Corporations and Jail Time

If I went into my neighbor's home and stole his stereo, PlayStation and iPod, I would expect to be in some state of criminal trouble should I be caught, not to mention having to return the merchandise, and pay for court costs and any civil infractions my neighbor feels savvy to file against me. Why is it that Multi-billion dollar companies can rob each other blind and no one goes to jail? Lets look at the Blackberry situation for example.

The Blackberry is a PDA type device that mashes a cellphone, PDA functionality, email, internet, music and more into one single device. Blackberry technology is owned by Research In Motion (RIM)which is currently involved in a patent dispute with NTP Inc. NTP has proved in court that it has patented the technology that RIM has been selling since 1999. Furthermore, the facts in the case prove that RIM knowingly stole the technology from NTP. NTP had been offered a settlement in excess of $400 million, which it declined.

Now lets look at a dumbed down example of what the real world is like. Lets say, I go next door and steal my neighbors car. He finds out I stole it. I flip him off and tell him to get bent. The police shortly arrive and take me away and I go to jail on a felony charge of Grand Theft Auto. In the corporate world, some CEO would steal the same car and instead of being arrested, he's be sued by the car's owner, all the while still cruising around in the car. It would take about 6 years for the lawsuit and several appeals to be finalized and in the end, the CEO would settle out of court for half the value of the car, which he gets to keep. Anyone see a problem here?

There are actually two problems here. Problem One is the lack of Corporate responsibility. A corporation is treated like a legal entity itself. Its the nature of the definition of a corporation. You cant very well put a corporation in jail, but you can sue them. The problem here is that someone had to sign off on this idea, knowing full well that they were robbing another man \ company. Why isn't that man, or committee, accountable? Using our car theft example, this would be like a gang. The Don sends out Guido and Tommy to go steal the car. It's the Don who is ultimately guilty, but rarely takes the fall.

This leads us to Problem Two, Money. If you have enough money, you can buy your way out of trouble. The same thing happened to an aftermarket automotive part manufacturer a few years back. Auto-lite made this formitable Platinum Spark Plug, so their competitor, Champion, bought a few cases of them and sent them to the engineering department to figure out how to make their own version of the Spark Plug. $50 million later, Champion gets to keep making the plug. No one goes to jail. One example against this might be the Enron executives that are seeing jail time. Enron ran out of money though.

This money issue goes into personal criminal and civil cases as well. In my honest opinion, the following people have got out of very incriminating circumstances because of their bankrolls.

O.J. Simpson
Robert Blake
Michael Jackson

This is just a few Celebrities, this doesn't count the politicians and Executives that literally get away with Murder at times. We need to start taking a common sense look at our Corporate world and start making people accountable for their actions.

I Won The Lottery, and Your Fired

Here's a terrifying thought. I work at a small company. We have three principle workers who generate income for the company, including myself, and two support workers. We crunch Data for multi-million dollar companies and are a small company in our own right. The two other principle workers are both brothers, one is the owner.

Now we are talking about the lottery. A group of 8 people, in an office pool at a meat packing plant, recently won the Powerball. After taxes, each pulled in about $15 Million. Now I gotta think that when all eight of them quit their job, that the owner is probably having some issues replacing them on such a short notice. This topic came up here at work. One of the brothers here, not the owner, plays the lottery often. Every week is gonna be his week according to him. So I tell my boss, "If he wins this thing, we are gonna be screwed." He then replies, "I'm hoping he take me with him." Then I realize, if either of them receive any good fortunes, no matter how unlikely it is, I'm out of a job. Scary.

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Thanks
Mike

Don't Squeeze The Charmin

I try to be as serious as possible on this blog by talking about serious topics, or exposing the world to my eccentric prose. However, every once in a while you just have to step back and ask a silly question. Recently, our office manager has changed our brand of Toilet paper. She now buys Charmin. If you haven't used Charmin before, its like the Bathroom equivalent to fluffy kittens and cotton balls. For women, I'm sure this is next to godliness when patting dry the Hoo Hoo parts, but for this man, I need something with some Grip. I mean, if you have to clean the tar hole, would you rather slosh around with silk or scrap that bad boy with sandpaper.

I've said enough. You can now vote at the Current poll to share your feelings on the subject. Poll running on the right.

More Haiku

Posting words that fill
The time and empty spaces
I lack better words

Selected Poetry

Drip, drop from the sky
of the sky
from an eye.
Drop, drip to the ground
on the ground
not a sound.
Whimper, whine from a girl
from the girl
with a curl.
Whine, whimper about a man
about the man
she can’t have

P.O.V.

I was hungry for life

so you fed me your seed.

I thirsted for your soul

so you bled it for me.

I felt naked to the world

so I blinded their eyes.

I’m a stranger in you land

take me in, let me die.

