Dale and Mike Parak were twin brothers and best friends. They spent their entire lives looking out for each other’s interests. While growing up, the two were inseparable. They played sports together, double-dated frequently, and attended the same university. They grew closer as they aged, they got married at about the same time, and eventually, both were divorced. After they retired from their jobs, they decided to live together to save money, and they still enjoyed each other’s company.

When he was 70 years old, Mike was diagnosed with cancer. Doctors predicted that he had about 6 months to live. The brothers agreed that Mike should not suffer. Mike and Dale wrote and signed a note stating that they decided to commit suicide. Dale broke 20 tranquilizers into Mike’s evening meal and watched as he ate it. Yet, when Dale checked on Mike one hour later, Mike was still alive. Dale panicked. He took a .38-caliber revolver from his desk and shot Mike, killing him instantly. Dale then went into the kitchen and took a handful of tranquilizers. He did not die. He awoke the next morning as somebody pounded on the front door. It was a neighbor who, seeing that Dale was dazed and confused, decided to call an ambulance and the police.

The responding police officer conducted an investigation, and Dale was arrested and charged with the premeditated, 1st-degree murder of Mike. The prosecutor, although noting it to be a difficult case, pursued the case because she thought that no citizen had the right to decide when someone should die. Dale Parak pled guilty to 1st-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 5 years in a maximum-security prison. (Note: This was the lowest sentence that could be given to a defendant convicted of his crime.)

• What is your personal definition of “justice”? What is the formal definition of “justice”? Do you believe that “justice” was served in this scenario?
• What is the state definition of the charge that you would file as the prosecutor against Dale? Did Dale commit each of the components and elements of the crime? The elements for 1st-degree, premeditated murder are 1) the unlawful killing; 2) with malice aforethought; 3) of another human being. Explain how each element was or was not committed.
• According to the definition of justice you provided, was this sentence just? Why or why not?
• If you were the prosecutor in this case, would you have charged Dale Parak with any crime? With 1st-degree murder? Why?
• If you were the judge in this case, how would you have sentenced Dale Parak? Why?

Individual Project 500- 750 words

Diversity Training Manual: Part II

As the new human resources manager, you are now ready to complete the next section of a diversity training manual that is targeted at making your workforce supervisors more aware of current racial diversity issues (e.g., the dramatic increase in the Hispanic percentage of the workforce) and how the supervisors should address them. The goal is to reduce potential tensions in the workplace among employees of different races.

Part II is to be titled, Historical Issues of Different Races in the Workplace and How to Handle Them.

This section should discuss the following: 

• Different races now or likely to be in the workforce of the future, based on the U.S. populations racial demographic changes
• Particular issues that create tensions among the different groups
• How supervisors need to address these issues that could potentially cause ten

Reading Assignment: Kossek & Lobel chapters3,6,15.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Discussion Board  150-250 words

As the manager of human resources (HR) in a medium-size company that is involved with several Affirmative Action initiatives, you have noticed that the racial makeup of your workforce has an increasing number of multiracial employees (or workers who are the offspring of a biracial couple). You are wondering how these employees should be counted in any kind of attempt to implement Affirmative Action.

In other words, if future hiring is meant to make the workforce relatively proportionate to the population’s racial mix, should workers who are, for example, offspring of an African-American mother and a Caucasian father be counted as White, African-American, or neither? Explain your answer.

Discuss the following information:

• The trend being seen in the general population in terms of people who could be characterized as biracial.
• Study the following table and comment on the views of multiracial people regarding Affirmative Action found  

  Interviewees’ Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action

  View on Affirmative Action	Overall
  Pro-AA and in favor of biracial persons qualifying	58%
  Mixed feelings about AA but believe all biracial persons should qualify	23%
  Pro-AA but unsure whether or not biracial persons who appear white should qualify	4%
  Pro-AA but believe biracial persons who appear white should not qualify	4%
  Opposed to AA but believe biracial persons should qualify as long as it exists	11.5%

  (Korgen, 1999)

• How do you think biracial people should be counted in terms of Affirmative Action initiatives? Explain your answer from an objective perspective. This should be the main focus in your discussion.

Reference

Korgen, K. O. (1999). From black to biracial: Transforming racial identity among Americans. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood.

its 2 pages long. you need to read the atachment below and follow it. The news has to be from Dec12 to Dec17th. Dont write 2 news in the same day.

Case study: Audit Client Considerations

Lanny Beaudean joined the CPA firm of Cardinal & Coyote LLP in 2008 after working for two years for the IRS in Phoenix, Arizona. The firm is a second-tier CPA firm just below the Big Four in size. Beaudean had passed all four parts of the CPA Exam in Arizona and decided to work for a locally based CPA firm with international clients to gain a broad base of experience that might help him become a CFO at a public company in the future. Beaudean has been advancing rapidly and just became a senior at Cardinal & Coyote.

Yancy Corliss is a new audit partner at Cardinal & Coyote. One day Corliss was summoned to the office of Sharon Rules, the managing partner of the firm. Rules told Corliss that she had been approached by a new client, Jost Furniture International. Jost is a large southwestern chain of home furniture rental catering to young upscale individuals who might live in a city for two years or so and then move on. It recently opened an office in Canada and plans to expand to Europe in the not-too-distant future. Top management at Jost seemed to imply that the firm would get the audit as long as it submitted a reasonable bid.

Rules asked Corliss to do background checks on Jost and make whatever inquiries were necessary to assess the potential business risk of Jost as a future client. Corliss was given three days to do the work and report back to Rules with a recommendation. If the decision is to go ahead, then Cardinal & Coyote would submit a bid and compete with one other CPA firm for the account. The firm believes it will be a lucrative account, especially since the company has been in an expansion mode and will require advice on acquisitions and other advisory services in the future.

