Before we proceed I want to explain that the title is a direct quote from the aircraft in question’s pilot taken from the official report. And I freely admit he was right, they couldn’t stop him.
This is the story of a man who was also a pilot who was in a difficult weather situation. Advised over and over and over again not to attempt a take off, he insisted and took off anyway. Or almost took off. He and one of his two passengers died.
This sounds more like a fable from the time of the Greeks. A man determined on a disastrous course of action is offered help which he refuses, advice which he resents, and expert help which he ignores. And then he goes ahead and dies.
Three people laded at Lake Renegade. They are in an amphibian aircraft. It only lands and takes off on water. There are so many bodies of water in the United States, people wonder why there aren’t more of these kinds of planes. It’s very simple. Calm water is a wonderful surface to land on, but in most of the United States there is considerable wind and you don’t have it. Choppy wind-blown water will kill you. Water landings depend on very calm and stable conditions. And that simply wasn’t the case at Lake Renegade that day.
I’ve read the report twice because it was so hard to believe. A veritable army of experienced and kind individuals virtually begged him not to take off. He went anyway.
Hubris is fatal. I suppose if a man wants to risk his life there is little that can be done to stop him but this man in his overweening pride also killed one passenger and injured another.
This was all a profound failure of ethics.
A man should take stock of expert advice. A man should not without a good adequate reason risk his own life or the lives of others. And above all, a man should respect the forces of nature and make decisions in accordance with weather and terrain.
There is a lot of pseudo-masculine ideology running about these days. I can’t help but wonder if he thought all the warnings were from “snowflakes” and “wimps” — and he was going to show everybody what a real man could do with an aircraft. He did provide us with a useful example of what not to do.
The staff and volunteers at the Airbase are all very clear that they literally begged him not to fly in these conditions. The pilot may have considered the rough conditions to be borderline and it’s true that at least one Lake pilot at the site stated that he thought it wasn’t outside of the ability of a highly experienced pilot. However, the pilot that day wasn’t highly experienced in seaplanes and he chose to risk a tailwind take-off in an aircraft that had required a tow a few hours before because it had taken on water. In his rush to leave, he either forgot or chose not to configure the aircraft correctly for take-off. It is very difficult to interpret his actions as anything other than reckless.
This is more quote than essay but I’m quoting a legal proceeding and the proceeding, a disciplinary hearing, is eloquent beyond my poor command of the English language. They wrote for the ages.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS BOARD ON PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY HEARING COMMITTEE NUMBER TWELVE
In the Matter of : Board Docket No. 22-BD-039 : JEFFREY B. CLARK, ESQUIRE : Disciplinary Docket No. 2021-D193
Across the United States, the legal profession is busy removing several Trump lawyers from the profession. The matter referenced above relates to Jeff Clark. But there are others include John Eastman and Rudy Giuliana. Another fourteen attorneys have gotten fines and other sanctions. And there will be more to come as other Trump trials move forward.
Here is a quote from the Disciplinary Hearing referenced above:
The lawyers who contested the 2020 election on behalf of President Trump, far from upholding the nobliest traditions of the profession, betrayed their ethical obligations. At President Trump’s direction, they employed any means necessary to keep him in office. This included frivolous civil rights actions filed in federal court seeking to set aside the results of lawful elections.
That’s the facts surrounding the decision to remove this man’s license to practice law. But this is the steel edge of the decision:
It is not enough that the efforts of these lawyers ultimately failed. As a profession, we must do what we can to ensure that this conduct is never repeated. The way to accomplish that goal is to remove from the profession lawyers who betrayed their constitutional obligations and their country. It is important that other lawyers who might be tempted to engage in similar misconduct be aware that doing so will cost them their privilege to practice law. It is also important for the courts and the legal profession to state clearly that the ends do not justify the means; that process matters; and that this is a society of laws, not men. Jeffrey Clark betrayed his oath to support the Constitution of the United States of America. He is not fit to be a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
I share that opinion.
Let justice be done.
James Pilant
This is a month old but discusses the Jeff Clark Disbarment Process.
