Tag: James Pilant

The Freedom to Experience Whooping Cough!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Government Failure

I had whooping cough at six weeks old. I burst my belly I was coughing so hard. If you run your hand down the center of my abdomen you can still feel the place. I am an old man now and in those far off years there were no vaccine for that disease. I also got to experience measles, chicken pox, and mumps. The measles infection was very serious and they put me in a bedroom by myself and a doctor came and checked on me. I didn’t quite die. But I remember how it felt. I remember rolling back and forth in the bed trying to make the pain go away.

Florida’s Surgeon General is doing away with vaccine requirements.

He says requiring vaccines is a form of slavery.

So, my suffering and near death were celebrations of freedom? If I had been freed at birth from the dangerous diseases which diminished my life and didn’t quite kill me, I would have been in some larger sense “free?”

What about the millions upon millions of Americans who died from these diseases before vaccines were developed? Were they free? I don’t understand, is there some freedom resting beneath a tombstone that I am so devoid of understanding that I just don’t get it?

What would I say to the Florida Surgeon General given the opportunity? I would say “Do you know what I want to be free of, Mr. Ladapo?”

“Vaccine requirements don’t bother me, not only did I get all of mine, I made sure my son got his too. No, what bothers me is the explosion of charlatans and fools thinking they know better. And not just thinking they know better but demanding other people yield to their crackpot ideas. What I want is to be free of crazy people trying to run my life. ”

It would be nice to be free of the loonies spouting their nonsense. And comparing vaccine mandates to slavery is so repulsive and disgusting that I don’t feel I could do my anger on the subject justice in less that two or three thousand words. Suffice to say, slavery as practiced in the American South was vile beyond belief and a crime so terrible that we as a nation have not and are unlikely to ever finish paying for it

Below is a link to the story I quote from and a brief passage.

(Just another crank lost deep in his own foolishness.)

Aysha Bagchi writing for USA Today has the following story: Florida surgeon general says he doesn’t need to study impact of ending vaccine mandate.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said he doesn’t need to study the potential impact of ending vaccine mandates for children before his state becomes the first to do so in 45 years.

“We do have outbreaks in Florida, just like every state, and we manage those,” Ladapo told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sept. 7. “So there are no new, special, you know, special procedures that need to be made.”

The Florida Surgeon General confesses he didn’t bother to study the effects of his decision.

What are the business ethics here?

Any decision made about Americans’ health should be taken with great consideration for the facts. To not even bother to collect the relevant facts is a complete and total dereliction of duty and a failure to conduct oneself in accordance with simple human intelligence.

I don’t see any need for further analysis.

It is painful to live in such times where these kinds of decisions are being made based on lunacy and stupidity.

James Alan Pilant

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

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

Shot Dead for Making Money

On By southwerkIn International

https://www.moretoherstory.com/stories/he-couldnt-take-it-anymore-father-shoots-daughter-dead-for-outearning-him

(Quoted directly from the article above.) “[Her father] had been upset for a while as he was being taunted by locals over his daughter’s income,” the Station House Officer Inspector Vinod Kumar told The Indian Express. “He was troubled by their remarks; they would keep saying the house is running on her money, and he is too dependent on that. He had asked [Radhika] several times to stop working at the academy, but she refused. He couldn’t take it anymore.” (End quote.)

That men and women should be able to work and earn money is not a difficult statement to find support for. But male resentment and stupidity are very common. And so we have murder because a father could not deal with his daughter’s success.

A tragedy of masculine standards and judgment. Internationally and domestically, men proclaim their power over women not out of strength or compassion but from envy and hatred as well as a constant desire for power and control

James Alan Pilant

Lies and Many More Lies

On By southwerkIn corruption

Business ethics are based on a bedrock of facts and reason, as true as we can make it perception of reality. But the leader of the current regime issues a constant stream of lies and misinformation and this is a constant danger to a common understanding of what is factual and what is not.

