President Business Guy

Trump Media plummets 10% in premarket trading, with stock slide poised to accelerate

A sell-off of Trump Media is poised to pick up speed Thursday, with shares of former President Donald Trump’s company down more than 10% in premarket trading.

The company behind the conservative social media app Truth Social, which trades on the Nasdaq as DJT, was hovering around $27.50 per share ahead of the market’s open.

That would be more than 36% lower than it stood at the start of June, when Trump Media stock cost just over $49 a share.

The slide represents a massive on-paper loss for Trump, the majority owner of Trump Media stock.

Trump’s 114,750,000 shares in the company, worth more than $5.6 billion at the beginning of the month, would be worth around $3.2 billion based on Thursday’s moves before the bell.

Trump Media has been in a slump since May 30, when a New York jury convicted the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

That downward trend accelerated Tuesday, dovetailing with a company deadline related to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s expected approval of its registration statement.The stock fell nearly 10% in Tuesday’s session, on more than double the average trading volume.

After the bell, Trump Media revealed that the SEC had declared its registration statement effective — an announcement followed by the stock plunging more than 17% in post-market trading.

The development authorizes early investors in Trump Media to exercise warrants they hold in the company, and it allows stockholders to publicly resell securities covered by the registration statement.

Investment?

Somebody please explain to me how this whole Truth Social stock thing isn't just another way to launder Russian mob money.

I spent 24 hours on Trump's Truth Social so you don't have to. No wonder it's tanking

You've likely heard of former President Donald Trump's mouthpiece and social media platform, Truth Social. You may have seen headlines that its stock shocked Wall Street with its much-hyped initial public offering. Or that in the week since, it has been hemorrhaging value as investors get a real sense of the company's worth.

But how many of us know what Truth Social is really like? Judging by the platform's relatively low number of active users, I'm guessing it's still a mystery to many Americans. So I joined Truth Social, selflessly going there so you don't have to.

Twenty-four hours of scrolling through posts from "Truthsayers" on the two-year-old platform explained why the site is tanking. In short, partisan echo chambers are stale, musty spaces that lack the sort of oppositional views needed to make social media tick. Truth Social feels like a MAGA town hall in a ventless conference room, where an endless line of folks step up to the mic to share how the world is out to get them.

The Truth Social feed I experienced was a mix of swaggering gun talk, typo-filled Bible scripture, violent Biden bashing, nonsensical conspiracy theories and more misguided memes about Jan. 6 “hostages," trans satanists and murderous migrants than anyone should be subjected to in one day. Or ever.

What I didn't see were the anodyne news posts that populate other social platforms, pushback against absurd misinformation about "tsunamis of death for the highly vaccinated!" or ads for much that wasn't Trump-branded, Trump-adjacent or sold by My Pillow.

Social media has always been a playground for our worst instincts, but here, the madness and misinformation goes largely uncontested because who else but a Trump fan and a columnist forced to write about this stuff would volunteer to wade through such a trash heap? Apparently not enough folks to bring in substantial revenue, according to a recent disclosure that the company had made a mere $4.1 million in revenue in 2023 on losses of more than $58 million — quickly deflating investor enthusiasm and shaving some $4 billion from the company's valuation in the days since its IPO.

There was little conversation about the platform's stock plummet, but there was plenty of chatter about a supposed trans takeover, alleged Dem voter fraud, President Biden purportedly sniffing a baby repeatedly during Sunday’s White House Easter egg hunt and a pointless poll from the Daily Mail showing that Trump would beat Michelle Obama if a hypothetical presidential election were held today.

Trump’s own posts from his @realDonaldTrump account (6.91 million followers) are the backbone of the Truth Social experience, and illustrate what really sets it apart from other social media outlets.

This site has a star, and he garners far more adulation than heat. Thousands of users liked and "ReTruthed" his boasts about a presidential endorsement from Hungarian leader and strongman Viktor Orban, his complaints about the latest gag order from a judge presiding over one of his many court cases and his link to a Newsweek story about Trump sneakers reselling on EBay for $450,000.

His posts are a mix of loud, Trumpian ALL-CAPS warnings — "UNDER CROOKED JOE BIDEN WE HAVE BECOME A THIRD WORLD NATION"— and run-on, word-salad grievances: "I’ve just posted a 175 Million Dollar Bond with the sadly failing and very troubled State of New York, based on a Corrupt Judge and Attorney General who used a Statute that was never used for this before, where no Jury was allowed, my financial statements were conservative and had a 100% perfect caution/non-reliance clause, there were no victims (except me!), there was no crime or damage, there was only success and HAPPY BANKS."

