cogitoergofun

[cogitoergofun]

Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly applauded the growing number of anti-Gaza war protests and encampments that have sprung up on college campuses from California to Massachusetts and have become a flashpoint in the U.S.

Izzat Al-Risheq, a member of the militant group's Political Bureau, said on Wednesday that President Joe Biden's administration is violating the rights of students and faculty members and arresting them, "because of their rejection of the genocide that our Palestinian people are the subjected in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the neo-Nazi Zionists."

The statement claimed: "Today's students are the leaders of the future."

The U.S. designated Hamas a terrorist organization in the late 1990s. Several other countries have labeled it a terrorist group.

Khamenei also put out a statement on X, formerly Twitter, where he celebrated the flying of a Hezbollah's flag in the streets of the U.S. "The people of the world are supporting the Resistance Front because they are resisting & because they are against oppression," the post read.

Plaudits from Iran and Hamas − the group that carried out the Oct. 7 attack prompting the deadliest single assault on Jews since the Holocaust, slaughtering 1,200 and dragging hundreds back to Gaza as hostages − come at a boiling point. Protests have embroiled college presidents, students, political leaders from both parties and even President Biden himself as thousands of Jewish students denounce growing antisemitism on U.S. college campuses.

It should be noted that Iran and Hamas have come under fire for cracking down on their own protest movements. Human Rights Watch, an international watchdog group, documented the "excessive and lethal force" Iranian security forces used to repress widespread protests that erupted in 2022.

In Gaza, beatings and arrests of human rights defenders, journalists and demonstrators by Hamas in recent years, reflect a systematic practice, a report by the watchdog organization found.

[...]

Since the group's founding in 1987, Hamas has called for the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state that would replace the current state of Israel. Hamas has said it believes in the use of violence to bring about the eradication of Israel.

[cogitoergofun]

On Thursday, Baltimore County Police arrested Pikesville High School's former athletic director, Dazhon Darien, and charged him with using AI to impersonate Principal Eric Eiswert, according to a report by The Baltimore Banner. Police say Darien used AI voice synthesis software to simulate Eiswert's voice, leading the public to believe the principal made racist and antisemitic comments.

The audio clip, posted on a popular Instagram account, contained offensive remarks about "ungrateful Black kids" and their academic performance, as well as a threat to "join the other side" if the speaker received one more complaint from "one more Jew in this community." The recording also mentioned names of staff members, including Darien's nickname "DJ," suggesting they should not have been hired or should be removed "one way or another."

The comments led to significant uproar from students, faculty, and the wider community, many of whom initially believed the principal had actually made the comments. A Pikesville High School teacher named Shaena Ravenell reportedly played a large role in disseminating the audio. While she has not been charged, police indicated that she forwarded the controversial email to a student known for their ability to quickly spread information through social media. This student then escalated the audio's reach, which included sharing it with the media and the NAACP.

Baltimore County Police say that Darien had accessed school networks to search for and utilize AI tools capable of voice imitation. Police also linked Darien to an email account used to distribute the fake recordings.

Voice-cloning technology, which we have covered in the past, can generate realistic speech after being trained on millions of human voices, then tuned to match a specific voice in a provided sample. In March, Baltimore Banner reporters spoke with Siwei Lyu, the director of a media forensics lab at the University at Buffalo. Lyu told the newspaper that he believed the falsified clip of Eiswert speaking was created using a voice synthesis service such as ElevenLabs. ElevenLabs allows users to upload voice samples of people for cloning using text-to-speech synthesis, although its terms of service prohibit cloning a voice without the person's permission.

The incident has led to Eiswert being absent from the school since the investigation began, and he has denied making the comments, stating that they do not align with his views. “I did not make this statement, and these thoughts are not what I believe in as both an educator and a person,” Eiswert said in a written statement.

When the audio clip emerged in January, Superintendent Myriam Rogers called the comments "disturbing" and "highly offensive and inappropriate." The Baltimore Banner notes that Billy Burke, head of the union representing Eiswert, was the only official to publicly suggest the audio was AI-generated. He expressed disappointment in the public's assumption of Eiswert's guilt and revealed that the principal and his family had been harassed and threatened, requiring police presence at their home.

