Monthly Archives: May 2009

Cheney’s speech false to fact and reason

MSNBC, by Keith Olbermann    Original Article
5/23/2009 10:46:33 AM     
Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about Mr. Cheney’s speech. Neurotic. Paranoid. False to fact and false to reason. Forever self-rationalizing. His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word and as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist.


read on if you what to hear when he starts to critisize Mr. Cheney.

Was he watching the same speech I was; or did the tinfoil come off his rabbit ears; again.

GM’s Problems: Too Much CSR?

              This is not Rocket Science

I recently ran across an old post by Dale Oesterle on the form of corporate social responsibility waged by GM:

There is a sizable group of academics that favor empowering boards of directors to favor constituencies other than shareholders (employees, suppliers, local citizens) in corporate decision making.  GM overpaid labor, buying peace for managers, at the expense of shareholder profit (and share price) for years.  Now GM’s survivability is at stake; employees themselves would be better off it the GM board had been more careful of shareholder profits.  Railroads situation is similar to GM (they have special legislation that protects their unions). Compare GM’s (or the railroad’s) situation to that of Caterpillar’s.  Caterpillar went through some tough strikes to hold the line on labor costs;  Caterpillar is now doing very well and is an international success story. The theory of shareholder primacy, rejected by many academics, is that in 9 cases out of 10, sustained shareholder profits are a surrogate for long-term gains for other constituencies — when shareholders make money over-time, employees have good, stable jobs.  If we hold boards accountable for profits, all constituencies, over-time, also benefit.

Still timely today. And it makes you wonder about the merits of giving the UAW 55% of Chrysler.

The Michelle of It All

Shhh!

A Commentary By Susan Estrich

“Do you really like her?” they say in a whisper. “Leaves me cold,” I hear all the time. “Ice cold.” I should add that most of the people saying these things are Democrats, and many of them are women who will be the first to admit that they might actually have a lot in common with her.  
But what about all those people in markets who sidle up and say the same thing? What about the flight attendants who tell me how much they like him, but that she makes their skin crawl?


And then there is this piece of logic that the Leftest are so famous for:

If people don’t like her — and I have no doubt that many people don’t, whatever the polls say — it’s not because she gave them ammunition; it’s not because of race (OK, maybe race plays in, but they like her husband); it’s not because she’s do anything to offend.



My new favorite word I just learned.  Hey, this is a good word to describe Michelle Antoinette

ar·ri·viste (²-r¶-v¶st“) n. 1. A person who has recently attained high position or great power without due effort or merit; an upstart. 2. An unscrupulous, vulgar social climber; a bounder. [French, from arriver, to arrive, from Old French ariver. See ARRIVE.]

Moral Dilemmas and the “Trolley Problem”

My main line of experimental research began as an attempt to understand the “Trolley Problem,” which was originally posed by the philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson.  

    First, we have the switch dilemma:  A runaway trolley is hurtling down the tracks toward five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. You can save these five people by diverting the trolley onto a different set of tracks, one that has only one person on it, but if you do this that person will be killed. Is it morally permissible to turn the trolley and thus prevent five deaths at the cost of one?   Most people say “Yes.”Continue reading “Moral Dilemmas and the “Trolley Problem””