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Social Justice - A Conversation
Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a k u and v studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Unknown Speaker 0:17
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.
Unknown Speaker 0:23
Hi, I'm Gabriela Tam, I'm a fourth year accounting student.
Unknown Speaker 0:27
And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation, a conversation. Well, good evening, everybody. We're back again. Charles Stanton, along with my co host, Gabriella Tam, hello. And we have a full bag of tricks for the today's tonight's broadcast. The there's never there's never an empty pouch when we do this show. I guess, I guess, you know, it seems like today that you can't keep up with all the different problems that our country is enduring. We're going to start off the show, as we have mentioned previously, with the situation with Boeing, and United Airlines and all that. And as we, as we know, from recent news that all the major executives from Boeing have departed. There's a major governmental investigation. They're also investigating apparently United Airlines. As it's extraordinarily disturbing. I am not I would not say I am a relaxed flyer, but I do. But I but I have managed to cope with flying. Yeah. But, you know, part of the part of the unspoken contract beyond the fact that you know, you're just you've just buy a ticket on an airline, is your assumption or your beliefs that can hold the people who are, you know, taking you to different places are very, very screwed, and it's about safety. Yeah. And that you, you are under the assumption that everything that is being done is done to make sure that the fruit of the passengers everybody gets to their destination, and a safe way. And I think that's, I think that's open to question now. Yeah, I say I say that because of the number in the last few weeks of incidents on these planes. I mean, like, very basic, mechanical failures on the airplane. And basically, you don't get the feeling when you, you know, read what the people have to say, from the hierarchy of the airlines. Are those people from Boeing, you don't get the feeling that they're being totally candid about, actually, what is going on? Yeah. I don't know what you're feeling.
Unknown Speaker 3:13
I mean, like, I thought, I don't know if I've heard like, I thought I heard this, but isn't, like flying. Technically. I mean, it's supposed to be safer than driving, right? It's safer. And now, it's like, you're putting people in the situ, like, there are lots of people who are afraid of flying already. And now you're like, amplifying or like, giving them even more of a reason to like, do something that was considered or is considered, like, potentially more dangerous, you know? Yeah. It's just like, it's kind of sad how, I mean, of course, it's not only like the airplane industry, but like, it makes me feel like, there's just a lack of caring for people. And like, we were talking about this earlier, like, it seems now, like something that we have made, which is like money and something that we've put a value on like it this is all like all us, like, what, like money is just something it's just like a create this man created, right? Like it's value is created by us. And I don't know, it's just like, we put that above people about above, like lives that we should, like, be caring about the end of the day. I don't know. It's just like, it's just really sad. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 4:39
Well, I think I think that my take on it is much like your take on it. I think that the motivation for profit, has in many industries obscured the need for the public good. So that You know, whatever that financial bottom line is, what what the stock price has to be, how we reward our executives, how we reward the shareholders, in many cases, obscures basically, the basic principles of what the business should be in a situation with an airline, of course, it would seem to be a given knowing as, as you do, and, you know, studying aviation, the complexities of something we've come to take for granted, which is flight. Yeah, I mean, to me, flight is a miracle that you're able to be in, you know, say, Mike in the East Coast. And then three or four or five hours, you're over here, you're in San Francisco, you're in Los Angeles, you're in all these places. So it's a great gift in a way. But but the the obligation to keep receiving that gift is that we, we want to maximize every safety procedure that we can, we can do. Yeah. The fact that all these executives left Boeing, which is like, along with Airbus, probably one of the two top manufacturers of, of aviation vehicles in our world is like profoundly disturbing. And almost, like, lacking any explanation to the public, yeah, it's
Unknown Speaker 6:42
like, they're, you know, they're chickening out or something. There's like, Oh, we're being investigated, I don't want to, I don't want to tell you the reason why, like, our airplanes are so dangerous, or like, why we're cutting corners now. But
Unknown Speaker 6:55
