UK
Politicians who criticised AstraZeneca vaccine 'probably killed hundreds of thousands', says Oxford scientist

Poppie Platt
Mon, February 7, 2022,

Oxford's Professor Sir John Bell said leaders who criticised the jab "cannot be proud" of their impact - Aaron Chown/PA

Scientists and politicians who expressed critical views of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine “probably killed hundreds of thousands of people”, an Oxford professor has said.

Professor Sir John Bell said critical comments from leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron, had “damaged the reputation of the jab” around the world, resulting in less people accessing the life-saving vaccine.

Speaking to the BBC Two programme AstraZeneca: A Vaccine for the World?, which will be broadcast on Tuesday at 9pm, Prof Bell said: “I think bad behaviour from scientists and politicians has probably killed hundreds of thousands of people – and that they cannot be proud of.”

Macron had previously claimed that the vaccine “doesn’t work as expected” and appeared to be “quasi-ineffective” in the over-65s.

Speaking just hours before the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved the AstraZeneca jab for use in the bloc, Macron also criticised the UK’s decision to administer vaccine doses 12 weeks apart, falsely claiming it could “accelerate the mutations” of the virus.

French president Emmanuel Macron gestures as he speaks to staff working in the intensive care ward of the Poissy/Saint-Germain-en-Laye hospital, near Paris, with French Health Minister Olivier Veran, right, and Chief of Intensive Care Unit Dr. Jan Hayon in March 2021 - Yoan Valat/EPA POOL

Other EU countries, including Germany, Spain and Italy, also temporarily suspended use of the AstraZeneca jab last year when it was linked to a tiny risk of blood clots.

The US has still not approved the vaccine, with Dr Antony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease previously saying that the country "may not need to use" the jab despite it being a "good vaccine", because of the widespread use of the Pfizer and Moderna jabs.

Despite its reputation being marred by criticism, the AstraZeneca jab has been heralded for its rollout in less wealthy countries as part of the Covax programme.

Scientists have suggested that the UK’s widespread use of the AstraZeneca vaccine – and its early rollout to elderly and vulnerable people – could be responsible for the relatively low death toll from the omicron variant compared to countries in Europe.

Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the Vaccine Task Force, told The Telegraph that he believed the AstraZeneca jabs offered more robust, long-term protection against severe disease and death than RNA-based alternatives made by Pfizer and Moderna.

Easing curbs in 'COVID-zero regions' could cause 2 million deaths in a year - China study

Sun, February 6, 2022
By David Stanway

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Restoring normal population mobility to "COVID-zero regions" like China will cause some 2 million deaths in a year and the key to controlling the virus is developing vaccines that are better at preventing infection, Chinese researchers said.

China's "zero-COVID" restrictions have come under growing scrutiny in recent weeks as it hosts the Winter Olympics in Beijing while using sweeping restrictions to try to prevent the spread of the more infectious Omicron variant.

Chinese scientists and public health specialists have reiterated the need for maintaining the stringent controls, saying the risks of transmission were too high and that mass infection would put intolerable pressure on the health system.

The researchers used studies from Chile and Britain to calculate the "baseline efficacy" of current vaccines - CoronaVac in the case of Chile and the Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca shots in Britain.

They estimated the baseline efficacy against symptomatic disease of the vaccines was 68.3%. They estimated the baseline efficacy of existing vaccines against death was 86%.

The efficacy estimate against infection - found to be 30% -is based on British data and efficacy against symptomatic disease and deaths was based on data extracted from a study on Sinovac's CoronaVac in Chile.

But even with a global vaccination rate of 95%, if population mobility was restored to 2019 levels, the researchers estimated that all COVID-zero regions would see more than 234 million infections within a year, including 64 million symptomatic cases and 2 million deaths.

"The human race should continue to develop vaccines and explore new ways to improve vaccine protection against infection in order to eliminate COVID-19 at the global level," the team of Chinese scientists said in a paper, published on Friday in the weekly bulletin of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC).

To reduce the incidence of COVID-19 to the levels of influenza after restoring normal mobility, the efficacy of vaccines against infection needs to be increased to 40% and the efficacy against symptomatic disease needs to be increased to 90%, they said.

They said it was more important for new vaccines to be effective against infection than against symptomatic disease or death.

"The key to controlling COVID-19 lies in the development and widespread use of vaccines that are more effective at preventing infection," the team said.

China is the only major economy sticking with a zero-COVID policy despite warnings it could hurt growth. Others, like Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, have abandoned the strategy in favour of what policymakers call "learning to live with COVID".

