, America is not safe.”
The public health workers went on to accuse Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.” They cited several statements and actions that Kennedy has made in recent months, pointing to his claim that mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively” against upper respiratory infections such as COVID-19—despite years of research showing that the shots are both safe and effective—and his announcement that HHS would be winding down mRNA vaccine development. They also condemned his decision to remove all the experts from a critical vaccine advisory committee. And they said some of Kennedy’s past comments—such as claiming that there is a “cesspool of corruption at CDC”—were “sowing public mistrust” in the health agency.
Will Kennedy stop spreading lies and misinformation? Don’t be ridiculous! In this administration, lies and misinformation constitute the very core of their being. They are living evidence of an accumulation of half assed beliefs, ill formulated concepts and huge masses of things they would like to be true but aren’t. He isn’t going to change. He owes his office to craven subservience to the “great” leader.
What are the ethics here?
These aren’t hard calls. The health care workers who have labored long and with amazing success to protect all Americans are heroes.
Right now they are being lambasted for doing their jobs. Many, a great many, are right now being fired in the name of “efficiency.” This government’s idea of efficiency is the destruction of a government that works and not just that but an embrace of a radical anti-science, anti-rational, belief system more befitting a basement dwelling conspiracy theorist than a working 21st Century government. It is all such a damned shame.
What is happening is wrong to the very center of the bone. There is not rational defense for what the government is doing.
When will this end? When will good, competent people return to rule?
Well, we will see if we can ride these horrors out.
Hotels are charging customer a five hundred dollar fee if a smoking sensor determines that you have smoked in your room. But do smoking sensors actually work and work reliably? They might. Maybe? I must once again confess that when a juicy $500 fine can be gotten for a false positive — I can’t help but feel there are going to be lots and lots of false positives. It gets taken directly off the credit card. Five hundred free bucks and you didn’t even have to use a gun.
The article says you should use Google reviews and see if they have a lot of customer complaints for smoking fines and then don’t stay there if you see them.
I have a better idea. How about our wimpy, unenergetic, corporate owned news media do investigations, find out if these sensors work, and expose hotels who steal from their customers?
That is what is supposed to happen? Why isn’t it happening? Could it be all the advertisements bought by hotels? Could it be the sympathy from another capitalist operation, you know, a sort of honor among thieves code??
I suppose for many of the powers that be and our pitifully corrupt ruling class, stealing an extra five hundred from a customer is just another yawn. Just another common man or women giving up some more money to their betters. They’d have probably bought beer or high sugar food — or any of those other justifications the wealthy have for sneering at the rest of us.
I don’t think so. Taking people’s money under false pretences is wrong. And no amount of babble about the reliability of the technology when it isn’t proven is going to make it right.
It’s a crime. It’s theft and it should be investigated and prosecuted.
If they have evidence these sensors actually work, why don’t they show it? And exactly what costs do they bear to justify this fee?
If you don’t mind me saying so — It all smells.
Please read the article linked to below. It is written by Caleb Harmon-Marshall. He is apparently quite the up and coming young author.
Imagine checking out of your hotel room, confident that everything went smoothly, only to find a $500 non-smoking fee charged to your credit card. No warning, no evidence, and no actual smoking. That’s the reality for dozens of travelers staying at hotels using air quality monitoring systems from a company called Rest.
Welcome to the latest hospitality tech trend that’s costing travelers hundreds of dollars, and it could happen to you.
In addition, here is a very fine article from Consumer Rescue about the immense difficulties involved in getting a smoking charge reversed. It is by Michelle Couch-Friedman.
Getting a surprise hotel smoking fee reversed isn’t easy — even if you’re a non-smoker like Kelsey Russell. Or a determined consumer advocate. But it can be done. Here’s how.
Kelsey’s case is yet another story that illustrates a disturbing trend that seems to be developing in the franchise hotel industry. Increasingly, we’re receiving complaints from guests who say these branded properties have hit them with an array of surprising post-stay charges — no proof included. But, as you’ll see in this case, even when the hotel provides “evidence,” it might just lead to more questions than answers.
This turned out to be a lengthy piece and a very good story. You should read it. And I have to admit it gave me a very good first impression of “Consumer Rescue.”
Beware of strange charges after spending the night at a hotel or other such venue.
Bugs Bunny is a cartoon version of an idealized American. He embodies many American virtues. He is not greedy and content with having just enough. Many simple pleasures make him happy. He loves a good meal, meeting new people, travel and a good joke. He is courageous and does not tolerate abuse or injustice. He is the very soul of patriotism, (He is an honorary United States Marine!)
(This is a 1912 picture from a book of stories. Alas, there is no picture of Bugs that is not under copyright protection.)
I used some of his cartoons in my classes to illustrate several different economic concepts. Like most Americans he does not aspire to be rich, he aspires to have “enough.” In the cartoons, his concept of “enough” boils down to a comfortable rabbit hole, food to eat, (many cartoons show him as visiting stores or cultivating food). He is often seen in bed reading what we assume is a good book.
