Pilant's Business Ethics

What’s a Little Corn Syrup Between Friends?

southwerk — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:26:01 +0000

When I developed high blood pressure, I had to start eating healthy. It was a shock to find out how much it cost to eat healthy. The food in the supermarket was laden with high fructose corn syrup or salt. Once I had eliminated food that wasn’t good for me, there were a lot fewer choices and with a few exceptions (frozen vegetables), they cost more. One of the most important things I did was to drop soda pop from my diet. That helped a lot with my weight.

It seems to me that the way food is made and marketed in the United States is inimical to having a healthy diet. That a few large companies control food distribution in the nation does not surprise me.

There is something bizarre in the fact that costs more to eat healthy than badly.

James Pilant

Willie Nelson: Why We Must Occupy Our Food Supply

What does this matter for those of us who eat? Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, the destruction of soil fertility, the pollution of our water, and health epidemics including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even certain forms of cancer. More and more, the choices that determine the food on our shelves are made by corporations concerned less with protecting our health, our environment, or our jobs than with profit margins and executive bonuses.

This consolidation also fuels the influence of concentrated economic power in politics: Last year alone, the biggest food companies spent tens of millions lobbying on Capitol Hill with more than $37 million used in the fight against junk food marketing guidelines for kids.

Willie Nelson: Why We Must Occupy Our Food Supply

High Fructose Corn Syrup & Obesity

King Corn

I’m feeling corny. Memoirs from a corn fed woman (thedeadrevolutionist.wordpress.com)
Beware of Fructose (menopausemaniac.com)
The Dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup (seedtosalad.wordpress.com)
Kids at Risk for Cardiovascular Disease from High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCF) Consumption (ecochildsplay.com)
Bill Gates Rebranding GMOs as “High-Tech Agriculture” (mountainrepublic.net)
What is high fructose corn syrup? (greenanswers.com)

Rick Santorum Journeys to a Fortified Refuge of the 1%

southwerk — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:52:18 +0000

The wealthy have their own schools and their own police, and so on and so on. It’s kinda’ like living in a South American country where the wealthy elites never have to see or interact with the smelly peons. Oh wait a minute, it’s exactly like that. It’s just that the peons are still laboring under the illusion that they are viewed as something besides overweight, lazy, unworthy burdens. It must be nice in there. By the way, to attend Santorum little event, you had to pay $2,500 a head.

Some people are more equal than others.

James Pilant

Santorum woos the wealthy in exclusive North Texas enclave | McClatchy

Santorum, who is competing with Mitt Romney for front-runner status in the GOP race, spoke to a group of supporters during a private fundraiser in the gated community of Vaquero, one of the most high-end neighborhoods in the country.

(From later in the article)

Police cars were parked near the security-patrolled Westlake enclave as a steady stream of vehicles entered the neighborhood, home to residents such as conservative political commentator Glenn Beck, Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton, BNSF Railway CEO Matthew Rose and pro golfer Ben Crane. Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira, formerly a Ranger, owns a home there that he is leasing out to New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton.

Santorum woos the wealthy in exclusive North Texas enclave | McClatchy

See how the top .001% live

Rick Santorum: The GOP’s Unelectable Soul Mate (mykeystrokes.com)
What Women Don’t Know About Rick Santorum Helps Him (themoderatevoice.com)

Another White House Sell Out on the Big Banks

southwerk — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:25:10 +0000

Shouldn’t bankers be held to the same laws the rest of Americans have to obey? This is a no-brainer except in the Washington beltway where banks are considered the basis of the Republic rather than the modern equivalent of train robbing Western desperados. I don’t understand. Why is no one being prosecuted? I once lied to a judge. I didn’t know it was a lie until later. When I found out, I called him up (I was working for the state and dealt with the judge regularly) and explained and apologized. He reminded me that I could have gone to jail for that. I told I was well aware of it. And yet here, banks who lied to the judge, to the courts of the United States, are simply walking away. Unlike me, they knew they weren’t telling truth and unlike me, they were making enormous sums of money by lying, and they are not apologizing. Do you see anywhere in the agreement that they have to say, “I’m sorry.” I don’t see it.

There is a dual system of justice in this country, one for me and you, and one for the 1%. It’s very sad. We have been told that we live in a nation of laws, not of men. But the fact is we live in a nation of men, where one class is better than another in the eyes of the law.

James Pilant

Robo-Signing Bank Settlement is a Criminal Sell Out | Better Markets

“Let me help a few victims I created by ripping them off and illegally throwing them out of their homes by false court filings that I swore were true.” That’s what the so-called mortgage settlement talks are really all about: fraud, perjury and crimes. That’s what these banks did and that’s what they are trying to buy their way out of.

