Ralph Nader: Engineers Often the First To Notice Waste, Fraud and Safety Issues 139
McGruber writes: In Scientific American, Ralph Nader writes about the decades of struggles by conscientious engineers -- whether employees or consultants -- who strive to balance professional ethics with occupational survival. Nader writes: "[T]oday's engineers are working in an improved environment for taking their conscience to work. Yet much more remains to be done to safeguard the ability of engineers to speak truth to the powers-that-be. For starters, the word whistle-blower -- once popularly meant to describe a snitch or a disgruntled employee -- now describes an ethical person willing to put his or her job on the line in order to expose corrupt, illegal, fraudulent and harmful activities. Indeed, in the aftermath of recent Boeing 737 MAX crashes, the media routinely and positively refers to disclosures by 'Boeing whistle-blowers.' Congressional investigating committees and federal agencies have called for whistle-blowers to come forward and shed light on corporate misdeeds and governmental agency lapses. To put it mildly, this was not always the case." "We need more public interest engineering advocacy groups and initiatives to open up new frontiers of excellence and service as well as to support engineers inside the corporate framework," adds Nader. "We need more engineers who embody the three principles of any profession -- independence, scholarly pursuits, and commitment to public service. Those are the vital ethical pillars to helping engineers withstand the great pressures to place commercial priorities over their engineering integrity and limit harm to the public."
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I wonder if the term would have a history in those steam powered industries where whistle blowing would be a sing to stop working and evacuate the factory to avoid a boiler explosion, in addition to turning of a shift.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower#Origin_of_term
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We as consumers don't want to pay a lot for products. We see this with complaints when looking at new technology we go, this costs $1,000 but it is only made with $50 worth of parts. Then a year or so down the line there is a 3rd party maker that makes the same product for a half the cost.
Especially when doing something new and innovative, there is a lot of money that goes into proper engineering. But people while they say they want a well engineered product, doesn't want to pay for the full engineering
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The cost of the actual engineering is nowhere near that on a per unit basis for anything that will see significant sales. Lets say you have a $1000 product that expects half a million in sales worldwide. If you put 5 engineers on it for 2 years and pay them $200,000/year (each), the engineering cost comes to $4/unit. Double the engineering effort and insist on a 100% mark-up on the engineering and now the product costs $1008.
Re:It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:5, Informative)
Engineers are there to do one thing, and one thing alone: Professionally certify that a design will meet certain criteria. End of story.
That turns out not to be the case. Engineers are also required to create and implement designs.
Incidentally, if "engineers are there to do one thing, and one thing alone: Professionally certify that a design will meet certain criteria", who sets those criteria? Presumably non-engineers. But how do non-engineers know what criteria are appropriate, since by definition they lack the requisite skill and knowledge?
The problem is akin to politicians who claim, when a policy backfires disastrously, that they were only acting on "the best professional advice".
But if, as non-professionals, they need to get advice from professionals... how can they tell the difference between good advice and bad advice?
Re:It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:5, Insightful)
how can they tell the difference between good advice and bad advice?
Obviously you must be new to management as this is a trivial question. The answer is obviously - good advice is what puts money into your portfolio now, or to a lesser extent lowers the immediate costs to produce. Bad advice is what costs more to produce, or puts money into your portfolio later or not at all.
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Insert "is promised to".
In other words, according to management (all too often) is the one who tells you what you want to hear is the "expert" and the guy telling you unfortunate truths is a two bit hack who needs to be shown the door.
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how do non-engineers know what criteria are appropriate
They don't. That has never stopped anyone.
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>how can they tell the difference between good advice and bad advice?
Well, if we're talking typical politicians, it seems to actually be pretty easy - the best advice comes with the largest bribes.
If we were instead talking statesmen or leaders - then it probably comes down to being able to evaluate the competence and honesty of the advice through a carefully cultivated network of trusted advisers. Which is a valuable skill set in its own right.
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how can they tell the difference between good advice and bad advice?
By having advice evaluated by a peer or team of similarly-qualified individuals who then append their summary.
Obviously... a person without the engineering qualifications does not have appropriate background to weigh in or
attempt to apply their own opinion or adequately evaluate the advise: this must be done by other objective engineers
approving the advice and the decided outcome based on its objective merits without being pressured
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"But if, as non-professionals, they need to get advice from professionals... how can they tell the difference between good advice and bad advice?"