We’re talking about advice that, although theoretically convenient to integrate into our lives, catches us unable to digest it in the moment in which it is offered. If that wasn’t enough, its attempt to lighten up a negative situation leaves us feeling silenced, judged and misunderstood. This phenomenon of subjecting a negative experience to a filter of optimism and vitality is known as whitelighting. Although the person who uses the tactic doesn’t mean to devalue or dehumanize the other’s experience, paradoxically that’s precisely what happens when someone tries to put a positive spin on negative or traumatic feelings and experiences experienced by another person.
We Americans live in a self help culture. And most of us think that is a good thing. It’s not. A realistic assessment based on accurate information is the best choice when dealing with reality. But many prefer the idea that all adversity is a challenge and anyone, anywhere, anytime, no matter what, can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It’s enough to drive me to deep abiding anger and rage. This Horatio Alger just never seems to die.
But whitelighting people when they’re sad – having lost loved ones, pets, jobs, relationships, etc. is just cruel. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” “Every dark cloud has a silver lining.” “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” “The school of adversity leads to success.” “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Countless times both I and people I know have been serenaded with these nuggets of folk wisdom. I’m reminded of the Monty Python movie, “The Life of Brian,” in which the crucified multitude join in a chorus of “Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
Being a friend, a relative or just a fellow human being demands patient listening and comfort freely given when someone you know is suffering. Happy talk has its place, not very many places but some places. Whitelighting is very much akin to gas lighting. Don’t do it.
Let me give you a simple example. The other day I ran into a woman with a medical boot on because she had injured her ankle. I told her I was sorry she was in pain. I did not tell her the leg would heal back stronger, that her suffering would ennoble her or that we all get hurt and it would be best to get over it quickly and get back to work. None of that. What I did add was because I’m an attorney. I noticed that she was parked pretty far out in the supermarket lot so I told her that she was entitled to a handicapped sticker while she was in recovery and if she didn’t want to go to the doctor to get it, she could call and they would mail it. That’s useful information.
I suppose what really gets my goat is corporate happy talk. I once gave a carefully considered and reasoned statement about the difficulty in getting new clients in the county where I worked and my boss’s boss said I should be more positive. Corporate culture in the United States believes that in general lying is wrong unless dealing with business prospects in which case, a false and nonsensical optimism is the chosen means of communication. God help us all.
An essay in Vox suggests that there is real hope for climate improvement provided we don’t see a second Trump Term. (From the article:)
Last year, more solar panels were installed in China — the world’s largest carbon emitter — than the US has installed in its entire history. More electric vehicles were sold worldwide than ever. Energy efficiency is improving. Dozens of countries are widening the gap between their economic growth and their greenhouse gas emissions. And governments stepped up their ambitions to curb their impact on the climate, particularly when it comes to potent greenhouse gases like methane. If these trends continue, global emissions may actually start to decline.
Climate change is a critical business ethics issue. The danger of rising temperatures calls into question the social utility of many common industries and business practices. We are at a critical point. The article is optimistic but very guardedly and there are dozens of caveats. We are in dangerous waters with very few sure ways to go on these matters.
Ellen DeGeneres is back on the comedy circuit.
Now she tells it as a joke but back in the day, while the show was running, it was a classic case of power corrupting a celebrity.
The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday voted 3-2 in favor of adopting a historic and far-reaching ban on noncompete agreements, potentially giving more leverage in the job market to millions of U.S. workers. The agency has said that the agreements, in which workers are forbidden from seeking a job with a competing business for a certain period of time, lead to an “unfair method of competition” and violate federal law. The vote by the agency’s five commissioners this week means the ban will move forward.
From time to time, the world of business ethics coughs up a good story, a positive story. The Federal Trade Commission has approved a ban on noncompete agreements. This has been long overdue. Originally non-compete agreements were targeted at employees whose inside knowledge of the company would give an unfair advantage to any company that hired them. Unfortunately, many employers realized they could use the agreements to make it difficult for employees to leave since the agreement made it very difficult for them to get a job in the same field. They argued that knowledge given in fast food places like how to make a sandwich were proprietary and required a non-compete agreement. This legal bufoonery did not disguise the intent of making life more difficult for employees and empowering the company to treat them badly since the workers had difficulty finding new jobs with the agreement in place.