To sign up for a Truth Social account, one must consent to receive text “updates” from the platform, and that Google Voice number designed to receive all your trash-bin spam calls and texts won’t work (I tried). Next up is choosing a username. The example given is “LibertyForAll.” Needless to say that handle was unavailable, as was “LibertyForAli.” Once in, it suggested accounts to follow such as Trump, conservative news outlets the Daily Wire and Breitbart, country singer John Rich and right-wing troll @Catturd. I did, and today, I am no smarter for doing so.

Social media is in essence a brain drain between sporadic bursts of breaking news and fresh commentary. And even though X, né Twitter, has decayed under the leadership of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, it's is still the closest thing our fractious online society has to a town square. Threads, Facebook's attempt to eat Twitter's lunch, still hasn't come close to generating enough heat to make it anything more than a placid space where nothing much seems to happen.

Truth Social launched in February 2022 after Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He has since been reinstated on both platforms, though he prefers to truth rather than tweet on his own platform, which is still a relatively small operation. Recent estimates from Similarweb show Truth Social has roughly 5 million active monthly users, compared to X’s estimated 368 million monthly users or Facebook’s 2.9 billion. The smaller number of users translates to a rather sleepy scrolling experience.

Advertisers also like lots of users, and the platform's ads — or lack thereof — are indicative of the challenges Truth Social has faced in finding companies willing to spend on Trump's platform. A majority of ads, labeled “Sponsored Truth,” are for Trump-branded merchandise: a 2024 Save America “gold” card, a "California for Trump" hat, an American flag embossed with more MAGA jargon.

Many of the retailers who buy space on the platform appeal to MAGA voters with Fox News-like candor. "Liberals Will Hate to See This!" boasts one ad for a "Love Like Jesus" hoodie. But as Monday's financial disclosure showed, that niche market might not be enough to put the company in the black.

To be fair, a Wall Street valuation isn't necessarily the only indicator of a product’s worth in the real world, that place where humans with tangible money and staggering debt actually handle the merchandise and use the service. And many tech companies surge after going public as retail investors buy the hype, then take a haircut as interest fades

Regardless, the volatile stock market story is about the most exciting aspect of Truth Social. Otherwise, it's a journey into the predictable, punctuated by ALL CAPS.

The Costs Of Climate Change

So I guess maybe the clear-eyed, pragmatic, let-the-markets-figure-it-out, level-headed conservatives - uhm - aren't.

Or - way more likely - they're being exposed as the cynical manipulative parasites they are.

There's a solid pattern being reprised that has to be acknowledged and sharply denounced. A pattern that points to the shitty things that plutocrats do to keep their profits (and their own portfolios) fat and healthy at the expense of everybody and everything else.

Black Lung? Yeah, but you can be proud of your family's tradition of working the mines and braving the dangers - like men - like good Americans.

Radiation sickness? Cancer? But isn't it your patriotic duty to stay in there and produce the weapons necessary to defend the nation? The arsenal of freedom is counting on you.

COVID? You're not going to let a little flu stand in your way are ya? You're working people - you need to work.

What's a little hot weather? You're no snowflake. Working up a good sweat won't hurt you. And just think how great it's going to be slammin' a few beers after work on a day like this. Plus, you'll have big time bragging rights. The Facebook memes are gonna do you proud.

They seem to think it's just a matter of better PR - that they can politic their way around it. But the truth is that these business geniuses are ignoring reality - the reality they're always trying to convince us they're so finely tuned in to.

• If the cost of lawsuits is less than or equal to the cost of product safety, then it's no big deal - carry on.
• If the cost of the labor force's healthcare is more than the cost of workplace safety, then we'll just externalize that cost by shifting the burden onto the workers themselves, or making sure our coin-operated politicians give us plenty of loopholes so we can make the taxpayers pick up the tab. So carry on.

Everything is factored in as the cost of doing business, with absolutely no regard for the fact that they and their businesses have to exist in the same reality as the rest of us. And I think that's what they're selling - they're trying to get us to accept the premise that given enough money and power, you don't even have to obey the laws of physics.

And BTW, you noticed how they changed the nomenclature a while back, right?

We used to be "personnel" - as in living, breathing, feeling, thinking people.

Now they call us "human resources" - as in "capital' or "raw materials".

Like we're nothing more than the interest payments on a bank loan that'll be written off, or sold off, or palmed off on whoever can be suckered into buying what's left of a dying business.

... or a load of bauxite, to be smelted down, used to stamp out as many beer cans as possible, and then discarded along with the rest of the slag.

Heat Is Costing the U.S. Economy Billions in Lost Productivity

From meatpackers to home health aides, workers are struggling in sweltering temperatures and productivity is taking a hit.

