You Bet Your Sweet FAA?

 

So, let me just express what I will consider my "conservative" reservations about the DOGE team "plugging in" to "upgrade our aviation system." I just don't know that a team of even extremely bright and committed young people, running on high optimism and little sleep, are going to do miracles sorting out air traffic control--especially if they approach this with a "move fast break stuff ethos."

I might be catastrophizing, but I worry that the guy who promised us driverless cars is thinking of something like air traffic control--without controllers.

Call me "analog"--a throwback. I believe in the human element.  I believe in lived experiences mattering for something. When I see something like this, I do think of what can go wrong, that an experienced knowledgeable expert in a given field, might think about, that even a very talented novice will not. 

Solving for How to Get Unknown

 

So, Twitter has an outstanding name-recognition and an iconic logo, and an in-media lingo "Tweeps, Tweets, ReTweets etc.) that have kept the brand at least somewhat recognizable, so what is Elon Musk's weird Sunday announcement?

We're changing the name and logo to "X". 

Now, if you're "Blackwater" and decide to change your name to Xe or Academi or whatever, fine. Reputation-laundering. But for a brand that might still have some name-value: why oh why the most dated 1990's GRR! EXTREME! doofusness combined with the blandest of corporate genericism: "Brand X"--the ultimate in non-descript. The signature of the illiterate. 

I just don't think Musk knows what social media is. You want the social bits of the media to work, and you want a continuous sense of community. You don't want fucking new unless it's better. And Is it going to be?

Is it? Because if the features that made it Twitter don't work and you add shit no one asked for, fuck off. You could have just built a new thing instead of harvesting brainmaggots in the thing we liked. And it might have cost less than $44 Billion to do it. 

Trains and Gaslight

 

new: OH officials appear to have relied solely on prelim H20 sampling conducted by a rail contractor to initially declare water in East P. safe

Ind. experts called sampling "sloppy" & "amateur"—initial batch not collected in accordance w/ EPA standardshttps://t.co/ZbpzrlnmZY

— Chris D'Angelo (@c_m_dangelo) February 18, 2023

It's difficult to wrap my head around how we do things in this country when it comes to potential corporate malfeasance: we take their word for things. If the rail company is responsible for a chemical disaster, why would we take their word for whether the water and soil are ok? If the rail company advocates for a release of toxic chemicals to be burnt in the first place (which cleared the tracks for more trains to come through) certain governors will just accept that advice. Even though there are hundreds of train derailments every year, and they many times do involve chemical spills and even explosions, we still listen to lobbyists on behalf of those companies who want less, not more regulation. 

And certain presidential administrations have even agreed with them. 

I've noticed that this particular accident and subsequent health concerns has become fodder for the right wing to demonstrate something about the Biden Administration. Whether it's when DeWine has finally requested federal assistance or whether FEMA even really is the agency that aid would come from seem like a weird muddying to me of who is responsible for what and creates a space for conspiracy theory and resentment to grow. 

When the rail company is just living in 1899 with the robber barons just enjoying cover from the partisans and trying to get people to sign away their future settlement rights for a pittance. It's what they've come to expect. They have a history. 

Now, Trump says he's going to make an appearance in East Palestine to basically be as useful as a cottage cheese dildo while additionally fanning the flames of conspiracy and (white) resentment. And we wouldn't expect anything less.

Shut up and Send Money, He Said

McConnell says companies should stay out of politics — unless they’re donating money https://t.co/E98oER4ltq

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 7, 2021

Or else, he added. Because he was not bothered. Not bothered at all. Why are you all saying that?

UPDATE: The other senator from Kentucky would like to cancel Coca-Cola, because he, too, is unbothered. Cancel Coke, and see how they like it!

UPDATE: More Americans are identifying as Democrats, and I'm sure that's nothing Republicans are bothered about.

UPDATE: It's possible that people like Biden's proposals because government should be about governing. Just a thought!