I died for a sin

but it was not for you.

Obey, like a dog

you know not what to do.

I’m a brigand and a bandit

never sawed on your wood.

I’m a cutthroat and a sinner

and I did it for you.

But I Know

Troubles come and troubles go

when they come they leave too slow

My soul was gone and I felt dead

Who’s in charge?

How will I live?

Yet I’m walking tall and on my own

with the strength of one and hard as stone

knowing not what to do

knowing not where to go

But I Know.

Little Man

Little man

Stand as tall as you can

There’s no savin’ your soul

There’s no swayin’ your hand

Violence is your nature

Deception is your bread

Juice is in your blood

NO grasp is within your head

Little man

Fall tall, strong blood, bad man

Little man

Stand small, weak soul, dry land

Little man

Eat shit, and die, dead man

Little man

Fall short, no doubt, Little man.

Obsessed

I’ve never been with you.

I can’t stand separation.

You don’t know what it’s like–without you.

I’m ________.

Can’t go two days

without thinking your name.

Can’t go two days

without going insane.

I’ve never been without you.

I can’t stand temptation.

You don’t comprehend--my thoughts of you.

I’m ________.

I want you near me

as close as you can.

I want you in me.

I’m ________.

A Measure Of Success

What does it mean to be Successful? Strictly defined, success means, "The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted" [1]. So literally any goal one sets for him\her self, that is achieved, is success. In the real world, however, we have to look at public opinion at times, weather we agree with them or not, to really define what it means to be successful. I'd say that we can all agree that Bill Gates is successful. I mean, he is the richest man in the world, so he must of accomplished some of his goals to get there. Others that fall into this category might include politicians, sports stars, big name actors, and long time business owners, all successful.

Is a modest living considered success? I mean, do we consider any old 9-5 worker to be successful? If their goals were to just make it and have a few possessions, then they fit the definition, but are they really successful? The majority of us don't look down on these people, because the majority of us are these people. I don't consider myself successful in any regard, yet my family is taken care of, the bills are paid, roof over our head and all that. Ask any homeless guy or victim of Hurricane Katrina if I'm successful and they'd probably say yes. Ask some poor unemployed soul from some impoverished nation if I'm successful and they would probably be humbled by the question, because in comparison to them, I'm rich. It seems that there is a little more to the definition of success. There is a comparison of sorts, unrelated to the setting of goals.

So do we measure success against our preconceived notions or against other peoples endeavors? What I mean by this is, do we actually set self goals or do we judge ourselves as successful in comparison to those we wish we were more like? Isn't that the whole thing with role models? When we are young we want to emulate those that we respect and we listen to their guidance and suggestions hoping that one day, we can be just like them, or better. That isn't always realistic. If you want to be just like your Dad, then great, that's probably obtainable, but to say that you want to be like Michael Jordan, well, there is only one Michael Jordan. I see a problem with fostering a successful attitude in children early on. When I was growing up in school, in the 80's and early 90's, there was this push toward higher education, which is wonderful. However growing up in urban cities like Detroit or Pontiac, Michigan, you don't exactly get the best bang for your education dollar.

Which brings me to another point, Schooling and Success or The Propaganda of College vs. Vocational Trades. Because of the push to get kids into higher education, we are actually hurting our kids. To explain, take your average student, and by average I mean "C" average. Regardless of his goals and dreams, assuming he has a focus as such, he's being told that he needs to get a higher education. First off, the kid isn't getting a lower education right now, so he's not even going to have the building blocks to go to college. He might be able to handle a community college, but the drop out rates of community college freshmen are very high. "At highly selective institutions, the vast majority of students graduate. But at public universities, which educate most U.S. students getting bachelor's degrees, nearly 60% fail to complete degrees within five years...and half of those leave during the first year. The dropout rate is even higher at many community colleges, where students are juggling jobs with their course work"[2]. So what does this kid do? He is out of school, has no immediate future in college and has no marketable skills. We need a push toward vocational education in public schools, and I'm not just talking about Auto or Shop classes, although those are fine professions. I'm talking about specialized training in smaller areas where these kids can get the ground work to having a usable life skill. Some schools are treating computer skills as vocational training, computer repair, diagnostics, etc, and jobs can be found using these skills with far less time and money than in the traditional higher education system. Furthermore, I'm not just talking about "C" average kids either, although they would benefit most from this, this is something that should be instituted across the board. This lack in vocational training is why we have adults today that don't know how to change a tire on a car.