As much of the United States swelters under record heat, Amazon drivers and warehouse workers have gone on strike in part to protest working conditions that can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

On triple-digit days in Orlando, utility crews are postponing checks for gas leaks, since digging outdoors dressed in heavy safety gear could endanger their lives. Even in Michigan, on the nation’s northern border, construction crews are working shortened days because of heat.

Now that climate change has raised the Earth’s temperatures to the highest levels in recorded history, with projections showing that they will only climb further, new research shows the impact of heat on workers is spreading across the economy and lowering productivity.

Extreme heat is regularly affecting workers beyond expected industries like agriculture and construction. Sizzling temperatures are causing problems for those who work in factories, warehouses and restaurants and also for employees of airlines and telecommunications firms, delivery services and energy companies. Even home health aides are running into trouble.

“We’ve known for a very long time that human beings are very sensitive to temperature, and that their performance declines dramatically when exposed to heat, but what we haven’t known until very recently is whether and how those lab responses meaningfully extrapolate to the real-world economy,” said R. Jisung Park, an environmental and labor economist at the University of Pennsylvania. “And what we are learning is that hotter temperatures appear to muck up the gears of the economy in many more ways than we would have expected.”

No shit, Sherlock. It's not like the smart guys haven't been trying to tell us that for the last 30 or 40 or 50 fuckin' years.

A study published in June on the effects of temperature on productivity concludes that while extreme heat harms agriculture, its impact is greater on industrial and other sectors of the economy, in part because they are more labor-intensive. It finds that heat increases absenteeism and reduces work hours, and concludes that as the planet continues to warm, those losses will increase.

The cost is high. In 2021, more than 2.5 billion hours of labor in the U.S. agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service sectors were lost to heat exposure, according to data compiled by The Lancet. Another report found that in 2020, the loss of labor as a result of heat exposure cost the economy about $100 billion, a figure projected to grow to $500 billion annually by 2050.

Other research found that as the mercury reaches 90 degrees Fahrenheit, productivity slumps by about 25 percent and when it goes past 100 degrees, productivity drops off by 70 percent.

And the effects are unequally distributed: in poor counties, workers lose up to 5 percent of their pay with each hot day, researchers have found. In wealthy counties, the loss is less than 1 percent.

Of the many economic costs of climate change —- dying crops, spiking insurance rates, flooded properties — the loss of productivity caused by heat is emerging as one of the biggest, experts say.

“We know that the impacts of climate change are costing the economy,” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, and a former global executive for environmental and social risk at Bank of America. “The losses associated with people being hot at work, and the slowdowns and mistakes people make as a result are a huge part.”

Still, there are no national regulations to protect workers from extreme heat. In 2021, the Biden administration announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would propose the first rule designed to protect workers from heat exposure. But two years later, the agency still has not released a draft of the proposed regulation.

Seven states have some form of labor protections dealing with heat, but there has been a push to roll them back in some places. In June, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas signed a law that eliminated rules set by municipalities that mandated water breaks for construction workers, even though Texas leads all states in terms of lost productivity linked to heat, according to an analysis of federal data conducted by Vivid Economics.

Business groups are opposed to a national standard, saying it would be too expensive because it would likely require rest, water and shade breaks and possibly the installation of air-conditioning.

“OSHA should take care not to impose further regulatory burdens that make it more difficult for small businesses to grow their businesses and create jobs,” wrote David S. Addington, vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business, in response to OSHA’s plan to write a regulation.

Marc Freedman, vice president of employment policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said, “I don’t think anyone is dismissing the hazard of overexposure to heat.” But, he said, “Is an OSHA standard the right way to do it? A lot of employers are already taking measures, and the question will be, what more do they have to do?”

The National Beef slaughterhouse in Dodge City, Kan., where temperatures are expected to hover above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the next week, is cooled by fans, not air-conditioning.

Workers wear heavy protective aprons and helmets and use water vats and hoses heated to 180 degrees to sanitize their equipment. It’s always been hot work.

But this year is different, said one worker, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. The heat inside the slaughterhouse is intense, drenching employees in sweat and making it hard to get through a shift, the worker said.

National Beef did not respond to emails or telephone calls requesting comment.

Martin Rosas, a union representative for meatpacking and food processing workers in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, said sweltering conditions present a risk for food contamination. After workers skin a hide, they need to ensure that debris doesn’t get on the meat or carcass. “But when it’s extremely hot, and their safety glasses fog up, their vision is impaired and they are exhausted, they can’t even see what they’re doing,” Mr. Rosas said.