Musk on Tuesday responded to an interim court order from Australia’s eSafety Commission requesting that X hide graphic and distressing videos of the recent Sydney stabbing within 24 hours with a Wizard of Oz meme: it’s all shits and giggles over at X. In further posts, he took aim at the eSafety commissioner, claiming she wants “authority over all countries on Earth”, after labelling her a “Commissar” for requesting the removal of the video in the first place, which depicted an attack that the NSW police have since classified as a terrorist incident.
The idea that freedom of speech is served by these horror postings of crimes and other savagery is just nonsense. Media has the power to exalt, to educate and to entertain. But here it is simply a horror fest in which demented criminals are given free publicity encouraging copycats and universal cynicism from the nihilistic values on display by these internet companies.
We have a right to see that evil deeds not be celebrated, to not see vicious anti-social clowns in action and absolutely a right to not ever have to be treated to the half wit, degenerate manifestos of mass murderers and terrorists.
If the auto company has your car connected to the internet, your driving can be monitored and your insurance costs can increase.
Automakers have been selling data about the driving behavior of millions of people to the insurance industry. In the case of General Motors, affected drivers weren’t informed, and the tracking led insurance companies to charge some of them more for premiums. I’m the reporter who broke the story. I recently discovered that I’m among the drivers who were spied on.
People were led to believe that OnStar got you help when you had car or travel problems but that is not all that the program does. Get a load of this:
My husband’s LexisNexis report had a breakdown of the 203 trips we had taken in the car since January, including the distance, the start and end times, and how often we hard-braked or accelerated rapidly. The Verisk report, which dated to mid-December and recounted 297 trips, had a high-level summary at the top: 1,890.89 miles driven; 4,251 driving minutes; 170 hard-brake events; 24 rapid accelerations; and, on a positive note, zero speeding events.
Once they’ve got your data, it can be sold to anyone at anytime and it never goes away. It can raise your insurance rates. It has raised insurance rates on many individuals. Your data is in real way, digital currency and when stacked with other such digital data, you pay the costs of that knowledge.
Google is going to delay its plan to eliminate cookies. I find this a depressing development. We consumers should have the right to not have our internet choices tracked and reported. However, Google still plans on eliminating cookies, just when is still up in the air.
Quote below from the link above from Yahoo Finance:
Google has spent years preparing to get rid of cookies following similar moves by Apple and Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox browser. It has promoted the change as a way to improve consumer privacy and developed an alternative set of technologies known as the Privacy Sandbox to replace many of their features. The plans have encountered several roadblocks from industry participants. Google first announced plans to block cookies in early 2020, targeting the end of 2022 for their elimination.
Gateway Pundit is seeking bankruptcy protections as it attempt to deal with a flood of lawsuits.
Quote from the link listed above:
For two decades, the site has published falsehoods and conspiracy theories on everything from vaccines to election fraud. Donald Trumpfrequentlyshares its material. The most notable lawsuit against the website is from Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. In 2021, they sued the Gateway Pundit, Hoft and his twin brother, and website contributor Joe Hoft in St. Louis Circuit Court for defamation and emotional distress. The website had falsely alleged that the mother-daughter pair had purposefully manipulated the vote count in Joe Biden’s favor.
I won’t miss them. They deserve the economic penalties derived from their misbehavior.
An Iranian court sentenced outspoken rapper Toomaj Salehi to death after his arrest over songs that criticized the government, his lawyer said Wednesday.
This is an extremely sad story, a tragedy. Civilizations advance along a number of different avenues simultaneously although often at different speeds. Artistic movements are often less noticed than economic or technological or even political developments but it can be argued that artistic developments are the most important in the long term. Songs are strong indicators of the health of a society. If songwriters have great freedom to create, that says a lot about the creative environment in which they function.
We may safely conclude that Iran is a zone devoid of progress for artistic expression. This is a sure sign of a fearful, incompetent and reactionary government. The United States even with its turbulent political activity and struggling factions is a far more healthy environment for art. That is a good sign for the nation’s future and its effect on the larger development of worldwide civilization.
As technology moves forward with often amazing speed, the law struggles to keep up. New offenses never even thought of before are happening every day. One tragic trend is the posting of fake nudes of high school students and there are many others. The internet is a massive information super highway of fraud, deception and filth. I don’t need to tell you in any detail because you see and experience yourself the horror of what the internet has become.