Don Blankenship Indicted Regarding Upper Big Branch Mine Violations

It's good to hear that Don Blankenship, who was CEO of Massey Energy when the Upper Big Branch Mine blast killed 29 workers, has been indicted for what really always looked to me like a criminal disregard for the lives of his employees. His poor ability to separate regard for  profit from duty to ensure mine safety seemed to me of a piece with a sense that employees were property--owned by the company. So why did it matter if some got killed here and there? He didn't just cost the company millions in fines and settlements--he's possibly cost himself his freedom.

Since the disaster never did cost him a place in the industry, maybe this is the message that was required that miners' safety matters.

Requiem for A Snack Cake?

I approach the story of the demise of Hostess Brands with some trepidation because I am just not a fan of their foodstuffs. It's not the food I was raised on. It's not that I never ate Twinkies or Wonder Bread--I've eaten them. But I come from the land of TastyKake and Amoroso rolls. A Twinkie is like nothing compared to even a Butterscotch Krimpet. Please! Can Wonder Bread contain the glory that is a cheesesteak or a meatball sub?

No.  These just aren't the foods of my youth, and although I understand the nostalgia other people may have for them, their feeling of loss is not mine. And these days, unless I have the opportunity to eat some freaking great pizza, I'm not all that that hot on gluten, anyway.  Or, for that matter, mass-produced baked goods that contain petroleum products. But leaving aside my developing consciousness about factory foods, how they are made possible by factory farming, and how we've come to accept highly refined chemical products as ingredients in our foods with little regard to how it impacts our bodies (whew, am I a freaking killjoy, or what?), the story of the supposed death of Twinkie the Kid is probably premature and more a story about (cake) makers and (money) takers.

If you were to ask the owners of Hostess Brands, they would have you believe that the union (read: the people who make the bread, cakes, etc.) are to blame for the demise of the company, due to a strike that impaired the company's profitability*. The actual story is a bit more complex than that--and a good take on it is found at Forbes.

Hostess has been sold at least three times since the 1980s, racking up debt and shedding profitable assets along the way with each successive merger. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004, and again in 2011. Little thought was given to the line of products, which, frankly, began to seem a bit dated in the age of the gourmet cupcake. (100 calorieTwinkie Bites? When was the last time you enteredMagnolia Bakery and asked about the calorie count?) 

As if all this were not enough, Hostess Brands’ management gave themselves several raises, all the while complaining that the workers who actually produced the products that made the firm what money it did earn were grossly overpaid relative to the company’s increasingly dismal financial position.

In other words, while the employees were in the business of making the products (and they actually did make compensation concessions in previous rounds), the management took. They rewarded themselves for failure. And in the long run, the employees are the ones out of a job.

And yet the brand names or properties of "Twinkies" or "Wonder Bread" still have saleable value. Other companies will compete for the rights to make those products, and they probably will be manufactured outside of the United States and shipped all over the world. And for some reason, they will sell. People will buy them. As if nothing had happened.

Lesson:  employees are disposable, managers should be paid regardless of performance, and Twinkies are immortal (even if their indefinite shelf life is an urban legend).

Is that the way it should be?  Meh. It is the way it is. I'm ready for "Occupy Cake".  Make your own Twinkies and Wonder-like bread at home, if that's what you like. Or patronize your local bakeries.   (Or even discover the gustatory wonders of your local loam; motto "Locavore, locavore, locavore"--Washington apples like a baby's head. Cranberry preserves on cheese from a dairy farm near you. Honey complete with comb in a clean little jar from your nearest co-op.  Figs from your own tree, crepes from eggs whose chickens you have personally met.)

I know that isn't a possibility for everybody owing to availability and price issues. But it would be neat if the business model Hostess followed was eaten out of house and home.

*NB: A strike actually is supposed to impair the profitability of a company, to smack the management over the head with the realization of who actually does the heavy lifting around here. This smack came too late for Hostess. Just a thing to chew over.

(X-posted at Rumproast.)

Don Blankenship has a new company. It is a coal company.

