Categories underneath Motivation/Rewards/Punishments:
- Influence / Persuasion / Bribery
- Threats / Intimidation / Extortion / ...
- Unity / Common Good
Articles and Resources
Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at: Feb 04, 2013 U.S. Accuses S. & P. of Fraud in Suit on Loan Bundles
QUOTE: The Justice Department filed civil fraud charges late on Monday against the nation's largest credit-ratings agency, Standard & Poor's, accusing the firm of inflating the ratings of mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck....From September 2004 through October 2007, S.&P. "knowingly and with the intent to defraud, devised, participated in, and executed a scheme to defraud investors" in certain mortgage-related securities, according to the suit filed against the agency and its parent company, McGraw-Hill Companies. S.&P. also falsely represented that its ratings "were objective, independent, uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest," the suit said.
New York Times Dec 14, 2012 It's 'slime' time in college football
QUOTE: Western Kentucky, a school with mediocre athletics and apparently, sub-mediocre standards, has turned to a person who lied to his last employer about the nature of an accident involving the mistress he allegedly hired to a university position she was unqualified to hold.
CNN (Cable News Network) Sep 13, 2012 Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
QUOTE: the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a "turnaround specialist," a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back.... Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.
Rolling Stone Aug 16, 2012 Elections Shape Judicial Sentencing, Study Finds
QUOTE: Making sure to account for whether cases were resolved via plea bargain or trial, and the criminal history of defendants, the authors identified a 10% increase in sentence length from the start of a judge’s term to the election (or, for judges who ran opposed, to the filing deadline for running, several months earlier).
Wall Street Journal, The (WSJ) Jun 20, 2012 U.S. Push on Illegal Bias Against Hiring Those With Criminal Records
QUOTE: In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission signaled that it would begin to crack down on employers who use the criminal histories of job applicants to discriminate against them illegally....many small businesses had no idea there was anything wrong with practices like a blanket ban on hiring anybody with a criminal record.
New York Times Mar 19, 2012 A Drumbeat on Profit Takers
QUOTE: Their joint crusade, stated repeatedly in editorials for the journal and since expanded in books and dozens of articles in the lay press, is against for-profit medicine, especially its ancillary profit centers of commercial insurance and drug manufacture — in Dr. Relman’s words, “the people who are making a zillion bucks out of the commercial exploitation of medicine.”
New York Times Mar 14, 2012 Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
QUOTE: the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
New York Times Mar 06, 2012 Saints admit to 'bounty' program
QUOTE: The New Orleans Saints admitted Tuesday to paying bonuses for hits that would knock opposing players out of a game....former NBA star Charles Barkley said he had taken part in a bounty program during his basketball playing days in the 1980s.
CNN (Cable News Network) Feb 11, 2012 Dishonest doctors: Why physicians lie
QUOTE: although two-thirds of doctors agree they should share serious medical errors with their patients, one-third did not completely agree. Nearly two-fifths of the respondents said they did not disclose their financial relationships with drug and device companies. And more than 55% of physicians said they often or sometimes described a patient's prognosis in a more positive manner than the facts might support.
CNN (Cable News Network) Jan 26, 2012 For $2 a Star, an Online Retailer Gets 5-Star Product Reviews
QUOTE: As the collective wisdom of the crowd displaces traditional advertising, the roaring engines of e-commerce are being stoked by favorable reviews. The VIP deal reflects the importance merchants place on these evaluations — and the lengths to which they go to game the system. Fake reviews are drawing the attention of regulators. They have cracked down on a few firms for deceitful hyping and suspect these are far from isolated instances.
New York Times Jan 25, 2012 In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad
QUOTE: workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems....More than half of the suppliers audited by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every year since 2007, according to Apple’s reports, and in some instances have violated the law.
New York Times Nov 20, 2011 Protest Puts Coverage in Spotlight
QUOTE: Newspapers and television networks have been rebuked by media critics for treating the movement as if it were a political campaign or a sideshow — by many liberals for treating the protesters dismissively, and by conservatives, conversely, for taking the protesters too seriously. The protesters themselves have also criticized the media — first for ostensibly ignoring the movement and then for marginalizing it.
New York Times Sep 05, 2011 Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel
QUOTE: While the American government routinely eavesdrops on some embassies inside the United States, intelligence collection against allies is always politically delicate, especially one as close as Israel.
