3638 Simplistic rant - don't bother reading.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

If your customs allow you to kill on the basis of religious, racial, material, political,

or ideological differences, then you are living in a barbarian society,

and you are a barbarian.

...[T]hose who engage in violence even to spread seemingly well intentioned

political ideologies are barbarians.

-- Michael Hachulski --

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I'm hearing that CEOs are against Obama.  Not all - but the hand-picked ones are being trotted out, threatening layoffs.  Sheesh.  I can't think of a better reason to vote for Obama.  Yeah, sure, if he's elected you're going to kill your own personal golden goose?  Wait a minute.  I gotta find my violin.

And hey, Kodak wants to kill the health care plans for their existing retirees as a means to  emerge from bankruptcy.  Note that retirees are usually on medicare, so all Kodak is paying for is fill-in policies, and for dependents of retirees.  These are older folks and dependents with pre-existing conditions.  Um, did you do anything first about executive salaries?   And if you get Romney, what will these folks do when medicare is strangled, or disabled to the point that facilities will no longer accept it?  How about the 60-year-old dependent who is not yet eligible for medicare?

Oh yeah, I forgot.  Romney has a plan for them.  He said people who don't have health insurance can just go to ERs.  Is he unaware that the ER will just stabilize you, then if you don't have insurance you are not admitted for further care, you are just sent home?  Stabilized means you're not going to die in the next day or two.  The basic condition is not addressed.  That's Romney-care.

CEOs like that, I guess.

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Something to keep in mind - CEO jobs and salaries have not been impacted in the current environment.  The stock market isn't thrilled, but that's because large companies are not expanding.  They are sitting on capital, waiting.  They won't admit it, but they kind of like being able to dictate salaries and conditions to people and unions who are desperate for jobs.

"Don't like it?  Leave.  I can get another just like you for less."

What they don't seem to realize is that nobody's buying what they have to sell because nobody's sure of their jobs, your job could move to India or China next week, and if they have a job they haven't had a raise in six years.  Corporations don't seem to have made that connection.  Chicken and egg.

You can't keep taking away from your workforce, and then expect them to keep buying your crap.

That's the REAL trickle-down theory.
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3433 Lawsuits

Friday, December 30, 2011

Thinking is a skill, not an innate ability.
-- Northrop Frye --

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Most Ridiculous Lawsuit of 2011 Announced!

[From http://www.facesoflawsuitabuse.org/2011/12/most-ridiculous-lawsuit-of-2011-announced/]

"The U.S. has been the undisputed lawsuit capital of the world for some time. And while the courts play a central role in resolving disputes and maintaining a civil society, that function isn’t easy when they are packed with frivolous suits.

Ridiculous lawsuits clog up our legal system’s dwindling resources, taking time away from legitimate grievances to devote to the vindictive, the hypocritical, the irresponsible, and the outright absurd.

With that in mind, FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org has compiled some of the most egregious examples of frivolous and abusive litigation from around the country and asked you to tell us which ones were the most ridiculous. These suits range from the comical and absurd to the disturbing, but they all underscore a real problem – lawsuits hurt businesses, families, and everyday Americans through lost time, money and job growth.

So which lawsuits are the doozies this past year? First, here’s the lawsuit that you thought was the most ridiculous:

• Convict sues couple he kidnapped for not helping him evade police. A man who kidnapped a couple at knifepoint while he was running from the police is now suing the victims, claiming that they promised to hide him in exchange for an unspecified amount of money. The plaintiff, currently in jail, is seeking $235,000 for the alleged “breach of contract.”

And here’s the rest of the top ten as determined by you who voted at FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org:

