Newt, you don't know the half of it. The reason they need a bail-out? Two words, my friend: stock buybacks.

Back in '16, good ol' AA was ~$20 BILLION in debt. Yes, their DEBT was larger than the GDP of some nations. Bad situation, right? What to do, what to do -- HEY! I got it! Let's spend NINE FUCKING BILLION on stock buybacks. In doing so, they turned $5b in reserve cash into $550 million. Trump himself couldn't have fucked this up worse if he tried.

It gets worse. Here, I will quote from Forbes:

"The numbers boggle the mind. American Airlines spent nearly three times its current value on stock buybacks over the last six years."

It gets even worse from there.

Over the last ten years, AA spent ~$13b on stock buybacks. You know what their free cash flow was over the same 10-year period?

-$7,935 million.

That's not a typo. Their free cash flow, unique among all major airlines, is NEGATIVE. The number on their -negative- cash flow is greater than the -positive- cash flows of Jet Blue and Alaska combined.

Guess where that money went?

Shareholders? Nope.
Employees? Nope.
Improvements to the business as a whole? Nuh-uh.

If you guessed "The CEO's pocket", you win a $4 Snickers bar. If you also suspect that any bailout will end up in the same place, I'm throwing in a free Baby Ruth or an Abbazabba (your choice).

That's right: your tax-paying American ass is going to bail out these cocksuckers not to save jobs -- no fucking chance in Hell that's going to happen -- but to make Doug fucking Parker, an asshole of utterly legendary proportions who made $11.5 MILLION in 2019 thanks to those buybacks, even fucking richer.

There's not enough Prep-H in the world to compensate for that level of ass-fucking. And you WILL smile when you're getting raped, otherwise it's getting stuffed in your mouth afterwards.

(BTW: when they started this financial cocksuckery, AA was ~$60 a share. On Friday, it closed just below $13. Dough Parker still made money. The funds, including pension funds, who invested in AA @ $60? Not so much.)

You stupid stupid dishonest stupid man. He renounced them for decades before the photo with Biden ('08?), starting in the 40's when he left the KKK after a few years in. Trump is currently being supported by the active KKK membership and leaders as well as multiple racist hate groups. He has not renounced them or said he doesn't want their votes, instead he claims he doesn't know who David Duke is despite having discussed him at length in prior interviews and calls them good people, his tough guys. Democrats have renounced the KKK and racists publicly for decades. Derp.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kkk-trump-david-duke-tucker-carlson-election-2020-a9609491.html

https://www.factcheck.org/2016/03/trumps-david-duke-amnesia/

If Biden is the racist, why do open racists all support Trump?

🤦‍♂️

Robert Byrd served as U.S. Representative for the state of West Virginia from 1953 to 1959, and as a U.S. Senator from 1959, until his death in 2010 ( here ).

Byrd was not a Grand Wizard or leader of the Klan. He was, however, a former organizer and member of the KKK. A Washington Post article reviewing Byrd’s memoir explains these years in more detail. Byrd later renounced his membership to the organization, although his early record in Congress on race and civil rights was mixed. For example, Byrd partook in a lengthy filibuster effort against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but supported the 1968 civil rights act . A Democrat but conservative in values, Byrd decades later also criticized President Bill Clinton’s decision to push for the legalization of gay marriage.

In a 2006 CNN interview, Byrd expressed regret for the filibuster and called his time in the Klan the greatest mistake of his life.
In 2005, Byrd commented on his past membership of the Klan in his memoir and in an interview with the Washington Post said, "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times … and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."

During the 2008 presidential race, Byrd endorsed Barack Obama.

At the time of his death, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a leading civil rights organization formed in 1909 for the advancement of racial equality and elimination of racial discrimination, issued a statement mourning his passing. The NAACP’s President and CEO remarked: "Senator Byrd reflects the transformative power of this nation. Senator Byrd went from being an active member of the KKK to a being a stalwart supporter of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and many other pieces of seminal legislation that advanced the civil rights and liberties of our country”. ( bit.ly/33hn5V3 ) Then-President Obama eulogized Byrd.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-biden-clan/false-claim-joe-biden-pictured-with-grand-wizard-of-ku-klux-klan-idUSKBN2103C3

McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, also spoke at Byrd’s memorial service — and other Republicans issued statements remembering Byrd. Texas Sen. John Cornyn said that Byrd was “a tireless public servant” and that the “Senate has lost a great champion, he will be missed greatly.”

