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Tuesday Morning: Monitor

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Y me lamento por no estar alla
Y hoy te miento para estar solos tu y yo
Y la distancia le gano al amor
Solo te veo en el monitor

— excerpt, Monitor by Volovan

Sweet little tune, easy to enjoy even if you don’t speak Spanish.

Speaking of monitor…

Flint Water Crisis: Michigan State Police monitoring social media
Creeptastic. MSP is following social media communications related to Flint water crisis, which means they’re watching this blog and contributors’ tweets for any remarks made about Flint. Whatever did they do in the day before social media when the public was unhappy about government malfeasance?

MDEQ personnel told Flint city water employee to omit tests with high lead readings
The charges filed last week against two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and a Flint city employee were related to the manipulation and falsification of lead level tests. From out here it looks like Mike Glasgow did what the MDEQ told him to do; with the city under the control of the state, it’s not clear how Glasgow could have done anything else but do what the state ordered him to do. Which governmental body had higher authority under emergency management — the city’s water department, or the MDEQ? And what happens when personnel at the MDEQ aren’t on the same page about testing methodology?

MDHHS too worried about Ebola to note Legionnaire’s deaths in 2014-2015?
Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services director Nick Lyons maintains a “breakdown in internal communication” kept information about the Legionnaire’s disease outbreak from reaching him. He also said MDHHS was focused on Ebola because of its high mortality rate overseas. There were a total of 11 cases of Ebola in the U.S. between 2014 and 2015, none of which were diagnosed or treated in Michigan. Meanwhile, 10 people died of Legionnaire’s due to exposure to contaminated Flint water in that same time frame. Not certain how MDHHS will respond to an imported biological crisis when it can’t respond appropriately to a local one created by the state.

Other miscellaneous monitoring

  • Charter Communications and Time Warner tie-up approved, with caveat (Reuters) — Charter can’t tell content providers like HBO they can’t sell their content over the internet – that’s one of a few exceptions FCC placed on the deal. I think this is just insane; the public isn’t seeing cheaper broadband or cable content in spite of allowing ISPs to optimize economies of scale. Between Charter/TWC and Comcast, they’ll have 70% of all broadband connections in the U.S.
  • Mitsubishi Motors fudged its fuel economy numbers for last 25 years (AP) — This investigation is exactly what should happen across EU, because EU-based manufacturers have done this for just as long or longer. And the EU knows this, turns a blind eye to the tricks automakers use to inflate fuel economy ratings.
  • Goldman Sachs has a brand new gig: internet-based banking (Fortune) — This is the fruit of GS’ acquisition of General Electric’s former financial arm. Hmm.
  • BAE Systems has a nice graphic outlining the SWIFT hack via Bangladesh’s central bank (BAE) — Makes it easy to explain to Grampa how somebody carted off nearly a billion dollars.

Toodledy-doo, Tuesday. See you tomorrow morning!

John Galt Outsources Death to Bangladesh to Save Pennies on Fifty Dollar T-shirt

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Graphic from retailer Everlane summarizing production costs for t-shirts that retail for fifty dollars.

Graphic from retailer Everlane summarizing production costs for t-shirts that retail for fifty dollars.

In a tale of unimaginable sorrow that is made all the worse by the unconscionable greed that  brought it about, at least 194 are now known to be dead in the collapse of a building in Bangladesh. But this was not just any building that collapsed, it was a building that housed multiple garment manufacturers. And in a pattern that has been repeated many times before, we see death brought about by the craven actions of the managers of the production companies while US retailers profess grief and claim no direct connection to the particular factories affected. Over time, once attention dies down a bit, those connections will become clear due to what appears to be a system designed to distance the retailers from the sweat shops via multiple subcontracting arrangements.

From today’s New York Times:

Search crews on Thursday clawed through the wreckage of a collapsed building that housed several factories making clothing for European and American consumers, with the death toll rising to at least 194 with many others still unaccounted for.

/snip/

The Bangladeshi news media reported that inspection teams had discovered cracks in the structure of Rana Plaza on Tuesday. Shops and a bank branch on the lower floors immediately closed. But the owners of the garment factories on the upper floors ordered employees to work on Wednesday, despite the safety risks.

Labor activists combed the wreckage on Wednesday afternoon and discovered labels and production records suggesting that the factories were producing garments for major European and American brands. Labels were discovered for the Spanish brand Mango, and for the low-cost British chain Primark.

Activists said the factories also had produced clothing for Walmart, the Dutch retailer C & A, Benetton and Cato Fashions, according to customs records, factory Web sites and documents discovered in the collapsed building.

The drive to save pennies on garments is directly behind this and similar tragedies:

“The front-line responsibility is the government’s, but the real power lies with Western brands and retailers, beginning with the biggest players: Walmart, H & M, Inditex, Gap and others,” said Scott Nova, executive director of Worker Rights Consortium, a labor rights organization. “The price pressure these buyers put on factories undermines any prospect that factories will undertake the costly repairs and renovations that are necessary to make these buildings safe.”

These sorts of tragedies happen with alarming regularity. Last September, at least 258 people died in a fire in a Karachi garment factory that had escaped safety inspections.

And note that although governments are cited in these tragedies for failing to provide adequate regulation and inspections, it is the tremendous pressure applied by US retailers to reduce production costs that drives many of the decisions that put workers at risk of death.

But these retailers are chasing very tiny cost reductions in the overall retail prices of garments. The graphic above is taken from a Tumblr post by retailer Everlane (they are touting their own business model of removing wholesalers, so they do have a particular point of view in promulgating the numbers). Read more →