At the beginning of each issue of Howard S. Katz's financial newsletter, the One-Handed Economist, he offers a poem. Here is the poem from the January 11 issue, which is on his website:
In gold your wealth you now should park.
It hit 900 dollar mark.
Upon Filet mignon we sup
Cause price of gold is going up.
Oh, Ben Bernanake gets no thanks
He only wants to help the banks
He takes advantage of the rubes
And US dollar-down the tubes.
Yes, US dollar sinking fast
The other nations are aghast
The more they print, now don't you know,
The lower does its value go.
And as the dollar hits new lows,
Now into gold the money flows.
Yes, gold stocks, gold stocks, buy, buy, buy.
Gold stocks are going to the sky.
Model portfolio, good news
About our profits we enthuse.
And on this subject I can say,
This week we hit $200 K.
Oh Ben Bernanke he is bad.
He steals our wealth and makes us mad.
So people you must all be bold.
And buy those mining stocks of gold.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Individualist Ethics and Corporate Social Control
The history of human resource management has evolved from an individualist/conflictual approach where wage cuts followed by strikes were common. As employers started to realize that violent strikes were counterproductive, they implemented three approaches. One, scientific management and welfare capitalism, aimed for a "mental revolution" among labor and management whereby workers' aims were aligned with management's through incentives and employee benefits. A second approach was a bureaucratic approach whereby laws, rules and union agreements established a high degree of formal control through regulation and collective bargaining. However, by the 1930s employers had realized that a third approach, emotive manipulation or social control through managing workers' feelings, attitudes and ethical beliefs had the potential for a more complete influence. This theory was related to Progressivism, which, as McFarland has argued, followed an earlier attempt by the Mugwumps to establish professional standards, credentials and licensure in such fields as medicine, law, economic policy, public health and library science. The Mugwumps were most concerned with rationalization of the public sector.
The Mugwumps had earlier demonstrated that an organized movement, even if small in numbers, that utilized mass media to unify and focus the movement, could result in effective political action. The Progressives utilized this approach. The argument that labor relations could be improved through psychological methods followed the muckrakers and Herbert Croly's emphasis on the use of public power and mass movements to recreate democracy.
The shift to emphasis on psychological and social control, via the management theories of Elton Mayo and Chester Barnard, was a reflection of the Progressive movement's tactical application of the same principles for public influence. The Progressives emphasized moral relativism to combat the American religious tendency toward individual conscience. They utilized the groupthink approach that Mugwumps pioneered. They realized that to manipulate the public, understanding of the public's group processes was necessary. Thus, the progressives applied the welfare benefit approach that local political clubs had used for centuries, but nationalized it and rationalized it.
The Mugwumps had earlier demonstrated that an organized movement, even if small in numbers, that utilized mass media to unify and focus the movement, could result in effective political action. The Progressives utilized this approach. The argument that labor relations could be improved through psychological methods followed the muckrakers and Herbert Croly's emphasis on the use of public power and mass movements to recreate democracy.
The shift to emphasis on psychological and social control, via the management theories of Elton Mayo and Chester Barnard, was a reflection of the Progressive movement's tactical application of the same principles for public influence. The Progressives emphasized moral relativism to combat the American religious tendency toward individual conscience. They utilized the groupthink approach that Mugwumps pioneered. They realized that to manipulate the public, understanding of the public's group processes was necessary. Thus, the progressives applied the welfare benefit approach that local political clubs had used for centuries, but nationalized it and rationalized it.
Sharad Karkhanis--Man of The Year
I just put up Phil Orenstein's press release concerning the Queens Village Republicans' award to Sharad Karkhanis as "Educator of the Year". I have decided that Sharad should also be awarded "Man of the Year". I am hereby designating him the first official recipient of Mitchell Langbert's blog's Man of the Year award. Who needs Time?
Sharad Karkhanis Wins Educator of the Year
Free Speech For Sharad
For Immediate Press Release Contact: Phil Orenstein January ?, 2008 (917) 620-2663 Email: maduroman@att.net
CUNY EMERITUS PROFESSOR FIGHTING DEFAMATION LAWSUIT TO BE HONERED AS EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR
Dr. Sharad Karkhanis will be honored as the Educator of the Year for his distinguished scholarship and the courageous battle he is presently waging against an unprecedented legal assault on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in a repressive urban academic environment. The awards presented at the annual Lincoln Day Dinner at Antun’s in Queens Village, sponsored by the Queens Village Republican Club, are designed to celebrate outstanding contributions to the greater good of the New York community. The Club, the oldest GOP group in America founded in 1875, stands behind Dr. Karkhanis’s battle for his constitutional rights and has allotted 5% of each Dinner ticket sold to be donated to his defense fund, “Free Speech for Sharad” to help defray the legal bills.
