After years of mismanagement, the Tribune Company newspapers — including the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times – are up for sale.  And one of the potential buyers? The Koch brothers.  And wow are people outraged!

Yes, it’s those Koch brothers:the billionaire businessmen who run Koch Industries, a sprawling multinational corporation involved in everything from oil to fertilizer to paper towels.  But you probably know the Koch brothers for how they spend their considerable wealth: bankrolling right-wing political causes like the Tea Party movement, and funneling millions of dollars to front groups and politicians devoted to their anti-regulatory, anti-labor, and pro-corporate ideology.  The Kochs have spent millions propping up climate-change deniers, and have been instrumental in funding ALEC, the powerful business lobby that pushes corporate-friendly policies at the state level.

What would the Kochs do with a few major newspapers?  They would push public opinion and public despair further to the right and further into the depths.  This is why taxing billionaires is not a policy driven by greed or jealousy or even the desire to put vast sums of riches to good use.  Taxing billionaires is necessary if we are going to have representative government.  We talk about “freedom of the press.”  Never mind government surveillance of reporters’ phone records.  Never mind the prosecutions of whistleblowers and journalists.  If billionaires can dominate our communications system with what to them amounts to pocket change, while we blog dissent to people who believe nothing that doesn’t appear on Tee-Vee or in a corporate paper, whose freedom of the press is it?

Some recent reports indicate that many L.A. Times staffers would consider leaving the paper if it were purchased by the Kochs — which is probably music to their cost-cutting ears.  Better than staff promising to quit is subscribers promising to unsubscribe:

“I will cancel my subscription and so will family members. We have no need for propaganda dictated by far right-wing spoiled billionaires with an anti-citizenry, pro 1% agenda.  This will be the death of your struggling paper in a town that once had a proud history of journalism.  It’s a disgrace.”

That comment was posted with a signature on this petition.  Here are some more:

“If you want to increase the circulation of the New York TIMES in Los Angeles, let the Koch brothers buy the Los Angeles TIMES.”

“No Koch news!!!”

“If the Koch brothers get their hands on your paper, it will only be useful as tp.”

“Don’t give up the integrity of your company for a measley few bucks.”

“I refuse to continue my newspaper subscription if the Koch Brothers buy the Tribune. I boycott their other products so I will do the same if they buy the Tribune.”

“If you sell to the Koch brothers, you can remove us from your subscription list!!”

“Don’t let your long tradition of fair reporting be purchased away.”

“Koch purchase is a bad deal for our nation!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Keep the corporate greed off of our free press!”

“Selling out to the Koch’s will pretty much put the kabosh on the 4th Estate’s duty to afflict the comfortable.”

“If the Koch Brothers take over, you’ll lose this loyal reader of the Chicago Tribune forever.”

“What an ignoble end to two fine papers known for excellence it would be if the Koch Bros. became the new owner. Forget about fairness and accuracy; the papers would simply become the latest bullhorn from which Charles and David would spew their propaganda. Has it come to this? Please don’t sell.”

“I am producer/director of Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press.  Seldes worked 10 years for the Chi Tribune as a foreign correspondent when their foreign press corps was one of the best in the world!  Remember with pride that high-quality journalism of the early Twentieth Century and don’t sell out!”

“This country is going in the wrong direction, don’t help it.”

“As a Chicago Tribune subscriber, I can say we will no longer subscribe to either the print or online version of the Trib if this sale goes through. The reputation and standing of the Tribune organization is on the line, and it will suffer irreparable harm if the sale occurs.”

“I have subscribed for 36 years and will cancel.”

“As the son of a former Editor on the Chicago Tribune I urge you to remember the Colonel and stand for something.  Don’t turn the Trib over to men that care only for this country for what they can dredge out of it for their own personal wealth.”

“I am an LA Times reader, my parents are Chicago Tribune readers.  We will do everything we can to make sure everyone we know never reads another edition of these papers if sold to the Kochs.”

Add your own comments for the Tribune Company to read.

