[PassedOut]

Chas_P, on 2019-September-22, 19:19, said:

Like every other complaint against the teenaged Kavanaugh, it was a matter of “my cousin Ernie’s brother’s girlfriend heard from her college roommate that three people whose names she cannot remember told her best friend that someone who might have been Brett Kavanaugh was rumored to have exposed himself at a drunken white-privilege party at Yale 35 or maybe 36 years ago.”

Just more hilarity from the looney left and The New York Slimes.

As I look at your quote from the NYT, it seems more specific than your characterization of it: Classmate Max Stier came forward to say that he himself witnessed Kavanaugh's behavior. I can say that if I had witnessed something like that at a college party, the memory would be indelible.

[Chas_P]

PassedOut, on 2019-September-22, 19:33, said:

Classmate Max Stier came forward to say that he himself witnessed Kavanaugh's behavior. I can say that if I had witnessed something like that at a college party, the memory would be indelible.

Yes he did. The man is apparently blessed with total recall. Yet I find it interesting that Pogrebin and Kelly failed to mention that Stier was part of Bill Clinton’s defense team when the priapic former president was endeavoring to extricate himself from l’affair Lewinsky without damaging any more cigars.

[y66]

From Noah Smith at Bloomberg:

Quote

Trump has spent twice as much bailing out farmers from a trade war he started than Obama spent bailing out automakers from a recession he didn't start.

Quote

At $28 billion so far, the farm rescue is more than twice as expensive as the 2009 bailout of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, which cost taxpayers $12 billion.

[y66]

From Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change? by Tad Friend at the New Yorker:

Quote

Brown assembled a team of scientists, who approached simulating a hamburger as if it were the Apollo program. They made their burger sustainable: the Impossible Burger requires eighty-seven per cent less water and ninety-six per cent less land than a cowburger, and its production generates eighty-nine per cent less G.H.G. emissions. They made it nutritionally equal to or superior to beef. And they made it look, smell, and taste very different from the customary veggie replacement. Impossible’s breakthrough involves a molecule called heme, which the company produces in tanks of genetically modified yeast. Heme helps an Impossible Burger remain pink in the middle as it cooks, and it replicates how heme in cow muscle catalyzes the conversion of simple nutrients into the molecules that give beef its yeasty, bloody, savory flavor. To my palate, at least, the Impossible Burger still lacks a beef burger’s amplitude, that crisp initial crunch followed by shreds of beef falling apart on your tongue. But, in taste tests, half the respondents can’t distinguish Impossible’s patty from a Safeway burger.

Eighteen months ago, White Castle, the nation’s oldest burger chain, started selling the Impossible Slider, and sales exceeded expectations by more than thirty per cent. Lisa Ingram, White Castle’s C.E.O., said, “We’ve often had customers return to the counter to say, ‘You gave us the wrong order, the real burger.’ ” In August, Burger King rolled out the Impossible Whopper in all of its seventy-two hundred locations. Fernando Machado, the company’s chief marketing officer, said, “Burger King skews male and older, but Impossible brings in young people and women, and puts us in a different spectrum of quality, freshness, and health.”

Ninety-five per cent of those who buy the Impossible Burger are meat-eaters. The radio host Glenn Beck, who breeds cattle when he’s not leading the “They’re taking away your hamburgers!” caucus, recently tried the Impossible Burger on his show, in a blind taste test against a beef burger—and guessed wrong. “That is insane!” he marvelled. “I could go vegan!”

Pat Brown had built a better mouthtrap. But would that be enough?

The working title of Impossible Foods’ 2019 impact report was “***** the Meat Industry.” “I never seriously considered using it,” Brown told me, “but it helps frame the mojo.” Brown has a light voice, a tolerant smile, and an engaging habit of absorption; he often remarks that some scientific conundrum is “too arcane to get into,” then plunges into it regardless, surfacing minutes later with a sheepish “Anyway, anyway!” as he tries to recall the topic at hand. But the mojo is conquest. “We plan to take a double-digit portion of the beef market within five years, and then we can push that industry, which is fragile and has low margins, into a death spiral,” he said. “Then we can just point to the pork industry and the chicken industry and say ‘You’re next!’ and they’ll go bankrupt even faster.”