The settlement discussions are the same: eliminate all or almost all liability for the bank and, most importantly, all bank officers and employees in exchange for a loan forgiveness or modification program. Think about this: the banks engaged in a years-long pattern and practice of what can only be described as fraudulent if not criminal conduct that would put anyone else in prison for years if not decades, yet banks get to buy off the cops with some money to help the victims they created.

Robo-Signing Bank Settlement is a Criminal Sell Out | Better Markets

Mortgage Settlement Is Great – For Big Banks

A Banking Strategy That No One Likes. (isellerfinance.wordpress.com)
Robert Kuttner: Showdown for the Banks, Showtime for Obama (huffingtonpost.com)
States Get Settlements Over Forclosures (myfoxphoenix.com)
Foreclosure settlement: The latest ‘back-door bailout’ for the banks? (hsh.com)
Bruce Judson: Why Inequality Matters: The Housing Crisis, Our Justice System & Capitalism (huffingtonpost.com)
Too Big To Jail (dinmerican.wordpress.com)
The “Robo-Signed” Foreclosure Fraud Settlement (news.firedoglake.com)

Banker Really Sticks it to the 99%!

southwerk — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:14:23 +0000

I’ve read from time to time about the sense of entitlement of the 1%. They feel they deserve their money. Now, they often make it with public money speculating against the interests of their fellow citizens, but they would argue that if we would get off our lazy butts, we too could manipulate Congress and parley our influence into millions of dollars. I think I will continue to work my two jobs and not use the government to become rich. I think that makes me stupid by the standards of Wall Street and the “very serious” people who deal out the loathsome pap we get for news and commentary.

Well, here is entitlement, hard core nastiness delivered with the joy of a gangbanger stabbing you for two bucks in a back alley.

James Pilant

BY THE WAY: The banker is unable to use percentages correctly! Apparently the skill set for banking doesn’t include mathematics.

Banker Leaves 1% Tip On $133 Lunch Bill In Defiance of ‘The 99%’ [UPDATED]

Courtesy of futureexbanker.wordpress

A banker left a 1% tip in defiance of ‘the 99%’ at a Newport Beach restaurant the other week, according to his dining companion and underling who snapped a photo of the receipt and posted it to his blog, Future Ex Banker. (Update: the blog is now offline.)

Banker Leaves 1% Tip On $133 Lunch Bill In Defiance of ‘The 99%’ [UPDATED]

Rich Banker Tips 1%, Tells Server To ‘Get A Real Job’ (businessinsider.com)
Get a Real Job (incaunipocrit.wordpress.com)
Bruce Springsteen: Does This Bus Stop At Banker’s Hill? (blogs.wsj.com)
Bankers, businessmen told to step up security (thehindu.com)
The 99 Percent of Greece Are Getting Screwed by the European Bankers Again (johnhively.wordpress.com)

Should We Go Back to the Good Ole Days with Women’s Health?

southwerk — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:43:08 +0000

It is so obvious to me that women should have access to birth control that I find it hard to take the opponents seriously. I agree with Martha Plimpton that the opposition to it is based on the bizarre idea that women do not know how to manage their lives and therefore need to be regulated. Women’s freedom is just as important as men’s. When it comes to rights, all humans are important.

James Pilant

Martha Plimpton: Stop undermining women’s health with personhood amendments and ultrasound laws

But we don’t live in caves anymore. And it has long been known that where women have the ability to control their own reproductive lives, standards of living rise, children are healthier, education levels rise, and women’s contributions to society increase. This is true in developing countries around the world, and in countries across Europe where low rates of teen pregnancy and infant mortality put ours to shame. When you keep women from exercising their right to physical self-determination, the actual consequences reveal themselves. It’s long past time we started focusing on the solutions that actually keep women healthy, instead of using basic aspects of women’s health as a tool of cultural, moral, and political control.

Martha Plimpton: Stop undermining women’s health with personhood amendments and ultrasound laws

In addition, here is Susan Fluke and the testimony she would have offered to Congress had the Chairman of the Committee allowed it.

Sandra Fluke Speaks: The Republican War on Womens Health

GOP’s War on Women’s Health (crooksandliars.com)
Women Fight Back: House Dems To Hold Own Hearing With Woman Issa Excluded; Virginia Gov. McDonnell Ducking? (news.firedoglake.com)
Buchanan To Republicans: You’re Overeaching On Birth Control (thinkprogress.org)
Nancy Pelosi offers to ‘explain biology’ as Republicans deny birth control is a women’s health issue (dailykos.com)
Female Democrats tout female witness at alternative contraception hearing (thehill.com)
Rush to the Middle Ages – The Attack on Women’s Health Rights (blueingreene.org)

Is Your Cat Dangerous to Your Health?

southwerk — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:11:11 +0000

How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy – Magazine – The Atlantic

It’s almost impossible to hear about Flegr’s research without wondering whether you’re infected—especially if, like me, you’re a cat owner, favor very rare meat, and identify even a little bit with your Toxo sex stereotype. So before coming to Prague, I’d gotten tested for the parasite, but I didn’t yet know the results. It seemed a good time to see what his intuition would tell me. “Can you guess from observing someone whether they have the parasite—myself, for example?,” I ask.

