Capitalism as usual: Profit above truth, human health and the environment

A long, detailed ProPublica article reports about a common occurrence among huge corporations, namely enforced secrecy to defend profits at the expense of the public interest:

How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals 

She Found in Human Blood Were Safe

Decades ago, Kris Hansen showed 3M that its PFAS chemicals were in people’s bodies. Her bosses halted her work. As the EPA now forces the removal of the chemicals from drinking water, she wrestles with the secrets that 3M kept from her and the world

Kris Hansen had worked as a chemist at the 3M Corporation for about a year when her boss, an affable senior scientist named Jim Johnson, gave her a strange assignment. 3M had invented Scotch Tape and Post-­it notes; it sold everything from sandpaper to kitchen sponges. But on this day, in 1997, Johnson wanted Hansen to test human blood for chemical contamination.

Several of 3M’s most successful products contained man-made compounds called fluorochemicals. In a spray called Scotchgard, fluorochemicals protected leather and fabric from stains. In a coating known as Scotchban, they prevented food packaging from getting soggy. In a soapy foam used by firefighters, they helped extinguish jet-fuel fires. Johnson explained to Hansen that one of the company’s fluorochemicals, PFOS — short for perfluorooctanesulfonic acid — often found its way into the bodies of 3M factory workers. Although he said that they were unharmed, he had recently hired an outside lab to measure the levels in their blood. The lab had just reported something odd, however. For the sake of comparison, it had tested blood samples from the American Red Cross, which came from the general population and should have been free of fluorochemicals. Instead, it kept finding a contaminant in the blood.

Kris Hanson

Long story short, Hansen repeated her results, then applied a more accurate measurement method and got the same results over and over. Everyone had PFOS in their blood. Hanson told her boss Johnson about the finding and his response was “this changes everything.” Johnson then walked into his office, closed the door and said nothing else the rest of the day. Later that same day, Johnson’s boss Dale Bacon came to Hanson and told her her results were wrong. Hanson then got more blood from more sources and tested them. All had PFOS contamination. While Hanson was doing her repeat testing, Johnson announced that he would be taking early retirement. He packed up his office and left.

The most reliable way to gauge the safety of chemicals is to study them over time, in animals and, if possible, humans. ProPublica reported that Hansen didn’t know that 3M scientists had already conducted animal studies in the 1970s and found evidence of PFOS toxicity in rats. A 1979 3M internal report in 1979 concluded that PFOS was “certainly more toxic than anticipated.” Explicit warnings about PFOS toxicity from an outside expert were omitted from internal company documents.

One 3M manager told Hanson that her equipment might be contaminated, so she cleaned everything, repeated the experiments and got the same results. 3M was looking for ways to discredit Hanson and her data. ProPublica described the extremes to which 3M as going to kill the results:

Sometimes Hansen doubted herself. She was 28 and had only recently earned her Ph.D. But she continued her experiments, if only to respond to the questions of her managers. 3M bought three additional mass spectrometers, which each cost more than a car, and Hansen used them to test more blood samples. In late 1997, her new boss, Bacon, even had her fly out to the company that manufactured the machines, so that she could repeat her tests there. She studied the blood of hundreds of people from more than a dozen blood banks in various states. Each sample contained PFOS. The chemical seemed to be everywhere.  

After Hansen started her PFOS research, her relationships with some colleagues seemed to deteriorate. One afternoon in 1998, a trim 3M epidemiologist named Geary Olsen arrived with several vials of blood and asked her to test them. The next morning, she read the results to him and several colleagues — positive for PFOS. As Hansen remembers it, Olsen looked triumphant. “Those samples came from my horse,” he said — and his horse certainly wasn’t eating at McDonald’s or trotting on Scotchgarded carpets. Hansen felt that he was trying to humiliate her. (Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.) What Hansen wanted to know was how PFOS was making its way into animals.  