Meat producers don’t seem too worried that Brown will rid the earth of livestock by 2035. The three largest meatpacking companies in America have combined annual revenues of more than two hundred billion dollars. Mark Dopp, a senior executive at the North American Meat Institute, a lobbying group, told me, “I just don’t think it’s possible to wipe out animal agriculture in sixteen years. The tentacles that flow from the meat industry—the leather and the pharmaceuticals made from its by-products, the millions of jobs in America, the infrastructure—I don’t see that being displaced over even fifty years.”

A number of alternative-protein entrepreneurs share Brown’s mission but believe he’s going about it the wrong way. The plant-based producer Beyond Meat is in fifty-three thousand outlets, including Carl’s Jr., A&W, and Dunkin’, and has a foothold in some fifty countries. Its I.P.O., in May, was the most successful offering of the year, with the stock up more than five hundred per cent; though the company is losing money, investors have noticed that sales of plant-based meat in restaurants nearly quadrupled last year. While Impossible depends on the patented ingredient heme, Beyond builds its burgers and sausages without genetically modified components, touting that approach as healthier. Ethan Brown, Beyond’s founder and C.E.O. (and no relation to Pat Brown), told me, jocularly, “I have an agreement with my staff that if I have a heart attack they have to make it look like an accident.”

Several dozen other startups have taken an entirely different approach: growing meat from animal cells. Yet even Pat Brown’s competitors often end up following his lead. Mike Selden, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Finless Foods, a startup working on cell-based bluefin tuna, said, “Pat and Impossible made it seem like there’s a real industry here. He stopped using the words ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ and set the rules for the industry: ‘If our product can’t compete on regular metrics like taste, price, convenience, and nutrition, then all we’re doing is virtue signalling for rich people.’ And he incorporated biotechnology in a way that’s interesting to meat-eaters—Pat made alternative meat sexy.”

What’s striking about Brown is his aggression. He is a David eager to head-butt Goliath. “If you could do two things of equal value for the world, and in one of them someone is trying to stop you, I would do that one,” he told me. Brown doesn’t care that plant-based meat amounts to less than 0.1 per cent of the $1.7-trillion global market for meat, fish, and dairy, or that meat contributes to the livelihoods of some 1.3 billion people. His motto, enshrined on the wall of Impossible’s office, is “Blast ahead!” During the six months that I was reporting this story, the company’s head count grew sixty per cent, to five hundred and fifty-two, and its total funding nearly doubled, to more than seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Brown laid out the math: to meet his 2035 goal, Impossible just has to double its production every year, on average, for the next 14.87 years. This means that it has to scale up more than thirty thousandfold. When I observed that no company has ever grown anywhere near that fast for that long, he shrugged and said, “We will be the most impactful company in the history of the world.”

[Winstonm]

Well, isn't this special?

Quote

A military official formerly in charge of all White House communications for the U.S. Army at Mar-a-Lago was sentenced to three years of probation on Friday after he made false statements to a federal agent during a child pornography investigation.

Richard Ciccarella — a non-commissioned officer who told federal agents he was in charge of communications at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach resort — became a target of an investigation after he uploaded photos of a young girl to a seedy Russian website between 2017 and 2018, according to court documents

[y66]

I've been enjoying my Google Pixelbook for a year or so. I got it for the lightweight feel (relative to my previous laptop), decent battery life, sharp display and touch screen. Yesterday I wanted to do something in Python and discovered it was fairly straightforward to install Linux and Python which is a plus. All in all, a pretty impressive machine for a relative newcomer to the hardware business.

[y66]

From Gillian Tett et al at FT:

Quote

As chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court since 2014, Leo Strine has been one of the most influential judges in US corporate law. More than half of all publicly traded US companies are domiciled in Delaware, making the small state the epicentre of legal battles between shareholders and boards of directors. 

