Josh Marshall has a good take on corporations’ approach to political activism. It’s members-only at TPM, but here’s his main point:
This part of the story should also focus us on the fact that to the extent corporate America is supportive of the aspirations and demands of cosmopolitan/urban-centric America (which I outline here), the support is essentially reactive and passive. The first goal is to avoid all involvement in America’s political polarization – since in the nature of things most corporations are focused on the entire consumer market, not one or the other main faction. (Note that in the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection many corporations decided to discontinue all political giving, to both parties.) But when it’s not possible to avoid picking sides many corporations now seek to avoid the reputational harm of being associated with views which the majority of the country – particularly the parts of the country that represent the future and the most disposable income – oppose. But voting rights aren’t first, second or third or even tenth on any corporate lobbyist’s list of asks from Congress or various state legislatures. Not even close. And that goes for race relations, any gender or LGBT rights, policing reform, and certainly any structural expansions of the safety which have been core to the early Biden legislative agenda.
Corporations may oppose or refuse to support things like the voting rights clamp down in GOP controlled swing states. But again, this is largely passive, an effort to disassociate and avoid reputational harm. The core agenda remains keeping taxes and regulations low because those are tied to maximizing profits, which is what corporations are designed to do.
If you subscribe to TPM, it’s worth reading his in-depth piece arguing that corporations are generally more reactive to concerns from the urban/cosmopolitan centers than they are to rural areas because that’s where the growth and money are. Part of the reason that Republican rural resentment politics work is that they are based on a core fact: rural areas are getting passed by, and it’s easier to stir up resentment and hate to keep rural votes than it is to do anything constructive about it.
Marshall’s post is a response to Mitch McConnell threatening “serious consequences” for corporate America if they continue to support voting rights. Riiight. The thing about Mitch is that it’s possible to be very evil and very good at one thing (maintaining a unifed obstructionist caucus), and still be shit at many other things. Banging the table threatening corporations with dire consequences at some unspecified future time is pretty fucking weak sauce, especially when those corporations know that all will be forgiven if they throw piles of Benjamins at Republican candidates and PACs. Why even open your mouth to make a laughable threat like that?
Big corporations sell a vision of a country full of shiny, happy consumers where their products are part of the reason we’re collectively happy. It’s “have a Coke and a smile” not “have a Coke and sneer at the other”. The current Republican strategy of division and suppression might work for them if it was a little more “morning in America”, but living in a Fox bubble has blinded Republicans to the reality that corporations need to market to everyone, not just 40% of the voting public.
Major Major Major Major
The GOP mindset really is astounding. Not a hint of self reflection. “If the problem is everyone else, maybe the problem is you” just never crosses their minds. Instead they decide, if the problem is everyone else, then everyone else simply should not have a voice.
raven
wow
Villago Delenda Est
Rural areas are getting passed by because that’s not where the money is. Hell, even in agriculture itself, because of corporate collective farms, the money is in urban areas. Kansas City, anyone?
West of the Cascades
“Why open your mouth”? Because Mitch has only one tactic, and that’s to threaten destruction of anyone that opposes his fundamental project of keeping a rump white supremacist majority in power. He’s past the point where he considers the consequences of what he says or any strategic/tactical goals, and just runs on autopilot.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: Reminds me of the old joke about someone who is on a diet, who says “you know, they say that being on a diet can make you cranky, but I’ve been just fine.
But everyone else is being really obnoxious!
Self-awareness, anyone?
WaterGirl
The Republicans appear not to know that it’s shameful to be against the right of citizens in America – a democracy – to vote.
It’s mind-boggling to see how badly they have lost their way.
Jeffro
I was just gonna say the same thing. Mitch is scared, and because he’s not scared very often, he’s angry.
Ohio Mom
There is an alternate view of the purpose of the corporation — not to maximize profits (as Milton Friedman claimed) but to best serve its many stakeholders, which includes not just owners/shareholders but also employees and management, suppliers and distributors, customers and the community in which they are located.
I know, too idealistic.
Betty Cracker
Excellent post on a timely issue — thanks! It’s a topic I’ve been mulling over a lot myself due to the GA situation and also what’s happening here in Florida with a beloved grocery chain, Publix, and its support for our corrupt shithead governor and its founding family’s support for Turnip’s insurrection.
I think you and Marshall are spot-on about what motivates corporations, i.e., keeping taxes and regulations low and not alienating too many customers in a polarized environment. Those motivations are increasingly in tension, and that will probably continue.
