USCE Autumn: Well Actually, This IS somethingpedantic.com

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Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

In addition to what others have mentioned, this is a classic instance of that Sartre quote about fascists playing with language to make future accusations against them sound absurd and meaningless.

Antisemites, but yeah it's understood in context as retroactively reflecting on the nascent fascist movement. However Sartre's concept of it ties more broadly into notions of bad faith and ideologically motivated hate in general. Lots of the book is way off-base (Sartre casually deploys a pretty, uh, unitary, concept of nationality and race to make his claims), but this is a part of particular utility, so I'm going to quote the source text more extensively than usual to show its context. Some emphases are mine; I'm using the pdf linked above to generate this more quickly and it has some scanning issues, so I apologize for any typos.

quote:

It has become evident that no external factor can induce anti‐Semitism in the anti‐Semite. Anti‐Semitism is a free and total choice of oneself, a comprehensive attitude that one adopts not only toward Jews, but toward men in general, toward history and society; it is at one and the same time a passion and a conception of the world. No doubt in the case of a given anti‐Semite certain characteristics will be more marked than in another. But they are always all present at the same time, and they influence each other. It is this syncretic totality which we must now attempt to describe.

I noted earlier that anti‐Semitism is a passion. Everybody understands that emotions of hate or anger are involved, but ordinarily hate and anger have a provocation: I hate someone who has made me suffer, someone who condemns or insults me. We have just seen that anti‐Semitic passion could not have such a character. It precedes the facts that are supposed to call it forth; it seeks them out to nourish itself upon them; it must even interpret them in a special way so that they may become truly offensive. Indeed, if you so much as mention a Jew to an anti‐Semite, he will show all the signs of a lively irritation. If we recall that we must always consent to anger before it can manifest itself and that, as is indicated so accurately by the French idiom, we "put ourselves" into anger, we shall have to agree that the anti‐Semite has chosen to live on the plane of passion. It is not unusual for people to elect to live a life of passion rather than one of reason. But ordinarily they love the objects of passion: women, glory, power, money. Since the anti‐Semite has chosen hate, we are forced to conclude that it is the state of passion that he loves. Ordinarily this type of emotion is not very pleasant: a man who passionately desires a woman is impassioned because of the woman and in spite of his passion. We are wary of reasoning based on passion, seeking to support by all possible means opinions which love or jealousy or hate have dictated. We are wary of the aberrations of passion and of what is called mono‐ideism. But that is just what the anti‐Semite chooses right off.

How can one choose to reason falsely? It is because of a longing for impenetrability. The rational man groans as he gropes for the truth; he knows that his reasoning is no more than tentative, that other considerations may supervene to cast doubt on it. He never sees very clearly where he is going; he is "open"; he may even appear to be hesitant. But there are people who are attracted by the durability of a stone. They wish to be massive and impenetrable; they wish not to change. Where, indeed, would change take them? We have here a basic fear of oneself and of truth. What frightens them is not the content of truth, of which they have no conception, but the form itself of truth, that thing of indefinite approximation. It is as if their own existence were in continual suspension.

But they wish to exist all at once and right away. They do not want any acquired opinions; they want them to be innate. Since they are afraid of reasoning, they wish to lead the kind of life wherein reasoning and research play only a subordinate role, wherein one seeks only what be has already found, wherein one becomes only what he already was. This is nothing but passion. Only a strong emotional bias can give a lightning‐like certainty; it alone can hold reason in leash; it alone can remain impervious to experience and last for a whole lifetime.

The anti‐Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti‐Semites, all of them absurd: "I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc."

Only after all this do we get to the paragraph people like to quote:

quote:

Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.

The following paragraphs are also instructive, before Sartre starts using specific examples again and focusing more on self-image:

quote:

If then, as we have been able to observe, the anti‐Semite is impervious to reason and to experience, it is not because his conviction is strong. Rather his conviction is strong because he has chosen first of all to be impervious.

