Octopus Overlords

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law Friday Democratic bills to repeal Michigan's right-to-work law that currently allows workers in the state to not pay union dues or fees. She also reinstated a prevailing wage law that requires union-level wages and benefits for state-funded construction projects.

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.

Everyone in this story makes me angry.

Judge Duncan is part of a culture of turning the federal judiciary into a conservative grievance LiveJournal. He’s also part of a pathetic culture of conservative victimology and free-speech hucksterism. The American right is trumpeting a purported concern for freedom of speech, based mostly on cries of “cancel culture” and gripes about how other people are using their free speech and association, while campaigning vigorously to use government force to limit speech they don’t like. The Federalist Society is complicit, off the bench and on it.

The right-wing media (check out the links in item 6 on David Lat's update) is campaigning to make money and clicks off of that conservative victimology. In the process it’s undermining everything that was ever admirable or worthwhile about American conservatism and making it into a cult of crybabies. Meanwhile, it’s torpedoing whatever American consensus we’ve ever had in favor of free speech values, conveying to half of America’s youth that free speech is cynical bullshit and to the other half that it’s a bludgeon to own the libs.

Associate Dean Steinbach and her ilk are campaigning to undermine free speech legal and social norms, striving to make someone’s subjective reaction to speech an unquestionable justification for suppressing it. Academic freedom is under state assault and she’s busily undermining it and telling students they have a right to shut people up.

Stanford, and schools like it, are shitting the bed over controversial speakers. Decide that students can shut down speeches they don’t like, if you want to take that path. If not, protect speakers from disruption and have the students escorted out if they shut down a speech. Don’t half-ass it and then apologize afterwards.

And students. Students think that they should be able to dictate which speakers their peers invite, who can speak, what they can say, and who can listen. They’re not satisfied with the most free-speech-exceptionalist system in the world that lets them respond to speech by assembling, protesting, and reviling people of authority like Judge Duncan. They demand the right not just to speak, but to control the speech of others. That’s straight-up thuggish, an aspiration born of a fascist soul. These are law students. They are training to express themselves for a living. If their view is “we can’t respond to awful speech, we can only stop it from happening,” then they’re going to be terrible lawyers.

Law students also persist in imagining that they invented the world. They believe they discovered that free speech laws and norms protect awful speech and awful people. They believe they discovered the plea “yes, but what you don’t understand is that this speech is really bad.” They believe that they are so self-evidently right, good, trustworthy, and noble that it’s obvious that we should let them decide who talks and who doesn’t. And they are too hubris-swollen — not too stupid, but too drunk with self-righteousness — to see that exceptions to free speech have always been used most harmfully against the powerless, and always will be. They’re too full of themselves to see that “let a crowd decide who is allowed to speak” is a horrific norm to promote with grotesque historic resonance. Some of them will grow out of this.

Americans’ life expectancy is plummeting. The graphic is stunning.

“American life expectancy is lower than that of Cuba, Lebanon, and Chechnya.”

Why?

“Yes, Americans eat more calories and lack universal access to health care. But there's also higher child poverty, racial segregation, social isolation, and more. Even the way cities are designed makes access to good food more difficult.”

Interestingly, the US “has higher rates of cancer screening and survival, better control of blood pressure and cholesterol levels, lower stroke mortality, lower rates of current smoking, and higher average household income.”

But it’s not enough to offset the many other factors.

Alefroth wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 4:12 pm Most other countries bounced back from that. We didn't.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 7:07 am

LordMortis wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 5:50 pm So the head of the RR company from the crash in Palestine, OH was on CNBC talking about how everything was being shipped out to clean.

https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/ea ... palestine/

By clean they mean

The wastewater is being sent to Texas Molecular, which injects hazardous waste into the ground for disposal.

The Michigan "disposal site" is right between the Huron River and Bellville Lake... and not too far from me and very close to Remus West. I wonder how U.S. Ecology Wayne Disposal actually disposes of the soil. Hopefully, not the same way we recycle.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/loc ... ne-county/

I guess working with government officials to make sure things are safe for decades to come means different things to the railroad than it does to me.

Wayne County Executive Warren Evans held a news conference Friday alongside U.S. Representatives Debbie Dingell and Rashida Tlaib about hazardous materials sent to Michigan.

After the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, tons of contaminated dirt needed somewhere to go. That somewhere was US Ecology, a waste disposal company in Van Buren Township specializing in hazardous waste.

The elected officials said its delivery blindsided them.

“Wayne County government not knowing that they’re coming, (or) which way they’re coming (or) how safe the trucks are that are coming is something that has us all very, very irritated,” said Evans.

The contaminated soil was delivered to a site in Belleville. At the same time, the contaminated wastewater was delivered to a deep well liquid injection site in Romulus.

Caught off guard by its arrival, officials questioned whether the facilities would handle the materials safely and whether they would pose any health or environmental concerns.

According to Dingell, the train company Norfolk Southern initially decided to send the materials to Wayne County. She said the EPA has since taken over the Ohio derailment site and that the agency will collaborate with Michigan officials moving forward.

Yet two months after the disaster, amid mounting distrust and as lawsuits pile up against Norfolk Southern, the railroad giant maintains an outsized role in monitoring for contamination in and around East Palestine. Contractors on Norfolk Southern’s payroll — including one with a particularly checkered past — are leading the search for pollutants in water, soil and home air.

Several independent experts have condemned the testing to date as inadequate, pointing out that authorities have been slow to test for the full spectrum of potential contaminants. Critics have unsurprisingly compared Norfolk Southern’s involvement to a fox guarding the henhouse, and some argue that funding cuts at environmental agencies opened the door for Norfolk Southern to be heavily involved in studying its own chemical disaster.

Nicole Karn, a chemist and associate professor at the Ohio State University, called the chemical screening and reporting “sloppy” and “ridiculous.”

“In terms of trust, it would be helpful if the company responsible for the problem wouldn’t be in charge of cleanup,” she told HuffPost.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 10:12 am Joe Biden confuses All Blacks with Black and Tans during Ireland trip

Alefroth wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 1:05 pm Right, he was talking about the New Zealand rugby team.

TheMix wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 2:47 pm It didn't even invoke a shrug from me. If I hadn't spent time in New Zealand when I was younger, I'm not sure I'd know exactly who the All Blacks are.

gilraen wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

Never heard of "All Blacks" since I don't follow rugby.

gilraen wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

El Guapo wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:31 pm

gilraen wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

Never heard of "All Blacks" since I don't follow rugby.

Honestly when I heard that Biden had made a gaffe involving him saying "All Blacks", I was relieved to hear what it was.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:41 pm

gilraen wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

After decades in Indiana, I think of hunting dogs.

gilraen wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

Never heard of "All Blacks" since I don't follow rugby.

Sinema and Manchin fail to attract small donors. But both share a billionaire donor: Harlan Crow.