Tilting at windmills.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and lowballing by government contractors

With heroes like these ...

It is now well known that Apple's Chinese suppliers have employees who work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and are housed in dorms with, according to the New York Times, as many as twenty people crowded into a three-room apartment. Banners on the factory walls warn: "Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow." In light of all this, it is difficult to understand why Steve Jobs has been so lionized.

And I still can't figure out why Mark Zuckerberg is treated with any respect. There is considerable evidence that Facebook was based on a stolen idea. As for Zuckerberg's pious assertion that Facebook's purpose is to "accomplish a social mission," he is of course absolutely correct. It was founded to serve the snobbery of Harvard students. I concede that it has grown to play a role in enabling friends to reconnect and keep in touch and in serving good causes as well as bad ones. For far too many of Facebook's users, however, it has turned friendship into a numbers game. Furthermore, its success is partly based on exploiting the self-absorption that has become one of the more unattractive features of modern life.

The Bain con

One of the most common tactics employed by defense and other contractors is called "lowballing." They win government contracts by making the lowest bid and then, once the work has begun and it is too late for the government to change contractors, they suddenly discover additional "unforeseen" costs that result in their having to raise prices, often well above the highest bid made by their competitors.

It turns out that Mitt Romney's firm, Bain Capital, practiced a clever variation on this con when bidding for companies it wished to acquire. Bain lodged the highest bids, and then, after winning exclusive rights to negotiate, would suddenly find "all sorts of warts, bruises and faults with the company being [acquired]," writes William D. Cohan, a Wall Street veteran and columnist for Bloomberg News. "Soon enough," he adds, "that near-final Bain bid ... would begin to fall, often significantly," and the company would have to "accept the lower price," or begin seeking a best bidder all over again.

Goldman Sachs is our compass

Similar to my qualms about Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, I am puzzled that the Human Rights Campaign appears to believe that the cause of gay marriage gains moral authority from its endorsement by Lloyd Blankfein.

Some things never change

If you're comforted by stories showing that, in some respects at least, the good old days are still with us, then you'll appreciate the latest news out of West Virginia. A 2012 candidate for sheriff in Lincoln County has, according to the Charleston Gazette, only recently emerged from prison after pleading guilty to vote-buying charges in 2005. He would replace the current sheriff, who, the Gazette also reports, has agreed to plead guilty to charges that he "manipulated absentee votes."

One SWAT too many

In another story from my hometown paper, the Gazette reports that a SWAT team from the Kanawha County Sheriff's Office has been found innocent of wrongdoing after its members managed to fire seven bullets into a hostage taker--even though he had released his hostages, they had only negotiated for two hours, and, by the way, he had not fired at them. None of this sounds exactly blameless to me. But more importantly, what on earth is the Kanawha County Sheriff's Office doing with a SWAT team in the first place?

And did you know that some local police departments now have their own drones? This is homeland security gone mad.

There's something about Marco

If you're a Democrat, worry about Marco Rubio. He seems destined to be the Republican vice presidential candidate, and he has the potential to change the...