Cheating our youth out of ethics

In an ever increasing competitive world, a recent poll conducted by Junior Achievement Worldwide and Deloitte & Touche reveals an unsurprising trend among today's youth. Nearly 30% of 13-18 year olds polled found it acceptable in some form to cheat in school to achieve success. Even more disturbing, 43% of those polled felt it was acceptable to cheat, steal, lie or behave violently to some degree if it meant succeeding academically. While some are extremely shocked by these numbers, I'm surprised the percentages are not greater.

http://www.ja.org/files/2007_Teen_Ethics_Survey_Cross_Tabs_Data.pdf

In an ideal world, success would come by honesty, hard work and determination, but that is not the reality of 21st century capitalist America. That's why we have the term "nice guys finish last". In reality, to get the upper hand, one must rise above the competition, and when the competition is cheating, one is at a disadvantage following the rules. That's what the era of steroids in baseball has been all about. The sluggers weren't the only ones cheating, nor was it solely hitters, many times it was the unproven role player, pitchers included, trying to separate himself from the rest of the pack, using steroids to gain an upper hand. This is the example that today's youth follow, and they see these athletes rewarded handsomely, earning millions playing a game.

Cheating breeds cheating and it is the reality of the world we live in. Look at the politicians our children look up to. Our whole political structure is one giant deception. Special interests is cheating, regardless if it is legal. It's a form of manipulation and how our congress is run.

Speaking of manipulation, our president and vice-president manipulated intelligence reports and lied directly to the world in selling this war. There were never any Weapons of Mass Destruction, only lies. And there have been no consequences for these individuals, only economic and political rewards that have furthered their agendas. So why should we be shocked by this poll of our youth?

And there are so many more examples. Our entire legal system is composed of liars and cheats. That's what for profit defense firms and frivolous prosecutors subsist on. That's why O.J Simpson never went to jail for killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, found liable for their deaths in civil court but not in criminal court. He had a lot of money and could afford the best legal defense, who used all their might and abilities to keep a murderer out of jail. I think it's safe to say Robert Shapiro and the rest of Simpson's defense team cheated the legal system, but it happens to be their job so capitalism approves.

I could go on as corporate accounting firms and CEO's deserve a whole posting to themselves considering Enron and Arthur Anderson, but the point has been made. Today's children are just more aware of business politics than of previous generations. So instead of panicking over the ethical beliefs of today's youth, point the finger at the individuals setting the precedent and hold them accountable. It's the system and political structure supporting it at fault. Our children are inheriting these values.

The Capitalism of today Vs. the role it once played

I am sure that many who read this blog are quick to label me a communist or socialist, (more than likely with a false propagandized understanding of what communism or socialism is) though I've always been somewhere in between socialism and capitalism. I believe in the ideal notion of a free market, but have seen too many times what the greedy hand of Man is capable of, placing profit over the sanctity of life, which is why I feel we need much greater economic restrictions. I have also seen what the free market produces and am fully convinced we are consuming ourselves and our very existence, at a far greater pace than the Earth can keep pace with. The problem with today's capitalism is it is no longer answering needs, it is manufacturing them! Instead of focusing on cleaner energy sources, famine and global poverty, real concerns that capitalism is supposed to address, today's capitalism has shifted the cultural focus towards high definition television, I-Pods and camera phones, technology that complicates our existence. Entertainment now trumps societal need.


As a matter of fact, Capitalism is the driving force behind global warming, famine and poverty, not a part of the attack against it. In the name of profit, ExxonMobil threw the world by the wayside and intentionally misinformed the public to the dangers of global warming over an eight-year span, spending millions to accomplish this goal. This is the capitalism of today!

http://americanwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2007/06/i-am-disturbed-by-disinformation.html

Regarding famine, the United States possess the ability to feed the starving worldwide, let alone within our own borders, but instead spends billions of dollars paying it's farmers not to grow crops through agricultural subsidy programs, averaging roughly $16 billion per year in subsidies from 1996-2002.

