Category: Truth in Media

America’s Homicide Policing Paradox

The Daily Escape:

Lupine, Steptoe Butte SP, WA – June 2022 photo by Francisco B. Aguilar Photography

German Lopez in the NYT writes about how urban gun crime is very concentrated, saying that a small number of city blocks often account for most of the gun violence in US cities. He says that just 4% of city blocks account for the majority of shootings in Chicago:

“The violence is so intensive that a few neighborhoods, blocks or people often drive most of the shootings and murders in a city or county. And this is true in both urban and rural areas, said Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton.”

Let’s pick up on the comment that this is true in both urban and rural areas. The WSJ has an article that says there’s been a big spike in murders in rural America:

“Homicide rates in rural America rose 25% in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was the largest rural increase since the agency began tracking such data in 1999. The CDC considers counties rural if they are located outside metropolitan areas defined by the federal government.”

That’s pretty close to the 30% increase in urban areas. But the WSJ points not to a lack of tough-on-crime policies causing the spike in rural homicides, or a lack of social services, safety net, or investment in anti-poverty measures. Instead, it says that the primary culprits are Covid lockdowns and a lack of “pastoral care” from churches.

As Adam Johnson, who writes on media and politics, points out, in January, the same WSJ said the culprits of increasing urban crime were:

“Progressive prosecutors take the approach of not prosecuting some low-level offenses like drug possession. In Philadelphia, for example, cases brought by the district attorney’s office from 2018 through 2021 dropped by nearly 30% compared with the prior four years. This week, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner defended progressive prosecutors while promising to tackle gun violence at the swearing-in ceremony for his second term.”

The Conservative formula is simple: When crime increases in liberal cities, the cause is: reformist prosecutors, bail reform, and defunding the police movements.

But when murder spikes in counties coded as white or rural, and controlled largely by Republicans, the causes are societal and therefore blameless —namely the fraying of the social fabric brought about by the pandemic. They fail to mention the persistence of drugs in rural America, or how corporations have hollowed out the economies of rural America by moving abroad.

Johnson says that we’re caught in a “Narrative” by leaders in both Parties, that the Covid-era surge in crime was the result of lax DAs, bail reform, and other far-left measures. And the only way to combat it, was to remove the reforms, fund more police, and to effectively sunset the Black Lives Matter movement.

And Johnson says:

“…data very clearly indicates that crime—namely, murder rate—increases appear to be entirely divorced from the policies of the prosecutors and police budgets of the affected areas. Despite the widespread, casual lie that radical, far-left reform prosecutors or defunded police budgets have caused a spike in crime…”

Despite everyone knowing that socio-economic problems are also at the heart of the homicide rates in urban areas.

Still, the “Narrative” is having an effect on Democratic politics. We saw the recall of the progressive DA in San Francisco last week, and the NYT had an article about how Maryland’s Democratic primary for governor is now focused on better solutions to urban crime:

“In Democratic strongholds like Maryland, a rise in violent crime has pushed the party’s candidates to address the issue of public safety in newly urgent terms….Long seen as a political wedge for Republicans to use against Democrats, crime is increasingly a subject of concern within the Democratic Party and the big cities that make up much of its political base.”

The homicide spike is transforming the Democrat’s playbook on law and order. It’s forcing the Party to seek ways of balancing its determination to overhaul the criminal justice system with the imperative to protect some of its most loyal voters from a rising tide of violence.

The challenge is to walk a fine line: How can urban Democrats make the police more responsive but not militarized or heavy-handed; how to move police departments away from the often discriminatory tactics favored by the law-and-order mayors.

Still, when crime goes up in urban areas, it’s the reform efforts that are to blame. When crime goes up (by roughly the same percentage) in rural places where no such reforms exist, the “Tough on Crime” approach and the lack of robust social services can’t be blamed.

Both Democrats and Republicans want police budgets to grow. But neither have any answers as to how incremental dollars will reduce homicide rates, or make the police more effective at their jobs.

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Free Speech Is About To Get Tested

The Daily Escape:

Lupine bloom, Beeks Bight, Folsom Lake, CA – May 2022 photo by Kaptured in Kamera

We’re back from France where we had fantastic weather, wonderful food and wine, and a break from the loud drumbeat of dystopian American news. One issue that Wrongo followed from afar was the continuing assault on free speech by America’s Right Wing.