Mr Strine is about to retire. But before he does, he is publishing a sweeping proposal for overhauling American capitalism. He outlines his ideas in this FT opinion column and you can read his proposal in full here. Later this week, Mr Strine will also present his ideas at a conference in Washington, details of which can be found here. 

However, last week in his first interview since announcing his retirement, Mr Strine spoke with Moral Money, and what he said is likely to intensify the debate about how to build a sustainable business. 

Some free-market thinkers may hate his ideas. Others may love them, particularly on the left. Either way, Mr Strine’s key point is this: rather than advance a Green New Deal, as liberal congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has proposed, he hopes to renew America’s commitment to former Democratic president Franklin Roosevelt’s original New Deal, focusing on worker rights. 

Mr Strine’s “comprehensive proposal” calls on big companies to create board-level committees focused on employees’ interests; it urges asset managers to consider their beneficiaries’ investment horizons and “human interests” when voting; and it recommends changing the holding period for long-term capital gains from one year to five, establishing a financial transaction tax, and closing the carried interest tax loophole. 

This is likely to spur discussion inside the Business Roundtable — and provide debate fodder for Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic presidential contenders as they scramble to win back labour union voters who sided with President Donald Trump in 2016. 

What follows is a transcript of the conversation edited for length and clarity.

FT: Are you a socialist? You are suggesting works councils

LS: I unapologetically support the approach to managing the economy that was begun in the New Deal and that is associated with European social democracy. 

That was the approach to managing an economy that forged a way that defeated both fascism and communism, and that made market forces — in other words capitalism — work for the many. And so I unapologetically embrace the New Deal/social democratic approach to the capitalist economy. 

I would note that virtually every rich person I know seems to buy their highest precision luxury goods such as automobiles and watches from nations that embrace that approach. 

FT: Why did you decide you needed to put this out now?

LS: My entire reason for being a public servant is because I believe in the idea that self-governing societies can make things better for their entire citizenry. 

(Winston) Churchill and (Franklin) Roosevelt, when they looked at the postwar era, realised that unless you have economic security . . . it is very difficult for you to enjoy life. 

I have been working for a long time on trying to forge common ground between business and labour. And for us to remember that what we have in common is more important than what divides us. 

And as we came into this [2020 election] cycle, some folks had asked me to take some of my thoughts over the years and put them in a more specific form. I bit the bullet and said, OK, if we were going to do something to make our corporate governance system and economy work better for the many and be aligned with sustainable economic growth, what would the changes be that we needed?

FT: You are particularly focused on the extra “E” in “EESG”. Why do you think investors should be paying as much attention to employees as to environmental, social and governance issues?

LS: Their investors’ economic wellbeing is mostly attributable to whether they have good jobs. These folks who control the capital, it is not their money, it is the money of working people and what you get to actually save, and put into the institutional investor is determined by your job. 

For most of us what we get out of the capitalist system is what we get from our employment. And that is what matters most as an economic matter to most investors. We don’t have an approach to running our economy where we treat the people who create the profits — the workers — with due regard and give them good pay. 

The election results in the US and the vote in Brexit are manifestations of what happens when there is economic insecurity. 

The great triumph of Franklin Roosevelt and the west was to actually come up with an approach to capitalism that made it work for the many. We have allowed ourselves to be arbitraged against each other and it has not had good results. It is absolutely vital that working people come first. 

I don’t apologise for being left-of-centre. When I am a judge I decide cases regardless of political bent, but I was never afraid of using the “liberal” word. But you can have what I call “the pour-over coffee left”: for European readers that means people who like coffee that is even more fancy than Starbucks. You can go to entire conferences where people will talk about sustainability, everything, and they will not mention how the company treats its workers. 

FT: Do you think the Business Roundtable statement (in August) missed a trick by not talking more about workers? 

LS: What I like about what they did is that they put down a marker. That alone creates some accountability. There is a lot of scepticism about whether it is just “woke talk” . . . or whether there is really going to be action behind it. I like to be optimistic and I think that they took a step forward.