He has chosen also to be terrifying. People are afraid of irritating him. No one knows to what lengths the aberrations of his passion will carry him � but be knows, for this passion is not provoked by something external. He has it well in hand; it is obedient to his will: now he lets go of the reins and now he pulls back on them. He is not afraid of himself, but he sees in the eyes of others a disquieting image‐his own‐and he makes his words and gestures conform to it. Having this external model, he is under no necessity to look for his personality within himself. He has chosen to find his being entirely outside himself, never to look within, to be nothing save the fear he inspires in others.

Sartre's not entirely on the mark here because the actor he describes does also socialize within similarly oriented groups; there's a social and communicative dimension of this rationalization that he doesn't fully address, which ties into his atomic construction of "choosing" ideologically committed bad faith. In practice, the formation, continued socialization, and tolerance of these people is a reflection of the systems they exist within; they exploit the settings and mediums which tolerate them, and their rationalizing beliefs take on the shape of those settings in turn. The same's true of everyone, of course, but it's especially fluid for these groups, which are motivated and/or defined by their opposition to an outgroup or groups.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Nov 21, 2022

# ? Nov 21, 2022 18:35

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# ? May 25, 2024 22:19

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

mawarannahr posted:

If they�re another form of dividends, why are they different and why is there a debate on the issue? Some things like how is the tax structure different, is there a difference in how rapidly the stock price goes up and down, can you fund dividends with debt? Can you show how they are the same form of thing?

You can fund both dividends and buybacks with debt. It's one of many reasons why corporate debt skyrocketed during the periods when we have had quantitative easing. Low interest debt meant low guilt for measures that helped achieve a lot of shareholder happiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_recapitalization

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leveraged_buyback.asp

# ? Nov 21, 2022 18:38

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Eric Cantonese posted:

You can fund both dividends and buybacks with debt. It's one of many reasons why corporate debt skyrocketed during the periods when we have had quantitative easing. Low interest debt meant low guilt for measures that helped achieve a lot of shareholder happiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_recapitalization

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leveraged_buyback.asp

Thanks for clarifying. I don�t know the answers to these questions about the differences, but there clearly are, and I�d like someone who says they are the same to clarify exactly why they�re the same when it�s widely seen as a matter of debate, from a cursory search, so it�s weird to just be dropping it in like that assertively.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 19:11

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

IANAE on any of this but I think most bad blood about buy backs seems to emanate not from the fact that they exist but that companies, in an era of huge corporate profits and high prices, they tend to use profits for buy backs instead of material investment into the company (that could potentially lead to consumer benefits).

# ? Nov 21, 2022 19:12

Eric Cantonese: Dec 21, 2004; You should hear my accent.

mawarannahr posted:

Thanks for clarifying. I don�t know the answers to these questions about the differences, but there clearly are, and I�d like someone who says they are the same to clarify exactly why they�re the same when it�s widely seen as a matter of debate, from a cursory search, so it�s weird to just be dropping it in like that assertively.

I would think of it like this.

Buybacks are share purchases (from other people) that help bump up the price of the shares that you already own. The value of the shares goes up (for at least a little bit), but the shareholder still has to sell in order to cash in fully. If you hold your shares, you may have benefitted from a bump in the share price and maybe that suits your long term goals.

Dividends are just money that you get by being a shareholder. One day you wake up and find some money in your brokerage account. You can reinvest the dividends if you want (and you can even set this up automatically), but you can also just take the cash and pocket it or spend it. The share price often goes down because that is money going out of the company's coffers. People like Warren Buffett and many big ibanks that "rescue" companies will often demand shares with dividend privileges because they like money. (Who doesn't?)

A lot of people have been trying to rebalance into dividend-heavy stocks as a way to adapt to inflation because you get the supposed high gain potential of stock share prices with a nice income stream from the dividends. When you take this approach, you're hoping that the stock isn't in an industry that would get wrecked by inflation, though.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 19:22

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

BonoMan posted:

IANAE on any of this but I think most bad blood about buy backs seems to emanate not from the fact that they exist but that companies, in an era of huge corporate profits and high prices, they tend to use profits for buy backs instead of material investment into the company (that could potentially lead to consumer benefits).