From Dan Pfeiffer:

“It seems like every week, Republicans propose, pass, or enact another outrageous, authoritarian, retrograde policy. Book bans, abortion bans, efforts to turn back the clock on marriage equality and contraception. Each is a fleeting political firestorm and then it’s on to the next….amidst this parade of retrograde lawmaking, there is a pattern…”

Despite claiming to be for small government, the Republicans want to dictate the terms of speech in America.

Consider Florida where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had passed legislation taking away the rights of Facebook, Twitter, and others to ban people from their platforms:

“The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Monday ruled it is unconstitutional for Florida to bar social media companies from banning politicians, in a major victory for tech companies….the court rejected many of the legal arguments that conservative states have been using to justify laws governing the content moderation policies of major tech companies after years of accusations that the tech companies are biased against their political viewpoints.”

The 11th Circuit court found that tech companies’ moderation decisions are protected by the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from regulating free speech. Interestingly, this comes after a different decision on the same issue by the Texas 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, that allowed a Texas law banning companies from discriminating against people based on their politics to remain in effect.

We now have completely opposite decisions by the 11th Circuit and the 5th Circuit courts on the issue of whether corporations must follow the Constitution’s First Amendment. This will invariably lead to the Supreme Court weighing in on whether private social media companies’ content moderation decisions are protected by the First Amendment. From the WaPo:

“Some lawmakers pushing for laws governing online content moderation and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have argued that tech companies should be regulated as “common carriers,” businesses like phone companies that are subject to government regulation because of the essential services they provide.”

But Florida’s court rejected those arguments, arguing states can’t force such restrictions on private company social media platforms. While the phone companies cannot stop callers or calls that may be objectionable, or even illegal, social media companies have different rights. From the Court’s ruling:

“Neither law nor logic recognizes government authority to strip an entity of its First Amendment rights merely by labeling it a common carrier…”

The “Terms of Service” (TOS) agreements between social media platform companies and their users are a contract. When someone agrees to the TOS, they are saying that they will abide by it. Violating the TOS, whether by Trump, Musk, or some random ideologue, is a violation of contract law.

When the TOS is violated and the violator is suspended or barred from the platform, it doesn’t demonstrate bias, or a restriction in free speech. It demonstrates equal treatment. The TOS isn’t there only to restrain Conservatives, despite their protests of discrimination.

Florida passes a “don’t say gay” bill to police free speech by public educators in schools. They then pass the law to prevent private companies from policing speech on their platforms. This irony is lost on those who claim they’re against federal or state overreach unless it’s their Party that’s doing the overreaching.

The First Amendment says the government cannot punish you for speech (with some exceptions). The same Amendment also protects free association—meaning that it’s perfectly legal for private organizations to exercise their freedom of association even while excluding some speech.

Networks like Facebook and Twitter exert a lot of power over the flow of information. They are a primary method of news and expression for millions. That means they must be broadly inclusive and promote healthy discourse. Their business model includes wanting to attract as many users as possible. From Nicholas Grossmann: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The big social networks—Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter—aim to be the online mainstream, appealing to a wide variety of users and the businesses that sell to them. That requires stopping behavior that isn’t illegal, but makes the platform inhospitable, such as hate speech.”

The large private social networks have a responsibility not to let the doctrine of free speech make them give a right of way to bad actors. There is zero reason to cede the concept of free speech to the trolls who are trying to drive people they hate off private social media platforms.

Now we wait to see what Alito, Thomas and the other Conservative Supremes have to say about the limits of Free Speech.

You shouldn’t be optimistic about the outcome.

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Saturday Soother – April 23, 2022

The Daily Escape:

North Landing River, near Virginia Beach, VA – April 2022 photo by Erik Moore

Our media ecosystem is overwhelming us. Some of the information is accurate, some is bogus, and much is intentionally misleading. And that’s a deliberate strategy. While it didn’t originate with Steve Bannon, he perfected it with his thought that:

“…the Democrats don’t matter….The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

This is why the ongoing cultural war works so well for Republicans. There’s always some petty war going on between the Parties that’s stoked by the media. And it’s almost always about cultural issues since Republicans really don’t have a policy platform, and don’t want to go against large corporate America. When you go against corporations, you lose the money needed to get elected.

But we should see the big corporations as our common enemy. Time Magazine has an article about how overtime pay has disappeared:

“If it feels like you’re working longer hours for less money than your parents or grandparents did, it’s because you probably are. Adjusted for inflation, average hourly wages have actually fallen since the early 1970s, while average hours worked have steadily climbed. American workers are increasingly underpaid, overworked, and overwhelmed.”

