Well, some of the dead ones do, as well as some live ones.
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Can we say “legally mandated grift?”
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Pay for Thomas Gallagher, the group’s CEO, … compensation included… money to cover part of his taxes.
This is what just kills me. Not only do the CEOs have exhorbitent salaries, but then the company pays the taxes so that $1 million is basically net.
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Rich people are just like us, in that they enjoy simple pleasures: Good food, vacations, and joining corporate boards. They simply can’t get enough of being on corporate boards—or sometimes charity boards, or museum boards. If you are truly an elite, you simply must be on a board or two, to demonstrate how sought-after your expertise is. Ex-politicians, in particular, love joining corporate boards, which happen to often come with a nice paycheck. In 2013, the average paycheck for directors at S&P 500 companies was $251,000; a 2016 Bloomberg report on ex-lawmakers joining corporate boards found they earned an even juicier $357,182.
But what do these people actually do? What expertise or skill that they use in these part-time roles is so valuable? This question has become newly relevant since the story of how Hunter Biden came to have a seat on a Ukrainian gas company board has returned to the news, after it was reported that President Trump called the Ukrainian president and asked him to investigate Joe Biden over his son’s ‘business activities.’ What, pray tell, was Hunter doing on the board of a Ukrainian gas company in the first place, to the tune of $50,000 a month?
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All that comes to mind is that there’s a… severance… that these people could be given that’s more appropriate to their role as the… executives… behind the opioid crisis.
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Stockton is giving people $500 a month, no strings attached. Here’s how they’re spending it
New data released as part of Stockton’s closely watched universal basic income experiment offer a first glimpse into how an extra $500 a month affects the spending habits and quality of life for those receiving the no-strings-attached funds.
The recipients — full-time workers, stay-at-home caretakers, disabled individuals, students — overwhelmingly use the money to feed, clothe and house themselves. The median monthly income among the participants is $1,800, compared to the median household monthly income in the city of about $3,500.
For spending, about 38 percent of purchases each month go toward food, and 25 percent on sales and merchandise such as clothing, home goods and items from discount stores such as Walmart.
Gas, electric and telecommunication bill payments make up the third largest spending category, about 11 percent. Less than 1 percent of total money tracked has been spent at alcohol or tobacco retailers, according to SEED spokeswoman Amanda Blanton.
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I have a friend who plays a Vibraphone. It’s such a rare, expensive, and difficult to port instrument that playing virtually guarantees him work. He regularly plays with major kirtan artists.
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Gee, the things I could improve/build upon with an extra $500 a month. Seriously.
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The whole thing is spot on. This part is almost a tangent to the main point of the essay, but this part especially struck me:
Witnessing the horrors of slavery drilled into poor white workers that things could be worse. So they generally accepted their lot, and American freedom became broadly defined as the opposite of bondage. It was a freedom that understood what it was against but not what it was for; a malnourished and mean kind of freedom that kept you out of chains but did not provide bread or shelter. It was a freedom far too easily pleased.
I’ve definitely taken notice of the really weak definition of “freedom”, of workers’ rights and the whole “it could be worse” attitude, and especially that last part is linked with racist attitudes now… but I’d never considered that it goes right back to slavery.
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Thread:
PG&E took the money it was supposed to use for repairs and fed it straight to execs. And since there weren’t enforceable conditions on that money, people are dying.
It’d be one thing if this was a natural disaster. It isn’t. PG&E is killing people.
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More info:
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Why would they cut the power at 3:30am if it was a planned outage??? And if it were so planned, how come they didn’t plan on medical equipment???
When Ontario had its last big ice storm and it took over a week to get everyone’s power back, banks opened up as recharging stations and warming stations. Sure, living in a bank branch is not ideal, but it’s better than dying.
The whole thing just seems so inept.
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Called it.
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Thread:
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Another from The Dollop. The story of Pemulway and the first peoples’ response in Australia to these rich Colonial assholes and their slavish hordes of Old World European bigots.
What’s so frightening about Colonialism and oligarchic bullshit is that the British shit is much the same as every big empire ever in Eurasia from Anatolia to Japan and Namibia to Norway, but still foreign to some lands within oral memory. Now, unfortunately for all of us, foreign to no one. It eats everything it sees, the system of mob bosses that consume every improvement we make, just to turn it against us.
Listen through to the end and their talk about climate change.
http://thedollop.libsyn.com/353-aboriginal-warrior-pemulwuy-live-wdamien-powers
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