"Throughout the world, except in China and Western Australia, everyone else has moved on," said Jaya Dantas, professor of international health at the Curtin School of Population Health in Perth, Australia, who described the Chinese paper as "very pessimistic".

"This is basically an in-house document: it is very focused on the China scenario, and they might want to support what the government is supporting, which is a zero-COVID policy."

China has been doubling down on its zero-COVID message and continues to seal off entire cities. The Beijing Winter Olympics are being held in a "closed-loop" bubble that some athletes have branded as excessive.

"We previously thought COVID-19 could be basically contained through vaccines but now it seems that there's no simple method to control it except with comprehensive measures," the CCDC's chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou told the Communist Party-run Global Times on Sunday.

(Reporting by David StanwayEditing by Robert Birsel, William Maclean)

TOYS FOR BOYS OF THE 1%

It's not just Jeff Bezos. Super rich around the world are snapping up superyachts as sales hit a record high last year.

Huileng Tan
Mon, February 7, 2022

Jeff Bezos' superyacht "Flying Fox" anchored offshore of Yali neighborhood of Mugla, Turkey in November. Bezos' new yacht, known only as Y721, is currently being built in Alblasserdam, Netherlands.

Ali Balli/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A record 887 superyachts were sold last year, up 77% from 2020, according to VesselsValue.


An "increased need for privacy and private isolation" is driving demand.


Supply was unable to keep pace with demand due to supply chain constraints and movement restrictions.

Super rich people who craved more privacy during the pandemic have taken to the high seas, sending the sales of superyachts to a record high last year.

One reason for the spike in multimillion superyacht sales is "the increased need for privacy and private isolation" that such vessels can provide, said Sam Tucker, head of superyachts at VesselsValue, a shipping data provider. Superyachts are generally defined as a boat at least 80 feet in length.

Low interest rates helped to provide for cheap borrowing, while the stock market boom also created more wealth, Tucker added in a report titled "2021 Superyacht Market Performance" released last month and seen by Insider.

According to a study released last March by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies, the collective wealth of 657 billionaires in the US grew by 44.6% — that's $1.3 trillion — during the pandemic.

While there was more money, there were fewer yachts to go around as shipyards were unable to significantly increase capacity due to global supply chain issues and a less efficient workforce due to pandemic movement restrictions, said VesselsValue's Tucker.

In 2021, fewer than 150 new yachts were delivered, far lower than over 350 in 2019, according to VesselsValue.

This has kept prices up in the secondhand market. Before the pandemic in 2019, a ten-year-old 60-meter Italian-built yacht could be bought for 20 million to 25 million euros ($22.9 to $28.6 million.) Today, the same vessel could fetch over 30 million euros ($34.3 million,) noted Tucker.

Superyachts are under the spotlight as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' new $500 million yacht, currently known as Y721, is reportedly so big that the historic Koningshaven Bridge in the port city of Rotterdam may have to be temporarily dismantled just so the vessel can pass.

Some Dutch residents are apparently not amused, and are planning to throw eggs at the superyacht when it passes the location.

Vastly unequal US has world’s highest Covid death toll – it’s no coincidence

Melody Schreiber
Sun, February 6, 2022

Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The US has suffered 900,000 deaths from Covid-19, the highest figure of any nation. The death toll would be equivalent to the 15th most populous city in the country, more than San Francisco, Washington DC or Boston – a city of ghosts with its population swelling each day.

It’s not just the total numbers. America also has the highest death rate of any wealthy country, with half of the deaths occurring after vaccines became available.

Related: The great gaslighting: how Covid longhaulers are still fighting for recognition

The US has never responded to the Covid pandemic in a sustained, proactive way as a unified nation. Instead, much of the responsibility – and blame – has fallen on individuals. In a country with vast income inequality, poor health and sharp political divides, the results have been grim.

“All of those factors put people at higher risk of Covid death,” said Megan Ranney, emergency physician and academic dean of public health at Brown University.

Vaccinations, in particular, have lagged, especially compared with other wealthy countries. The health system was already precarious when it began to be battered by wave after wave of Covid.

Other countries with similarly high death tolls earlier in the pandemic have seen fewer fatalities from the Omicron variant – yet in the US, the Omicron death toll is surpassing the Delta wave of autumn 2021. Last month was one of the deadliest of the entire pandemic.

Meanwhile, American leaders are attempting to mimic other countries’ return to normal, despite a markedly different situation with hospitalizations and deaths – which, every day, nearly reach the losses from the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“The first and most obvious [issue] is our vaccination and booster rate,” said Ranney. “Our rate of vaccination, period, is lower than in most other high-income countries, and our booster rate is lower as well. And as ample CDC data proves, vaccines and boosters are tremendously effective at protecting against death, even with Omicron.”

