Sometimes you just have to smack your head and laugh. Because the only other thing you can do is scream and cry.
Let’s start close to home.
Martin Luther King Rises From The Grave to Bust Unions
Johns Hopkins is Maryland’s largest employer. Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) employs more than 3,000 nurses — 3,000 unorganized nurses — many of whom are fed up with poor pay, deteriorating benefits, forced overtime, dangerous working conditions and understaffing — and are working with the National Nurses Union to organize a union.
Hopkins, which purports to serve the community — the struggling city of Baltimore — is mounting a typical anti-union campaign, spending big bucks to hire the union-busting firm Littler Mendelson.
Now, this is typical of large anti-union employers. But what really burns me is that the hospital’s anti-union Facebook page “Keep JHH Nursing Union Free” actually quoted Martin Luther King to stress the importance of unity instead of joining a union.
A union supporter who objected to the quote (reminding Hopkins that King was assassinated supporting a labor strike) was removed from the Facebook page for using “inflammatory wording” when she called the misuse of King’s words “ignorant and offensive.”
Personally, I thought that wording was exceptionally restrained.
More on the JHH nurse organizing campaign here.
But wait, there’s more……………
Scott Walker’s Successful Refinery Explosion
As all of you Confined Space fans know, a refinery exploded in Superior, Wisconsin earlier this week. Luckily, it happened during a break and although 21 workers were hospitalized and over a thousand residents evacuated, no one died. Because there were no deaths, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker declared the incident to be a “remarkable success story.”
“Certainly there will be plenty of research done to figure out what ultimately brought about this in the first place, but to see the kind of response as much as you don’t want to have this in any community. To me, any time you don’t have a fatality after an explosion, that in itself is a remarkable success story.”
Well, no Scott. There is no world where a huge refinery explosion and mass evacuation can be considered a “remarkable success story.” Just because no workers were killed and the Hydrogen Fluoride tank didn’t rupture killing hundreds in the surrounding community, doesn’t make it a “success.” The absence of catastrophe is not the definition of success.
Perhaps a “near miss.” Or a “close call.” But definitely not a “success.”
And yes, there will be “research” done. Or an “investigation,” as the rest of us call it. OSHA will be there to determine whether any OSHA standards were violated. EPA may even show up to make sure no birds or fish perished. And the Chemical Safety Board will conduct an extensive root-cause investigation and issue recommendations.
And speaking of the Chemical Safety Board. Your buddy Donald Trump has again called for the elimination of the CSB. If you really want a quality investigation conducted into why the explosion happened and how to prevent future explosions — ones that may not be quite as successful — you may want to make a call to The Donald and plead for the life of the CSB.
Don’t go away, it gets better….
Honey, I lost the kids…
This one is so bad, I (almost) don’t really have to comment on it. Read it and weep
Federal officials lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children last year after a government agency placed the minors in the homes of adult sponsors in communities across the country, according to testimony before a Senate subcommittee Thursday.
“You are the worst foster parents in the world. You don’t even know where they are,” said Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.
Now this is the same Trump government that has come under withering criticism lately for separating children from the parents of undocumented immigrants. As if that wasn’t inhumane enough, the government can’t even locate 1500 minor children who crossed the border last year. It’s bad enough that they’re taking the children. But then they’re losing them? What country is this?
OK, I gotta go.
Read it and weep for sure. On Hopkins, they might want to invoke Michael Honey’s book and essay. He discovered a new file from the King archives on “ Labor Speeches,” which shows how King apparently believed much more fervently in the importance of unions to protect people’s economic security than usually recognized—in fact, Honey points out that King pointed out repeatedly that civil rights were hollow without the strength of a union to underpin people’s lives. On Walker—wow, we might to respond to that. And the feds, well, they’ve never learned the first rule of Dad School: when you take 3 kids to the park, you’re supposed to come home with 3 kids. Not super complicated.