Almost 200 employees out of roughly 2,500, have quit at the Dodge City National Beef plant since May, Mr. Rosas said. That’s about 10 percent higher than usual for that time period, he said.

But even some workers in air-conditioned settings are getting too hot. McDonald’s workers in Los Angeles walked off the job this summer as the air-conditioned kitchens were overwhelmed by the sweltering heat outside.

“There is an air-conditioner in every part of the store, but the thermostat in the kitchen still showed it was over 100 degrees,” said Maria Rodriguez, who has worked at the same McDonald's on Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles for 20 years, but walked out on July 21, sacrificing a day of pay. “It’s been hot before, but never like this summer. I felt terrible — like I could pass out or faint at any moment.”

Nicole Enearu, the owner of the store, said in a statement, “We understand that there’s an uncomfortable heat wave in LA, which is why we’re even more focused on ensuring the safety of our employees inside our restaurants. Our air-conditioning is functioning properly at this location.”

Tony Hedgepeth, a home health aide in Richmond, Va., cares for a client whose home thermostat is typically set at about 82 degrees. Last week, the temperature inside was near 94 degrees.

Any heat is a challenge in Mr. Hedgepeth’s job. “Bathing, cooking, lifting and moving him, cleaning him,” he said. “It’s all physical. It’s a lot of sweat.”

Warehouse workers across the country are also feeling the heat. Sersie Cobb, a forklift driver who stocks boxes of pasta in a warehouse in Columbia, S.C., said the stifling heat can make it difficult to breathe. “Sometimes I get dizzy and start seeing dots,” Mr. Cobb said. “My vision starts to go black. I stop work immediately when that happens. Two times this summer I’ve had heart palpitations from the heat, and left work early to go to the E.R.”

In Southern California, a group of 84 striking Amazon delivery workers say that one of their priorities is getting the company to make it safe to work in extreme heat. Last month, unionized UPS workers won a victory when the company agreed to install air-conditioning in delivery trucks.

“Heat has played a tremendous role — it was one of the major issues in the negotiations,” said Carthy Boston, a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters representing UPS drivers in Washington, D.C. “Those trucks are hotboxes.”

Many factories were built decades ago for a different climate and are not air-conditioned. A study on the effects of extreme temperatures on the productivity of auto plants in the United States found that a week with six or more days of heat exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit cuts production by an average of 8 percent.

In Tulsa, Okla., Navistar is installing a $19 million air-conditioning system at its IC Bus factory, which produces many of America’s school buses. Temperatures on the floor can reach 99 degrees F. Currently, the plant is only cooled by overhead fans that swirl high above the assembly line.

Shane Anderson, the company’s interim manager, said air-conditioning is expected to cost about $183 per hour, or between $275,000 and $500,000 per year — but the company believes it will boost worker productivity.

Other employers are also adapting.

Brad Maurer, vice president of Leidal and Hart, which builds stadiums, hospitals and factories in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, said managers now bring in pallets of bottled water, which they didn’t used to do, at a cost to the company of a few thousand dollars a month.

Rising heat around Detroit recently caused his employees to stop working three hours early on a Ford Motors facility for several days in a row — a pattern emerging throughout his company’s work sites.

“It means costs go up, production goes down, we may not meet schedules, and guys and women don’t get paychecks,” Mr. Maurer said. Labor experts say that as employers adapt to the new reality of the changing climate, they will have to pay one way or the other.

“The truth is that the changes required probably will be very costly, and they will get passed on to employers and consumers,” said David Michaels, who served as assistant secretary of labor at OSHA during the Obama administration and is now a professor at the George Washington School of Public Health.

“But if we don’t want these workers to get killed we will have to pay that cost.”

An Unsurprising Surprise

Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections

Insider knowledge

For decades, some members of the fossil fuel industry tried to convince the public that a causative link between fossil fuel use and climate warming could not be made because the models used to project warming were too uncertain. Supran et al. show that one of those fossil fuel companies, ExxonMobil, had their own internal models that projected warming trajectories consistent with those forecast by the independent academic and government models. What they understood about climate models thus contradicted what they led the public to believe.

Structured Abstract

BACKGROUND

In 2015, investigative journalists discovered internal company memos indicating that Exxon oil company has known since the late 1970s that its fossil fuel products could lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” Additional documents then emerged showing that the US oil and gas industry’s largest trade association had likewise known since at least the 1950s, as had the coal industry since at least the 1960s, and electric utilities, Total oil company, and GM and Ford motor companies since at least the 1970s. Scholars and journalists have analyzed the texts contained in these documents, providing qualitative accounts of fossil fuel interests’ knowledge of climate science and its implications. In 2017, for instance, we demonstrated that Exxon’s internal documents, as well as peer-reviewed studies published by Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists, overwhelmingly acknowledged that climate change is real and human-caused. By contrast, the majority of Mobil and ExxonMobil Corp’s public communications promoted doubt on the matter.

