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| 8:46a |
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| 8:46a |
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| 8:46a |
Peter Lynch
The UK has sentenced a bigot to almost three years in prison for
shouting insults -- and nothing else.
He received the same sentence as another rioter who kicked and threw
bottles. There ie evidently injustice here. Worse than that, to
convict people for insults -- even insults that are foolish and false
right-wing nonsense -- tramples freedom of speech.
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| 8:46a |
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| 8:46a |
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| 8:46a |
Health Over Wealth bill
According to Americans for Financial Reform, the Health over Wealth bill
would make these positive requirements:
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Transparency: Required reporting will ensure the public is able to
know the status of healthcare entities owned by private equity firms
with regard to their debt, executive pay, political spending, patient
costs, and any reductions in patient services or staff wages and
benefits.
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Continuity of Care Protections: The bill would require private equity
firms to establish escrow accounts sufficient to cover five years of
operation beyond any financial disruptions or facility closures and
fund neighboring providers in case of closure.
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Public Accountability: The bill would require private equity firms to
obtain a license in order to purchase healthcare entities in whole or
part. This license could be revoked in the event of understaffing,
price-gouging, or reducing patients’ access to care.
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Community Protections: The bill would require the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS) to review, and possibly block, any sales of
hospitals or facilities by private equity Real Estate Investment
Trusts (REITs) if the sale would threaten the facility’s financial
status or the public health.
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The Role of Private Equity: The bill would establish an HHS Task Force
to monitor and examine changes in the marketplace and any patterns of
private equity ownership that result in excessive consolidation or
inequities in access or quality or services.
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Accessibility, Safety, and Quality: The bill would prevent the
stripping of assets from healthcare facilities by private equity firms
necessary for assuring the safety and quality of healthcare services
and retain staff in any bankruptcy.
I am in favor of each of them, but this approach is nibbling around
the edges of a large problem which applies to many fields, including
retail sales and home rentals. We should address the whole problem
fully.
So I urge we either (1) prohibit private equity organizations from
owning medical facilities or practices, or (2) subject private equity
organizations to the same SEC rules as public equity corporations.
Any requirements of the Health above Wealth Act that do not currently
exist for public corporations should be imposed on all of them.
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| 8:46a |
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| 8:46a |
(Satire) Hazard-filled fairways
(satire) *Bemoaning the terrible course conditions he encountered
while visiting the military burial site, Donald Trump called out
Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday for its hazard-filled
fairways.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-click
and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx
that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
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| 8:46a |
Bird flu
The same factors that undermined the US response to Covid-19 are
having the same effect on the US response to bird flu.
Bird flu is a pandemic for birds and could cause extinctions and
damage agriculture. At present it is not a big direct danger to humans,
but it has the potential to mutate and become so.
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| 8:46a |
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| 8:46a |
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| 8:46a |
Lafourche Parish saved
A local man saved Lafourche Parish from Hurricane Ida by building a
18-foot levee instead of the wider 13-foot levee that the US
government was going to build.
Each choice of design would have represented a bet about what future
storms would be like. Hurricane Ida's waves were 17 feet tall.
I expect that a broader 18-foot levee could have been built, if it was
clear that would be needed, but it wasn't.
Maybe the federal government should prepare for stronger hurricanes,
since that seems to be what is coming. That could help for some
decades. But if we don't curb global heating, any levee will
eventually fail, because sea-level rise will overcome it.
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| 8:46a |
Plane emission lobbying
US air carriers lobbied quietly and secretly against an EU plan to
require carriers to better measure the amounts of various pollution
substances they emit into the air (and the amount of greenhouse effect
of each one).
Measuring these better can't hurt, but using them to calibrate an
emissions trading program is misguided. We have seen that emissions
trading is ineffective for reducing emissions, because it is too easy
to game the system or cheat.
By going in that direction, the EU
is caving into business at the outset.
By imposing a tax on emissions, a government offers no easy way to
game the system, and cheating would constitute tax evasion -- punishable
by imprisonment.