One reason is the loss of overtime pay:

“If you’re under the age of 45, you may have no idea that overtime pay is even a thing. But…middle-class workers used to get a lot of it….That means that [for] every hour you work over 40 hours a week you work for free, contributing…a giant pool of free labor that modern employers have come to expect and exploit. Profits are up, real wages are down, and income inequality has soared to its highest level since the Gilded Age.”

Overtime pay was one of the great New Deal reforms. It was a core provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA set the minimum wage at one-half the median wage and the overtime threshold at three times the minimum—an amount equal to 1.5 times the median wage.

But both the minimum wage and the overtime rules began to change in 1975, and rising income inequality since 1975 is responsible for a $50 trillion upward redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom 90% households to those in the top 1%. Here’s a chart showing the impact of losing overtime. Productivity goes up, but is completely decoupled from income:

Source: chartr

The Economic Policy Institute has a tool called “Company Wage Tracker” that allows you to select any big corporation and see what percentage of their employees make below a certain wage. For example, it shows that 51% of Walmart employees earn below $15/hr.

The NYT wrote about Mary Gundel, a manager at a Dollar General store in Tampa, FL who was fired for speaking out about the chain’s policies regarding overtime and short-staffing:

“The store used to have about 198 hours a week to allocate to a staff of about seven people….But by the end of last month, she had only about 130 hours to allocate….With not as many hours to give to her staff, Ms. Gundel often had to operate the store on her own for long stretches, typically working six days and up to 60 hours a week with no overtime pay.”

Ms. Gundel was working 60 hours a week and making $51,000 a year. That means she’s making only a little more than the minimum wage. Dollar General is one of the most profitable retail chains in the country.

Prices are going up everywhere across America, and corporations are making proportionately more income. This is what the Democrats should be focusing on, standing up for workers, doing what is right as opposed to groping for answers to the Republican’s culture war issues.

There’s plenty that’s wrong in America. But what’s wrong doesn’t see the light of day alongside all of the pissing contests about Critical Race Theory, or predator grooming or LGBTQ issues. These are ginned-up to make sure you won’t pay attention to what’s really going on.

Something seems to be brewing. We’re seeing halting attempts at unionization at Starbucks and Amazon. Those employees want a better life; they want to have a seat at the table about the future of the company.

We need to remember that without the “essential workers” the country grinds to a halt. We need to support those who try to organize. We need to wrest some economic power away from politicians and big businesses. And finally, some faceless people who are sick of being wronged are trying to do just that.

Enough for another week. It’s time to let go of the news. It’s time for our Saturday Soother. On the Fields of Wrong we’re preparing our vegetable garden, although it will be a few weeks before it’s warm enough for the plants to survive. We had an overnight temperature of 32° earlier this week.

Now, grab a seat by a large window and listen to violin soloist Soojin Han play Chopin’s “Nocturne No.20 in C# minor” in August 2019. She’s playing on a 1666 Stradivarius:

It sounds beautiful.

Chopin composed the piece in 1830, but it was published in 1875, 26 years after his death. It was featured in the movie “The Pianist” in 2002.

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Eric Boehlert, RIP

The Daily Escape:

Woodenshoe Tulip Festival, near Salem, OR, with Mt. Hood in background – April 2022 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, who wrote commentary and media criticism in his “PRESS RUN” newsletter, was killed on Monday while riding his bike in Morristown, NJ.

Boehlert skewered today’s journalism and its practitioners. He hated journalistic laziness and took great pains to call out the mainstream media’s daily obsession with Both Siderism. We have often quoted him at the Wrongologist. He did a great job of researching his material and his arguments were ferocious.

Whenever Wrongo saw something with Boehlert’s byline, it was sure to be interesting, important, and reliable. He usually posted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Wrongo was surprised when he didn’t post this past Wednesday. But as someone who doesn’t always post on a reliable schedule, I thought that something just came up.

This is a particularly terrible time to lose such an important voice, but it’s always a terrible time to lose a good person. James Fallows paid tribute to Boehlert in his “Breaking the News” newsletter, Framing: In Honor of Eric Boehlert:

“We have lost a crucially incisive voice, and a kind and generous person….Here is an attempt to continue in his spirit.”

Fallows continued about the unspoken assumptions that the media bring to its political coverage:

“This means, for example: the press’s assumption that the most interesting aspect of any development is the politics of it—“What does this mean for the midterms?” “Are the Democrats in disarray?” “Who can out-Trump Trump?”

Or that you should get to the truth of an issue by quoting both a Republican and then a Democrat, or better yet having them argue on screen.

