Author: Matthew G. Saroff

About that “Labor Shortage”

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Service Workers Aren’t Lazy — They Just Don’t Want to Risk Dying for Minimum Wage

—Jacobin

As I have noted before, “If only there were some sort of proxy for value that we could offer workers. 

We have seen more than a few examples of this: 

As March drew to a close, Klavon’s Ice Cream Parlor in the Strip District found itself without enough workers for the upcoming spring and summer rush, and it certainly did not have enough workers to open the shop to its desired seven days a week schedule.

Then, on March 30, the parlor announced it would more than double the starting wage for the roles, going from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour, a scoop that seemed to captivate workers throughout the region and one that earned a significant amount of local media coverage.

“It was instant, overnight. We got thousands of applications that poured in,” Maya Johnson, general manager of Klavon’s, said. “It was very overwhelming, very. People were coming in by the next day that it broke on the news, they were coming in, filling out paper applications. I was doing on-the-spot interviews.”

If you cannot find workers, just pay them more, and you will find them.

Linkage

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I did not realize that The Who released a protest song 2 years ago. It’s a wonderful bluesy piece:

Took Long Enough

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Oregon state Representative Mike Nearman, who allowed right wing terrorists into the state house, has been charged with first-degree official misconduct and second-degree criminal trespass.

I’m surprised that he got charged at all:

An Oregon lawmaker who let violent far-right demonstrators into the state Capitol during a Dec. 21 special session was criminally charged on Friday with first-degree official misconduct and second-degree criminal trespass.

Rep. Mike Nearman, R-Independence, was caught on security videos opening a door and allowing demonstrators to enter the building. He had been under investigation since at least January for enabling the breach.

He was caught on tape, and it took them 4 months to charge this mook?

What is up with that?

………

The first-degree official misconduct charge is for allegedly knowingly taking action that constituted an unauthorized exercise of his official duties to benefit someone else, according to court filings. The second charge is for allegedly abetting another person to enter and remain in the Capitol.

………

Oregon’s Capitol has been closed to the public for the last year due to the pandemic. On Dec. 21, lawmakers were in the building for the third special session of 2020, which Gov. Kate Brown called to extend the state’s eviction moratorium, create a relief fund for landlords and pass wildfire and COVID-19 related funding.

As House lawmakers debated rules for the one-day proceeding around 8:30 a.m., Nearman left the chamber and exited a door near where right-wing demonstrators had gathered to protest the state’s coronavirus restrictions. Demonstrators, including some carrying rifles, were circulating outside the north face of the Capitol and one man carrying a large flag waited just outside the door that Nearman opened, according to security footage obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request. Nearman exited and walked around the man with the flag, making no effort to keep him from entering the Capitol.

Surveillance video showed that once Nearman allowed demonstrators into the northwest Capitol vestibule, the group clashed with Oregon State Police and Salem police who tried to keep them out of the building. Demonstrators attempted to push past police, who rushed to eject the initial insurgents and physically block the doorway Nearman had just opened.

They have him on at least 4 cameras.  He’s been cut way too much slack by law enforcement.

He should have been frog marched out of his office in handcuffs months ago.

And Yet He Remains a Respected Part of the DC Establishment

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A federal judge just called former Attorney General William Barr a liar.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson just accused him of deliberately misleading her, Congress and the public about his characterization of the results of the Mueller investigation.

Furthermore, she notes that his description of the memos that avoid public disclosure through the FOIA process.

Why this man has a law license is beyond me:

A federal judge in Washington accused the Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr of misleading her and Congress about advice he had received from top department officials on whether President Donald J. Trump should have been charged with obstructing the Russia investigation and ordered that a related memo be released.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court in Washington said in a ruling late Monday that the Justice Department’s obfuscation appeared to be part of a pattern in which top officials like Mr. Barr were untruthful to Congress and the public about the investigation.

The department had argued that the memo was exempt from public records laws because it consisted of private advice from lawyers whom Mr. Barr had relied on to make the call on prosecuting Mr. Trump. But Judge Jackson, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, ruled that the memo contained strategic advice, and that Mr. Barr and his aides already understood what his decision would be.

