Tag: health

TikTok Leads Youth to Porn?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

As an expert on business ethics, each day is another dreary ride into greed and evil. Today is Friday and just another day in the exploration of greed when we find that an internet platform leads children to porn. Yes, just another day.

TikTok leads teenagers to porn after a few clicks. The internet being the cesspool that it is, we shouldn’t be too surprised but I am. What surprises me is that this was in “restricted” mode.

That’s right. The fake accounts used in the study were not just teenagers, they were supposed to be operating in restricted mode but still after a few clicks they began leading these example children to adult topics and pornography. A parent doing due diligence could be fooled be this thing and that was probably the intent.

Let me get the news article that leads to my content out of the way as well as the usual quote.

(Internet Porn breaching the home’s defenses.)

The article is called – TikTok ‘directs child accounts to pornographic content within a few clicks’

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/03/tiktok-child-accounts-pornographic-content-accessible

Global Witness set up fake accounts using a 13-year-old’s birth date and turned on the video app’s “restricted mode”, which limits exposure to “sexually suggestive” content.

Researchers found TikTok suggested sexualised and explicit search terms to seven test accounts that were created on clean phones with no search history.

The terms suggested under the “you may like” feature included “very very rude skimpy outfits” and “very rude babes” – and then escalated to terms such as “hardcore pawn [sic] clips”. For three of the accounts the sexualised searches were suggested immediately.

The article was written by Dan Milmo writing for the online version of the Guardian.

The inevitable question here is why would anyone do this. The money is very good. Teenagers have a lot of spending power and these villains want to tap into it.

How many ways can I say that this terribly wrong and people shouldn’t make money this way? Close to infinity. So moral persuasion is useless. If you want to stop children watching and buying porn, people have to pay fines and go to jail.

There is no other choice. We’ve had the kind words and tried to reason with them and yet here we find a process designed to fool a cautious parent but still get the child as a customer. That speaks to a massive amount of intent. They are playing the government and the people of this nation for fools pretending to regulate content while building a Swiss cheese of holes that any child can get through to get to the supposedly regulated content. It is not right.

Let me in closing state the facts about online regulation when it comes to the United States. We are failing as a regulator of the internet. The EU and Australia have long ago taken the lead in online regulation and we should be following their lead.

James Alan Pilant

Children’s Brains Changed by Inequality

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Editorial, Government Failure

Research finds that Inequality creates a toxic environment.

MRI scans of thousands of children found that those living in areas of higher inequality had measurable changes to the brain and it is believed that these changes may have long term effects on mental health.

This should be front page news.

I am not surprised with the results or the fact that this is not a major story. As a society we talk about children as important but when it comes to money and effort, we demonstrate a lack of concern. .

If you live in a society where basic unfairness is part of the life you lead, you are harmed. The study showed that children from different social classes, that is, the winners and losers, suffered just the same.

The old simple Biblical principle that doing evil and having evil done to you damages the soul.

Yes, it does.

What are we going to do about it. The standard playbook used by Big Tobacco and currently by the fossil fuels industry will be applied as it always is when social change threatens the established order. And so, the result will be —

Nothing.

The Right Wing media machine will spend tens of thousands of words explaining the results away. They are quite likely to produce several made up studies in which they decisively prove that inequality is good for everybody. They will endlessly discuss avoiding a culture of “dependence,” which is a scurrilous way of describing having people fed. There will be several hundred thousand bots posting derogatory attacks on the specific researches and on academics in general. And there will have to be some death threats to round out the mix. After all, the cruelty is the point.

After these attacks, politicians, public figures and regular people will consider the topic controversial and have “doubts.” that these doubts are cleverly manufactured by evil and well paid advocates will be irrelevant.

(It is possible by careful planning using God’s gift of intelligence to create great and wonderful things.)

Now, what would intelligent thinking and capable human beings do with this research?

Now, that is interesting. Obviously, we need more studies of children in societies with different levels of inequality. We also need to see if there are variations that can be achieved by different methods pf parenting and education.

