‘Amazon’s moral collapse’ / ‘Decades of broken promises’ / ‘I’m very worried’

‘Amazon’s moral collapse.’ Popular Information concludes the deaths at the company’s Edwardsville warehouse last weekend illustrate “a larger problem with Amazon's business culture, which subordinates worker safety to ruthless efficiency.”
A Tribune editorial asks angrily: “Why were you not in Edwardsville on Saturday morning, Jeff Bezos?
A law professor explains that workplace bans—like Amazon's—on cellphones are legal, but pose a safety risk.
Columnist Will Bunch: Friday’s tornadoes “ripped the roof off American capitalism.”
On one Kentucky street Friday, a tornado killed seven children.

Unusual weather we’re havin, ain’t it? Chicago today was on the threshold of record warmth …
 … and with it, winds and storms.
The Conversation: The Arctic’s transformation is shocking scientists.

‘Decades of broken promises.’ A Better Government Association investigation details how Mayor Richard M. Daley’s 1997 pledge to transform Chicago’s tragically neglected Cabrini-Green housing development has transformed it, all right: From a Black neighborhood to a predominantly white one.
Mayor Lightfoot’s administration hails a Northwest Side housing deal approved in City Council committee yesterday—over the objections of the area’s alderperson—as “an important step toward addressing Chicago’s longstanding racial and economic segregation.”
The Washington Post explains how investors have been snapping up residential homes at depressed prices—in the words of a local property assessor, “removing generational wealth for an entire demographic of people”—then jacking up rent for families who can’t afford to buy.

‘I continue to be surprised and delighted.’ Esquire’s Charlie Pierce tips his hat to “the stagecraft employed by the special committee of the House of Representatives investigating the attempted coup d’etat that took place on Jan. 6”—especially Rep. Liz Cheney, whom he compares to “a shotgun you borrow from your most despised neighbor.”
Columnist Neil Steinberg wants things to move faster: “In a little more than a year the Republicans might take over the House and maybe the Senate, too, and all this stops.”
The full U.S. House has voted to hold ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress …
 … sending the matter to the Justice Department.
A Sun-Times editorial: “Holding Meadows … and even Trump himself accountable … is the only way to protect our country from future coup attempts.”
Trib columnist Clarence Page spotlights a “bizarre” Chicago connection to the riot probe.

‘I’m very worried.’ The chief medical officer at the American Society of State and Territorial Health Officials tells Politico that even if the COVID-19 omicron variant’s symptoms are “mild,” it can still wreak plenty of havoc on health care symptoms systems—particularly with a holiday-travel-fueled surge and maybe the flu.
Kroger—parent to Chicago’s Mariano's chain of grocery stores—is cutting benefits for unvaccinated workers.
University of Illinois computer science professor Sheldon Jackson in the Trib: Time for the insurance industry to make tough decisions for the unvaxxed.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken cut his overseas trip to Southeast Asia short after a reporter traveling with him tested positive for COVID.

Monkee business. Trib alumnus Lou Carlozo has launched an online petition to get the Monkees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
From 2020: Why they’re not.

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Chris KoenigMike Braden and Jim Parks made this edition better …

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