We Were Always Here

If you are fortunate enough to visit the National Mall in D.C. during the spring, hopefully you will get to the American Native museum of the Smithsonian there.   As you come to the museum, there are several displays outside that are worth a look.   The  figures above are among them, representing themes often chosen by native artists.

We Were Always Here the figures are named, representing Bear and Raven.   The artist, Rick Bartow, has written about his creation.

The Bear and Raven, Healer and Rascal sit atop the sculpture poles; one, slow and methodical, fiercely protective of her children, the other a playful, foible-filled teacher of great power. Both Bear and Raven are focused on water and salmon for serious reasons. The salmon are an indicator species reflecting the health of the environment In particular water, the source of all life.

On each pole are repeated lower horizontal patterns that symbolize successive waves, generations following generations, an accumulation of wisdom and knowledge. The tree used for the sculpture is an old growth Western Red Cedar from Washington state. It is approximately 500 years old. The elders say that the power of the sun is stored within the tree. Essentially the tree embodies the fundamental elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, our sacred and precious natural resources.

To do a huge carving is like creating 22 feet of music. It is creating a rhythm that can be sustained over a long period time. It is music created by chisels, hammers, knives and pencil marks. It moves like a tide, slowly and surely along, turbulent around knots and troublesome grain and then surging along oil-smooth over good clear grain, upwards to completion. The Creator gave me this job of being an artist. Now I create out of necessity. Spirit waits for me in the “doing”–the process of working. Whatever comes of the “doing” is what I share. Spirits are pleased. Ancestors rejoice!

Visiting these sculptures in their setting outside the museum reminds us that much of the heritage of native Americans is that of nature, appropriate in the wind, sun, air and breath of the outside world.

I just read a really amazing story about a product that stops table saws from cutting off people’s fingers. You might think that manufacturers would race to incorporate this feature into their products. Yet the opposite happened. A coalition of table saw makers have taken multiple steps over years to suppress this technology.

If you wonder, “Why would manufacturers fight against a product that saves customers’ fingers?” you haven’t been paying attention to the power of association lobbying money.

The article describes all the various methods that the big power tool industry uses to block the incorporation of this technology into their product. It really is fascinating the way they turn losing your fingers into a right while transforming the makers of SawStop into some kind of greedy hucksters.

Steve Colbert did an excellent piece on this over a year ago. What I like about this piece is that they point out the way power tool manufacturing industry uses the same right wing tropes about “nanny state” and “freedom” that we see in the weapons industry. But if you look behind the scenes you see the manufacturers don’t really care about users freedom to cut their fingers off, they really care about their bottom line, the possible costs of lawsuits and having to pay royalties to the patent holders at SawStop.

What if one of them owned the patent for this technology and made it available to everyone for free? Would they then widely introduce it? I’ll bet they would, but after they got a bill passed like the gun makers did, one that keeps them free from liabilities from old saws that were made during the DECADE they fought the introduction of the technology.

I’m sure the people who work against safer products can count on both hands the number of reasons that a safer product like SawStop isn’t necessary and shouldn’t be mandated.  Of course if they were using SawStop those 10 fingers would still be attached.

Photo by Mr. Greenjeans under Creative Commons license

Cross posted on Spocko’s Brain

It’s Cartoon Friday, again!

My spoon is too big!

Don Hertzfeldt at work

For those who have watched, this simple phrase will immediately bring to mind Rejected, Don Hertzfeldt’s Oscar winning short cartoon film. Taking the form of a series of short promo cartoons supposedly created for cable networks, each succeeding segment gets weirder and more disturbed. This cartoon continues to be influential today, as Wikipedia notes:

Rejected has a cult following and has grown into a pop culture icon that is frequently quoted or referenced. In 2009, it was the only short film named as one of the “Films of the Decade” by Salon.com. In 2010, it was noted as one of the five “most innovative animated films of the past ten years” by The Huffington Post.^[4]

Hertzfeldt’s almost childish style combined with absurdist, edgy content has made him a top name in animation and a major influence on modern cartoons, particularly the kind of shows one sees on Adult Swim and its relatives. As Ad Week points out, his outspoken hatred of the advertising industry meant it was only a matter of time before they ripped him off for Pop-Tarts.