ADVANCES

Many of the uncovered fossil fuel industry documents include explicit projections of the amount of warming expected to occur over time in response to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Yet, these numerical and graphical data have received little attention. Indeed, no one has systematically reviewed climate modeling projections by any fossil fuel interest. What exactly did oil and gas companies know, and how accurate did their knowledge prove to be? Here, we address these questions by reporting and analyzing all known global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003.

Our results show that in private and academic circles since the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil predicted global warming correctly and skillfully. Using established statistical techniques, we find that 63 to 83% of the climate projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists were accurate in predicting subsequent global warming. ExxonMobil’s average projected warming was 0.20° ± 0.04°C per decade, which is, within uncertainty, the same as that of independent academic and government projections published between 1970 and 2007. The average “skill score” and level of uncertainty of ExxonMobil’s climate models (67 to 75% and ±21%, respectively) were also similar to those of the independent models.
Moreover, we show that ExxonMobil scientists correctly dismissed the possibility of a coming ice age in favor of a “carbon dioxide induced ‘super-interglacial’”; accurately predicted that human-caused global warming would first be detectable in the year 2000 ± 5; and reasonably estimated how much CO2 would lead to dangerous warming.

OUTLOOK

Today, dozens of cities, counties, and states are suing oil and gas companies for their “longstanding internal scientific knowledge of the causes and consequences of climate change and public deception campaigns.” The European Parliament and the US Congress have held hearings, US President Joe Biden has committed to holding fossil fuel companies accountable, and a grassroots social movement has arisen under the moniker #ExxonKnew. 

Our findings demonstrate that ExxonMobil didn’t just know “something” about global warming decades ago—they knew as much as academic and government scientists knew. But whereas those scientists worked to communicate what they knew, ExxonMobil worked to deny it—including overemphasizing uncertainties, denigrating climate models, mythologizing global cooling, feigning ignorance about the discernibility of human-caused warming, and staying silent about the possibility of stranded fossil fuel assets in a carbon-constrained world.



Historically observed temperature change (red) and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (blue) over time, compared against global warming projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists.

(A) “Proprietary” 1982 Exxon-modeled projections.

(B) Summary of projections in seven internal company memos and five peer-reviewed publications between 1977 and 2003 (gray lines).

(C) A 1977 internally reported graph of the global warming “effect of CO2 on an interglacial scale.”

(A) and (B) display averaged historical temperature observations, whereas the historical temperature record in (C) is a smoothed Earth system model simulation of the last 150,000 years.

Abstract

Climate projections by the fossil fuel industry have never been assessed. On the basis of company records, we quantitatively evaluated all available global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003. We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations. Their projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models. Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp also correctly rejected the prospect of a coming ice age, accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected, and reasonably estimated the “carbon budget” for holding warming below 2°C. On each of these points, however, the company’s public statements about climate science contradicted its own scientific data.

In 2015, investigative journalists uncovered internal company documents showing that Exxon scientists have been warning their executives about “potentially catastrophic” anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming since at least 1977. Researchers and journalists have subsequently unearthed additional documents showing that the US oil and gas industry writ large—by way of its trade association, the American Petroleum Institute—has been aware of potential human-caused global warming since at least the 1950s; the coal industry since at least the 1960s (4); electric utilities, Total oil company, and General Motors and Ford motor companies since at least the 1970s; and Shell oil company since at least the 1980s.

This corpus of fossil fuel documents has attracted widespread scholarly, journalistic, political, and legal attention, leading to the conclusion that the fossil fuel industry has known for decades that their products could cause dangerous global warming. In 2017, we used content analysis to demonstrate that Exxon’s internal documents, as well as peer-reviewed studies authored or coauthored by Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists, overwhelmingly acknowledged that global warming is real and human-caused.

By contrast, we found that the majority of Mobil and ExxonMobil Corp’s public communications promoted doubt on the matter. Cities, counties, and states have accordingly filed dozens of lawsuits variously accusing ExxonMobil Corp and other companies of deceit and responsibility for climate damages. The attorney general of Massachusetts, for instance, alleges that ExxonMobil has had a “long-standing internal scientific knowledge of the causes and consequences of climate change” and waged “public deception campaigns” that misrepresented that knowledge. Civil society campaigns seeking to hold fossil fuel interests accountable for allegedly misleading shareholders, customers, and the public about climate science have emerged under monikers such as #ExxonKnew, #ShellKnew, and #TotalKnew.

But what exactly did the fossil fuel industry understand about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming, and how accurate did their understanding prove to be? Several of the documents in question include explicit projections of the amount of warming that could be expected to occur over time in response to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Yet, whereas the text of these documents has been interrogated in detail, the numerical and graphical data in them have not. Indeed, no one has systematically reported climate modeling projections by any fossil fuel interest, let alone assessed their accuracy and skill. This contrasts with academic climate models, whose performance has been extensively scrutinized.

- more, in case you need to get totally geeky-freaky with it -

The fuckers knew - the Dirty Fuels Cartel knew what was coming because of what they were doing.

They fucking knew.

And we've seen numerous studies of numerous smoking guns now. Class action lawsuits should be pouring in, and I should think the insurance companies would be leading the charge.

On Employer Vax Mandates

The nexus between the Libertarian nutballs and the Anti-Vax nutballs may be bringing up some interesting twists - for me anyway.

My general philosophy is that most everything is a matter of where you draw the line.

eg:

• Where's the line between Murder and Homicide?
• Where's the line between Sexual Harassment and pleasant friendly - even playful - interaction among colleagues?
• Where's the line between campaign contributions and bribery?

So I have to ask - if my employer can mandate shirts and pants, why not a mask?

If I can require my employees to observe safety regulations in the workplace, why would I not be allowed to mandate vaccinations?

You show up at work with measles because you refuse to get yourself or your kids vaccinated. You infect the young woman in the next cubicle and her pregnancy ends in miscarriage causing hemorrhage and complications that aren't fatal, but debilitating...etc etc.

Where does my liability as an employer end, and yours as an infection vector begin?

Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Can employers make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory?

Yes, with some exceptions.

Experts say U.S. employers can require employees to take safety measures, including vaccination. That doesn't necessarily mean you would get fired if you refuse, but you might need to sign a waiver or agree to work under specific conditions to limit any risk you might pose to yourself or others.

"Employers generally have wide scope" to make rules for the workplace, said Dorit Reiss, a law professor who specializes in vaccine policies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. "It's their business."

Rules will vary by country. But the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has allowed companies to mandate the flu and other vaccines, and has indicated they can require COVID-19 vaccines.

There are exceptions. For example, people can request exemptions for medical or religious reasons. Some states have proposed laws that restrict mandating the vaccines because of their "emergency use" status, but that may become less of an issue since Pfizer has applied for full approval and others are likely to follow.

How employers approach the issue will vary. Many might not want to require vaccination because of the administrative burden of tracking compliance and managing exemption requests, noted Michelle S. Strowhiro, an employment adviser and lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery. Legal claims could also arise.

As a result, many employers will likely strongly encourage vaccination without making it mandatory, Strowhiro said.

Walmart, for example, is offering a $75 bonus for employees who provide proof they were vaccinated.

So, it seems like we're charging headlong into a new round of labor vs management scrapes, and suddenly we're seeing something of a break in the stone wall contention that has always maintained that the noble entrepreneur has - and deserves to exercise - all but absolute power when it comes to deciding what does and what doesn't happen in and around his little patch of empire.

But as the Anti-Vax bullshit gets more astroturf boosts from fat cat culture war hobbyists, are the clear-eyed pragmatic authoritarians now saying the workers deserve to have more of a say in company policy?

Or maybe it's more like - "We'll throw them this populist bone and that'll help them get their minds right"

I doubt anyone notices for very long that we've got another hypocrisy problem here. Some clever schmuck will come up with a cool-sounding slogan to smooth it all over. But hey - for a brief and glorious moment, y'know?

COVID-19 Update

World

• New Cases:   547,338 (⬆︎ .71%)
• New Deaths:      7,986 (⬆︎ .47%)

USA

• New Cases:   183,223 (⬆︎ 1.01%)
• New Deaths:      1,414 (⬆︎   .44%)

Since 11-24, the 7-Day Rolling Average (World) has been over 10,000 dead per day.

Since 12-4, the 7-Day Rolling Average has been over 2,000 Dead Americans per day.

In another typical display of shitty politics, Washington has managed to take it all the way up to the brink before figuring out that Americans ought to have a little help once in a while.

WaPo:

Senate majority leader announces approximately $900 billion deal on emergency relief package

Senate leadership announced a bipartisan deal on an approximately $900 billion economic relief package late Sunday afternoon that would deliver emergency aid to a faltering economy and a nation besieged by surging coronavirus cases.

After months of contentious negotiations and seemingly intractable partisan gridlock, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the Senate floor to say that a deal had been finalized and could be quickly approved.

The emerging stimulus package was expected to direct hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to jobless Americans, ailing businesses and other critical economic needs that have grown as the pandemic ravages the country and batters the economy.

“More help is on the way. Moments ago, in consultation with our committees, the four leaders of the Senate and House finalized an agreement. It would be another major rescue package for the American people,” McConnell said. “As our citizens continue battling this coronavirus pandemic this holiday season, they will not be fighting alone.”

Schumer then took to the floor, calling the aid package insufficient but heralding it as a critical measure to “give the new president a boost, a head start, as he prepared to right our ailing economy.”

The House and Senate on Sunday night approved a one-day extension of government funding to allow the final bill text on the relief package to be written. President Trump signed the stopgap measure, preventing a government shutdown.

The legislation includes stimulus checks for millions of Americans of up to $600 per person. The size of that benefit would be reduced for people who earned more than $75,000 in 2019 and disappear altogether for those who earned more than $99,000. The stimulus checks would provide $600 per adult and child, meaning a family of four would receive $2,400 up to a certain income.

Congress would also extend federal unemployment benefits of up to $300 per week, which could start as early as Dec. 27.

The income criteria for the stimulus checks is expected to reflect that of the first round of relief payments sent by the Treasury Department earlier this year.

- it goes on, but suffice to say the Republicans are assholes who believe nobody deserves anything they haven't inherited form their daddies, stolen from their employees, or grifted from the public.

But wait, there's more - the long-anticipated return of the 3-martini lunch.

WaPo again:

The White House also secured a ‘three martini lunch’ tax deduction in a draft of the relief package. Trump has long seized on the tax break as a way to revive the restaurant industry.

The draft language of the emergency coronavirus relief package includes a tax break for corporate meal expenses pushed by the White House and strongly denounced by some congressional Democrats, according to a summary of the deal circulating among congressional officials and officials who are familiar with the provision.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a proposal that had not yet been publicly released.

President Trump has for months talked about securing the deduction — derisively referred to as the “three-martini lunch” by critics — as a way to revive the restaurant industry badly battered by the pandemic.

But critics said it would do little to help struggling restaurants and would largely benefit business executives who do not urgently need help at this time. Some Democrats recoiled at the proposal, though it has also been denounced as ineffective by conservative tax experts as well.

Color me unsurprised. Make America Shit-Faced Again.

John Oliver

Dots

Fun fact reminder: the American economy took a 12-14 Trillion-Dollar hit starting in 2008.  

And tax-payers had to borrow that much (paying interest, of course) from our buddies around the world, and that means - lemme see - about 13 Trillion plus about 2-and-a-half percent interest - gosh, it seems we might have a number that fairly closely resembles the horribleness of the $15 - 18 Trillion added to our national debt that "Conservatives" love to bitch about.

Or maybe it's purely coincidental.  I suck at math, and I'm often real wrong about a lotta things.  But my Spidey Sense tells me the guys who make billions off of Other People's Money aren't likely to become saintly and altruistic just because their shit hits somebody else's fan.  They'll do what they know how to do - which always comes down to making sure they're not the ones left holding the bag.

And oh yeah - I want Elizabeth Warren to stay where she is, doing exactly what she's doing for a good long time.  Dang - the mad crush on that woman continues unabated.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

Part 1 from The Real News Network

hat tip = FB buddy DR

The safety gizmo was found to be malfunctioning during an inspection in 1976 - the last time this site was inspected - and it was removed in 1979.

No safety inspections in very nearly 40 years. A safety valve that prob'ly would have prevented the thing from leaking for these last 4 months - but hey, we'll just go on about our bidness because the market will make any necessary corrections all in good time, and only some libtard who hates anybody trying to make a living would think anything might actually go wrong. 

This fits nicely into my take on the GOP Playbook.

1) Fuck up the EPA - cut funding, block appointments, harass in general

2) Wait for an environmental disaster

3) Point at it and say, "The EPA's all fucked up; their job-killing business-hostile regulations were supposed to make sure this didn't happen. The EPA is useless. Let's get rid of the EPA"

It Got Me Thinkin'

Which is always a little dangerous, but anyway - here's a little bit of a thing:



'Conservatives' are always yammerin' about how they want Gubmint to run more like a Bidness.

My contention is that's pretty much exactly what we've been seeing for 20 or more years, and here's why I think it:  Congress Critters are privy to lots and lots of information that's either not known to the rest of us, or that they get to know about way before we get to know  about it; AND, they get to make rules and regulations that can easily tilt the money chute a little (or a lot) in the general direction of their own bank accounts and portfolios.  So while we have managed to put certain safeguards in place to make it harder for them to give themselves raises in their salaries, we've done practically nothing to keep them from creating a very slick and lucrative money-laundering apparatus that funnels shitloads of cash into their pockets, even if it does happen behind a thick veil of toxic fog.

Meanwhile, Corporate Bosses get to do this in a slightly more open way - but it's still pretty fucked up.  CEOs and Directors and Senior Execs get paid a lot, but the way they make the real money is by putting policy decisions in place that benefit them greatly at the expense (often) of everybody else.

Ask a simple question: why are so many companies spending so much (~$2.4 TRILLION) buying their own stock?

Then ask: what's the Comp Plan look like for those Bosses?  

I'm betting dollars to dingleberries that those guys are gonna make more than a few bucks over and above their salaries if the company stock performs well, and what better way to boost the value of a share of your stock than to make it look like it's a hot property because "somebody's snapping it up like crazy"?

And when you're in bed with the politicians who conveniently vote against close enforcement of the rules you've already gotten them to weaken, then collusion and cronyism and outright bribery become the orders of the day, and simply the usual and customary way of doing business.

It gets really complex and convoluted, and I'm not pretending to know what all is wrong or what all needs to be done.  But I think it points back to the need for Separation-Of-Powers solutions; we have to rebuild the firewalls - the ones that keep Businesses and Governments and individuals from becoming too big and too powerful.

Cuz always remember - a business is not a democracy.

The Industrial Food Image Bureau

This one ran on the front end of a music video I was trying to watch:



And I just had to go to the website (farmedanddangerous.com), where I found this:



I've been "on the web" in one way or another since the late 80s, and I think this is the first time I've ever come across a pop-up kinda ad that I've actually clicked on.  I guess Google's gonna get all of us eventually.

Today's Shameless Fanboy Plug

All hail Keith!

There is no bigger pain in the ass (from what almost everybody says), and there is no better reporter anywhere in any field at any price.

The NFL recently agreed to pay $765M to be paid out to 4500 guys over a 17-year period.  As others have said, it sounds right decent, but... a little math (the kind that's simple enough even for me to understand) shows just how big this particular bamboozle really is.

The league made some $9.5 Billion last year - BILLION. If that number stays static over the 17-year lifetime of the deal (and we all know it's a lot more likely to go up rather than stay the same or go down), the total "cost" to the owners is less than one half of one percent of league revenue.

But of course, we can always count on some Press Poodle - who in this case owes his living to the NFL - to come up with some good PR Fluffery (in the form of sneering mockery which has become the prevailing journalistic style of Corporate Attack Dog Media).

Enter Pete Prisco at CBS Sports:

I just got off the phone with my attorney. Why?

I had a concussion playing 115-pound football and another in high school. Back then -- not leather helmet days but close -- they just called it getting your bell rung and stuck some nasty crap in front of your nose, and told you to go back into the game.

So I am suing.

Why not? I might get an extra $100,000 or so for my bank account. The precedent has been set. The NFL settled Thursday with a group of players filing concussion lawsuits to the tune of $765 million. So why not go after the high schools? Pop Warner? Colleges? And maybe even those two-hand touch games set up by our dads?

So, are you saying your coaches didn't know about the dangers of head injuries?  And that we should pretend it's still 1965 and make all of our health and safety decisions based on what we didn't fucking know 50 years ago?  Or are we finally unmasking your deep-seated fear that maybe your daddy didn't really give a fuck about you?

Here's Keith taking Mr Prisco down:



Nobody does it better.  Welcome back, Mr Olbermann - we've missed you.

Healthy People

A pretty good point (from Wonkette):

Here is a lesson on capitalism and profitability courtesy four companies that refuse — REFUSE — to make sure that their employees are not handling your food with their tubercular hands.

Maybe next time you call ahead for a reservation, you should ask if all the chefs and wait-staffers have seen a doctor lately and if the owner of the joint is willing to guaranty you won't be infected because the pot washer working 29 hours a week at 8 bucks an hour couldn't afford to get a flu shot this year.

This whole stupid argument over Obamacare coming from some of these "conservatives" is just another great example of having people in charge of businesses who really don't understand the first fuckin' thing about business.

And this is what the first thing is:  If you don't take care of the people who take care of your customers, you won't have those customers for very long. (and I can't believe anybody would actually have to say that out loud - fuck)

Sounds Vaguely Important

What makes the stories in this clip different from stories we used to hear in school about Robber Barons and Company Stores and dead Union Organizers?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This just keeps sounding shittier and shittier.

We'll Have To Sell Our Way Out Of It