[cogitoergofun]

Last year, in an effort to bring greater transparency to local elections, the Texas Legislature mandated that school districts, municipalities and other jurisdictions post campaign finance reports online rather than stow them away in filing cabinets.

But many agencies appear to be violating the law that took effect in September.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune examined 35 school districts that held trustee elections in November and found none that had posted all of the required disclosures online that show candidates’ fundraising and spending. (Two of the districts did not respond to questions that would allow us to determine whether they were missing these reports.) And the agency tasked with enforcing the rules for thousands of local jurisdictions does not have any staff dedicated to checking their websites for compliance.

“The public not having access to those records because they’re not turned in or not posted in a timely fashion means that the public can’t make an informed decision based on where that candidate’s financial support is coming from,” said Erin Zwiener, a Democratic state representative from Driftwood who has pushed for campaign finance reform.

The interest in more transparency in local elections is bipartisan. “The local level has an amazing amount of funding and activity going through their respective districts, whether it be a school district, the city councils and the counties,” said Republican Carl Tepper, the state representative from Lubbock who authored the bill.

[cogitoergofun]

A bill that would strengthen oversight of Tennessee’s juvenile detention centers has failed, despite a concerted push for reform after multiple county-run facilities were found to be locking children alone in cells.

The bill was introduced in the state legislature in January after a WPLN and ProPublica investigation last year reported that seclusion was used as punishment for minor rule infractions like laughing during meals or talking during class. One facility, the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center in Knoxville, was particularly reliant on seclusion, in violation of state laws and standards that banned the practice as a form of discipline.

“If we can’t get behind independent oversight and transparency as a good thing in the juvenile justice system, there will never be meaningful accountability and our system can’t change for the better,” Zoe Jamail of Disability Rights Tennessee said. “So it is frustrating and disappointing.”

The oversight bill aimed to give an independent agency the power to require changes at facilities that violate state standards, effectively forcing Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services to act.

Currently, the ombudsman at that agency, the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, responds to family complaints about DCS but doesn’t have enforcement power. Under the bill, if a facility didn’t follow those recommendations, the department would have been required to suspend the site’s license or stop placing kids there until the violations are fixed.

It was sponsored by two prominent Republicans and one Democrat, and a version of the legislation had the department’s backing. It wouldn’t have cost the state any money, according to the bill’s fiscal note.

Usually in Tennessee, that would be a recipe for a bill to become a law. But the legislation was sent to what is called “summer study,” a maneuver that allows lawmakers to continue working on the legislation but is typically used to effectively kill a bill. Its sponsors and child welfare advocates are baffled as to why.

“I can’t think of a reason for not wanting oversight unless there’s something to hide,” Jamail said.

[cogitoergofun]

SpaceX, the world leader in rocket launches, is increasingly coming under scrutiny for its workplace practices. A recent safety review performed by Reuters highlights an upsetting trend at the aerospace company. For the second year in a row, injury rates at SpaceX far exceed the industry average. This is according to a Reuters review of 2023 safety data that the company filed to U.S. regulators, specifically the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Discouragingly, the injury rate worsened at SpaceX compared to the previous year.

A previous Reuters investigation found that the approximately 600 reported injuries in 2022 included crushed limbs, cuts, burns, eye injuries, electrocutions, amputations, and serious head injuries, according to the news outlet, which noted that data from prior years are either incomplete or non-existent.

The situation doesn’t appear to be improving. In 2023, the SpaceX facility in Brownsville, Texas, for example, reported an injury rate of 5.9 per 100 workers, a notable increase from 4.8 in 2022. Comparatively, the industry average remains significantly lower at 0.8 injuries per 100 workers, according to figures provided by Reuters.

The company’s rocket recovery teams appear to be taking the brunt, with Pacific coast workers experiencing an injury rate of 7.6 per 100 workers—more than nine times the industry average. The Atlantic team fared a bit better, enduring 3.5 injuries per 100 workers.

SpaceX is the only company currently in the business of recovering incoming boosters from droneships. Accordingly, its teams are having to deal with unique and sometimes extreme challenges. But that’s no excuse for allowing these injuries to occur, and it’s a possible sign that the company is launching too many rockets too quickly—or a corporate culture that doesn’t value safety.

