October 23, 2015

Grand Moff Tarkin Not Such a Bad Guy After All

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Brad Delong points me to Ogged, who points me to a recent tweet from Bill Kristol:

A commenter has an obvious and seemingly devastating riposte: “Other than blowing up an entire planet to torture a prisoner/deter other planets, the Empire was pretty moderate.”

But wait. The size of the Star Wars galaxy is in some dispute, and I’m not willing to spend more than a minute or so on this. But apparently the galaxy contained about 50 million star systems during the reign of the Empire. If we assume Alderaan was more or less typical, it means the Death Star killed one 50-millionth of the galactic population. Assuming I haven’t slipped a decimal point somewhere, that’s about equivalent to killing 140 people on present-day Earth.

See? Not so bad! That’s about 0.0002 percent as bad as Hitler in World War II. It’s about 0.07 percent as bad as George Bush in the Iraq War. And honestly, the enhanced interrogation of Han didn’t look all that bad either. I think we really have to give this one to Kristol. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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