United States Attacks Financial Fraud Two Years Late

Justice must be seen to be done. A society in which the wealthy or well connected get different justice than others is a society in real trouble.

When someone murders someone, you start looking immediately. When you have a theft you go and start asking questions. But if you are American financial institutions, you get a two year head start.

The Obama administration has decided to launch “a sustained, multilevel attack on financial fraud.”

Isn’t that just precious? They’re on the job!

I can’t help but wonder why people who stole billions of dollars, moved many Americans into poverty and missed totally destroying the world’s economic system by a hairs breath get two years to dispose of the evidence and develop new schemes of raping the public.

I have to ask if this government and this president are serious in any way at pursuing the financial malfeasance of those who have made large campaign contributions.

Morality and ethics demand that criminals be brought to justice. But not only that, simple logic dictates that they who have victimized millions should be priority targets for investigation.

Chamber of Commerce Stacks the Deck

Truth. We are taught to respect it. It might be said that truth is the basis of morality and ethics. Certainly the search for truth is the basis of modern science.

But the United States Chamber of Commerce already knows the truth. To paraphrase the movie, Treasure of Sierra Madre, “They don’t need no stinking research.”

In a series of memos, the Chamber explains that it has decided to pay $50,000 dollars to a “well-respected economist” to write a study explaining that the health care bill will cost jobs.

“The economist will then circulate a sign-on letter to hundreds of other economists saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy. We will then be able to use this open letter to produce advertisements, and as a powerful lobbying and grass-roots document.”

This the Chamber’s procedure. We decide on a result. We hire someone who “looks” respectable but has the morals of a syphilitic serial killer. He conducts a study predesigned to our conclusion. We get the research result we want and we can call it science.

Tell me, what does this say about the organization and its lobbying effort?

Camp Lejeune Whistleblower Fired

Few ethical dilemmas are as gut wrenching as to whether or not to blow the whistle on unethical, inefficient or stupid practices by your employer. The personal cost is often very high. For Dr. Manion, it was the loss of his job and the high likelihood that no one else will hire a “trouble maker” like him.

There is no doubt in my mind that Dr. Manion fulfilled his duty to his country and his profession. There is no doubt in my mind that the government here was intent not on the care of veterans but on covering its thoroughly incompetent butt.

Let’s not mince words. Firing conscientious workers is a clear and distinct message to leave your morals at the door, that if you are asked to participate in crimes, you’d better participate. It is the last refuge of the employer scoundrel, unless you consider murdering the employee a possibility. The Navy failed in its duty to the nation, to its members and to any semblance of moral responsibility.

THE STORY

Dr. Kernan Manion was terminated by his contractor. His contractor said the Navy asked for him to be terminated.

Manion was made aware by his clients that many on base were suffering severe psychological problems that were going untreated because the system wasn’t working properly due to neglect and because superior officers penalized those who sought treatment.

The soldiers told him that they felt it was likely someone would snap and there would be a mass shooting on the base. Manion wrote memos warning of the problem and provided documentation supporting his findings.  The navy did not want to see these memos.

On June 24, a supervisor for the contractor warned Manion to stop making trouble. “Kernan Manion, it is requested that you cease and desist all further correspondence with the government,” the supervisor with NiteLines, Pamela Friend, wrote to Manion.

After his firing, Manion wrote to President Obama:

“Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I’ve never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness — literally a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experience,”

How Do You Measure Happiness?

We live in a world of stories, facts and numbers. Numbers often drive politics even though many do not understand what those numbers mean. Numbers appear to be definite. One and one make two. Really? If you have two apples, that is one and one making two. What if one of the apples is rotten? Is it still two apples? What if one of the apples is smaller than a plum? Is it still two apples? What if one is a horse apple or an Adam’s apple? Numbers are simple only in theory.

Numbers also and often unfortunately drive ethical discussions: “the greatest good for the greatest number, etc.” One critical number in this society and many other is the Gross National Product. Often subjected to interpretation and re-interpretation depending on your policy view, this number is considered the measure of success for a society. That no one is exactly sure what it means or that we are often ambivalent as to whether or not money can buy happiness. We often yield to the tyranny of this number. Ethical thinking does not stop when confronted by a statistic. It is something of a wall to be climbed over but much thought has to overcome the complex and the mundane.

France has been confronting the question of how to measure the country’s prosperity, through Gross Domestic Product or the Happiness Index. Today, it was announced that GDP has won out over the other measure.

In 2007, the French Government commissioned American Economist, Joseph Stiglitz to develop economic measurements that included happiness and other quality of life measurements.

There have been modifications to the simple idea of GDP in the past. For instance the United Nations uses the Human Development Index which is based on measurements of life expectancy, education and standard of living.

Gross National Happiness measures sociological and psychological elements as well as economic ones to determine a nation’s success. It was expected that Stiglitz’s ideas would move French measurements in that direction. But it was not to be.

United States has World’s Fastest Computer

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s high-performance Jaguar XT5 computer, built by Seattle-based Cray Inc., was named Monday as the fastest on the planet in the latest semiannual TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

After a $19.9 million upgrade funded with federal economic stimulus money, Jaguar posted a performance speed of 1.759 petaflops or quadrillions of calculations per second.

It is often said that the government can do nothing right. As thinking human being we must recognize that broad generalizations may be true at one time or another but examining case by case is the best way to ascertain the truth. A government financed project in concert with a private company created the fastest computer in the world. Its purpose is research, one funded by the government.

There is a great deal of hostility to science in this country, hostility not based on fact but on rumor, lies and religious dogmatism. An ethical human being questions beliefs and decides to support or not support them based on his own decision making. Accepting a religious denomination’s directives on any belief without examination is an abdication of a human being’s responsibility to use the ability to reason.

Hostility to science can have long term effects on education and development in this nation. But far more dangerous is the implication that faith is utterly superior to reason. If thinking is not respected, there will be a temptation to choose leaders “just like us.” Instead of seeking capability, we seek comfort, because after all if reason, knowledge and education are not important why consider them a factor in decision making?

Suffer the Little Children to Starve

Business Ethics is a subject deeply concerned with a variety of moral approaches to problems. Often dogmatic simple solutions are not effective all the time. The United States is said to be one of the countries in which the free market is enshrined as a “successful” doctrine. Successful it may well be in some contexts but one size does not fit all and there are problems resistant to the free market.

Last year, nearly 50 million American had trouble getting enough to eat. The Washington Post then says that one in four children in America is part of this group. That’s right, the richest nation on earth, richer beyond the ambition of countless empires of history can’t feed its population. This nation has 269 billionaires. Yet, 1/6 of the population has problems getting enough to eat. More than 35 million Americans get food stamps. More than thirty million children get government subsidized school lunches.

We can do better than this. We have a responsibility to make sure every American gets enough to eat. Yes, that includes the homeless and the “unworthy.” It might be said that if we encourage people to succeed in the free market they will solve their hunger problems through hard work and ambition. It has long been an ambition of mine to see new born babes fight their way into important corporate positions. I want to see eight and nine year olds compete with adults in a difficult job market. That will make them tough.

Well, don’t worry about them, the free market cures all. We just have to give it time.

The record is unmistakable: If you seek economic growth, social justice and human dignity, the free-market system is the way to go. It would be a terrible mistake to allow a few months of crisis to undermine 60 years of success. The Wall Street Journal

If human dignity is not to have enough to eat.

So how should one respond to issues such as severe poverty, hunger, and healthcare? I would suggest that it comes down to education, education, and more education. An individual must educate him or herself first and then educate others. Ayn Rand’s philosophy holds that historical trends are the inescapable product of philosophy. Fighting for the victory of ideas can defeat widely held ideologies that threaten liberty, private property rights, economic and individual freedom. From the BLOG, Free Market Physician
If we educate people, they won’t be hungry. (Damn those children. They just won’t get a college education until they get older. Apparently they lack ambition.)

All of us are the inheritors of this freeing of the market and the resulting technological revolution. The automobiles people drive, the televisions they watch, the movies they see, the cell phones they answer, the planes they fly, and — exemplified by Microsoft — the computers they use, all owe their development and availability to the free market. At a more basic level, we can best see the operation of the free market in the availability of an amazing variety of cheap foods for the poor and lower middle class. An American supermarket is a cornucopia of agricultural wealth, with choices of fruits, vegetables, meats, cereals, breads, wines, and so on from many areas of the United States and countries of the world. Similarly, department and hardware stores shelve, hang, and display a wide variety of goods. To see the results of freedom, you need only shop in any of democracy’s stores.  On The Incredible Utopia That is the Free Market, R.J. Rummel

There isn’t any hunger. We live in Utopia. Isn’t it wonderful?

I’m Back

It has been more than a week since I posted. The death of my Father-in-law was deeply saddening. But if painful for me was of course more painful for my wife. Nevertheless, it is time to get back to the great moral issues of business.