Obsidian Wings

Corporate Power & Responsibility

by Ugh

Back in the day I suggested that perhaps the higher ups at VW would not run into any trouble for the emissions scandal.  Indeed, informed commentators deemed it "highly unlikely" that gaming the emissions system was a senior management decision and was "relatively contained" in VW.  Well, it seems my and others' surmisings were wrong:  

Volkswagen AG’s former Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn was charged in a Michigan federal court with conspiracy and wire fraud in relation to a probe into the German automaker’s efforts to cheat U.S. diesel emissions testing, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.  Winterkorn, who stepped down from his role as CEO days after the scandal was revealed, is accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and violate the Clean Air Act.

....

The carmaker pleaded guilty in January 2017 to using false statements to import cars into the U.S. and to obstructing investigations, and paid $4.3 billion in penalties.

Well, I guess no executive has gone to jail, since as the article notes 5 other executives have been indicted by the US but remain in Germany, not (yet) extradited.  

The discussion in that thread brought to mind the recent arrests of two African-American men at Starbucks, including the call made by the store manager to the police, the resulting protests, and the reaction/response of Starbucks' CEO.  Now, on the one hand, it seems a little cumbersome for a CEO of a company Starbucks' size to be responsible for the actions of a single employee at one of Starbucks stores, as well as taking the scale of remedial actions he's ordered (there are obviously broader forces at work here though).  OTOH what is the correct level of responsibility and action of the CEO with respect to corporate employees?

Large corporations with thousands of employees and limited liability seem to be a recipe for diffusion of responsibility and avoiding punishment for wrongdoing, with rare exceptions (VW appearing that it might be one of those).  Take the financial crisis, for example. But it doesn't seem to me the right course to have a CEO step-down or take corporate wide action because of one employee somewhere (absent other evidence) with poor, or even racist, judgment.

Anyway, just some free form thoughts in our lovely modern world. 

Wolf at the door open thread

by liberal japonicus

Not really a great title, but I've been taking in a little of the discussion about Michelle Wolf's monologue at the WHCD. And we are in need of an open thread and it's a bummer seeing "What is racism?" every time in the sidebar (and yes, that is privilege talking, cause I can step back from it) Anyway, stuff below the fold.

When your relatives' DNA squeals on you

by liberal japonicus

Maybe I'm reaching for a cute headline, but that's what seems to have happened.

A cursory reading suggests that they compared the DNA they had with DNA profiles on genealogical sites to get a familial match. The article references the Grim Sleeper case.

On July 7, 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that an arrest had been made. District Attorney Steve Cooley identified the suspect as 57-year-old Lonnie David Franklin Jr. (born August 30, 1952), a mechanic who worked between 1981 and 1988 for the City of Los Angeles in the sanitation department and briefly for the police department.[4] Franklin was identified for arrest, at least in part, on familial DNA analysis.[19]

Police had found no exact match between DNA found at the crime scenes and any of the profiles in California's DNA profile database, so they searched the database for stored profiles that demonstrated sufficient similarity to allow police to infer a familial relationship. They found similar DNA belonging to Franklin's son, Christopher, who had been convicted of a felony weapons charge. According to Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, detectives then used a piece of discarded pizza with Franklin's DNA to make the link. One Los Angeles undercover police officer pretended to be a waiter at a restaurant where the suspect ate. He collected dishes, silverware, glasses, and pizza crusts to obtain DNA.[20] The identification was used to arrest Franklin after his DNA was obtained and deemed a match.[21] Saliva found on the victims established a DNA match linking Franklin to the deaths.[22]

Very curious what folks here think of all this and since the last thread is approaching 200 comments, I'd put this up.

what is racism?

by russell

My wife and I had dinner with a friend recently.  She was talking about the conflicts she feels as a liberal living in the SF bay area.

One thing she discussed was the more or less unconscious bias she often experiences when she interacts with black and brown people.  Especially black and brown people who don't appear to share her socio-economic position.

What is that?, she wondered.  Where does it come from?  She has no animus or malice toward black or brown people, very much the opposite.  But still, the noticing of skin color, and the adjustment of how to interact with them.

I suggest that it is, quite simply, racism.  If you respond to people differently because of their skin color, that is racism.