Let’s start with this story from The Daily Beast.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fbi-reveals-trump-crime-wave-164848654.html

(Quoted directly from the article linked to above) New FBI data contradicts President Donald Trump’s often-repeated claim that crime is surging in the U.S. and Democrats are to blame. Violent crime went down 4.5 percent in 2024, while property crime dropped 8.1 percent, according to the freshly released report. The trend was apparent across the board—every single one of the FBI’s reporting violent crime categories showed a significant drop: murder (-14.9 percent), rape (-5.2 percent), robbery (-8.9 percent), and aggravated assault (-3 percent). (End of quote.)

It is a fact that crime has been dropping in the United States for last forty years from its statistical high in the 1960’s. That fact and the data behind it does not exist in the President’s mind or the Right Wing media machine. Cities and blue states are portrayed as sinkholes of moral depravity while red states are bastions of tranquility. And factually?? I live in Oklahoma which is ranked 21st in intentional murder while New York is ranked 35th. It is more dangerous at night on the streets of Oklahoma than it is in New York.

But the lies benefit the President and his twisted view of the United States as battered hell hole he has come to save.

How about this story from The Maddow Blog?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maddow-blog-u-economy-cools-150520471.html

(Quoted directly from the article linked to above)The question I haven’t heard him answer is why, exactly, he came to this conclusion. This went largely unasked because the answer was so obvious: Trump had some baseless assumptions about what the numbers should’ve been, based on what he perceives as the greatness of his economic agenda. And since job growth continues to fall far short, common sense (or at least a Trumpified version of common sense) led him to conclude that officials in his own Labor Department must be conspiring against him. Indeed, over the weekend, as part of the larger gaslighting campaign, the president insisted online that he’s responsible for “creating the greatest economy, where prices and Inflation have come way down,” despite the economy being demonstrably and quantifiably worse than when he took office, and neither prices nor inflation have “come way down.” (End of Quote.)

The economy is doing badly based on objective information, that is, the truth. However, the President believes and states the contrary based purely on how he feels the numbers should be and his historical reliance on his narrative of himself as a genius afflicted by constant conspiracies.

Now can anyone, anywhere explain to me how he is going to make intelligent and effective decisions on the American economy when he simply does not have a grasp of economic information? And what’s more he just makes stuff up. In Business, making up your own “facts” is not a formula for success. And it never will be.

How about this from Huffpost:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/cnn-data-chief-shuts-down-071445353.html

(Quoted from article.) Trump — in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” host Joe Kernen — urged viewers to watch “Harry Emden” on CNN, declaring that the data analyst “went crazy over how well” he was doing.

The president claimed his approval rating was at 71% and, among Republicans, bragged that the figure is around 94 to 95%.

It’s unclear where Trump was getting such figures, which seemingly don’t mirror reality and were swiftly fact-checked by Kernen on CNBC.

Enten quickly dismissed the president’s remarks on his numbers.

“You know, I give him a fair shake. I don’t give him a positive spin,” Enten told CNN’s John Berman. (End of quote.)

Here are the real numbers of approval and disapproval, in case you want to compare.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-approval-rating-right-now-heres-what-latest-presidential-poll-numbers-show/ar-AA1K6Ogm?ocid=BingNewsSerp

(direct quote) RealClear Polling which encompasses the average of different 14 different pollsters, including all those mentioned above, shows Trump’s overall favorability today at 45.9% that approve and 51.4% that disapprove. These numbers are nearing his lowest rating this term, when it reached a 52.4% disapproval rating and 45.1% favorable approval rating in late April. (End of quote.)

How does someone get such numbers where are publicized widely and constantly so wrong. I think his mind filters out facts and knowledge so that thoughts and opinions can give him good feelings about his performance and his image. One of the worst things about this is that he might learn and improve if he had to deal with reality but since he is unable to cope with facts, he is sentenced to his life of mediocrity.

Let me close this brief look into the President’s lies with a comment from Maggie Haberman possibly the greatest expert on our current “leader.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maggie-haberman-flags-1-way-071911535.html

(Quoted from the article above.) New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman argued Tuesday that Donald Trump has somehow “convinced himself,” without evidence, that the July jobs report was manipulated for political reasons. (End of quote.)