Less than two-thirds – about 64% – of Americans are vaccinated, and only 48% of those are boosted, despite ample vaccine supply.

For a country which has a vaccines-only strategy, we’re not very good at vaccination
William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology

“For a country which has a vaccines-only strategy, we’re not very good at vaccination,” said William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and co-director of the Center on Communicable Disease Dynamics. “There are large parts of the country which are not vaccinated to higher levels … and that’s made worse by the fact that with Omicron, to get really good protection, you also need to be boosted.”

Problems with access to vaccines linger, too. Better-off people have had plenty of opportunities to be vaccinated, but those in poorer households still struggle to get vaccines – and time off to recover from any side effects. Some 15% to 20% of unvaccinated Americans say they are still interested in getting their shots, Hanage said – they simply haven’t been able to yet.

Meanwhile, poorer unvaccinated people also face a “double whammy” because they are also more likely to contract Covid, he said.

“You have people who are more likely to be exposed to the virus, who are less likely to receive vaccines, who are less likely to be able to take steps to protect themselves even with vaccination, because they’re scared of missing a paycheck, they’re scared of taking a day off, their employer won’t let them.”

The US is the most economically unequal of G7 countries, and it offers no guaranteed sick leave.

“The absence of paid sick leave is an absolute scandal,” Hanage said. “If you care about working people, give them sick leave. That sick leave will enable them to avoid infecting others, it will enable them to help protect workplaces – it’s just a no-brainer.”

Another reason for the disparate outcomes in the US is the fractured healthcare system. People who lack health insurance tend to wait longer to be seen by physicians, making worse outcomes more likely. They are also more likely to have pre-existing health conditions that put them at greater risk for Covid.

“There are lots and lots of ways in which societal inequities are mirrored and magnified in our death rates,” Ranney said. “With Covid, there is now no longer any way to cover up all of these underlying problems, and the impact of those problems got magnified because many of the social supports which allowed us to muddle through were no longer present.”

The US also has higher rates of death from opioids and gun violence, and lower rates of life expectancy, than similar countries. Hospital overcrowding is also higher in the US than other countries, Ranney said.

“Overcrowding correlates with poor outcomes for multiple types of diseases and injuries,” she said. “And there’s been preliminary data that people are more likely to die of Covid when there’s a higher number of Covid patients in the hospital or when ICUs [intensive care units] are overwhelmed.”

One predictor of Covid deaths by country is trust in government, according to a recent report in the Lancet: countries with lower levels of trust in government had higher rates of cases and deaths.

“If you don’t trust the government, you’re less likely to follow suggestions or mandates around lockdowns, early on, or masks. And then the lack of trust also impairs governments’ ability to do important things like masking or testing or good data acquisition,” Ranney said.

Only 25 US states share reliable data on cases by age, which makes it difficult to know how many children are sick, for instance. “And then that hurts our ability to put data-driven public health measures in place, and then people don’t follow the public health measures, because they don’t trust them. And it becomes this circular problem,” Ranney said.

National leaders in the US are unable to mandate precautions, like masks or vaccines, for the entire country, with responsibilities largely falling instead to state and local leaders.

Yet leaders have seen their ability to act during health emergencies limited even more during the pandemic, with more than half of US states introducing new limits on public health powers.

“There is a constituency within the US that is beginning to look at this and see this opportunity,” Hanage said. “A lot of that comes down to: how much illness and death will people accept?”

Those who are interested in limiting public health regulations “are looking at this and thinking, whoa, a significant fraction of the population is fine with 900,000 deaths”.

There is still time to change course and prevent future losses, Ranney said.

“I do think that there’s a chance to create a better future,” she said, noting that leaders can “use this moment to build up the infrastructure that is needed, so if and when there is another variant or some other acute epidemic, we have the system in place to address it”.

But the US reaction to the pandemic is also compounded by an American sense of exceptionalism.

“It’s a very American idea to suggest that reality is what you want it to be. You can be whoever you want to be. Reality is a real thing, though. The virus doesn’t care who you are,” Hanage said. “It only cares that it can infect you.”

California attorney general accuses wealthy town of using mountain lions to skirt affordable housing law

Michael Finnegan
Sun, February 6, 2022,

State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta says Woodside, a wealthy Silicon Valley town, is deliberately trying to shut off the supply of new housing within its borders by declaring itself a sanctuary for mountain lions like the one above in the Santa Monica Mountains. (National Park Service via AP)

State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta accused managers of a posh Silicon Valley suburb on Sunday of trying to skirt new affordable housing requirements by declaring their town a sanctuary for mountain lions.