What are your favorite cartoons? If I can, I’ll use your suggestions in future installments.

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What’s on your mind tonight? You can talk about anything in the comments.

San Onofre at the No Nukes Brink

An update on the continued troubles of San Onofre from Harvey Wasserman.

In January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a corporate cake walk.

With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison
was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched $770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year.

But a funny thing has happened on the way to the restart:  a No Nukes groundswell has turned this routine rubber stamping into an epic battle the grassroots just might win.

Indeed, if ever there was a time when individual activism could have a magnified impact, this is it (see www.sanonofresafety.org and www.a4nr.org).

This comes as the nuclear industry is in nearly full retreat.  Two US reactors are already down this year.  Yet another proposed project has just been cancelled in North Carolina.  And powerful grassroots campaigns have pushed numerous operating reactors to the brink of extinction throughout the US, Europe and Japan, where all but two reactors remain shut since Fukushima.

In California, it’s San Onofre that’s perched at the brink.

By all accounts Southern California Edison should have the clout to restart it with ease.   The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been a notorious rubber stamp for decades.  The California Public Utilities Commission, which decides how much the utilities can gouge from the ratepayers, has long been in Edison’s pocket.  State water quality regulations could force Edison to build cooling towers, a very expensive proposition that would likely lead to a quick retirement.  But Gov. Jerry Brown has been deafeningly silent on the issue.

But San Onofre sits in an earthquake/tsunami zone halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego.  At least 8 million people live within a 50 mile radius, many millions more within 100. The reactors are a stone’s throw from both a major interstate and the high tide line, with a 14-foot flood wall a bare fraction of the height of the tsunami that overwhelmed at Fukushima.

San Onofre Unit One was shut in 1992 by steam generator issues. Edison recently spent some three-quarters of a billion dollars upgrading the steam generators for Units 2 and 3. But the pipes have leaked and failed.  Units 2 and 3 have been shut since January 2012. Edison has now asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to run Unit 2 at 70% power for five months to see how the reactor might do. An NRC panel has termed the idea “experimental.”

Edison is desperate to get the reactor running before summer.  But in the wake of Fukushima, and in the midst of a major boom in solar energy, southern California is rising up to stop that from happening:

For various reasons I am not going to use names in this post.

High deductible insurance seems designed to cost money through confusion.

Several years ago we (my family and I) were forced to change our health insurance from a classic HMO plan to a “high-deductible” one. That plan is effectively incomprehensible; ever since we were switched to that plan, we’ve been in collection or sued several times every year. As has everyone else – literally – that I have spoken to, who is on one of these plans. All of them. Every single person I’ve spoken to who is on a high-deductible plan has faced multiple medical collections and/or lawsuits. I am not kidding.

The cost has been staggering.

Now, the supposed principle behind high-deductible plans is to force medical consumers (i.e. everyone) to be “wiser”. To make better choices. Not to get wasteful and expensive MRIs, for example, when an x-ray will do just as well.

There’s just one problem with that noble concept: it’s bullshit. Who among us is qualified to know whether an MRI is more or less suitable than an x-ray for any particular case? A doctor, that’s who. And certainly not the vast majority of patients! Most patients couldn’t tell you the difference between an MRI and an x-ray if you pointed a gun at their heads.

But of course, the real purpose of such plans isn’t to make health consumers wiser. It’s to shift costs, away from the employer and health insurer, and onto – you guessed it – the patient. Never mind that since 1980 wages for the middle class and working class have flatlined or declined, while health costs have skyrocketed; we’re scheduled to get the shaft on medical costs nonetheless. Which is why medical bankruptcies have skyrocketed in recent decades.

As has, I strongly suspect, the medical collection industry. Who might be profiting from this explosion in medical costs and lawsuits? Somehow I doubt that it’s the middle class or the poor.