………

Her rebuke shed new light on Mr. Barr’s decision not to prosecute Mr. Trump. She also wrote that although the department portrayed the advice memo as a legal document protected by attorney-client privilege, it was done in concert with Mr. Barr’s publicly released summary, “written by the very same people at the very same time.”

………

The ruling came in a lawsuit by a government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, asking that the Justice Department be ordered to turn over a range of documents related to how top law enforcement officials cleared Mr. Trump of wrongdoing.

At issue is how Mr. Barr handled the end of the Mueller investigation and the release of its findings to the public. In March 2019, the office of the special counsel overseeing the inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III, delivered its report to the Justice Department. In a highly unusual decision, Mr. Mueller declined to make a determination about whether Mr. Trump had illegally obstructed justice.

………

But instead, Judge Jackson wrote, Mr. Barr and his aides had already decided not to bring charges against Mr. Trump. She reprimanded the department for portraying the memo as part of deliberations over whether to prosecute the president. She noted that she had been allowed to read the full memo before making her decision, over the objections of the Justice Department, and that it revealed that “excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the attorney general to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time.”

………

The Justice Department argued that the emails were exempt from disclosure and filed sworn affidavits about their contents by lawyers for the Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration. But Judge Jackson insisted on reading the emails for herself and wrote that “the court discovered that there were obvious differences between the affiants’ description of the nature and subject matter of the documents, and the documents themselves.”

More so than Donald Trump, Roger Stone, or Rudolph Giuliani, William Barr needs to be in the dock.

First, he was US Attorney General, and should be subject to a higher standard of behavior than your standard political hack, and second, he is a fixture of the Washington, DC establishment, and someone needs to poke a hole in their own innate sense of impunity for the whole corrupt edifice.

That he can still practice law is an abomination.

This is How You Weed Out the Militia Types

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Once again making a joke of, “Protect and Serve,” police are some of the public servants least likely to get a vaccine.

This is a good thing:  It is a canary in a coal mine.

When you tell a police officer, get a vaccine, or you are suspended, and they take the suspension, 9 times out of 10, they are right wing militia types who have infiltrated the police.

These are the cops who generate your problems with brutality, racism, and million dollar judgement.

Let them go:

Police officers were among the first front-line workers to gain priority access to coronavirus vaccines. But their vaccination rates are lower than or about the same as those of the general public, according to data made available by some of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies.

The reluctance of police to get the shots threatens not just their own health, but also the safety of people they’re responsible for guarding, monitoring and patrolling, experts say.

At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, just 39 percent of employees have gotten at least one dose, officials said, compared to more than 50 percent of eligible adults nationwide. In Atlanta, 36 percent of sworn officers have been vaccinated. And a mere 28 percent of those employed by the Columbus Division of Police — Ohio’s largest police department — report having received a shot.

“I think it’s unacceptable,” Joe Lombardo, the head of Las Vegas police and sheriff of Clark County, said of the meager demand for the shots within his force.

………

Police hesitancy also means officers may be vectors of spread to vulnerable people with whom they interact during traffic stops, calls for service and other high-contact encounters. That could thwart efforts to restore community trust in a moment of heightened scrutiny after last month’s conviction of ex-officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd.

“Police touch people,” said Sharona Hoffman, a professor of law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University. “Imagine having a child in the car who’s not vaccinated. People would want to know if a police officer coming to their window is protected.”

Make it mandatory and fire the cops who refuse.  They are refusing to support public health.

You will end up with a better police force.

Good Riddance, You Incompetent Prat

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DCCC chair in the last election cycle, who has seen her chances to advance in House leadership as a result, will not be running for reelection in 2022.

In a just world, she would be run out of town on a rail.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos of Moline announced Friday she would not seek reelection next year after serving since 2013 in a northwest and west-central Illinois district that has trended increasingly Republican.

She does not know how her district will change in redistricting.

………

At one time, Bustos had been viewed as a rising star among House Democrats, demonstrating an ability to win in largely Republican territory.

No, she managed to get mentored by Nancy Pelosi, which is why she got, and mismanaged her time as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, most egregiously when she explicitly stated that consultants working on primary challenges would be blacklisted by the organization.

It’s called saying the quiet part out loud, and it is very very stupid.