[cogitoergofun]

Donald Trump is currently leading the 2024 presidential race, in no small part because voters trust him to combat inflation. This is a bit strange since Trump has for months now been advertising plans to drastically increase consumer prices.

Over the weekend, an NBC News poll found Trump leading Biden nationally by a 46 to 44 percent margin. Yet on the question of which candidate would better handle inflation and the cost of living, the Republican led the Democrat by a whopping 22 points.

Trump’s landslide lead on price management is significant, since inflation was the poll’s single most commonly cited “critical issue” facing the United States.

Unfortunately, Trump does not actually have a bulletproof plan for making Big Macs cheap again. To the contrary, the Republican and his advisers have developed an economic agenda that amounts to a recipe for turbocharging inflation.

The claim that Trump’s policies would increase prices does not rest on a debatable interpretation of their indirect effects. Rather, some of the president’s proposals would directly increase American consumers’ costs by design. Here is a quick primer on the likely GOP nominee’s four-point plan for making your life less affordable:

[cogitoergofun]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, on Wednesday launched an investigation into the “outrageously high prices” of Novo Nordisk’s respective diabetes and weight loss drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.

On Wednesday, Sanders penned a letter to Novo Nordisk’s chief executive officer, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, notifying him of the investigation and laying out his concerns with various price discrepancies between the drugs and pointing out concerns about the drugs’ pricing.

“The scientists at Novo Nordisk deserve great credit for developing these drugs that have the potential to be a game changer for millions of Americans struggling with type 2 diabetes and obesity,” Sanders said.

“As important as these drugs are,” Sanders continued, “they will not do any good for the millions of patients who cannot afford them.”

Ozempic and Wegovy have the same active ingredient – semaglutide – but they have different doses and strengths. Ozempic is FDA-approved for type 2 diabetes while Wegovy is approved for weight loss.

In his letter, Sanders questioned why the two medications would be priced differently from each other and priced differently from other countries.

Ozempic costs $969 a month for type 2 diabetes in the United States, but it costs $155 in Canada and $59 in Germany, Sanders said. Wegovy costs $1,349 a month for weight loss in the U.S., compared to $140 in Germany and $92 in the United Kingdom.

Sanders cited a recent report from Yale University that he said found the drugs could be profitably manufactured for less than $5 a month.

“The result of these astronomically high prices is that Ozempic and Wegovy are out of reach for millions of Americans who need them,” Sanders said. “Unfortunately, Novo Nordisk’s pricing has turned drugs that could improve people’s lives into luxury goods, all while Novo Nordisk made over $12 billion in profits last year — up 76 percent from 2021. That is unacceptable.”

Sanders warned the high prices could bankrupt key programs like Medicare and Medicaid, “if the prices for these products are not substantially reduced,” adding, “The United States Congress and the federal government cannot allow that to happen.”

[cogitoergofun]

When you’re looking to an investment advisor to help roll over your 401(k), you might assume the one you choose has your best interests in mind: They’ll help minimize fees and pick the investments best suited for your age, risk tolerance, and financial goals. Because after all, it’s their job.

But until Tuesday, that actually wasn’t a guarantee. Instead, some were able to advise clients to invest in financial products that lined the advisor’s own pockets, rather than what would likely lead to the best returns for clients. Now, though, the Biden administration is requiring more financial professionals to adhere to a higher standard when providing financial advice, a move experts are calling a win for the average retirement saver. In fact, it could help workers keep as much as $5 billion of their own money each year related to one insurance product alone, according to the Council of Economic Advisers.

Called the fiduciary standard, the rule means investment professionals have to act in their client’s best interests rather than their own when advising them on their individual retirement accounts, 401(k)s, and other similar products. It’s meant to prevent conflicts of interest by deterring financial advisors and insurance agents and brokers from promoting products purely because they stand to collect a commission from them.

401(k) plan administrators at companies must already adhere to this standard, and financial advisors typically must as well when recommending certain securities, like mutual funds. The new rule, introduced by the Department of Labor last fall, expands to include advisors and brokers who give one-time advice to savers rolling those employer-sponsored assets into an IRA or annuity.

