United totally, 100% disagrees with your assessment. They say they were absolutely wrong and the passenger shares zero responsibility for what happened to him, something that never should have happened and never will again (according to the United President).

Edit: Also totally convinced United did the wrong thing, their shareholders. Ignoring any legal rights, the publicity this gained for them has cost United hundreds of millions in market value.


The guy went to the check in counter to discuss volunteering to fly later, and refused when he was told he would not fly until the next afternoon at best, not in a few hours. That was not acceptable and would cost him money and patients, which he told them. Then he got back on without incident.
Then he was forcibly removed.
Then he got back on again without incident, rambling and bleeding, now diagnosed with a broken nose, missing teeth, and a severe concussion.
And you support the company that had him attacked and concussed and let him back on the plane twice, not the one even United calls "the victim".

Also, why is no one upset that he managed to re-plane twice with no one even noticing?!? That's an insane security failure.

What the world must look like to you when you insist on being on the wrong side on every issue. You really must exist in a living hell.

Monsanto is like Microsoft... they are these hulking titans of their respective industries, who work as hard as they can to stay ahead of the game, sometimes through questionable activities. However, their contributions on the whole are incredible, driving generations of progress in their respective fields through investment, research, and release of progressively more useful tools (on the whole).

There is a similar debate regarding pharmaceutical companies and their profiteering from the invention of life saving drugs... its easy to paint a company as a 'bad guy' for charging large amounts of money for medicine that a person needs to live. But is it the company's responsibility to forgo shareholder profits in order to maximally help more people with their drug, or is it the spectrum of regulations imposed by a representative government that should be entrusted with that responsibility?

GMO agriculture products that are drought tolerant, flood tolerant, self pollenating, etc etc, will likely save our buns in the next 100 years. If anything we should be doubling down on how much effort we put into GMO production and selection, to help drive a technological boom in that industry before we've mismanaged ourselves into a crisis.

I understand what you are saying I would say though that in the past, a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away- media in this country was a bit more "journalistic". Able to take multiple views and be the devil's advocate, if need be. Now everything is streamlined and slimmed down with an agenda set by their corporate sponsors and shareholders. It wasn't ALWAYS like this in the very specific way that it is now.

I think I abstracted my point, sure - Trump would be great for capitalism and business and I do understand why many asshats think "in the box" for that sort of utopian status quo bullshit. Unfortunately, we're no longer in the 50's & 60's... we have MANY issues that demand progressive answers.

Welp, my friends - soon we might just have to join a Snorkel Colony. Thanks Trump, alt-right-wingers & capitalism! I always wanted to go back to my roots in the ocean!

Sounds like an exercising in rearranging the furniture on the Titanic to me.

In a world where discrimination and separatism is qualitatively and quantitatively on the rise, people in charge must be ecstatic that they can appease people without having to do anything meaningful that might piss off the extremists on the right, or "shareholders". And people are so used to being told that change is only possible through incremental adjustments that they'll eat it up like candy and think this is progress.

"People people people, if you're going to call someone a filthy tranny and throw fast food at xem on public transport, at least use the proper pronoun when you verbally abuse xem."

When there's a hole in the boat and you're taking on water, the least of your concerns should be about what language you use to describe the in-rushing water or shape of the hole, nor arguing over the colour of the material you use to repair it.

I'm sure some people will see this as a victory. Until next time they apply for a job and not get hired due to transphobia. And the manager of the company, with a gleam in their eye, begins the rejection letter with 'Dear bun/bunself', then sniggers to themselves and says "fucking trannies."

What I'm trying to say was summed nicely in a tweet i saw the other day:
ALTRIGHT/NEO NAZI: your all going to the gas chambers!!!
NEOLIBERAL: you're*

If this is the extent of what activism is able to achieve, i should say that the establishment/elite have won by pacifying and declawing the protesters. It's no longer about breaking the shackles of oppression. We can't go around breaking shackles everywhere - think of the effect on the economy? And what about people getting hit by shrapnel? No, instead the LGBTQ community will be given multi coloured chains, the black community will be given slightly longer chains, and we'll pad the shackles with silk so that everyone is much more comfortable. Don't complain about the concept of being chained, instead complain that your chain is not as nice as the next guy's chain.