I’m not sure if Pelosi is just a bad judge of people, in the early 2000s, she pushed Anthony Weiner and Deborah Wasserman Schultz who were similarly disastrous in their own special ways, or if she decided that the best way for her to remain speaker was to support flawed individuals as a part of the next generation.

I think that she may be following the advice of Lord Julius, “When you’re running a bureaucracy the best way to safeguard your job is to make sure you’re the only one who knows how the whole thing works.” (Pelosi might also be following he advice of Weisshaupt, but that is enough of a deep dive into Cerebus quotes)

Her path up the Democratic Congressional leadership is done for a very long time, and she knows it, so she’s looking to cash in as a lobbyist or a pundit.

Pass the Popcorn

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The  Executive Office for United States Trustees, a division of the Department of Justice tasked with overseeing bankruptcy proceedings in the United States, just unleashed a huge can of whup-ass on Wayne LaPierre and the NRA.

It isn’t often that you hear terms like, “Failed to provide the proper oversight,” “Personal expenses were made to look like business expenses,” and that their regulatory issues with the New York AG are, “Not a legitimate reason for filing bankruptcy.”

It’s extremely rare for the trustee to say things like this, or to call for a bankruptcy to be halted, or to call for appointing a trustee.

The NRA is in a world of hurt, and if there is any justice in this world, Wayne LaPierre will end up sharing a cell with Matt Gaetz and Roger Stone.

The National Rifle Association’s hopes of end-running a legal challenge in New York were dealt a serious blow on Monday when a Justice Department official rebuked its leadership and called for the dismissal of its bankruptcy filing or the appointment of an outside monitor to oversee its finances.

Lisa L. Lambert, a lawyer in the United States Trustee’s office, which is part of the Justice Department, said the “evidentiary record clearly and convincingly establishes” that Wayne LaPierre, the longtime N.R.A. chief executive, “has failed to provide the proper oversight.” For a number of years, she added, “the record is unrefuted that Wayne LaPierre’s personal expenses were made to look like business expenses.”

Mr. LaPierre and the N.R.A. had filed for bankruptcy not because of any financial distress, but as a strategy to avoid litigation in New York, where the attorney general, Letitia James, is seeking to shut down the organization and claw back millions of dollars in allegedly misspent funds from Mr. LaPierre and three other current or former executives.

………

“The N.R.A. is in real trouble,” said Adam J. Levitin, a professor specializing in bankruptcy at Georgetown University. “The U.S. Trustee rarely gets involved in this sort of motion, much less urges dismissal, a trustee or an examiner. I cannot see an outcome where the N.R.A. comes out unscathed. I think the real issue is what remedy the judge grants.” 

John Pottow, who teaches bankruptcy at the University of Michigan Law School, called the trustee’s intervention “a glaring signal of profound dysfunction” at the N.R.A., adding that such an intervention by the trustee “doesn’t happen very often.”

“The N.R.A. has stated that it is seeking refuge from the New York attorney general’s actions and wishes to change its state of incorporation,” she added. “That can be done outside of bankruptcy. It is not a legitimate reason for filing bankruptcy.”

Shut them down, take their domain names, and take their mailing and donor lists.

Don’t allow LaPierre to resurrect his scam under a different name.

The ammosexuals community will doubtless find another outlet for their political priorities, after all, they have won the war against common sense gun laws for a generation, but at least that new organization won’t rob them blind.

Just Give them Money

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Essential Musical Accompaniment

It’s “Teacher Appreciation Week”, and the I agree with Anne Helen Petersen, if you have chosen to do any of the standard teacher appreciations, doughnuts, Starbucks, socks (!), or other various gifts, you are doing it wrong.

Just give them money, and while your are at it, fund the public schools:

All across the United States parents and caregivers are receiving and forgetting instructions on what they’re supposed to be preparing for their preschool and elementary school kids’ teachers. That’s because next week is officially “Teacher Appreciation Week,” an official holiday orchestrated by a combination of Classroom Parents and PTAs that, over the course of the last four decades, has exploded into an intricate, overly-complicated, largely hollow performance of gratitude.

Am I meant to eat twenty breakfast items???