Hansen’s team found it in Swedish blood samples from 1957 and 1971. After that, her lab analyzed blood that had been collected before 3M created PFOS. It tested negative. Apparently, fluorochemicals had entered human blood after the company started selling products that contained them. They had leached out of 3M’s sprays, coatings and factories — and into all of us.  

Even as Hansen was being sidelined, the results of her research were quietly making their way into the files of the Environmental Protection Agency. Since the ’70s, federal law has required that companies tell the EPA about any evidence indicating that a company’s products present “a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” In May 1998, 3M officials notified the agency, without informing Hansen, that the company had measured PFOS in blood samples from around the U.S. — a clear reference to Hansen’s work. It did not mention its animal research from the ’70s, and it said that the chemical caused “no adverse effects” at the levels the company had measured in its workers. A year later, 3M sent the EPA another letter, again without telling Hansen. This time, it informed the agency about the 14 other fluorochemicals, several of them made by 3M, that Hansen’s team had detected in human blood. The company reiterated that it did not believe that its products presented a substantial risk to human health.  

In 2022, 3M said that it would stop making PFAS and would “work to discontinue the use of PFAS across its product portfolio,” by the end of 2025 — a pledge that it called “another example of how we are positioning 3M for continued sustainable growth.” But it acknowledged that more than 16,000 of its products still contained PFAS. Direct sales of the chemicals were generating $1.3 billion annually. 3M’s regulatory filings also allow for the possibility that a full phaseout won’t happen — for example, if 3M fails to find substitutes. “We are continuing to make progress on our announcement to exit PFAS manufacturing,” 3M’s spokesperson told me [ProPublica reporter Sharon Lerner]. The company and its scientists have not admitted wrong­doing or faced criminal liability for producing forever chemicals or for concealing their harms.

This reporting personally resonates quite a lot. A company I worked for in the 1980s had two different well-known consumer products tested for one form of toxicity, one each from two major corporations. One was mildly toxic but a common food ingredient and the other was horrendously toxic. After receiving their toxicity reports, lawyers for the two corporations wrote a letter to our CEO, (i) reminding him of the secrecy agreement the testing was done under, and (ii) threatening to ruin him and the company if the toxicity data was ever leaked to the public. 

The foot-dragging, downplaying bad data and denying responsibility in pursuit of profit is standard corporate tactics. That is the rule, not the exception. Exxon-Mobil and oil companies do it about global warming. Cigarette companies still do it about lung cancer. All or nearly all big corporations do it about whatever they make money from doing. Profit is always privatized and trickled up to the elites, while harm and damage to humans and the environment are socialized and offloaded from corporate responsibility as much as possible. And, much is possible with America’s corrupt pay-to-play, two-party political system.  

From this story, one can easily see why the authoritarian radical right Republican Party Project 2025 plans to get rid of the EPA and environmental protection regulations. 1970s federal law had required that companies tell the EPA about any evidence indicating that a company’s products present “a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” By getting rid of laws like that, corporations can legally keep their dirty laundry hidden. That is how plutocracy works. That is the core morality of capitalism.

I do not know if the toxicity data my old company generated was ever reported to the EPA. Given the moral mindset of capitalism, that data may have never been reported. 

The essence and language of Christian nationalism; About the radical right's logic and consistency

An interesting Slate interview discusses the theocratic Christian nationalism wealth and power political movement with experts, Katherine Stewart and Rachael Laser:

The Religious Right Isn’t Hiding What It’s Doing in the Courts

Religion is everywhere in American legal discourse, but only one side is really comfortable talking about it. Religion is why Dobbs talks about the “unborn human being,” and it’s why religious website designers have now been given a singular opt-out from providing services to their paying customers. It’s why Justice Samuel Alito went to Rome shortly after Dobbs was decided, to fret publicly that “religious liberty is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power.” Religion is why Federalist Society chairman Leonard Leo flies an “Appeal to Heaven” flag. It’s why Speaker Mike Johnson also flies an “Appeal to Heaven” flag. Oh, and it’s also why Martha-Ann Alito flies an “Appeal to Heaven” flag.

