Can we fix broken capitalism?

The Washington Post reported on Sept. 4 that Boeing’s ill-fated Starliner capsule will returned to Earth Sept. 6 without its two-person crew. The formerly respected aerospace and airplane manufacturer and NASA have agreed that mechanical issues made a crewed return unsafe, but Boeing has objected to describing the return of the crew as “stranded.” The fact is that an eight-day mission has stretched for months and the word is perfectly appropriate.

Boeing’s PR folks are clearly in bunker mode because the firm issued a statement instead of answering questions, according to the Washington Post. That’s not surprising given the company’s recent history. For those needing a reminder, two new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft crashed due to software and other failures claiming 346 lives. More recently, an Alaska Airlines 737 lost a door plug forcing an emergency descent and return to the airport. And, two Boeing whistleblowers died a few months ago. The other reminder about Boeing is less spectacular and thus may have flown below much of the public’s radar. The firm moved its Seattle-area headquarters to Chicago in 2001 and then, in 2022, to Arlington, Va. Many industry watchers and others noted the moves from changed the company from an engineering firm to a bean counter firm.

But this isn’t just about Boeing. It’s about how the right-wing has destroyed the best parts of capitalism. It’s about James Buchanan and the Koch brothers and the other “titans” of industry who created a deeper and broader problem for the United States and world economy.

I’ve written exhaustively about the source of the 20th Century origins of this movement by citing the brilliant work of award-winning Duke University historian Nancy MacLean’s 2017 “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America.” Buchanan laid the plans for the unfettered libertarian corporations in the world, especially in the United States where the guardrails are weak.

But another book chronicled the who and how changing the stakeholders in companies from employees and customers to investors and “Wall Street,” they have reshaped the economy to favor the wealthy.  

David Gelles’ work, “The Man Who Broke Capitalism:How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America — and How to Undo His Legacy” describes how Welch changed G.E. from a customer-product-employee oriented company to a firm focused on stock price. Welch’s reign of terror began in 1981 and spawned the “greed is good” 1980s and 1990s.

“But Welch’s achievements didn’t stem from some greater intelligence or business prowess. Rather, they were the result of a sustained effort to push GE’s stock price ever higher, often at the expense of workers, consumers, and innovation,” writes the Simon & Schuster summary of Gelles’ work. “In this captivating, revelatory book, David Gelles argues that Welch single-highhandedly ushered in a new, cutthroat era of American capitalism that continues to this day.”

Gelles cites Boeing, Home Depot, Kraft Heinz, and others; so, Boeing is just the most recent poster child for abomination. It’s been going on for years. Remember Erin Brockovich? And how about Microsoft’s environmental rape by setting hardware requirements for Windows 11 that will obsolete an estimated 240 million non-conforming, vomiting them into landfills?

As recently as Sept. 1, the New York Times broke a story about Acadia Healthcare’s illicit hold policies for psychiatric patients. That story also mentioned the Justice Department’s $122 million fine in 2020 of Universal Health Services, Inc. and Turning Point Care Center, LLC. The DOJ release of July 10, 2020 stated the fine was “to resolve alleged violations of the False Claims Act for billing for medically unnecessary inpatient behavioral health services, failing to provide adequate and appropriate services, and paying illegal inducements to federal healthcare beneficiaries … .:”

These examples are the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Also on Sept. 4, Kim Komando’s tech newsletter exposed the Atlanta-based Cox Media Group for selling information from its product that taps smartphones and sells the information for advertising.

“Their Active Listening software can tap into private conversations through your smartphone’s microphone. It uses AI to capture and analyze data from a convo, which it then combines with behavioral data to create ultra-targeted ads,” Komando wrote. “Perhaps most shockingly of all, they list Facebook, Google and Amazon as partners. Now, they didn't say for sure the Big Tech giants use Active Listening; it’s more implied — and now those companies are scrambling.”

And lest we forget, take note of Tesla, the most prominent strain of corporate genital herpes, Elon Musk, infecting our world.

“When a Tesla is in Sentry mode, its onboard cameras capture what’s happening around the vehicle when there’s sound or movement detected. Police know that to get the footage, they need access to the USB drive in the glove box. If the owner is MIA, cops get a search warrant and tow the EV into evidence,” Komando wrote. That also raises the question that a Fourth Amendment violation may be at play. In addition, Musk’s Space X is contaminating Texas, without the state’s corporately captive government doing nothing. Of course, Texas own Führer, Greg Abbott, promotes this as he pledges his allegiance to the world oligarchy.

Gelles was optimistic that firms are now rejecting “Welchism,” citing companies like Patagonia and Unilever among others. But given the revelation about the Cox Media Group and BigTech, I am far from convinced the pendulum will swing back the other way.

It will come down to politics, won’t it? Add the above thoughts on November 5, 2024.

My Journey to Linux and Peace

 This story is part of my mental health journey to embrace things that give me more peace, pleasure and less agitation.

As I continue my painful recovery from surgery and float through the cybersphere, I came across a post on one of my subreddits — a Linux Mint forum. The post celebrated the first release of this operating system on August 27, 2006.

Why should this matter to me? Or to anyone else?