The plot of the story in the cartoons revolves around Bugs’ response to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Various hunters, crooks, con men, grifters, mad scientists, monsters and the occasional vampire show up to steal from him, harm him or just kill him. Bugs defeats his opponents by determination, humor and inventiveness, qualities that Americans with considerable justification believe they have in abundance.
Using him as an economic example generally involved his less meritorious sometimes friend and often enemy, Daffy Duck.
The Economics of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck
In one cartoon I used “Ali Baba Bunny” (1957), Bugs and Daffy find the fabled treasure of Ali Baba, a huge and sprawling treasure similar to a dragon horde, which is promptly claimed in total with no justification whatever by Daffy – with the following line:
While Bugs is content with what he has, Daffy is the “other” American, the grasping “get rich quick” fool who never stops looking for some easy way to make piles of money. If that wasn’t bad enough he is perennially incompetent and constantly goes into situations over his head.
Of course, whenever you encounter treasure there must be a guard. Bugs saves Daffy from certain death at the hands of “Hassan,” although repeatedly the cowardly duck tries to betray him. Daffy’s greed keeps getting him into danger and eventually Bugs leaves him to his dire fate.
Daffy at one point bundles every last coin up for his own use while Bugs simply continues on his journey taking nothing, content with what he has and unwilling to take what isn’t his.
It’s a good lesson and I usually add examples of treasure hunters spending their lives in the fruitless search for immense wealth. You know pirate treasure, the lost Dutchman mine, gold prospecting and the list goes on.
In another cartoon showcasing his immense greed, Daffy captures the Tasmanian Devil. In the 1957 short feature, Ducking the Devil, Daffy a loudly self-proclaimed coward discovers that there is a 5,000 dollar reward for returned the escaped Tasmanian Devil to the zoo.
Daffy after many misadventures lures the creature back into its cage and collects the money. While he is walking away, a single dollar bill is caught by a breeze and carried into the monster’s cage, where upon an outraged Daffy charges in, beats the creature to a pulp and recovers his dollar. (My Chinese exchange students really enjoyed this cartoon.)
I use cartoons, short movie clips, jokes, etc. to lead into discussion of the more intricate points of law, of capitalism, the American Experience — you know – Teaching.
Why use cartoons and all the myriad things I find to interest my students?
It was my transcript.
As you might imagine I am quite capable as a student (317 college hours later). So, I have a large transcript and I happened to be looking at it and I realized there were many classes I had no memory of. I could not picture the instructor, remember the textbook and to my ultimate despair, none of the coeds I flirted with. It made me sad.
And so I decided to teach in an unforgettable manner. I took whatever subject was in hand (I’ve taught 23 different courses and I am qualified to teach quite a few subjects I never got around to teaching.) and divided it into a set of critical lessons. My Business Law course, one of them, boiled down to thirteen critical lessons.
Okay, very good, I knew what to teach. How to get it across? Not hard. Stories! At first I told stories from the law. Stories I’d learned in law school and from my wide reading. Then I added jokes and then I read large story collections and picked out a chosen few. Then I began my use of classic movies and I added discussions of literature, history, sociology and the struggles of Americans toward greater freedom, minorities and women. Every day I combed the Internet, magazines and sometimes just stuff I observed always looking for that hook that would catch their interest.
Years after being in one of my courses, students will remind me of a story I told, or a movie they watched or a class discussion they never forgot.
I think I did okay. I miss teaching.
But I will maintain against all opposition that Bugs Bunny has his place in Business Law and Business Ethics.
The good guys, the guys in the white hats, our modern Hop-Along Cassidy’s, do not win many victories these days what with the scoundrels running the government but sometimes the good guys win one. And today is one of those days.
Here is the headline, the link and a quote.
Conservative network Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over bogus 2020 election claims
The conservative network Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of defaming a voting equipment company by spreading lies about President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, according to documents filed Monday.
The settlement comes after Fox News Channel paid $787.5 million to settle a similar lawsuit in 2023 and Newsmax paid what court papers describe as $40 million to settle a libel lawsuit from a different voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which also was a target of pro-Trump conspiracy theories on the network.
If you have a genuine enjoyment of humor, go down further in the article and read how Newsmax claims that they did nothing wrong. “We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism.” I can’t help but think that paying sixty-seven million dollars certainly gives one the impression that someone did some wrong-doing.
Will the Right Wingers ever accept the 2020 elections as legitimate after an unbroken stream of court losses of which this one is just the latest? Not a chance. Their self identity demands victimhood and not just victimhood but giant international conspiracies to justify their foul language and overwrought histrionic emotions.
It is a real pity that the court results have a limited effect in this strange world of politics we live in.
But still a good win, a great victory.
You can make a strong argument that those who had to pay out all this money are being punished although Newsmax claims otherwise. I would bet you real money they are more judicious in their language in the future.
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