April 19

 We did have a nice sunny day yesterday but it didn't really warm up because we had a brisk wind. The cats were not happy because I kept the windows and doors closed. We did our usual shopping and just vegetated for the rest of the day. Today we have other errands so I'll see how much I of my e-mail and other reading I get done.

Well, Fox News settled with Dominion and will pay a bit more than three-quarters of a BILLION dollars. The only statement the company came out with acknowledged the Judge's adverse determinations on SOME of the questions involved in the defamation suit. That is NOT any kind of admission that they did anything wrong. Robert Reich has a very accurate assessment: money is not accountability. The amount of the settlement sounds like a lot to most of us but the Fox Corporation is worth $17Billion. The Founding Fathers considered a "free press" as necessary an "informed" citizenry. It's been noted since that "free" didn't mean "fair." I would also say "free" doesn't mean truthful or factual.

Naked Capitalism has an article on the child labor scandals and the political moves to weaken or eliminate child labor laws. This, I think, the only story, at least the only I have seen, that looks at who and what organizations are pushing this trend. Surprise! Surprise! Major scrooges pushing it: hospitality and restaurant, construction, meat packing and other that require low paid labor. And efforts to apply the laws and curbs the exploitation seem to give the real criminals a slap on the wrist and destroys the kid and their families. I said a good 30 years ago that the period from the 1930 to about the turn of the century was an anomaly and we are reverting to conditions someone in the 19th and earlier centuries would recognize. No effective labor unions. A "family income" derived from a man + a woman who makes 50 or 60% of the "breadwinner's wage", and several children older than 6 who each earn one-quarter what the man made. No wide spread public education. No birth control. Perhaps someone will form a new version of the Pinkertons.

Here is another article Naked Capitalism is reposting from The Oil Price which addresses a major problem with the hidden costs of so-called green energy. I read other criticisms of alternatives which talk about some of the costs that are often ignored but they rarely come from the environmentalists or politicians pushing the alternatives.

Listening to some of the news, and not the political clown show, I have to wonder what the hell has happened to some people in this country. An elderly man shoots a 16 year old black boy who simply knocked on his door by mistake. Another older man shoots at a car that mistakenly turned into his drive, and then turned around and was leaving when he fired killing a woman sitting in the car. Two students bludgeon their Spanish teacher to death for giving them low grades. When did people become so entitled and so frightened? People I know, or knew, had guns at home. I had guns at home in the past but not for many years. But none of them would, and nor would I, have even thought of shooting without even saying a word. Something has happened to us as a nation.

John Michael Greer has one of the best summaries of our current situation in this chaotic world.