New York Times Aug 19, 2011 In California, Victims’ Families Fight for the Dead
QUOTE: The rights of families like the Tays to be heard has been a fundamental tenet of a movement since California passed its first victims’ bill of rights three decades ago — a model that has been followed by states across the nation....with a United States Supreme Court mandate in May to reduce the populations of California’s overcrowded prisons, Gov. Jerry Brown has thus far upheld 207 of the parole board’s 253 decisions to release convicted killers.
New York Times Aug 05, 2011 Ex-Lawmaker Still a Friend of Hospitals
QUOTE: House members are banned from lobbying on Capitol Hill for a year after leaving office (Mr. Pomeroy’s term ended in January), but Mr. Pomeroy, a Democrat, has teamed up with his former chief of staff, who is not subject to the restriction, as a lobbying partner.
New York Times Jul 25, 2011 This Is Considered Punishment? (Op-Ed)
QUOTE: for anyone still hoping for justice in the wake of the financial crisis, the news was hardly encouraging. First, the Fed did not force Wells Fargo to admit guilt — and even let the company issue a press release blaming its wrongdoing on a “relatively small group.” The $85 million fine was a joke; in just the last quarter, Wells Fargo’s revenues exceeded $20 billion.
New York Times Jul 07, 2011 How Bright Promise in Cancer Testing Fell Apart
QUOTE: as patients and their doctors try to make critical decisions about serious illnesses, they may be getting worthless information that is based on bad science. The scientific world is concerned enough that two prominent groups, the National Cancer Institute and the Institute of Medicine, have begun examining the Duke case; they hope to find new ways to evaluate claims based on emerging and complex analyses of patterns of genes and other molecules.
New York Times Jun 21, 2011 Wal-Mart’s Authoritarian Culture
QUOTE: The underlying issue, which the Supreme Court has now ratified, is Wal-Mart’s authoritarian style, by which executives pressure store-level management to squeeze more and more from millions of clerks, stockers and lower-tier managers. Indeed, the sex discrimination at Wal-Mart that drove the recent suit is the product not merely of managerial bias and prejudice, but also of a corporate culture and business model that sustains it, rooted in the company’s very beginnings.
New York Times Jun 17, 2011 U.S. Pressing Its Crackdown Against Leaks
QUOTE: The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents combined....The string of cases reflects a broad belief across two administrations and in both parties in Congress that leaks have gotten out of hand, endangering intelligence agents and exposing American spying methods.
New York Times May 30, 2011 Where ‘Free’ Costs a Lot
QUOTE: Although many carriers charge passengers flying with award tickets some government taxes and fees, foreign airlines are increasingly adding fuel surcharges to the bill...
New York Times May 25, 2011 Irish Church's Forgotten Victims Take Case to U.N.
QUOTE: An estimated 30,000 women were sent to church-run laundries, where they were abused and worked for years with no pay... No one has taken responsibility for what happened in the laundries.
New York Times May 21, 2011 The Gossip Machine, Churning Out Cash
QUOTE: This is how it works in the new world of round-the-clock gossip, where even a B-list celebrity’s tangle with the law can be spun into easy money, feeding the public’s seemingly bottomless appetite for dirt about the famous. A growing constellation of Web sites, magazines and television programs serve it up minute by minute, creating a river of cash for secrets of the stars, or near-stars.
New York Times May 20, 2011 States Seeking New Registries for Criminals
QUOTE: Lawmakers around the country are pushing for online registries, like those used for sex offenders, to track the whereabouts of people convicted of a wide variety of crimes, from arson and drunken driving to methamphetamine manufacturing and animal abuse....Critics say that while the registries are attractive to politicians who want to appear tough on crime, they often do little more than spread fear and encourage vigilantism.
New York Times Apr 20, 2011 Boot camp in Malaysia for effeminate boys slammed
QUOTE: An education department in one Malaysian state is sending effeminate boys to a boot camp to change their behavior… Donna Guest, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific program at Amnesty International, deplored the action, which "feeds into gender stereotyping and homophobia."
CNN (Cable News Network) Apr 20, 2011 Juvenile Killers in Jail for Life Seek a Reprieve
QUOTE: Teenagers deserved more lenient treatment than adults because they are immature, impulsive, susceptible to peer pressure and able to change for the better over time… Tammy Lotts said race figured in her stepson’s trial.
New York Times Apr 20, 2011 Stumbling Into Bad Behavior
QUOTE: They overlook transgressions — bending a rule to help a colleague, overlooking information that might damage the reputation of a client — because it is in their interest to do so… Good people unknowingly contribute to unethical actions, so reforms need to address the often hidden influences on our behavior.