• Man suing for age discrimination says judge in his case is too old. A 60-year-old musician who is suing for age discrimination wants the judge removed from the case – because he’s too old. Ironically, the plaintiff says his fight against age-based discrimination is too important to leave in the hands of the 88-year-old judge.
• Young adults sue mother for sending cards without gifts and playing favorites. The plaintiffs, now 20 and 23, claimed the mother “sometimes didn’t include gifts in cards sent to her children; played favorites with her children . . . did not send care packages until his sixth semester away at college . . . changed her surname, thus ‘causing attention’ at her daughter’s school events; and refused to buy her a homecoming dress.”
• Obese man sues burger joint over tight squeeze in booths. A nearly-300 pound man is suing White Castle restaurants, saying that their booths are too tight to accommodate someone of his size. In fact, he’s so distraught by the booths that he hasn’t been to White Castle in months (instead, he sends his wife to pick up his burgers so he can eat them at home).
• Woman sues over movie trailer; says not enough driving in ‘Drive’. A Michigan woman who claims she was misled by the trailers for the movie ‘Drive’ is suing the distributors of the film. She says she was disappointed by the lack of driving in the film and was expecting something more similar to the ‘Fast and Furious’ films.
• Mom files suit against exclusive preschool over child’s college prospects. A New Yorker is suing a private preschool, saying the school’s curriculum has seriously hurt her 4-year-old’s chances of getting into an Ivy League college.
• Man sues bar for not disarming him before he started drinking (and fighting). A Pennsylvania man illegally brought a gun into a bar, then got injured in a drunken shootout with another patron, and now has sued the bar for not searching him for a weapon on his way in.
• Passenger’s lawsuit says cruise ship was too fast. An Indiana woman is suing Carnival Cruise Line, claiming she got sick because the boat was going too fast and was swaying from side to side.
• Woman disagrees with store over 80¢ refund, sues for $5m. A New York woman decided to make a $5 million federal case out of a disagreement over 80¢. Her suit says she used a $5-off coupon when she purchased a bevy of items for over $100. When she returned one of the items, the store pro-rated the refund to account for the discount.
• Mother sues Chuck E. Cheese – says games encourage gambling in children. A California woman has filed a lawsuit against Chuck E. Cheese on the grounds that their games are actually an illegal form of gambling and could get kids hooked. She is seeking at least $5 million; the restaurant says the games are legal and has asked a judge to dismiss the suit.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote. And while we can’t predict everything 2012 has in store, it’s a good bet there’ll be more ridiculous lawsuits. So remember to visit FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org monthly to vote for your favorite ridiculous lawsuits."

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On the other hand, some of the US Supreme Court's decisions this past year in favor of corporations will make it almost impossible to sue them when they screw you. See http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbobelian/2011/12/28/the-top-three-cases-that-impacted-corporate-america-in-2011/.

In perhaps my oversimplification, the AT&T decision says that if a corporation puts that hateful but standard arbitration clause in your contract, you can't join a class action suit against them. That doesn't mean you can't sue them, you don't give up that right, but it does mean you have to sue them individually. Now consider going up against a gazillion-dollar corporation's legal department all by yourself. (Worse, and not mentioned in this article, there's a movement afoot to rule that the loser in a civil case pays BOTH parties' legal fees, in an effort to stop frivolous lawsuits- see above.)

The Wal-Mart ruling bothers me because in essence, it says that if a corporation allows individual managers to discriminate, then the individual managers can be sued by the individual complainants, but the corporation cannot be sued by a class of victims just because they don't have a corporate policy against such discrimination.

This is looking like corporations can pretty much do anything they damn well please, free from the threat of anyone suing them.

Now, I'm not a fan of class action suits. Too many law firms go out hunting for people to join a suit they, the lawyers, thought up, then they settle for a gazillion, and each of the citizen parties to the suit get a pittance. That's not right. But if a bunch of people have been harmed, class action suits have an important purpose. If nothing else, it's bad publicity and a threat of punishment.

Now, there's not even that. Welcome to USA, Inc.
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3175 Interesting Observation

Sunday, February 27, 2011

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers".
-- T.S. Eliot --

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As you've probably heard, corporations are now "people" -- humanoids that are equivalent to you and me.

Since the 13th Amendment bans slavery, which is the ownership of a person, the newly born corporate "persons" cannot legally be bought and sold. Thus Wall Street -- now a slave market -- must be shut down! Let us all join hands and march for this new civil rights cause, chanting, "Free the Corporate Slaves!"

From AlterNet, By Jim Hightower

2680 Perfect and not so perfect

Monday, November 30, 2009

However you choose to keep score in the game of life (possessions, sexual conquests, etc.) it will impress only others who keep score the same way.

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I am so tired of hearing "perfect storm" of whatever applied to everything. I hear "perfect storm of this", "perfect storm of that" at least five times every day! Hey folks, it's done. Over. Finished. No longer an interesting turn of phrase. It's just plain annoying.

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I am surprised by how many young people have never heard of the Bhopal Union Carbide disaster. It happened 25 years ago as of next Thursday, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that 35-year-olds don't know.

It was and still is the largest manufacturing disaster in written history. Different sources quote different numbers, but somewhere around 4,000 sleeping people were killed immediately by the gas leak, followed by another 11,000 over the next few weeks. Approximately 300,000 survivors were badly damaged, left with destroyed kidneys, livers, lungs, nervous systems, many eventually dying of their conditions. The luckiest ones were only blinded.

Since then, children born to survivors suffer birth defects in various degrees, everything from retardation, to microcephalus and other nerve damage, to paralysis. (These are poor people, with no insurance.) The enviromental damage has never been cleaned up - the water is poisoned.

Union Carbide has fought the lawsuits. The Indian government sued for a few billion. Union Carbide offered to settle for $350 million, the amount of their liability insurance. Quoting Wikipedia, "In 1989, a settlement was reached under which UCC agreed to pay US$470 million (the insurance sum, plus interest) in a full and final settlement of its civil and criminal liability." It was "take it or leave it, we'll fight this forever."

