Cox News Service reports that Mahoud Abbas a\k\a Abu Mazen, the new Palestinian Prime Minister, advocates peace with Israel and a cessation to suicide bombing. Maybe common sense will prevail. The fact is, peaceful pursuit of Palestine's aims will put much greater pressure on Israel to accomodate. The article had an interesting mistake. It said Israel was created by the 1948 war. It was, of course, (re-)created by the United Nations.

The lack of ethics and honesty continues to be big news. American Airlines nearly lost its deal with its unions when its bonuses to executives came to light. The CEO had to resign and credibility of managment is damaged. This raises several questions. First, as a practical matter, why would you want to give bonuses to the people responsible for managing the company into near bankruptcy? This, obviously, was not a decision of the stockholders or employees, but an example of managment profiting at the expense of the company they are supposed to benefit. This is a company that paid $200 million to get its name on a sports arena in Dallas, made a $2 billion stock buy back, bought TWA on the verge of bankruptcy, payhing $742 million in cash and assuming $2 billion in debt. Talk about a spending spree. Bad stewardship is one way to describe it. Second, why do people believe they can keep something big secret? It never works. For example, did management not read the paper and see all of Enron's dirty secrets exposed? No one ever keeps a big secret long. No large group ever keeps a secret. Period. Third, didn't any of these people see that it would look bad to accept a big raise or bonus why laying off thousands of workers. Even if you had no ethical restraints, common sense should tell you this is a bad idea. Fourth, the lack of honesty is appalling. Here is my first idea: fire all the managers that tried to profit in this situation and lay off fewer flight attendants.

Then we move on to the 10 Wall Street firms and 2 stock analysts having to pay $1.4 billion to reach a settlement after directing clients to invest in companies they new were declining. It reminds you of the old joke: what does it take to make a small fortune in the stock market? A large fortune. But, again, the problem is greed and the lack of ethics and honesty.

This brings to mind the battle between the ACLU and the 10 Commandments. The ACLU, of course, want to strip the Commandments from any and all public venues. I suggest that not only do they need to be posted there, but that they need to be posted in businesses. Forget the religious implications if you want, we need to return to standards of honesty. Our business culture is becoming one of lying, cheating, and stealing. And it has a bad effect, not only on the moral fiber of the culture, but on the economy as well. People loose their money, often their savings or their retirement funds to dishonest business people. People loose their jobs. Your tax dollars are spent to help alleviate the problems. It costs you money when people in business are dishonest. Face it, God knew what he was doing.