When I read this a short while ago, I was taken a little bit aback. See, it just seems to me that if you've run a business where your reputation as a polluter is notorious, where your employees have died from preventable incidents due to disregard for safety practices--and where a record settlement was just made regarding a horrific accident at your old company, maybe you should think about doing something that isn't operating coal mines.  Maybe your time is better served portioning out alms to widows and orphans, or setting up an endowment for respiratory disorders research, or maybe just staying retired. I don't know why folks do anything, sometimes. It just seems to me that if massive environmental disasters and mangled bodies were left in one's wake, why, one might just as well not go back into a business one did so poorly at--

Profitably.  But poorly, in any moral sense of the word. 

Don't want any person, place or thing, trying to pull the REINS in on me--

The House passed something called the REINS (or Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act today. The idea behind the bill is that the controlling party of either chamber gets veto power over any new regulations of the federal government over industries. As far as these things go--it's so very, very Republican.  It's unlikely to clear the Senate, and even if it did, President Obama would surely veto the heck out of it. But just listen to this kind of rhetoric:

"Who do the regulators answer to? No one," said Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) in debate on the House floor. "When the regulators go to work every day, like most people go to work, their work assignment's a little different," Poe said. "In my opinion, they sit around a big oak table, sipping their lattes. They have out their iPads and their computers, and they decide, 'Who shall we regulate today?' And they write a regulation and send it out to the masses and make us deal with the cost to that."



Rep. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), argued that if Congress can stop rules in their tracks, businesses will flourish. "Poll after poll of small business owners, of medium-sized business owners -- they will show you and tell you that major regulations are holding back their expansion and the ability of them to hire more workers," Quayle said.

That is just fabulous--the regulators are "sipping their lattes". I bet they go on to have an arugula salad for lunch after a hard half-day of regulatin'--so unlike the red meat job-creators, who probably take their coffee black and sweetened with the tears of widows.  You know, I'm not a government regulator, but I bet they probably consider other stuff, like employee deaths, possible dangers to consumers, the despoiling of the environment, and other bummers that serious people might think about after reviewing and considering pages and pages of data including heart-wrenching anecdotes about the victims of corporate abuses in the pursuit of profit--but that's just how I think. But no, really. Oak tables, lattes. Also--I'm not really sure what polls Ben Quayle is talking about. I don't really think the link between regulation and job growth has been all that conclusively proven.


I'm sure many informed people might be saying to themselves, "But I thought Congress already did have oversight over this stuff--and wouldn't this lead to gridlock in a climate where even pro forma stuff like judicial appointments and debt ceiling raises are subject to blocks and filibusters and all that?"  Yeah, you totally have that right.  It's a stupid bill--the big deal is trying to override presidential veto and basically weakening the government's effectiveness at regulating businesses overall. In that way, the road is made smooth for more fracking, and mountaintop removal, and arsenic in the apple juice, and deep-sea drilling disasters, and all the other kinds of stuff that sometimes remind us why a government should not, actually, be small enough to be drowned in a bathtub, but might actually play a protective role for its citizens.

In other words--such total crap.  But thanks, House Republicans, for really showing us what you all stand for. For the very next industrial disaster, I will surely be thinking of you.

Massey Energy (Alpha Natural Resources) to pay largest settlement in Blast that Killed 29 Workers

Just to follow up on a matter that I had posted about a while back, Alpha Natural Resources, which took over Massey Energy, will be paying $209 million in civil penalties and restitution as a result of the mine explosion that killed 29 men.

Although this is a record settlement, the systematic and pervasive violation of mining regulations is probably not going to be handled by monetary penalties alone. Unfortunately, it seems that businesses consider the price of getting around regulations, via fines, lobbyists to undo regulations, and the deaths of workers, as being a part of the overhead of doing business. Some say only criminal penalties will be sufficient to persuade the industry to change its ways:

Under the federal mine act, safety violations, with the exception of falsifying records, are categorized as misdemeanors. That limitation that could make it hard to build a case against senior managers, like Don Blankenship, the former chief executive of Massey, lawyers said.