We have information that leads us to see brain changes in children. So, what can we do and what are we doing now that has an effect on this process.

In other word, we as a society and a people take significant research and use it to improve our way of life.

That is what is supposed to happen.

But right now, the intelligent and cultured are under attack by an increasingly unhinged band of goons who are determined to impose their lack of breeding and intelligence on all of us.

We will see whether or not they succeed.

Here is the Guardian article explaining and linking to the research – along with a short quote.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/sep/30/study-links-greater-inequality-to-structural-changes-in-childrens-brains

A study of more than 10,000 young people in the US discovered altered brain development in children from wealthy and lower-income families in areas with higher rates of inequality, which were also associated with poorer mental health.

The data was gathered from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study and published in the journal Nature Mental Health.

Researchers at King’s College London, Harvard University, and the University of York then measured inequality within a particular US state by scoring how evenly income is measured. States with higher levels of inequality included New York, Connecticut, California and Florida, while Utah, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont were more equal.

This article was written by Tobi Thomas for the Guardian.

The Freedom to Experience Whooping Cough!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Government Failure

I had whooping cough at six weeks old. I burst my belly I was coughing so hard. If you run your hand down the center of my abdomen you can still feel the place. I am an old man now and in those far off years there were no vaccine for that disease. I also got to experience measles, chicken pox, and mumps. The measles infection was very serious and they put me in a bedroom by myself and a doctor came and checked on me. I didn’t quite die. But I remember how it felt. I remember rolling back and forth in the bed trying to make the pain go away.

Florida’s Surgeon General is doing away with vaccine requirements.

He says requiring vaccines is a form of slavery.

So, my suffering and near death were celebrations of freedom? If I had been freed at birth from the dangerous diseases which diminished my life and didn’t quite kill me, I would have been in some larger sense “free?”

What about the millions upon millions of Americans who died from these diseases before vaccines were developed? Were they free? I don’t understand, is there some freedom resting beneath a tombstone that I am so devoid of understanding that I just don’t get it?

What would I say to the Florida Surgeon General given the opportunity? I would say “Do you know what I want to be free of, Mr. Ladapo?”

“Vaccine requirements don’t bother me, not only did I get all of mine, I made sure my son got his too. No, what bothers me is the explosion of charlatans and fools thinking they know better. And not just thinking they know better but demanding other people yield to their crackpot ideas. What I want is to be free of crazy people trying to run my life. ”

It would be nice to be free of the loonies spouting their nonsense. And comparing vaccine mandates to slavery is so repulsive and disgusting that I don’t feel I could do my anger on the subject justice in less that two or three thousand words. Suffice to say, slavery as practiced in the American South was vile beyond belief and a crime so terrible that we as a nation have not and are unlikely to ever finish paying for it

Below is a link to the story I quote from and a brief passage.

(Just another crank lost deep in his own foolishness.)

Aysha Bagchi writing for USA Today has the following story: Florida surgeon general says he doesn’t need to study impact of ending vaccine mandate.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said he doesn’t need to study the potential impact of ending vaccine mandates for children before his state becomes the first to do so in 45 years.

“We do have outbreaks in Florida, just like every state, and we manage those,” Ladapo told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sept. 7. “So there are no new, special, you know, special procedures that need to be made.”

The Florida Surgeon General confesses he didn’t bother to study the effects of his decision.

What are the business ethics here?

Any decision made about Americans’ health should be taken with great consideration for the facts. To not even bother to collect the relevant facts is a complete and total dereliction of duty and a failure to conduct oneself in accordance with simple human intelligence.

I don’t see any need for further analysis.

It is painful to live in such times where these kinds of decisions are being made based on lunacy and stupidity.

James Alan Pilant

The Ethics Disaster at the CDC

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Editorial

In one of the greatest, if not the greatest, scientific disaster in this nation’s history, the head of the CDC was fired followed by the resignations of some of the finest scientific minds in the nation.

