I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Corporations that intentionally kill people deserve the death penalty. Stockholders lose their entire investments. Executives who perpetrated the crime should be held personally both criminally and civilly liable.
My current picks for liquidation with extreme prejudice: Purdue Pharma and Boeing.
Purdue’s a family-owned drug dealership. They have killed untold numbers of people by bribing doctors to over-prescribe Oxycontin and its related addictives. The pill-popping Mafiosi pled guilty last week but have pulled a maneuver from the Donald Trump playbook: bankruptcy. The drug-dealing Sackler family, reportedly worth at least $13 billion (with a B), will pay chump change as their part of the deal, $225 million (with an M).
A former executive at Reno’s now-sold Jones-West Ford, his associates and a local doctor were busted for selling Purdue wares. (I’ve always wondered why the feds never moved to condemn and acquire the exec’s family’s car dealership. I guess high-level drug dealers can afford top gun lawyers.)
Boeing bosses knew that the 737 Max was defective, convinced limp-wristed FAA inspectors to trust them, and now 346 people lie dead. The destruction reverberated worldwide, destroying families, jobs and tanking the company and its long-cherished credibility.
Both outfits should be folded, sold off and the proceeds used to compensate victims. Any leftovers go toward a government account to fund future anti-corruption activities.
May the perps burn in hell.
GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE DEPT. Corporations in Switzerland just killed two progressive proposals along the above lines. One would have held Swiss companies liable for human rights violations and environmental damage abroad. The proposal won at the polls but was vetoed by state (canton) governments under Swiss law.
An initiative that would have prevented Swiss institutions from funding war weapon and material manufacturers also failed.
From great dissents come future great majorities.
LABOR OF LOVE. Just in time for Thanksgibleting, Laborers’ Union Local 169 just donated $12,500 in grocery store gift cards to seven northern Nevada nonprofits.
They included the Reno Initiative for Shelter and Equality, the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada, the American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Vietnam Veterans of America.
As a former trumpet player for VFW Post 8900 band during my salad days in Fresno, many thanks to my union sisters and brothers. Details at NevadaLabor.com/
A TALE OF TWO BOYNTONS. Last month brought news of the deaths of two men separated by time and color but not in improving the lives of others.
Former TV-2 and TV-8 news anchor Brent Boynton died at age 64 from COVID-19. After his TV days, he served as press secretary to former Gov. Jim Gibbons and most recently took a tough and critically important position at the Reno Housing Authority. He once told me that he had offers to leave Nevada for major market news positions, but like a rare few, chose to make his home here. He was a mellow dude.
All Bruce Boynton wanted was a cheeseburger but ended up making new law at the U.S. Supreme Court with future justice Thurgood Marshall as his lawyer. Bruce Boynton was born in Selma Alabama in 1937 and died in Montgomery last month. As a young law student heading home in 1958, he refused to sit in the dingy black section of a Richmond, Virginia, bus station restaurant. He was arrested and fined $10. Virginia courts, of course, ruled against him but in 1960, the U.S. Supremes held in his favor, a win that sparked the 1961 Freedom Riders campaign in the deep south. Sparks resident Erma Fritchen, a retired Nevada teacher, and former Reno-Sparks NAACP President Eddie Scott were among them.
Now they all belong to the ages.
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS DEPT. The good people at the Reno Gazette-Journal ran a promotional banner above the newspaper’s masthead on Thanksgiving Day.
“Your complete Black Friday shopping resource!”, it stated. In an unintentional bit of overcompensation or obtuseness, the headline was accompanied by an illustration of a BLACK family at Thanksgiving dinner complete with a laptop computer next to the turkey. I bet more than one person in the newsroom gobbled hard after seeing that. The clip art was probably cheap.
TALES OF THE GREAT PUMPKIN. I’ve baked a few pies in my checkered past, but never of the pumpkinish persuasion. Quarantining, I had Thanksgiving goodies delivered by Safeway (a union shop, natch). They were out of pies, so I asked my delivery consultant to get me a can of pumpkin pie fixings.
A sharp young lady named Cierra asked if I had the required evaporated milk.
“Oh, er, uh, sure, I knew that. Thanks. Please include one.”
It was organic, too. Once the pie was in the oven, I remembered what my old friend, former Sparks businessman John Hanks, often advised: When all else fails, read the instructions.
Zounds.
The recipe on the can called for adding both the milk and two eggs. Egad. What to do?
When the pie came out of the oven, I fried two eggs over easy and placed them on top of the aromatic creation. The residual heat cooked the eggs to over-medium by the time the delicacy was served. (Culinary tip from an old frycook: Add craisins below the two eggs and you’ve got a smiley face on your magnum opus.)
Somewhere, John the old cropduster pilot is having a good laugh at my expense. You, too.
Believe it or else.
Hope you and yours enjoyed a happy and safe Thanksgibleting. Happy High Holly Days.
Take care of each other and be careful out there.
¡Sí se puede!
Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
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