The CEO hears that sales needs a new piece of software. He talks to the CIO who says 18 months. He talks to the heads of all other departments, who all say 'Shouldn't take more than three months'. So he's got one group giving one opinion, and *one* so-called expert giving another ... of course he goes with the majority.
Worse than that, most CIO types - and many
Re:It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:5, Informative)
Engineers are there to do one thing, and one thing alone: Professionally certify that a design will meet certain criteria.
I just love it when janitors explains product lifecycle.
The engineers create the product. It's Quality Assurance that certifies the design meets the requirements - and also that the implementation is done according to the specs, the documentation is done, changes are tracked, the production tooling is up to scratch, that the personnel is qualified, that the production process is sound and includes proper controls, etc etc...
Engineers NEVER EVER certify jack shit because they'd end up being judge and jury. That's a basic rule.
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Depends on the engineer, in some disciplines like civil engineering they do have to sign off on a design and it carries a lot of liability. But that's usually with licensed engineers. Not "software engineer" programmers.
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in some disciplines like civil engineering they do have to sign off on a design and it carries a lot of liability.
That is because we have laws about the construction of buildings, bridges, dams, and other such infrastructure, where
the designs must be approved by a qualified licensed professional engineer as part of the process for securing the
permits or rights to lawfully proceed with building it -- many lives and high dollar values in property can be in immediate jeopardy
if the thing fails because of
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Engineers do not just 'sign off' on a design, they do the math and independently prove the design. The current problem is people signing off on a design without doing the math, driven by greed. Engineers are licensed, drivers are licensed, when drivers drive recklessly they are prosecuted and recieve custodial sentences, the same needs to apply to engineers. When those who do the math and check the math and people die, they need to earn a custodial sentence for criminal negligence. Will that make engineerin
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QA is part of the engineering process. There are design engineers that design the bridge, and then the construction engineers are leads that oversee the building. I loved it when Concord decided the engineers were going to be test passengers on its inaugural flight after redesign. Thats how you motivate.
I had a friend who worked for intel around the time they opened the phoenix plant (pentium pro era). Remember how chips got rated for clock speed based on a QA test. Same die, same wafer, same process. Not e
Re:It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:4, Interesting)
The process involves something no one wants to talk about: responsibility and honor. You do the best job, and walk-- your pride and dignity intact-- when asked to design failure.
There's always a salesperson, an MBA in finance, an unwise customer decision, that endangers safety. A responsible engineer has to say: no. And if such a design is approved, becomes guilty if their silence is implicit.
Professional integrity still demands responsibility. This is counter to profits-at-all-costs dictums of modern corporate life. How does one resolve that paradox? It drives some engineers to bad conclusions, while others find other jobs, and still others develop standards group and compliance mechanism that save lives every minute of every day.
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The engineers create the product. It's Quality Assurance that certifies the design meets the requirements - and also that the implementation is done according to the specs, the documentation is done, changes are tracked, the production tooling is up to scratch, that the personnel is qualified, that the production process is sound and includes proper controls, etc etc...
In the world of "real engineering", PEs must sign off on anything. And, true enough, companies only do that because they have to. Much fun as it would be, you don't actually "QA a bridge" by driving progressively heavier trucks across it until it collapses.
Engineers NEVER EVER certify jack shit because they'd end up being judge and jury. That's a basic rule.
You're stuck in the 20th century. Now companies have no QA nor any professional systems admins. Software engineers are the single interchangeable cog that must do all jobs. Since when has a large corporation cared that their stupid ideas were counter
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In the world of "real engineering", PEs must sign off on anything. And, true enough, companies only do that because they have to. Much fun as it would be, you don't actually "QA a bridge" by driving progressively heavier trucks across it until it collapses.
Only in limited fields, such as civil in the case you mentioned. Aeronautical and electrical, for example, do not require a PE for many activities.
Re: It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:2)
But, but, but... it's AGILE(tm)!!!!!!1!!!11!!!!
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"Engineers NEVER EVER certify"
A very long time ago (but the last time I worked as an employee) I was asked to certify an isolation amplifier for MTBF. The boss just came in and asked me to sign the paper.
I wasn't willing to do so without at least looking at the schematics. When I did, the first thing I found was a 250 mW resistor that was dissipating 400 mW inside a sealed box. That's not likely to last 250,000 hours. When I said I could not certify the thing, I was immediately fired.
Some years later it
Re:It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get your hopes up, folks, the bean-counting weasels in head office don't give a shit. They just want to cut costs and maximize profits.
It's worse than that. They want to financially engineer speculative investment rorts for the shareholders. The company does not appear to have any problem taking on ever increasing levels of corporate bond debt. This money could have been used to fund the development of a new airframe, you know, Boeing's core business and all that. If they had started this 10 years ago (after the GFC, when interest rates went to zero and lots of workers found themselves without jobs) they would have been able to fight Airbus with a brand new design by now. It could have even been type rated with the 787, so that, while airlines would have to fork out for training, they would also be investing in a much more flexible future. The whole thing would have been a pretty virtuous usage of the ridiculously cheap money that the fed pumped into the markets.
But instead they used much of that money to buy back their shares and along with much of the rest of the financial industry, create a bunch of giant speculative bubbles in almost every asset class. Meanwhile the real economy struggled along without decent job or wage growths while the trillions of QE bailout money sloshed around in the casino.
Ultimately this is because we have idiots in charge of the monetary system, who are not prepared to regulate the financial industry and setup whatever rules are required to prevent this sort of distorting behaviour. The financial industry is only meant to do one thing - allocate capital towards the most productive (in real terms) need. Make sure it is doing this properly and many of our problems will be solved. The alternative is to let them continue to play these games with our markets, and then wonder why regular folks start thinking authoritarianism and central control isn't such a bad idea anymore.
Re: It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:2)
"Ultimately this is because we have brazen crooks in charge of the monetary system"
FTFY
Re:It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw this first hand. As a child growing up in the 70s and 80s my dad worked for IBM during a time where they were top dog on most office machines. He worked in a division of failure analysis. He ran two electron microscopes, as well as a full chemistry lab. When there was a rash of failing parts, it was his job to determine the cause. Sometimes it was materials based lending itself to brittle fracture, fatigue failure, or plastic deformation. Sometimes it was a chemical reaction from a step in the production process causing corrosion of conductors. The weirdest was when his company had transitioned to Lexmark and were trying to root out the cause of print heads of inkjet printers getting clogged prematurely. Turned out to be a bacteria feeding on the ink clogging the cartridge printhead.
Now that everything is coming out of china super cheap, noone wants to spend R&D on failure analysis. Its cheaper to just fill massive landfills with parts that failed prematurely than it is to identify the cause. So the companies just replace them under warranty.
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I work at a company that manufactures in China. We collect and analyze data on units returned under warranty and correct design flaws that lead to significant warranty claims. It would be dumb not to.
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I work at a company that manufactures in China. We collect and analyze data on units returned under warranty and correct design flaws that lead to significant warranty claims. It would be dumb not to.
Companies used to do testing and QA before shipping, and they used to do their own manufacturing so nobody changed plastics on them mysteriously, or subbed out counterfeit capacitors. Now you imagine that diligence after failure is sufficient.
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This is total nonsense. They absolutely know how to produce quality. They also know how to profit from making crap, and that it's a lot easier, and that they can get away with it because their government will protect them. By the time the world moves its manufacturing away from China to any large part, they will have already derived the benefit of pushing a bunch of garbage out to the rest of us, and they won't need our business any more.
My big worry is that since warfare with toy technology has become viab
Europe just passes laws (Score:3)
What you do is charge the company a recycling fee. Intense competition in electronics makes it hard to pass the cost onto the consumer so they put actual effort into making more durable products. You've got to do it to the company though since otherwise th
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Professionally certify that a design will meet certain criteria. End of story.
That isn’t true. The #1 objective [nspe.org] in the professional licensed engineer’s code of ethics is to maintain public safety.
1. Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
In fact as a professional engineer you can lose your license if you certified a design that injured or killed someone. In the case of the 737 MAX they will scrutinize the actions of the engineers and some may lose their licenses or have them suspended for a while. Boeing unfortunately may not face tough sanctions.
Re:It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:4)
In the case of the 737 MAX they will scrutinize the actions of the engineers and some may lose their licenses or have them suspended for a while. Boeing unfortunately may not face tough sanctions.
This reminds me of the VW emissions cheating scandal. The top management tried to blame it on a "rogue engineer".
As we now have found out, it was the top management who orchestrated the cheating.