Now I've been out of public schools now for 13 years, so I don't know how far they've come in this regard, but I can almost guarantee, that wherever the averages are, I'm sure the inner city numbers are lower. There is this unspoken similarity in minorities and poverty. That's not to say that all blacks and Hispanics are these kids that have no hope for higher education opportunities, just that there is this overlap of the two that have similarities. What I'm getting at is that something drastic needs to be done, especially for minorities. Even those who get education at the college level still don't have necessary life skills and fall apart under the pressures of life. I believe a push toward more vocational skills, specialized skills in children, can benefit everyone in the end and fill a void in the preparation process for becoming independent.

Now I could go on for days on my ideas on how to change our education system, but my topic is success. The definition for success is fine. We set goals, attain them and we are successful. This definition needs an asterisk however, one that defines the Method to be Successful. That asterisk should read as followed:

It is our duty as human beings to teach our children to set reasonable goals, goals that make them better than they are today, which are attainable and reasonable. It is our duty as human beings to grant our children the tools to fulfill these goals and to steer them in the direction to fulfill them. It is our duty as human beings to better ourselves in the process.

Could You Donate Your Face?

Anderson Cooper, from CNN, asked on his Blog, "Would you be willing to donate your face when you die?" This question arises in regard to the French woman, Isabelle Dinoire, who was the first recipient of a partial human face transplant. Isabelle was victimized by her pet dog and left mutilated with exposed bone on the vast majority of her face. Although she has the face of another person, Isabelle looks neither like the donor or her original self. In regard to the question, I'd make a guess that a majority of people could not donate their face, even those who would not hesitate to donate their internal organs. Two reasons why.

Foremost, we treasure our uniqueness in the world. While we generally have no qualms about our inner organs, our everyday appearances are special to us. Things like our eyes, face, or even our genitals are something that make us who are we are, and there is something a little unsettling when we think that those parts could be on or used by another human being. Its a selfish thought, but one a majority of us probably cant shake.

The second reason is one that I worry about most and that is the reaction of our surviving loved ones. I remember when I was just a kid, we received news that my Uncle Ernie was killed in a car accident. He was completely rolled over by a steel truck. He had a closed casket funeral for obvious reasons and as a child, It never seemed real. I never saw his body. I always thought that he would just show up at the next family function and he was just my Uncle. Imagine what his kids went through. They were devastated because their dad was taken from them and they never got the last goodbye. It's that "Last Goodbye" that people will have trouble with. Funeral services are for the living to give their last respects, not for the dead, but to come together and respect what life is. To take some of that away with a closed casket will be too much for some people.

That's not to say that these procedures wont happen, because they will. Cases like these are rare, so the lower number of donating parties probably wont impact the need to supply ratio. In the future, as technology permits, we are going to be dealing with more issues like these. Some are going to be personal issues, but as cloning and gene therapies get more commonplace, ethical theory will be brought to the forefront as well. Hopefully we will all see the greater good and swallow our pride, when we have to.

Anonymity Makes Us Ignorant

With all the great things the Internet provides us, from services to entertainment, you also see things in people that you usually only see when they are stone cold drunk, ignorance. It's been talked about before, people lose all control of their animal instincts and hurt others as quickly and as often as they can, because, on the Internet, you aren't as accountable. You can say things on a message board, like you hate black people, the Holocaust never happened or that some other guy's wife is a fat pig, things that would get your nose bloodied in some company. Safe behind your computer screen, no one can hurt you so your fingers type what your mouth could never safely say.

This isn't always a bad thing. Anonymity can also allow us to say things that people need to hear without the backlash that sometimes goes with these things. For instance, protesting the tyranny of the Chinese governments lock-down on intelligent freedoms in China or signing a petition to support a cause you might not otherwise support in public.

Rudeness in general comes from anonymity, and this one really irritates me. When trying to do business with people, especially on a message board or through Craigslist, I might reply to questions about a product I'm trying to sell, like price, location, or cost to ship and I answer them as quickly and nicely as possible. They never reply. They never say weather they want the item or not. Not even a "Go To Hell". They just never reply. It's Irritating.

I'm currently trying to sell a PlayStation 2, 10 games and accessories and have had many people ask me about it and with each reply of mine, I get cool silence. If they don't like the price, we can negotiate. Don't want to pick it up, I can meet you somewhere. They never find this out because they believe I will act like they do, with rudeness and general uncooperativeness. I'm willing to bend. People on the internet, generally just don't get it.

State of The Union

Regardless of the agenda that Bush has and the fact that he didn't say how he can do it, especially on how he going to pay for it, was anyone else put off a little when he compared our troops mission in Iraq to President Lincoln's freeing of the slaves, Defeating Nazi Germany in Europe during WWII, and Martin Luther Kings March for civil rights? I mean, isn't he reaching a bit there or does he really see it as just that important.

The governor of Virginia's response had a better feel to it, but he too lacked info on how he was going to accomplish these things. Maybe he's just a better speaker. There was a whole lot of talk, but not any clear method on how we are going to accomplish any of it.

Politics as per usual.