Twitter and Questionable Amends

I recently saw a story in the news about the bomb suspect, Cesar Sayoc. It's been shown he threatened a number of people on Twitter, and the company did nothing. But now, with the company getting bad publicity for not abiding by its stated rules and regulations, it has taken down his account and made a quick, slick apology.

It's rather funny. I've seen so many businesses do this, with little repercussions. And in the case of Cesar Sayoc it wasn't just an oversight. There were a number of complaints and nothing was done--it had more to do with policy than with error. Yet, what does this say to the workers at these businesses, and the customers, and the public? Doesn't it say, "Don't trust us--we care solely about our image, not our workers, our product, or our customers."

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On Climate Change

There was a recent report on climate change by an agency affiliated with the United Nations. The results were stark. The gist of it is major changes are required by society as a whole and individuals within that society. Yet, with our current president, this appears to be a no-starter.

I have been doing much reading (and some writing) on climate change and it seems to be near the top, if not the top, of issues the world needs to address.

Yet, the public doesn't presently seemed motivated to even hear what is being said. It may be one of those things where they say 100 years from now, "Why didn't they do something back then? What was holding things up?"

That is, if there is any "they."

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Pres. Trump and the Sins of the Father

The New York Times recently published a story about how Pres. Trump's father and mother handed down a lot of money to the president and the president's siblings. The amount of taxes the parents should have paid is in the vicinity of half a billion dollars. How much did they actually pay? About 50 million.

Mmmh. One doesn't have to be a tax accountant to know the numbers, so to speak, don't add up.

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Seymour Hersh

I just read a good piece on the great investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, at https://daily.jstor.org/seymour-hersh-future-american-journalism.

He had some interesting things to say about the state of the media, society, and investigative journalism. Here is an insightful quote related to the president: "The bottom line is, when you got a guy like this, you have to remember, this is the guy, reviled for his ignorance, seemingly, and his lack of respect for most norms. This is the guy that took down fifteen Republicans, with an accumulated political experience of about 300 years. He put down two dynasties. The Bush dynasty. And the Clinton dynasty. And so to sell him short is a big mistake. He's not a moron, and I just think it's [a] big mistake for the Democratic party to keep    on attacking him for his lies and misstatements and his obvious inability to plan. And [the  Democrats] better offer middle America something. They lost that election because the white  working class walked away from them...So I think the Democrats have to come back, to stop    yipping about it. They're playing into his hand with the tweets. They're playing in his ballpark.    Why do that? Just go write about what he wasn't doing. And write about what's going on in the    communities because of the changes in regulations his people did. There's a lot of stuff to do."

Some good stuff in this article.

Postscript: I used this method of quoting this long piece because otherwise it would come out jumbled.

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