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John Deere

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an 7 26

Executives climbing the corporate ladder to the top seem to lose IQ the higher up they get.

That might explain why John Deere's top corporate bosses have imposed an astonishingly stupid policy on America's farmers. For years, they've decreed that while a farmer "technically owns" a tractor or other John Deere product, the owner is prohibited from making any repairs when the machinery breaks down, stalls out, etc. Instead, owners must call an authorized Deere dealer to fix what most farmers could handle by themselves.

The monopolistic profiteer refuses to make its repair manuals available to customers or local repair shops, so ... gotcha.

But in 2020, Walther Schweitzer rallied with other mad-as-hell farmers and ranchers to rebel. The Montana rancher's tractor had gone kaput in hay baling season -- but, "no," said a Deere dealer, a technician is not available; and "no," you can't have access to the diagnostic computer to do it yourself. So, he had to wait weeks before Deere finally got his tractor running -- a fairly basic job worth about $600 ... but they billed Walter nearly $4,000.

That's what's called "a monopoly fix." But they messed with the wrong farmer. Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, mobilized grassroots pressure from five states, forcing federal officials to sue Deere. This month, Deere's aloof executives settled that suit, finally letting its farm customers take charge of the equipment that -- hello! -- they own!

Schweitzer points out that this landmark win over the arrogance of Deere executives is just one stepping stone to a right-to-repair law for all products. To help push this right forward, go to repair.org.

IGNORANCE + ARROGANCE + POWER = LUNACY

Some presidents are known as uplifting orators; our present president is known for petulant putdowns.

Periodically, Trump discovers a new pejorative that he considers clever, so he wears it out attacking his endless list of enemies. His current favorite is "lunatic," hurling the slur at women reporters, most foreign leaders, all Democrats, protestors and ... well, everyone who offends him.

But if he wants some real lunatics to belittle, why not that menagerie he's appointed to top government positions? Such as Brendan Carr, Trump's FCC attack dog who keeps yapping that he's going to abolish NPR.

Failing at that, Carr has now gone from silly to ridiculous, pushing a phantasmagoric scheme that truly is lunacy. It comes from some Elon Musk proteges who apparently noticed that our planet gets dark as night falls. Eureka, they exclaimed, we need to "light the night!"

Why? Well, they say, to illuminate all city streets and rural roads, make crops grow faster and stuff like that. But how to generate the light? Easy, the geniuses explain: mirrors.

They want government support to deploy a global network of orbiting space mirrors that could reflect sunlight onto Earth's rotating dark areas. Lots of mirrors -- the schemers propose to put 50,000 in our skies by 2030, with each of the largest ones shining as bright as 100 full moons!

Nothing could go wrong with that, right? Bedazzled, Carr didn't ask. Instead, with no public input, he just rubber-stamped an initial launch of this "novel technology," blandly assuring us that "harms are unlikely to occur."

To oppose this lunacy, connect with the American Astronomical Society: aas.org.

5 22 vice

It’s not just Toyota.

A slew of Fortune 500 companies, led by hardware giant Home Depot and agricultural equipment manufacturer Deere & Company, donated more than $800,000 last month to Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results, according to federal election contribution data compiled by the liberal group Accountable.US.

In March alone, Home Depot donated $95,000 to 20 House Republicans who voted to overturn the 2022 election results last January. Deere donated $75,000 to more than a dozen Republicans, and aerospace giant Boeing—the second-largest federal contractor in the U.S., with more than $23 billion in federal contracts in FY2021—donated $45,000 to 32 different Republicans who objected to the 2020 results, according to FEC records.

General Dynamics, Motorola Solutions, FedEx, and Tyson Foods also each donated more than $20,000 each to multiple GOP members last month, according to the data.

Political Action Committees (PACs) tied to the beef, cotton, and rural broadband lobbies all donated at least $30,000 to Jan. 6 objectors as well, according to Accountable.US.

In total, House Republicans who voted against the certification of the 2020 election—even after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and delayed the vote for several hours—raked in more than $800,000 from corporate and trade group PACs last month. Such groups have donated more than $12 million to Jan. 6 objectors since the insurrection.

“Corporations that have failed to align their political spending with their stated values supporting democracy should stop misleading the public about what they value far more—amassing political influence,” Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said in a statement to VICE News.

“It’s short-sighted for any corporation to marginalize concerns from its customers and shareholders when it comes to democracy, because a healthy democracy will always be what’s best for business.”

Home Depot, by far, has been the biggest corporate donor to Republicans who voted to overturn the election, giving $360,000 to such candidates since January 2021. The top recipients of the money included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy ($456,000), House Minority Whip Steve Scalise ($353,000), and Missouri Rep. Sam Graves ($290,000).

