HP Forks Over $16.25 Million to Settle School Bribery Case

Yes, HP must endeavour to train its staff to follow the rules in fair business practices, afterall, we don't all KNOW instinctively that bribing someone to get confidential information isn't wrong!!!! Another example of the whoops, we got caught mentality - in other words it's OK to do this so long as you don't get caught, as in college sports, business, etc, etc!

This is really teaching these people that it is OK to lie, cheat, steal and bribe. If they do get caught then they just put their lawyers on the case and delay, delay, delay. Then when the lawyers realize that there is no way they can win the case they advise the company to pay the piper and everything is OK. Don't worry...we will still make money, just not quite as much. Of course the reason they do it is that everyone else is doing it or so they say. However, everyone else is doing it because they are doing it. So now everyone is happy. The school officials got to go to the Superbowl. The government did their job. The students got their laptops and HP is still making a fortune. Something ain't right. How about a law that says if you bribe someone to get a contract you spend a year in prison at hard labor. Then when your boss tells you to bribe someone you'll get it in writing and signed. Use that as your get out of jail card to get the real crooks higher up the chain of command. Get them in prison and make honest men out of them. Why is this happening? Why is American losing its moral compass? Why is white collar crime rampant? First probably are our laws. When a crook robs a bank with a gun he probably doesn't get much to begin with. Maybe he can support his family for a few years at most. If he's smart he knows that if he gets away he stands a chance of never being caught. However he knows it will be many years in a dirty over crowded prison if convivted.However a scam artist like Bernie Madoff can ruin thousands of peoples lives and when caught and convicted he will only get a few years in a summer camp of a prison. The Enron folks who set out to make billions from doing nothing but scamming good people are sweeping and mopping when they should be making little rocks out of big ones. It's a fact. These embezzlers and scam artists and bribers are thieves big time. They steal from the poor and give to the rich; themselves. They know they probably won't get caught, arrested or convicted. If they do they can make a deal or a trade or if old enough pull a 'Dartois' which is dieing after conviction but before serving a day. Then if they do go to prison it will be a summer camp of minimum security...a vacation of sorts. Three hots and a cot, sweep a little, mop a little and sleep a lot. So do your time and keep thinking of all those millions in that swiss account. Easy time for those who can get it. However, the biggest reason is that these men and women grew up without guidance and a good moral background. They never learned about God and the 10 Commandments. Their parents never took them to Church. Their teachers never gave them the moral guidance they needed because the state was forced to remove any resemblance of organized religion from state schools. The teachers had few morals themselves because of the same situation. University professors taught them that the only way to keep score in the business game was with dollars and that to take them from others any way they could. So cheat, steal, lie, bribe and don't get caught. Where the business community should be dealing with how many people can they help. With that profits will come and white collar crime will be only a part of history. To those that who do get caught give them real punishment so that others will not repeat the process. When your boss tells you that the only sure way to get this contract is to bribe an official then just remind him that there a lot of big rocks that are needed for road gravel. You won't do it and he had best not even suggest it.

Oops, think there might be a double negative in there somewhere - basically we DO all know bribing someone to get info is wrong, but some people just choose to ignore ethics and break the law anyway. Sorry, clarity on a Sunday morning is a tough thing to achieve!

Why don't they look into the deals that HP supposedly has with Staples? It all comes down to $$$$$$ and LACK of honesty and integrity. It is RAMPANT in this country and getting worse. One CEO is as bad as another! Just that HP seems to HIRE all the bad ones!

When I read that, after HP fired a couple of thousand employees, they reported an increased profit for the year that just happened to match the total salaries of the fired employees, I decided that I had had enough of their anti American policies. I will never buy another HP product, and as I need replacements for my present equipment, they will not be HP. (I quit buying their over priced ink cartridges long ago and refill them myself at a considerable savings.)