Woodside, an enclave in the foothills west of Stanford University, announced last month in a memo to its 5,500 residents that because the entire town was habitat for the potentially endangered mountain lion, it was exempt from a new law that permits duplex development on single-family home lots.

Bonta, a Democrat, called the move "a deliberate and transparent attempt to avoid complying with the law," known as SB 9.

"This memorandum is — quite clearly — contrary to the law, and ironically, contrary to the best interests of the mountain lions the town claims to want to protect," Bonta said.

By failing to help California expand its housing supply within existing towns, Woodside "would increase the likelihood of exurban sprawl that will adversely affect the habitat of mountain lions," Deputy Atty. Gen. Matthew T. Struhar told Woodside's town manager Sunday in a letter.

The town manager, Kevin Bryant, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, nor did the mayor, Dick Brown.

California wildlife regulators are weighing whether to declare mountain lions an endangered species.

Struhar's letter, sent on Bonta's behalf, said there was "no valid basis to claim that the entirety of Woodside is a habitat for mountain lions."

"Land that is already developed — with, for example a single-family home — is not, by definition, habitat," Struhar wrote, using italics for emphasis. "That mountain lions appear in Woodside from time to time does not make any of its individual parcels mountain lion habitat."

Struhar noted that the mountain lion's overall range includes "the vast majority of the San Francisco Bay Area."

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

"That breadth does not make nearly every single parcel in the San Francisco Bay Area a habitat for mountain lions, nor could the range of mountain lions, or any endangered species, be used to justify a local government's attempt to categorically prohibit a class of housing development within its local boundaries."

Struhar suggested it could "only be assumed" that Woodside's decree was "intended to undermine the Legislature's efforts to combat the crisis-level housing shortage."

The median home value in Woodside is $4.5 million. Its residents have included Oracle founder Larry Ellison, whose 23-acre estate there was modeled after a 16th century Japanese imperial palace.

The prospect of creating more affordable housing has long spurred strongly negative reactions in some California communities.

Woodside is one of about 40 communities in California that have passed new rules limiting housing projects since SB 9 went into effect on Jan. 1, according to YIMBY Law, a San Francisco group that urges local governments to approve more housing.

The new state law generally allows property owners of single-family parcels to build duplexes and, in some cases, fourplexes on their land. But lawmakers gave local governments discretion to add parking requirements or size limitations, among other restrictions.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Bonta recently created specialized units to investigate cities that unlawfully deny housing projects or evade state laws.

Times staff writer Liam Dillon contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

VIDEO

Wealthy Bay Area town accepts affordable housing after lawsuit threat (yahoo.com)

Florida jury orders R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to pay $9.75 million to family of a woman who died from respiratory disease caused by smoking cigarettes

Zahra Tayeb
Sun, February 6, 2022,

Carolyn Long was a regular smoker for decades before quitting in 2002.boonchai wedmakawand/Getty Images

R.J. Reynolds was ordered to pay $9.75 million to the family of a woman who died two years ago.

A Florida jury ruled that the firm's cigarettes and nicotine addiction caused Carolyn Long's death.

Despite trying everything she just couldn't quit, lawyers representing her husband told Insider.

A Florida jury awarded the family of a woman $9.75 million after she died from respiratory disease caused by smoking cigarettes.

Courtroom View Network (CVN) reported on the news.

Carolyn Long was a regular smoker for decades, before quitting in 2002. In the late 1990s, however, she was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which ultimately led to her death in 2020 at age 80.

The lawyers representing Long's husband, John, told Insider that Long had an extremely difficult time trying to quit smoking over the years. "Despite trying literally everything she just couldn't quit," said Shane Newlands of Florida-based law firm Newlands and Clark.

He added: "As we know now, nicotine rewires the brain in powerful ways when you start that young. The tobacco companies knew this long before the public did and engineered cigarettes to be as addictive as possible."

Long's husband told CVN that her illness and subsequent death were caused by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company's conspiracy to conceal the truth about the dangers of smoking.

R.J. Reynolds did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

According to CVN, Reynolds' false marketing kept Long hooked on cigarettes. Lawyers told the outlet that Long smoked about half a pack a day for decades, before switching to a different brand selling an "ultra light" variation to be healthier.

In a statement to Insider, Newlands said the "light" cigarettes were marked as safer in the 70s and 80s. "We now know that was a lie," he said.

The switch led to Long smoking more than a pack of cigarettes a day, CVN reported. "That is the point of what the industry wanted. [They] don't want people to quit," lawyer Lee Clark, who is also representing Long's husband,said.