“No,” he says, “the parasite’s effects on personality are very subtle.” If, as a woman, you were introverted before being infected, he says, the parasite won’t turn you into a raving extrovert. It might just make you a little less introverted. “I’m very typical of Toxoplasma males,” he continues. “But I don’t know whether my personality traits have anything to do with the infection. It’s impossible to say for any one individual. You usually need about 50 people who are infected and 50 who are not, in order to see a statistically significant difference. The vast majority of people will have no idea they’re infected.”

How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy – Magazine – The Atlantic#.TzRDnzPwopE.facebook#.TzRDnzPwopE.facebook#.TzRDnzPwopE.facebook

As a cat owner, I found the article listed above as disturbing. However, the title sounded a little like an “Obama was born in Kenya” article, so I wasn’t too worried. Unfortunately I read the article. The science was good, very good. I was hoping for small samples, unreplicatible studies and maybe a few unguarded statements about cat hatred. There weren’t any of those present.

So read the article. I do hope you note that it is highly likely that it is too late to get rid of you cat, you are already infected. So, please don’t hurt any animals.

James Pilant

Cat Feces Might Be Changing Your Brains Activity (inquisitr.com)
Your Cat And Its Parasites May Actually Be Making You Crazy (blisstree.com)
It seems that the Crazy Cat Lady may have a medical explanation (inquisitr.com)
A Parasite Found In Cats Could Be Manipulating Our Brains (businessinsider.com)
Is it true that God made Dogs, and that Satan made Cats? (warmsouthernbreeze.wordpress.com)
Feline fears, confirmed (chicagoreader.com)

Is Stepping on Teachers Becoming a National Pastime?

southwerk — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:51:01 +0000

Arizona Bill Would Restrict Teachers’ Speech – Proposed legislation would punish those who violate FCC standards

Arizona doesn’t want its teachers cussing in class—and new proposed legislation would actually make it illegal to do so. GOP state lawmakers are behind Senate Bill 1467, which would require public school teachers to adhere to the FCC’s TV and radio standards. That means certain limits on obscene, indecent, or profane language, the Arizona Republic reports. One teacher notes that the bill applies to teachers’ language not just in the classroom, but even if they are with a colleague.

Arizona Bill Would Restrict Teachers’ Speech – Proposed legislation would punish those who violate FCC standards

About one hundred years ago there were three groups of professionals, the opinion makers, in small towns all over the United States. They were lawyers, doctors and teachers. Doctors and lawyers have retained their status. Teachers are barely one step above a sixteen year old with a MacJob. How did this come about?

There are a lot of reasons. I suspect the increasing demonization of teachers as the destroyers of educational excellence is a key factor. The strange idea that motivated teachers can overcome massive income inequality to produce high test scores in all populations. The teachers’ inability to produce this utopia of educational success results in constant attacks and ridicule. It takes its toll after a while. Further, teachers are divided in their political loyalties making their backing in a political campaign of questionable value. I estimate teachers’ union endorsement to be worth no more than sixty percent of their votes. Teacher fragmentation has been devastating to their political influence for decades. I remember listening in class to my teachers attacking unions and evolution. I grew up in Oklahoma. Defying teacher unions and refusing to even ask for an endorsement became standard politics long ago.

I don’t get it. Teachers by education and position ought to be opinion leaders but have apparently given up the job to do some version of independent politics on an every man for himself basis. Benjamin Franklin once told his fellow revolutionaries, “We must all hang together or else we shall hang separately.” The teacher unions are dying fragmented and ineffective.

Unless this fragmentation ends, there is only one end to the story, the minimum wage.

James Pilant

Teachers’ union backs air-freshener colleague (cbc.ca)
Union accepts district assurance that teachers can return to Miramonte (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
Trust Teachers (horsesass.org)
Union: CPS Layoffs Unfairly Affected African-American Teachers (chicago.cbslocal.com)
Hawaii Teacher’s Union May Vote to Strike (beyondhonolulu.com)
Rockford teachers union rejects contract offer (mysanantonio.com)
Wisconsin teachers union endorses Falk (mysanantonio.com)
National Council on Teacher Quality: K-12 teacher tenure being weakened or eliminated in more U.S. states (educblog.wordpress.com)

Bill Moyers Fights the Good Fight

southwerk — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:07:01 +0000

Here is a selection of the words of Bill Moyers. The first is from Salon and is in print today, February 14th, Valentine’s day. The next three are closing remarks from episodes of Bill Moyers’ Journal. You might say that this is a valentine to Bill. May he live a hundred years and continue to inspire us every day of that time.