Well yes they make it clear that the businesses are not in the market to actually provide good, consistent, and beneficial service. They exist to provide value to the owners, above all, and sometimes only. Any other benefit is ancillary and often incidental.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 19:23

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

mawarannahr posted:

Thanks for clarifying. I don�t know the answers to these questions about the differences, but there clearly are, and I�d like someone who says they are the same to clarify exactly why they�re the same when it�s widely seen as a matter of debate, from a cursory search, so it�s weird to just be dropping it in like that assertively.

The really simplified and dumbed down version (that doesn't fully capture all of the differences, but is 98% of the way there) is that a buyback is like paying your employees a bonus. It's a one-time thing that costs exactly as much as you want to spend.

Dividends are like giving your employees a raise. You have to keep paying them out in perpetuity and any further raises are going to be built onto those raises. If you try to cut them, them everyone will be upset and some will leave.

Buybacks are big upfront purchases. The companies like them because they aren't on the hook for future payments beyond that one. Some shareholders like them because they are a large and fast increase in the value of their shares.

Buybacks also have some corporate governance influence. If you increase dividends, that doesn't change the votes in the company. If you do a buyback, then then it makes the votes of the remaining shares more powerful because it is a smaller total amount of votes.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 19:25

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

BonoMan posted:

IANAE on any of this but I think most bad blood about buy backs seems to emanate not from the fact that they exist but that companies, in an era of huge corporate profits and high prices, they tend to use profits for buy backs instead of material investment into the company (that could potentially lead to consumer benefits).

Pretty much this.

It's the same thing as giving the CEO a million dollar raise instead of giving the workers a raise. The $1 million likely would have meant a few pennies if you spread it out amongst all workers, but it is the optics and the attitude/belief among management that you can't get away without raising CEO pay to "stay competitive", but you can get away without raising worker pay - especially when companies are making record profits - that makes people mad.

It's a very easy to grasp symbol of the larger corporate behavior problems.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 19:30

Edge & Christian: May 20, 2001; Earth-1145 is truly the best!
A world of singing, magic frogs,
high adventure, no shitposters

Quorum posted:

Wouldn't this require a vote by the entire House, basically to create a "no Ilhan Omars" rule? My understanding is that the partisan balance of a committee is set in the rules that a House passes at the start of its session, but who exactly represents the Dems and GOP is a matter for the relevant caucus unless the entire chamber intercedes.

It's an Ethics bill that is voted on by the entire House to strip someone of a committee appointment. Most of them historically have been because of indictments and not all of them went to floor votes -- Steve King was stripped by the GOP leadership themselves (including McCarthy), but Paul Gosar and MTG were stripped by censure. Gosar had two Republicans (Cheney and Kinzinger) vote to strip him, while MTG got eleven Republicans to vote her out.

Assuming the GOP can vote in lockstep to formally censure any of the three targeted people, they could bar them from committee seatings. But McCarthy has indicated he's also going to float a bill to uncensure MTG so she can be seated again, so who knows if everyone in the GOP will go along with it (Kingzinger and Cheney are gone, but Brian Fitzpatrick, Mario Diaz-Balart, Young Kim, Nicole Malliotakis, Maria Salazar, and Chris Smith all voted to unseat MTG and will be back in 2023)

# ? Nov 21, 2022 19:35

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Honestly can't see them going for it. Having your name on the record backing MTG is a poison pill if you want to be able to distance yourself from the Trumpian right when the tower of poo poo collapses, and some of those reps want to be career seat holders rather than poo poo and run to wingnut welfare.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 19:57

Rigel: Nov 11, 2016

selec posted:

Why are stock dividends a thing? Wouldn�t it work better/more transparently if the only way to make money off stock was selling it? What�s the justification for dividends?