Elliot Pedrosa of American law firm Jones Day who represented R.J. Reynolds contended that Long smoked out of choice, not addiction. "Mrs. Long smoked when she wanted to, where she wanted to, and when she wanted to quit, she did that, too," Pedrosa said. "Smoking didn't control Mrs. Long. Mrs. Long controlled her smoking," he added.

But according to Newlands, the jury agreed Long was in fact addicted to cigarettes. "We're grateful that the jury listened so carefully to all the evidence and then placed a very significant value on what was a very significant loss for that family," Newlands said.

According to CVN, jurors apportioned 60% of responsibility to Reynolds and 30% to Long. Philip Morris, a cigarette company, was apportioned 10% of the responsibility, although it was not a party at trial.

Earlier this month, Cracker Barrel was ordered to pay $9.4 million to a man who was accidentally served toxic chemicals. But due to Tennessee laws, he is unlikely to receive the full amount, per a local news outlet.

America's hidden world of handmade pornography

Lisa Z. Sigel, Professor of History, DePaul University
Sat, February 5, 2022


Soldiers used spent shells and casings to make trench art, like this brass bottle opener that was made during World War II. Michael Riordan, CC BY-SA

“To live among the handmade,” philosopher and antiques dealer Leon Rosenstein once said, “is to live among the human.”

Well, there’s nothing more human than handmade pornography.

When you hear “pornography,” you might think of Playboy and Penthouse, X-rated movies and internet porn.

But one type that has been largely hidden and forgotten is the pornography people make for themselves. Unlike pornography for profit, handmade pornography is crude and funny and subtle. It, too, contains multitudes.

Over the past decade, I’ve visited archives and museums, met with collectors and antiques dealers, and talked with artists and scholars to reconstruct the ways people across America, from the 1830s to the 1970s, drew, painted, glued, sewed and baked their own pornography. Some altered coins or carved objects from wood, stone and bone. Others wrote stories, made pamphlets and designed comic books.

Despite the concerted efforts of law enforcement and social purists to destroy sexual artifacts, thousands of these fascinating objects remain. And now I’m publishing the first history of homemade and handmade pornography.

I’ve titled the book “The People’s Porn” because the objects being considered come from a true representation of the American people. As opposed to commercially produced pornography imported first from Europe to early America and then pirated as bootleg editions in major cities, these materials, often made with rudimentary artistic skills, cropped up organically in communities, small and large, across the country.
From funerals to farms

Pornography went wherever Americans went – in life and in death, at war and at sea. Men carved wooden pornographic objects at logging camps in the 19th century, and they made pornographic scrimshaw on whaling vessels during the 18th and 19th centuries. Others were inspired to refashion the 19th-century liberty penny that had “ONE CENT” written on the reverse side of the coin. By changing the “E” to a “U,” many Americans had the same idea for rendering the coin obscene. Who knows how many pockets jingled with these pennies over the years?

A celluloid toothpick from around the time of World War II. Michael Riordan, CC BY-SA

In many handmade objects, sexual gestures stand right behind propriety and erections pop up in staid places. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people made small, carved coffins as a form of memento mori that concealed carved figures inside. When you lift a coffin lid, the male figure’s erection pops up. The popular objects were hand-carved, hailing from places that still prepared their own dead for burial and still made coffins for neighbors and kinfolk. You can imagine them circulating discreetly at wakes and memorials, provoking laughter even as people mourned.

Pornographic objects also leered about the barnyard, a reminder that America was a largely rural country up until the 1920s. When pornography showed cocks mounting hens, dogs humping each other and pigs acting like swine, it demonstrated that animals remained underfoot and in people’s sexual imaginations.

And when called to war, men made pornographic objects out of spent shells and casings and adorned planes with their favorite nudes.
Postwar pornographic potpourri

Despite the postwar world’s reputation for cultural conservatism, pornographic objects continued to be made in the home.

Women circulated patterns for pornographic potholders and aprons. Made with a wide variety of fabrics and trimmings, potholders came in pairs, with one side featuring a pop out penis and the other a vulva. Cookies, aprons, hook rugs, embroidery – all traditional women’s crafts – also came in pornographic form. Joined by explicitly feminist materials in the 1960s and 1970s, women’s creations show that the category of pornography can be much more capacious than you might think.

Red and white potholders feature sly allusions to genitals.

People from all walks of life – young and old, gay and straight, rich and poor, Black and white – made objects that the established order found embarrassing and preferred to ignore. Using commonly available materials, they found a way to express what moved them, what frightened them, what aroused them and what made them laugh.