What we have to see from them is, are there tangible steps they are willing to take that show their commitment is more than just of the moment.

FT: Your proposals look pretty close to European works councils. Is that essentially what you think the BRT and American corporations should be adopting? 

LS: Sen [Elizabeth] Warren has a really interesting and provocative proposal [the Accountable Capitalism Act] where she essentially calls for that. I call for something that gives workers more leverage, but that fits within the American context more. What I am calling for in the first instance . . . is a requirement that at the very least you have a workforce committee of the board that is focused on the best interests of the employees of the company and also has to take into account the best interests of the people who work as contractors of the company. It is short of co-determination, but it would require the board itself to focus on these issues.

FT: You are asking for sacrifices from those who wield economic power. What makes you think they will give up any of what they have?

LS: I have heard institutional investors talk about sustainability, but when you talk about [a
financial transactions tax], where are they? Do you know what the definition of a long-term capital gain is in the US? One year. That is an oxymoron. 

The question is are we going to recognise that we have a duty as citizens to the whole that [with] everybody engaging in some reasonable compromise we can move forward very positively for everybody. The investments that can be made if you actually raise sufficient revenues will make everybody more prosperous. 

The chance to get some stuff done may be enhanced because people are starting to see what happens when you don’t address these concerns. Whatever your perspective on Brexit, it is having a paralysing effect on the British people and their economy. 

The only thing we can do is keep pushing for common ground to encourage people to say, look, we are not asking you not to be a billionaire. But maybe you could pay a bit more of that wealth in taxes.

FT: In a world where your ideas are adopted, what is the mechanism that forces change? 

LS: Elections and leadership. And focus. [In the 2016 US election], one of the candidates focused intensely on economic insecurity and the other candidate did not. The candidate who did won. There is a lesson there. 

FT: Who would you say is your audience for this plan?

LS: I hope it is business people, labour people and all Americans who care about whether our economic system works for the many. I also hope it has an international appeal. I do not think we can do things in isolation any more. I do hope we are having a cross-border conversation. My proposal around workforce committees was very much influenced by the good work that has been done in the UK around these issues. 

FT: Do you need cross-border co-operation because otherwise we get into a competition where companies move to the lowest tax states and shares are traded in Singapore to avoid the financial transaction tax?

LS: Exactly. We have allowed competition on dimensions that we had determined were not socially acceptable within our own borders. We outlawed child labour, we outlawed excessive hours. We said working people should be able to form a union. 

How do any of our productive economies benefit from tax havens? We do not. If we did something like a financial transaction tax and a carbon tax across the scope of the OECD we could raise needed revenues for all of our societies and try to squeeze out these tax havens. If we can make sure that we give workers protection in the world economy then we will not have our workers played off each other. 

I don’t underestimate the challenges. But if we do not step up with positive answers then we know the nativist, negative answers will come to the fore.


FT: Are there other disclosure proposals you would like to see and that someone like SEC chairman Jay Clayton and right-of-centre individuals could agree on?

LS: I think very highly of Mr Clayton and I think he is doing an excellent job. We need to focus on coming up with common disclosures that are in the “good” range. But make sure they are common. Give the SEC the authority to oversee it but give them the time to consult with other policymakers about what would be most important. And frankly have that apply to all corporations that are societally important. 

One of the things I liked about Elizabeth Warren’s bill is that she did not focus just on public companies. She focused on the size of the company.

FT: What more do institutional investors such as BlackRock and Vanguard need to be doing?

LS: I have encouraged the index-fund complexes to step up. I have been at them about it for about 20 years because I think they are particularly well-aligned with the way companies should be run and with the interest of their workers and their investors. They are stepping up and I applaud that. 

They need to hold themselves accountable as complexes. They need to make sure that their index funds and socially responsible funds vote on everything in accordance with their objectives. They need to speak up and say there are too many votes that they cannot keep track of and to create a more patient approach to voting that is more thoughtful. 

It is insane that we have say-on-pay votes at every company every year. 

There is no way we want chief executives paid on year-to-year contracts and there is no way that institutional investors can vote thoughtfully on that many votes every year. 