A lot of people are giving you technical reasons for this, which may be correct, but I think you are looking for an "ethical" big picture reason.

You have a company, and it makes a profit. That profit is now in the form of a pile of cash and you are publicly owned, so the cash belongs to your shareholders, what do you do? You could reinvest it which could mean using that cash for things your company needs or to purchase some other company that will make your company more profitable. Or you can repurchase your own stock. Or you can pay it out in a dividend.

If you are a large, mature company and you aren't really going to grow much anymore, nothing wrong with the company, its a good business that is profitable, but you don't actually need that profit for anything, well then the "correct" and "ethical" choice here in my opinion is to declare a dividend and pay it back to your shareholders. If you don't do that, then you are arrogantly or selfishly telling the shareholders that its better for that money to rot in a bank account somewhere earning very little.

If you are a smaller growing company with a bright future, or if you have a legit understandable need for the cash, then you shouldn't declare a dividend and the shareholders should understand that they didn't buy your shares for the annual profit, but for the future potential so they should be OK with you spending the money back into the company.

Or maybe you don't have immediate need for cash but you have some reason to believe your company's value will improve in the future, maybe you have a promising drug which might be approved soon or you believe some of your competitors will die soon allowing you to take market share, or whatever. Then instead of paying the money back to the owners through a dividend, you can repurchase your own stock. When you do that you are telling the shareholders that you believe your company will make more money in the next few years than whatever investment decisions the shareholders would have otherwise made with their dividends. If you are right, fine. Or you could be wrong and arrogant in which case the shareholders should complain about no dividend and/or sell their shares and bail out of owning your company.

Generally speaking, every company needs some cash for emergencies or opportunities (or you are Warren Buffet and your whole thing is buying undervalued companies because you are a genius and you never pay a dividend). Above and beyond the cash you "need" though, having extra cash lying around is selfish and bad, and if you can't explain to your shareholders why you need that extra cash, then you should pay it to them and let them decide what to do with it, its their money.

edit: I should add that there are tax consequences too. If you pay a dividend, it gets taxed twice. First the company pays tax, then the shareholder pays tax. If you keep the money, the company still pays tax, but tax on the profit the shareholders earned is deferred. The shareholder will eventually realize a gain anyway when they sell the stock, but that gain can be planned for and the tax consequences minimized. However if the company pays a big dividend, the shareholder suddenly gets a tax liability that maybe they didn't plan for. Some shareholders don't like dividends and might pick stocks that dont pay dividends for that reason.

Rigel fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Nov 21, 2022

# ? Nov 21, 2022 20:45

Dapper_Swindler: Feb 14, 2012; Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

speaking of ethics. seems walker is just saying gently caress it and saying warknock assulted kids at youth camps.
https://mobile.twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1594751186338463752

# ? Nov 21, 2022 20:48

Angry_Ed: Mar 30, 2010; Grimey Drawer

Dapper_Swindler posted:

speaking of ethics. seems walker is just saying gently caress it and saying warknock assulted kids at youth camps.
https://mobile.twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1594751186338463752

ah, the Karl Rove strategy. Take something good (helping out kids at youth camps) and turn it into something horrifying and insidious.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 20:54

the_steve: Nov 9, 2005; We're always hiring!

Angry_Ed posted:

ah, the Karl Rove strategy. Take something good (helping out kids at youth camps) and turn it into something horrifying and insidious.

Seems more like the LBJ strategy: Call him a horsefucker and make him spend time denying the horsefucker allegations.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 21:03

haveblue: Aug 15, 2005; Toilet Rascal

Or the Steve Bannon strategy: "Flood the zone with poo poo"

# ? Nov 21, 2022 21:05

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

haveblue posted:

Or the Steve Bannon strategy: "Flood the zone with poo poo"

Ok, but what's Steve Bannon's political strategy though? :v:

# ? Nov 21, 2022 21:06

Angry_Ed: Mar 30, 2010; Grimey Drawer

the_steve posted:

Seems more like the LBJ strategy: Call him a horsefucker and make him spend time denying the horsefucker allegations.