Wrongo didn’t know Boehlert but read his newsletters each week. That somehow, makes the news of his death more painful. It’s interesting how when someone that you have never met dies, it can still feel like a huge loss. In some ways, the loss is very much like losing someone you knew in real life.

And yet, Dick Cheney and Mitch McConnell still walk the earth. Why not Cruz? Hawley? Clarence Thomas? Or any of the other assholes who pollute and poison our politics?

America has far too few voices speaking truth about the corrosive behavior of the US political media. Now, it’s lost one of our most important critics of that industry. Hopefully, others who do this important work will redouble their efforts in homage to Eric’s efforts. Wrongo will try harder.

As Boehlert would say in his sign-offs, “Stay healthy. Be kind.” He was a good man that fought the good fight.

Boehlert concluded each of his columns with music. Let’s try to honor him by watching and listening to the Celtic Woman perform “The Parting Glass” live in 2018 in Ireland’s Johnstown Castle. The parting glass was the final hospitality offered to a departing guest in Scotland and Ireland. It has become a tune used to celebrate the lives of the dearly departed:

Lyrics:

Oh all the money that e’er I spent
I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e’er I’ve done
Alas, it was to none but me

And all I’ve done for want of wit
To memory now I can’t recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all

Oh all the comrades that e’er I’ve had
Are sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e’er I’ve had
Would wish me one more day to stay

But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise, and you should not,
I’ll gently rise and I’ll softly call
Good night and joy be with you all
Good night and joy be with you all

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Saturday Soother – April 2, 2022

The Daily Escape:

The Devil’s Churn, Yachats, OR – 2022 photo by Bobbie Shots Photography

The war in Ukraine has brought with it a difficult information environment. We’ve had a hard time sorting the facts from the misinformation. When Biden said in his State of the Union that Russia is “isolated from the world,” that wasn’t exactly misinformation. But it wasn’t exactly true since much of the rest of the world doesn’t see it our way.

The sanctions on Russia are limited largely to the EU and NATO members plus a few other close allies like Australia, Japan, and South Korea. Other countries are much more open to continuing to trade with Russia. That was demonstrated this week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visits to India and China.

China and India have refused to condemn Russia’s invasion outright. Both abstained from voting on UN resolutions demanding Moscow immediately stop its attack on Ukraine. At that vote in March, 144 countries condemned the invasion, but few world leaders other than those in the West have openly criticized Vladimir Putin since then.

After visiting China, where Beijing reiterated that its relationship (which is now even more vital for Russia due to the sanctions) “has no limits”, Lavrov traveled to India. US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo criticized India for discussing a rupee-ruble trade arrangement with Russia, which could undermine Western sanctions:

“Now is the time to stand on the right side of history, and to stand with the United States and dozens of other countries, standing up for freedom, democracy and sovereignty with the Ukrainian people, and not funding and fueling and aiding President Putin’s war,”

Visiting India is quite fashionable just now. Earlier this month, leaders from Japan and Australia held summits with their Indian counterparts. And this week, diplomats from Germany and the European Union are visiting Delhi. Lavrov’s visit coincides with a visit by Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.

Russia has been critical to India’s increased weapons procurement. In 2018, it signed a $5 billion weapons deal with Russia for air defense missile systems. Some Western estimates say that 50% of India’s military equipment now comes from Russia.

Meanwhile, despite US pressure to increase oil production, the OPEC countries are standing by their deal with Russia. Reuters reported that when asked about Russia’s war with Ukraine at the OPEC meetings, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said that when they hold meetings:

“….everybody leaves his politics at the door”.

Japan also announced that it isn’t pulling out of the Sakhalin-1 offshore oil joint venture it has with Russia. Japanese officials have stressed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that the Sakhalin-1 project is crucial for Japan’s energy security.

Everyone knows that Russia is a top global exporter of energy, weapons, and wheat, so many countries are trying to say that Putin’s War isn’t their fight. These nations are all concerned about possible boomerang effects of Russian sanctions on their own economies.

Other nations including Brazil, Pakistan, and South Africa, are also staying on the sidelines.

The US spin is that these countries are actively undermining the effort to bring Russia to heel in Ukraine, but each of them has economic reasons for trying to steer a middle course on the conflict. Americans may see that as morally reprehensible, but they see it as enlightened self-interest.

Enough about geopolitics and whether countries should back the US play with Russia. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget about why Republicans are against capping the price for Insulin.

