March 26, 2011
A toast – to life?
You have to have a sense of humor in most jobs just to make it through each day but California prison official Scott Kernan’s sense of humor seems a bit on the morbid side. Due to “a severe shortage of sodium thiopental, a sedative that is part of the three-drug lethal injection cocktail used by nearly all 34 death penalty states”, Mr. Kernan sought supplies from neighboring state Arizona to carry out a scheduled execution in his state.
Seems the shortage is due to the only U.S. supplier of the sedative, Hospira Inc. shutting down operations, forcing prison systems to look overseas or to fellow penal associates for sources.
Relieved and grateful that the death row inmate whose time had come to “meet his maker” was not going to see the light of day a single day longer than the state had scheduled, MR. Kernan sent his appreciation to his Arizona counterpart in an e-mail that called them a “life saver” for coming through in their hour of need. The recipient of this cocktail may view it as something other than a life saver. To pour salt into the soon-to-be-deceased’s wounds, Mr. Kernan was willing to thank his supplier by buying him “a beer next time I get that way” A toast me lads to the man who saved my life and ended that of another. SOURCE
Saving Money Endangers Air Passengers’ Lives
Perhaps you’ve heard about the veteran air traffic supervisor that dozed off after having worked his fourth 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift in a row. To make matters worse this occurred at D.C.’s Reagan airport, a major facility that “is in the vicinity of some very sensitive airspace” according to Rory Kay, a former Air Line Pilots Association safety chairman and an international airline captain.
The fact that a policy exists where only one air traffic controller is on duty at a major airport during this late shift seems amazing. If such a policy exists do you think it’s wise to allow the same individual to take this shift 4 days in a row? But what of this policy that has strong implications that conservative politicians are putting costs over safety? According to one spokesperson for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, “One-person shifts are unsafe. Period… The administration inherited an unsafe policy of staffing to budget instead of putting safety first.”
Quick to defend this practice is House Transportation Committee, Congressman John Mica (R – Fla.) saying that the rush to staff up control towers “when there are no flights during the early morning hours, is a typical bureaucratic response. Increasing staff when there are no flights also violates FAA’s own management plan of staffing to air traffic. In difficult financial times for the nation, it is critical that we utilize our limited resources in the most responsible fashion without compromising safety.”
Yeah, right Rep. Mica. Would that have been your response if your wife or children had been on either of those flights? You might want to recoup some of those unpaid taxes from G.E. to help pay for an extra controller at some of these major airports SOURCE
And finally …
PBS is loaded with liberal leaning socialists – NOT
Ultra conservatives in Congress, with new-found strength from the newly elected Tea Partiers, are once again trying to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Their claim is that tax payer money should not be used to pay for left leaning propaganda which they accuse the network of despite the fact that “Every local market has a different flavor that reflects the interests and diversity of its audience. The national content producers strive for a sort of neutrality that not only reflects [PBS’s] journalistic sensibilities but also allows for a sort of universality that works with the local flavors in hundreds of towns and cities.” SOURCE
If any of these people truly listened to PBS or NPR routinely as I do they would find that there are numerous reports that are far from left leaning. One example of this was recently reported by the “left-leaning” media watchdog group FAIR. Following the recent U.S. led NATO strikes on pro-Gadhafi forces, the NEWSHOUR program with Jim Lehrer used military personnel and conservative politicians to give their perspective on this action. SOURCE
The fact that PBS and NPR’s sense of “fair and balanced” is more reality based than what hard-right conservatives like, appears to be their real motivation behind defunding these public sources of information. It also shows their attempts to balance the budget through such endeavors as pathetically weak since what little Congress allocates to PBS and NPR ($422 million) amounts to a farthing compared to the total deficit which is currently over $14 trillion. Taxpayer funding for the CPB is the smaller amount of what individual donors ($729 million) and local businesses ($435 million) contribute.
See How CPB Funding Works
Posted by lbwoodgate in Economy, People, Social Discourse, Society and Politics Tags: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, defunding NPR, Hospira, Jim Lehrer, lethal injections, National Air Traffic Controllers Association, NPR, Public Broadcasting Service, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, United States House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Rumor has it that Gretchen Carlson was the person behind this question.