Home Depot did not respond to a request for comment from VICE News Wednesday, but it told Yahoo Finance last month that the company’s PAC “supports candidates on both sides of the aisle who champion pro-business, pro-retail positions that create jobs and economic growth.”

https://boingboing.net/2018/09/20/sold-out-by-cfb.html

as  I wrote last week, the California Farm Bureau (which lobbies for the state's farmers) struck a deal to gut the state's Right to Repair legislation, a move that will cost farmers their right to fix their own tractors and other heavy equipment.

Kyle Wiens from iFixit and the Repair Coalition and Elizabeth Chamberlain have the detailed story in Wired, explaining how the Farm Bureau spun the story to make it look like they'd gotten John Deere to make a bunch of concessions, when in reality Deere had already made those concessions, nationwide.

Where California farmers go, the rest of America follows—and in this case, that’s dangerous. The state produces more food by far than any other in the nation, accounting for two-thirds of all US-grown fruit and nuts. By agreeing to the spurious distinction between “repair” and “modification,” the California Farm Bureau just made the EFF’s job a lot harder. Instead of presenting a unified right-to-repair front, this milquetoast agreement muddies the conversation. More worryingly, it could cement a cultural precedent for electronics manufacturers who want to block third-party repair technicians from accessing a device’s software.

As a nation of repair advocates, we need to reject toothless deals like this. We must define right to repair in a way that supports the needs of individuals and small growers, not the bottom line of enormous corporations.

This deal is no right-to-repair victory. Don’t let John Deere—or the California Farm Bureau—call it one. Real progress isn’t going to come until a state passes real Right to Repair legislation. And momentum is building. Twenty states, including Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, considered bills this year. Although none have passed yet, John Deere is clearly feeling the heat.

John Deere Just Cost Farmers Their Right to Repair [Kyle Wiens and Elizabeth Chamberlain/Wired]

https://movetoamend.org/john-deere-just-told-copyright-office-only-corporations-can-own-property-humans-can-only-license-it

When I was a boy, I loved spending time with my Uncle Ernest and Aunt Eula on their small northeast Texas farm. They pulled a frugal living from their 50 acres, raising a little bit of everything. Doing a lot with a little to make ends meet, Ernest and Eula operated on principle of frugality expressed in an old country rhyme:Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

This meant that when their tractor broke down, they fixed it themselves. Likewise, if their old Zenith console radio went on the fritz, they didn't just order a new one, they brought out their tool kit and fixed it.

While the media and political powers seem blissfully ignorant of the "lifestyles" of America's commoners, most families are struggling financially and are making do or doing without. For this poor- to middle-class majority, frugality is not some old-world virtue, but a household necessity and the fix-it ethic is central to their lives. Add to them the millions of do-it-yourselfers who like to tinker or refuse to be a part of the corporate system's throwaway economy.

Today, just about every manufactured product containing software, from an electric toothbrush to an SUV, has no-repair clauses and/or digital locks. It's now standard industry practice for manufacturers to insert a spurious claim into their sales agreements that the company retains legal possession of key components of the products they sold to us, and only it can make repairs. To see how insidious this is, let's go back to the farm with Ernest and Eula.

My aunt and uncle would have been thunderstruck that a tractor company like Deere & Company, the world's largest, can now embed a ban on do-it-yourself repairs in the fine-print legalese gobbledygook of its sales contracts. Manufacturers call these devious clauses "End User License Agreements"—EULA!

Although buyers technically "own" the Deere tractor, the EULAs define the software that runs them as its "intellectual property" and asserts "proprietary rights" to certain parts. Therefore, if "unqualified individuals" (aka, farmers) tinker with their purchases, they can be held in violation of federal copyright laws.

Hog stuff! Which syllable in the word "own" don't they understand? If you bought it, it's yours. Period. Congress has passed no laws barring buyers from opening up, ripping out, adding in, fixing, rewiring, upgrading or tying bells onto stuff they've bought. Deere's claim to have a controlling power over people who own its products is a ridiculous perversion of language, logic and law.

Far worse, though, are the multiple harms done to farmers and others who have been led to believe that Deere's repair-prevention clause is the law:

Deere's claim of a proprietary right to control the repair of your tractor is no more grounded in law than the snake oil flimflammers of yesteryear were grounded in science. Yes, Deere owns the copyrights, patents and trade secrets involved in creating the software, but you're not tampering with, pirating, altering or trying to sell any of those intellectual properties; you're just repairing your tractor, and it's none of the manufacturer's business. It's your absolute right to do so.

Populist author and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.