James Pilant

America’s billionaire-run democracy – 2012 Elections – Salon.com

We are drowning here, with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges detonated by the owners and manipulators of capital. Their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. Nothing can stop them. Not the law, which has been written to accommodate them. Not scrutiny — they have no shame. Not a decent respect for the welfare of others — the people without means, their safety net shredded, left helpless before events beyond their control.

The obstacles facing the millennial generation didn’t just happen. Take an economy skewed to the top, low wages and missing jobs, predatory interest rates on college loans: these are politically engineered consequences of government of, by and for the 1 percent. So, too, is our tax code the product of money and politics, influence and favoritism, lobbyists and the laws they draft for rented politicians to enact.

America’s billionaire-run democracy – 2012 Elections – Salon.com

Plutocracy and Democracy Do Not Mix

Bill Moyers on Greed

Bill Moyers on the American Dream

Bill Moyers: Why I am Returning to the Air (VIDEO) (alwaysquestionauthority.wordpress.com)
Bill Moyers Says That Saul Alinsky was a Good American (johnhively.wordpress.com)
Tumultuous Times for Democracy Compelled Moyers’ Return to TV | Common Dreams (tribuneofthepeople.wordpress.com)
Elana Estrin: Bill Moyers Speaks at LBJ Library (huffingtonpost.com)
Bill Moyers Visits HuffPost, Talks Inner Life And Purpose (huffingtonpost.com)
Bill Moyers, Divid Stockman On Crony Captialism(elmsprogressivemedia.wordpress.com)
Bill Moyers

A Song For Occupy Wall Street

southwerk — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:13:53 +0000

Nathan Shaffer – Come Back America – YouTube

(Something I found on You Tube – You can buy the music and other works by the artist online.)

Sometimes the music has a message.

UConn Students Try To Silence Occupy Wall Street Song (huffingtonpost.com)
2011: A Big Year for Social Media (socialpeel.com)
Wall Street Journal Credibility Vaporized – Via MF Global – YouTube (guerrillasurvival.net)
Makana: Did the “Occupy” Musician Trick Obama and APEC Leaders? [VIDEO] (ibtimes.com)
Russell Simmons with Mark Weber at Occupy Wall Street (markinthecity.com)
Does Occupy have an anthem? It might now (news.blogs.cnn.com)
Occupy Wall Street with art (hangwithbigpictureframing.com)

Ethics Bob has some Choice Words about Mitt Romney

southwerk — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:41:03 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Mitt Romney: Liar, liar, pants on fire. Said he didn’t care about poor people, now brushes it off as “I misspoke” « Ethics Bob

(Here’s a representative paragraph. jp)

But appearing so heartless can be costly to a Presidential candidate. So Romney tried to lie his way out of it, saying he misspoke. But he didn’t misspeak. Misspeaking is when I call my granddaughter by her sister’s name. Misspeaking is when John McCain tells a Romney gathering that he’s confident that President Obama will cure the nation’s ills. Misspeaking is not saying something, then when challenged explaining what you said. He didn’t misspeak.

Mitt Romney: Liar, liar, pants on fire. Said he didn’t care about poor people, now brushes it off as “I misspoke” « Ethics Bob

Ethics Bob is holding Romney to the standard of truth.

I also found Romney’s original statement much more credible than his later correction. The conviction that he worked hard and others have not making them unworthy is part of his make up. Otherwise his overwhelming sense of entitlement would make no sense to him.

I do not believe that the struggles and the pain of American workers and the middle class have any relevance to him. His devotion is only to the comically titled, “job creators.”

James Pilant

In defense of Mitt Romney on abortion: He’s not a flip-flopper … he’s a liar. (dailykos.com)
Rachel Maddow Mocks Mitt Romney’s ‘Very Poor’ Backtracking (VIDEO) (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
Soledad O’Brien Challenges Mitt Romney Claim That He ‘Misspoke’ About The Poor (mediaite.com)
WATCH: Maddow’s Brutal Take On Romney’s Mistakes (huffingtonpost.com)
Romney To Hannity: ‘I Misspoke’ About Not Being Concerned About The Very Poor (mediaite.com)
Mitt Romney turns off even more independent voters(dailykos.com)
Ethics Bob

Pilant's Business Ethics

What’s a Little Corn Syrup Between Friends?

High Fructose Corn Syrup & Obesity

King Corn

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A Song For Occupy Wall Street

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