But I don't like to use that word, she says.  It implies hatred.

And that, says I, is the problem.  If we can't call it racism because that means we're some kind of Nazi or Klansman, then what do we call it?  If we can't give it a proper name, how do we address it?

IMO racism isn't about hating people, although some folks will add that in for good measure.  It's about making assumptions about people, responding to people, interacting with people differently based on the color of their skin.

Does it matter, if there isn't hatred involved.  Yes, I think it does.  Because people perceive how you perceive them.  And being perceived as different in a way that needs special treatment - whether it's animus, or the kind of weird walking-on-eggs deference that Liberals Like Me often adopt, or whatever form it might take - it harmful to people.

Not harmful like the imminent threat of bodily harm kind of harmful.  Harmful like undermining your sense of being a person harmful.

But wait, doesn't this make almost all of us racists at some level?  Yes, I suspect it probably does.  I can't imagine how anyone could grow up in the US and not imbibe at least some of our historical legacy with their own mother's milk.  I don't know how you'd escape it.

So, if everyone or almost everyone is sorta-kinda racist, does it even matter?  Yes, I think it does.

IMO we need to stop thinking about racism as being solely about nazis and Klan rallies.  I.e., solely about hate.  We need to recognize it as our legacy as Americans, and perhaps as humans.  We need to see it in ourselves, when it's there, which it probably is.  And we need to acknowledge it and stop trying to pretend it ain't there.

If we can get that far, maybe we can even get beyond it.  But getting beyond it is not in the cards as long as we can't own it.  And we can't own it if we can't acknowledge and talk about it.

And we won't be able to acknowledge and talk about it if it automatically carries the stigma of hate.

It's not that hate isn't part of it, and it's certainly not that hate doesn't deserve it's own measure of approbrium.  But hate surely is not the whole of it, nor is hate the only source of harm in it.

Still Ice

by JanieM

Three weeks ago I wrote that it wasn’t going to be an especially late ice-off this year. In a post about unpredictability, I hazarded a prediction.

Here’s the view from the town beach this afternoon:

It's usually at least a few days from the time when the ice starts to break up into big sheets until it's all gone. Right now it's still all in one piece. We've had February weather in March and March weather in February and April. The peepers are awake, the crocuses are lovely, but the grass is still brown.

As a bonus, here’s more or less the same view from a recent autumn:

Tomorrow is Earth Day. Let’s take care of it. We ain’t got another one.

*****

P.S. Flickr has been sold again, and I'm thinking of getting my stuff off the site and starting afresh with a new photo repository. Anyone got any experience/suggestions?

P.S. #2: Edited to fix the fuzziness of the photos.

W is still worse (open thread)

by Ugh

While there's a lot of norm breaking, rampant corruption, and likely a fair bit of criminality, Trump still has a ways to go before he reaches the truly great heights of horribleness that was the W administration.  Hundreds of thousands of unnecessarily dead people, for example, plus torture and a number of other things I'm sure I've forgotten.  But hey, Trump has lots of time left in his first term!

80 degrees here in DC last Friday, 45 degrees today, it's the hippies fault, I'm told.  The major banks saved something like $4 billion in federal taxes from the TCJA in the first quarter of 2018 alone. Phew, I was worried about them. Hey look another school shooting, so please reset your "don't politicize the tragedy" clocks to two weeks before we're allowed to talk about gun control, per the NRA.

Started listening to the What Were You Thinking podcast. Halfway through the first episode and it has some very interesting insights into how teenagers (actually categorized as 13-24 year olds) make decisions, like joining ISIS.  Good stuff.

Be excellent to each other.

Open thread.

On-Line Sales Taxes

by wj

The big news this week appears to center around Michael Cohen, James Comey, and the usual political soap opera that our country seems to have become. But there is something else of interest going on -- something which will actually have a noticable impact on most of us.

Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on South Dakota v. Wayfair which concerns whether a state can require an on-line retailer with no physical presence in the state to collect state sales taxes. Currently (under the Court's decision in 1992 in Quill v. North Dakota), only those retailers with a physical presence in a state, for example a warehouse, can be required to collect tax. But this may change that.