Well, late in 2023, I decided that Microsoft had become too intrusive to both my pocket book and my data. The tech giant converted its office suite into a subscription-based product while disabling and locking away access to former versions of Office, which had been fully paid for making practically industry-standard Word, Outlook, Excel and other programs useless. The threat that the firm’s monopoly-coveting greed would extend to renting the main operating system seemed real to me, specifically because its PR flacks issued denials of the possibility. Then, “security” updates to the Windows 10 system imposed defaults to such things as OneDrive, where all your work was loaded into the Microsoft cloud app or “copilot,” a supposed artificial intelligence app. It was clear that my “personal” computer was really just becoming Microsoft’s work station placed in my home.

Then with no rational justification, Microsoft’s new hardware requirements for its Windows 11 operating system would vomit, according to some estimates, about 240 million (yes, million) older devices in landfills. I lack any civil words for condemning Microsoft’s rape of the environment.

I knew, from my introduction to personal computing in 1976, other operating systems were available; and I knew from playing in cyberspace in 2016 that operating systems based on Unix and Linux were gaining ground and becoming more user friendly. So, I went on a research spree and, in November 2023, checked into various Linux operating systems (called distros in Linux-speak). The learning curve was steep, complicated by the fact that some of my essential finance and photography programs were not available for Linux systems; or, that the Linux variants were simply not robust enough.

After an agonizing trek through research and testing in December and part of January 2024, I decided that I wanted a “dual boot” system. That is, I wanted the ability to start and/or boot my powerful desktop computer into either Windows 10 or Linux Mint Cinnamon. The latter Linux system’s desktop environment looked much like Windows although it was completely different. That decision made, I took apart my computer and following very helpful YouTube videos, installed two solid state drives, or SSDs, and then loaded Windows 10 on one and Linux Mint Cinnamon on the other. I reattached all the drives and booted up. By the end of last January, I had everything installed with both operating systems available at my command. And, the few Windows-only programs run on that SSD while the majority of my “daily driver” applications are on my Linux drive.

Remember I said environmental rapist Microsoft is forcing those who want/need to run Windows 11 to give up perfectly good devices, flooding landfills with the poisons of Silicon Valley? Well, a major answer to dodging the cost of new equipment is that the variety of Linux distros let you choose one that will work on older machines because even the most robust of Linux flavors are less bloated than Microsoft’s operating systems. My Linux Mint Cinnamon is lightening fast on a 2011 ASUS laptop that slogged along on Windows 10.

There is another benefit to using Linux and Linux-based applications. They are known as “open source,” which means they are free; they are supported by large communities of developers who will take but not require contributions. So my word processing, video editing and playback apps, other office-programs, browsers and VPN are all free and run on Linux. I am writing this on LibreWriter, which is part of my LibreOffice suite. It’s not as robust as Word in some ways, but it’s easy to use and, as I noted, free. Even better, none of the Linux applications default to data sharing or have embedded spyware. Further, as many in the Linux community will point out, these distros are remarkably secure and almost totally immune to malware attacks.

Moving from the major computing environments to Linux can be challenging. In my moments of great frustration, and there were many, I reminded myself I was also learning things and the exercise was good for my Hercule Poirot-type “little gray cells.” Now I start my days in Mint condition, visiting Microsoft once a day to handle finances. It gives me peace to know I am less vulnerable to BigTech and am part of a community with similar values to mine. If you, dear reader, wish to detach from BigTech and greedy capitalism, take a look at Linux. Even if you don’t convert, you will have learned there are more options for you and your computer to enjoy.

Abbott and the stormtroopers

 

On August 8, 2024, Greg Abbott, the Nazi who purports to be the governor of Texas, issued Executive Order GA-46.

The order, as the Texas Tribune notes, “ … requires public hospitals in Texas to collect information on the immigration status of patients so that the hospitals can then track costs incurred for the care of undocumented migrants.”

But, that’s only part of it. The order requires that hospitals enrolled in Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and any provider the Health and Human Services Commission defines as a hospital to comply. So, clearly DeTar and Citizens are being abused by these stormtroopers; but so are the hospitals in Cuero, Hallettsville and other neighboring towns. Further the HHSC can extend the order to encompass any other provider it wants to. At what point would this stop?

Let’s leave aside the notion that this Gestapo-like overreach clearly violates the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and any other laws about patient confidentiality. If you read the order, it’s a rant to feed more red meat to the radical Texas Reich base. It’s also going to clearly drive sick people away from health care — and that will include many legal as well as undocumented people of color. This racism  would make Hitler and Joseph Goebbels proud. And, no, that is not too extreme a label for Abbott, Patrick, Paxton and the rest of the Republican ilk.

One question is whether the hospitals and other related industry associations will fight this in court. And, will the media cover this monstrosity as the media should or will the media be complicit enablers of these ogres.

Lord knows, were I still an active reporter, I’d be on this like a duck on a June bug. But I am not. I lack the resources to file the requisite record requests and engage the in fight over facts that would ensue. Nor do my blog or Facebook pages have the reach and traction this exposé desperately needs. I have, for the record, reached out to the new editor at The Victoria Advocate. I will, along with the posting this, reach out to others in my media network.

Let’s see what happens.