That’s a big deal given Americans rolled over almost $800 billion from 401(k)s and other employer plans into IRAs in 2022, the White House said when it introduced the rule in October 2023. A rollover typically happens when workers move jobs, retire, or want to combine multiple accounts.

Under the guidance, financial professionals making retirement recommendations must “establish, maintain, and enforce written policies and procedures reasonably designed to … identify and at a minimum disclose, or eliminate, all conflicts of interest associated with such recommendations.”

“These rules are already many of the same standards set for CFP professionals,” says Andrew Fincher, a Virginia-based certified financial planner. “This is great that practice standards will now encompass a wider net to include others within the financial professional industry.”

[cogitoergofun]

Minnesota senators are expected to adhere to “the highest standard of ethical conduct,” according to the legislative body’s rulebook.

House members, similarly, must show “good citizenship and high personal integrity,” according to the House code of conduct.

But living up to those standards has proven to be a challenge for at least six current lawmakers who have been arrested for various crimes while in office. 

As the Senate debates how to respond to the arrest of Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, on first-degree burglary charges, here is the complete list of legislators — that we know of — who have committed criminal offenses while serving as elected officials.

As of this writing, all remain in office.

[cogitoergofun]

The Biden administration finalized nursing home staffing rules Monday that will require thousands of them to hire more nurses and aides — while giving them years to do so.

The new rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are the most substantial changes to federal oversight of the nation's roughly 15,000 nursing homes in more than three decades. But they are less stringent than what patient advocates said was needed to provide high-quality care.

Spurred by disproportionate deaths from COVID-19 in long-term care facilities, the rules aim to address perennially sparse staffing that can be a root cause of missed diagnoses, severe bedsores, and frequent falls.

"For residents, this will mean more staff, which means fewer ER visits potentially, more independence," Vice President Kamala Harris said while meeting with nursing home workers in La Crosse, Wisconsin. "For families, it's going to mean peace of mind in terms of your loved one being taken care of."

When the regulations are fully enacted, 4 in 5 homes will need to augment their payrolls, CMS estimated. But the new standards are likely to require slight if any improvements for many of the 1.2 million residents in facilities that are already quite close to or meet the minimum levels.

[...]

The plan was welcomed by labor unions that represent nurses — and whom President Joe Biden is counting on for support in his reelection campaign. Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry called it a "long-overdue sea change." This political bond was underscored by the administration's decision to have Harris announce the rule with SEIU members in Wisconsin, a swing state.

The new rules supplant the vague federal mandate that has been in place since the 1980s requiring nursing homes to have "sufficient" staffing to meet residents' needs. In practice, inspectors rarely categorized inadequate staffing as a serious infraction resulting in possible penalties, federal records show.

Starting in two years, most homes must provide an average of at least 3.48 hours of daily care per resident. About 6 in 10 nursing homes are already operating at that level, a KFF analysis found.

CMS also mandated that within two years an RN must be on duty at all times in case of a patient crisis on weekends or overnight. Currently, CMS requires at least eight consecutive hours of RN presence each day and a licensed nurse of any level on duty around the clock. An inspector general report found that nearly a thousand nursing homes didn't meet those basic requirements.

[cogitoergofun]

The USPS announced on Tuesday it will follow through with its plan to reroute Reno-area mail processing to Sacramento, a move that drew bipartisan ire from Nevada lawmakers while raising questions about the rate at which mail ballots can be processed in a populous part of a crucial swing state.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has cast the permanent measure as a cost saving move, but federal, state and local lawmakers have complained about a lack of transparency in the process that could slow mail throughout the region.

Under the plan, all mail from the Reno area will pass through Sacramento before reaching its destination — even from one side of the city to the other.

Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, the state’s top election official, previously said moving operations could slow the processing of mail ballots, and “has the potential to disenfranchise thousands of Nevada voters and would unquestionably impact the results of Nevada’s elections.”

In the Tuesday statement, the USPS said “the business case” supported moving the processes to California, because most of the mail processed in Reno is destined elsewhere. The Reno facility will stay open as an area that prepares mail before it’s sent out. USPS will invest $13.4 million in the facility, mostly for renovations, per the agency.