— Emily (@themerriest) April 29, 2021


This year, Teacher Appreciation is particularly overdetermined, because most teachers have had an ass of a year — attempting, based on their location and particulars of their situation, to balance potential COVID exposure, extreme hygiene theater, in-person learning, distance learning, hybrid learning, vitriolic attacks from parents on their unions, and generalized demoralization. Depending on the state and strength of union, many elementary and high school teachers may be struggling to make ends meet; almost everywhere, ECE teachers receive truly garbage pay. That was true before the pandemic, and as with so many jobs deemed “essential,” the garbage pay feels even more insulting. 

………

Temporarily setting aside the fact that this is the sort of labor that almost always falls upon mothers, and serves as yet another way in which working moms, less financially stable moms, single moms, and/or less mobile moms can “fail” at public performances of proper motherhood…and also setting aside the many parents are already paying up to a third of their income on daycare and preschool…and also setting aside the fact that those failures often filter down and serve as sources of shame for children…and also setting aside the fact that making participation in these weeks “optional” is at once bullshit and gaslighting, these gifts don’t actually make the teacher feel supported. 

………

………These gifts can simultaneously “mean well” and serve to protect parents from larger, tougher, more challenging understandings of what support can and should look like.

So what does that support look like? The easiest route, at least in this moment, is money, filtered for actual use in the form of an actually useful giftcard. Depending on your background, you may or may not have internalized the idea that giving money as a means of thanks is tacky or untoward. That is bullshit posturing and you should forget it. A giftcard to Target will actual support a teacher in a way that a desk full of breakfast items cannot.

But that solution is also fairly shallow. There are several ways that you, as a parent or a caregiver or just an adult in the world, can support the teachers in your life in far more meaningful ways. In public, you can show up and back them and their unions at rallies. You can defend them when people start talking shit about them and their unions in Facebook Parent Groups. You can write them with specific and non-performative and non-passive-aggressive ways that they have impacted your child’s life, and be very clear that you don’t expect a response. 

In private, you can vote for politicians and support policies — especially education levies — that move to robustly fund public education. You can vocally support national plans that conceive of childcare and preschool as essential infrastructure: a market failure that demands public investment in order to 1) be affordable & and accessible to all families and 2) pay a living wage.

Preach it!

We under-invest in education, and we allow charlatans to extract tax dollars through charter schools.

Show them the money.

I Am Not Sure How I Feel about This

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Both DARPA and NASA are moving forward with plans to develop nuclear thermal rockets.

While nuclear thermal propulsion do not match the efficiencies of electric (Ion, etc.) propulsion (an ISP of about 1000 for nuclear thermal as versus up to 5000 for electric propulsion and about 300-500 for chemical rockets) they provide more efficiency than chemical rockets, and more thrust than electric propulsion. 

It makes a lot of sense for satellites in various earth and lunar orbits where you need to change position rapidly. 

I’m not sure how sanguine I am about the possibility of putting a few hundred pounds of enriched uranium in orbit though.

From the NASA story:

More than sixty years after the U.S. began serious studies into nuclear propulsion for space travel, NASA is taking the first steps on a new path to develop nuclear-powered engines for crewed missions to Mars by the end of the next decade.

The agency is reviewing industry responses to the first phase of a plan with the Energy Department to mature a prototype nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) reactor and engine design for use in space. The congressionally directed initiative, which is also supported by ongoing NASA/Energy Department research into advanced nuclear fuels, will ultimately lead to the building and testing of demonstrators.

Beyond this, the vision extends to the potential development of a full-scale nuclear-powered system for a crewed mission to Mars that would be launched in 2039. The new capability, which could be based on either NTP or synergistic nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) technology, would also provide power for future crewed and robotic deep-space exploration missions as well as faster, more responsive resupply flights to lunar and Martian outposts.

NEP is about having more energy available for an electric propulsion.

It is still a low thrust system, but provides much more delta V over time.

DARPA’s proposal is more about providing satellites that can move between geostationary orbits and lunar orbits quickly and flexibly to deal with treats presented by some sort of rival in space:

A nebulously named “Deterrence Layer” is on the drawing board for the National Defense Space Architecture, and that could mean the return of a functioning U.S.-operated, nuclear-powered satellite in orbit by 2025 for the first time in 60 years.