Now go scourge yourself until I tell you to stop, you liar and fool. Trump made you look stupid again with another misrepresentation you regurgitated.

Just to clarify

"According to Rich Kramer, CEO and president of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, the slide that was leaked from the Topeka plant was created by an employee at the Topeka plant and did not run it through its corporate office."

https://twitter.com/goodyear/status/1296522073637101569/photo/1

Why aren't (some) officials questioning the pension liabilities? In many cases it could be because Republicans at least tend to let the pensions go bankrupt then allow agencies off the hook for the retirement packages many worked a lifetime to earn, so why worry? Oddly, when it's multi million retirement packages for CEOs of companies being bailed out, the same people insist it's a contractual obligation that can't be ignored.

Sure did...almost as bad as blockbuster.
I read the CEO of Netflix said if Blockbuster had started streaming two years earlier (they first tried in early 09 through TiVo) it would still exist and Netflix would have died.

No, there aren't. The cheating is excessively one sided.
Republicans certainly think it helps them, or they wouldn't be doing it over and over and over and over while claiming illegal immigrants are the problem with zero evidence to back their claims.
There have been zero democratic campaigns caught cheating, changing ballots, purging voter rolls, closing polling places in areas where the minority population increased and adding more in affluent areas, instituting polling taxes, or voting multiple times or for dead people. Those were ALL Republicans. Show me an instance in the last decade of a democratic conspiracy to commit vote fraud, I doubt you can even come up with individual instances. Btw, OANN or other disreputable sources (propaganda networks) will be ignored, if you find a story there, verify it elsewhere before using it as evidence, because the chances they're making it up are good.

I would agree with allowing Sunday voting, but your party has banned it because huge numbers of minorities were voting after church, so Sunday voting was removed in multiple Republican led states. I also support a full week of voting. Mandatory voting, while I like the idea, is incredibly complicated and won't work in America imo, and especially not if you removed voting by mail.

I'll run with in person only (although I don't really support it) because that also hurts Republicans badly....the elderly almost exclusively vote by mail, your main voting block.
With ID....ok, but to be fair, it needs to be a voting only ID that every person needs to go wait in line at the DMV or courthouse to get. If Republicans had to jump through the same hoops they want to set up for the poor, they would remove all the hoops....elderly and CEOs won't accept having to procure a seperate id just to vote, like they insist is a good idea for the poor who don't drive so don't have a driver's license...they only like the idea if the id they already have covers them, not if they have to do anything to get one.

Seven executives of top pharmaceutical companies were grilled before a congressional panel Tuesday about the nation's skyrocketing drug prices

Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the committee, blasted Big Pharma as "morally repugnant" and accused the companies of operating in an "unacceptable" way. He grew testy when he believed the executives weren't being forthcoming about reducing list prices.

"All of this other stuff is window dressing," Wyden snapped. "You are stonewalling on the key issue."

At one point, he pressed the chairman and CEO of AbbVie, maker of the arthritis drug Humira, which, according to a recent New York Times story, has doubled in list price since 2012, from about $19,000 a year to $38,000. Wyden wanted to know whether the company makes money on drugs in Germany and other Westernized nations where patients pay, on average, 40% less than Americans.

"Yes, we do," CEO Richard Gonzalez said.
If that's the case, Wyden said, "you can do the same thing in the United States."

"How is that not gouging the American consumer?" he asked. "You are willing to sit by and hose the American consumer and give breaks to those overseas."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/health/senate-hearing-skyrocketing-drug-prices/index.html

Okay, the whole last statement is Bullshit.
"Americans are subsidizing the cost of drugs for the rest of the world." "The reason drugs are so expensive in the US, is becuase they are cheaper everywhere else."

BULL
Talk about shifting the blame.
The reason the drugs are so expensive is because the Drug companies are "for Profit" private companies, and they know people will die without their product so they also know there is an urgency for people to have the drugs. So they jack up the price for bigger profits. Stock owners want better return on their investments, so the board and CEO do everything they can/get away with to get as much as they think they can without breaking the bank. AKA, the consumer - of course, there is an acceptable death rate that they factor in, which they feel is safe to shield them from backlash, staying as close to that line as possible.