No, it's literally something Karl Rove did.

The Atlantic posted:

When his term on the court ended, he chose not to run for re-election. I later learned another reason why. Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children. In the early 1980s he had helped to start the Children's Trust Fund of Alabama, and he later established the Corporate Foundation for Children, a private, nonprofit organization. At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove's signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.

Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out--he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."

# ? Nov 21, 2022 21:08

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Rigel posted:

A lot of people are giving you technical reasons for this, which may be correct, but I think you are looking for an "ethical" big picture reason.

You have a company, and it makes a profit. That profit is now in the form of a pile of cash and you are publicly owned, so the cash belongs to your shareholders, what do you do? You could reinvest it which could mean using that cash for things your company needs or to purchase some other company that will make your company more profitable. Or you can repurchase your own stock. Or you can pay it out in a dividend.

If you are a large, mature company and you aren't really going to grow much anymore, nothing wrong with the company, its a good business that is profitable, but you don't actually need that profit for anything, well then the "correct" and "ethical" choice here in my opinion is to declare a dividend and pay it back to your shareholders. If you don't do that, then you are arrogantly or selfishly telling the shareholders that its better for that money to rot in a bank account somewhere earning very little.

If you are a smaller growing company with a bright future, or if you have a legit understandable need for the cash, then you shouldn't declare a dividend and the shareholders should understand that they didn't buy your shares for the annual profit, but for the future potential so they should be OK with you spending the money back into the company.

Or maybe you don't have immediate need for cash but you have some reason to believe your company's value will improve in the future, maybe you have a promising drug which might be approved soon or you believe some of your competitors will die soon allowing you to take market share, or whatever. Then instead of paying the money back to the owners through a dividend, you can repurchase your own stock. When you do that you are telling the shareholders that you believe your company will make more money in the next few years than whatever investment decisions the shareholders would have otherwise made with their dividends. If you are right, fine. Or you could be wrong and arrogant in which case the shareholders should complain about no dividend and/or sell their shares and bail out of owning your company.

Generally speaking, every company needs some cash for emergencies or opportunities (or you are Warren Buffet and your whole thing is buying undervalued companies because you are a genius and you never pay a dividend). Above and beyond the cash you "need" though, having extra cash lying around is selfish and bad, and if you can't explain to your shareholders why you need that extra cash, then you should pay it to them and let them decide what to do with it, its their money.

edit: I should add that there are tax consequences too. If you pay a dividend, it gets taxed twice. First the company pays tax, then the shareholder pays tax. If you keep the money, the company still pays tax, but tax on the profit the shareholders earned is deferred. The shareholder will eventually realize a gain anyway when they sell the stock, but that gain can be planned for and the tax consequences minimized. However if the company pays a big dividend, the shareholder suddenly gets a tax liability that maybe they didn't plan for. Some shareholders don't like dividends and might pick stocks that dont pay dividends for that reason.

Notably, none of these options is "pay employees who actually do all the work more"

# ? Nov 21, 2022 21:29

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Jaxyon posted:

Notably, none of these options is "pay employees who actually do all the work more"

Paying them more to do the same thing when they aren't leaving for another job does the opposite. It lowers profit.

That is kind of the point of singling out stock buybacks or CEO pay. The CEO bonus wouldn't really make a difference in the company's bottom line, but they have a "reasonable fear" that they will leave for somewhere else that pays better. It's the attitude and priorities that it symbolizes rather than the actual business impact of 0.01% of the company's revenue going to a bonus. If there is no reasonable fear that they will lose labor, then there is no reason to pay them more for the same work.

That is also exactly why there is a lot of crossover between those members of management and the people who are driven absolutely insane by a labor shortage that is giving labor the edge when it comes to employment for the first time in the last 30 years and now think "nobody wants to work anymore!"

# ? Nov 21, 2022 21:35

Madkal: Feb 11, 2008; Fallen Rib

the_steve posted:

Seems more like the LBJ strategy: Call him a horsefucker and make him spend time denying the horsefucker allegations.