Even as consumer culture expanded, pornography continued to be made by hand as people sought to articulate their own visions of sexuality. The mass market eventually took notice of these do-it-yourself productions, whether pornographic or not. By the 1990s, “amateur porn” started to flood the market in response to cravings for authenticity.

But you shouldn’t confuse this category of commercialized porn with what people made and continue to make. Handmade and homemade materials can expand our understanding of sexuality. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s ugly.

As much as the world might like to limit sexuality to the realms of the uplifting and transcendent, homemade pornography – in all its incoherent, libidinal, confusing strangeness – reminds us that we are imperfect in body and in mind, subject to pain as well as pleasure, willing to laugh at ourselves and each other, and moved equally by the ridiculous, the violent and the sublime.

Naked wooden figures in a sexual postiion.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Lisa Z. Sigel, DePaul University.

How Playboy skirted the anti-porn crusade of the 1950s

More penises are appearing on TV and in film – but why are nearly all of them prosthetic?

‘The 120 Days of Sodom’ – counterculture classic or porn war pariah?

Lisa Z. Sigel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Boeing 737 Max tragedy is a cautionary tale of cost-cutting corporate hubris

Bob Kustra

Sun, February 6, 2022, 

In 2018 in Indonesia and in 2019 in Ethiopia, pilots of two brand new Boeing 737 Max jet planes lost complete control of their planes and crashed, killing a total of 346 passengers and crew.

The Max was to be the latest version of the 737, often the workhorse of airlines. Tragically, the new 737 Max was built to fail. An important piece of its software would override pilots’ efforts to stabilize the plane, causing the two crashes with no survivors.

How could this happen to a corporation so steeped in the successful engineering and building of iconic airplanes like the 757 jumbo jet?

That’s what I asked author Peter Robison recently when I interviewed him at Reader’s Corner for his book, “Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing.” His answer: corporate hubris that blew up a culture focused on engineering excellence and replaced it with a bottom-line culture where the focus included cutting budgets on traditional Boeing priorities like pilot training, flight simulators to train pilots, an electronic checklist for pilots and research to improve safety.

It started with Harry Stonecipher, the McDonnell Douglas CEO, a defense contractor expert at cutting budgets to win contracts, who took the reins at Boeing when the two companies merged.

Stonecipher and CEOs who followed him from General Electric’s Jack Welch school of management applied what author Peter Robison calls Welch’s standard corporate playbook: ”anti-union, regulation-light, outsourcing heavy.”

Later, Boeing decided to move its corporate headquarters to Chicago, encouraged by tax incentives from the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago. Critics claimed Boeing’s corporate chieftains place short-term profits ahead of engineering excellence as they left behind in Seattle the daily operations of Boeing and the accountability that accompanies a proximity to manufacturing. It also moved some of its manufacturing to South Carolina, a non-union state.

As usual in corporate America, those in the executive suites of Boeing were spared the cutbacks that research, safety protocols and employees suffered at the hands of these modern-day Scrooges. Boeing CEOs made out like bandits, and Boeing shareholders did, as well.

While engineers were forced to cut back, Boeing executives bought back its company stock, thereby increasing its price and enriching shareholders. According to Robison, Boeing spent $41.5 billion on stock buybacks from 2013 to 2018. Its CEOs walked away with millions in cash the buybacks generated.

Boeing’s board members didn’t do badly either, considering that the board caught none of this steady cultural drift toward deadly blunders. Board member Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, made a cool $800,000 from 2017 to 2019, while Kenneth Duberstein, onetime chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan, pulled down $5.3 million.

Boeing built a lobbying team in Washington second to none. According to Open Secrets, a comprehensive resource for campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis, in 2019 alone, Boeing spent $13 million and employed more than 106 lobbyists including some of the most politically connected law firms in D.C.

The passengers of those two deadly flights didn’t have a chance, given heavy lobbying by Boeing in D.C.

Boeing “captured” the agency charged with regulating the company and the airlines. The Federal Aviation Administration not only loosened its rules that would ultimately impact a safety focus at the company, but it also stripped the agency of some of its regulatory authority and transferred it to Boeing personnel. (It would be like the FDA handing over its meat inspection to pork producers.)

This most egregious and blatant misuse of regulation would cost loss of lives, the airline’s reputation and its bottom-line on which it was so focused. In 2020 alone, Boeing lost $11.9 billion, according to Robison.

The immediate cause of the two crashes was software more powerful than what Boeing claimed in documents submitted to win the plane’s approval by the FAA. In underestimating the software’s ability to move the horizontal stabilizer, the small stabilizer on the plane’s tail, Boeing’s supposed processes to catch issues like this failed. Airlines and pilots in the industry claimed that Boeing had hidden the existence of the potentially deadly software.