In all, 18 Massey executives have refused to be interviewed by federal investigators, invoking their Fifth Amendment rights.


“Until someone goes to jail, there will be no justice done here,” said Cecil E. Roberts, president of United Mine Workers of America International.

I'm highlighting this story in part because it serves as an example of the ways in which businesses don't even follow such regulations as actually exist, even in the face of severe financial civil penalties. This is a far cry from any suggestion that in the vein of enlightened self-interest, such industries would ever self-regulate.   In the absence of regulation, I only suspect things would be worse,  and am therefore very leery of politicians who imply otherwise.

Just another sign that the SCOTUS isn't yours and mine--

I'm a bit cheesed off at the recent SCOTUS decision over Wal-mart vs. Dukes (Dahlia Lithwick runs down all the details here.)  It just seems to me that the size of a class of persons to be considered for a class action lawsuit shouldn't be a consideration for whether that group can be considered a "class" per se for redress of an issue via the courts because it, well, discriminates against people who are part of a large group, or suing a large enough institution or corporation.  Also, I don't see how gender isn't sufficient to tie together people as belonging to a particular class if the court already recognizes something called: "gender discrimination."   It strikes me as sort of self-explanatory, that way.  Finally, I'm just up to here with the argument that because Wal-Mart had a written anti-discrimination policy re: women, the "statistical and anecdotal evidence" somehow doesn't matter.  But that's Scalia for you. Women: a class he doesn't necessarily recognize. Corporations, a class he just about always does--rather favorably.

What Walmart costs--not such a profit, let me tell you!

So, here's a link about the costs to American taxpayers--who did not know this, but are actually supporting with their own tax dollars the pretty successful retail enterprise called "Walmart". It's true.

See, the people who run Walmart, or at least have a controlling interest, are the Waltons, who are, totally loaded.   But their employees are making less than would let them aspire to just being poor. That sucks.   Why should Walmart employees be happy about being under-funded for the real work they do?

I am so grumpy at stupid, awful people.

I know. That isn't even a good, coherent blog topic, but last I checked, I'm not even a good, coherent blogger.

So I have to talk about the idiocy of Michael "Heckuva job!" Brown piping up his stupid nonsense today:




Um--three weeks ago, Obama totally said he was open to the idea of off-shore drilling. So, why would he be happy about this disaster happening so soon after he said that? And why would a responsible reaction to the disaster be seen as "pandering"?

You know, since someone called "Brownie" was a Bush-appointed crony who is generally thought to have been a disaster at his public job circa 4.5 years ago, and is only some kind of disaster recovery consultant today apparently on the basis that if people learn from mistakes they've made, then Brown knows everything--maybe a stiff shot of STFU is coming Brownie's way, 'kay?

Also a stupid, awful person--Don Blankenship. I really don't care for him. This story is so many quotes of stupid and awful.


Just quotes, guys:

"I think about how evil people can be and how misplaced their priorities can be and unfortunate it is that people that can reach the level of senator or president or representative or head of the union - how wrong they can be," Blankenship said. "But I've seen a lot of it over my time."

--Laird Blankenship, re: His Critics

Also wrong--miners, mine inspectors, the families of miners, people with common sense, the legal system and people who believe in regulations in general and mine regulation in particular. And they are all evil, too. Don't you forget it.

It's really sad, because Cecil has no more idea what happened at UBB than I do, and it's political agenda - he's, you know, it's almost like Goober or Barney on an 'Andy Griffith' running around, 'Citizen's arrest,' or something," Blankenship said.

Blankenship also criticized President Barack Obama for getting most of his advice from "the union element." He also said he hasn't had an opportunity to talk with Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va. Although he shook hands with Rahall at some point, Blankenship said he had not had discussions with him about "any of these outlandish statements." Blankenship did not specify the statements.

--His Lairdship, re: comments from United Mine Workers' President Cecil Roberts

Oh, that scruffy union element--those killjoys. Isn't it lucky that Massey didn't have that wretched union influence improving conditions in their mines? Because, who knows if actual precautions being taken couldn't have prevented a disacter? One can only wonder.