This case detailed in the links below alleges that Dazhon Darien used AI technology to imitate the Pikesville high school’s principal. The fake recording had the principal disparaging minority students and teachers. It was spread about on the internet. Darien was under accusation of having billed the school illegally for about $2000. It seems the motive was revenge.
Using cloning technology, Darien forged an audio clip in which it sounded as if the principal was frustrated with Black students and their test-taking abilities, police wrote. The recording also purported to capture the principal disparaging Jewish individuals and two teachers who “should never have been hired”.
The AI attack was very successful. The principal was temporarily replaced as complaints flooded in. This was a truly vicious unprincipled attack. There are many disturbing elements, the main one being this is a first use case. There will be others and the results are likely to be at least as tragic and probably much, much worse.
We must as a society find ways of dealing with these issues of technological criminal innovation much more quickly. AI is a revolutionary technology. To say that it could be used to kill is not an exaggeration. And I while I am seeing a great deal of concern and discussion, I’m not seeing much legislative and administrative action.
Our legislatures, our Governors, our federal system are all creatures of the past with long and storied histories. But they were developed in the age of the horse as the main instrument of travel and the written letter, the primary medium of communication. Let me just give you an example, in the great majority of states, Corporate law requires the Board of Directors to meet annually and keep records of that event. This is directly from an era in which they traveled by train and horse. Isn’t it obvious that the corporate board be regularly involved, meeting often and having some kind of regular contact with the company? Yet the law requires no more than that single meeting a year. And we’ve had the internet, automobiles and telephones for quite some time now and we have not adapted the the statutory law to mandate more contact in an ongoing business. And that is the story across the board in the United States. The laws are based on circumstances that have become obsolete.
I suggest that the Justice Department create a division devoted to technological innovation and crime. This will give the government a slim chance of getting ahead of the curve of these new kinds of crime. We really don’t want to wake up one morning and find that AI had killed, destroyed reputations, collapsed companies and crashed infrastructures without legal recourse for the victims or the government.
We need to act. We must act now. Because the wicked actors both here at home and overseas are not resting. They are actively plotting and will given any opportunity take advantage of these new technologies.
On January 16, a Gmail user known as TJFOUST9 sent an email to three teachers, including Darien, at their school email addresses. The subject line said, “Pikesville Principal — Disturbing Recording.” A sound file was attached. A man could be heard speaking. Among other disparaging comments, including one about two teachers and another about Jewish people, the man said Black students couldn’t “test their way out of a paper bag.” The recording proliferated. A teacher who didn’t get along well with Eiswert admitted to sharing it with a student “who she knew would rapidly spread the message around various social media outlets and throughout the school,” the report said. The teacher also sent the recording to media outlets and the NAACP.
I’m sure most of my kind readers are of the law abiding type. I would like you to imagine what it would feel like to be surrounded by heavily armed policemen who believe that you are a dangerous felon right in the middle of committing a crime. Watch the film below to get the details of what happened to Jamie Rodgers in that same situation. God forbid anything like this should ever happen to you!
Rodgers’ car was in the shop at the dealership. He was given a loaner car so he could drive to work. The dealership mislaid his paperwork and reported the car as stolen. The police stopped him on the highway, surrounded his car with heavily armed officers. He was finally released when the situation was clarified. It is only a matter of chance and luck that he wasn’t killed or seriously injured.
I’m flabbergasted at this error. Is it just routine to report cars as stolen? I did some internet searches looking for dealerships who had reported loaners as stolen but all I got were references to the current case. So, apparently this is far outside the norm.
In my opinion the dealership is liable for pain and suffering. It was a very serious error and they have to be responsible for what they did.
The more I thought about the case, the more I saw the similarities to “swatting.” A bad actor can use the police to harm enemies with this kind of report. Fortunately, there was none of that here. But the strategy of “lets you and him fight” has been a regular ploy throughout all recorded history. Of course, I’m just a cynic. Let’s hope that nothing like this every happens again.
