Great Idea. Now Alabamians everywhere can be thankful to what their Senator Shelby has brought them. Makes you wonder how he is going to spin his screw up.
It would seem that republican's rhetoric has finally caught up with them. Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer was grumbling about too many taxes, too much government inefficiency, not enough privatization, too many bureaucrats, too much socialism, too much big government. Today, his editorial decries how Obama is taking away NASA political kickbacks in Alabama and how unfair it is to close NASA facilities that can no longer justify their existence nor pay for themselves when the government is broke, and turn space exploration over to the private sector as the republicans had been demanding. How will republicanism survive without government pork to keep it philosophically in the pink? Reminds me of the rebel battlecry, "No more government socialized medicine, but keep your hands off my Medicare."
Looks as if Senator Shelby poked the wrong person in the eye with a stick and now Alabamians will just have to suffer like the rest of us. With the republicans now openly advocating and end to both medicare and social security as central planks in their reelection platform, I suspect were are going to hear a lot more whining from Bubba real soon. From the news media it sounds as if, Alabamians everywhere are already reaching for their guns.
Hope Buba gives Senator Shelby a real earful, dawlin.
Finally, the GOP has wised up and has set out to systematically destroy Silicon Valley and all those liberal-minded programmers and their support for leftist educators that have nothing better to do than fill the minds of children with all sorts of thoughts.
If jobs aren't outsourced to India, how can American corporations make enough money to pay executive salaries? If Silicon Valley can be broken, computer talent can be had at pennies on the dollar, so that once again we will be able to compete with India and China.
You obviously don't seem to concerned about lock in, probably because you are spending other people's money to fix your problems.
Users would do well to consider a mixed strategy of running multiple platforms to foster true competition. One can incrementally move in the path of least cost and more efficiency if one has options. However, if one gets tied to a single vendor because they provide a politically expedient, albeit expensive solution.
Without US business interests funneling perks to Australian bureaucrats on a regular basis, just how do you Aussies expect Microsoft to keep America afloat?
Its not sour grapes but rather yet another tale of what happens to a society that lets corporate insiders run loose at the expense of employees, shareholders, and taxpayers. Ignore it at your peril.
In any event, there is no logical connection to the total amount of money Sun paid to its employees and the money Scott McNeally and other like corporate insiders got by gaming the system for their own benefit. It is not as if he was using his money to pay the employees. No, it was mine and as a stockholder of SUN I got my clock cleaned. Does it matter to you? Probably not. Should it? Yes, I think so because when insiders are allowed to game the system for their own advantage, which has become the American Way of Doing Business these days, the entire system is put at risk. Maybe you haven't noticed but the entire system is not working well, precisely because there are too many Scott McNeallys running around loose in corporate boardrooms with limited or no supervision.
If I run a red light or make a mistake I should be expected to pay a fine. The same should be equally true of corporate executives, who destroy entire companies, communities, even nations, with malfeasance and incompetence. Otherwise, what you are advocating that its perfectly OK for corporate execs, who are driving huge semi-trucks to ignore the red lights. That shouldn't make you feel smug and secure when you enter an public intersection to make a transaction.
"to the extant that the government will not use its power to make the opportunities explicitly unequal."
Yeah. Right. Sounds like you need a history lesson my friend. Weren't the folks that wrote the constitution the same folks that denied the right to vote to anyone not owning property, anyone who was not female, and let us remind everyone of US history, that made slavery perfectly legal? If you are willing to defend that, fine but don't go around telling everyone that people shouldn't demand that one purpose of government is precisely to "coerce people" into giving up totally unjust and unworkable ideas such as slavery, forcing children to work for less then minimum wage, murder, etc. The same is true for taxes. You may not like them, but then again, its a hell of a lot better than the anarchy republicans are selling these days that will no doubt ensure if no one pays any taxes. Have you ever wondered how we would pay soldiers to risk their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq without taxes? Don't we have enough chaos and anarchy in our system now? Why do you advocate for more?
Laws are written to control people so we don't have anarchy and perhaps some modest sense of justice. Most of the time they are written so that what constitutes anarchy and justice is largely defined by those with enough money to buy the politicians and lawmakers to see to it that such definitions are more favorable to themselves. Why you want to grant even more power to corporate elites is beyond me.
Socialism is not the "opposite of freedom". That is just republican bunk for the uneducated and foolish, who will gladly beat themselves about the head if told it feels good. Socialism is a system in which everyone pays in to get benefits from the system as a whole, in which everyone agrees not to rely on third party middle men to can muscle in for an ever greater profit.
You only have to ask all those "oppressed" people in Sweden, Denmark, or Germany how they are faring under socialism, where they have free government sponsored health care, liveable pensions, laws that protect their environment, enough money to fight crime and regulate their markets and trade, pave their streets, support their corporations to compete internationally, make sure their trains run on time, even have trains that work, grant them well-paid government sponsored holiday time, and educate their children so they far exceed US school children in math and science scores, etc. to see if they would trade all it in for your version of "freedom" from government. Do they have problems, yes of course, but they pale in comparison to the failings voters in the US have brought for themselves by buying into republican corporate talking points.
What you are advocating is simply turning the opportunities for coercion over to unregulated, unelected corporate executives, who will not by law be constrained to deny you health care, force your children to work for less than minimum wage, refuse to pay your insurance claim, give your social security pension to Wall Street investors, walk away from your pension plan, let big banks destroy the financial system by fraudulently selling worthless paper, let guys like Bernie Madoff go free no matter how bit the scam, let your cable company charge you hundreds of dollars a month to watch their commercials, etc. No doubt, all a republican's wet dream.
Sorry to be impolite, but you are so caught up in your own rhetoric that you don't even recognize that what you are advocating is anarchy or at best corporate feudalism.
Cash and stock are not equivalent. One is money in hand the other is the promise of money in hand. Insiders can print promise of money in hand and convert it to money much faster than the average investor, which gives them increased opportunity to game the system. With stock as pay, what you have witnessed is ever increasing wage inflation for those at the top, while long term costs just get passed on to other shareholders and then society at large in the form of an increased corporate welfare state. You also see less and less payout going to other investors. Is anyone making much money in the market these days other than the insiders who are selling stock and the investment houses that the buying stock with other people's money?
Making all pay only payable in cash would put some sanity back into the market and ultimately support more prudent investing because it would be harder for insiders to game the system as they do now. Yes, it will cost companies money immediately on their books, no accounting gimmicks or commoditized hedge trading on future benefit packages, where corporate insiders work with unregulated hedge fund managers to time shorts so that both benefit at the expense of other shareholders. Sure they take a short term hit on their remaining porfolios, but no matter as they, unlike other investors, can just replenish their stock in bonuses at a timing of their choosing, which they give to themselves. This is not available to other investors.
Cash only compensation would reduce executive compensation packages overall and lower the prices corporations need to charge, while still giving the average investor a chance to at least make a reasonable return on their investment rather than seeing it all skimmed of by corporate insiders, who use their inside status to simply print themselves ever bigger salaries. Right now, there is essentially no reason to invest in stocks unless of course, you are investing with other people's money and then charging them for the privilege.
Yes there are still risks and rewards, but the risks are all to the small investor (who may invest directly or indirectly) and all the benefits are with those who can give themselves big stock options, just before they bail out and the company goes belly up. Scott McNeally is just only one of many such poster children for what has happened to US corporate dominance as stock-based compensation has been promulgated through the system as a perfectly legal way of doing business.
The majority of stockholders do not have enough shares to permit themselves to sit on the corporate board and award themselves additional stock options at the expense of the other shareholders. They make up the bulk of the ownership ONLY because they have been allowed to game the system, not because it somehow benefits other shareholders. Don't believe it? Then just look at corporate income and see where most of it goes. Not to shareholders in terms of increasing return on investment but to insiders who skim an ever greater share of the loot before the average shareholder has the time to press the sell button on his PC.
Wall Street greed and executive compensations have reached the point of such ridiculousness that only the insane and those investing OTHER PEOPLE's pensions would be foolish enough to invest in most US corporations these days. The longer you hold such stock the greater time you give to insiders to steal your investment. Lets face it the system is totally broken. Yet so many just shrug their shoulder and think well that is the way its supposed to work, not thinking about the consequences to society as a whole.
Capitalism is in for a far rougher patch than most might have predicted. However, we may just pull ourselves out of it. All we need is just one more good Ponzi Scheme.
Most people of the world are just thinking how and if they will even have another lunch.
In the meantime the Scott McNealy's, Bernie Madoff's and Ruppert Murdoch's are stealing everyone blind making everyone's life a lot more difficult, yet so many buy into the slogans of how "less government", in which we at least have a tiny amount of control over, should be reduced so that it will be easier on the Scott McNealy's, Bernie Madoff's and Ruppert Murdoch's and Ken Lays of the world to make their money, raise their prices, eliminate any obstacle to their own self-gratification.
In the meantime the planet goes to hell in a hand basket.
Intervene with coercive force to appropriate shareholder's private property? Are you some kind of republican shill?
Most shareholder's like me need, indeed require LAWS and REGULATION to protect ourselves from insiders like Scott McNealy and Bernie Madoff, who use their inside connections to game the system. Have you ever wondered why it is CEO's are still allowed to make outrageous sums even when they destroy there companies? Have you ever wondered what might be the consequences if everyone simply shrugs their shoulders as you seem to be suggesting and say, "well ok by me"? Have you ever thought about the consequences of such an approach to taxpayers like you and me? Have you ever wondered what will happen now when no capitalist in his right mind will invest in a company because its just provides license for insiders to rob them blind, while as the insiders smile for the cameras and provide happy talk right up to the point of insolvency?
How many more Ken Lay's, Bernie Madoff, and Scott McNeally endure before people like you wake up to the reality of what the "its all socialism", and "reduce all regulation" slogans have to offer Amerca's future in the long run. Keep it up and you might as well join the Taliban in reducing American to a sort of 21st century feudal kingdom. After all, we will be able to run our Armies, flush our sewers, put out our fires, hire policemen to catch on our criminals, keep our environment healty,.... on lower and lower taxes so the government doesn't "coerce us" right? That way we can leave such coercion to executives at the insurance companies, phone companies,... right, with no control over what they impose on us, right?
Frankly, I would prefer that the government take half of my investment in taxes for the greater good of society at large than to continue to permit insiders like Madoff and McNeally walk away with essentially all of it because it is legal for them to do so. It seems to work well for most of the rest of the industrialized world, where at least you can get government health care, good quality pensions, trains that run on time,... If you want to live in a totally dis-functional society keep up with the republican philosophy of "less government and less taxes", for soon Wall Street, which now thrives only as a result of corporate welfare, will crater and society as a whole will crater with it, because there will be no incentive for anyone to participate in any effort toward collective reason.
No wonder republicans have no use for the teachings of Jesus any more other than to continue to lead the sheep at the voting booth to shear them again and again.
Perhaps it never occurred to you that this is precisely why America and Wall Street and your government is broken.
McNeally and his friends used the SUN board to give themselves plenty of stock at the expense of other shareholder's who were not in a position to do so. Consequently, they lived well while the company went bankrupt Its what all US corporations do these days: game the system for the benefit of the insiders at the expense of society. So when things go South and belly up, they get a big reward and everyone else who try hard to make the system work, just get taken for suckers. Politicians have adopted the same lack of principles and commitment to the general welfare of the system.
This is why you are a fool to invest in stocks any longer. There is no possibility of making a reasonable rate of return in the long run. The longer you own a stock the more opportunity the Scott McNeally's of the world have to game the system in their favor at your expense. Wall street is no longer even a zero-sum game. For the average investor its like pulling the lever on a slot macchine. The house skims off 80-90% of the take right off the top.
So in your mind that ok?
Fine, then don't bitch about the economy or anything else and welcome to Hell rather than civilization.
Lets face it GOP'ers like McNeally dropped the pretense about Christianity and Christian virtue long time ago. The only use for Jesus that republicans like McNealy have these days is to continue to fool the foolish on the religious right. If Jesus can be used to sell a turd to a sock puppet in exchange for a dollar, he's worth something in their minds, otherwise he's there just to be peed on.
I can sympathize with the writer, but from a different perspective. As an investor I bought into the notion that Sun had good products produced by the kind of worker who wrote the column and that by investing in innovation we can collectively move the country forward. As a result of insider greediness and to some extent my own, I lost my entire retirement portfolio. Yes my mistake, in ever trusting a republican to do the right thing.
I hardly regard the article as diatribe as some who are eager to dismiss it suggest. Rather, it should be a sober, teachable moment to all as to what happens when you let republican philosophy and republican leaders plan a future for you. Your interests will be dropped like a rock as soon as there is an extra dollar to be scammed from the system..
I would encourage anyone who at any time heres the name Scott McNeally to make a point of noting just what a miserable failure and self-interested creature he turned out to be. At least that way regardless of much money he and so many executives like him have been able to game the system for, the McNeally name will forever be tied to A BIG STINKING PILE OF FAILURE. I have moved on, but he and his family will have to live with that reality for the rest of their lives. His money, no matter how much he has scammed will buy him any respect. When you hear a story about Scott McNeally, clear your throat mightily and then just spit it out and move on.
"Why should the government prevent corporations from spending money on commercials?" a What if the corporations were run and owned by foreign nationals, who advocated that the US military must by law only buy weapons from those who make a shoddy product? What if foreign islamic governments via their Washington corporate offices begin to elect politicians who demand that all US women begin to wear burquas and make consumption of alcohol punishable by beheading? What if foreign bankers elect US politicians who want the interest rates on US federal debt be increased to 35% per year?
Just another commercial in your mind? Your world is about to change in a hurry and no doubt you won't even notice as you will be too busy watching the commercial.
Seems ironic that all those tea-baggers, libertarians, and conspiracy theorists who always seem in a tizzy about the imposition of bhe "new world order" have had their heads (and their butts) handed to foreign-owned corporations by the so-called "conservative" Roberts Court. At least there is now some justice. Ruppert Murdoch can reclaim his Australian citizenship, as with this ruling there is soon will no longer any real advantage to being an American, at least as far as American electoral politics is concerned.
Your suggestion that tracking the spending for corporate money will become easier is absurd. You are burying your head in the sand, while Chinese and Saudi corporations are now ramping up to outspend you at the ballot box.
Good luck in your dream world. Let us know how it turns out.
Absolutely. This just merely says its now OK and official for foreign nationals to become involved in US electoral politics.
Now irate Iranians won't have to burn our flags, they can just try to burn our politicians at the ballot box via their Washington corporate offices. Now Canadians, Russians, Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, South Americans Middle Easterners etc., can get even with all those advocating "Yankee imperialism" or policies that might perpetuate the US as a world super-power, to use a now well worn out phrase. Its now free and legal for them to do and if they want to spend the money.
Heck, they can just raise gas prices, commodity prices, prices on goods sold to America, or interest they charge us for our excessive borrowing just to pay for their new found electoral rights just granted to them by the Roberts court. This is a bonanza to lobbyists representing foreign governments and foreign corporations.
Because the corporations need not be owned by US citizens, in a remarkably poorly thought out opinion the Roberts court has just given foreign corporations the ability to manipulate US law and its electoral politics and there is now nothing US citizens or polticians can do about it.
Expect soon for all UW women to be wearing burquas and for everyone to be required to speak the new official language of the US, Chinese. Now, its only a question of time.
If anyone wondered about what wealthy foreign nationals would do with all those increasingly worthless US dollars they have been lending us at every increasing rates, now you know.
No taxes, no government. Gee that sounds like a wonderful, but rather preposterously unworkable idea. But hey if it sells for the benefit of corporate interests, go for it. Corporatized anarchy, literally the ultimate form of government.
The Chinese and other foreign interests are going to love this. They can use the money we pay to borrow from them to support their multinational corporations, who working out of their Washington offices can dictate US policy.
Maybe now that SCOTUS has deemed corporations to be "persons" the IRS is in a position to treat them as such and regard the legal opinion as indication that Corporations now TOO must pay taxes on GROSS INCOME rather than just NET INCOME. After all, SCOTUS has just overturned all the laws to the contrary.
Sort of hard to imagine careers in finance will be stable in the US in the future. Whatever finances we have these days seem to be based on inflows of foreign funds. Too many careers in "finance", will only mean a decrease in the rate of return on investment on borrowed funds.
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Great Idea. Now Alabamians everywhere can be thankful to what their Senator Shelby has brought them. Makes you wonder how he is going to spin his screw up.
It would seem that republican's rhetoric has finally caught up with them. Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer was grumbling about too many taxes, too much government inefficiency, not enough privatization, too many bureaucrats, too much socialism, too much big government. Today, his editorial decries how Obama is taking away NASA political kickbacks in Alabama and how unfair it is to close NASA facilities that can no longer justify their existence nor pay for themselves when the government is broke, and turn space exploration over to the private sector as the republicans had been demanding. How will republicanism survive without government pork to keep it philosophically in the pink? Reminds me of the rebel battlecry, "No more government socialized medicine, but keep your hands off my Medicare."
Looks as if Senator Shelby poked the wrong person in the eye with a stick and now Alabamians will just have to suffer like the rest of us. With the republicans now openly advocating and end to both medicare and social security as central planks in their reelection platform, I suspect were are going to hear a lot more whining from Bubba real soon. From the news media it sounds as if, Alabamians everywhere are already reaching for their guns.
Hope Buba gives Senator Shelby a real earful, dawlin.
Finally, the GOP has wised up and has set out to systematically destroy Silicon Valley and all those liberal-minded programmers and their support for leftist educators that have nothing better to do than fill the minds of children with all sorts of thoughts.
If jobs aren't outsourced to India, how can American corporations make enough money to pay executive salaries? If Silicon Valley can be broken, computer talent can be had at pennies on the dollar, so that once again we will be able to compete with India and China.
You obviously don't seem to concerned about lock in, probably because you are spending other people's money to fix your problems.
Users would do well to consider a mixed strategy of running multiple platforms to foster true competition. One can incrementally move in the path of least cost and more efficiency if one has options. However, if one gets tied to a single vendor because they provide a politically expedient, albeit expensive solution.
Without US business interests funneling perks to Australian bureaucrats on a regular basis, just how do you Aussies expect Microsoft to keep America afloat?
If it costs more to assess the software than to use it, just go ahead and use it. If it doesn't work out in a test situation, then throw it out.
Isn't that what Aussies do to their politicians anyway?
Its not sour grapes but rather yet another tale of what happens to a society that lets corporate insiders run loose at the expense of employees, shareholders, and taxpayers. Ignore it at your peril.
In any event, there is no logical connection to the total amount of money Sun paid to its employees and the money Scott McNeally and other like corporate insiders got by gaming the system for their own benefit. It is not as if he was using his money to pay the employees. No, it was mine and as a stockholder of SUN I got my clock cleaned. Does it matter to you? Probably not. Should it? Yes, I think so because when insiders are allowed to game the system for their own advantage, which has become the American Way of Doing Business these days, the entire system is put at risk. Maybe you haven't noticed but the entire system is not working well, precisely because there are too many Scott McNeallys running around loose in corporate boardrooms with limited or no supervision.
If I run a red light or make a mistake I should be expected to pay a fine. The same should be equally true of corporate executives, who destroy entire companies, communities, even nations, with malfeasance and incompetence. Otherwise, what you are advocating that its perfectly OK for corporate execs, who are driving huge semi-trucks to ignore the red lights. That shouldn't make you feel smug and secure when you enter an public intersection to make a transaction.
by and large just got their clocks cleaned in the current Wall Street meltdown.
The only thing that differentiates them as "savy" is that they couldn't care less as they invest OTHER PEOPLE's money.
"to the extant that the government will not use its power to make the opportunities explicitly unequal."
Yeah. Right. Sounds like you need a history lesson my friend. Weren't the folks that wrote the constitution the same folks that denied the right to vote to anyone not owning property, anyone who was not female, and let us remind everyone of US history, that made slavery perfectly legal? If you are willing to defend that, fine but don't go around telling everyone that people shouldn't demand that one purpose of government is precisely to "coerce people" into giving up totally unjust and unworkable ideas such as slavery, forcing children to work for less then minimum wage, murder, etc. The same is true for taxes. You may not like them, but then again, its a hell of a lot better than the anarchy republicans are selling these days that will no doubt ensure if no one pays any taxes. Have you ever wondered how we would pay soldiers to risk their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq without taxes? Don't we have enough chaos and anarchy in our system now? Why do you advocate for more?
Laws are written to control people so we don't have anarchy and perhaps some modest sense of justice. Most of the time they are written so that what constitutes anarchy and justice is largely defined by those with enough money to buy the politicians and lawmakers to see to it that such definitions are more favorable to themselves. Why you want to grant even more power to corporate elites is beyond me.
Socialism is not the "opposite of freedom". That is just republican bunk for the uneducated and foolish, who will gladly beat themselves about the head if told it feels good. Socialism is a system in which everyone pays in to get benefits from the system as a whole, in which everyone agrees not to rely on third party middle men to can muscle in for an ever greater profit.
You only have to ask all those "oppressed" people in Sweden, Denmark, or Germany how they are faring under socialism, where they have free government sponsored health care, liveable pensions, laws that protect their environment, enough money to fight crime and regulate their markets and trade, pave their streets, support their corporations to compete internationally, make sure their trains run on time, even have trains that work, grant them well-paid government sponsored holiday time, and educate their children so they far exceed US school children in math and science scores, etc. to see if they would trade all it in for your version of "freedom" from government. Do they have problems, yes of course, but they pale in comparison to the failings voters in the US have brought for themselves by buying into republican corporate talking points.
What you are advocating is simply turning the opportunities for coercion over to unregulated, unelected corporate executives, who will not by law be constrained to deny you health care, force your children to work for less than minimum wage, refuse to pay your insurance claim, give your social security pension to Wall Street investors, walk away from your pension plan, let big banks destroy the financial system by fraudulently selling worthless paper, let guys like Bernie Madoff go free no matter how bit the scam, let your cable company charge you hundreds of dollars a month to watch their commercials, etc. No doubt, all a republican's wet dream.
Sorry to be impolite, but you are so caught up in your own rhetoric that you don't even recognize that what you are advocating is anarchy or at best corporate feudalism.
Cash and stock are not equivalent. One is money in hand the other is the promise of money in hand. Insiders can print promise of money in hand and convert it to money much faster than the average investor, which gives them increased opportunity to game the system. With stock as pay, what you have witnessed is ever increasing wage inflation for those at the top, while long term costs just get passed on to other shareholders and then society at large in the form of an increased corporate welfare state. You also see less and less payout going to other investors. Is anyone making much money in the market these days other than the insiders who are selling stock and the investment houses that the buying stock with other people's money?
Making all pay only payable in cash would put some sanity back into the market and ultimately support more prudent investing because it would be harder for insiders to game the system as they do now. Yes, it will cost companies money immediately on their books, no accounting gimmicks or commoditized hedge trading on future benefit packages, where corporate insiders work with unregulated hedge fund managers to time shorts so that both benefit at the expense of other shareholders. Sure they take a short term hit on their remaining porfolios, but no matter as they, unlike other investors, can just replenish their stock in bonuses at a timing of their choosing, which they give to themselves. This is not available to other investors.
Cash only compensation would reduce executive compensation packages overall and lower the prices corporations need to charge, while still giving the average investor a chance to at least make a reasonable return on their investment rather than seeing it all skimmed of by corporate insiders, who use their inside status to simply print themselves ever bigger salaries. Right now, there is essentially no reason to invest in stocks unless of course, you are investing with other people's money and then charging them for the privilege.
Yes there are still risks and rewards, but the risks are all to the small investor (who may invest directly or indirectly) and all the benefits are with those who can give themselves big stock options, just before they bail out and the company goes belly up. Scott McNeally is just only one of many such poster children for what has happened to US corporate dominance as stock-based compensation has been promulgated through the system as a perfectly legal way of doing business.
The majority of stockholders do not have enough shares to permit themselves to sit on the corporate board and award themselves additional stock options at the expense of the other shareholders. They make up the bulk of the ownership ONLY because they have been allowed to game the system, not because it somehow benefits other shareholders. Don't believe it? Then just look at corporate income and see where most of it goes. Not to shareholders in terms of increasing return on investment but to insiders who skim an ever greater share of the loot before the average shareholder has the time to press the sell button on his PC.
Wall Street greed and executive compensations have reached the point of such ridiculousness that only the insane and those investing OTHER PEOPLE's pensions would be foolish enough to invest in most US corporations these days. The longer you hold such stock the greater time you give to insiders to steal your investment. Lets face it the system is totally broken. Yet so many just shrug their shoulder and think well that is the way its supposed to work, not thinking about the consequences to society as a whole.
Capitalism is in for a far rougher patch than most might have predicted. However, we may just pull ourselves out of it. All we need is just one more good Ponzi Scheme.
Most people of the world are just thinking how and if they will even have another lunch.
In the meantime the Scott McNealy's, Bernie Madoff's and Ruppert Murdoch's are stealing everyone blind making everyone's life a lot more difficult, yet so many buy into the slogans of how "less government", in which we at least have a tiny amount of control over, should be reduced so that it will be easier on the Scott McNealy's, Bernie Madoff's and Ruppert Murdoch's and Ken Lays of the world to make their money, raise their prices, eliminate any obstacle to their own self-gratification.
In the meantime the planet goes to hell in a hand basket.
Intervene with coercive force to appropriate shareholder's private property? Are you some kind of republican shill?
Most shareholder's like me need, indeed require LAWS and REGULATION to protect ourselves from insiders like Scott McNealy and Bernie Madoff, who use their inside connections to game the system. Have you ever wondered why it is CEO's are still allowed to make outrageous sums even when they destroy there companies? Have you ever wondered what might be the consequences if everyone simply shrugs their shoulders as you seem to be suggesting and say, "well ok by me"? Have you ever thought about the consequences of such an approach to taxpayers like you and me? Have you ever wondered what will happen now when no capitalist in his right mind will invest in a company because its just provides license for insiders to rob them blind, while as the insiders smile for the cameras and provide happy talk right up to the point of insolvency?
How many more Ken Lay's, Bernie Madoff, and Scott McNeally endure before people like you wake up to the reality of what the "its all socialism", and "reduce all regulation" slogans have to offer Amerca's future in the long run. Keep it up and you might as well join the Taliban in reducing American to a sort of 21st century feudal kingdom. After all, we will be able to run our Armies, flush our sewers, put out our fires, hire policemen to catch on our criminals, keep our environment healty, .... on lower and lower taxes so the government doesn't "coerce us" right? That way we can leave such coercion to executives at the insurance companies, phone companies, ... right, with no control over what they impose on us, right?
Frankly, I would prefer that the government take half of my investment in taxes for the greater good of society at large than to continue to permit insiders like Madoff and McNeally walk away with essentially all of it because it is legal for them to do so. It seems to work well for most of the rest of the industrialized world, where at least you can get government health care, good quality pensions, trains that run on time, ... If you want to live in a totally dis-functional society keep up with the republican philosophy of "less government and less taxes", for soon Wall Street, which now thrives only as a result of corporate welfare, will crater and society as a whole will crater with it, because there will be no incentive for anyone to participate in any effort toward collective reason.
No wonder republicans have no use for the teachings of Jesus any more other than to continue to lead the sheep at the voting booth to shear them again and again.
Human civilization will survive if it can win against its reptilian brain's triggers that prompt so many to vote republican and just trigger randomly.
Perhaps it never occurred to you that this is precisely why America and Wall Street and your government is broken.
McNeally and his friends used the SUN board to give themselves plenty of stock at the expense of other shareholder's who were not in a position to do so. Consequently, they lived well while the company went bankrupt Its what all US corporations do these days: game the system for the benefit of the insiders at the expense of society. So when things go South and belly up, they get a big reward and everyone else who try hard to make the system work, just get taken for suckers. Politicians have adopted the same lack of principles and commitment to the general welfare of the system.
This is why you are a fool to invest in stocks any longer. There is no possibility of making a reasonable rate of return in the long run. The longer you own a stock the more opportunity the Scott McNeally's of the world have to game the system in their favor at your expense. Wall street is no longer even a zero-sum game. For the average investor its like pulling the lever on a slot macchine. The house skims off 80-90% of the take right off the top.
So in your mind that ok?
Fine, then don't bitch about the economy or anything else and welcome to Hell rather than civilization.
Think about it.
Lets face it GOP'ers like McNeally dropped the pretense about Christianity and Christian virtue long time ago. The only use for Jesus that republicans like McNealy have these days is to continue to fool the foolish on the religious right. If Jesus can be used to sell a turd to a sock puppet in exchange for a dollar, he's worth something in their minds, otherwise he's there just to be peed on.
I can sympathize with the writer, but from a different perspective. As an investor I bought into the notion that Sun had good products produced by the kind of worker who wrote the column and that by investing in innovation we can collectively move the country forward. As a result of insider greediness and to some extent my own, I lost my entire retirement portfolio. Yes my mistake, in ever trusting a republican to do the right thing.
I hardly regard the article as diatribe as some who are eager to dismiss it suggest. Rather, it should be a sober, teachable moment to all as to what happens when you let republican philosophy and republican leaders plan a future for you. Your interests will be dropped like a rock as soon as there is an extra dollar to be scammed from the system..
I would encourage anyone who at any time heres the name Scott McNeally to make a point of noting just what a miserable failure and self-interested creature he turned out to be. At least that way regardless of much money he and so many executives like him have been able to game the system for, the McNeally name will forever be tied to A BIG STINKING PILE OF FAILURE. I have moved on, but he and his family will have to live with that reality for the rest of their lives. His money, no matter how much he has scammed will buy him any respect. When you hear a story about Scott McNeally, clear your throat mightily and then just spit it out and move on.
"Why should the government prevent corporations from spending money on commercials?"
a
What if the corporations were run and owned by foreign nationals, who advocated that the US military must by law only buy weapons from those who make a shoddy product? What if foreign islamic governments via their Washington corporate offices begin to elect politicians who demand that all US women begin to wear burquas and make consumption of alcohol punishable by beheading? What if foreign bankers elect US politicians who want the interest rates on US federal debt be increased to 35% per year?
Just another commercial in your mind? Your world is about to change in a hurry and no doubt you won't even notice as you will be too busy watching the commercial.
Seems ironic that all those tea-baggers, libertarians, and conspiracy theorists who always seem in a tizzy about the imposition of bhe "new world order" have had their heads (and their butts) handed to foreign-owned corporations by the so-called "conservative" Roberts Court. At least there is now some justice. Ruppert Murdoch can reclaim his Australian citizenship, as with this ruling there is soon will no longer any real advantage to being an American, at least as far as American electoral politics is concerned.
Your suggestion that tracking the spending for corporate money will become easier is absurd. You are burying your head in the sand, while Chinese and Saudi corporations are now ramping up to outspend you at the ballot box.
Good luck in your dream world. Let us know how it turns out.
Absolutely. This just merely says its now OK and official for foreign nationals to become involved in US electoral politics.
Now irate Iranians won't have to burn our flags, they can just try to burn our politicians at the ballot box via their Washington corporate offices. Now Canadians, Russians, Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, South Americans Middle Easterners etc., can get even with all those advocating "Yankee imperialism" or policies that might perpetuate the US as a world super-power, to use a now well worn out phrase. Its now free and legal for them to do and if they want to spend the money.
Heck, they can just raise gas prices, commodity prices, prices on goods sold to America, or interest they charge us for our excessive borrowing just to pay for their new found electoral rights just granted to them by the Roberts court. This is a bonanza to lobbyists representing foreign governments and foreign corporations.
It is now!
Because the corporations need not be owned by US citizens, in a remarkably poorly thought out opinion the Roberts court has just given foreign corporations the ability to manipulate US law and its electoral politics and there is now nothing US citizens or polticians can do about it.
Expect soon for all UW women to be wearing burquas and for everyone to be required to speak the new official language of the US, Chinese. Now, its only a question of time.
If anyone wondered about what wealthy foreign nationals would do with all those increasingly worthless US dollars they have been lending us at every increasing rates, now you know.
No taxes, no government. Gee that sounds like a wonderful, but rather preposterously unworkable idea. But hey if it sells for the benefit of corporate interests, go for it. Corporatized anarchy, literally the ultimate form of government.
The Chinese and other foreign interests are going to love this. They can use the money we pay to borrow from them to support their multinational corporations, who working out of their Washington offices can dictate US policy.
Be extremely careful of who you buy things from. If a corporation donates to candidate X who you don't like. Never, ever do business with them again.
Maybe now that SCOTUS has deemed corporations to be "persons" the IRS is in a position to treat them as such and regard the legal opinion as indication that Corporations now TOO must pay taxes on GROSS INCOME rather than just NET INCOME. After all, SCOTUS has just overturned all the laws to the contrary.
Sort of hard to imagine careers in finance will be stable in the US in the future. Whatever finances we have these days seem to be based on inflows of foreign funds. Too many careers in "finance", will only mean a decrease in the rate of return on investment on borrowed funds.
Because a belief in God can be used to explain anything and everything, therefore it explains nothing at all.