Corliss assembled his team to review the background and other information about Jost Furniture. Corliss asked Beaudean to head up the assessment and report back to Corliss in two days. During that time, Beaudean would have two other staff members to help with the assignment. Beaudean was excited about his first opportunity to work on new client assessment.

Beaudean met with Vinnie Gabelli, a transplanted Brooklyn native who had graduated from Arizona State University (ASU) at Phoenix. Gabelli was like a fish out of water in Arizona even though he had spent 16 months in the master’s of accounting program at ASU. Gabelli thought a prickly pear was someone who could not make it in Staten Island and moved to Brooklyn for a better life.

Gabelli told Beaudean that he welcomed the opportunity to work with a native of Phoenix and learn about its colorful history. Beaudean also asked Jackie Oloff, a native of Minneapolis, to join the team. Jackie had moved to Phoenix two years ago with her husband, who is a professor of accounting at ASU. The team discussed mutual responsibilities, data sources for the information, key areas of risk, and then they broke up to start their work. At the end of the day, the team reassembled to share information. Here is a brief list of the findings:

1. The predecessor firm had helped Jost Furniture with its initial public offering and audited the financial statements of the company for five years. The firm resigned the account in 2007, following the issuance of a modified opinion on the 2006 financial statements. The firm had issued an unqualified opinion with an explanatory paragraph that raised questions about the ability of Jost to continue as a going concern because of persistent operating losses that threatened the company’s ability to secure needed financing.

2. A second firm audited the financial statements for 2007. That firm also raised going-concern questions and was dismissed by Jost’s top management.

3. Jost’s financial statements for 2008 and 2009 were audited by a third firm that was dismissed after two years.

4. The financial statements for 2010 had not been audited and on March 19, 2011, the CEO of Jost Furniture, Jerry Jost, approached Sharon Rules at a community event and asked her to submit a bid for the Jost audit. Jost asked that the bid be submitted by March 23.

5. A memorandum to the file prepared by Rules indicated that Jost had admitted to Rules that the company had past problems with various auditors, but Jost assured Rules the going-concern issues had been resolved. He also told Rules that the company’s controller had recently quit, the third time in four years there had been a turnover at that position. Jost told Rules the company had two candidates and he wanted her to help with the final decision since the CPA firm would work closely with the controller.

6. Beaudean, with the help of Gabelli and Oloff, reviewed the financial statements of Jost Furniture for the past four years during which time going-concern explanatory paragraphs had been issued. They went through a checklist of risk assessment issues for new clients and stopped when they came to the following: Verify the circumstances of any prior auditor dismissal or withdrawal by first asking the client for permission to approach the predecessor auditor(s). All three auditors felt this should be done by Yancy Corliss.

At the meeting at the end of the first day, the auditors discussed the unusual number of auditor changes in a short period of time apparently due to going-concern issues that were raised in the audit reports for the years 2006 through 2009. Beaudean asked Gabelli to contact the two banks where the company does business and check into its payment record. Oloff had a past business relationship with Miles Frazer, the attorney for Jost Furniture. Oloff agreed to contact Frazer to determine whether there are any outstanding litigation issues or other legal matters that the firm should know about. They all agreed to get these matters done by the end of the second day and a meeting was set for 5:00 p.m.

Gabelli found out that a $1 million loan payable to Phoenix Second National Bank had been overdue before payment had been made March 15, 2011. The president of the bank told Gabelli that Jost had been in violation of a debt covenant agreement that obligated Jost to maintain a current ratio of 1.5:1 at all times and that the bank was concerned about Jost’s ability to continue as a going concern, pointing out that Jost had gone below the ratio twice. The first time Jost had violated the covenant, the bank accepted the explanation of a temporary cash flow problem. The bank granted the company a three-month extension to meet the requirements of the debt covenant. The bank subsequently found out the cash flow problem had been due to the fact Jerry Jost withdrew $500,000 from the Jost cash account at Second National Bank to help put a down payment on a mortgage loan to buy an upscale house in Scottsdale. The second time it occurred, the bank began foreclosure on the loan on January 31, 2011, but by the time the process had been completed, Jost had paid off the entire $1 million balance.

Oloff had no luck with the Frazer, the attorney for Jost. When she called his offices, the secretary always told Oloff that Frazer was on another line and she’d take a message. When Oloff asked to leave a voice-mail message, she was told Frazer did not have voice mail. How about leaving an e-mail message? she asked. No e-mail either. Can I text him, tweet him, or just do it the old-fashioned way and set up an appointment? No, no, no were the answers. Oloff had left five messages for Frazer in the time before the meeting. She had nothing to report except to make an editorial comment about lawyer responsiveness, or lack thereof.

At first, Jost had side-stepped Corliss’s request for permission to speak with the predecessor auditor. Jost claimed that there had been a “personality conflict” and Jost was afraid the auditor would speak negatively about the company. Jost did agree after Corliss reminded him it was a required part of the procedures auditors follow in making the client acceptance decision.

At 5:00 p.m. on March 22, the auditors met in the firm’s conference room to discuss their findings. After hearing about Gabelli’s concerns and Oloff’s lack of success with Frazer, Beaudean expressed serious concerns about taking on Jost as a client.

Read the above case. Choose one of the individuals in the case and identify their actions and viewpoints. Write up an executive summary on the case, including answers to the following questions.

1. Brief review of the case from your auditor’s point of view (one paragraph)

2. Identification of the key behaviors, attitudes, and ethical dilemmas faced by or caused by the auditor

3. Assessment of the philosophical and practical approaches to ethical decision-making that could have avoided the problems in the case

4. Evaluation of alternatives to solve the situation in the case

5. Summary of actions that you might have taken yourself if you had been in this situation in real life