At the moment, my state at least requires me to pay the sales taxes for on-line purchases when filing my state income tax. The problem, of course, is that nobody keeps track of on-line purchases for that. Personally, I would have no problem paying the tax. What I have a problem with is doing the administration and paperwork. So if the retailer, like every other retailer in the state, would collect the tax, that would be fine with me. The states certainly need the revenue, and it definitely seems like a leveling-the-playing-field approach.

And it's not like it's really going to be a huge burden for the on-line retailers. The software to calculate the relevant sales tax is trivial. For a computer, keeping a running total of the amounts owed to 50 different states (or even a bunch of smaller jurisdictions which may impose additional sales taxes) is likewise trivial. From the amicus briefs being filed, you'd think that the on-line retailers believe having to collect sales taxes would make a huge hit on their business. But I just cannot believe that there will be that much impact. Anybody have a different perspective?

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

by Ugh

So I won't have fraud and noted stupid spineless squish Paul Ryan to kick around any longer. So sad, so sad. I'm sure he will go on to that great K Street suite in the sky.  But I will miss his ability to gracefully and with strangely weird-eyed aplomb sh1t on the poor, weak, and elderly while maintaining a sterling reputation for "wonkery" with the Beltway Press when all it really was warmed over College Republican douchebag jackasshattery, with a twist of lemon.

In other news, missiles to Syria, I'm glad I never set up a Facebook account, the attorney-client privilege is DEAD, and soon to be NBA playoff time. Bryce Harper off to another super hot start (I can haz 60 homerz plz?) and jeebus effing christ we're all gonna die aren't we.  Can we wait until Tiger wins another major?

Non-disclosure agreements about anything other than intellectual property should be prohibited by law (hear the April 6 podcast episode of Planet Money).

And soon, Asian Dawn will be taking over the world (see Time magazine).

So, open thread. Tell me the best new song you've heard in 2018, please, also, too.

What will Japan do about Syria?

by Ugh

In light of another apparent chemical attack by the Assad regime in Syria, the world turns its eyes to Japan and asks what will its government do in light of the most recent atrocity.  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday promised a “big price” to be paid. In a tweet, Mr. Abe laid the blame for the attack partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Fumio Kyuma, Mr. Abe's Defense Minister, said he and the rest of the Prime Minister's national security team had been in talks with Mr. Abe late Saturday and early Sunday about how to respond. “I wouldn’t take anything off the table,” Mr. Kyuma said, “These are horrible photos; we’re looking into the attack at this point.” 

That raised the prospect of a strike along the lines of one that the Prime Minister ordered almost exactly a year ago after a sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 civilians. In that strike, the Japanese military droppsed 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Al Shayrat airfield, where the chemical weapons attack had originated.

Mr. Abe may be considering such a strike even as he has expressed his desire in recent days to pull Japanese troops out of Syria, where they are seeking to eliminate the last vestiges of the Islamic State.

The assault on Douma and the Prime Minister’s response also showed how Syria has bedeviled Mr. Abe just as it did his predecessor, repeatedly presenting them with grave challenges and few good options for confronting them.  It was not clear on Sunday whether his tweets reflected serious planning for a military strike, or if the suspected chemical attack had changed the Prime Minister’s calculation about the necessity for a rapid wind-down of Japanese military involvement in Syria.

But some Liberal Democrats urged Mr. Abe to act, saying his talk of pulling Japanese troops out of Syria had telegraphed to Mr. Assad that he would pay no price for brutalizing his own people.

Annals of Modern Life: Customer Service in the Age of Globalization

by JanieM

A friend of mine bought her five-year-old a stuffed animal on Amazon. Almost as soon as it arrived, one of the legs came off. She wrote to the seller to report the problem and got this reply:

Hello friend

Thanks for your order in our store. The sheep is made from cotton.

We will check it before we send it out. But sometime there still will be a little problem with it.

You can sew it by yourselves.

Have a good night.

If past experience is any guide, Amazon will refund the money with no further questions asked. Maybe this will happen often enough so that Amazon will boot the seller, who will promptly change costumes and be back online again in a jiffy.

Until someone slaps a tariff on cotton sheep. Then we’ll show ‘em.

Open thread.