It's as though the great struggle of protest and civil disobedience has been taken over by the liberal intelligentsia, and the worst kind of discrimination faced by a 20 year old middle-class university student with rainbow coloured dreadlocks and a nose piercing is the letter they receive about their student loan that begins "dear sir/madam". So they go out and march about it and think they've made progress when they get their own pronoun. In their life, in their experiences, they are treated equally in other respects, so they think they ARE fighting inequality.

But for the working class male or female transsexual who gets filthy looks and a seat isolated by themselves on public transport, to travel to their entry level job where they've been skipped over for promotion for not looking the part, or getting the right level of respect from the trans-phobic staff, getting snide whispered comments from customers about the size of their hands, getting abuse yelled at them as they travel to have a night out at the ONLY trans-friendly bar within a 20 mile radius....... I get the feeling that receiving a letter with the correct pronoun isn't exactly going to change their fucking lives.

To remove a weed, you go for the roots. Some wanker calling you him/her when you prefer bun/bunself is not the root of this problem. The problem is that they are trans-phobic, not the language - which is just the tool they use to discriminate against you. To change the language and think that you've won is a bit like redefining room temperature and claiming you've warmed everybody by a few degrees.

If you march for equal rights, fair pay, fair treatment then people are going to see that and join your protest because they also want those things. Those things will solve the problems faced by the trans community, feminists, masculinists, minorities alike! And through common goals and by supporting each other en masse for simple, unified goals like EQUALITY, progress will be made, change will happen. It is a concept called solidarity and seems to be going out of fashion, but our grandparents knew.

The objective for the establishment is to drive a wedge between groups of people so that their demands are more manageable, and they can be turned on each other. Feminists, masculinists, LGBT, everyone... can't you see how better off you'd be marching together for common values that lie at the core of what every human wants?

Wall of text, sorry... and I know it looks like i'm being insensitive. So congratulations, genuinely, for getting someone to use your preferred pronoun if that makes you feel better. But whilst people have been fighting tooth and nail to get their own pronoun (in civilised settings only), we've suffered huge leaps backwards in freedom and tolerance behind their backs whilst they were bent over intently concentrating on the finer detail of what their ideal equality looks like.

I don't really care about their taxes. I was simply illustrating that they unlock phones (individually by request with a warrant), that they got burned the last time they left a backdoor in a product, and that they are completely mercenary. The mercenary part is in line with what you said, they have only a responsibility to the shareholders to return a profit.

If they were doing this to safeguard the 4th Amendment only, then that would be patriotic.

The legal responsibility of Apple (along with all publicly traded corporations) is to maximize shareholder profits. If they act against those interests, then their management is liable, acting illegally, and susceptible to lawsuits.

That's the law and their "patriotic" duty. Their manufacture of popular products is the way they have gone about doing just that.

In China, by contrast, Apple has no problem unlocking phones or complying with the Chinese rulers' requests. But in the US, why should they comply if they don't have to (and it's their legal duty to act on behalf of their stock holders' interests)? They have already said that if they lose their legal battle, they will comply with whatever legal requirements. It would still be their duty to use any and all loopholes at their disposal to act in service to their shareholders' best interests, however they see fit. It's the State's problem to deal with such muddles, if the law is what it is. Not Apple's.

It's the same as with Apple's avoidance of taxes. Apple has the legal (and ethical) responsibility to avoid paying taxes however the law permits them to do so, and to not pay unnecessarily more than they have to do so. Again, they have that legal responsibility towards their shareholders.

The tax code, for anyone who looks it, is completely arbitrary. There is no "right" amount or percentage that anyone person or group "should" be taxed or is "fair" to be taxed. Such amounts are arbitrary and certainly not determined by some user's preference on videosift. (This is why videosift has no say in how much anyone pays in taxes or what the tax code actually says.)