The need for the Deterrence Layer may depend on what China and Russia do next. If rival militaries establish a presence in the region of deep space between geostationary and lunar orbits, the U.S. Defense Department believes a future spacecraft—an “advanced maneuvering vehicle” (AMV)—will be needed to charge out as far as the Moon, hopefully just to remind an adversary to keep a tight leash on any nefarious plans in cislunar space.

………

What is envisaged for the AMV is a propulsion system that produces a high amount of thrust compared to its weight yet is significantly more efficient than chemical propulsion.

………

In the NERVA ground tests and SNAP-10A orbital tests, NASA and the military used a fission reactor fueled by highly enriched uranium, the same radioactive material used to make nuclear warheads.

For DRACO, DARPA has specified a technology shift to high-assay, low enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel. Unlike weapons-grade uranium fuel that is typically enriched to 80%, HALEU is by definition only enriched between 5% and 20%—although the exact level is not being released. HALEU in the form of uranium metal will be furnished by the government to GA-EMS for the DRACO reactor.

The choice of HALEU exploits a bureaucratic loophole created by former President Donald Trump. His presidential memorandum signed on Aug. 20 delegates approval for the launch of a spacecraft using uranium that is enriched below the 20% threshold to the head of the sponsoring agency instead of the White House. In effect, the memorandum transfers the launch authority decision for DRACO from the president to the secretary of defense, perhaps along with the risk in case anything goes wrong.

Nuclear loopholes in space.  Now THERE’S a reassuring term.

I understand the advantages of such a system, but I am concerned about the potential safety risks, both for NTP and NEP propulsion.

If You Thought That There Was a Speck of Sanity in Law Enforcement………

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Then you should read just how cops believed the weirdest conspiracy theories during the Black Lives Matter protests.

I want what they are smoking:

The graffiti on a port-a-potty in a gravel pit was, in the opinion of one Washington state resident, a sign that anti-fascists might blow up a nearby dam. Another local was convinced that a young man reading signs was actually an “Antifa or BLM scout.” A third person warned, via an anonymous email tip, that her ex-husband was part of an anti-fascist group that was coming to burn down the town.

All these complaints were forwarded throughout police ranks in Washington, where officials urged vigilance against the leftist threat.

As racial justice protests flared across the country in summer 2020, so did conservative fears of leftist protesters. From Oregon to Virginia, social media lit up with rumors about anti-fascists (“antifa”) or Black Lives Matter participants, who were allegedly coming to terrorize small towns.

Anacortes, a scenic city of 17,000 in coastal Washington, was no exception. From June to August 2020, the city’s police department received repeated tips about supposed antifa threats, according to police documents obtained by the government transparency nonprofit Property of the People and shared with The Daily Beast. Even some of the most absurd claims found their way up to state-level law enforcement, those documents show.

………

The documents, obtained via Freedom of Information request, reveal the absurdity of some of last year’s complaints.

………

The following month, another alleged antifa threat, even wilder than the others, found its way to the Skagit County Sheriff, documents show. In this case, it involved two overturned port-a-potties in a gravel pit near a boat launch in Concrete, Washington.

One of the port-a-potties had been spray painted with the acronym “ACAB,” short for “all cops are bastards.” The other was tagged with an A in a circle, an anarchist symbol. But where some observers might have seen common vandalism symbols, the tipster who photographed the port-a-potties saw something more ominous—maybe even part of a plot to blow up a dam.

………

“When individuals and law enforcement have been whipped into such a paranoid frenzy that they’re primed to see ‘antifa’ or ‘BLM’ terrorist conspiracies literally in the toilet, the situation is a powder keg,” Shapiro said. “There’s a direct line from this sort of deliberately induced political hysteria to violent, repressive crackdowns on progressive dissent.” 

The police were clutching at any potential excuse to foment violence and beat up (riot against) protesters.

It’s not conducive to the proper functioning of a democratic society.

Continue Pushing

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If Joe Biden has a virtue as President, it is that he will do the right thing if he has no alternative, a characteristic that he does not share with his three predecessors. 

That being the case, the continuing efforts by Democrats in Congress to push Medicare expansion should continue:

Congressional Democrats are planning to pursue a massive expansion of Medicare as part of President Biden’s new $1.8 trillion economic relief package, defying the White House after it opted against including a major health overhaul as part of its plan.