The Dinner program will feature a number of noteworthy and controversial speakers and honorees besides Dr. Karkhanis. Queensborough Community College History Professor and Lincoln scholar Gerald Matacotta will revive the historical tradition of the annual Abraham Lincoln Address with a presentation bringing Lincoln’s moral principles into focus on our present day state of affairs. Queens Village resident Major Jeffery R. Calero, who perished in Afghanistan in November when an IED detonated while he was on combat patrol, will be honored posthumously with the Ultimate Sacrifice Award to be presented to his fiancée, parents and siblings. Michael P. Ricatto, successful entrepreneur and founder of Better Leadership America, which advocates for a safer and more secure America, will be receiving the Businessman of the Year Award for his passion to give back to the New York community something greater, in appreciation for the opportunities he was afforded in America. Jeffery S. Wiesenfeld, City University of New York Trustee, who advocates improving academic standards at CUNY will speak on: “The poisoning of our next generation by our academics throughout our nation.” The keynote speaker will be George J. Marlin, author and former Mayoral candidate and Director of NY and NJ Port Authorities, will address the topic: “Is there a future for New York Republicans and Conservatives.
Dr. Karkhanis Professor Emeritus of Political Science from Kingsborough Community College (KCC), is presently being sued for defamation in a $2 million lawsuit filed by fellow professor and union official, Susan O’Malley (aka: Susan Gushee O’Malley) accusing him of making recent defamatory statements in his email newsletter The Patriot Returns, 13,000 issues of which he has been regularly distributing to CUNY faculty since 1992. Dr. Karkhanis has often criticized the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the CUNY faculty union leadership for mismanagement of funds and has lambasted Professor O’Malley for trying to land teaching jobs for convicted terrorists at CUNY, writing that she has an “obsession with finding jobs for terrorists” and is trying to “recruit terrorists” to teach within the CUNY system. The lawsuit charges that such statements are defamatory.
Ever since he first criticized her in 1995, Professor O’Malley, former chair of the University Faculty Senate (UFS) and PSC executive committee member, has been trying to silence Dr. Karkhanis, since his reporting has been hurting her re-election campaigns for union and University Faculty Senate (UFS) seats (Patriot 3/22/95). “In December, Prof. O'Malley ordered Sharad to stop the publication of the Patriot. Does Prof. O'Malley realize that KCC Campus is neither the Gulag of Marxist Russia nor is it a Nazi concentration camp…understand that Sharad is a free man - free to speak, free to write, free to talk to anyone… There is nothing you can or anyone else can do about this.” (Patriot 3/19/96)
In 1997 Dr. Karkhanis received two death threats at KCC, which he believed to be coming from a faculty member of KCC or CUNY who wants to shut down the Patriot. The FBI launched an investigation and campus security protected him while on campus and he had the service of a bodyguard whenever he went off campus.
In the April 2000 CUNY union elections the “New Caucus” took control of the PSC, and the Patriot has been their watchdog ever since. The Patriot exposed the leadership’s excessive involvement in political activities, funding radical causes and supporting the legal defense of convicted terrorists and criminals with the member’s dues, while the union Welfare Fund that members rely upon for medical benefits nearly vanished. The Patriot reported, “under New Caucus stewardship the WF Reserves have dropped from $15,000,000 to below $2,000,000.” The PSC leadership has organized and funded such radical pressure groups as, “New York City Labor Against the War” and “Labor for Palestine”, donated $5000 to support the legal defense of Lori Berenson, in prison for aiding Marxist Shining Path terrorists in Peru, and donated a sizable amount for the defense of Sami Al-Arian convicted of conspiracy to aid terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. After the 9/11 attacks, the PSC organized anti-war teach-ins on CUNY campuses blaming the attacks on “American Imperialism” at one of the events, and mobilized its membership to protest the Republican Party at its National Convention in the city in 2004. Since they have been in power, the Patriot has monitored the PSC leadership’s failure to negotiate a satisfactory contract for CUNY faculty members while spending a considerable amount of $60 million in collected dues money on irrelevant and dangerous political causes.
Recent issues of the Patriot have targeted O’Malley’s tireless efforts to find teaching positions at CUNY for convicted terrorist conspirator Mohammad Yousry, and Susan Rosenberg, convicted Weather Underground terrorist, sentenced to a 58 year prison term for the possession of 700 pounds of dynamite. Karkhanis wrote satirically: “There are hundreds of qualified people looking for teaching jobs. Why does she prefer convicted terrorists who are bent on harming our people and our nation, over peace-loving Americans?” (Patriot 3/12/07)
On September 28, O’Malley filed a lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court seeking $2 million in monetary damages for wrongful statements published in the Patriot and a permanent ban on the future publication of offensive material against the plaintiff. In a subsequent interview in the New York Sun concerning the lawsuit, O’Malley said: “It’s all very, very silly.” After Karkhanis refused to be intimidated into silence by the threat of a costly lawsuit, the formal legal complaint, Susan O’Malley v. Sharad Karkhanis, John Doe and Jane Doe was filed on December 21, 2007.
One week prior to filing the formal charges, O’Malley lost two UFS seats by more than 50% of the vote in the KCC elections held for campus senator and alternate. This is the first time since 1980 she has been voted out of her UFS office. It appears that these election defeats dealt a humiliating blow to O’Malley by fellow KCC faculty who may be loosing respect for her due to the frivolous nature of the lawsuit. CUNY faculty have argued that such matters of dispute between colleagues should be dealt with in a collegial setting within the CUNY system rather than making it public in a court of law with frivolous charges and outrageous monetary claims.
• Special accommodations for the press will be made at the Dinner event at Antun’s.
• Regularly updated news and information on Dr. Karkhanis’ case can be accessed from the Free Speech at CUNY Website. http://freespeechcuny.blogspot.com/
• The Patriot Returns archives can be accessed at: http://www.patriotreturns.com
• The formal legal complaint: Susan O’Malley v. Sharad Karkhanis, John Doe and Jane Doe is posted on Professor Mitchell Langbert’s blog: http://mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com/2007/12/susan-omalley-v-sharad-karkhanis-john.html
[[END OF RELEASE]]
For Immediate Press Release Contact: Phil Orenstein January ?, 2008 (917) 620-2663 Email: maduroman@att.net
CUNY EMERITUS PROFESSOR FIGHTING DEFAMATION LAWSUIT TO BE HONERED AS EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR
Dr. Sharad Karkhanis will be honored as the Educator of the Year for his distinguished scholarship and the courageous battle he is presently waging against an unprecedented legal assault on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in a repressive urban academic environment. The awards presented at the annual Lincoln Day Dinner at Antun’s in Queens Village, sponsored by the Queens Village Republican Club, are designed to celebrate outstanding contributions to the greater good of the New York community. The Club, the oldest GOP group in America founded in 1875, stands behind Dr. Karkhanis’s battle for his constitutional rights and has allotted 5% of each Dinner ticket sold to be donated to his defense fund, “Free Speech for Sharad” to help defray the legal bills.
The Dinner program will feature a number of noteworthy and controversial speakers and honorees besides Dr. Karkhanis. Queensborough Community College History Professor and Lincoln scholar Gerald Matacotta will revive the historical tradition of the annual Abraham Lincoln Address with a presentation bringing Lincoln’s moral principles into focus on our present day state of affairs. Queens Village resident Major Jeffery R. Calero, who perished in Afghanistan in November when an IED detonated while he was on combat patrol, will be honored posthumously with the Ultimate Sacrifice Award to be presented to his fiancée, parents and siblings. Michael P. Ricatto, successful entrepreneur and founder of Better Leadership America, which advocates for a safer and more secure America, will be receiving the Businessman of the Year Award for his passion to give back to the New York community something greater, in appreciation for the opportunities he was afforded in America. Jeffery S. Wiesenfeld, City University of New York Trustee, who advocates improving academic standards at CUNY will speak on: “The poisoning of our next generation by our academics throughout our nation.” The keynote speaker will be George J. Marlin, author and former Mayoral candidate and Director of NY and NJ Port Authorities, will address the topic: “Is there a future for New York Republicans and Conservatives.
Dr. Karkhanis Professor Emeritus of Political Science from Kingsborough Community College (KCC), is presently being sued for defamation in a $2 million lawsuit filed by fellow professor and union official, Susan O’Malley (aka: Susan Gushee O’Malley) accusing him of making recent defamatory statements in his email newsletter The Patriot Returns, 13,000 issues of which he has been regularly distributing to CUNY faculty since 1992. Dr. Karkhanis has often criticized the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the CUNY faculty union leadership for mismanagement of funds and has lambasted Professor O’Malley for trying to land teaching jobs for convicted terrorists at CUNY, writing that she has an “obsession with finding jobs for terrorists” and is trying to “recruit terrorists” to teach within the CUNY system. The lawsuit charges that such statements are defamatory.
Ever since he first criticized her in 1995, Professor O’Malley, former chair of the University Faculty Senate (UFS) and PSC executive committee member, has been trying to silence Dr. Karkhanis, since his reporting has been hurting her re-election campaigns for union and University Faculty Senate (UFS) seats (Patriot 3/22/95). “In December, Prof. O'Malley ordered Sharad to stop the publication of the Patriot. Does Prof. O'Malley realize that KCC Campus is neither the Gulag of Marxist Russia nor is it a Nazi concentration camp…understand that Sharad is a free man - free to speak, free to write, free to talk to anyone… There is nothing you can or anyone else can do about this.” (Patriot 3/19/96)
In 1997 Dr. Karkhanis received two death threats at KCC, which he believed to be coming from a faculty member of KCC or CUNY who wants to shut down the Patriot. The FBI launched an investigation and campus security protected him while on campus and he had the service of a bodyguard whenever he went off campus.
In the April 2000 CUNY union elections the “New Caucus” took control of the PSC, and the Patriot has been their watchdog ever since. The Patriot exposed the leadership’s excessive involvement in political activities, funding radical causes and supporting the legal defense of convicted terrorists and criminals with the member’s dues, while the union Welfare Fund that members rely upon for medical benefits nearly vanished. The Patriot reported, “under New Caucus stewardship the WF Reserves have dropped from $15,000,000 to below $2,000,000.” The PSC leadership has organized and funded such radical pressure groups as, “New York City Labor Against the War” and “Labor for Palestine”, donated $5000 to support the legal defense of Lori Berenson, in prison for aiding Marxist Shining Path terrorists in Peru, and donated a sizable amount for the defense of Sami Al-Arian convicted of conspiracy to aid terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. After the 9/11 attacks, the PSC organized anti-war teach-ins on CUNY campuses blaming the attacks on “American Imperialism” at one of the events, and mobilized its membership to protest the Republican Party at its National Convention in the city in 2004. Since they have been in power, the Patriot has monitored the PSC leadership’s failure to negotiate a satisfactory contract for CUNY faculty members while spending a considerable amount of $60 million in collected dues money on irrelevant and dangerous political causes.
Recent issues of the Patriot have targeted O’Malley’s tireless efforts to find teaching positions at CUNY for convicted terrorist conspirator Mohammad Yousry, and Susan Rosenberg, convicted Weather Underground terrorist, sentenced to a 58 year prison term for the possession of 700 pounds of dynamite. Karkhanis wrote satirically: “There are hundreds of qualified people looking for teaching jobs. Why does she prefer convicted terrorists who are bent on harming our people and our nation, over peace-loving Americans?” (Patriot 3/12/07)
On September 28, O’Malley filed a lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court seeking $2 million in monetary damages for wrongful statements published in the Patriot and a permanent ban on the future publication of offensive material against the plaintiff. In a subsequent interview in the New York Sun concerning the lawsuit, O’Malley said: “It’s all very, very silly.” After Karkhanis refused to be intimidated into silence by the threat of a costly lawsuit, the formal legal complaint, Susan O’Malley v. Sharad Karkhanis, John Doe and Jane Doe was filed on December 21, 2007.
One week prior to filing the formal charges, O’Malley lost two UFS seats by more than 50% of the vote in the KCC elections held for campus senator and alternate. This is the first time since 1980 she has been voted out of her UFS office. It appears that these election defeats dealt a humiliating blow to O’Malley by fellow KCC faculty who may be loosing respect for her due to the frivolous nature of the lawsuit. CUNY faculty have argued that such matters of dispute between colleagues should be dealt with in a collegial setting within the CUNY system rather than making it public in a court of law with frivolous charges and outrageous monetary claims.
• Special accommodations for the press will be made at the Dinner event at Antun’s.
• Regularly updated news and information on Dr. Karkhanis’ case can be accessed from the Free Speech at CUNY Website. http://freespeechcuny.blogspot.com/
• The Patriot Returns archives can be accessed at: http://www.patriotreturns.com
• The formal legal complaint: Susan O’Malley v. Sharad Karkhanis, John Doe and Jane Doe is posted on Professor Mitchell Langbert’s blog: http://mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com/2007/12/susan-omalley-v-sharad-karkhanis-john.html
[[END OF RELEASE]]
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