After the two crashes, the FAA, sometimes referred to it as the “tombstone” agency because it only acts when people are dead, delivered on its loyalty to Boeing by deferring the decision to ground the 737 Max.

First, it was China that grounded the Max, followed by other nations, but the FAA took its time, waiting three days after the two crashes before ordering the 737 Max from the skies. Since these two crashes occurred in other countries, there were initial charges that foreign pilot error was to blame. When the 737 Max was finally grounded, investigations showed that pilot error was not the problem. Boeing software was!

Boeing did show just how quickly it can act when its self-interest is at stake.

After the Indonesian crash, agents of Boeing and Lion Air, the Indonesian carrier, were there at the Jakarta airport offering families “blood money” of $91,600 in exchange for the release of liability in any global court — a mere pittance to what could be awarded for the wrongful death of a loved one. Seventy of the victims’ families signed the settlement offer. In contrast, just last November, Boeing agreed to a settlement in a lawsuit filed against the company and its board for more than $230 million. The lawsuit accused Boeing and its board of failure to address safety warning signs before the two Max jetliners crashed.

The aftermath of the crashes produced a mixed bag of results.

Congress did return to the FAA the authority to regulate Boeing that those expensive lobbyists and legislators shifted to the company. The company corrected the software issues, but the 737 Max remains the only large commercial airliner without an electronic checklist in the cockpit to guide pilots. Eventually the FAA returned the 737 Max to the skies. Boeing also called a halt to those generous stock buybacks that ate up cash that could have been used to build planes, catch software errors and invest in research.

Who was ultimately held responsible for the deaths of 346 passengers and crew?

As is too often the case, criminal liability skated past Boeing’s executive offices and boardroom and landed down the chain of command on Boeing’s chief technical pilot who was indicted for lying about the flight control software that claimed so many lives. One lawsuit filed by shareholders against current and former Boeing directors was settled for $225M and Boeing agreed to a legal settlement with the Justice Department for $2.5 billion, thereby resolving a criminal charge that Boeing conspired to defraud the FAA.

After reading Flying Blind, the reader would expect some form of criminal liability like manslaughter to be imposed on CEOs at the controls as Boeing veered off course. No such thing happened, but two months after the Indonesian crash, the Boeing board would award the CEO on duty at the time, Dennis Muilenburg, a record-breaking salary of $31M including $13M bonus for performance.

The CEOs before Muilenburg who changed the culture and downplayed safety concerns also got off scot free. Robison reports on their post-Boeing lives of luxury thanks to their generous salaries and stock options. After learning of the Justice Department’s settlement of Boeing’s fraud conspiracy, Robison quotes one Boeing pilot as concluding, “Boeing got away with murder.”

Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to 2018. He is host of Reader’s Corner on Boise State Public Radio and is a regular columnist for the Idaho Statesman. He served two terms as Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.

U.S. farm income expected to fall as costs for fertilizer, other production expenses climb sharply


Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register
Sun, February 6, 2022,

Iowa and U.S. farmers can expect income from crops and livestock production to tumble, with costs spiking and government payments falling, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says in a forecast for 2022.

Agriculture department economist Carrie Litkowski said the agency expects U.S. farm income to fall to $113.7 billion, down $9.7 billion, or 7.9%, from 2021. Last year's farm income hit the highest level since 2016, with corn and soybean prices closing in on record highs set in 2012 and 2013.

Farming is a significant economic driver in Iowa, which leads the nation in corn, hog and egg production, and is second to Illinois in soybean production. Agriculture ripples through the state's economy, with ties to equipment manufacturing, insurance, seed and renewable fuel production — another category Iowa leads.

Randy Miller, a farmer from Lacona, harvests soybeans from one of his fields last fall.

The state ranks second only to California when it comes to the size of its farm economy.

Lance Lillibridge, president of the Iowa Corn Growers board, said he believes U.S. farm income will be lower this year than the agriculture department predicts in its forecast, released Friday, with production costs exploding.

"I think incomes will be significantly in the red," said Lillibridge, who grows corn and soybeans and raises cattle near Cedar Rapids.

The agriculture department expects the costs to raise crops and livestock will grow 5.1% to $411.6 billion over the 2021 figure, with the price of fertilizer climbing 12% and for livestock feed, 6.1%. This year's expected hike in expenses comes on top of a 9.4% increase last year, the forecast said.

Lillibridge, however, said the increases he's seeing are far greater. He said his fertilizer costs are up 300% and the costs of herbicides, pesticides and other crop protection products are up 100% to 150%.