Or why they seem to be suddenly against what they’re calling “sportsball”. Apparently sports have become so woke that NBA, NFL and college teams are doing things like having woke slogans on their uniforms. That’s making Republicans like Ben Shapiro feel like he’s lost his safe space.

That won’t stop Wrongo and Ms. Right from watching both the men’s and women’s Final Four basketball championships this weekend.

Anyway, it’s time to let go of the internet and find a safe space of our own for a little relaxation. Let’s start by brewing up a mug of Big Trouble coffee ($16/12oz.) from Durham, NC’s Counter Culture Coffee.

Now grab a seat by a south-facing window and listen to the late Julian Bream play “The Miller’s Dance” from Manuel de Falla’s ballet. “The Three-Cornered Hat”. This performance was filmed in La Posada del Potro in CĂłrdoba, Spain in 1985. Bream was one of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century. He also played a significant role in reviving interest in the lute:

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Which States Have the Highest Homicide Rates?

The Daily Escape:

Moonrise over Salt Run, St. Augustine FL – March 2022 photo by Bob Willis

Republicans can’t stop talking about how the murder rate in America has grown. It’s true that the homicide rates are up, although they remain well below their historic highs of the 1990s. There were more than 21,500 murders in 2020, the latest year for which we have data. The national murder rate in 2020 was about 6.5 per 100,000 people, about 40% below what it was in the 1990s.

With the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the trope about a liberal soft-on-crime plot against America returned. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said:

“We are in the middle of a violent crime wave including soaring rates of homicides and carjackings….Amid all this, the soft-on-crime brigade is squarely in Judge Jackson’s corner.”

Would you be surprised to learn that McConnell’s home state of Kentucky has the third-highest homicide rate per capita in the US? In fact, eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates in 2020 voted that year for Trump. The truth is that Red states (those run by Republicans) have a bigger problem with murder than do the Blue states; their murder rate is higher.

Jonathan Capehart says in the WaPo: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“This startling data is revealed in a new report from centrist think tank Third Way. Mississippi leads the way with a 2020 homicide rate of 20.5 per 100,000 residents…the five states with the highest murder rates, all Trump-voting states, had rates at least 240% higher than New York’s murder rate and at least 150% higher than California’s.”

Here’s a chart from the WaPo:

The per capita homicide rates above are per 100,000 people. Remember that the national average is 6.5 per hundred thousand people. Beyond the top 10 states, the report looked at the 2020 murder rates in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump and compared it with the murder rates in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden.

The news was the same. The murder rate in Trump states (8.20/100k) was 40% higher than the 5.78/100k murder rate in Biden states. These facts really hurt the Republican narrative of “crime-is-out-of-control” in cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Portland, Baltimore, and Minneapolis, all of which have a bad rap among our Red state friends.

When you dig into the report by city, Jacksonville FL, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city led by a Democrat. Despite having comparable populations, few would say that San Francisco is a safer city than Jacksonville.

The narrative by the Right (and supported by the media) about crime and murder is both convenient and wrong. Many on the Right attribute the homicide increase to Democratic policies, specifically about police reform. The fact is that murder rates are actually higher in Republican states that haven’t even flirted with ideas like defund the police.

The eight of the ten Red states in the top ten are not only Trump-voting states, but they have been bastions of GOP policy for the last 25 years. The true conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job of blaming others for high murder rates than they actually do to reduce murder rates.

Sorry Mitch, the increase in murders is not a liberal cities problem. It’s a national problem.

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Boeing Documentary Shows Corporate Malfeasance

The Daily Escape:

Mount Liberty, White Mountains, NH – February 2022 photo by AG Evans Photography

Over the weekend, Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the Netflix Boeing documentary: “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing”. You can watch the trailer here. It exposes how Boeing’s management, Wall Street’s influence and the cratering of Boeing’s culture of quality control, resulted in two plane crashes of the 737 MAX, just months after being placed in service.

That two new planes would go down within five months of each other was beyond a chance event in 21st Century airplane manufacturing. Boeing initially blamed the pilots based in Indonesia and Ethiopia for being poorly trained. But it turns out that Boeing knew all along that the 737 MAX had a critical software problem that caused the plane to go into an irreversible nosedive.

The film makes it clear that pilots had just 10 seconds to reverse those faulty software commands before it was too late. It shows that Boeing told the FAA and the airlines that purchased the MAX that no new pilot training was required to fly the new plane, even though pilots knew nothing about the software or the glitch.

Boeing was lying about training to keep the costs of the new aircraft competitive with Airbus. It was a lie that Boeing took months to correct. It also took months for Boeing to admit that they were flying an unsafe plane.