So if capitalism is an economic system that answers needs, it clearly is failing in this regard. Those that argue that the consumers determine need are dead wrong, evident within the multi-billion dollar marketing industry. Advertising has a huge influence on our cultural desires. In many ways it is a form of brainwashing, enhancing materialism and the need for non-needs by portraying people that consumers can identify with in use of some product. It used to be that companies developed a product then focused on selling it. This shifted at the beginning of the 1960's. Now businesses and marketing teams study what they think could sell by identifying and targeting consumers, compiling massive collections of personal data, and go about designing the product around this information. This is a huge fundamental shift in the difference between the capitalism that fueled the growth of modern society and the capitalism currently consuming society. If the capitalist's are going to defend capitalism, then the system needs to begin again what it once did: use profit to meet need, not greed. Capitalism also needs to start answering needs before manufacturing them. That's where the restrictions are needed.

Forgent Asures our economy's broken

I'll admit I have a personal interest in this posting, one that has miserably lasted for over six years as a shareholder, before any knowledge of '672, which I'll get to shortly, but I have a telling point to make nonetheless. Most have never heard of Asure Software, nor Forgent Networks or VTEL for that matter, but they represent so much of what business is about these days in 21st century capitalist America.

Asure software began doing business inconspicuously in 1985 as San Antonio Digital Labs, based out of San Antonio, Texas, as one of the pioneers in video teleconferencing. In 1986, the company changed it's name to VideoTelecom, which was shortened to VTEL when the company went public in 1993. The company continued along, enjoying modest success through the '90's, and happened into a gold mine in 1997, though they were unaware of it at the time. That was the year VTEL purchased a small company by the name of Compression Labs, Inc., whose main value at the time lay in video coding and compression technology. The purchase was meant to strengthen VTEL's technological foothold, but it would be five more years before VTEL realized the full effect of their purchase.

By 2002, VTEL had renamed itself Forgent Networks, and while going over some of the patents it had acquired in the Compression Labs purchase, they uncovered patent number 4,698,672, the patent for the JPEG image compression standard. JPEG is one of the most commonly used image compression methods in computing, and is used in many commercial products and applications. Initial estimates pegged the patent to be worth in excess of $1 billion, though Forgent would only acquire a fraction of that, albeit still an impressive amount. Forgent would go on to collect over $100 million in settlements from companies like Adobe, Microsoft and IBM, with roughly half of their earning going to their legal team.

The fun would end in in 2006 when the United States Patent Office ruled Forgent's claim invalid, thus ending what had become Forgent's main source of income: suing others. Forgent's image suffered along the way, becoming known as a patent troll, which prompted the change in name to Asure Software. To this day they lack a sound business structure and are in the midst of examining another patent, No. 6,285,746, which deals with video system playback used in Digital Video Recorders (DVR), commercially known as the Tivo!

When I hear people arguing on behalf of the capitalist system, at least as it is freely practiced in this country, I cannot help but think of leeches like Asure Software, who only drain from the system while contributing no societal worth. It's not as if they developed the technology for the '672 patent themselves. They acquired it and began to enforce it years after it had been freely given to the public, once the public had become dependant on it. That's akin to technological blackmail! They have since earned $8 million off the '746 patent, again without any good reason other than they can. And it's the consumers who will pay the price for this. All the companies that were forced to settle from both patents simply will trickle the loss onto their expenses and raise the price of their products.

There is no reason this should be allowed to occur, other than greed. If we are going to live in capitalist system, it needs greater regulation and a whole new set of corporate rules. Asure Software is by no means anywhere near the worst of bad business in this country, look what Enron did, and Haliburton, not to mention ExxonMobil and their misinformation campaign! What all these companies have in common, including Asure Software, is this immoral capitalist mindset that seeks profit in any which way regardless of what wrongs may be brought on society. Look at W.R. Grace! Asure Software is peanuts compared with these companies, but regardless society suffers because of their existence, save for the few Asure Software employees and their gracious legal team. Capitalism in it's current form is a destructive force that needs to be remade or replaced. Asure Software is a very small example of why.


Digg it!
http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/Forgent_Asures_our_economy_s_broken

W.R. Grace, Capitalism, Libby, MT.

I've written once before on the Libby, Montana, tragedy, where the greed of one company and numerous politicians effectively chose profit over life, exposing countless living, breathing people to a deadly form of asbestos known as tremolite, which has killed and debilitated so many. Below is a link to an article I wrote a while back which gives a brief summary of what happened.

http://americanwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2007/09/libby-montana-american-nightmare_08.html

However I just recently finished reading An Air That Kills: How the Asbestos Poisoning of Libby, Montana, Uncovered a National Scandal by Andrew Schneider and David McCumber, and I now have a much more thorough understanding of the events and people that allowed this blatant disregard for human life to occur. This story definitively illustrates everything wrong with capitalism in America and why the system is broken, despite what the wealthy profess.

The story of W.R. Grace in Libby, Montana is long and complex, but the cause of the problem is simple to understand. To this day asbestos is used in thousands of commercial applications, including in automobile brakes, despite the fact the majority of Americans believe otherwise and remain convinced that this environmental hazard has been banned. Medical science has proven the harm of asbestos, and in particular has isolated tremolite as a primary cause of mesothelioma and asbestosis, yet despite this known fact, bureaucrat's and politicians, all of them profiting in some form along the way, have been able to keep the restrictions on Big Business loose and favor the interests of business over the sanctity of life. In fact, the EPA was looking to ban asbestos use in the late 1980's and into the early '90's, but lobbying groups working on behalf of the asbestos industry succeeded in thwarting those efforts, downplaying the real life harm of asbestos in favor of economics. The economy for too long has taken precedent over common sense. The tragedy in Libby, Montana happened because of business, profit and capitalism.

I will write more on this issue in upcoming postings, as the story is far too complex to understand in such brief discussions, yet it is imperative when examining the state of our society to understand what drives the interests of our elected leaders and policies. What is most disturbing is how many people have spoken out against those seeking reform in Libby, blaming the sick and dying for the loss of business and economic opportunities in the local community. Roughly 1/3 of the locals, many of whom never even worked for Grace (who just were forced to breath in their air) are either dying or will die of some form of asbestos related disease in their lifetime, yet there are actually those who have stood up and defended the actions of W.R. Grace and the policies of the EPA. The far majority of citizens living in this country are directly harmed by capitalism, not helped. We no longer practice capitalism in this country, we are a country of fascists. I definitely recommend the above mentioned book as a much needed read into understanding the values that our society operate under.

Sesame Street deemed inappropriate for children

We have come a long way as a society in the last half century, but unfortunately as I see it in recent years, much of it has been in the wrong direction. I hate to begin a posting with such negative sentiment, but I cannot help the feeling given the way our society has reformed itself around the "status quo", striving evermore to be politically correct in lieu of what needs to be said, censoring our children at an increasingly harmful rate. Never should this be more apparent than in a recent release of the first two volumes of Sesame Street on DVD, covering the earliest episodes of the childhood favorite television show, which have happened to be deemed, by the way, inappropriate for today's children. That's right, the earliest episodes of Sesame Street are for adult eyes only.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The Cookie Monster is a vegan these days, forced to conform to a healthier, less dangerous diet, as cookies have now been relegated to "a sometime food". And Bert and Ernie no longer share a bath together, because two naked muppets is obviously highly suggestive and harmful to the minds of four year olds. You can thank the religious right for that one.

I don't remember much about watching Sesame Street as a kid, though I do remember watching it frequently, or at least the memory of it, and it was positive. However, I can assure you that nothing naughty came to my mind when two muppets, who resembled myself in age at the time, took a bath together, singing about rubber duckies. I guarantee you I wanted as many cookies as I could get, and would have made like the Cookie Monster every day of the week and twice on Sunday had I the choice, but I did not develop poor eating habits as a result of his influence. I have my parents to thank for that, though mainly my Dad in hindsight. Though when Mom was in charge of dinner when Dad was out of town, it was normally a treat.

I just wish our children could be children again, referring to a time when there wasn't so much policing over what was acceptable or not. Let kids be kids, and if they are exposed to something that may or may not be harmful, then perhaps the parents should do a little parenting. It's not like Sesame Street had the final say over Dad in my household.

How cool it must have been to have accepted a reality inhabited by a Cookie Monster.

The presidential deception regarding Iran

I am no longer surprised by the news I hear out of Washington, just evermore disturbed. However, the news that broke this past Monday regarding the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program reveals just how deceptive and criminal the president and vice-president are, and how totally corrupt the political structure we live in is.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071203/ts_nm/iran_usa_dc

We now know that Iran halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that Bush and Cheney have known about this all along, but you will hear no admissions of guilt from our leaders in Washington. Instead, Bush is actually using this new report as an opportunity to further his rhetoric for war with Iran. This despite the fact that the report he is citing reveals in truth that he has been lying to us this entire time about Iran's nuclear program. Below is the actual transcript from the press conference he called to discuss the new NIE report.

"I think it is very important for the international community to recognize the fact that if Iran were to develop the knowledge that they could transfer to a clandestine program, it would create a danger for the world. So I view this report as a warning signal that they had a program, they halted the program."

The new NIE report should have put an immediate end to any speculation about war with Iran, but with president Bush's sociopathic agenda, he somehow finds the gall to turn the tables on this report, evades any wrong doing and argues that this report actually reveals that Iran is a threat. This is absurd! He is using the evidence that negated his argument to somehow reinforce it. I mean seriously, how does he get away with this? He argues that Iran could become a danger to the world, when he in fact is the danger to the world!

Is perception that different, or is it intent? I believe it's the latter and Bush is intent on global domination. Look through his words and at his intent and you will see a man gushing with power and fortune, gleeful over the domination he's wrought. Not once during his entire presidency has Bush ever hinted at any personal mistakes. In fact, he has actually stated that he has made no mistakes since 9/11, and if you don't believe that, click the link.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0414-01.htm

We have a very serious problem here and it doesn't reside in the middle east. There cannot be war with Iran, the consequences would be beyond catastrophic. Bush's manipulative rhetoric needs to be exposed and the above quote is a prime example of this in action. There has been no nuclear weapon development since 2003 in Iran and our president knew this and pushed for war anyway, deceiving the public of the truth. Those are the facts. We need to see justice.

A greater deception than Enron at work

We continue to hear from our leaders how healthy our economy is, though the federal debt continues to grow every year, millions are without health care and adequate education, and the dollar has steadily devalued over the past several years. In fact, the current United States deficit has grown by a reported $1.3 trillion in the past eight years, but as I'm about to detail from an article on MSN money, the actual debt is far greater than reported, and it's all on account of misleading accounting, intentionally practiced by the our elected leaders. What follows is indicative of why our political system is in need of reform.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/News/FedsBudgetTricksHideTrillionsInDebt.aspx

What's most striking is how legal all of these actions apparently are. In the past eight years our government has reportedly increased it's debt by$1.3 trillion, but when the numbers are closely examined, we're really $3.3 trillion behind in that period, for a total U.S. federal deficit of $8.9 trillion. All of this, mind you, while our elected leaders in Washington have profited handsomely over that span, giving themselves numerous tax breaks all the while. Even more disturbing is how this practice occurs.

Our government is issuing bonds to itself which have no cash backing to cover financial losses. In essence, they are crediting themselves with imaginary money to cover the exceeding debt. Bonds work as a government loan, offering cash to the government for an expected future return. In this instance, our government is simply creating the bonds and crediting them to trust funds such as Medicare and Social Security, without any real cash backing. Since the imaginary bonds accrue interest, our deficit appears less severe. Attempt to cash the bonds, and nothing is there. These bonds only have value on paper. It is an absolute joke how our leaders are able to manipulate these numbers, but this is common practice in 21st century American politics. We saw what the collapse of Enron did to our economy and the very real pocket books of all the employees and stockholders who lost everything in that scam. Now imagine what happens when Enron overtakes our government. We may see quite soon. It's the system, though, truly at fault.