The top management got golden parachutes. VW engineers and factory workers lost their jobs.
Re: It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:2)
Re: It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:2)
Citation please.
Re: It was ever thus - and getting worse. (Score:2)
They specify in the article it includes software engineer. It's unreal how aggressive they are about enforcing the title. They have spiders checking linkedin, they will robocall your employer saying you falsely used the title engineer on your linked and the company could be liable too, they'll check your voice mail messages and business cards to make sure you don't use the title engi
Re: FAIL: ignoring Maslow's pyramid (Score:5, Insightful)
What does capitalism have to do with it? In other economic regimes, like the collectivism of the Soviet Union, the pressure is even greater to conform to the vision of those with the political power.
Yes, we know. Trots will always say 'it has never been tried.'
Fuck off.
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Nah, it's just the same. You have to suck up to some dimwit who more likely than not got his job for some qualification that has zero to do with the position. The difference is just that in Communism getting a top level management position depends on how well you know Marxism/Leninism, in Capitalism it depends on how well you know someone further up the chain.
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Creating cheap throwaway products wastefully is not a problem generally associated with socialism or communism. That's a capitalist thing. The Soviets had different issues. Like distribution.
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Isn't capitalism wonderful?
Yes, it is. In capitalism, you only lose your job for pointing out the flaws in your boss's ideas, and you can just get another job. In communism, they just have you shot, and maybe your family too if they're really annoyed. Communism is better - just publicly ask anyone living in a communist country!
Re: FAIL: ignoring Maslow's pyramid (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time someone cites the times of Stalin as the prime example of Communism, I feel compelled to cite the early industrial times as a prime example of Capitalism, with labor days of 16 hours and children working in coal mines. Was it a reality? Yes. Was it representative? No.
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Ignoring China? [wikipedia.org] And the time of Mao was worse, as he arranged the mass death of millions of ardent supporters.
The most deadly modern "natural" disaster (multiple cascading dam failures) was the result of how engineering works under communism. Engineering in modern China is even worse, with high rise residential buildings just collapsing under their own weight - whatever mix they have of capitalism and communism is really quite bad.
Defending communism just makes you look malicious - it's beyond being just
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I give you that Capitalism is less blunt. It's insidious that way. Not only in the way it kills, by denying those that can't afford it what's required to survive. The promise it makes is also more insidious. The promise of Communism was "work hard and we'll live in paradise tomorrow". The promise of Capitalism is "work hard and you'll live in paradise tomorrow". If you fail to succeed, which you invariably will, it's easier to pin it on you instead of the system. Because both systems are rigged to ensure th
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by denying those that can't afford it what's required to survive.
Absurd hyperbole. Even in the Great Depression, before any modern social programs, almost no one actually starved to death. Now we have many safety nets. Capitalism with a safety net is still capitalism.
There is surely a better system than capitalism. It's the worst, except for everything else that's ever been tried.
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Some pople did die of starvation & malnourishment during the great depression. Even as late as the 60s, deaths from malnourishment were not unknown in poor areas of the country.
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So you're a Hooverville denier?
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Can't trust any story told by Okies!
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Times sucked for both groups. However, the descendants of Stalin's population still live in a shithole. The descendants of those 16 hour a day child coal miners sip Starbucks, Tweet on iPhones, and complain about the lack of free college education.
Developing economies and poverty suck, but capitalism progresses out of that situation far faster and improves the lives of many more people than communism ever has. Maybe as we progress to the next level of societal development, communism might be a better system
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You mean the descendants of those 16 hour a day miners work at Starbucks and sell you iPhones, right?
Capitalism certainly is a way to efficiently distribute the resources. Whether the resources are sensibly distributed is debatable.
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Capitalism certainly is a way to efficiently distribute the resources. Whether the resources are sensibly distributed is debatable.
Efficiency means that the average person gets more. "Sensible" means that whoever gets to decide what "sensible" means, and his cronies, get vast wealth while everything else is a shithole.
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So one person gets 10, 8 people get none is better than a system where each person gets 1?
Capitalism can work, but the charade we're calling Capitalism now isn't.
Smith specifically warned against handing out corporate charters too easily and enforcing them too lightly.
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I imagine working at a Starbucks or the Apple Store is still better than most of the jobs in former communist countries. And I'd be willing to bet most of the people working at Starbucks and the Apple store have an iPhone and drink Starbucks.