the thing that's also interesting is, you know, we're doing this show, and when we're not my expertise is law, your expertise, obviously, as accounting, yeah. But that you would, you would have to come on a program like we're doing, and talk about something that should be a given, you're running that kind of a business. But I think that one of the problems that you have, and this is the problem with the drug industry, it's the problem with, with with the meat industry, the poultry industry, is you don't have the, you don't have the staff, you don't have the amount of people need it. So really, to really keep an eye on these on these industries. Because in a lot of ways, in a lot of ways, even though we have the FDA and we have all these different regulatory agencies that are part of the government, they're really understaffed. So, you know, it would be like the meat industry, like you could have, you can have people go to these different factories, where meat is processed, or, in the case of, of the drug industry, go to the factories and see how they, they do their do what they do. But the amount of people that you have doing it is miniscule, compared to all the things that you have to check. So in many ways, it's a matter of reliance on the people in the industry, and what they are and what their, what their priority is. And our society is so profit driven now, that I think a lot of these issues and Robbie's problems have not been attended to the fact it's what's what's frightening about the plane situation is not so much that you know, I mean in every in every industry, you could have you could have things that have gone wrong. I mean, you know, in say let's say let's say the car industry Yeah, you know you had the airbag inside the airbag incident or you know, and you had like you know what the self driving cars those are scary, which would which were where they had issues there. But the issues here though, I mean the airbag the airbag is an addition to the car. The airbag is a safety feature. Yeah. Okay. The dri the the the the thing with the cars, the self driving car, that's also an addition. But the thing with the planes are, this is the basic plane doesn't have to do it doesn't have to do with any addition or extras. extra benefit or
Unknown Speaker 9:57
extra service has already been like included. It's like a founding Question. Yeah, well, I mean, like,
Unknown Speaker 10:01
like, the height the failure of the hydraulic system. Yeah, you know, doors coming off. I mean, just like basic things, and you say to yourself, well, who maintain these planes? Or where was it? Or was it that there's such a demand? There's such a demand of people who want to fly, and the need and the need to keep all these planes going to handle all these? I mean, I've been on I've been on flights. I've been on flights. And yes, we, which is kind of I'll tell you an interesting story. When I came out here, after being visiting back east, in January, they had a flight and I was on where they were going to, they were going to from New Jersey to Las Vegas here. Then they had to go. Then they had to go, I guess to San Francisco. And then that same plane was going to make a return flight to Newark, New Jersey. So you had all you had this enormous wear edge? Yeah, on the planes. And not only that, though, not only that, though, the the the the wear edge on the cruise. Yeah. Whereas in the past, and it was it was really, it was really kind of bizarre. I had an incident where I was on the flight. And I was it was a problem flight, it was a problem flight, there was a lot of weather issues and stuff like that. But one point toward the end, the pilot came out of the cockpit where he was, and he was so like, disparaged. He saw, like disparage the people who were sitting there. And what was also interesting about it was usually when you get off the flight, you know, I want my customers basically to thank the crew. Yay, and to thank the pilot, but the pilots were gone. They weren't out there. They had left the plane already day. So I'm saying to myself, you know, maybe they had another flight to well, this is why I'm saying that. They're over there overtaxing the system. And it's and the danger there is, if you're if you're doing so many flights, with the same planes over a period of so many days? How actually, do you maintain the plane? Yeah. What are the maintenance protocols? For an airline? Yeah, and what of course, was what's different about it? What's different about it is that with a car, basically, you're, you're the maintainer of the car. Yeah, you know, you buy the car, the car is yours, and you you're supposed to do all the safety stuff. But in a sense, in a sense, your time on the plane is almost like a lease time, you have a lease a time on the plane to get to a certain place. But your your, your reason for getting on that plane for obviously, it's for to save time for you to drive, yeah, drive, but it's also an implied agreement that this lease that you're going to take, the lease is going to be a safe one. Yeah, that you're not going to go into something where, you know, there's a chance of calamity, you know, so So, yeah, so So that's how, that's how we started off ourselves today. I'm sure I'm sure that the will go over well with the airline industry. But in all truth, though, it's not just the airline industry. It's a lot of industry is
Unknown Speaker 13:59
a lot of industry. But it's, I was just telling the professor earlier, it's interesting how there's a lot of problems involving like airplanes and like, like, airplane companies, like manufacturers and like, like Southwest and American Airlines, and all this, like even the pilots, like I just made the connection, like, why are they forcing all these not well made airplanes to be sent out? But there's like a possibility of not enough pilots to fly these airplanes either.