As always follow the money - see what these companies make in a year.

<iframe src='//players.brightcove.net/2111767321001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6007817856001' allowfullscreen frameborder=0></iframe>
http://players.brightcove.net/2111767321001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6007817856001


"As a result, even with major R&D spending, pharmaceutical companies remain highly profitable. They have the tenth highest average after-tax profit levels of more than 100 different industries. And according to figures from Axios, while drug companies bring in 23% of health care’s U.S. revenue, they make 63% of the total profits."

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by BSR.

The veracity of the statement has no bearing on the fact that you dismissed/questioned it first, and now agree. Your position changed....and so has your argument now from 'staggering wealth inequality isn't a bad thing" to ' wealth inequality isn't staggering'.
Forgive us if we take the words of economists, historians, reality, and our own senses over a random person's opinion.

Wiki- in 2014 the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation's wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the "richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percent".[8] The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee "needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour"
If that's not excessive, I have to wonder what could be in your opinion. My wife, head of her department for 10 years, working 45-50 hour weeks, makes $30k a year working like a dog (at a job that is life and death for her customers, platelet donation, her department keeps our only local blood bank open as the only money making department, she doesn't make fries.)...Warren Buffet makes >10000 times that much doing absolutely nothing...not excessive?! Also, because he only pays taxes on what he spends, he pays less in taxes than we do.
Thpp!....Ack!

Yes, and they used those tax breaks to buy back stock, not create jobs.
<7% went to workers in the form of wages increases or new jobs. Far more went directly into the pockets of a few CEO s. Many of those businesses he touted as being saved and growing thanks to him have closed factories since the tax cut and some left the country.
It would be interesting to find out how much George Soros got from those tax cuts thanks to uncle Donny.

Installation of the Peg Valve Transference Unit requires a signed TN.17 (3 copies); a filled and signed FL.54 (additionally signed by 3 witnesses); majority approval from the Board of Optimal Manufacturing Process; majority approval from the Board of Human Affairs; and a sworn affidavit from the CEO (or appointed delegate if the CEO is on leave) that the proposed change will neither impact the human rights of the human resources, nor negatively impact the economy of the state.

The above solution only required a signed Refrain from Sexual Misconduct and a basket.

Your video, Tumblr CEO: No More Porn, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Except that YouTube (a private company) refusing to host his videos isn't at all equivalent to the government dragging him away and silencing him against his constitutional rights. Obvious, perhaps, but worth saying anyway, given that's how the alt-right have been portraying his "takedown". Also, he was only banned from Twitter for a week and is back spewing his hateful dangerous lies on that platform as if nothing happened, with the tacit approval of its CEO, who loves the clicks.

Probably? Try 100%. The scary thing is his supporters, the entire evangelical Christians, will walk lock and step with him all the way. They are 100% guaranteed to turn out in force in November 2018, so no Blue Wave, and they are guaranteed to show up in 2020 as well. He has 35% of the voting population that will support everything he ever does. Like he said, he could shoot somebody on live TV and wouldn't lose a vote. He's giving them everything they ever wanted. Everything. We'll be in a theocracy by the time his two terms are up, and then he may become President for life. And yet the liberals keep thinking that sooner or later, he'll trip up... he tries to order the Post Office to increase their rates specifically to Amazon because it's founder owns a newspaper that has said bad things about him, and now has ordered the Justice Department to carry an investigation into his political enemies. He doesn't understand the divisions and separation of power, he thinks being President is like being an owner and CEO of a major company. And the GOP will never do anything to stop him, again because he's got that 35% that is 100% guaranteed to follow him no matter what. He could appear on TV and say "I'm doing everything I can to undo that niger Obama's Presidency... and we all know there's a difference between a black person, like my friend Kanye, and a nigger like Obama" and they'd just say something like they don't share his opinion, but do nothing... he could follow through with his threat to shoot somebody, and they wouldn't care. There can be no overstating the dangers democracy is in right now in the country, that's how bad it is...