There are exceptions, but no one will ever mistake most corporations for altruistic organizations that put their civic duty ahead of or equal to “delivering shareholder value.” But in some scenarios, corporations have had to serve as guardrails because our political system is so goddamned dysfunctional, thanks to Republicans. The blowback from the insurrection is one example.
Jeffro
Corporations are starting to…maybe…slightly…wake up to the fact that the GQP is batshit insane and therefore bad for the economy. It’s hard to run a successful business and make oodles of cash if one party cares not one bit about a freaking pandemic, or an insurrection, or investing in the country’s future.
(and they know damn well they can afford some tax increases, too, especially if the taxes go for badly needed infrastructure)
The GQP has rage-tweeted itself into a corner with their “the opposite of what THE LIBS want, daily, forever and ever”. Us blessed libs are working to keep the country from falling apart; the GQP wants the opposite of that; therefore, the GQP wants the country to fall apart. You don’t need an MBA to realize that’s more than a little bad for business.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker:
I haven’t followed that closely, because I don’t live in Florida, but apparently DeSantis is making hay out of his recent clash with 60 Minutes, and he has Democratic pols coming to his defense. He’s setting himself up as the martyr of the Liberal Media in preparation for 2024.
I didn’t watch 60 Minutes, but aside from Publix, did they bring up Bruce Rauner and the Ocean Reef Club?
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Ohio Mom: Probably too idealistic. That said, one thing that I didn’t mention in the piece is that corporations are a lot more diverse today than they were in the past. Laws that shit on a good percentage of your workforce are bad for business if you care about your workforce. Some corporations like Wal-Mart probably don’t, but those that rely on a more educated diverse workforce (say, Delta), do.
WereBear
As someone born in a farm town that still isn’t even on most maps, I can confidently blame them for that.
They didn’t have to indulge their mindless nostalgia and paranoid fears. It’s hard not to loose the best and brightest to the nearest big city, but being open to job training, better education, different kinds of people, and demanding broadband so commuters might want to buy homes in the community… isn’t rocket surgery. In some ways, it’s just being sensible human beings.
But I don’t think anyone who voluntarily listens to Rush Limbaugh for longer than three minutes fits into that category. Sure, Faux News is brainwashing propaganda, but something kept people from turning the channel.
And it spelled their own doom.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro:
do anything that helps the world in any way.
Baud
WereBear
I was blown away by this because Publix was so operationally different from the cash cow attitude of Wal-Mart. My friends who worked there were treated decently, they made the stores clean and bright and welcoming, they had great delis, and they’d do extra things for the customer.
Of course, my experience is now decades in the past… and the 3rd generation is usually the one which wrecks the dynasty :)
dr. bloor
@WaterGirl:
It’s actually pretty easy when you grasp that they are incapable of experiencing shame.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: I read just enough conservative websites + communities to know this is the case.
They’ll even spend paragraphs talking about how literally everyone disagrees with them: experts, priests, government, democrats, media, educators, and businesses and wonder how all those disparate people could possibly have the same opinion. It’s so unlikely that they would all band together against Republicans!
Their answer is that it’s a conspiracy. Not, you know, that the Republicans are obviously wrong or reprehensible.
Steve in the ATL
@WereBear: and unlike most of the grocery industry, Publix is non-union
laura
Opening your skull on the daily to Rushbo and Co to shit in and then spending every evening hour letting the fox lineup continue to shit in your skull has not served the listeners and viewers well at all, but does help explain the willingness to cut your nose off to spite your face as an organizing principle
Now that I’m retired I never have to go to Florida again, but I still have my Publix shopping bag and miss their fresh hot empanadas.
James E Powell
@West of the Cascades:
Republicans are sticking with the racism, lies, & obstruction plan because it has worked beautifully for them. They jammed Obama & won the trifecta. They got their tax cuts, three justices, and a record number of federal judges.
I would bet a majority of white voters approve of what they are doing. Has anyone polled this question? I doubt that white people in Georgia, Texas, Iowa and elsewhere are calling their senators & representatives with objections.
They will not change until they lose like three straight election cycles.
Jeffro
I actually winced reading that but it’s just so true
Baud
Big corps are also multinational now. Their care about their image in foreign non-white markets.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: also, I wonder what the effect of more diverse corporate boards are. Here’s the board of Coca-Cola, I wonder how different those pictures are from 25 or 30 years ago. I gather Kenneth Chenault and Ken Frazier have been lobbying their friends in high places, and I’m betting they’re both on a couple of high-profile boards even if they’re both retired or retiring (respectively).