Did Pence ever spend time denying the allegations?

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:07

selec: Sep 6, 2003

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Paying them more to do the same thing when they aren't leaving for another job does the opposite. It lowers profit.

That is kind of the point of singling out stock buybacks or CEO pay. The CEO bonus wouldn't really make a difference in the company's bottom line, but they have a "reasonable fear" that they will leave for somewhere else that pays better. It's the attitude and priorities that it symbolizes rather than the actual business impact of 0.01% of the company's revenue going to a bonus. If there is no reasonable fear that they will lose labor, then there is no reason to pay them more for the same work.

That is also exactly why there is a lot of crossover between those members of management and the people who are driven absolutely insane by a labor shortage that is giving labor the edge when it comes to employment for the first time in the last 30 years and now think "nobody wants to work anymore!"

I recently read somewhere �MBAs and communists have the exact same understanding of how the world works, it�s just that the MBA thinks it�s good,� and this whole series of explanations is pretty much ringing the bell under that.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:09

haveblue: Aug 15, 2005; Toilet Rascal

Madkal posted:

Did Pence ever spend time denying the allegations?

Were those allegations ever mainstream? I thought it was just a joke on these forums based on one time he tweeted a Reagan quote

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:09

Gyges: Aug 4, 2004; NOW NO ONE
RECOGNIZE HULK

BonoMan posted:

IANAE on any of this but I think most bad blood about buy backs seems to emanate not from the fact that they exist but that companies, in an era of huge corporate profits and high prices, they tend to use profits for buy backs instead of material investment into the company (that could potentially lead to consumer benefits).

I'd argue that the current bad blood is mostly from the government repeatedly giving money in various forms to corporations in order to stimulate the economy or save jobs, only to :surprise pickachu face: when the corporations just turn around and do stock buy backs instead.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:24

BonoMan: Feb 20, 2002; Jade Ear Joe

Gyges posted:

I'd argue that the current bad blood is mostly from the government repeatedly giving money in various forms to corporations in order to stimulate the economy or save jobs, only to :surprise pickachu face: when the corporations just turn around and do stock buy backs instead.

Oh I mean yeah... that too!

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:29

Tibalt: May 14, 2017; What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

Gyges posted:

I'd argue that the current bad blood is mostly from the government repeatedly giving money in various forms to corporations in order to stimulate the economy or save jobs, only to :surprise pickachu face: when the corporations just turn around and do stock buy backs instead.

I feel like this came up a few times with 2008 bailouts - bail out money wasn't allowed to be used for dividends (or executive bonuses), but it didn't stop stock buybacks.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:30

yronic heroism: Oct 31, 2008

None of this is new ground, and sounds like a setup for �lol guess what libs, businesses exist to make money and not give it out to people :smug:

�

To which the checkmate move is always to point out �no poo poo that�s why there�s a government :smuggo:

�

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:31

Crows Turn Off: Jan 7, 2008

Dapper_Swindler posted:

speaking of ethics. seems walker is just saying gently caress it and saying warknock assulted kids at youth camps.
https://mobile.twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1594751186338463752

I wish there was actual punishment for lying about poo poo like this. The most severe punishment is that he'll lose the election.

Crows Turn Off fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Nov 21, 2022

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:33

Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi: Mar 26, 2005

Crows Turn Off posted:

I wish there was actual punishment for this lying about poo poo like this. The most severe punishment is that he'll lose the election.

Yeah, it sucks. And my assumption is that by presenting it as "I heard from someone else that this totally happened!" he can loophole himself from any defamation or libel suit.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:47

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

That's like trying to explain that a klan member is calling themselves a racist ironically. Like yeah, they are, but also it's true.