And it’s clear that extreme religionists are very, very comfortable talking about extreme religion amongst themselves, even if the rest of us have been slow to recognize and name that pattern in political conversation. Just think about how Mark Meadows and his “Stop the Steal” pen pal, Ginni Thomas, were happily writing about how “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs,” and how the former president screens a video called “God Made Trump” at his rallies, and how Project 2025 is teeming with theological ideas.

One side is still scrambling to find the language to talk about how religious fundamentalism is playing out in the courts at a time when the separation of church and state is a persistent target of legal assault, and the consequences of one subset of religious beliefs have been imposed on many millions of women in the country. Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Rachel Laser, the president and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State—a nonprofit education and advocacy organization that works in courts, legislatures, and the public square to protect religious freedom—and Katherine Stewart, an author and journalist who’s been covering religious nationalism and the assault on American democracy for over 15 years.

Dahlia Lithwick: Define Christian Nationalism because we put a lot under this rubric of white Christian nationalism.

Katherine Stewart: Let’s talk about what Christian nationalism is and what it isn’t. Christian nationalism is not a religion—it’s not Christianity. I think of it as a mindset, and also a machine. The mindset is this ideology, the idea of America as essentially a Christian theocracy or a Christian nation whose laws should be based on the Bible, and a very reactionary reading of the Bible. It’s also a political movement that exploits religion in this organized quest for power. As a political movement, it is leadership-driven and it’s organization-driven. It has this deeply networked organizational infrastructure that is really the key to its power. There has been five decades of investment in this infrastructure, and it’s the leaders of this network who are really calling the shots.

We can group their organizations into categories. I’ll throw out a few names, but this is by no means comprehensive. There are these right-wing groups like the Family Research Council. You have networking organizations like the Council for National Policy, which gets much of the movement’s leadership cadre on the same page, and brings them together with these very deep-pocketed funders. There are think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. And there’s a vast right-wing legal advocacy ecosystem that includes groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, with its $100-plus-million-per-year budget; also, the Becket Fund, Liberty Counsel, First Liberty Institute, Pacific Justice Institute—and they align with the aims of the Federalist Society and related organizations that mobilize enormous sums of money to shape the courts.

Another feature of this movement that is often overlooked is the pastor networks like Watchmen on the Wall and Church United, or groups like Faith Wins, that draw together and then mobilize tens of thousands of conservative or conservative-leaning pastors as movement leaders. If you can get the pastors, you can get their congregations. Often pastors are the most trusted voices in their congregations. So they reach out to these pastors, draw them into networks, and give them tools to turn out their congregations to vote for the far-right candidates that they want.

And then, of course, there’s this information sphere—or propaganda sphere—of the type that the Alitos, with their “Appeal to Heaven” flag, are clearly tied into. It’s a kind of messaging sphere that outsiders often simply don’t know about, but it’s incredibly self-contained and repeats over and over again a certain core set of messages.

Lithwick: We know a lot about Mike Johnson, we know a lot about Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the ways in which these religious ideas have embedded themselves in the other two branches of government. But it’s harder and murkier to understand how it intersects with the courts. 

Rachel Laser: I think we have to start with the Federalist Society, which was founded in 1982. That was around the time when all of the religious-right groups were getting active. They were intentionally shifting their focus from school segregation to abortion. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, we saw this shadow network of legal groups forming. That accompanied what the Federalist Society was doing with the judiciary. The Alliance Defending Freedom was founded in the early ’90s, the Becket Fund in the early ’90s, First Liberty in 1997, Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice back in 1990, Liberty Counsel in 1989. So when we were seeing the “moral majority,” and this sort of burgeoning religious extremist movement in the country, they got really smart and decided to focus on the courts, and, boy, are we seeing the rewards of that today.

Stewart: And the movement is extremely strategic. Very patient. I think the key to their success is that long-range thinking and their strategy.