The movie "The Yes Men Save the World" (I watched it a few weeks ago) points out that Dow Chemical, who purchased Union Carbide in 2001, paid out several billion to four or five Texans injured in a chemical spill a few years ago, but feels no compulsion to honor UC's moral debts in India.

Boston.com's Big Picture set this week is Bhopal, twenty-five years later, but I'm not sure the choice of photo subjects was very effective. There's a surfeit of rusting tanks and machinery, and a dearth of human aftereffects, and that's the big story.

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Some of the comments on the photo set are interesting.

Commenter #17 points out that this kind of disaster occurs with distressing regularity in less developed areas, but not in this country, and so he wants to put the blame on lax governmental regulations, corrupt officials, and low work standards. In other words, it's India's fault.

Commenter #19 rejoins that corporations know that if they can get away with risking people's lives, it makes economic sense for them to do so, so they do. Union Carbide could have followed the same safety procedures they implement here, but they didn't, by choice.

I have to agree with commenter #19.

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BTW - Bhopal is not a tiny village out in the countryside somewhere. It's a city of 1.5 million.

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I am sitting here going slowly crazy.

I have some kind of minor condition where a repetitive motion at a certain speed can put me in a near trance. A rotating ceiling fan can make it very difficult for me to concentrate. Flashing sunlight between equidistant tree trunks along the road make my eyes lock.

A repeating sound has the opposite effect. I tense up, get mean, and want to explode.

Someone clicking a ballpoint pen, or doing that tap-rolling the fingernails on the table thing in a meeting is liable to find me at his throat. Ex#2 used to get something going with his nose where it clicked on every inhalation.

For some reason, this house amplifies some sounds. Maybe because it's set in bedrock on a ridge. Maybe just because it's high. Maybe it's that the west wall is mostly glass. The railroad tracks are at least two miles away, but sometimes you can "feel" the trains go by (and those are passenger trains, not freight). There was a bagpipe band that used to practice in (inside!) a firehouse 15 miles away as the crow flies, across the river, but I could hear them inside the house. Couldn't hear them outside, just inside.

Well, something is going "thrump thrump thrump" somewhere outside, at the rate of 90 thrumps per minute. Steady. No variation. No pause. For the past hour! I have a radio on here in the den, and one in the living room, and one in the kitchen, all tuned to NPR, and even with the volume up high I can still hear the thrumps. I went outside and I can barely hear it in the front of the house, and not at all in the back, where all the glass is. It seems to be coming from somewhere to the north.

Right now my back and jaw are tensed and I want to kill something!
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2160 Surprise?

Sunday, December 14, 2008

I don't understand why anyone is surprised or shocked about all these CEOs getting tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses, and acting like they deserve it. Thirty years or so ago was when it all started, when executive salaries started growing exponentially. People were shocked then, and asked if it made any sense.

Now we have companies employing 100,000 people, and executives of those companies each pulling from the profits their salaries and bonuses equal to 10,000 times the average salary of the workers - and then telling the workers that raises will be low this year because the company isn't as profitable as they'd hoped. Yeah. After your raids, there's nothing left over.

Duh?

The CEO of one company is on the board of other companies, whose CEOs are on other boards - and they award compensation to each other in a big circle. Dividing up the pies. There's something very wrong with that.

Why are people acting like it's news? Why are people just now seeing how unfair it is? Like they hadn't been talking about it and shaking their heads over it for the past thirty years?
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1792 Economic War

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Hey! It's May Day! When I was in elementary school, on May 1st we used to have a picnic with the procession of the May Queen and her court, over the petals of thousands of shredded flowers scattered by us plebeians, athletic contests, and dancing of white-robed flower-crowned girls around the May Pole, weaving intricate patterns of colored ribbons down the pole. I love May Pole dancing. Done correctly, it's fascinating. I suppose it's now frowned upon as pagan. Bullpoopy! It's just pretty.

Anyhow, back to my topic.

Forty years ago, the theory was that eventually, well, by now, actually, nations all over the world would be so economically intertwined that war would no longer be justifiable. War would hurt yourself more than the enemy, even if you won.

We thought that international corporations, with their worldwide investments and interests and their political influence, would work as a stabilizer.

I guess that was Pollyanna thinking. I guess it didn't occur to us that war could be waged solely for economic gain. (In the hippie '70s you didn't do anything solely for economic gain.) And I guess it didn't occur to us that corporations would have the most to gain from war, making their political influence a destabilizer.

Well, it's possible to wage economic war, without the bullets and bombs. Maybe that's the way to go.

It's possible that Israel could win the war with the Arabs by devaluing oil ("Next Big Future" link).

SUNRGI's "concentrated photovoltaic" system relies on lenses to magnify sunlight 2,000 times, letting it produce as much electricity as standard panels with a far smaller system. They say they'll start producing solar panels by mid-2009 that will generate electricity for about 7 cents a kilowatt hour, including installation.("USA Today" link.)

Cool.
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