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Not really.
Imagine working in a company where what you do doesn't matter to nobody. Your boss doesn't care, your boss' boss doesn't care, nobody cares. As long as you put up a show of working, you're fine. If you have to queue up for oranges or potatoes, nobody gives a shit if you're absent for the morning. Or afternoon. Unless some bigwig is supposed to come, and you have ample warning that they will, nobody will yell at you for being too slow. Mostly because they're busy goofing off themselves. And for go
No shit (Score:2)
Of course they are. That's why management doesn't like to listen to them because whenever they open their mouths it costs money and/or you suddenly become accountable.
Re:No shit (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, the whole "speaking truth to power" bullshit only works if the truth matches what the manager likes to hear.
Which is rarely the case.
There is no balance (Score:1)
"who strive to balance professional ethics with occupational survival."
There is no balance between professional ethics and occupational survival.
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Thanks, Democrats and Republicans (Score:2)
Thanks, credulous followers of the Establishment. You voted for what you considered "the lesser evil", and you got... evil! Surprise, surprise, surprise.
A long time ago on a cold Florida Morning (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that's some fluffy word-salad. (Score:5, Insightful)
How are those, "the vital ethical pillars to helping engineers withstand the great pressures to place commercial priorities over their engineering integrity and limit harm to the public"? Isn't the job figuring out how to achieve commercial priorities, like the product being functional, commercially viable, and only exploding if it's intended to? And, "public interest engineering advocacy groups and initiatives to open up new frontiers of excellence and service as well as to support engineers inside the corporate framework"? What? That's some flowery, but ultimately meaningless verbiage.
Shall I simply assume that Scientific American didn't put this through peer review?
Re:Wow, that's some fluffy word-salad. (Score:5, Insightful)
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... and his daughter died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash ...
Actually, it was Ralph Nader's niece's daughter, 24-year-old Samya Stumo.
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Yep... If this didn't come from a "famous name" like Ralph Nader, nobody would even consider it newsworthy.
Fact is, any business building a product that's used by millions of people has to consider safety as part of the whole design. Boeing screwed up this time .... but overall, it's a company who clearly DOES employ plenty of engineering talent who care that the products are safe. For many years, all I heard from people is how they'd rather fly on a Boeing airplane than anything made by a company like AirB
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Speak for yourself, asshole. Some of us try to make the world a better place.
Better by calling people names? +1 Funny.
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This is why I sadly quit subscribing to SciAm many years ago - tired of the relentless left-wing idiocy that they were trying to pass off as "science".
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Scientific American has been, since really the 90s neither Scientific nor, in fact, much pro-America either.
They've largely devolved into "Leftist political agitprop with a science-y flavor" that you can pay to subscribe to.
All of the following really identify the change of ownership in the late 1990s as a point at which the feel of SciAm went from a sober, objective science journal to unabashed side-taking (and more importantly: to-hell-with-actual-science):
https://uvachemistry.com/2015/... [uvachemistry.com]
https://sandwalk [blogspot.com]
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Fired... (Score:1)
I literally just got fired 4 months ago for some of this. NDA with a couple months pay as a forced way to keep you quiet.
Not exactly (Score:2)
Usually the first to notice are the floor workers, the grunts who assemble your shit, who empty your trash cans, who do the "simple" jobs.
But they know better than question what management does. The average narcissistic manager can't handle it if the floor sweeper who makes a fraction of his salary knows better how to run the company. Even if he usually does.
Waste/fraud in government? (Score:2)
What if you work for the government and there are actually disincentives to reduce waste and fraud? (It's some lifer's job, a pork contract for an influential voting block or politician, cream on a bloated defense budget, walking around money for underemployed bases, too much hassle to tangle with an agency about, etc.) Are you left with just "safety" or do you just mail your career in?
Whistle-blowers? (Score:1)
Because of the way laws are written, they can not usually recoup their legal fees when found INNO
Re: No, sabre rattling (Score:2)
"a tarriff war that only U.S. consumers can lose."
Wait - you mean the trade dispute (not a "war") that Americans (who are both producers and consumers) can only win?
Trade policy under the treasonous Democrat/Republican/oligarch consensus of the past several decades has been so bad, so destructive, so utterly corrosive to society, that _any_ change in policy was pretty well guaranteed to be a big improvement.