James Yue's Comm 101 Blog

Political scandals, corporate scandals and celebrity scandals; we’ve heard them all. Surely, you would expect a corporation designed to invest their resources into green energy for the betterment of society would be void of these reputation-tainting claims.

The federal-backed loan of a whopping $535 million to Solyndra, a solar energy company that manufactures solar panels and other products, is now being held under investigation for partaking in accounting fraud. On top of being probed by the FBI, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy on September 6, 2011 while also slashing 1000 jobs after promising the Obama Administration that it would be generating about 4000 more.

The authorization of the loan by the Obama Administration’s  will now prompt much inquiries and harsh criticisms by the GOP. As well, one of the major investors of the solar company was Obama’s prime contributors in his 2008 election, George Kaiser. One could stir up political controversy by merely saying that Kaiser played a role in influencing and speeding up the process of the federal loan to take place. But who is really to say? The public of course has every right to be concerned now that their very own tax dollars have gone to the waste of a seemingly prospective renewable energy company

Speaking of airport security and the deprivation of freedom of privacy, Oscar Lai discussed about the Obama’s Administration implementation of the “Pre-Check” program in order to lessen the hassle for traveling passengers. However, the catch is that this ‘benefit’ only applies to U.S. citizens who are willing to give up their personal information which may include background to previous flights

From the flier’s perspective, providing this information impulsively means that their personal data is being handed over to the government at the expense of getting to their planes quicker. Just recently at the International Air Transport Association Aviation Security conference held in Amsterdam, the “checkpoint of the future”, is a new form of security that will soon remove the pat-down altogether. There are three passageways categorized in terms of the level of risk the passengers according to their background information

Although still faced with technology-based difficulties and financial obscurities, this is a pressing step forward to allow swifter security checks and avoid personal conflicts between security personnel and fliers. Despite the attractive emergence of technology to ease troubles in our daily lives, this security protocol may insinuate that each distinct tunnel labels people which brings forth the issue of profiling

Netflix’s shift in dividing its usual DVD mail services and streaming services has garnered much attention from consumers and critics as to why this decision was set in stone. Many inquisitive Americans are now trying to figure out why they must pay two different bills and access streaming services and DVD-by-mail through two different websites creating inconvenience. CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, had a simple good humoured answer: “It’s all the Canadians’ fault”.

Canada’s Netflix is only restricted to streaming services, which was the company’s initial plan to observe how well the market for streaming services were in the North. However, placing the burden on Canada for its feasible success in streaming only services seems to place a negative connotation for the fact that Canada has helped the company realize that the demand for streaming is superior to its counterparts.

The spin off subsidiary of Netflix, Qwikster is now being adopted as a rather smart accounting decision to try and dismiss itself from the DVD niche altogether. Understanding that the demand for DVDs were decreasing, Qwikster serves as a company purposed to herald the downfall of this service in a cost-efficient manner without largely harming the brand image of Netflix.

Known for their impressive stance in the information technology industry, IBM also has an ulterior motive in maximizing profits while handing corporate executives that extra bonus they ever so deserve. According to many speculations, the multinational tech firm has reportedly laid off an estimate of 10,000 employees in the year of 2009. The company has been blamed incessantly because of its offshore hiring in locations such as India, China and Brazil. The man heavily responsible for these unfortunate self-interested employment losses in North America is the CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano. While employment in IBM is dwindling, Palmisano’s is gladly enjoying his whopping $21 million in compensation with $4 million in bonus.

Is it even just for the CEO of an infamous IT company to receive a large sum of money while only driving revenues up by  a mere 5% from 2007 to 2008? Where’s the appreciation to the employees who aided in creating IBM’s stature and success today? They were the framework to the corporation’s current status, yet now the hands are being dealt over to foreign workers who are being paid as little as possible. But save the empathy and feelings for another time because to them its just “business as usual”