[...]

Northern Nevada’s congressional delegation — which includes Rosen, Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei — sent a letter to USPS opposing the move and have long spoken out against it.

Other opposition came from Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and the Washoe County Commission, which includes Reno.

In a statement following the announcement, Rosen said she was “outraged that out-of-touch Washington bureaucrats think they know what’s best for our state.”

[cogitoergofun]

U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, ripped into his party’s right flank for voting against billions in foreign aid for U.S. allies last week, castigating his ultraconservative peers as “scumbags” and klansmen.

“These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they're walking around with white hoods in the daytime,” Gonzales told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview Sunday. “It didn't surprise me that some of these folks voted against aid to Israel.”

Gonazales, a rare flame-throwing centrist who is battling it out against YouTube gun enthusiast Brandon Herrera in the first serious primary challenge, singled out two sitting Republicans by name who have endorsed against him.

“It's my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags like [Florida Congressman] Matt Gaetz. He paid minors to have sex with them at drunk parties,” Gonzales said, before calling out Rep. Bob Good for earlier this month endorsing Herrera, whom he called a “known neo-Nazi.”

Federal prosecutors declined to charge Gaetz after investigating allegations of sex trafficking, though the House Ethics Committee is continuing to investigate the matter.

Gonzales made the remarks in reaction to several Republican members voting against their party’s leadership on Saturday on military and civilian aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The hardline House Freedom Caucus asserted Congress should not pass the bills, which would include over $90 billion in assistance to the U.S. allies, before more securing aggressive measures on the U.S.-Mexico border. The foreign aid packages passed the House with large bipartisan support.

[...]

The Texas Republican Party censured Gonzales last year, citing his opposition to Roy’s border bill and the rules package, as well as his support for gun safety legislation after the Robb Elementary shooting in his district. The party also cited his support for legislation protecting same-sex marriage.

[cogitoergofun]

Congress passed and President Biden signed a reauthorization of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), approving a bill that opponents say includes a "major expansion of warrantless surveillance" under Section 702 of FISA.

Over the weekend, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act was approved by the Senate in a 60-34 vote. The yes votes included 30 Republicans, 28 Democrats, and two independents who caucus with Democrats. The bill, which was previously passed by the House and reauthorizes Section 702 of FISA for two years, was signed by President Biden on Saturday.

"Thousands and thousands of Americans could be forced into spying for the government by this new bill and with no warrant or direct court oversight whatsoever," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on Friday. "Forcing ordinary Americans and small businesses to conduct secret, warrantless spying is what authoritarian countries do, not democracies."

Wyden and Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) led a bipartisan group of eight senators who submitted an amendment to reverse what Wyden's office called "a major expansion of warrantless surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was included in the House-passed bill." After the bill was approved by the Senate without the amendment, Wyden said it seemed "that senators were unwilling to send this bill back to the House, no matter how common-sense the amendment before them."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he voted against the reauthorization "because it failed to include the most important requirement to protect Americans' civil rights: that law enforcement get a warrant before targeting a US citizen."

[cogitoergofun]

A LOT MORE comes to the surface at an oil and gas well than just the oil and gas. The U.S. oil and gas industry produces 3 billion gallons of brine a day, and despite the innocent name, it can contain toxic levels of salt, elevated levels of heavy metals like lead and arsenic, and dangerous amounts of the radioactive element radium. My reporting journey into this topic started when an Ohio community organizer told me someone made a liquid de-icer out of oilfield brine. The product contained enough of the radioactive element radium to be defined by EPA as a radioactive waste. Yet, the company behind the product advertised it was to be used on home driveways and patios and that it was “Safe for Pets” — they had even been selling it at Lowe’s. 

Unraveling how that came to be turned into a 20-month Rolling Stone magazine investigation, which won an award with the National Association of Science Writers, and eventually became my book, Petroleum–238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It, which will be published on Wednesday. Shielded by a system of lax regulations and legal loopholes, radioactive oilfield waste has been spilled, spread, injected, dumped, and freely emitted across America. My book relies on community activists, scientists and health experts, a century of academic research, and a trove of never-before-released industry and government documents to lay out a series of game-changing reveals into the world’s most powerful industry. But my most important sources are the oil and gas industry’s own workers. None have been more deceived. 