Why did this (and even worse things) occur while Boeing was attempting to bamboozle the Feds, the airlines, crash victims and their families? Money. The film features Michael Stumo, father of Ethiopian Airlines crash victim 24-year-old Samya Stumo. While not mentioned in the film, Ralph Nader is Samya’s uncle. At the time, he published an open letter to Dennis A. Muilenburg, then-CEO of Boeing. Here’s a part of his letter: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Your narrow-body passenger aircraft – namely, the long series of 737’s that began in the nineteen sixties was past its prime. How long could Boeing avoid making the investment needed to produce a “clean-sheet” [new design] aircraft and, instead, in the words of Bloomberg Businessweek “push an aging design beyond its limits?” Answer: As long as Boeing could get away with it and keep necessary pilot training and other costs low…as a sales incentive.”

Nader draws a connection between Boeing’s decision to “push an aging design” and their financial engineering:

“Did you use the $30 billion surplus from 2009 to 2017 to reinvest in R&D, in new narrow-body passenger aircraft? Or did you, instead, essentially burn this surplus with self-serving stock buybacks of $30 billion in that period?”

Nader notes that Boeing was one of the companies that MarketWatch labelled as “Five companies that spent lavishly on stock buybacks while pension funding lagged.” More:

“Incredibly, your buybacks of $9.24 billion in 2017 comprised 109% of annual earnings….in 2018, buybacks of $9 billion constituted 86% of annual earnings….in December 2018, you arranged for your rubberstamp Board of Directors to approve $20 billion more in buybacks.”

Nader shows that Boeing had the capital to invest in developing a new plane. They also had problems with the launch of the 787:

“In the summer of 2011, the 787 Dreamliner wasn’t yet done after billions invested and years of delays. More than 800 airplanes later…each 787 costs less to build than sell, but it’s still running a $23 billion production cost deficit.

The 737 MAX was the answer to Boeing’s prayer. It allowed them to continue their share buybacks while paying for the 787 cost overruns. Abandoning the 737 for a completely new plane would’ve meant walking away from a financial golden goose.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) who chaired the House Committee on transportation and infrastructure that investigated Boeing, said:

“My committee’s investigation revealed numerous opportunities for Boeing to correct course during the development of the 737 Max but each time the company failed to do so, instead choosing to take a gamble with the safety of the flying public in hopes it wouldn’t catch up with them in the end…”

Wrongo remains baffled by how Boeing management was given a pass after this gross negligence. They paid the US government $2.5 billion to settle criminal charges that the company defrauded the FAA when it first won approval for the 737 MAX. The deal deferred any criminal charges by the DOJ to January 2024 and will dismiss the case then if there are no more misdeeds by the company.

Perhaps this is another example of a corporate mistake that’s simply too big to be punishable in the US. That means US corporations and their CEOs are immune to accountability. This should have put people into prison, but the CEO got off, and ultimately got a $62.2 million severance for his misdeeds, despite a lot of people dying on his watch.

To curry favor on Wall Street, Boeing reduced salaries. They cut costs deeply in quality assurance and safety programs to give the shareholders more money.

See the movie. Be outraged. Elect more people like Peter DeFazio.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 20, 2022

(The hosting service for the Wrongologist is having problems with the RSS feed that sends subscribers an email version of the column in the morning. Please go to the website to see earlier columns.)

 

Is there a better metaphor for today’s America than this?:

“A ship carrying cars from Germany to the United States caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday, forcing the crew’s 22 members to abandon the vessel and leave it burning and adrift.”

So, there’s a 60,000-ton cargo ship adrift off the Azores yesterday with no crew. It’s carrying an estimated 4,000 cars, including 189 Bentleys and 1,100 Porsches. Tow boats from Gibraltar and the Netherlands are on their way to the site with three expected to be there by next Wednesday. The abandoned and burning vessel is operated by the Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines.

Think about America as a ship adrift, in flames. One that its essential workers had to flee to survive. And it’s loaded with Porsches and Bentleys. On to cartoons.

Putin’s always thinking ahead:

Rumors of Russia’s pullback are deceiving:

Irrational discourse is America’s brand:

When a priest says “I baptize,” instead of “we baptize,” there’s no baptism:

Trump’s CPA walks away:

Sarah Palin vs. New York Times:

Sarah Palin sued The New York Times for defamation but failed to prove her case. In 1964, the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan, said that public figures (like Palin), have to prove a defamatory statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

From Clay Jones who drew the cartoon above:

“It’s weird how Republicans claim they love the United States Constitution, refer to themselves as ‘constitutionalists’, yet hate press freedom and do everything in their power to destroy it. The Supreme Court has affirmed the right to a free press time and time again, yet Republicans like Donald Trump have argued to limit press freedom, if not outright destroy it.”