On one side of this firing and these resignations we have an unhinged conspiracy theorist. On the other we have seasoned scientists with decades of experience in dealing with vaccines and disease.

In any other administration, science would prevail.

But we have this administration.

(A picture from the book, An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800. It was published in the 19th Century. It seems to carry an appropriate ambience for the current situation. jp)

In many business ethics disasters people die, nations are severely harmed, land become barren and toxic. What do you say about this one? This is a situation where a nation’s defense against disease is being compromised. It is possible that millions will die, certainly thousands.

Why this massive shake up? Why are these people being gotten rid of?

What possible rationale could there be to remove these medical and scientific experts from the defense of our nation?

Apparently, the worst and the least of the internet conspiracy theories.

On that basis a great nation goes naked in an environment where new diseases are evolving moment to moment?

Well, yes.

Have we as a nation gone completely mad? Are our leaders a band of unhinged lunatics?

Certainly, there are times when that seems to be the case. The District of Columbia is infested with the National Guard of several states. The President is trying to fire people he is directly prohibited by law from firing and the Supreme Court using a thing called a “Shadow Docket” finds that the President can do pretty much what he wants in spite of the clear English language meaning of the law.

So, the government is in a real way crazy right now.

But people dying because of this craziness? Not just dying but dying when we have the vaccines to prevent it? Are you sure that these people should be allowed to go this far?

You know and I know that this is madness.

Once, we’ve come to agreement on the fact that these people are crazy, we arrive at a new problem.

What are we going to do about it?

Right now we can vaccinate a large proportion of the population against the latest version of COVID. Kennedy has limited those vaccinations to people over 65, a small proportion of the population that can be protected. COVID is infecting people right now in large numbers.

People are going to die who don’t need to die.

That offends me. Doesn’t that offend you?

What are we going to do?

How long can this government go on doing these kinds of things?

Below are a couple of news stories and some quote that relate to this story.

James Pilant

MIKE STOBBE writing for the Associated Press has an article that I have linked to below and quotes a few lines from.

https://apnews.com/article/cdc-monarez-fired-trump-kennedy-vaccines-science-17fd8a19064e39906bc0125fd81e3525

When the White House fired Susan Monarez as director of the premier U.S. public health agency, it was clear to two of the scientific leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the political meddling would not end and it was time to quit.

“We knew … if she leaves, we don’t have scientific leadership anymore, ” one of the officials, Dr. Debra Houry, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“We were going to see if she was able to weather the storm. And when she was not, we were done,” said Houry, one of at least four CDC leaders who resigned this week. She was the agency’s deputy director and chief medical officer.

And then I have this.

Sarah Fortinsky writing for The Hill in an article: Biden White House official on RFK: ‘This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff’

Biden White House official on RFK: ‘This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff’

The health secretary (Kennedy) reflected on the children he’s encountered since arriving in Texas, saying at the event, “I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like.”

“I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation,” Kennedy said.

“You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection,” he continued. “And I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”

This is the man in charge of the nation’s health. He believes that he can tell if a child is “overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation” by looking at them. (My words, my emphasis.)

Defying Kennedy.

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, code of ethics, Government Failure

We don’t see a lot of courage these days. In the last few months in the United States, law firms, whole industries and universities have bent the knee to the new regime. The American elites that have dominated our society for decades when put to the test of loyalty to nation or self-interest proved themselves to be cowards and curs.

It has been very disappointing. I was under the illusion that I lived in a robust democracy when what I actually live in is a society where many of the most influential and well placed people simply want their money and power without any responsibility to the people and heritage of the United States. They are self-interested, greedy cowards.

(In an Alice in Wonderland world, all ideas are equal. But we live in the real world where ideas have consequences.)

And so we have the current situation where democracy itself may disappear in this nation.

But not everyone has surrendered. Not yet.

RFK, Jr. demanded that “Annals of Internal Medicine” retract a study whose results call into question his ridiculous fringe and conspiracy laden beliefs.