This is truly terrible. It is not just that he lies. Is is that he believes the lies.

What kind of leader lies in such huge quantities of lies that it has been described as a fire hose of lies and then believes his own nonsense.

I’ll let you wrestle with the consequences although I may observe that facts and reality have an thoroughly dangerous habit of manifesting themselves over time.

James Alan Pilant

It is Here.

On By southwerkIn business ethics

We live in a profoundly unethical time under a profoundly unethical federal government which is in the process of becoming a totalitarian regime.

We are much of the way there and Rachel Maddow is telling us in the article listed below that a key part of the structure of that regime is already in place.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/rachel-maddow-warns-americans-1-134807335.html

(Directly quoted from the article above.) She then put it even more bluntly: “We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country.” While the MSNBC host went on to acknowledge that this might sound “melodramatic,” Maddow noted the U.S. now seems to have its own “secret police,” which is commonplace across dictatorships, in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under Trump. “A massive, anonymous, unbadged — literally masked — totally unaccountable internal police force that apparently has infinite funding but no identifiable leadership,” said Maddow. “And they act in ways designed to instill maximum fear and use maximum force.” (End of quote.)

I agree with her on this point. And we should all be concerned.

But why am I, a writer on business ethics, taking up this subject. Isn’t it just politics?

I wish it were but as the regime spirals into more and more open criminality, it is having a dramatic effect on the economy. When I say criminality, I am talking about thinly discussed bribes and charges for access and many other illegal acts.

It may be soon that speaking as I am may carry civil or criminal penalties and I have noticed that many moral people have gone silent as they see the political apparatus being constructed. No doubt they consider silence better than risk but honor is more important than life itself and it is vital to live as human beings standing tall than to crawl like a worm before a hideously deformed government.

Business ethics relies on reason, logic and evidence. These are all becoming scarce commodities under the trash talk of our current regime.

So, I write about our political downfall and current crisis.

It is only right that I do so.

James Alan Pilant

The Legendary Oceangate

On By southwerkIn business ethics

In the annals of Business Ethics, Oceangate is likely to be part of the curriculum for next one hundred years.

The disastrous implosion of a carbon fiber submersible has all the elements of melodrama as well as a long, long list of issues found in business ethics.

We can start with Hubris, an epic and fatal grandiosity seldom equaled and generally when equaled only in fiction. Then we have lies, exaggerations and misleading claims. Then we have untested materials, unproven procedures and an almost comical lack of money to do things right.

And a truly epic number of documentaries not to mention public hearings where the testimony was often fascinating, challenging and sometimes hard to believe.

In the last few days, the Coast Guard released its final report. I link to a news article on that subject below.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/coast-guard-releases-final-report-121424630.html

(Quoted directly from the article above.) Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate, was among those killed in the June 2023 implosion. Had he survived, the Coast Guard’s investigative team would have recommended manslaughter charges to the DOJ, the report said.

“This marine casualty and the loss of five lives was preventable,” Jason Neubauer, Titan MBI chair, said in a statement about the report’s release. “The two-year investigation has identified multiple contributing factors that led to this tragedy, providing valuable lessons learned to prevent a future occurrence. There is a need for stronger oversight and clear options for operators who are exploring new concepts outside of the existing regulatory framework.” (End of Quote.)

Indeed, manslaughter charges would have been appropriate. That he fooled others was not forgivable, that he fooled himself, merely ironic.

James Alan Pilant

The President and the Nobel Prize

On By southwerkIn business ethics

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maddow-blog-white-house-lobbying-164641914.html

(From the Link above) Donald Trump’s desperate and yearslong desire for a Nobel prize is well documented. In fact, after his defeat in 2020, the Republican president released a weird, campaign-style video that suggested he’d already received a Nobel prize. But as pitiful as this has become, Trump isn’t lobbying by himself. Congressional Republicans have tried to please the president by nominating Trump for a Nobel prize, and foreign leaders eager to curry favor with the American leader have done the same thing.(End of quote.)