Press freedom doesn’t belong to liberals or conservatives, it belongs to everyone. Free speech is a Constitutional right and if you try to kill it because someone said something about you that you didn’t like, you’re not just killing free speech for your enemies, you’re killing it for yourself.

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Are Freedom and Democracy Still Compatible in America?

The Daily Escape:

Henniker Covered Bridge, Henniker, NH – February 2022 photo by Jurgen Roth Photography. It is a footbridge across the Contoocook River.

Trucker anger is coming to America. From Politico:

“Canada’s truckers have paralyzed Ottawa and unsettled the country’s politics over vaccine and mask mandates. Now Americans want in on the action. A nationwide convoy — starting in California before heading toward Washington, D.C. — is expected to get underway on March 4 amid a growing clamor from those who believe their freedoms are under threat from government Covid-19 restrictions.”

The trucker protests in Canada seem to have become a rallying point for those who are irate about what they view as Covid-inspired overreach by their governments. Momentum seems to be building for a similar convoy in the US. The NYT reports that:

“…several right-wing figures, including Dan Bongino, Michael Flynn and Ben Shapiro, have promoted the protest and shared links to fund-raising sites that have collected millions of dollars. American anti-vaccine groups have also begun forming local wings of the movement and have urged truckers in the United States to adopt the tactics in Canada.”

The US organizers are now calling it “the People’s Convoy“. They have formed Telegram encrypted channels to use for building support in multiple states. The group says it’s working with two other groups: Freedom Fighter Nation and Restore Liberty, whose founders are closely tied to right wing politics. They include Leigh Dundas, founder of the Freedom Fighter Nation. She gave a speech in DC on the eve of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill insurrection, claiming it would be “within our rights” to murder “alleged American turncoats” who interfered with the 2020 election.

She seems nice.

Trucker protest convoys have become a rallying cry for far-right and anti-vaccine groups around the world. They seem to be gathering strength from growing Covid fatigue, something that is nearly universal in the developed world.

Their message is that “government has been overreaching for too long, and we’re not going to take it anymore”. They’re expressing an old, bad idea: That individual freedom cannot be limited by government.

Let’s spend a minute on whether freedom and democracy are compatible. “Freedom” normally means freedom of the individual while democracy is a communitarian concept. Democracy is a system of government while freedom is about either not being governed or being governed as lightly as possible.

But a society without democracy would be autocracy or worse. With no government, it would be anarchy. And a society without freedom couldn’t possibly be a democracy. So maybe the question isn’t whether they are compatible, but whether each is a co-requisite for the other to exist.

Elizabeth Anker in the NYT opined on the changing nature of the language of freedom, saying that many political actors are using the concept of freedom to justify anti-democratic politics. She calls them the “ugly freedoms”. In American politics they increasingly justify minority rule, prejudice, and anti-democratic governance. And their popularity is growing.

This is highly relevant to the impending trucker convoys and how we think about “free speech” and the rights of non-experts to try and force their opinions on the majority. Perhaps the alternative to the ugly freedoms should be our beautiful freedoms, like the Bill of Rights, or the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A third of Americans make up their own facts, so we’re bound to hear a few lies expresed as truth. These same people believe they don’t have to consider what’s happening in their communities. They think opinions are equal to facts. They get angry enough to threaten violence or to commit violence.

Many of them, despite outward tough guy appearances, are simply too soft mentally and emotionally. Life can often be harder than we want it to be. Sometimes, you’ve got to do what’s good for society, not just what’s good for you.

OTOH, these trucker rallies could conceivably draw support from others who are angry at governments at all levels. Think about restaurant workers, first responders and all of the “essential’ employees who have been unevenly impacted by Covid.

Think of it as the laptop workers vs. those who have to leave the house to earn a living. They each have experienced Covid and the jobs crash in far different ways. If the trucker protest casts a wide net, it will rope in small business owners and parents who are angry that their children have lost so much when schools were closed.

There’s plenty of anger fermenting out there.

Going back to Wrongo’s US Army days, you weren’t required to like everyone in your platoon, but duty demanded you bear the responsibility of fighting beside and for them. That was considered patriotic. Once we had the ability to pull together and sacrifice in the midst of national crisis. Now it’s everyone for themselves.