Capitalism is a guideline or system of how to organise aspects of society (trade, labour and services for example), nothing more. How you use it defines its effect on us. I could sell you my child explicitly for the purpose of you raping it and it would show how evil capitalism is. Or I sell you my children's book explicitly for the purpose of you entertaining your own children and that would be quite nice.
The problem starts if you think everything needs to be a for profit business as capitalism should be unlimited. Then you live in a country that makes prisons privately owned businesses and thinks it's ok to bankrupt sick people and their families with medical bills.
Capitalism is as evil as the people controling it. Who allows these people to be evil? Who cares? Apparently not the majority.
However, all that is not the problem of this ad. The capitalism works to nobodies disadvantege here. Edeka tries to brand itself as family-friendly and established part of homelife. That is quite normal and acceptable for a grocery store. It is not like as if VW would be putting out ads on how honest they are.
The version of the ad I described as being better is as manipulative as this one with the exception that it doesn't make everyone look like assholes upon closer inspection.
Nobody nailed grandpa's door shut, he's allowed to step into the world and make new friends and other aquaintances. His isolation is understandable but mostly his own fault. I witnessed stuff like that myself, I have grandparents too.
On the other hand you bemoan the smombies of today. Do you see the irony of complaining about the screen-fixed stare of todays youth (and society in general) on an internet forum?
We created a distraction-addicted, short-term attention-spanned and self-affirming society on our own by willingly swallowing all the crap the distraction industry throws at us.
I don't have a twitter account because nothing I can say in 140 characters without established context is worth saying. That gotta mean something coming from me of all people.
I'm not on Facebook because I know what the 'StaSi' was and see no reason to do their work on my own person for Mr. Zuckerberg and his shareholders.
I have no internet connection on my cellphone because I prefer to know stuff instead of just looking it up. I don't write text messages all the time because I prefer spoken words with their complexity that simplifies communication instead of emojis that emulate things my face did since before cellphones stopped being science-fiction.
I choose not to stare at the palm of my hand and what's lying in it every 5 minutes because I can. Most of our modern society chooses differently. They chose poorly, as the real oldtimers would say.
And here we are, yet again, ranting about the evils of enticing screens in our lives, live on the internet. You know, we would not be this absurd joke if we'd sat at a dinnertable right now. With food and drink from Edeka.

I hate the term TBTF. If the corporation is too big to fail then don't let it or cause it to fail but rather put a few key executives in the slammer for 20 years and fine them into poverty. The corp. will replace the executives with new people who might think twice about the legality or morality of the methods they use to increase shareholder value and earn bonuses.

Yes, I am bit racist - as I said - toward Jamaican people.

Yes, I am prejudiced against cops - of any ethnicity.

A better word would be - wary, cautious, fearful

Again, you Lantern - as a old white cop - NEVER have to worry about being mistaken for a - thug or savage.

I do. Simply because I'm brown.

You can't complain about that Allen West isn't considered "black enough".

When you're making the argument that Obama isn't "American enough".

Barack Obama has lived his ENTIRE LIFE - expect 4 years between age 6 to 10 - in America.

So what if the Pastor at his church said racist stuff against white people?

That doesn't make Obama racist by association.

If that does, EVERY WHITE PERSON IS RACIST because.. the KKK.

Also -
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Bush's financed the Nazis. National Socialists.

You support the Bushes, therefore you're clearly a racist AND a Nazi.

You see. I could make the same weak arguments as you Lantern.

Stop being a weak politically-correct coward and just admit you're a racist jingoist Nazi-sympathizer.

The Royal Canadian Mint is a Canadian Crown Corporation, and operates under the legislative basis of the Royal Canadian Mint Act. As a Crown Corporation, it is 100% owned by the Government of Canada, which is its sole shareholder. It also serves the public’s interest while mandated to operate “in anticipation of profit”, meaning that it functions in a commercial manner and does not rely on taxpayer support to fund its operations.

The government department responsible for the Royal Canadian Mint is the Department of Finance. There are currently 10 members of the Mint’s Board of Directors, and 12 members on its Executive Team.[14] The Royal Canadian Mint has four lines of business: Bullion and Refinery Service, Canadian Circulation, Foreign Business, and Numismatics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Mint

The problem with action movies today is consumers are willing to pay to see any turd they crank out and turds are quite easy to make. You keep paying for them and they will keep making them.

I can't recall the last action movie i enjoyed and/or was willing to pay to see.

...and it's not that they (studios) don't know. They just don't care. Making money trumps quality every time for most studios. Especially if they have shareholders.

of course i'm assuming all this based on what i see.

The Basel 3 accords are essentially doing this. Basel and its previous incarnations are essentially non-binding guidelines established by an international agency for banks that domestic regulatory agencies in countries then enact. Even if they don't, banks follow these anyway because it's effectively an international standard.

Basel 2 (which we had prior to the GFC), had 2 tiers of capital that could be held. The actual shareholder stock capital that is rock solid (tier 1) and various loose definitions (including at the time AAA rated mortage backed securities) - tier 2. The last I heard, that 2nd tier has essentially been done away with and the overall capital requirements (%) required to be held, has been raised.