Across America, they haul trucks of toxic radioactive waste labeled as nonhazardous, thanks to an extraordinary nearly half-century-old industry exemption, and must crawl inside tanks to clean out radioactive sludge, armed with no knowledge or appropriate protection against radioactivity. Some of the biggest dangers occur at treatment facilities where highly radioactive oilfield waste is mixed with less radioactive items like lime and ground up corn cobs so the sludge can be hauled to local landfills rather than taken to secure radioactive waste disposal sites. While these facilities often remain a secret even to the very communities in which they are located, over my years of reporting, I was able to learn about them through industry and government reports and whistle-blowing workers. But none has a story like Jesse Lombardi. 

[cogitoergofun]

Tom Cotton has never seen a left-wing protest he didn’t want crushed at gunpoint.

On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as “the nascent pogroms at Columbia.” Last week, Cotton posted on X,  “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.” He later deleted the post and reworded it so that it did not sound quite so explicitly like a demand for aspiring vigilantes to lynch protesters.

This is a long-standing pattern for Cotton, who enjoys issuing calls for violence that linger on the edge of plausible deniability when it comes to which groups, exactly, are appropriate targets for lethal force. During the George Floyd protests of 2020, Cotton demanded that the U.S. military be sent in with orders to give “no quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters,” insisting unconvincingly in a later New York Times op-ed that he was not conflating peaceful protesters with rioters. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who had raised a fist in apparent solidarity with the mob that assaulted the Capitol on January 6 before fleeing through the halls to avoid them once the riot began, echoed Cotton’s call for deploying the National Guard to Columbia. (Both men, as it turns out, are in favor of some quarter for “insurrectionists” who happen to be on the right side.)

What Cotton and Hawley are doing is simple demagoguery. When Donald Trump was inaugurated president, he spoke of an “American carnage” that he would suppress by force. Trump’s attempts to apply the maximum level of violence to every problem did not solve any of them. Migration at the southern border surged in 2019 until a crackdown in Mexico and the coronavirus pandemic brought it down; Trump’s presidency ended with a rise in violent crime (another likely pandemic effect, among other factors) and with widespread civil-rights protests.

[...]

As we approach the summer of 2024, the economy is growing, migration to the border has declined at least temporarily owing to what appears to be a new crackdown by Mexican authorities, and in many major cities, crime is returning to historic lows, leaving protests as the most suitable target for demagoguery. The Biden administration’s support for Israel divides Democrats and unites Republicans, so the longer the issue remains salient, the better it is for the GOP. More broadly, the politics of “American carnage” do not work as well in the absence of carnage. Far-right politics operate best when there is a public perception of disorder and chaos, an atmosphere in which the only solution such politicians ever offer can sound appealing to desperate voters. Social-media bubbles can suffice to maintain this sense of siege among the extremely online, but cultivating this perception among most voters demands constant reinforcement.

This is why the Republican Party is constantly seeking to play up chaos at the border and an epidemic of crime in American cities, no matter what the reality of the situation might actually be. Cotton and Hawley are demanding that Biden use force against the protesters not just because they consistently advocate for state violence against those who support causes they oppose as a matter of principle, but also because any escalation in chaos would redound to their political benefit. They don’t want to solve any problems; they want to make them worse so that the public will warm to “solutions” that will continue to make them worse. They don’t want order, or safety, or peace. What they want is carnage.

[cogitoergofun]

Two framed documents from a long career at Boeing hang side by side in Merle Meyers’s home: A certificate from 2022 that thanks him for three decades of service. And a letter he received months later reprimanding him for his performance.

The documents reflect his conflicting emotions about the company. Mr. Meyers, who worked as a Boeing quality manager until last year, holds deep affection for the aircraft manufacturer, where both he and his mother worked. But he is also saddened and frustrated by what he described as a yearslong shift by Boeing executives to emphasize speed over quality.

“I love the company,” said Mr. Meyers, 65, who is publicly sharing his concerns for the first time, supported by hundreds of pages of emails and other documents. For years, he said, quality was the top priority, but that changed over time: “Now, it’s schedule that takes the lead.”

