All posts tagged: business executives

How Humanism Can Save the World

How Humanism Can Save the World

Published by skeptic

One evening not long ago, I was doomscrolling on social media, wading through the detritus of our present moment: Videos of terrorists in Israel decapitating a man with a garden hoe. A clip of Donald Trump being cruel and narcissistic. Footage of mobs physically assaulting some lone stranger they disagree with, pummeling him as he lies prone on the ground. These are all products of the rising tide of dehumanization that has swept across the world. The famous dates of our century point to this great unfolding of barbarism—September 11, 2001; January 6, 2021; October 7, 2023. The causes of this rising culture of dehumanization are almost too many to count: tribalism, racism, ideological dogmatism, social media. All this amounts to the steady evisceration of the moral norms that can make our planet a decent place to live—and their gradual substitution with distrust, aggression, and rage. Dehumanization is any way of seeing and acting that covers the human face, that refuses to recognize and respect the full dignity of each person. Then, as I was …

The Problem With Hunter Biden’s Business

The Problem With Hunter Biden’s Business

Published by skeptic

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to convert the federal prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden into a special counsel ensures that Democrats will be fielding uncomfortable questions throughout the 2024 presidential campaign. They would do well to think before they speak. Asked one such question in a television interview in May, President Joe Biden insisted, “My son’s done nothing wrong.” But is that true? It now seems quite likely that Hunter Biden has violated one or more U.S. laws. And that’s not all the wrong he has done. There is a difference between what is technically illegal and what is wrong. Some context may help explain the chasm that has opened up between the two—the gulf between what most ordinary Americans understand as corruption and the mincing definition that reigns in the professional spheres of politics, the law, and big business. Since 1987, and most recently in May of this year, a series of Supreme Court cases has relentlessly narrowed the legal definition of corruption. This is the body whose cavalier attitude toward its own ethics has …

Premarket stocks: CEOs are tired of being held responsible for gun regulation

Premarket stocks: CEOs are tired of being held responsible for gun regulation

Published by skeptic

A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link. New York CNN  —  Americans have grown used to corporate executives treading the well-worn paths of the Northeast corridor to convene alongside elected officials in Washington, DC, and discuss geopolitics, policy and all that’s in-between. In 2017, major CEOs from across the country came together to oppose North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law. In 2019, they called abortion bans “bad for business.” After the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, many of corporate America’s biggest names denounced the rioters and pledged to halt their political giving. Recently, more than 1,000 companies promised to voluntarily curtail their operations in Russia in protest of Moscow’s war on Ukraine. Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling semi-automatic, assault-style rifles at stores and Citigroup put new restrictions on gun sales by business customers after the mass shooting at a high school …