New York Times Mar 27, 2011 The Dissident's Wife
QUOTE: A human rights group reports that more than a hundred bloggers and rights advocates have been interrogated or detained in connection to the “Jasmine Revolution...” The Chinese government must not be allowed to claim that China is a nation operating under the rule of law while persecuting those who try to ensure that it respects the law. And when the government silences dissent, the international community must speak up.
New York Times Mar 11, 2011 A Legal Privilege That Some Lawmakers See Broadly
QUOTE: (Steven F. Huefner) said the privilege, which is included in the United States Constitution and in many state constitutions, was designed to protect lawmakers from civil matters that would interfere with their legislative duties. “The legislative privilege should not become a get-out-of-jail-free card or escape-from-ever-being-put-in-jail card for state legislators."
New York Times Dec 22, 2010 Rape victims fear being jailed in Mauritania
QUOTE: Mahjouba was raped in March on the nighttime streets of Mauritania's capital, but she will not bring charges against the man she says did it...According to a local U.N.-funded group working with the victims, the law criminalizes the women instead of their rapists -- and society ostracizes the women.
CNN (Cable News Network) Dec 08, 2010 ‘Operation Payback’ Attacks Fell Visa.com (The Lede)
QUOTE: A group of Internet activists took credit for crashing the Visa.com Web site on Wednesday afternoon, hours after they launched a similar attack on MasterCard. The cyber attacks, by activists who call themselves Anonymous, are aimed at punishing companies that have acted to stop the flow of donations to WikiLeaks in recent days. The group explained that its distributed denial of service attacks — in which they essentially flood Web sites site with traffic to slow them down or knock them offline — were part of a broader effort called Operation Payback, which began as a way of punishing companies that attempted to stop Internet file-sharing and movie downloads.
New York Times Nov 30, 2010 Beauty Discrimination During a Job Search
QUOTE: an attractive man needs to send an average of five résumés with a photo to get one interview. An ordinary-looking man needs to send 11 résumés with a photo to get a single interview. But the apparent bias in favor of job candidates with photos didn’t hold true for women.
New York Times Nov 03, 2010 Ouster of Iowa Judges Sends Signal to Bench
QUOTE: An unprecedented vote to remove three Iowa Supreme Court justices who were part of the unanimous decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the state was celebrated by conservatives as a popular rebuke of judicial overreach, even as it alarmed proponents of an independent judiciary.
New York Times Oct 28, 2010 On Wall Street: All Reward, No Risk
QUOTE: For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Wall Street bankers, traders and executives get paid so much money year after year for doing jobs that rarely require them to innovate, enlighten or put their own capital at risk, and have the nasty habit of periodically sinking our economy.
New York Times Jul 01, 2010 Change in IRS rules could block rewards for whistleblowers
QUOTE: When information from whistleblowers helps the IRS recover unpaid taxes, the informants are entitled to as much as 30 percent of the proceeds. However, the new manual explains that the tipster is out of luck if, instead of yielding a payment to the IRS, the tip stops a refund or reduces a credit.
Washington Post Jun 30, 2010 The Good Driller Award
QUOTE: as long as we continue to drill for oil and mine for coal, we must do everything we can to make those industries safer. That includes not just tough, well-enforced regulations, economic liabilities and criminal penalties for companies that prove too dangerous, but also positive incentives and public rewards for those that put safety first.
New York Times Jun 26, 2010 Gen. McChrystal allies, Rolling Stone disagree over article's ground rules
QUOTE: McChrystal had been relieved of his command, his 34-year military career in tatters...officials close to McChrystal began trying to salvage his reputation by asserting that the author, Michael Hastings, quoted the general and his staff in conversations that he was allowed to witness but not report.
Washington Post Jun 17, 2010 Obama’s Twist of BP’s Arm Stirs Debate on Frequent Tactic
QUOTE: President Obama’s successful move to force BP to establish a $20 billion compensation fund that the company will have no voice in allocating — just a down payment, the president insisted — may have been the most vivid example of what he recently called his determination to step in and do “what individuals couldn’t do and corporations wouldn’t do.” With that display of raw arm-twisting, Mr. Obama reinvigorated a debate about the renewed reach of government power, or, alternatively, the power of government overreach.
New York Times May 27, 2010 Anti-whaling activist goes on trial in Japan
QUOTE: Bethune's case is the first time a Sea Shepherd activist has been tried in a Japanese criminal court in the group's long-running battle with Japan's whalers in the icy waters of the Antarctic. Japan annually hunts whales in the Antarctic, despite a worldwide moratorium on whaling, under the loophole that a country may legally do so if its purpose is scientific research.