"It makes you want to throw up," he said, adding that he expects his fertilizer costs will be $190,000 more than last year's by the time the season ends.

The forecast said soybean growers should expect to get 8.9% more when they sell their crops this year, and corn growers should receive 4.8% more, with both increases primarily due to larger quantities sold.

Cash receipts for soybean are expected to hit a record high, Litkowski said.

Cash receipts for dairy producers are expected to be 22.1% higher, the forecast said, and 8.5% higher for calf and cattle operators, both based on strong price growth.

Hog producers can expect to get 10.3% less for their animals this year, coming off strong prices in 2021, Litkowski said.

Randy Miller, a farmer from Lacona, harvests soybeans from one of his fields last fall.

While the prediction of improved prices for cattle is encouraging, Lillibridge said, receipts probably won't keep pace with increased costs.

More: Iowa farmers get big break with good harvest, high prices. But will their luck hold?

Farmers have a lot on their minds going into the next growing seasons, he said. In addition to higher production costs, Iowa farmers are concerned about whether they'll have equipment and parts next season, given supply-chain issues, and remain concerned about the possibility of a drought.

More: Competition is fierce for Iowa's used farm equipment, attracting bidders from across the world

Iowa and large parts of the Midwest struggled with drought conditions last year. Many farmers said they received rain just in time to preserve crop yields.

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor report, released Thursday, showed almost 55% of Iowa experiencing abnormally dry or moderate drought conditions in the week ending Feb. 1. That was up from about 52% the previous week and about 48% a year ago.

"It probably wouldn't take much for us to drop back into a drought," Lillibridge said.

Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com 

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: 2022 US farm income is expected to fall 7.9%, as production costs rise

WHITE COLLAR BLUES
45% of Remote Workers Would Quit Their Jobs in 2022 for This Reason

by Maurie Backman | Published on Feb. 6, 2022


Image source: Getty Images

Would you do the same?

Key points

New data reveals the factors that would drive people to leave their jobs today.

There's one specific change that clearly won't sit well with workers.

There was a time not so long ago when the simple fact of having a job was something to be grateful for. Early on in the pandemic, millions of Americans lost their jobs overnight, so much so that unemployment reached its highest level ever.

These days, however, the job market is much healthier, and there are plenty of opportunities to be had. As such, workers have been quick to quit their jobs for better opportunities.

Now there are plenty of factors that might drive workers to leave a job today. A big one is compensation. With inflation driving everyday living costs up, workers may not hesitate to go after a higher paycheck -- one that allows them to more easily cover their bills and perhaps even add to their savings.

But in a recent Joblist report, there's one factor that could drive many workers today to tender their resignations. It's also something a lot of people might grapple with later on this year.

Is in-person work a deal-breaker?

Joblist says 45% of current remote workers would quit their jobs if their employers started requiring full-time in-person work. Another 24% say they're not sure if they'd quit if that were to happen, but reading in between the lines, it's clear they're considering it.

The reality is that while many companies presented remote work as a temporary change at the start of the pandemic, at this point, many people have been doing it for almost two years -- and they've gotten used to it and don't want to revert to their former setups. That's understandable.

Remote work has several benefits. For one thing, there's big savings to be reaped by not having to commute to an office all the time. This especially holds true today, with gas prices being up.

Remote work could also lend to a better work-life balance. First of all, skipping the commute could be a big time-saver for a lot of people. And being home during the day could make household tasks easier to manage while also putting in a full-time work schedule.

Should you quit your job if you're asked to return to an office?

At some point this year, there's a good chance companies will try bringing employees back to the office -- especially if things improve with regard to the COVID-19 outbreak. If you're told your remote work arrangement is coming to an end, you, too, may be tempted to quit.

But is that the right move? It depends.

If your employer is willing to be flexible and let you work remotely some of the time, that's a reasonable compromise to consider. And even if your employer won't let you work remotely on a regular basis, if you have the flexibility to go remote on an as-needed basis, that, too, may be reasonable.

But if your employer makes it clear remote work is completely off the table, then you may want to seek out another job -- one that's far more flexible. This especially applies if you earn an average salary and could easily command it elsewhere. If you're compensated well and can't afford a pay cut, you may want to roll with your company's changes even if you're not thrilled about them.

These days, many companies are adopting a more flexible approach to work schedules in the wake of the pandemic. If your employer starts insisting on full-time in-person work with no exceptions, it's a sign you should probably aim to find a role elsewhere.

WHITE BLUE OR PINK THE COLOR OF YOUR COLLAR DOESN'T MATTER

WE ARE ALL PROLETARIANS NOW!