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| 8:46a |
Gas rhetoric
The Australian fossil fuel companies claim that Australia has been too
slow to build more renewable generation and therefore needs to
develop new gas fields.
Why has Australia gone too slowly in building new renewable
generation? Because the previous government was controlled by global
heating denialists and adopted planet-roaster policies -- which
included resisting building renewable generation.
If the government tolerates that as am excuse to allow more gas
extraction development, it will lock the country into "solving" the
problem of failure to curb global heating by boosting global heating.
Another way to delay curbing global heating is by spending billions
on fantasy solutions that have never been shown to work. For instance, carbon capture and storage. If that reduces what's available for the cheap and
effective solutions, it gives the fossil fuel barons what they want.
*How Exxon chases billions in US subsidies for a ‘climate solution’ that helps
it drill more oil.*
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| 8:46a |
Peter Hendy
The UK's railroad minister, in his previous job, threatened to deny
contracts arbitrarily to an engineering company unless it bullied a
worker into ceasing to raise safety concerns. In response, the
company fired him.
I am not competent to judge the validity of those safety concerns.
What is clear is that gagging a qualified person who reports safety
concerns, rather than investigating them properly, is Boeing-like and is a
failure of responsibility to passengers and others.
I think such conduct ought to be a crime.
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| 8:46a |
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| 8:46a |
Misquoted about HAMAS hostage treatment
Accusations that HAMAS physically harms its hostages seem to be false.
*Freed Israeli captive Noa Argamani says she was wounded by Israel, not
Hamas.*
Being held hostage is in itself a form of mistreatment, but we should
not confuse that with physical mistreatment.
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| 10:23a |
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| 10:23a |
Ex-Twitter banned, BRA
Brazil has banned ex-Twitter for spreading
propaganda
in favor of the extreme right-wing ex-president Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro launched an attack against the main government buildings in Brazilia after Lula was
elected president again.
I recognize people's right to advocate right-wing political views, even though (as you can see from
years of postings in this site) I loathe those views. However, the state should not hold out its
neck for an enormous business to cut, and businesses are not entitled to human rights.
Aside from the owner's vicious politics,
ex-Twitter is unjust to each and every user by
requiring per to run nonfree software to access it. The article says that many users have switched
to Bluesky. Is it possible to use Bluesky without running any nonfree software?
Strictly speaking, the ban is because ex-Twitter tried to evade legal responsibility by
ceasing to operate in Brazil and not appointing any legal representative. Each company doing
business in Brazil is required to have a representative, whom I believe has the job of receiving
summonses to the company. Must seems to have thought to make legal action against ex-Twitter
impossible by not appointing one.
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| 10:23a |
Urgent: Billionaire Minimum Income Tax
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support the
Billionaire
Minimum Income Tax.
You can be sure that billionaires are phoning those same elected officials on the other side.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
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| 10:23a |
Urgent: Debate-questions ABC should ask
Everyone:
call on ABC
to expose the right-wing extremist's connection to Project 2025 in the coming
presidential debate.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the
site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript's or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the first step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before
posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work
without JavaScript!" They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple
method seems adequate for some of them.
To start, in the personal information in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say
who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without
nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code,
you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing
its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This
should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter the subject and body of
your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients,
the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step
needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort compared
with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially
malicious) software.
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| 10:23a |
Urgent: Kroger's surveillance-pricing
Tell
Kroger's to stop trying to identify all its customers through facial recognition.
I edited my letter to say that trying to identify each customers is unjust even aside from the use
of that information for precision gouging.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the
site's nonfree JavaScript code. I presume you have deactivated JavaScript or are using the LibreJS
plugin.
I have done the first step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before
posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work
without JavaScript!" They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple
method seems adequate for some of them.
To start, in the personal information in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say
who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without
nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code,
you should enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By
editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end. Then insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL.
This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body
of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients,
the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step
needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort compared
with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially
malicious) software.
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