SA itself has problems with people advocating [repulsive thing or person] "ironically" (wholeheartedly), it's a learned way to slip vileness into the discourse while pretending not to own it.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:52

Jaxyon: Mar 7, 2016; I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Crossposting from Texas thread:

Lemniscate Blue posted:

"Bill filed" is not "bill passed, but god drat.

https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1592536218507833344

This is full-on eliminationist. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/pdf/HB00672I.pdf

They absolutely want queer folks and especially queer kids dead.

# ? Nov 21, 2022 22:56

Rigel: Nov 11, 2016

Oregon's governor just announced a blanket marijuana pardon for state level crimes.

https://twitter.com/YahooNews/status/1594822158315921419

# ? Nov 21, 2022 23:38

FLIPADELPHIA: Apr 27, 2007; Heavy Shit; Grimey Drawer

Trump rejecting Elon's plea to come back to Twitter is so loving hilarious and awesome. It's like the one cool thing he's ever done.

# ? Nov 22, 2022 00:29

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009

FLIPADELPHIA posted:

Trump rejecting Elon's plea to come back to Twitter is so loving hilarious and awesome. It's like the one cool thing he's ever done.

Fast food banquet was the coolest thing he�s ever done. :colbert:

# ? Nov 22, 2022 00:34

Morrow: Oct 31, 2010

FLIPADELPHIA posted:

Trump rejecting Elon's plea to come back to Twitter is so loving hilarious and awesome. It's like the one cool thing he's ever done.

The thing you need to admire about Trump is that he firmly believes in kicking people when they're down, where it will hurt, without mercy. It's not cool when he does it to people you like but it's great when the eye of sauron turns on the unworthy.

# ? Nov 22, 2022 00:34

Ither: Jan 30, 2010

Rigel posted:

Oregon's governor just announced a blanket marijuana pardon for state level crimes.

https://twitter.com/YahooNews/status/1594822158315921419

Hasn't weed been legal for some time in Oregon?

Does anyone have insight into the timing of this?

# ? Nov 22, 2022 01:02

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Ither posted:

Hasn't weed been legal for some time in Oregon?

Does anyone have insight into the timing of this?

I'd guess either lame duck decision or in response to Biden saying Governors should pardon all weed possession charges.

Waiting for a lame duck in Oregon or waiting a month after Biden called for it both seem a little weird, though.

# ? Nov 22, 2022 01:06

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Thank you all for clarifying about buybacks and dividend, and how they differ and resemble one another.

# ? Nov 22, 2022 01:18

Dapper_Swindler: Feb 14, 2012; Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

I'd guess either lame duck decision or in response to Biden saying Governors should pardon all weed possession charges.

Waiting for a lame duck in Oregon or waiting a month after Biden called for it both seem a little weird, though.

I�d be curious about if Shapiro does it in PA, he isn�t a super duper krasner progressive but I could see him doing it especially if the WH is encouraging it.

# ? Nov 22, 2022 02:20

Sephyr: Aug 28, 2012

FLIPADELPHIA posted:

Trump rejecting Elon's plea to come back to Twitter is so loving hilarious and awesome. It's like the one cool thing he's ever done.

Did he really refuse? Wow.

I guess Trump didn't like the idea of his presence boosting someone else's toy site. Before, he was the main character in a site run by a faceless corporate logo. Now it has an actual personality pulling the strings...and one that could change its mind and ban trump again just to post "roflcopter get bent omegalulz!"

# ? Nov 22, 2022 02:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 25, 2024 22:19

Gyges: Aug 4, 2004; NOW NO ONE
RECOGNIZE HULK

Sephyr posted:

Did he really refuse? Wow.

I guess Trump didn't like the idea of his presence boosting someone else's toy site. Before, he was the main character in a site run by a faceless corporate logo. Now it has an actual personality pulling the strings...and one that could change its mind and ban trump again just to post "roflcopter get bent omegalulz!"

It's nothing so calculated. Donny has his own social media company where he can drop his bon mots, and nobody from Twitter apologized profusely for offending America's Favorite President.

# ? Nov 22, 2022 02:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE Autumn: Well Actually, This IS somethingpedantic.com

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