There is a big blind spot that [asset managers] have on political spending. They do not exercise any constraint.

FT: What’s next for you and this report?

LS: A lot of us believe there is more common ground among the business community and working people in the US than there are issues that divide them. It is time that we built on that sense of shared purpose and had an agenda that allows us to go forward as vigorously as we need to do to address climate change. 

To the extent that I have a small part in this, it is part of a shared spirit with a lot of other people that we are losing sight of the things we share and letting the marginal issues that are far less central divide us. As a nation going into 2020 and 2021 can we do some constructive things? That is the goal.

[y66]

From Workers must be at the heart of company priorities by Leo Strine

Quote

The writer is chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and author of ‘Toward Fair and Sustainable Capitalism’, prepared for this week’s ‘A New Deal’ conference in Washington

Quote

The US corporate governance system has lost sight of its purpose. Companies have become more responsive to the immediate desires of the stock market but are failing to move quickly toward sustainable business practices, adequately invest in human capital and, most importantly, fairly share gains from corporate profits with the workers who create them.

The disjunction comes at a time when many American workers have become forced capitalists. Tax rules demand that employees saving for retirement or education put their money into equity and bond mutual funds in 401(k) and 529 plans.

These long-term savings objectives should align well with running sustainable, responsible businesses. Diversified worker-investors do not benefit when some companies offload the costs of their activities, such as pollution and carbon emissions, on to everyone else. As human beings who consume products, and depend on good jobs, they suffer when companies harm the environment, defraud or injure consumers and move production overseas.

Critically, 99 per cent of Americans owe most of their wealth to their jobs. As a result, the vast majority of investors need companies to do business in a way that provides Americans with access to good jobs, sustainable wage growth and a fair share of the profits that businesses generate. Yet our corporate governance system has increasingly failed to deliver. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, workers and investors did share in the wealth generated by a strong, growing economy. But since then that social compact has frayed: worker productivity has risen by about 70 per cent, but hourly pay has grown by only 12 per cent. Meanwhile, corporate profits have hit record highs. US workers are more educated, more skilled and do more to create corporate profits, but they share far less in the fruits of that labour.

The Business Roundtable, made up of top chief executives and institutional investors such as Vanguard and BlackRock now acknowledge that we need to make our capitalist system work better for the many. But scepticism rightly exists over whether this woke talk will be backed up by real action. Here are some concrete steps that could make a difference.

Workers must be given far more priority by companies. We should appoint board committees focused on fair treatment of company employees and those who work for its subcontractors. Business leaders must also support sensible labour law reforms giving unions a fairer opportunity to represent and bargain for their workers. We must make it easier to hold companies accountable by requiring better disclosure of how they treat workers and whether they operate in an ethical, sustainable, environmentally responsible manner.

But companies cannot act more responsibly without the support of the institutional investors who control worker-investors’ capital and thus more than 75 per cent of corporate shares. Some big money managers are starting to consider environmental, social, and governance factors. That is not enough. Institutional investors should be focused on EESG, adding an “E” for the interests of company employees. They should align their voting policies with the interests of worker-investors who need not just sustainable corporate profits but also good jobs, clean air and safe products. It makes no sense to require companies to disclose their EESG performance unless institutional investors also have to do so.

Other complementary measures are needed to promote a fair and sustainable capitalism. We must change tax and accounting rules that encourage speculation and rapid portfolio turnover, rather than productive, sound, long-term investments. Investments in employees should get as much credit as investments in robots. A financial transactions tax, capital gains tax reform, and elimination of rules that reduce the tax rate on “carried interest” generated by private equity would all increase the fairness of our tax system and discourage socially unproductive speculation.

The resulting revenues should fund infrastructure and basic research to improve US competitiveness and quality of life. We can supercharge our efforts to address climate change and set a global example. Investing in research, infrastructure and training will create jobs in the US, help workers in carbon-intensive industries shift to emerging clean energy companies, spark innovation and enhance America’s long-term international competitiveness.