The early pledges from some party lawmakers, led by prominent members of its liberal wing, threaten to create even more political tension around a package that is already facing no shortage of it. The expansion push comes as Biden on Wednesday stressed in his first address to Congress that he is still committed to making health care more affordable.

They specifically aim to lower the eligibility age for Medicare to either 55 or 60, expand the range of health services the entitlement covers and grant the government new powers to negotiate prescription drug prices. Party lawmakers say their approach could offer new, improved or cheaper coverage to millions of older Americans nationwide.

………

The early efforts reflect a broader belief among congressional Democrats that they must more aggressively seize on their narrow but powerful majorities to push policies that long have been stalled in Washington — no matter their cost. Many party lawmakers have pushed Biden at times to spend sky-high sums, sometimes even more than the president himself says he supports, arguing that they have a political mandate to pursue vast economic change.

Also, let us not forget, lowering the age of Medicare eligibility is also exquisitely good policy. It creates a 25% savings right off the back.

But health-care revisions are likely to present a significant challenge, threatening to open rifts not just between the two parties but within the Democratic caucus itself. In an early sign of trouble, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) told The Washington Post on Wednesday that he opposes expanding Medicare eligibility even as he supports broader adjustments to the Affordable Care Act.

Of course Manchin opposes expanding Medicare.  He’s an evil hypocrite.

………

For many Democrats, the most enticing target is Medicare, as they try to deliver on their 2020 campaign promises to make health insurance affordable and available. Biden himself endorsed a policy report after the party’s presidential primaries — part of a “unity” effort among Democratic contenders, including Sanders — that called for lowering the Medicare enrollment age and expanding the health services it covers.

Make Manchin vote against this.  Make Sinema vote against this.  Make the rest of them vote against Medicare expansion.

Make them pay the cost for being narcissistic amoral assholes.

Boeing Still Can’t Make Planes

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The FAA will audit Boeing following the discovery of a serious manufacturing flaw.

The short version of this is that Boeing has systematically dismantled procedures to allow employees to report safety issues on the shop floor to senior management, because the management fetishist MBA culture that was imported from McDonnell Douglas when they acquired the firm.

Since McDonnell took over Boeing with Boeing’s money, they have systematically dismantled every advantage that Boeing once they came on board:

Boeing Co. is facing an audit to determine why changes in its manufacturing practices on the 737 Max led to a hazard that went unnoticed for almost two years.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees Boeing and has meted out multiple civil penalties against the planemaker in recent years, said in a statement Thursday that it is also investigating the origin of the manufacturing flaw.

“These initiatives are part of our commitment to continually evaluating and improving our oversight of all aspects of aviation safety, recognizing that catching errors at the earliest possible point enhances what is already the world’s safest form of transportation,” the agency said.

………

The flaws in the electrical components raise new questions about Boeing’s ability to monitor safety issues within the company. The lack of a robust internal safety review and oversight system was cited repeatedly by multiple reviews of the 737 Max crashes.

Until recent months, Boeing didn’t have what is known as a Safety Management System, which requires an organization to conduct more robust risk analyses of design features, open channels for employees to raise concerns and involve senior management.

………

The changes to how certain electrical components were installed on the 737 Max occurred in 2019. At the time, Boeing concluded it was such a minor change that it didn’t require FAA approval, the agency said in a statement. Similarly, Boeing employees who are deputized to act on behalf of the federal regulator also didn’t approve of the changes.

………

The electrical problem was deemed serious enough that the agency said it was waiving the normal period for public comment and would require the repairs as soon as Boeing completes a bulletin detailing them.

Boeing is being run by finance guys, and their business model is tor burn the the company down for the insurance money.

Support Your Local Police

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A cop in Georgia (where else?) was planning to arrest black people to prevent them from voting. 

He is also hooked up with white supremacists online.

Am I the only one who thinks that this guy is not an isolated case?

A former Middle Georgia sheriff’s deputy bragged in text messages with members of an alleged extremist group that he had beaten a Black person he arrested and planned to charge Black Georgians with felonies to keep them from voting, according to an FBI affidavit.

The ex-Wilkinson County deputy, Cody Richard Griggers, of Montrose, was fired last November after the FBI contacted the sheriff there about an investigation into illegal guns and their alleged ties to a California man said to have made violent political statements on Facebook.