I will not dignify or give any credence to the anti-science ravings of this man. To pretend, that he “might have something,” is another way to assist people in their leap down the rabbit hole of internet nonsense.

I stand on the side of reason, logic and science.

I firmly believe that the study questioned by Kennedy is well founded and provides substantial evidence that anyone who is rational should take into consideration when making decisions about vaccine safety.

But the wonderful part of this sad nonsense is what the Danish researchers did when Kennedy issued his demand.

When confronted by Kennedy’s demands, they said no.

When confronted by the demands of the American federal government that they give way to conspiracy minded nonsense, they said no.

When asked to give up their integrity and surrender to opinions of the foolish and ill informed, they said no.

They stand in defiance to our current nonsensical government. They have backbone and courage.

I wish we had more of these kinds of people here in the United States.

RFK, Jr., Demanded Study on Vaccines and Aluminum Be Retracted—The Journal Said No

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/rfk-jr-demanded-study-vaccines-194500702.html

The study in question, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in July, is one of the largest of its kind, looking at 1.2 million children born over more than two decades in Denmark. The authors reported that no significant risk of developing autoimmune, allergic or neurodevelopmental disorders was associated with exposure to aluminium compounds in vaccines.

…

Annals of Internal Medicine says it stands by the study and has no plans to retract it. Christine Laine, editor in chief for the journal, wrote in a comment on the study’s web page on 11 August that “retraction is warranted only when serious errors invalidate findings or there is documented scientific misconduct, neither of which occurred here”.

A published response was made and I recommend you read all of it.

Anders Hviid, the senior author and an epidemiologist at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark’s public-health agency responds in the following post:

Data vs. Doubt: Danish Scientist Responds to U.S. HHS Secretary Critique of Aluminum Vaccine Study

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/data-vs.-doubt-danish-scientist-responds-to-u.s.-hhs-secretary-critique-of-aluminum-vaccine-study-290120e9

In conclusion, I maintain that our study does not provide support for the hypothesis that aluminum used as adjuvants in vaccines are associated with increased risks of early childhood health conditions. None of the critiques put forward by the Secretary is substantive. Currently, the best way to evaluate this hypothesis is to use observational data and methods. This is what we have done using transparent and rigorous statistical analysis. I categorically deny that any deceit is involved as implied by the Secretary.

Our current regime is an enemy of science, logic and reason. They don’t like to be disagreed with and the idea of independent judgement and actual research fills these liars and mountebanks with fear and trembling.

Their deadliest enemy is the truth.

If we come out of this crisis and return to democratic principles, truth must be the light that guides us.

James Alan Pilant

Health Workers Demand Kennedy Stop Spreading Lies.

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, corruption

A few days ago, there was an attack on the CDC by a gunman. Our current regime hardly bothered to take note but the CDC is home to scientists and highly professional experts in their fields. These are the dregs of humanity in the eyes of our oligarch managed masses of barely literate malcontents currently occupying the highest offices in Washington. And so, the shooting did not trouble our government.

But those who have spent their lives working to protect and improve the lives of all Americans resent being shot at by crazy people and disparaged by their current “leadership.” That is not surprising. What is also not surprising is that they are publicizing their discontent.

They have published a signed letter demanding change and one of the changes is for Kennedy to stop spreading misinformation.

That first paragraph quoted from the letter found below is a mountain of eloquence and it may find its way into the future history books once we escape the clutches of the current regime.

(A picture from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes showing Sherlock and a criminal.)

Below is a report from Time magazine entitled Hundreds of Public Health Workers Call on RFK Jr. to ‘Stop Spreading Inaccurate Health Information’ After CDC Shooting written by Chantelle Lee.

https://time.com/7311308/rfk-jr-misinformation-cdc-shooting-letter/

“The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization—and now, violence,” public health workers said in the letter, which was also addressed to members of Congress. “CDC is a public health leader in America’s defense against health threats at home and abroad. When a federal health agency is under attack, America’s health is under attack. When the federal workforce is not safe, America is not safe.”

