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[Frumple]

any case, have some mild humor instead of round N of the fourth estate fuckup derby

Twitter post re: the lev par-whatever/maddow interview

[sluissa]

All I can say is, "LoL, what are you guys on?"

[Doomblade187]

Well, Pete handled very poorly a police shooting back when he was the mayor, and has exhibited very little understanding of racial minority issues.

[wierd]

Surely, a chlorophorm soaked rag and a neck pillow will suffice?

That way they continue to pay court costs while you represent them.

"My client is just very fatigued by the lengthly border patrol check he was subject to on the flight in. Hasnt slept a wink since 2 days ago. If you have questions I would be happy to answer them as his legal representative..."

[Frumple]

Did you miss the thing where pete more or less forged (there's a better term here, but I'm forgetting it) the support of notable black political figures, slu?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

But he's great at meeting with local leaders when vacationing in Somaliland, as one does.

[nenjin]

Time to play "What's the ethical threshold?"

[sluissa]

Did you miss the thing where pete more or less forged (there's a better term here, but I'm forgetting it) the support of notable black political figures, slu?

I'm seeing articles where there are some black people from his town supporting him, but there's others saying "We didn't pick those black people, they don't count."

[Lord Shonus]

Workers already have the "right" to buy shuttered factories, if they pool their resources and make an offer. I'm not sure what this bullet is supposed to give - unless this is codifying that workers by default have first right of refusal.

Making buybacks illegal doesn't make much sense, if you keep the 20% worker-owned shares thing apply regardless of total shares outstanding.

Massive stock buybacks are often correlated with unethical behavior. You tank the stock price so people start selling for whatever they can get, generously buy the stock from them, then sell out to another company and ride the golden parachute they give you into the sunset.

The new company then closes the facility for awhile before reopening it under another name with an all-new (to this company) workforce that no longer has any seniority, accumulated leave, pre-existing union contract, or any other benefits. The proposals you question are designed to address both ends of this abuse chain. You restrict the stock transfer to make it harder to sell out, and you give the workers guaranteed right to buy (coupled with his proposed government financing for employee-owned businesses) to prevent the name-cycling.

[Max™]

Re: biden

Without engaging in a 1:1 conversation with him i cant make a fair asessment.

I would look for signs indicating "time travel" and for difficulty with open ended questions, new concepts, or with rejection of factual information that he disagrees with.  (*time travel in this case, is jumping in and out of different eras, cogitatively speaking. People with some forms of dementia can be here and now one moment then be in 1962 talking about hippies the next.)

'Mr. Biden, what do you think Americans need to do to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?'

Well, they have to deal with the—look, there’s institutional segregation in this country. From the time I got involved, I started dealing with that. Redlining banks, making sure we are in a position where—look, you talk about education. I propose is we take the very poor schools, triple the amount of money we spend from $15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise to the $60,000 level. Number two, make sure that we bring in to help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are—I’m married to a teacher, my deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. Make sure that every single child does, in fact, have 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds go to school. Not day care, school. Social workers help parents deal with how to raise their children. It’s not like they don’t want to help, they don’t know what to do. Play the radio, make sure the television—excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, the—make sure that kids hear words, a kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there.

Now, personally, I chose driving because it's one of the most challenging activities nearly everybody engages in at some point, it involves crispness of reflexes, senses, and predictive ability. The vast majority of people who do drive are clearly not qualified to do so, as evidenced by the ridiculous accident statistics and horrifying fatality rates, but honestly I wouldn't have felt much better about riding in a car driven by the old fuckers running for president now if they were 40 years younger.

Though, if I was 40 years younger, I would have just been conceived, while Bernie and Biden would be damn near my age!

Is driving exactly like the executive office? Obviously not, in regards to the cognitive stresses and strains, I'd say driving is easier, as I didn't go gray from driving for 8 years.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Huh, I didn't know that Biden was in the "trade school for three-year olds" camp. That's a real camp we have now, by the way. Gotta get those lazy toddlers signed off on their career path. Have I mentioned I hate this nightmare world we've been damned to inhabit? If I die and find out this was some kind of subtle hell simulation, I'm only going to be around 60% surprised.

[dragdeler]

-

[McTraveller]

Massive stock buybacks are often correlated with unethical behavior. You tank the stock price so people start selling for whatever they can get, generously buy the stock from them, then sell out to another company and ride the golden parachute they give you into the sunset.

But that's why I said I don't know why buyback ban would matter if you ensure that employees maintain their 20% stock share and 45% board representation or whatever even when buybacks happen.  If owners can sell the company with 80% of 2 million shares and 55% of the board surely they would still be able to sell the company with 80% of 1 million shares and 55% of the board.

I would rather ban the effect though instead of the means; I think there are probably other ways people would find to sell their companies or whatever.  Or put another way: banning stock buybacks outright probably has some unintended consequences.

(More generally, I don't laws that specify certain specific methods - that's how you get loopholes or unintended side effects.  I like laws that address effects. E.g., "No Murder, by any means" instead of "No putting a knife into someone's body until they die" and trying to enumerate all the possible ways to kill someone.)

[Reelya]

You're missing the point, there's really no good reason that stock buybacks are a good idea.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the-stock-buyback-swindle/592774/

Stock buy-backs only cause a short-term jump in the share price, and then it generally flops back to where it was. The reason is this: say a company is worth $10 billion and the market hovers around a total market value of the shares of $10 billion. The company then buys back $2 billion in shares. The stock price then spikes up. But it then flops back down to the original price. The reason is this: the company is now only worth $8 billion because you expended $2 billion in capital. Also, growth tends to tank because of lack of investment, since the managers decided that their stock-buy-back get-rich-quick scheme was a better investment than maintaining the company's products.

Worse, is when they exploit cheap credit to debt-load a company, or sell off productive assets so they can boost the share price through buy-backs and offload the CEO's stock options quickly at a large profit and then effectively retire leaving the the company as a mere shell.

[Iduno]

Warren could actually legitimately connect to voters with reagan portraits in their living room that are rightfully disgusted by the big orange turdbaby,

If I wanted the Reagan Youth to lead us, I'd vote Republican.