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Yeah, I really don’t get this. What are they going to do? Come out for unions all of a sudden?
And I get it that it’s lousy to live somewhere where everybody’s fondest hope is to get the fuck out and go live somewhere else. But the people who are so bitter about that are the same people who call Democrats communists while they’re trying to help these people.
I’d love to see happy, thriving small towns and countryside all over this country. But it’ll never happen as long as the people who live there are still living there.
jonas
@WaterGirl: They have no shame about it because they don’t really view POC as actual fellow-citizens having equal rights. “Real” Americans have the right to vote conveniently. Those “other” people? Not so much.
laura
@Jeffro: I winced writing it, but damn.
Baud
@James E Powell:
Word. I’ve been saying this forever.
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: \
Why would Democratic pols be defending that asshole? Is this why we can’t win Florida state elections?
Captain C
Moscow Mitch is feeling weak these days, perhaps for the first time, certainly for the first time in a long time. He can’t stand this, as power (and sadism) appears to be his real pleasure. His old moves are no longer working nearly as well, and he can no longer resort to a façade of Conservative ideology to pretend he’s got nothing to offer but obstruction and corruption. His physical health is starting to fail.
These are week woofs from an unhappy man desperate to feel powerful at a time when he isn’t, not like before.
Brachiator
McConnell coming down hard in support of voter suppression. Is this GOP bipartisanship?
This is an incredibly arrogant and stupid blunder. I look forward to watching the Democrats kick McConnell’s ass over this.
smith
Every time I start to despair about the apparently incurable pathology of the GQP, I remind myself that this is the way we will win: basically, we kidnap their kids.
Just recently I also realized that this is the nub of the Qanon fantasies. Their best and brightest kids leave rural areas and small towns as soon as they can, and when they come back to visit (if they come back to visit) they’ve acquired alien ideas about diversity, religion, politics, etc. We are actually stealing their babies and swallowing them up. Of course, it’s a metaphor, but these are the people who take metaphors literally…
Baud
So far, anyway, Republican senators seem content to go down with Mitch’s ship.
WereBear
@Steve in the ATL: Ahhhh! How… Southern… of them.
Baud
@smith:
Enough about Gaetz.
catclub
@Ohio Mom:
More like: Never enforced by the States that allow corporations to exist in the first place.
WereBear
True words. And this is also an American tradition…
Because I’ve noticed such places have a tendency to try and trap their kids and keep them close. That scorn of intellect which is so rampant in some regions and classes… it runs very deep.
rp
@Ohio Mom: Yes…I haven’t read Marshall’s piece, but he’s missing a big piece if he doesn’t talk about the corporations’ employees. Corporations are obv. just a collection of human beings with their own concerns, political views, etc., and many of them are in major urban areas and employ lots of bright, young college educated types. Those employees are pushing the companies to be more diverse and take a stand on some of these issues. So while making customers happy might be the primary reason for the corporations’ political stances, I don’t think it’s as passive and reactive as he’s suggesting.
Mike G
Banging the table threatening corporations with dire consequences at some unspecified future time is pretty fucking weak sauce, especially when those corporations know that all will be forgiven if they throw piles of Benjamins at Republican candidates and PACs.
That’s their point, they’re working the refs. Feigning outrage, implying corporations will need to pony up more money in their bribes next time to heal the “hurt”.
WaterGirl
@dr. bloor: Agree that it’s obvious that they are incapable of experiencing shame. I don’t actually care if they feel any shame. But they don’t even seem to understand that there is something terribly wrong and amoral about actively trying to keep citizens from voting in a democracy.
I think there’s something terribly wrong with all of them.
WereBear
Also, part of the rural/city divide is the relative ease of being a big fish in a small pond. Whole Southern towns were ruled for generations because the original Big Daddy owned a car dealership or some food franchises.
If they are already sitting pretty, why care if the place actually flourishes?
Dorothy A. Winsor
A story of how a party can provoke voters by crappy rhetoric they think is universally accepted: We have a local election today. I requested a mail in ballot which was sent to Iowa for reason unknown. It didn’t come until late yesterday which meant mailing it on time was going to be a problem. And I didn’t know who I wanted to vote for for the library board, etc. (I knew who for school board because the IL part of the NEA sent me a flyer). So I was actually considering not voting.
Then an email came from some group called the Suburban Action Pac. They recommended candidates who were concerned about taxes and thought the library was overfunded. OK, time to vote. People who think the public library and public education are overfunded are generally not the ones you want in charge of it. Also, now I had a list of candidates NOT to vote for, which made it easy to vote for their opponents.