US public corporations are not playthings. They create jobs, produce goods and services that consumers depend on, affect the environment we live in and build wealth that help Americans lead more secure lives. They are societally chartered institutions of enormous importance and value. Those who govern them should be accountable for the generation of durable wealth for their workers and ordinary investors.

We need a new system that supports sustainable and fair wealth creation within a system of enlightened capitalism. It should align the interests of institutional investors and corporations with those of the workers whose capital they control. With some modest sacrifices by every interest that wields economic power, we can make the economy work better for all Americans.

[Winstonm]

Finally some justice in the U.S.A.

Quote

Amber Guyger convicted of murder for killing Botham Jean

[Winstonm]

Could someone point me to the offices of the lobbyist for the bottom 99%?

Quote

Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to.

[Winstonm]

Having trouble with fruit flies? I have the solution.
First, locate a vintage Zenith or Philco black and white portable t.v.. (for reasons to be shown later, Zenith is the better choice). Now follow these steps:
1. Remove the picture tube
2. Fill a 1/2 gallon aquarium 3/4 full with apple cider vinegar.
3. Add exactly 10 drops of Dawn liquid dish soap
4. Place the aquarium inside the Zenith where the picture tube used to be.
5. Place the tv on a television stand and set in the kitchen close to your fresh fruit.

Cngratulations, , you have just made yourself a Zenith Fly Trap.
(Note: if you were lazy and used a Philco, all you made was a phool of yourself.)

[Winstonm]

I wonder if Republicans against Planned Parenthook realize they are promoting the birth of more Democrats?

[Winstonm]

Hard to believe that the Republicans have drawn the line at Kurds. What about string cheese and wheels?

[Zelandakh]

Winstonm, on 2019-October-07, 16:29, said:

Hard to believe that the Republicans have drawn the line at Kurds. What about string cheese and wheels?

I expect the Republican line is somewhere around coffee latté.

[Winstonm]

Zelandakh, on 2019-October-08, 02:30, said:

I expect the Republican line is somewhere around coffee latté.

Udder madness!

[cherdano]

I've canceled my NBA League pass subscription. This Daryl Morey story is chilling.

[Winstonm]

cherdano, on 2019-October-08, 15:24, said:

I've canceled my NBA League pass subscription. This Daryl Morey story is chilling.

The world is now about only money and corruption. Y66 posted this the other day. It is pertinent.

Quote

But without an ideology that looks toward the future, there are no goals of progress. Instead of offering a coherent vision for the future, you peddle in nostalgia; you explain the world not through ideas but conspiracies. Instead of being a beacon of hope, you accuse everyone else of being just as corrupt as you are. We are all post-Soviet now.

[Winstonm]

Quote

“I am sorry to say I do doubt the honesty of many men that are called good at home, that have given themselves up to serve a party. I am no man’s man. I bark at no man’s bid. I will never come and go, and fetch and carry, at the whistle of the great man in the white house, no matter who he is. And if this petty, un-patriotic scuffling for men, and forgetting principles, goes on, it will be the overthrow of this one happy nation, and the blood and toil of our ancestors will have been expended in vain.” – An Account of Col. Crockett’s Tour to the North and Down East : In the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-four (1835), p. 172

Too bad he is gone - seems there is another B'arr in need of a 3-year-old.

[johnu]

Tulsi Gabbard Says She Might Skip The Democratic Debate

Just a funny and odd story.

Quote

Presidential hopeful Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) threatened to drop out of next Tuesday’s Democratic debate, claiming that the whole electoral process is rigged against her.

The debates are the only way to get nationwide exposure for the "minor" candidates polling less than 2 or 3 percent. (excluding some kind of scandal or some incredibly favorable newsworthy event). Skipping the primary would be put her even farther out of the public view. I suggest she boycott the primaries while continuing her campaign full speed ahead. That would be newsworthy, but since the only way to get nominated is to win delegates in the primaries and caucuses, there would be zero chance of winning the nomination.

[y66]

Yuval Noah Harari and Steven Pinker discuss the case for optimism and other stuff.