Griggers, 28, a former Marine, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Macon to one count of possession of an unregistered firearm, a crime the authorities discovered in their probe, which began last summer. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in July.

………

Griggers, in the texts, was said to have claimed he was making and gathering illegal firearms and explosives.

Griggers, who is white, “also expressed viewpoints consistent with racially motivated violent extremism, including the use of racial slurs, slurs against homosexuals and making frequent positive references to the Nazi holocaust,” prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday announcing Griggers’ plea.

The prosecutors said that on Nov. 19 last year that the FBI searched Griggers’ patrol car and found a machine gun “with an obliterated serial number,” a weapon he was not allowed to have in his patrol car.

It was Griggers’ statements in text messages, however, that most concerned Wilkinson Sheriff Richard Chatman.

………

“I beat the (expletive) out of a (racial slur) Saturday. (Expletive) tried to steal (a gun magazine) from the local gun store. … Sheriff’s dept. said it looked like he fell,” the affidavit noted, quoting Griggers.

Griggers went on to write that the beating was for him “sweet stress relief.”

………

The affidavit also said Griggers had texted how he “intended to charge black people with felonies in order to keep them from voting.”

“It’s a sign of beautiful things to come,” he wrote, according to the affidavit. “Also I’m going to charge them with whatever felonies I can to take away their ability to vote.”

Griggers had worked as a deputy in Wilkinson County — which lies just east of Macon and has a population of about 9,000 people, about 40% of them Black — for just over a year, the sheriff said.

According to the FBI affidavit, Griggers also discussed “killing liberal politicians” with other members of the text group, writing they could “make it look like Muslims” were responsible.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, and I am not just talking about the Wilkinson County sheriff’s department.

Police departments across the nation are objectively pro-white supremacist.

RTead more here: https://www.bnd.com/news/nation-world/national/article251004169.html#storylink=cpy

My Opinion of Him Has Risen (It Could Not Have Fallen More)

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After putting his foot in his mouth,

Joe Rogan offers a pithy and apparently sincere apology.

He said some tremendously stupid things about Covid Vaccines, and when called out, he replied as follows, “I’m not a doctor, I’m a f—ing moron.”

In a world of mealy mouthed apologies, it’s kind of refreshing, though Joe Rogan remains, and will probably be, a  f—ing moron:

Popular Spotify podcast host Joe Rogan on Thursday sought to clarify his recent controversial comments that young, healthy people don’t need a COVID-19 vaccine.

During a conversation on his most recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the comedian made it clear that he wasn’t anti-vaccine, and people should not necessarily be looking to him for medical advice.

“I’m not a doctor, I’m a f—ing moron, and I’m a cage fighting commentator … I’m not a respected source of information, even for me. But I at least try to be honest about what I’m saying,” Rogan said.

Rogan’s initial comments drew backlash from multiple critics as harmful and irresponsible, including from many infectious disease experts and even Biden administration officials.

For someone who says outrageous crap for a living, it’s kind of refreshing when they quickly recognize that they f%$#ed up.

This is Horrifying

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45 people have been killed in Israel in a crowd crush during Lag B’Omer celebrations at Mount Meron.

It appears that this situation has been predicted for over a decade, but political pandering, and a general unwillingness of the political establishment to challenge the Heredi ultra-Orthodox demands for impunity:

The man underneath Avraham Nivin was already limp and lifeless. The men above him were thrashing and flailing. The men to his sides were screaming for help and struggling to breathe.

And crushed in the middle of these limbs and torsos — his legs trapped, his shoes and glasses lost in the melee, his body perpendicular to the floor — was Mr. Nivin himself.

………

He survived, but 45 others did not — turning a night that began as a pilgrimage for tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews, and a joyous return to something approaching post-pandemic normality, into one of the deadliest peacetime tragedies in Israeli history.

………

By Friday night, the stampede had prompted a surge of soul-searching about religious-secular tensions, the resistance to state authority displayed by some ultra-Orthodox Israelis and, above all, questions of blame, responsibility and negligence.

Gee, ya think?

For more than a decade there have been concerns and warnings that the religious site on Mount Meron in northern Israel was not equipped to handle tens of thousands of pilgrims who flock there each year to commemorate the death of a revered second-century rabbi.