I just got back from surrendering my mail-in ballot and voting in person. I took pictures of my ballot so I’d remember who to vote for.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Shorter McConnell/GOP Obstructionists:
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I didn’t see the program either, but yep, DeSantis is making hay of it, and a couple of Dem elected officials in the wealthy counties to which DeSantis had Publix deliver vaccines are coming to his defense, presumably because it serves their political interest to do so. Don’t know if the Reef Club thing was covered on 60 Minutes, but it has been by the local dailies that broke the story — extensively.
What enrages me is how the national political pundits are lining up to suck DeSantis’s dick without bothering to read the local reporting, which has been very good. Josh Barro, to name one example, said attacking Publix and DeSantis will offend FL voters. Excuse me? Fuck that noise.
The straight dope on this isn’t that DeSantis used Publix to distribute vaccines. I assume all governors are using regional chains to do that. It’s that he pretty much farmed it out to them in a completely autonomous way — they don’t even keep the Dept. of Health informed on where they’re vaccinating people, which affects access everywhere.
Anyhoo, it’s too much to cover in a comment, and I’ve meant to do a post on it, but I am too pissed off to really be coherent. The national media is getting ready to crown that shithead DeSantis for 2024 despite his lying, scheming and corruption, that much is clear. That might redound to our benefit since DeSantis is a belligerent prick who lacks charisma. But by god Politico & Co. will do their best to mitigate that shortfall, and who can say they won’t succeed under the right circumstances?
WaterGirl
@jonas: Maybe what you have written is the key. Rapists don’t really view women as PEOPLE, but more as objects.
The Republican party, and surely cops who are murdering black people, don’t view black and brown people as actual people. They are surely not seen as people, as full citizens.
My mind has trouble comprehending how so many people can feel this way, but the fact that I teared up when I read what you wrote tells me that i know at some level that it’s true.
Andy
@Ohio Mom:
watch the end of the movie Executive Suite from 1954
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEOsGvT0qA
WaterGirl
@Captain C: I think there’s a really good chance that Mitch McConnell is not well physically, and that what he is fighting for here is the horrible legacy of the hate and ugliness and obstruction he has stood for. I will not mourn his loss when he is gone, but I will definitely mourn for what he has taken from our democratic union.
I am hopeful that if we can pass the For the People Act, and the voting rights Act, we can turn that around.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Not just everyone, the entire glob. Worth noting the irony of China bashing farmers when China is a major customer of theirs.
bluehill
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s depressing to me that I feel like I have to pour over statements by candidates for even these locally elected positions to try discern whether they have any MAGA leanings.
MattF
I think corporations watch what other corporations do, particularly competitors. And not so much what politicians do or say. Coke gives Mitch $$$ because Pepsi gives Mitch $$$. Goya’s competitors watched happily while the big dog in their market dropped a huge turd. And I’ll put money on the proposition that corporations don’t like being threatened.
hueyplong
Don’t disagree with anything above re corporate motivations, but we might be underestimating the fact that corporate America watched the GOP spectacularly fail at what they consider its one true purpose– to protect them and their consumer base in a time of crisis.
It seems logical to assume that soulless bottom liners would be much more offended by objective incompetence than by evil/moral bankruptcy. The former is everything. The latter is irrelevant.
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: A friend of mine who was director of agency that helped women recover from drug/alcohol addiction remarked that her partner now wife was treated better by Kroger than she was at the agency when she came out.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Coca-Cola is really a “set it and forget it” kind of enterprise. Keep the lines going, the products clean and some basic advertising, and it’ll go on for centuries like Brawndo.
Delta, on the other hand, requires a lot of organizational and managerial skill to keep up, with professional engineer mechanics, marketing execs, bean counters, aircraft designers and quants (to suss out fuel use and loads) anchoring important corners of the organizational chart. That requires a highly educated workforce, necessitating diversity and a lot of concentrated team effort.
The Herrenvolk Republic of GOP dreams is the opposite of that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It don’t take to many candidates turing the job down or quitting because they or members of their immediate family might be murdered for their sexuality or color of their skin the get corporate attention.
Kent
It’s not just that rural areas aren’t where the money is. It’s that rural areas are MUCH MUCH more ossified in their ways and spending habits, partly because they are old.
There way zero chance that my elderly grandmother in rural PA was ever going to change her brands of anything because of some TV ad. She bought the same soap that her mother bought since the 1950s and that was that.
That’s why the 20-35 demographic (or whatever it is) is so important to advertisers. These are young people with money who can be swayed. And they almost entirely live in cities.