Also stupid and awful?

Dana Perino--because "Listen all y'all it's a sabotage!"



What? Um. Oh, and all of Fox and Friends for just sucking out loud to push the "response delayed" meme. Just--wow, way to push something unfounded to create a negative narrative that fits an anti-Obama agenda in a really nakedly hacktastic way, huh?

Two quick ones about the Massey mine disaster,

The first is a Tweet from a spokestool from ALEC,



(h/t to The Political Carnival.)

So, let me get this straight, a widow recently bereaved decides to sue a company that is notorious for safety violations and this goof says, "Oh, it's 'free money'."

Sorry, um, I'm counting the loss of a life-partner and breadwinner as a "price paid". I don't actually see that as "free". And I would bet that hardly anyone would choose a big payday at the risk of their beloved. That is simply cold-blooded. But that is very revealing in terms of the way some pro-corporate minds work. In his mental ledger, the death of the worker is more of a nuisance to his employer than to his spouse, since Massey now has to replace him and bother will all this paperwork--let alone deal with with some legal nonsense. Implied: "She should take whatever the going rate for dead husbands is and stop haggling!"




Another story is this piece on Don Blankenship from Businessweek that has one detail about his dealings with a former housekeeper that only reinforces my impression that he has an "ownership" mentality towards people in his employ.

Blankenship, his opponents and supporters agree, simply has to get his way. Nothing illustrates this better than his fight with a maid earning $8.86 an hour. In 2001, Deborah May started working for Mate Creek Security, a company "related to Massey Energy," according to court documents. When Mate Creek assigned her to work for Blankenship, according to the documents, May cleaned his three-story home, shopped, and did laundry. By 2005 she was also cleaning a bus, two cabins, and a mansion in Kentucky. She received one 30 cents hourly raise. After Blankenship said she would also have to care for a "German police dog," according to the documents, she quit.

In November 2005, May applied for unemployment benefits, saying she was forced to leave the job. The state denied her claim, concluding she quit for no reason. In June 2008, West Virginia's top court reversed the state's denial of benefits. Two of the court's justices said "the unrefuted evidence" showed that Blankenship "physically grabbed" the maid, threw food after she brought back the wrong fast-food order, and tore a tie rack and coat hanger out of a closet after she forgot to leave the hanger out for his coat. "This shocking conduct" showed May was in effect fired because she felt compelled to quit, the justices said. They said the conduct was "reminiscent of slavery and is an affront to common decency."

Perfectly disgraceful. But it does reveal a disrespect for persons, and a unique sense of his relationship to people "beneath" him.

Little Laird Blankenship and the WV Fiefdom

Just a quick call-out: Don Blankenship is a jerk. Unfortunately, he's a jerk who owns runs mines *as CEO of Massey Energy Corp, so he gets to be a powerful jerk who employs good, hardworking people, and suffers under the delusion that he owns them, just like he runs the mine. He looks at the bottom line and determines pretty much how many fines and wrongful deaths his business can get away with, versus the "increased productivity" of doing stuff with violations, which he sees as just a part of the coal business. Since those violations are safety violations, which means that failures to keep mines safe results in deaths, that means that Blankenship has accepted that sometimes, people have to die for his profits.

I just wanted to comment that this is the worst kind of feudalistic mindset. He couldn't be more abusive of his "lord of the manor" position if he decided to practice the droight de seigneur* over miners' wives.

I'd love to see this guy get some kind of comeuppance. He's already figured the toll of this latest disaster into his balance sheet.

*(Yes, I know the concept of the droight de seigneur isn't historically verified. Nonetheless, he's getting a "leg-over" financially, but people would probably get madder if it was physically, no?)

(*Yes, I know better, yet rhetoric overtook me. Actually, it's kind of worse because there's a corporate board that must like him this way. After all, he rose in the ranks of the company by ensuring the company was non-union.)