Rodgers, who was on his way to his job as an athletic trainer, told KTLA, “I’m thinking I’m going to get shot. I’m a Black man being pulled over in Orange County. … I’ve heard too many stories of this happening.” A fleet of sheriff’s patrol cars had tailed him, leading to suddenly being stopped and faced with about a dozen officers aiming their guns at him, as they had been mistakenly informed that Rodgers was armed and dangerous.
By Jr JL – This file was derived from: Duchy of Lancaster-coa.png:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39911069 —- This was found on wikipedia and I gratefully acknowledge their kindness in letting me borrow the image. As you can see I have quoted in full the attribution they wished attached. JP
Recently, the King of England has decided in his infinite wisdom to hand out honors. Awarding honors to the deserving is an important function of all mature and intelligent societies. We wish to encourage and recognize acts of bravery, benevolence and sacrifice.
In the course of human events, many are called to heroic deeds. An examination of the news over a period of a few days will disclose people who selflessly risked their lives. For instance, just last week a teacher, Darrell Campbell, at Amman Valley School in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, responded to a stabbing in which three people were injured and wrestled the knife away from the attacker and then subdued the attacker. That is courage worthy of recognition and honor. (The news story is linked to below.)
But the King’s ceremony and the award of honors wasn’t for him. You see, the King realized that he knew very well who was deserving of honor and recognition in the name of all that is royal in the realm of Great Britain. The honors were awarded to his wife, Camilla; his son, William; and his son’s wife, Kate.
(From the article:)
Prince William becomes Great Master of the Order of the Bath. Catherine is now a Companion of Honour, which recognises achievement in arts, medicine, sciences and public service. And the Queen becomes the Grand Master of the Order of the British Empire, once held by the King’s father, Prince Philip, and grandfather George VI.
So, the King decided that while there were undoubtedly thousands of people who deserved honors for the great deeds, it was his wife, son and daughter in law, who merited these attentions. As Mel Brooks announced with great joy in “History of the World, Part One,” — “It is good to be the King.”
Apparently it is also very good to be married to or be an offspring of the King, because the money, the property and honors never stop flowing like an endless stream of benefits paid for by someone else.
Great Britain is similar to the United States in some ways, a semi-common language and some customs. However, the founding fathers directly placed in the Constitution a prohibition against this kind of thing. To quote from the United States Constitution:
Clause 8 Titles of Nobility and Foreign Emoluments No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
And so we don’t in general have this kind of nonsense. And God be praised that we don’t.
We now live in the 21st Century and the idea that there are Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses is a relic of an illiterate, ignorant and moronic age, an age where people actually believed that God had ordained some people to be rulers, not on the basis of any moral or mental quality but simply by accident of birth.
Darrell Campbell, an actual hero, is far more representative of the greatness embodied in the British people than any of these bejeweled fops lauded daily in the press and possessed of incredible wealth and influence taken from the people of the empire. In any society with a shred of dignity or intelligence or judgment, it is he who should stand before the nation and be given honors for his deeds.
It is time for us, all of us, to stop paying attention to these silly royals who have stuff just because of who their parents were.
We should be valued by our own merits as demonstrated in our own lives because that is what is just, and true — and, indeed, worthy of honor.
This last week was crowded with business ethics disasters and issues. Let’s get started. Above you’ll see a short You-Tube video that I liked and included.
Louisiana State University is offering corporations the ability to influence research. The University has, it seems, offered up its intellectual integrity for a price, a very good price. In their defense I have to point out they aren’t selling themselves cheap (maybe it’s more of a rental?). Let me quote from the article above:
For $5m, Louisiana’s flagship university will let an oil company weigh in on faculty research activities. Or, for $100,000, a corporation can participate in a research study, with “robust” reviewing powers and access to all resulting intellectual property. Those are the conditions outlined in a boilerplate document that Louisiana State University’s fundraising arm circulated to oil majors and chemical companies affiliated with the Louisiana Chemical Association, an industry lobbying group, according to emails disclosed in response to a public records request by the Lens.
This is a pivotal moment in the history of the energy industries. I believe they are in the midst of a almost revolutionary pivot. My perception of what is currently happening is that they are attempting to build a huge infrastructure of “carbon capture” industry. The companies ability to limit and influence research would be invaluable when you are an organization that created in large part the global warming crisis and now intend to profit like bandits from that same crisis.