From the very beginning, they set about picking the right cases to bring to the right courts and they created these novel legal building blocks that would sideline, and in some cases obliterate, the establishment clause. They’ve turned civil rights law on its head, and expanded the privileges of religious organizations substantially, including the right to taxpayer money.

Lithwick: Katherine, you wrote a piece in 2022 describing how the movement gets supercharged. You flagged three things that happened after Dobbs: First, the rhetoric of violence among movement leaders appears to have increased significantly from the already alarming levels I had observed in previous years. Second, the theology of dominion—that is the belief that right-thinking Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society—is now explicitly embraced. And third, the movement’s key strategists were giddy about the legal arsenal that the Supreme Court had laid at their feet as they anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Stewart: By acknowledging the legitimacy of a state interest in zygotes and blastocysts and fetuses, they really provide a legal system with a set of purely religiously grounded rights that can be used to strip women of all kinds of rights and basically turn our bodies and lives over to federal and state authorities.

But Dobbs is really just the inevitable consequence of this movement’s power. They’re not stopping here. The movement leaders are determined to end all abortion access everywhere. When they say abortion, they also mean some of the most effective and popular forms of birth control, as well as miscarriage care that’s necessary to save women’s lives and health. We’re seeing the consequences of this all over the country, where women are suffering devastating health consequences when they can’t get the miscarriage care that they need.

I’ve been attending right-wing conferences and strategy gatherings for 15 years for my research, and they tell us over and over again what they intend to do, and then they do it, and then they boast about what they’ve done. They’re really not hiding, and their aims are not hard to discern if you’re paying attention.

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

A Salon article discusses how America's authoritarian radical right is reacting to the conviction of Hunter Biden:

Why Republicans are left disappointed by Hunter Biden's conviction

The Trump campaign reportedly thought it would be a fundraising bonanza for them if Hunter Biden was acquitted

Some Democrats and legal observers wondered about the prosecutorial discretion in bringing the case which is very seldom done in circumstances like this,(as did a couple of the jurors) but across the board, they all respected the verdict and the judicial system. Nobody threatened anyone or vowed to take vengeance on them. Nobody accused the prosecutors, the judge or the jurors of being corrupt. Nobody said the proceedings were rigged.

Well, actually, a lot of people said it was rigged — but they were all Republicans who simply couldn't take "guilty" for an answer. You can understand why. They've been sobbing and whining and rending their garments for weeks now over Donald Trump's guilty verdict in his Manhattan hush-money trial insisting that the Biden Justice Department (DOJ) had implemented a two-tiered system of justice to target Republicans, specifically Trump. And here you have that same DOJ prosecuting the president's only living son over a crime that Republicans insist is a violation of the Second Amendment. In fact, if it had been anyone else, much less the son of a GOP president, the NRA would have been holding vigils outside the courthouse. If Republicans still required logic and consistency to persuade their voters this whole thing would have been terribly confusing for them. Lucky for them, all they need is lies and demagoguery.

That nicely sums up the deep moral rot that America's authoritarian radical right operates with. American authoritarianism is based on lies, demagoguery, bad faith and malice, not logic, consistency or good will.

The "minor felonies" Hunter was convicted of carry a maximum 

sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000

Are we distracted and gaslit yet?

And finally, there is this little gesture of bad faith and malice from DJT:

Well folks, it seems you are getting two for one today.

I had intended this thread for today but notice our friend Germaine also had a religious theme in mind with his thread..........

The essence and language of Christian nationalism

Mine involves an opinion piece written by a religious person:

Wes McAdams,  Christian Living

https://radicallychristian.com/how-partisan-politics-are-harming-christians/

Christians lately have been taking it on the chin. Our friend who runs this forum at least distinguishes average everyday Christians from Christian nationalists. 

As a rule they still do NOT support abortion rights, one of several reasons I consider myself atheist, my morals would never align with "the church."

Nevertheless, here is how one Christian feels about partisan politics:

How Partisan Politics are Harming Christians

The dictionary defines partisan as, “feeling, showing, or deriving from strong and sometimes blind adherence to a particular party, faction, cause, or person.” Pay special attention to the words, “strong and sometimes blind adherence.” It might be helpful to think about partisanship in terms of loyalty, commitment, or devotion.

Partisan loyalty is often so strong that political affiliation becomes core to a person’s identity. For instance, when we fall into the partisan trap, we do not simply agree with Democrats or Republicans on certain issues, “Democrat” or “Republican” becomes fundamental to how we think of ourselves. Similarly, ideological perspectives, such as “Progressive” or “Conservative,” can also become cornerstones of our identity.

Finally, partisans sometimes become fixated on a political leader. Our loyalty gets directed to the person who leads the party, embodies the party’s values, or seems capable of saving the party from opponents. The “strong and sometimes blind adherence” is concentrated on one particular person.

For Christians, partisanship often begins with genuine Christian motivation. We find that one party seems to align with biblical values on a particular issue or policy. Perhaps it is a concern for the poor or a concern for the unborn. It could be a biblical stance on sexual ethics or justice for people wrongly accused of crime. This desire to support a party that supports biblical values is admirable.

However, political parties are a mixed bag. No political party aligns completely with kingdom interests, values, and priorities. When we develop a “strong and sometimes blind adherence” to a political party, that party begins to shape our values.

Sadly, many of us are towing the party line rather than holding fast to the truth of Scripture. We have abandoned the historic Christian view on war, abortion, wealth, poverty, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, or something else…and we don’t even know it. We have allowed a party platform, rather than the Holy Spirit, to shape our views.

Because we agree with a party on issue X, we blindly assume that party must also be right on issue Y. This is a dangerous and harmful assumption.

This sort of angry, fearful, and outraged partisanship is not only dividing us from our neighbors but also from our brothers and sisters in Christ. It ought to be obvious how many Christian principles this violates:

• “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27)
• “live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18)
• “put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth” (Colossians 3:8)
• “lead a peaceful and quiet life” (1 Timothy 2:2)
• “speak evil of no one” (Titus 3:2)
• “avoid quarreling” (Titus 3:2)
• “be gentle” (Titus 3:2)
• “show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:2)

Our neighbors are not our enemies. 

A quick observation, if I may. You don't have to be a Godly person to understand that last line. We all seem to have fallen into that trap of judging someone by their religion or by how they vote or by what their personal beliefs are. So the biblical quotes applies to all of us. To continue:

We must all recognize that there is a danger when we give our allegiance to a group, a tribe, a party, or a faction. Our values, priorities, and perspectives will be shaped by that allegiance. We can tell ourselves that we “think for ourselves.” However, like it or not, we are social creatures and we are shaped by our group loyalty.

As Christians, our loyalty and allegiance should belong to Jesus and his kingdom. We must remember that our true family, group, and tribe is much bigger than a single nation, political party, ethnic group, or ideological perspective. These other groups will always be competing for our loyalty, but we must resist this temptation.

I hope more Christians feel this way, and that those who put party over their religion will read this and feel some shame.

Amen. 

 

The war against authoritarianism: Whacking pro-tyranny lawyers

An article The Conversation published focuses on the crooked lawyers who attack the rule of law and our system of justice without justification but in league with American radical right authoritarianism:

Trump’s lawyers in lawsuits claiming he won in 2020 are getting punished for 

abusing courts and making unsupported claims and false statements

Over the past four years, U.S. courts and state bar associations have taken action to protect the integrity of the U.S. judicial system by penalizing attorneys who filed meritless lawsuits claiming – without evidence – that the 2020 presidential election results were invalid.

Despite aggressive litigation by attorneys denying wrongdoing, over time the U.S. legal community has exercised the oversight needed to hold most of them accountable for misusing U.S. courts.

Most lawsuits challenging the 2020 presidential election results were filed in federal courts. Federal judges not only dismissed the claims for lack of evidence, but some also penalized the attorneys who filed them.