The public health workers went on to accuse Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.” They cited several statements and actions that Kennedy has made in recent months, pointing to his claim that mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively” against upper respiratory infections such as COVID-19—despite years of research showing that the shots are both safe and effective—and his announcement that HHS would be winding down mRNA vaccine development. They also condemned his decision to remove all the experts from a critical vaccine advisory committee. And they said some of Kennedy’s past comments—such as claiming that there is a “cesspool of corruption at CDC”—were “sowing public mistrust” in the health agency.

Will Kennedy stop spreading lies and misinformation? Don’t be ridiculous! In this administration, lies and misinformation constitute the very core of their being. They are living evidence of an accumulation of half assed beliefs, ill formulated concepts and huge masses of things they would like to be true but aren’t. He isn’t going to change. He owes his office to craven subservience to the “great” leader.

What are the ethics here?

These aren’t hard calls. The health care workers who have labored long and with amazing success to protect all Americans are heroes.

Right now they are being lambasted for doing their jobs. Many, a great many, are right now being fired in the name of “efficiency.” This government’s idea of efficiency is the destruction of a government that works and not just that but an embrace of a radical anti-science, anti-rational, belief system more befitting a basement dwelling conspiracy theorist than a working 21st Century government. It is all such a damned shame.

What is happening is wrong to the very center of the bone. There is not rational defense for what the government is doing.

When will this end? When will good, competent people return to rule?

Well, we will see if we can ride these horrors out.

God bless us all.

James Alan Pilant

Radioactive Shrimp??

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, International

The modern world has many hazards. Some of them are well known like e-coli and forever chemicals. But from time to time something news comes out to threaten our existence and today we have a new one, that is, radioactive shrimp.

Let us have a look at a news article reporting on this new threat. In a posting, an essay written by Richard Hall and Rebecca Schneid reports the following.

https://time.com/7310679/fda-shrimp-radioactive-warning-recall/

The Food and Drug Administration has warned the public not to consume certain frozen shrimp products sold at Walmart due to possible contamination with Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope.

It said the warning affects the Great Value brand of raw frozen shrimp sold at the superstore, adding that anyone who purchased the products should dispose of them.

A statement from the agency said the FDA was “actively investigating reports of Cesium-137 (Cs-137) contamination in shipping containers and frozen shrimp products” shipped from Indonesia.

(This is an illustration from one of Mark Twain’s travel books published in he 19th Century. We may presume in the current situation that he is retreating from radioactive shrimp. jp)

The article does a good job of explaining what industrial uses are made of Cesium-137 which is good substantial reporting but gives no clue as to how the shipping containers from Indonesia got contaminated.

It seems to me that in the future Wal-Mart might do radioactive checks on incoming goods. An Internet shows that radiation detection devices are quite inexpensive and readily available. In fact, Wal-Mart itself has a good variety of the devices which it sells online.

This incident is a rebuke to those that claim government is an unnecessary burden. Without the FDA and the US Customs and Border Patrol, we would never have known we were in any danger.

My compliments to both agencies.

James Pilant

Should Police be Doing Mental Health Calls?

On By southwerkIn Government Failure

(One of Dante’s visions of Hell.)

No. It is a bad idea and has always been a bad idea.

Police are trained to respond to crimes and have resort to various means of restraint and violence. People with mental health problems are seldom criminals and often have no intent to cause a disruption but they lack the ability to discern the effects of their actions.

Police departments are ill equipped to handle mental health emergencies. These aren’t crimes. These are social problems we no longer treat in facilities because state legislatures got rid of the facilities in the half-baked loony idea that serious mental health problems could be handled on an outpatient basis. This was a massive failure and now the mentally ill wander our streets, are often homeless and provided continuous challenges for states, cities and counties. We’ve known this for years. When you are dealing with the mentally ill, untrained responses can result in death and injury.

This is wrong. The mentally ill should be dealt with by people trained and educated to do so.