(Elizabeth) Hanna, a registered dietitian nutritionist and certified diabetes care and education specialist with “16 years of experience in the field of medical nutrition therapy”, according to the lawsuit, says the ADA and in particular Nicole Johnson, the ADA’s vice-president of operations for the science and healthcare division – “a former Miss America who has traded upon the dreams and aspirations of people with diabetes to reach fame and fortune” – pressured her to endorse what she believed were unhealthy and unethical claims.
If you’re teaching ethics or business ethics or any of a number of business courses, this is a lengthy article laden with serious business ethics issues, you should use this. “How much deference should an organization pay to its donors?” is a recurring issue we constantly see over and over again.
Nestlé, the world’s largest consumer goods company, adds sugar and honey to infant milk and cereal products sold in many poorer countries, contrary to international guidelines aimed at preventing obesity and chronic diseases, a report has found.
This is the latest in a number of controversies regarding the products international corporations sold in developing countries. Stay tuned. I will probably get to return to this issues again.
I have heard economics described as the “dismal” science. Well, that is not true, it is business ethics. Greed, death and human stupidity are big parts of the field.
So, from time to time, I take a break. This is a fun story.
Here we have an elephant seal who declined to accept relocation.
Last week, gun-wielding conservation officers stuffed a 500lb elephant seal in the back of a van, drove him along a winding highway in western Canada and left him on a remote beach “far from human habitation”.
That beach was 126 miles away. The elephant seal known as Emerson declined to accept relocation and came right back. I side with the seal but I very much want the public to give the fellow a safe distance. He’s got a lot of muscle on him and he’s not in anyway tame.
It wouldn’t be standard week in 2024 without Boeing getting a headline or two. And for Boeing while the headline isn’t friendly, at least parts didn’t fall off of plane or bunch of people die.
I have addressed the Boeing issues before and no doubt will return to the topic in the future. Good article though.
In the United States, politics is something of a business but according to some including our former President, not as much a business as it should be. Trump is asking for five percent of all donations received from candidates who use his likeness in fund raising.
That is a very solid transformation of political relationships into purely business relationships. Every down ballot candidate becomes something of a financial subsidiary. It’s in a real way revolutionary. Here is a link.
From the link, one gets the impression, that this “request” is not going over well. Imagine my surprise at this!
Elon Musk has been in the news but he is always in the news much like bad weather and air accidents he figures in our national consciousness. But this is a special occasion. He’s not saying anything stupid or bizarre. Have a look at the link below:
Tesla is asking shareholders to restore a $56 billion pay package for CEO Elon Musk that was rejected by a Delaware judge this year, and to shift the company’s corporate home to Texas. The changes, to be voted on by stockholders at a June 13 annual meeting, could be a tougher sell than when it was first approved in 2018. The Austin, Texas, electric vehicle maker is struggling with falling global sales, slowing electric vehicle demand, an aging model lineup and a stock price that has tumbled 37% so far this year.
So, all Tesla wants is to reward Elon Musk for what some might call leadership by restoring his 56,000,000,000 dollar pay package voided by that meany of a Delaware Judge. They also want the company headquarters moved from Delaware to Texas to escape the aforementioned judge.
You know I was really going to pound Elon Musk for his many missteps but do I really need to? He does not deserve the money. He has acted foolishly and every company and cause associated with him has suffered. Enough said. For another good read on the subject, go to the link below:
In Great Britain, austerity was imposed on the public and lasted for many years. The decline in the quality and quantity of the infrastructure, schools, public facilities like libraries and medical care has been very hard on the population and is considered a major factor in British economic decline. . It also was cruel and it seems both in fore and hind sight to be unnecessary. But the Tories basked in their “get tough” attitude toward the public. They has showed themselves to be “manly” men, willing to put hard limits on the disorganized mob of citizenry always “looking for a handout.”
The Tories in Britain are watched closely by their American counterparts and the Americans bounce ideas between themselves and as far as I can tell, almost all right wing think tanks and a good number of right leaning politicians find these ideas compelling.
