Media Coverage of 2 Different Drone Scenarios

Subsidizing Contractor Misconduct: Government Contracts Despite Egregious Labor Violations - Chris Thompson in Corpwatch

In effect, the federal government has been subsidizing contractor misconduct with our tax dollars.

Rodney Bridgett was killed when a piece of Tyson Foods’ heavy equipment crushed him. Calvin Bryant was crippled in a Imperial Sugar plant explosion in Georgia that also killed 14 of his co-workers. When Alma Aranda tried to exercise her legal right to take unpaid time off to care for her dying mother, Verizon harassed her with so much paperwork that her hair fell out in clumps.

What do these 3 cases have in common? The federal government handed out tens of millions of dollars in contracts to these companies, without regard to how they treated their workers. 

In effect, the federal government has been subsidizing contractor misconduct with our tax dollars. As long as federal contractors have known that their lawbreaking would not jeopardize the next contract, they have had little financial incentive to stop mistreating their workers.

Government rules that require it to contract only with companies that have a “satisfactory record of performance, integrity, and business ethics.” In practice, the contracting system does not effectively review companies’ records for responsibility, nor does it ensure—before awarding contracts—that violators reform their practices.

As a result companies have continued to receive billions of dollars, despite long records of violating workplace laws. They may neglect legally required safety standards and maim a worker on the job, systematically engage in age or gender discrimination, refuse to pay overtime in violation of the law, or ignore the Americans with Disabilities Act and demote or fire disabled employees.

The full article is available here

2 New Studys: 4 Ways We're Pushing Earth Past Limits - Oliver Milman

All of these changes are shifting Earth into a "new state" that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.

Humans are "eating away at our own life support systems" at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.

Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results.

Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded "safe" levels: human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change, and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertilizer use.

Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to provide a baseline for the analysis.

They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilization has advanced significantly.

All of these changes are shifting Earth into a "new state" that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.

The full article is available here