Judge Linda Parker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan acted first, ruling in August 2021 that a lawsuit filed by nine lawyers was “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.” In a 110-page opinion, she wrote that the abuses included:

“proffering claims not backed by law; proffering claims not backed by evidence (but instead, speculation, conjecture, and unwarranted suspicion); proffering factual allegations and claims without engaging in the required prefiling inquiry; and dragging out these proceedings.”

“Print, television, and social media” are where the attorneys could have made their “protestations” and “conjecture,” Parker wrote. But “such expressions are neither permitted nor welcomed in a court of law.”

In that spirit of defense of democracy and the rule of law, I sent the New York State Bar Association this little reminder of their duty to defend democracy and the rule of law:

Re: Trump's trial attorneys 

To whom it concerns:

During the recent trial before Judge Merchan, Trump's attorneys displayed a shocking level of mendacity, and also a shocking contempt for the court and the rule of law. Given that, it is reasonable to expect that disciplinary hearings for those attorneys will be held. 

As you know, American democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law are now all under a severe, sustained attack from America's powerful radical right authoritarian wealth and power political movement. Holding attorneys who fight on the side of authoritarianism by violating ethics rules and/or laws must be investigated and punished if their behavior warrants punishment. Anything less constitutes unjustifiable capitulation to authoritarianism.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

One can hope that the NYSBA is empowered to do an investigation for New York state ethics violations. If not, someone would have to file a formal complaint.

Democracy & compromise

Rolling Stone reports about comments Sam Alito made that directly indicate he is an anti-democracy authoritarian:

Justice Samuel Alito spoke candidly about the ideological battle between the left and the right — discussing the difficulty of living “peacefully” with ideological opponents in the face of “fundamental” differences that “can’t be compromised.” He endorsed what his interlocutor described as a necessary fight to “return our country to a place of godliness.” And Alito offered a blunt assessment of how America’s polarization will ultimately be resolved: “One side or the other is going to win.”

Alito made these remarks in conversation at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, a function that is known to right-wing activists as an opportunity to buttonhole Supreme Court justices. His comments were recorded by Lauren Windsor, a liberal documentary filmmaker. Windsor attended the dinner as a dues-paying member of the society under her real name, along with a colleague. She asked questions of the justice as though she were a religious conservative.

The recording, which was provided exclusively to Rolling Stone, captures Windsor approaching Alito at the event and reminding him that they spoke at the same function the year before, when she asked him a question about political polarization. In the intervening year, she tells the justice, her views on the matter had changed. “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” Windsor says. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.”

 
“I think you’re probably right,” Alito replies. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

The justice’s unguarded comments highlight the degree to which Alito makes little effort to present himself as a neutral umpire calling judicial balls and strikes, but rather as a partisan member of a hard-right judicial faction that’s empowered to make life-altering decisions for every American.

What Alito clearly does not understand is that (1) democracy demands reasonable compromise, and (2) authoritarianism rejects compromise. Alito's failure to understand this fundamental  difference is obvious. His pro-tyranny sympathies cannot be much clearer.

Let’s spitball here (science minded types only need apply) 😉

Thinking about two phenomena today: Chemistry and the Laws of Physics.

• I’m wondering, what “trumps” (as in, surpasses, beats, is better than, more powerful than, etc.) what; a.) Chemistry (the elements that make up our universe) *or* b.) the Laws of Physics (the processes/fundamental forces that act upon those elements)? 

• Are they equals?  If yes, in what way?  If not, why not?

• Is one more “basic/fundamental” than the other?  If yes, which, and why?

• Can there exist one without the other?  IOW, do they share a mutually inclusive or exclusive existence?

• Is it a symbiotic relationship, necessary for one another's survival?

• Am I asking crazy (meaningless) questions?

Talk about (debate) these two natural phenomena.  Brainstorm away, just for the heck of/conversation of it.

(by PrimalSoup)