So here’s the most recent thing that happened to us. We got a collection letter from a local hospital. Teri’s doctor had sent her there for some tests a few months ago; nothing terribly unusual, just the kind of test that every woman probably ends up having done sooner or later.

Just to be clear, she’s fine. But there was good and sufficient reason for her doctor to order those tests – they were certainly appropriate and necessary. She’d had such tests before and they’d been fully covered without question.

But this time we got a bill from the hospital where she’d had the test for $1560.00. Need I say that we were horrified? I’ve been through hell with these medical situations before; the thought of going through all that again was really almost unbearable. Still, I girded my mental loins and plunged in.

There are several things to remember when you’re dealing with this sort of situation:

It was thrilling to finally see, on this week’s HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, an articulate guest answering Maher’s frequent screeds that Islam is overwhelmingly the most violent and dangerous religion. Glenn Greenwald was well prepared and answered so swiftly, brilliantly and efficiently we had to replay it several times to fully enjoy it.

The clip shows that, despite Bill’s repeated attempts to marginalize and mock Glenn’s views, Glenn presses on with the truth, winning multiple rounds of applause from Bill’s audience and – a rarity with Bill – the last word. My son’s reaction: “Suddenly Bill Maher looked kind of old.”

With his usual surgical precision Greenwald disproves Maher’s smug insistence that Americans, Christians and Jews no longer make deadly attacks on innocent people of other faiths – when in fact, We’re Number One. In Glenn’s compact comments you may catch a reference to our General Boykin’s military, whose pep talks included: “…My God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

(I happen to know both Bill and Glenn a bit: I attended a party at Bill’s house years ago, introduced my mom to him at a taping of Politically Incorrect in NYC, and I’ve spoken with him briefly after shows in Santa Rosa. I met Glenn at a Salon event in 2011; he’s my favorite columnist and was quite proud when earlier this year he praised my political courage in a comment at his Guardian column.)

I have tremendous respect for Bill’s intelligence and humor, but he has been uniquely scarred: as he puts it, “I was the only American to lose his job over the 9-11 attacks.” While unequivocally condemning the attacks in September 2001, Bill dared to point out that, since those who attacked us gave their lives for their beliefs, “cowards” might not be the right word when comparing them to an American who fires deadly cruise missiles from complete safety. In today’s age of death by drone, his comment is more timely than ever. Back then, Politically Incorrect was quickly cancelled.

Of course, HBO turns out to be a much better home for Maher than his former ABC/Disney could be. But it feels like he’s spent a decade trying to prove his disrespect for terrorists by attacking a billion Muslims and Islam generally.

Glenn was well prepared since he recently dealt with Sam Harris, whose efforts to become a leader of New Atheists have been marred (or Mahered) by even more stunning open bigotry aimed directly at Muslims and Islam, thinly disguised as skepticism about religion generally. I was eager to read Harris’s work, but his alarming comments quickly spoke for themselves. His eagerness to treat every Muslim as a terrorist just doesn’t make logical or moral sense. Amid such blind, foaming Islamophobia, I’m sad to say Atheism hasn’t had a more embarrassing champion since Stalin.

Glenn nails it: if they could stop cheering their own superiority for a moment and actually compare the history of deadly attacks – without automatically excluding terror against Muslims and attacks on them – they might see the kinds of patterns that a more honest scientist like Noam Chomsky would notice.

Terror Facts
It’s maddeningly damaging to ordinary atheist scientists when a self-appointed Leader like Harris or Richard Dawkins slides from logical and scientific arguments into hate speech and jingoism, with so few facts and so little insight. By being as irrational and tribal as he claims most Muslims are, under the pretense of science, Harris and his kin smear all of us until we vocally object.

So let’s honor the brave Bill Maher who lost Politically Incorrect for daring to share an unpleasant truth. Let’s ask a few tough questions today, and actually count things – as if we were curious, rational, objective scientists rather than cheerleaders for our team.

Though of course they’re different categories, let’s at least roughly compare muslims with US citizens: