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POPSPlanet Robo: Population Will Exceed 1 Million Worldwide by 2010 "DO NOT TAKE A BATH WITH YOUR ROBOT WHILE JUGGLING CHAINSAWS." Best advice I’ve heard all year. But where are all of these robots? Mostly they are things like those little Roombas and Robomowers that creep in and around tech-savvy homes. The author identifies a looming problem, with military contractors driving the manufacture and spread of Robosapiens, we need to begin focusing on the ethics of their use for civilian applications. Getting a robot to identify the enemy under military situations is quite different from relying on them to patrol civilian streets. It’s no longer a great stretch to imagine robocops in patrol cars in the near future.
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POPSWhat Side Are They On? A declaration of war against common sense? What this question says, in the context of this commentary, is that anyone who stands for an ethical America is on the wrong side. When I ask the question “what side are they on?” I mean it as asking why is America becoming a terrorist nation? Why do we have to keep rehashing the ethics of torture? The common sense is that we all want an America that is free from terrorism. We are all on the same side. The common sense is that the use of torture turns the torturer into a terrorist. It can have no other effect. The common sense is that torture is not the only way to get info out of someone. There are more humane methods. We have intelligence gathering protocols in place that have been working for decades without the use of torture. Why is anyone defending the use of torture now? What has changed that now makes it okay for America to compromise its ethics?
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POPSScientific American editors decry research restrictions on GMOs Something as basic as seed to grow food, the very substance of life, necessary for the survival of every person, should not in any way be controlled by any corporation or individual. Patents for the control of plant seed is a crime against humanity designed to gain ownership of life itself.
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POPSSanford's use of state plane questioned Personal use of public property is called theft, right? This is also an ethics issue. Wasn't Sarah Palin busted and supposedly forced to pay back the cost of her misuse of government property? Government watchdogs said federal officials have to repay the cost of flying government planes for personal or campaign events and said they didn't know of a state that permitted planes to be used for such trips. State law requires the Aeronautics Division to collect and keep sworn statements from aircraft users certifying flights were for official business within 48 hours of flights. But the AP review raises questions about how South Carolina polices the use of its aircraft and reveals a system rife with shoddy record keeping and violations of laws that require the public be able to see documents. Oh, I see, this makes it easier to get away with it. Once again, if they are not watched closely, they will steal you blind.
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POPSPassing unread laws and a Useless Pledge By passing legislation without having read it congress is falling victim to the old bait and switch scam. What they end up voting on is someone else’s interpretation, i.e., synopsis of the legislation before them without being informed of everything that is in the bill. An awful lot of pork can be passed into law by the unscrupulous author of a bill who can be bought by lobbyists to include enticements for themselves into a bill that doesn’t get read by the signer. As far as this ‘pledge’ goes, it is the highly naïve person who thinks signing it will have any positive impact. The ethics and common sense of their position already dictates that they know what it is they are voting on.
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POPSPalin Hit with Another Ethics Complaint In February, Palin was required to pay back income taxes on thousands of dollars in expense money she received while living at her home overlooking Lake Lucille in Wasilla. Little more than two weeks ago she was forced to pay back the State of Alaska more than $8,100.00 for nine trips taken by her children that she had improperly charged as being part of official state business. The reason she is spending so much time fighting off ethics complaints is because she is actively performing unethical acts.
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POPSSen. Landrieu To Get Nelson Treatment Over Health Care Reform Another case of money overriding public interest. Ethics in Congress, not in our lifetime. It's literally unbelievable that when you have polling that shows that the public supports a public option for health care by enormous margins (83-14%) Congress wastes time debating it.
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POPSEnsign back in D.C.; group plans ethics complaint In yet another blow against ethics, Republican Sen. John Ensign returned to the capital today to handshakes from colleagues. What does this say of his colleagues? Do they condone his behavior? Senator John Ensign called for Bill Clinton and Larry Craig to resign over sexual misconduct, and then cheated on his wife with a married staffer. This "defender of marriage" should have the dignity to resign now. But dignity is in short supply in politics. Therefore, it is business as usual in the nations capital. Does his affair mean we cannot trust him to speak for his constituents? If nothing else, it lessens his authority on ethics issues but we already know that any talk of ethics reform from politicians is nothing more than hot air. If you cannot live up to the vows you make to your spouse in front of God then how can you be trusted to live up to your promises to the people who put you in office? The 'ole boys club' ethics wins again.
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POPSWar On You: Breaking Alternative News I agree with Ms Martens assessment. The middle class is the engine of our economy and the rich supplies the ‘fuel’ to keep it going. What we need in addition to Ms Martens suggestions is an incentive for companies to hire more people and pay a higher wage instead of allowing them to stash their earnings in foreign banks to avoid taxes. Likewise, if the rich had an incentive to work with the government to help the poor and disadvantaged there would not be such a overwhelming burden on the government to do it by itself. The benefit of living in a capitalist economy is that people can become rich. I would not disparage anyone from using this system to better themselves and their families unless they do it illegally or unethically. Ethics unfortunately is the one aspect of this system that is the most perplexing. Which is why we need regulation.
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POPS10 News photos that took retouching too far Why we can never fully trust what main stream media shows us. “People shouldn't expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the 'fringe' media.” – Ted Koppel “The press is the hired agent of a moneyed system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved.” I don’t know who the author of this quote is but it speaks an undisputable truth. Any Photoshopping that alters the meaning of the original photo should be labeled as a "news illustration" in the caption so the viewer understands the photo has been altered.
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POPSHog Giant Smithfield Transforms Eastern Europe The Virginia-based pork giant has squashed small-scale hog farming in Romania and Poland, just as it did in the United States in the 1990s. Smithfield says pork prices dropped by about one-fifth, saving consumers about $29 per year. While this is good news for us, farmers are run out of business forced to seek employment elsewhere and the new Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are creating vast open disease ridden cesspools. Unbearable stenches, and wrecked communities. They used high-level cronyism to move through the maze of the Romanian political system. This is a prime example of the poisonous downside of corporate globalization.
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POPSTime to find corporate billions kept offshore
Tax evasion is basically theft and can be secondarily considered treason. The tax system is set up to benefit the general population through maintenance of infrastructure, paying the military, paying our politicians, etc. American corporations making a profit from doing business in the U.S. and conducting their business through overseas subsidiaries to avoid U.S. tax laws are in effect stealing from the American public. This leaves the bill for these government supported services to be footed by honest tax payers. This is also an issue of morality and ethics. Corporations take and use all the benefits of living and working in America but don’t pay for the privilege. These corporations need to step up and pay their fair share of being allowed to do business in America. Politicians will never force the issue because they are benefiting from these corporations doing business here. We all need to raise our voices high and boycott those corporations that are stealing from
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POPSYou could be a terrorist if... If you are a puppet-on-a-string assiduously following every law to the letter, enthusiastically nodding in agreement to everything the government tells you, patriotically turning in your neighbors for every infraction of the law (both written and social), then you have nothing to worry about. Many Americans, Republican and Democrat, have grown tired of the direction in which this country is headed. The once occasional lapse in ethics has become common place, greed and irresponsibility by our financial institutions are being rewarded in the form of ‘bailout’ tax dollars, citizens have to watch what we say and do and how we do it, self-interest has supplanted “doing what is right for this country”, special interest groups are favored over national security and welfare, food safety has been jeopardized in favor of profit. Civil unrest is brewing and FEMA detention centers are sprouting up across the nation. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/FEMA-Concentration-Camps3sep04.htm
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