Actually, that’s one explanation, the more common reason given for this holiday is the end of a plague against Rabbi Akiva’s students almost 2 centuries earlier.

In 2008 and 2011, reports by the state comptroller, a government watchdog, warned of the potential for calamity there. The leader of the regional government said he tried to close it at least three times. In 2013, the regional police chief warned in an official investigation of the possibility of a lethal stampede. And in 2018, a prominent ultra-Orthodox journalist called it a death trap.

And yet the government still authorized this year’s event, raising questions about its culpability and whether its reliance on ultra-Orthodox political parties had trumped concerns for public safety.

Of course it was politics.  This is Bibi Netanyahu we are talking about.

………

Israel has been racked by tensions between the secular mainstream and ultra-Orthodox Israelis, also known as Haredim, particularly during the pandemic. Among secular Jews, there was widespread anger about a disregard for coronavirus regulations within parts of the ultra-Orthodox community.

………

The night reached its crescendo shortly after midnight, as packed crowds gathered in a cramped open-air arena beside the tomb to sing, dance and watch the lighting of ceremonial bonfires.

The festivities turned to horror afterward as celebrants attempted to leave via a steep, narrow gangway that descends down a short set of steps to a narrow, covered passageway.

………

The Israeli authorities had placed no restrictions on the number of attendees, despite warnings by some health officials about the risk of Covid-19 transmission.

………

For the Haredi community — which was disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus crisis, both by the disease and by the stinging rebukes of secular society — it felt like a particularly cruel turn of events.

………

The compound on Mount Meron includes several large gathering grounds with bleachers and stages, connected by a series of alleyways and path. The 2008 comptroller report said that various additions and changes to the site had been made without the approval of the local and district planning and building committees.

………

Despite the warnings that the infrastructure could not safely bear large crowds, one former official, Shlomo Levy, who had chaired the Upper Galilee Regional Council, said he had come under political pressure to cancel a warrant he had issued in 2008 to close the tomb compound because of safety concerns.

Mr. Levy told Kan, Israel’s public radio, that the public security minister at the time told him he was afraid to touch the site and that it was a “hot potato.”

That wariness likely stemmed from the disproportionate political power long held by ultra-Orthodox parties in Israel’s coalition system. The ultra-Orthodox have been crucial members of successive Netanyahu-led governing coalitions.

One would hope that there would be some changes in behavior as as a result of this tragedy, but I would not hold my breath over this.

Headline of the Day

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Will “Goldman Penis Envy” Crash the Economy Again?

—Matt Taibbi

The point of his article is that there are a lot of actors in Wall Street like Lehman, who are small enough that they feel that they have to massively over-leverage to compete with the Vampire Squid, but large enough to crash the system.

“We called it ‘Goldman Penis Envy,’” says Lawrence McDonald, former Lehman trader and author of A Colossal Failure of Common Sense. In telling the Gelband story, he explains that Fuld and Gregory were so desperate to beat out Goldman and become the richest men on Wall Street, they chased every bad deal at the peak of the speculative bubble.

“These tertiary financial institutions, in order to win business away from the big players, they have to continually juice their offerings, offer more leverage, more goodies,” says McDonald. “Dick and Joe, they wanted to do these banking deals, to steal Goldman’s business by offering more.”

He’s suggesting that the collapse of Archegos Capital Management is a taste of things to come.

He’s probably right.

Adventures in Google™ Adsense™

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I don’t pay a whole bunch of the attention that Google™ Adsense™ serves on my blog, but occasionally,I see somethng truly odd:

I don’t understand how Google™ Adsense™, given the enormous amount of data that they have on me, would think that I care one whit about intestinal parasites in horses.

Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

Deep Thought

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Only Psychopaths and True Believers Are Willing to Put Up with the Bullshit in Politics, Because There Are More Psychopaths Than True Believers, So the Psychopaths Make the Rules.

It was a throw away line by me at the Stellar Parthenon BBS, in a more general discussion of dysfunctional politics, but it was well received, so I thought that I would share it here.

Biden’s Speech

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I didn’t watch it, I prefer to read the transcript.

The only thing close to the surprise was his pre-K childcare/education proposals, which are a good idea from both a policy and a political standpoint.

On the other hand, he is the first President who I can bear to listen to in at least 20 years.