Unknown Speaker 14:36
Well, well, not not only that, but you know, the whole system. The whole system basically works. You have the plane, and then you have the pilots, but the lack now of air traffic controllers, all these people who are overworked and that is I cannot imagine how challenging a job that must be. Yeah, because you're at a major airport now. And whether it's San Francisco or Los Angeles, or Chicago, or New York, and you're literally responsible for all these decisions, you know, who's gonna take off who's going to land, and read and read a lot about this is how all these people are overworked, they're doing, they're doing hours in excess of what they should be doing. They should, they should have a some kind of a cap, a lot of them are working overtime, only
Unknown Speaker 15:38
that there's like, there's so many different, like, weather conditions, you know, like, depending on where they are, they are of course, like, if like Los Angeles, you're under that sun for a while, or like, if you're in like, Chicago, you probably deal with like a bunch of like, lizards, or like, all those like tornadoes and stuff, you know,
Unknown Speaker 15:59
and you gotta be sharp, you gotta be sharp, you see, and that's, that's the thing that they want. And not not just in the airline industry, or even car manufacturing industry. The trend to our society is to have fewer and fewer and fewer people working because that's going to maximize their profits. Look Look at look at look at the drug industry. Look at look at the major pharmacies in our country, the reduction in the amount of workers, you go into the pharmacy, and or call the person on for the call them on the phone, you're talking about sometimes 3040 minutes, they've all cut back, they've cut back on the amount of stores, and they want they want the ultimate goal of these people. And you know, AI? I'm gonna throw AI in here. No, that's valid. Yeah. So AI in here, because, you know, everybody's talking about, everybody's talking about, you know, the dangers of AI, for children and all. That's all. That's all. That's all to the good. There should be, obviously protections for for young people. But but the mover, the mover behind AI, the mover behind AI, the mover behind really literally throwing it out there. Without really government regulation, or government or government evaluation. Yeah, it came out that has everything to do with the limitation of people that want to cut back and all these industries want to remove, they want to remove as many white collar workers as they can remove. This is what it's about. There's no mistake about that. That's why I got approved so fast. It's the same thing. It's the same thing with with, you know, social media, that the regulation of social media, okay, well, yeah, there should be regulation of social media, these companies should be, you know, very closely watching their content. But the problem is, the problem is that you gotta hire people to do that. And they don't want to do that. They want to run as they want to run as leadership as they can, so that they maximize the profits for the stockholders, but also maximize the the income of the executives. I was reading the other day about, about some of these executive packages that that's mind boggling. What are these people were taking home? Oh, you know, and, and, and the average and the average worker, the average worker is getting is not getting treated, right. But this is what they're doing. So they're trying to move down. I mean, if you think about it, if you think about it, if you look at if you look at you know, a lot of the food delivery services, that's basically an a job killer. If the if the Kroger Albertsons merger goes through, there's going to be another huge drop off in jobs with the merger, and closing and stores and everything. So the idea like in business, and everything is, well, you know, mergers, promote efficiency, and all the rest of that stuff. But that's not really the purpose of why they're doing it. It might it might provide some efficiency, but it's just to get rid of people. It's just to get rid of people, you know, it's
Unknown Speaker 19:36
so it's so interesting, because it's like, we don't because, you know, there's like the whole thing about like,
Unknown Speaker 19:45
like, like, illegal like immigration, immigration, were like, Oh, you have all these people like taking our jobs. Okay, but like these jobs weren't being done by you. And then also like, Now they want to take it away. So no one's gonna have these jobs. I don't know. Now, I'm also thinking like, what did they expect us to do if we don't have jobs? Yeah, you know, well, the
Unknown Speaker 20:11
problem that you have about about American industry or business or corporations, whatever it is, is, I'm not gonna, I'm not I'm not saying everybody, there's some. There's some wonderful people, like some dead people out there, Mackenzie, Mackenzie, Bezos, you know, she's done. Stuff that is only only worthy of praise, and she's helped. But a lot of these people, a lot of these people
Unknown Speaker 20:42
a lot of the point 00 1%
Unknown Speaker 20:45
It's not, it's not just, it's not just that they, it's not just that they, they sort of don't care. It's that they totally don't,
Unknown Speaker 20:57
I was gonna say it's that they really don't care, the
Unknown Speaker 21:01
needs of the average person, all the rest of the stuff, it just doesn't matter to them. And that's why and that's why our political system is so so messed up. And why why basic needs of people not being met, because the corporations, whether it'd be the social media corporations, or the food corporations, or the drug corporations, a lot of the corporation basically run the country, they run the country, they run the country, it's really executives, subliminally, but they really run it to the lobbyists, who bring an unknown number of cases that I know actually wrote the legislation for the senators and the people in the House of Representatives. They wrote it, they wrote it out, like it gave us a distance to it. That's about what it is. Yeah. That's, uh, I had gone to visit, I had gone to visit one of the senators. This was a few years ago in Washington. And they were like, they were they must have been, like, 25 lobbyists in that office at the time. So how, how are the needs of an average person, middle class person, regardless of your ethnicity, sexuality? How are they going to be ever addressed? Because these people, all they're about doing is feathering their own nest. So what they do is they fund the campaign's of the senators, and Congress and people in the house representatives. And then when that term is up, eventually, they get a job working for lobbying company. So how to so how does that work? How does that work? That will just to take just to take a diversion, since he just wanted to talk a little bit about the Supreme Court hearing of the metaphor, stone case. And, you know, the the trying to ban the film and all this insanity? Which, you know, I had the opportunity to listen to a good deal of the oral argument on this. And it's a joke, man, I was like, anxious. No, it's a joke. It's a joke, because it's a joke, because even the conservative justices on the court basically said that they didn't, the people who were bringing the case, the plaintiffs who were bringing the case, they didn't even have standing to be in the court. They shouldn't have even been there because they did not have they did not have a an established stake in this whole matter. There was just like, but they gave them a hearing anyway,
Unknown Speaker 23:37
they literally were like, you're literally a joke, like, why are you even here, but they did it anyway.