On Jan. 6, the right of free speech produced lies that led people to commit federal crimes. That’s the downside of the Bill of Rights: An individual has a protected right to lie to the public. We see many career politicians and social media entrepreneurs lie every day.

Assuming that there are protests in the US in coming weeks, Biden will face the same dilemma as Canada’s Prime Minster Trudeau faces now. Will Biden demonize the truckers? Will he listen to their grievances?

The shift of emphasis in America from an expanding democracy with protected individual rights/freedoms to an ad hoc (and sometimes illogical) version of freedom is what may create a failed American state.

It’s a movement that’s long on energy, and short on facts and judgment.

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Should the Mainstream Media Stay Neutral?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise with sea smoke, Curtis Island Lighthouse, Camden ME – January 2022 photo by Daniel F Dishner. Sea smoke forms on Penobscot Bay when the air temperature is colder than the water temperature.

On Tuesday, Wrongo took aim at the New York Times for it’s confusing editorial that misstated how to use an economic tool, and then went on to use that tool incorrectly.

The media, including the NYT, have become a source of both misinformation and disinformation. We really have two media, the mainstream one and the right-wing one. Although most of the disinformation is centered in the right-wing media, it’s becoming less clear to Wrongo that, at present, the mainstream media can (or will) help to defend our democracy.

If you doubt that, look at the November Marist College poll which found, by 42% to 41%, that American adults see the Democratic Party as a greater threat to democracy than the GOP.

The broader results were that 81% of Americans believed there is a “serious threat” to our democracy, including 89% of Republicans, 80% of independents, and 79% of Democrats. That was the poll’s headline. But buried in the cross-tabs was the answer to which Party presents the bigger threat – the 42% to 41% split.

This is mostly the result of our media that defaults to sensationalism rather than trying to explain complex issues. One group slavishly supports a GOP that is full of cranks, bigots, conspiracy theorists, and careerist politicians with flamethrowers. They’re also the media that say things like “intolerance of racism is worse than racism”.

The other side makes a pretense of non-partisanship while echoing many right-wing talking points.

We’ve learned over the past few years that the right-wing media has more control over setting the national agenda than the mainstream press does. The idea that the Party that’s trying to protect and expand voting rights is wrecking democracy isn’t just a misconception—it’s the result of an orchestrated assault on reality. And nearly half of Americans believe it.

In early December, Dana Milbank wrote in the WaPo about how the media has treated Biden as badly as – or worse than – Trump. Milbank had a data analytics company examine more than 200,000 mainstream news articles about both the Trump and Biden presidencies. Milbank wrote that: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“During 2020, when the Trump administration’s response to and dishonesty about the pandemic led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when he refused to denounce white supremacists at a debate and launched serial assaults on democracy, he got slightly more favorable coverage in the mainstream media than Biden has received since August.”

Remember that Milbank’s review covered articles and mentions in the mainstream press. Milbank concludes by saying:

“We need a skeptical, independent press. But how about being partisans for democracy? The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians.”

Does the mainstream media have the power to try to counter this? The big question is how will the mainstream press cover the 2022 mid-terms and 2024 presidential campaign?

People want to be light and breezy, but Wrongo‘s brand is accuracy. Things have been really bleak for many years. And Wrongo has become short-tempered with those in the media who continue to deny just how deep the hole has become.

After the 2020 election, America had a chance to recover from the anti-establishment efforts of Trump’s administration. It was clear that Biden wouldn’t be able to do all that much, because of the slender Democratic majorities in both Houses.

It was a gamble for Biden and the Democrats to wrap every promise into one big bill that would set us on a course for changing the “economic paradigm”. In the end, that was a failure. Governing isn’t simple, especially with such narrow majorities.

And that’s where Democrats are now, paying a heavy price for overpromising and Biden’s naive expectations that he would work magic with Republicans getting some of them to vote for his agenda.

Biden and the Dems could still rebound. Passing a smaller, more focused version of Build Back Better, along with an easing of inflation, and a return to something like normal on the virus front could bring a fall comeback wave.

But it will also take a mainstream media that understands and accepts its role with a resolve at least equal to that of the right-wing media.

Let’s close with a palate cleanser. Biden has an uphill fight. He should take inspiration from The Temptations doing “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1969. Eddie Kendricks’ falsetto was the best:

The Sullivan Show aired on CBS from 1948-1971. For 23 years it aired a wide variety of popular culture.

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