Are CPA Firms Finally Being Held to Account for the Financial Meltdown? Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd, the world's largest accounting and consulting firm, was accused on September 26 of failing to detect fraud during its audits of one of the biggest private mortgage firms to collapse during the U.S. housing... Read more →
Standardized Testing is not the Answer This is the third in a three-part series of blogs on declining student performance in our schools. In the first blog I pointed out that the mean SAT reading scores of U.S. high school students have fallen to their lowest levels in nearly 40... Read more →
The Ethics of Capital Punishment Troy Anthony Davis was executed on September 21 having exhausted all avenues of appeal of his death sentence in August 1991. Davis allegedly murdered police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. MacPhail was working as a security guard at a Burger King restaurant when he... Read more →
The Ethics of School Accountability In my last blog I pointed out that the mean SAT reading scores of U.S. high schoolers have fallen to their lowest levels in nearly 40 years, dropping four points in the last four years to 497. Furthermore, only 43 percent of test takers achieved... Read more →
No Child Left Behind is a Failure This is the first of a three-part series of blogs on the state of our educational system. In this blog I look at the recent decline in SAT scores and whether the No Child Left Behind program has worked. In the next blog... Read more →
UCLA and Milken’s Gift By Steven Mintz Today's blog first appeared as an opinion editorial in the Pacific Coast Business Times that covers businesses in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. When UCLA announced a $10 million gift from Lowell Milken to establish a business law institute in... Read more →
SEC Has Lost its Moral Authority to Regulate Securities Markets Perhaps you heard that a not-for-profit group co-founded by a Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer used his name to raise thousands of dollars from law firms that represent clients before the agency. According to an article by Jessica Holzer posted... Read more →
Blame it on Social Media? For the eighth straight year no American male won the coveted U.S. Open, the grandest prize of them all in tennis. Andy Roddick won it in 2003. Pete Sampras in 2002 on his way to a record-setting 16th Grand Slam Title. What happened to the... Read more →
Who is Winning the Culture War? The term “culture wars” dates back to a 1991 book by academic James Davison Hunter who argued that cultural issues touching on family and religious values, feminism, gay rights, race, guns, and abortion had redefined American politics. Going forward, bitter conflicts around these issues... Read more →
Cyber-bullying as a Form of Discrimination Threatens Young People I have previously blogged about the use of social media as a tool for cyber-bullying. The Cyberbullying Research Center defines cyber-bullying as "willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices." Numerous examples exist... Read more →