CNN (Cable News Network) May 26, 2010 Electronics Maker Promises Review After Suicides
QUOTE: “Foxconn’s production line system is designed so well that no worker will rest even one second during work; they make sure you’re always busy for every second,” says Li Qiang, executive director of the China Labor Watch, a New York-based labor rights group. “Foxconn only values the enterprise benefits but totally ignores the social benefits.” Those claims have been bolstered in recent weeks by some of China’s state-run newspapers, which have published a series of sensational reports about the suicides, alongside exposés detailing what they claim are the harsh conditions inside Foxconn factories.
New York Times May 24, 2010 For Children in Sports, a Breaking Point
QUOTE: Encouraged by parents and coaches, many with visions of glory and scholarships, too many young athletes are being pushed — or are pushing themselves — to the point of breaking down, physically and sometimes emotionally.
New York Times May 22, 2010 Lies as Wishes
QUOTE: “I think that lies are like wishes,” said Bella DePaulo, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “So when you wish you were a certain kind of person that you know you’re not, and maybe you’re not willing to do what it would take to become that person or can’t go back, then it becomes very tempting to lie.”
New York Times May 21, 2010 Defiant Judge Takes On Child Pornography Law
QUOTE: the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated a 20-year child pornography sentence by ruling that the sentencing guidelines for such cases, “unless applied with great care, can lead to unreasonable sentences.” The decision noted that the recommended sentences for looking at pictures of children being sexually abused sometimes eclipse those for actually sexually abusing a child.
New York Times May 21, 2010 Sure, It’s Big. But Is That Bad?
QUOTE: “The government is finally onto the notion that they have to start asking questions about Google,” he said. “Google started off saying they were going to treat everything on the Web neutrally. That is the basis on which they secured dominance. And now they’ve changed the rules.”
New York Times May 17, 2010 Extended Civil Commitment of Sex Offenders Is Upheld
QUOTE: In a broad endorsement of federal power, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Congress has the authority under the Constitution to allow the continued civil commitment of sex offenders after they have completed their criminal sentences. The 7-to-2 decision touched off a heated debate among the justices on a question that has lately engaged the Tea Party movement and opponents of the new health care law: What limits does the Constitution impose on Congress’s power to legislate on matters not specifically delegated to it in Article I?
New York Times May 16, 2010 Afghan reconciliation strategy should reflect Pashtun culture
QUOTE: Conflicts start because of an insult to a tribe's honor, which requires a rite of revenge known as badal. The fighting continues until scores are settled and the combatants are exhausted. It's the mechanism of conflict resolution that's intriguing, in terms of U.S. strategy. Reconciliation begins with a process of repentance...
Washington Post Apr 23, 2010 Jury verdict hits Boy Scouts with $18.5 million in punitive damages
QUOTE: An Oregon jury on Friday found the Boy Scouts of America liable for the sexual abuse of a 12-year-old boy more than 25 years ago, returning a verdict of $18.5 million in punitive damages....alleged that though the scout leader was removed, he was allowed to stay on as a volunteer and the abuse continued.
CNN (Cable News Network) Apr 21, 2010 Nike’s Women Problem (Opinionator)
QUOTE: Is there anything creepier than a big, beer-breathed celebrity athlete exposing himself in a night club and hitting on underage girls, all the while protected by an entourage of off-duty cops? Well, yes. It’s the big, corporate sponsor — Nike, in this case — that continues trying to sell product with the creep as their role model.
New York Times Mar 29, 2010 Reputations at stake, companies try to alter word of mouth online
QUOTE: Liu said Yelp's salespeople phoned repeatedly, telling her that if she advertised on the site, negative reviews would move lower on Scion's page and positive reviews would move up. Liu decided to fight back, joining nine other businesses this month in a class-action lawsuit against Yelp alleging similar tactics -- claims that Yelp executives deny.
Washington Post Feb 27, 2010 Inquiry sought into disappearance of e-mails in interrogations case
QUOTE: Senior Democratic lawmakers and watchdog groups demanded Friday that the Justice Department investigate the disappearance of e-mail messages written by Bush administration lawyers who drafted memos blessing harsh interrogation tactics, saying their absence cast doubt on an ethics report that cleared the lawyers of professional misconduct.
Washington Post Feb 18, 2010 Girl's arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance
QUOTE: "We are arresting them at younger and younger ages [in cases] that used to be covered with a trip to the principal's office, not sending children to jail," said Emma Jordan-Simpson, executive director of the Children's Defense Fund, a national children's advocacy group.
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