Yes. Heather Beaven is wrong. Dead wrong.
Congressman JOHN LUIGI MICA was right in seeking to ban lithium batteries from airplanes. They are a fire hazard. They are extremely flammable. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says that "Primary lithium batteries cannot be extinguished with firefighting agents normally carried on aircraft."
We can't carry gasoline or other flamable products on board airplanes, either. No one complains.
It is a matter of air safety. When we fly, we don't want to die.
We need fireproof containers on airplanes to contain lithium batteries.
The Valu-Jet crash in South Florida killed 105 people on May 11, 1998 and was caused by exothermic reactions from chemical oxygen generators wrongfully carried on board.
Heather Beaven's demagogic E-mailing (below) is the sort of misguided partisanship that causes people to die. We need a real Democratic nominee (Faye Armitage, who earned nearly 150,000 votes in 2008).
We don't need as a Democratic nominee an unwise, uncouth Republican act-alike wannabee, someone who prattles (below) airily, as if she were a Stepford WIfe lobbyist from the National Association of Manufacturers. She says that MICS's amendment would "greatly harm large and small business communication. Clearly John Mica is not only out of touch with today's business traveler, he does not understand today's world."
Her "greatly" is as mistaken as her "clearly," adverbs in defense of the indefensible -- a troglodytic anti-safety point of view that verges on mockery and ignorance.
Heather Beaven describes herself as a "social entrepeneur." Evidently Beaven must also be a high-stakes gambler, one who is willing to gamble on air safety with human lives.
When even JOHN LUIGI MICA, a right-wing Republican is willing to stand up for air safety, he deserves praise, not vilification.
So here goes: JOHN LUIGI MICA is right on lithium batteries. Beaven is wrong.
Beaven is unscientific. She wants to make public policy based on slogans, not facts. She's willing to go demagogic, and it is not even 2010 yet. If she's willing to sacrifice air safety, what else is she willing to sacrifice? Occupational safety and health? (Yes, see below).
In fairness, JOHN LUIGI MICA was also right in the 1990s when he voted against the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which allow banks to sell stock and investments. Time has proven that JOHN MICA was correct on that vote, too.
The difference between statesmen and politicians is that statesmen can work with people of differing political persuasions for the common good. My first boss, Senator Ted Kennedy, was a statesman. Senator Orin Hatch was one of his best friends, and he would make deals with Hatch and other Republicans to pass progressive legislation.
In contrast, Heather Beaven's reflexive anti-MICA posturing shows that she is a hack, someone with little public policy experience, more mouth than mensch.
Heather Beaven says she's "CEO & President of The Florida Endowment Foundation for Florida's Graduates who oversees all aspects of a monumental, $20 million dollar, growth campaign in stay-in-school, school-to-career and return-to-school initiatives designed to positively impact the graduation rate, employability (sic) readiness and the post secondary education enrollment of students' of untapped promise."
Questions that need to be asked about Heather Beaven's "monumental, $20 million dollar, growth campaignm" a 501(c)(3):
Who funds it? (Government and big corporations).
What does it do? (Little but fancy brochures).
What's the purpose of it (further funding, feel-good for donors, and encouraging "at risk" high school students to become docile workers who show up for work on time, but are never never taught their rights under minimum wage, occupational health and safety, and other laws).
It makes sense that someone who thinks they're doing students a favor not teaching them about OSHA would want to blast JOHN MICA for a pro-safety amendment.
It makes sense that someone who has no business experience would ascribe mean and base motives to all business travelers. Who would want to risk their fellow passengers' safety for the use of a dumb 'ole laptop computer at 30,000 feet?
Heather Beaven, the Stealth corporativist candidate from the "monumental, $20 million dollar, growth campaign" that teaches workers nothing about OSHA.
Heather Beaven: unsafe at any speed?
Banning lithium batteries from aircraft would mean eliminating all laptops and smartphones from air travel. This is unrealistic in the extreme, because such devices have become indispensable tools for the business traveler. Airlines have recently added WiFi to their flights in recognition of this fact. Every airport in the US has facilities for wireless networking. These devices allow business travelers to receive, send, and edit data and voice communications with their home offices, out-of-town clients, and suppliers. Banning or confiscating such devices would do much to render business travel impractical.
ReplyDeleteThere have been incidents of batteries catching fire, but of the billions of units in service, the number of documented fires have numbered in the hundreds. Considering the percentage of a device's life represented by a trans-continental flight, such a ban would represent a gross over-reaction to a very small threat. Even the arch-paranoiac Dick Cheney only applied a one-percent doctrine to his worst-case models. This would be more like a .00001 percent model, and Cheney was talking about nukes!
Look, these things have been in widespread use for a decade, and there are billions of air-miles logged a year. If this were a danger worth imposing this kind of cost, it really would have happened by now.
Furthermore, this issue is hardly the focus of Ms. Beaven's campaign, and does not justify the inflammatory ad hominem tactics represented in this post. There are plenty of points of disagreement between Armitage and Beaven which could have been explored here, but the Bush-style scaremongering displayed here is unworthy of you or this fine blog.