So, all over the United States, Republicans are doing cruel, obnoxious and borderline evil acts to prove that they too have the cojones to deprive the public of important things. So, we have cuts in food to school children, laws against giving water to waiting voters, regular attempts to gut child labor laws and finally — and our topic for today, denying municipalities the right to require water and shade for workers.
Florida under the “leadership” of Gov. DeSantis have a adopted a law banning municipalities from requiring heat protections for worker beyond those provided by state and federal law. This follows adoption of a similar law in Texas. You would think that heat isn’t much of a problem if two legislatures feel that nothing needs to be done locally but people do die: (link below)
A sugar cane worker on a work visa from Mexico died just the other day. Is that the only death? I very much doubt it but I don’t know of any data base I can find more extensive data from. The sugar cane worker death made the news because they’re contesting the OSHA fine. I suspect that foreign worker deaths rarely make the news.
A study from the University of Florida shows that heat deaths in the stare are on the rise with the changes caused by global warming. (Link Below)
What do Republicans say about these cruel measures. Well, let me quote:
Republican Rep. Tiffany Esposito of Fort Myers, who sponsored the House version of the bill, told reporters that her husband has worked in South Florida’s construction sector for two decades and that she knows the industry takes worker safety seriously. “This is very much a people-centric bill,” Esposito said. “If we want to talk about Floridians thriving, they do that by having good job opportunities. And if you want to talk about health and wellness, and you want to talk about how we can make sure that all Floridians are healthy, you do that by making sure that they have a good job. And in order to provide good jobs, we need to not put businesses out of business.” (This quote is from the link below.)
“People-centric.” Sometimes you get the impression that the Republican Party is actually some sort of satirical variation on an actual political party. Dead workers are not a demonstration of people centered legislature. And the idea that companies will go out of business if they have to follow heat rules is nonsense.
So, in conclusion, the cruelty is the point. Although there is a certain element of corporate boot licking and servile obedience to the construction industry, inflicting pain on workers is a considered a mark of virtue in the current Republican Party and I am appalled by this pseudo-masculine nonsense.
It is better to feed children, protect the weak and maintain worker protections from danger than to aspire to some kind keyboard machismo.
The University of Southern California has canceled a brief remark (3-5 minutes) scheduled to be given at the graduation this year by the class Valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, on “public safety” grounds.
I may be getting old and cynical but the University’s concern over public safety strikes me as nonsensical. This is the United States of America. From time to time, people have differences of opinion. I promise you Americans are not going to melt like a chocolate bar in hot summer sun if Ms. Tabassum says something many people disagree with in her 3-5 minute remarks.
I also might point out that Ms. Tabassum stated that she had planned to talk about hope although I don’t think after this pitiful controversy that I or anybody else can expect her to continue with that topic.
In terms of business ethics, if USC is a private business, they have every right to cancel any part of the ceremony for any reason whatever. But they are a public university. If recollection serves, they are one of the land grant universities, one of President Lincoln’s ideas. Public institutions are supposed to respect the rights of Americans, particularly the right to political speech, the most protected form of speech under American Constitutional Law.
What the University should be saying loud and clear is that our new Valedictorian has the right to speak her opinion. We may not agree with that opinion but it is better to live in a nation where people have a right to express their thoughts than one where thought, opinion and speech are proscribed in case they offend the public or the government.
Now, I suppose some readers will accuse me of being Pro-Palestinian. To be honest, I don’t side much with anybody in this Middle Eastern mess. The Palestinians deserve the right to live, work and exercise voting rights. Their property must be protected. The Israeli’s have the right to exist and to be free from attack. Lots and lots of people have died and suffered sexual assaults. Hamas has done a bunch of killing and Israel with its indiscriminate use of firepower has done an even bigger bunch of killing. Do you see why I find both sides problematic?
But while elements of this dispute have traveled to the United States, we are neither Israel or Palestine. Most of us are neither Muslims or Jews. We can hear both sides strident as the voices may be and make up our own minds as Americans are supposed to do.
University officials chose Tabassum, a biomedical engineering major with a minor in resistance to genocide, as valedictorian from a pool of nearly 100 applicants with GPAs of 3.98 or above. The title comes with an invitation to deliver a 3-to-5-minute speech to an audience of about 65,000 at the campuswide commencement ceremony on May 10.
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