Here is New York Mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, suggesting that police no longer bear the burden of mental health calls.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/zohran-mamdani-tells-audience-nypd-020500302.html

(Quoted from the article linked to above.) Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani — who has faced heat lately over years-old social media posts critical of the police — came face-to-face with an audience of NYPD officers Tuesday night and told them he would, if elected, spare them the responsibility of responding to most mental health calls.

“We must stop asking them to respond to nearly every single failure of the social safety net,” Mamdani said at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza as a contingent of cops from the nearby 78th Precinct flanked him for an annual “National Night Out” event. “We must stop making it impossible for them to do their jobs by asking them to do every other job we can think of.” (End quote.)

He’s right and I’ve written about this before. Police should not be doing this. If we are going to throw these people onto the streets we should create an organization with facilities to deal with the problems they make.

What is the ethics here?

How about the idea that when a heavily armed (militarized) police force is asked to deal with mental health calls without training or preparation that people are going to die?

Is that a moral problem? You bet.

Let’s build a better nation by dealing with mental health problems like these intelligently and capably.

James Alan Pilant

Needless, Pointless, Cruelty

On By southwerkIn business ethics

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)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/heat-killed-florida-sugar-farm-175931833.html

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)

https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/AE558

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.)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/florida-joins-texas-in-banning-local-heat-protections-for-outdoor-workers/ar-BB1lGzFk

“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.

James Alan Pilant

https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-baffles-experts-banning-local-215200502.html

A good comment comparing student athlete protections to worker protections.

Dead Men Walking? Should Nursing Home Residents Lose the Right to Vote?

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-endorsed-senate-candidate-claims-110250489.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-senate-hopeful-suggests-nursing-home-residents-are-too-close-to-death-to-vote/ar-BB1lhWmp

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-candidate-eric-hovde-questions-whether-nursing-home-residents-should-vote/ar-BB1llwF8

Running for office has long been big business in the United States. Consultants, election observers, campaign managers and many others have careers in the election cycle.

In this kind of business there are things commonly done and commonly not done. One of the things commonly done is to create strategies for appealing to what are called interest groups. These can range from relatively tight categories like doctors to larger more diverse categories like “white females, aged 18-24” or even huge categories like in this case the elderly.

One of things you try not to do as a rule is to alienate any large group of voters by insult. In the situation noted in the links above we have a serious divergence from that rule.

Let me quote:

(Eric) Hovde continued, “We had nursing homes, where the sheriff of Racine investigated, where you had 100 percent voting in nursing homes. Well, if you’re in a nursing home, you only have a five, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.”

I suspect that if I lived in a nursing home I might resent the impression that I am in immediate danger of death and incompetent to vote. And I further suspect that other elderly citizens in his state might resent the implications of his remarks.

Do you wonder just what has happened to our politics when this kind of nonsense is bandied about as if it was similar to a coherent thought? It was not too long ago that political eloquence was valued in our American society. Today, capturing the new cycle with a quote so bizarre, it begs normal human belief, appears to be the principle goal of political rhetoric.

Now you can argue that “James, shouldn’t you discuss the merits of denying or preserving the elderly’s right to vote?”

No. Absolutely no. This claims is just nuts. The idea of taking away basic rights based on advanced age with no other factors in consideration is just crazy. I’m not going to honor these weird babblings from a fool by pretending to detect a thread of an actual argument in it.

I think I am like you in that I am tired of crazed conspiracy nuts. They seem to be everywhere and they never seem to be ignored.

A lot of it has to do with the long term horror of our online world. Where we have each and every individual one of us become accessible moment to moment to every loon, crook, foreign power, and political manipulator. Our government and ruling class have failed all of us by not insisting on enshrining our right to our identities and private information in the letter of the law.

What about Eric Hovde? This is not the only strange controversial remark on his part. There are other conspiracies and strangeness. See below:

Hovde, a banking and real estate development executive, has already faced a number of controversies in his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. He came under scrutiny over a multi-decade-long fight to tear down a beloved family bar in Madison, and has said that in his ideal world, alcohol wouldn’t be legal for commercial sale.