Boeing is revered by many aviation professionals as a lasting symbol of ingenuity and an engineering and manufacturing powerhouse. It is so important to the U.S. economy that presidents have effectively served as salesmen for its planes abroad. The company is a dominant force in Washington State and a top employer in the Seattle area, where it was founded and produces the 737 and other planes.

A job at Boeing is often a source of pride, and many employees have intergenerational ties to the company. In addition to his mother, Mr. Meyers said, his wife’s father and grandfather also worked there.

But that shared pride has been badly bruised in recent years. The company’s reputation was tarnished by a pair of fatal crashes of the 737 Max 8 in 2018 and 2019 and an episode when a panel blew out of a 737 Max 9 plane on Jan. 5. That flight reignited intense scrutiny from regulators, airlines and the public.

[...]

While aviation remains exceedingly safe — far fewer people die on planes than in cars, trucks or buses — the Jan. 5 flight highlighted quality concerns raised by Mr. Meyers and other current and former employees. Many who have spoken out say they have done so out of respect for Boeing employees and their work, and a desire to push the company to restore its reputation.

[...]

Mr. Meyers, who wears a ring on his right hand commemorating his 30 years at Boeing, said he had begun to notice slipping in the company’s high standards after its 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas. He said Boeing’s engineering-first mentality had slowly given way to a stronger focus on profits after executives from McDonnell Douglas assumed top jobs at Boeing.

Mr. Meyers said he was particularly troubled that workers at Boeing’s Everett factory felt such pressure to keep production moving that they would find unauthorized ways to get the parts they needed. That included taking parts assigned to other planes, taking newly delivered components before they could be inspected or logged, or trying to recover parts that had been scrapped. To Mr. Meyers, managers did little to dissuade or punish workers from such shortcuts.

“What gets rewarded gets repeated,” he said. “People get promoted by hustling parts.”

Thousands of people work at the Everett building, which is generally regarded as the world’s largest by volume, and Mr. Meyers acknowledges that his observations were limited to a portion of the work carried out there. But the pressures he described are similar to those identified by other current and former employees.

[...]

Mr. Meyers said that he would notify corporate investigators of such incidents when he believed that the practices he uncovered were widespread and that the company should do more to stop them.

But emails he shared with The New York Times also show that his efforts to get the attention of those investigators often ended in frustration. In some cases, the investigators said they could not substantiate his findings. Mr. Meyers frequently pushed back, succeeding in some cases in prompting additional action, he said.

By early last year, Mr. Meyers had received that written reprimand, which said he was responsible for creating “defective work product, service or output” but didn’t provide any details about what he had done wrong. He felt both that his concerns were not being taken seriously and that if he stayed at Boeing he might eventually be pushed out. He was offered a financial incentive to quit, so he took it.

It was not the departure he had expected or planned for.

[cogitoergofun]

Rep. James Comer apparently wants to put the whole matter behind him.

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee reportedly told at least one of his colleagues he’s ready to be “done with” the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden after more than a year of investigations have turned up nothing.

According to CNN: “Comer has grown increasingly frustrated as his investigation appears to be at a dead end, with Republicans resigned to the reality that they don’t have the votes to impeach the president, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN.

“Sources say the Kentucky Republican is now focused on tactfully wrapping up his work – all while Comer, a five-term congressman, has another matter on his mind: ambitions to run for higher office one day, including potentially running for governor, according to lawmakers who have spoken to him.”

And maybe more to the point:

“Comer is hoping Jesus comes so he can get out,” one of the GOP lawmakers who spoke to Comer told CNN, per the report. “He is fed up.”

In December 2023, the House authorized the impeachment inquiry into Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.

The committee has asserted for the past year that the Bidens traded on the family name, by trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.

But despite dedicating countless resources and interviewing dozens of witnesses, including the president’s son Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden, Republicans have not produced any evidence that shows Joe Biden was directly involved or benefited from his family’s businesses while in public office.

Ousted GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger had another take for Comer: “Nope. You can’t just walk away. You must admit to America you lied and found nothing.”