The problems though are:

1 - Unless you raise capital to stupendous levels (like seriously inhibiting bank lending), you wouldn't have anywhere near the buffer to prevent another 2008. The problem then was not insufficient capital. It's that the industry as a whole made a large judgement error in valuing mortgage backed securities.

2 - This also highlights the problem that breaking up the banks wouldn't solve the issue of groupthink because availability of credit and economic conditions are a universal thing. An analogy is the oil price. Even though the US is a major oil producer in it's own right, events like Iraq recently still heavily impact prices in the US because global prices don't change in a vacuum.

3 - As far Glass Steigel, even if investment and traditional banks were separate, operating in the same field, if credit dries up (say because a investment bank made a bad decision), that will still affect the traditional merchant banks.

All banks work through fractional lending. You take a deposit, keep a buffer for capital. You lend out the rest. Some returns back as a deposit, again you keep a buffer and lend out the rest. In bad economic conditions, regardless of whether caused by them or other players in the finance industry, some of their lenders default and there is potential for their entire capital buffer to collapse and the bank to default if the crisis is bad enough. Even if it's purely a merchant bank.

-

What splitting the banks probably would do is increase competition, and lower banking costs as well as salaries, which is generally a good thing and I would agree here that this is something that banks have lobbied heavily against (as well as things like the Consumer Protection Agency, for the same reason, margins). Having said that, there are a lot much more monopolistic companies with lower risk and much more stable margins (e.g. Wallmart).

I'm having a real problem putting my thoughts into words. I would feel a union has most of it's member's values presented for the most part. If a union leader really started acting contrary to the rank and file, he'd be voted out.

"Citizens United" -and PACs in general- however, from what I've been able to figure out, is a CEO donating "for his employees", but a CEO working contrary to his employee's wishes is commonplace, dare I say expected? As long as he has the blessing of the Board and Shareholders, his position is fixed.

I would think a union is closer to having its member's welfare in mind than a CEO. I have less a problem with a union (mass of people) controlling a government, than Corporations (a couple dozen people) controlling it.

Since the Republicans invented the Individual Mandate, tried twice under Bush Sr and once under Clinton to force what would eventually become Obamacare into National Law, I don't know why they are against it. They should be glad their plan passed and not any of the two plans Democrats actually wanted. It was funded the same way Obamacare is. The only real changes is that insurance companies can't deny or charge more for pre-existing conditions, and it went from catastrophic care to comprehensive care, so we treat people before they need major services. Otherwise basically the same thing. It was those plans that Romneycare was based on.

What the Democrats have long wanted, and what the American people deserve is the Single Payer that works so well for every other civilized nation in the world. What Obama promised was a Government Option which is a compromise between the massive for profit insurance that we have now, and a Single Payer. Then massive amounts of Republican's following what they were being sold by Fox News and the Koch brother's massive Tea Party movement, convinced the Repbulican base to ignore what their so called Christ said, to help the needy and poor and heal the sick, to "let them die!" And a massive opposition grew. So the Democrats fearing they couldn't go to the point of actually helping the millions of Americans working for companies that refuse to offer affordable health care and not paying a living wage for the benefit of the executives and shareholders, went with the Republican designed Individual Mandate.

What the Republicans should be doing is celebrating the fact that the Democrats couldn't (or more like wouldn't) pass either of the two plans they wanted, and in the end passed and adapted the Republican plan. They should be proud that Obamacare is basically Romneycare at the National level and be bashing Democrats for blocking it back when they tried to pass it under Bush Sr and Clinton. The Republicans should be saying, "we told you so a long time ago this was the way to go, and because of Democrats blocking it, we didn't get it until we forced Obama and the Democrats to give in and accept our plan. You American's could have had this over 20 years ago, but the Democrats refused. This is a victory for Americans and the Republican party that they finally relented and let our plan pass." Instead we get them shouting "let them die", because that's what the modern Christian Republicans think, that we are better off letting the poor people who work for these giant companies should die rather than let their tax dollars help them.

The problem is this is wishful thinking.

Unless you're a shareholder, you don't get a vote on how corporate funds are spent. There isn't an opportunity cost argument here unless you believe in state ownership or heavy intervention far beyond the level of regulation we have now.

Of course the government should incentive net benefits to society, say through subsidies or tax benefits, that the market undervalues such as health or transportation which has externality benefits that capitalism doesn't capture effectively. But that's a far cry from indicating specifically where it should be spent.