Christmas: A U.S. National Holiday Privatized by Logical Fallacy and Passive Aggression

On December 18, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order, the first section of which states, “All executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall be closed and their employees excused from duty on Monday, December 24, 2018, the day before Christmas Day.” Christmas itself had not been an official federal holiday until an Act of Congress was signed by President Ulysses S. Grant in June, 1870. That Act also declared New Year’s Day and the 4^th of July would be national holidays too, yet by the 21^st century a significant number of Americans, and especially business managers, were committing a gaping category mistake by treating Christmas as not commensurate with the other two holidays as public holidays. By Christmas in 2018, the self-ingratiating “mistake” was still not transparent. Hence, this essay.

The full essay is at "Relegating the U.S. Holiday of Christmas by Fallacy and Passive Aggression."

On the Ethics of Legislating

The means by which a bill becomes a law are sometimes referred to “how sausage gets made” because they are not suited for public display.  The belief is that were the citizens to see what goes on in the process, they would demand that it be changed. Perhaps this means that it should be changed.

The full essay is at "On the Ethics of Legislating."

Stockholders Retain Wells Fargo’s Board: A Low Bar for Corporate Governance

Corporate governance is supposed to hold management accountable. Slack in the mechanism enables not only a lack of managerial competence or ethics, but also an ineffectual board. Unfortunately, whether by proxies or connections—or just sheer power—a board’s chair and other directors can remain in place in spite of having failed to hold a management accountable. Put another way, it is not necessarily enough that an incompetent or unethical management (and other employees) is removed; replacing the derelict board may be more crucial and yet even more difficult.

The full essay is at "Wells Fargo Stockholders Retain Board"