That the current leader of the United States is often delusional is readily apparent. He also craves praise and validation. His North Korean style cabinet meetings where his lickspittles thank him for his leadership and praise him to the skies are unprecedented in American history.

And he loves prizes and awards. His “amazing” string of club victories at his golf clubs are legendary. There is whole book about his golfing and what it says about him:

I have ordered a copy of the book for myself and it might be wise for you to do the same thing.

Returning to the subject of the Nobel Prize, I find it hard to believe that he would ever get one. If he did get one, how much value would any future Noble Prize have? Its value would be little more than a stuffed animal won at a carnival if that.

Newsweek Magazine commissioned a piece on Nobel Prize winners’ thoughts on the President’s chances. It’s a good piece of reporting. The hardest hitting and most acid drenched comments were those of William Nordhaus who won a Noble prize in 2018 in Economics. I have quoted him below.

https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winners-react-trump-economics-2107563

(Quoted directly from the link above.)“The way I understand Trump’s ‘successes’ is this: The United States has over the decades built up an enormous reservoir of soft and hard power as well as good will around most of the world—a vast amount of social capital,” said Nordhaus, who won the award in 2018 “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis.”

“Trump has drawn upon that social capital and is using it like a spendthrift teenager to achieve virtually nothing of value and to destroy many critical parts of the global institutional infrastructure,” Nordhaus said.(End of quote.)

There is some useful business ethics observations can be made here. Certainly competing for a prize for the best workplace, most effective innovation and many other things have led to positive good. But this is just another attempted reinforcement for a personality that craves attention and can never be filled. He is empty inside now and he will be empty inside no matter what awards and prizes he gets.

That’s just the way it is and his desperate need for it is more than a little unsettling.

James Alan Pilant

The United Airlines Edition

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics19 Comments

The United Airlines Edition

United Airlines has acted outside the norms of business ethics. They have done so in a manner the requires the guilty be punished.

Let me list some links so you can get a grasp of the actions of what calls itself an airline:

United Airlines passenger forcibly removed from overbooked flight

Passenger dragged off overbooked United flight

Man Violently Dragged Off Plane After United Airlines Overbooks Flight

Or my favorite –

Video shows man forcibly removed from United flight from Chicago to Louisville

I’ve thought about this since I first saw the headlines and I gone from rage to lamenting the sorry spectacle of human stupidity.

The Fire Everyone Edition

Here we have what purports to be a business overbooking flights and using the way the contract is worded to get rid of the unwanted passengers. You notice I don’t call them customers. It’s obvious that the “airline” doesn’t consider them to be that big a deal. Maybe the words, victims, suppliants or some other word the implies a human being considered as nothing more than temporary way to turn some coin might be found to fit.

I suppose the company might have been within its contractual rights to drag everyone off the plane using whatever force it considered reasonable. Maybe the passengers are lucky that didn’t occur to the leadership at United. It’s possible the the company would have considered the unhappy publicity a small price to pay for compliant and obedient passengers in the future. I don’t know.

What I do know is this – somebody has to be fired. In fact, a lot of people need to be fired. This sorry spectacle shows what happens to people when corporations can use the law to enforce their whims. The company took a simple civil dispute and converted into a tragedy. It appears they dragged a doctor off a plane and injured him for not giving up his seat and attempting to assert his rights under the law of this nation.

What we see here is raw power on display.

Did they intend to explain to us who really matters and who doesn’t? It doesn’t matter. The lesson is clear. If you fly United, be obedient and servile or they can drag you from your seat and throw you off the plane like garbage.

Fire everyone. That’s one it is going to take for the lesson to take hold. And what lesson it that, you might ask.

We’re Americans, a proud people and we don’t have to obedient to any company’s whims, and they shouldn’t be able to harm us for standing up for our rights.

I think that’s important. Don’t you?

James Pilant