Friday, February 10, 2017
[1868 - William Allen White, newspaper publisher, writer, born in Emporia, Kansas]
[1890 - Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, poet, writer, born in Moscow, Russia]
Actor Alan Hale
[1892 - Alan Hale (Rufus Edward Mackahan), actor, born in Washington, D.C.]
[1893 - Jimmy (James Francis) Durante, actor, comedian, born in Brooklyn]
[1898 - Dame Judith (Frances Margaret) Anderson, actress, born in Adelaide, South Australia]
[1905 - Walter A. Brown, Basketball Hall of Famer, founder NBA and Boston Celtics, born in Hopkinton, Massachusetts]
[1906 - Lon (Creighton Tull) Chaney Jr., actor, born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma]
[1914 - Lawrence 'Larry' Cecil Adler, composer, musician, born in Baltimore, Maryland]
[1920 - Alexander Comfort, medical researcher, gerontologist, anarchist, pacifist, writer born in London]
[1927 - (Mary Violet)Leontyne Price, lyric soprano, born in Laurel, Mississippi]
[1960 - USS Sargo (SSN-583) surfaces at the North Pole]
[1962 - American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers exchanged for Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel]
[1966 - Ralph Nader testifies to Senate on US auto industry social irresponsibility]
More than four decades ago, a youthful Ralph Nader appeared before Congress to expose the shameful safety practices of the Detroit auto makers. Now that Mr. Nader has become an old curmudgeon, and a perennially unsuccessful candidate for high office, the Detroit auto makers have finally listened to his message. Having resisted most safety advances in the intervening years, it was only government regulation, consumer oversight, and some expensive lawsuit losses (plus some healthy competition from the more responsible foreign manufacturers) that made the US-produced cars now on our highway more protective of human life. Detroit built safer cars only when they had no other sensible choice.
More recently, numerous recalls by auto makers of every stripe have revealed that known defects that were causing death and serious injury to motorists (including some related to defective safety equipment) were actively concealed from regulators and the public for years by corporate officers, who apparently treated the loss and damage of human life as just another cost of doing business. If corporations are indeed persons, it is high time that the criminals among them were sent to prison for taking human life in the interest of bottom line performance and financial gain.
William's Whimsical Words:
Well, Mr. Attorney General, when can we expect the first indictment of the these homicidal corporate officers?
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