For this Labor Day, WC offers a re-post of an August 2011 blog post. A book review of a biography of Joe Hill, a martyr of the early days of the labor movement.
The first song WC learned to play on the harmonica was “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night,” the labor organizing anthem popularized by Joan Baez. It’s an easy, simple tune, as a labor anthem should be. But there was nothing simple or easy about the death of Joe Hill. There’s an excellent new biography of Joe Hill out, The Man Who Never Died, by William M. Adler (Amazon Link), that examines the life, times and wrongful death of Joe Hill. It’s a remarkable book and worth a read.

Joe Hill was a labor organizer, political gadfly, and a Wobblie – a member of the Industrial Workers of the World…

This post was written pre-surgery.

Under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund, the very worst environmentally contaminated sites are designated for cleanup by a scoring system called the Hazard Ranking System. If they are bad enough, they get on the National Priorities List – a euphemism if WC has ever heard one – and, eventually, they get “remediated” – another euphemism.

It’s an imperfect system, but CERCLA is a start at getting some of the worst environmental catastrophes attended to.

America needs something similar for ethics and politicians. We need a way to “score” their ethics or lack thereof, so that a plan of remediation to address those ethical lapses can be developed.