Unknown Speaker 23:43
They're, they're there because they're there because you have two or three people on the Supreme Court, who will have a as long as it's to take people's voting rights away. Or it's to continue gerrymandering, or solicit, you know, to take away you know, abortion rights or any of these things. They'll give them a hearing. It doesn't matter where they come from, or you know, what their actual argument is, what short they should be doing, what they should be doing, which they're not doing, instead of wasting all this time, with stuff that you know really is legally not allowed me indefensible, but from a technical point of view. Also not hirable is expedite the expedite the this hearing on whether the ex president has immunity. Exactly. Why Why was that delayed? Why was that delayed?
Unknown Speaker 24:41
Why was that after the abortion pill? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 24:45
well, well, it's April, well into April. It's getting close when they had when they had the situation. But President Nixon Okay, who never did 1,000th of what what the other Gentleman did, as to you know whether or not he had to provide the tapes and various documents. It was decided, in a couple of days, when they had the situation with Al Gore and George Bush, with the Florida vote, it was decided, like in a day or two, this is ridiculous. Why is this taking like months? Because bit? Well, I think the answer is self evident. But that's why people see that's why people don't believe in the institutions anymore. Because they see basically, that the Institute I mean, Justice Sotomayor said it Justice Sotomayor said it. She said basically, that more and more people are coming to believe that us because she's on the court. Yeah, it's just about politics has nothing to do with the law. It has nothing to do with what's right or wrong. It's a political thing. We're going to hear these cases of people who, you know, shouldn't even be before us. And and the agenda, basically, as I've said, is basically to deprive people of their vote to deprive people of their of their, of their, of their rights and freedoms. And, you know, answer to the answer to the people who put them there. Yeah, this is the whole thing that these people wind up on the court. There's a it's like a farm system, they go to these prestigious firms in Washington, DC, they do their apprenticeship. They belong to Federalist Society, and all the rest of it, and then they go on the court, but they don't have any open mind on these issues, because they've been indoctrinated into this philosophy. That is, has been there that has been their benefactor. So at that point, they can't they can't turn away from it. Because they've already compromised themselves so many times, basically. Yeah. But I think it's, I think it's an issue. I think there needs to be like a major like revamp of the whole thing. I mean, they did they gotta look at, you know, the whole thing, whether they should or whether it should be term limits on the Justice definitely shade the whole thing, the whole thing. I mean, that's gotta we got they got to almost start from scratch. Because it'd because people don't believe in it. Do you think
Unknown Speaker 27:18
they would ever allow like us, like, you know, like citizens to decide on who should be able to vote on Yeah. What do you think about? Well,
Unknown Speaker 27:30
I think I think that's a possibility. But presuming, presuming that you had an electorate that was knowledgeable enough to make those decisions? I mean, just imagine right now, in the climate that we're in, if you said, we're gonna, we're gonna make the Supreme Court. We're gonna vote for all the members of the Supreme Court right now. It will be mayhem. Oh, yeah. Have may have now just what we haven't even gotten close to the election yet. You're going to talk about fake news lies disinformation. It would be it would be crazy. Not only that, though, not only that, but the other thing would be, who would actually want to run for those positions, knowing what's out there on the internet and social media and all those things that could come back against you and get threats and all the rest of it. In an earlier day, when people were, you know, when we were conversing with one another? Which we're not doing now, obviously, in our society, that might have been possible. Maybe when maybe when President Obama was the president, or maybe when President Kennedy was the president, but it's a completely different ballgame. Now, you know, but we, as I like to say, every time we end the show, we do not solve all of our society's programs in half an hour. But we just we bring these things to your attention. The most important thing is that, that you think about it, yeah. Do you give it some thought, and reflect on a lot of things that that hopefully we would all come at certain point to understand, needs to be changed, not not for the benefit of just one group in particular, but the benefit of all of us. So I want to thank you all for listening. Thank my partner for being here with me. And good night to all of you.
Unknown Speaker 29:34
Thanks for listening. Good night. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi one that is T A N G, one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles satin at charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai