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Trump's Second Term

Planigale said:
Our Latin teacher had a good collection of graffiti, she used to make lessons more interesting. together with pictures of flying cocks (not birds!) and pictures from pottery. She knew how to keep a group of girls at an all girls school interested in dead languages; by making them come alive. Then there was Catullus (swoon).
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Has to remind be of the graffiti scene in “Life of Brian”!

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Planigale said:
Apart from his Nationalist tendencies, Trump also exhibits a number of socialist tendencies, with central control of the economy e.g. advocating to limit profits taken by the arms industry in dividends and pay outs to CEO, limiting the rate of interest charged by credit card companies etc. I wonder if there is a term for the combination of Nationalist and Socialist policies?
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No he doesn't. He is displaying fascist tendencies, private companies have to be subservient to the state (or as ever the dictator) in a fascist state. A socialist tendency would be for him for example to say the credit card companies should be owned by its customers.

ETA: Duh - sorry I was being thick.
 
dirtywick said:
yeah i think that's a related issue. definitely being exacerbated by encouraging and enabling people to continue to make poor personal financial decisions
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It's more a case of forcing people into such situations. Like with company towns and scrip payments in the 19th and early 20th century companies are profiting off both underpaying their workers and extending unsustainable finance to them.
 
Shoot rioters! President has that right!
www.threads.com

David Heath (@david.heath.writer) on Threads

Kristi Noem is caught off guard when Jake Tapper asks if Capitol Police should have shot rioters and pointing out that Donald Trump pardoned all of them.
www.threads.com www.threads.com
Kristi Noem is caught off guard when Jake Tapper asks if Capitol Police should have shot rioters and pointing out that Donald Trump pardoned all of them.
 
Trausti said:
It remains fascinating to me that lefties are obsessed with supposed wealth inequality but have absolutely zero curiosity about wealth creation. It's always take, take, take. Just pure envy and greed.
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Of course we know perfectly well how wealth is created (and stolen.) I mean, one of the most successful sports leagues on the entire planet figured it out, and I explained it in the very post you responded to. Every team in the MLB gets a portion of what the MLB as a whole generates through a soft cap on player salary that is taxed, and distributed evenly between the teams.

Furthermore, EVERYONE involved in the MLB makes money. E.V.E.R.Y.O.N.E, except for part-time vendors. The part-timers are mainly local youth and retirees. Some of them are on government assistance for being disabled in some way, such as Down's Syndrome, and this is their way of earning both an income, as well as that government assistance they receive.

Some vendors are full-time and work for the league year-round. The full-time vendors make at least $70,000/year. This is their actual career. Not a side-job. These people work 40+ hours a week. They double as janitors and sometimes help the grounds crew preparing and maintaining their stadium. I should know. I have an uncle that did this very thing for the Atlanta Braves, and this was way back in the early 1990s before the latest CBAs that have since increased the pay and benefits of ALL full-time workers. He made a good living out of it.

The NFL, the most successful sports league on the planet, with one of the most wealthy sports francheses with the Cowboys worth $10.1 billion, (Patriots $9 billion, Rams 7.6, and Yankees 7.55). The NFL itself is worth about $230 billion. In comparison, Wal-Mart is worth 913 billion.

The difference:

The NFL only operates (the vast majority of their revenue) comes from just 18 weeks of the year. Wal-Mart, in comparison, operates (operated) 24 hours, 364 days of the year for decades on end, and currently operate 18 hours for 364 days of the year.

The Superbowl is the most prolific singular event in the world, other than perhaps the World Cup Final itself.

I am from Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The most successful youth sports league on the planet operates out of Williamport. So I know my baseball. I know my sports. I used to volunteer every year for the LLWS as a soda vendor, and I made more money selling sodas in a week through my teenage years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, than I ever did as an hourly full-time employee working for Wal-Mart after high school. Yes. I made money as a "volunteer" soda vendor. (I also stayed to help clean the stadium after the days' events were complete. I stayed late, far into the night, for the week before school started.)

I made commission on the sodas I sold when RC Cola was the soda sponsor of LL.

When Coke took over, they switched to paying us hourly. We all decided not to be vendors any longer for private soda companies. For a few years, they literally had nobody to walk around selling soda. Until finally they relented and started paying commission for every soda sold. As I understand, Coke is now making more money than they did when they decided to be greedy.

In my local area, there are three other examples I would like to give:

Weis Markets
Wegman's
Sheetz
Wawa.

Of those three retailers (two gas station chains and two grocery chains), Weis is the greediest of the three. They don't hire full-time workers at all. They only pay $12/hour. They offer no benefits. They are no longer a growing company, and i don't think they ever reached the list of best companies to work for.,

Wegman's, Sheetz, and Wawa are all frequently in the Top 100 and even the Top 50 of companies to work for. Sheetz starts at $15.50/hour, even in Clinton County, PA (the poorest county in the state). Wegman's starts at $14 / hour for their lowest part-time day-shift position. Full timers overnight will start at $17/hour. Wegman's generally tries to hire full-timers, but they do give students, retirees who are bored and want to remain productive, as well as the disabled, part-time jobs during the day. Wegman's is almost always on the Top 50 companies in America to work for.

Same story with WAWA.

Wegman's, Sheetz, and Wawa are all growing companies. Hell, Wawa is expanding through the northern and western part of the state, opening up a lot of new stores. One in Williamsport just opened last year. One in Lock Haven next year, and same with State College.

Same can be said of Buccees. It's now moving north. one just opened in PA not too long ago.

Amazon was FORCED to increase workers' pay due to the threat of workers striking and shutting down their fulfillment centers. Same thing happened to Wal-Mart through the 2000s and 2010s. Both Amazon and Wal-Mart were forced to recognize that, yes. Their workers ARE necessary to run their ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ business. Wal-Mart starts their lowest employees at $14 / hour in the lowest-cost-of-living areas and have to start the higher cost areas at $17. Sam's Club employees make a minimum of $16/hour.

The entire point is, it's the WORKERS that generate the wealth. Not the CEO. Not the board of directors. CEO position wouldn't even exist without a workforce, as the company wouldn't exist.

And finally, people can make as much money on the stock market as they want. I am only targeting company embezzlement here. An overly excessive salary and bonus structure that is essentially stealing from the company. Nobody.... and I mean absolutely N.O.B.O.D.Y is worth paying over a billion dollars in salary and bonuses. It's the CEO and BoD paying themselves, embezzling company money at the expense of the REAL wealth-creators: The workers, supervisors, and managers themselves. They're the ones that ultimately have to make and carry out all of the day-to-day decisions and work throughout the entire company that keeps it running, and the customers coming back.

Wealth is O.N.L.Y created through the production of goods. Services are supported by the production of THINGS. A piece of stock is just a piece of paper, which is virtually useless in producing anything. It's just a piece of paper and means absolutely nothing. It doesn't produce a sofa. It doesn't produce a car. It doesn't pull iron or oil out of the ground. A piece of stock only has value as long as there is productivity to support that value. Just like with the US dollar. It's completely and totally worthless without the entire US economy producing STUFF. It's very literally what currency was invented to do in the first place: as a medium of exchange for STUFF that was produced by workers. By pottery-makers, farmers, builders, etc. Otherwise, currency wouldn't have a reason to exist.
 
WELKER: Where is that $50,000? Did you keep it?

HOMAN: I didn't take $50k from anybody and that's a question for the FBI. I'm not giving this story more air. Bottom line I did nothing illegal.

WELKER: But was there $50k in the bag?

HOMAN: I'm not addressing it

WELKER: But did you keep the money?

HOMAN: $50,000 is ridiculous

https://twitter.com/x/status/2010368826886480332
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
It's more a case of forcing people into such situations. Like with company towns and scrip payments in the 19th and early 20th century companies are profiting off both underpaying their workers and extending unsustainable finance to them.
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Another example. the sushi restaurant chain in Arizona that was trafficking immigrants and then using them as slave labor in the restaurants.

USA: Sushi chain operators arrested on charges of forcing undocumented migrants to work at restaurants seven days a week without leave - Business and Human Rights Centre

Check out this page via the Business and Human Rights Centre
www.business-humanrights.org www.business-humanrights.org
 
Tero said:
Greenland won't go away. Why does Miller want Greenland? Not all of those people are white...
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trump won't rule out the use of military force to take Greenland.

President Donald Trump won’t rule out the use of military force to acquire Greenland, the White House said. Yahoo News article link
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How did the United States decide we must have Greenland? I never heard this before. Not from Congress, not from the Republicans. It was definitely not a plank in their platform in 2024. When has the United States ever used military force to seize control of a foreign land? Never. It's the opposite of what the United States has always stood for.

Until now.

This is all one man. (Plus, presumably, Stephen Miller, someone whose own family -- as with RFK Jr. -- has publicly warned people about.)

That's where we are. We've invaded Venezuela and apparently are going to occupy it for quite some time. We're threatening to invade Greenland. Not because of Congress. Not because the public has demanded it. Invading Venezuela and Greenland have never been publicly debated, even by the Republican Party. It just came out of the blue, all because of one man. trump.

We have to find a way to stop this madness. This is not the America I've lived in for many years. This is a different place and one I do not like.
 
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Even some Republicans are voicing opposition to the Greenland annexation idea.

In what could prove to be a pivotal election year for the Republicans, with the midterms holding much influence, President Donald Trump arguably needs the support of his own party now more than ever. Especially as he is facing loud calls for impeachment from the Democratic Party...Yet there is currently a split forming, as some prominent Republican lawmakers are publicly disagreeing with Trump regarding his renewed annexation threats against Greenland in the wake of the Venezuela intervention...“This is appalling. Greenland is a NATO ally. Denmark is one of our best friends… so the way we’re treating them is really demeaning and it has no upside,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told CNN on Tuesday. Time Magazine article link''
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Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has called trump's rhetoric, “utterly unacceptable.”
 
newyorkguy said:
Even some Republicans are voicing opposition to the Greenland annexation idea.
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The popularity of a Greenland invasion was what, 7% in favor in the US, with only 13% of Republicans supporting it? Softer options were also extremely unpopular, albeit a bit less so. Greenlanders, of course, were also extremely opposed to being part of the US.
 
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