Keith P.
I guess it kind of dates me, but I know it as “[tell Bill I said] have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up”.
Kent
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Coca Cola is really the ultimate American company. They produce the same crappy carbonated sugar water they have been doing for 150 years with basically zero innovation. The entire focus is simply marketing and they have convinced the entire planet to buy their product.
Back when I was in the Peace Corps in rural Guatemala in the 1980s you would find coke everywhere in the most rural and remote villages that don’t even have road service, running water, or electricity. They would haul crates of bottled coke in by horseback and serve it warm. Which I was actually thankful for because you generally don’t want to be drinking the water and the only other options are beer and rum. Nothing more Guatemalan than to be sitting around to a lunch of rice and beans with handmade tortillas washed down with a bottle of warm coke.
Kathleen
@Captain C: Plus isn’t Elaine in the spotlight now also?
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: It’s still the best grocery chain in Florida by far from the customer’s perspective (IMO), and most people who work there say they are well treated even though it’s an anti-union shop. The family that founded it has it has always been Republican and super-Jesusy, and it was the last chain to open on Sundays. All that said, the company pretty much publicly disowned the heir of the founder who funded the insurrection rally, so they will bow to political pressure. But they are way up DeSantis’s ass.
Baud
@Kent:
They tried with New Coke. That’s probably what caused the current political polarization.
Kathleen
@rp: I agree. Plus global markets help keep them mindful of consequences.
Captain C
@rp:
Not to mention things like:
“Hey, Bob, we really need you to go and lead the opening of our new office. You’re the best there is. We’ll give you a big raise and a housing allowance.”
“Great! Where is it?”
“Atlanta.”
“Sorry, Susan, can’t do it. They don’t want to let me or my family vote there.”
laura
Off topic but spouse and I got our 2nd pfizer jabs Thursday. Spouse is a super high frequency donor of plasma and platelets and made a donation yesterday. He just got an update indicating that his donation tested positive for Covid antibodies. No such antibodies after the first vax. He’s taking a victory lap around the couch.
J R in WV
There are half-a-dozen Kroger’s grocery stores within a 40 minutes (or so) drive of our house, because we live 25 minutes from town. I just recently learned that the nearest one, which of course I shop at mostly, is called “The Gucci Kroger’s” because it’s the biggest and nicest one in the area… also clean, doesn’t smell.
Come on people, clean and doesn’t stink is the FLOOR for a grocery store!
Caring for the community, keeping clean drinking water flowing, good health care available, good jobs, schools, and work places, well functioning waste treatment — this is the FLOOR for a community and a political party, not an aspirational unattainable goal!!
But Republicans and Evangelists don’t see it that way, at all, do they?
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: I still can’t get past the fact he wrote a book which claimed slavery wasn’t that bad but the same media who marginalize Black voters don’t seem to have a problem with that.
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
Not quite. They don’t put cocaine in it anymore, unfortunately.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: Oh, yes, my peeps in Florida still love it. And I look fondly back on their Cuban sandwiches, which had a touch of authenticity for such a mass-produced deli product.
lashonharangue
@Kent: It is also one of the main reasons Mexico has been hit so hard by Covid – diabetes and obesity.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda-sugar-tax-mexico
Brachiator
@Andy:
An exciting film that still holds up. Interesting that it was made in the 50s, when American corporations were maybe at their peak (“the business of America is business”).
The opening of the Hollywood Reporter review of the movie:
Great screenplay by Ernest Lehman screenplay, based on Cameron Hawley’s novel.
What would a modern reboot be, “Zoom Call?”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Captain C: We wound up in Iowa because John Deere aggressively recruited Mr DAW to do research on emissions and fuel economy. They have trouble drawing graduate level engineers.
We had the same trouble recruiting at Iowa State. It wasn’t just the candidates. Their families had needs too
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: It has excellent reputation in the industry for customer service (the clerks take time to talk to snowbirds) and how they treat employees. They do a lot of promotion from within or used to.
boatboy_srq
It is probably worth noting that, market-driven amorality aside, the Corporate sphere is generally of the mindset of old-school Conservatism, and the GOTea is a font of Conservatistism. Much of the modern GOTea agenda is not especially palatable to little-c conservatives, and adhering to that agenda (and obstructing businesses pursuing their own goals) is more likely to harm business than help.
The question really boils down to how much GOTea Kool-Aid that CEOs and Directors have drunk and how quickly they realize that their goals and their preferred party’s have diverged.
hueyplong
@Brachiator: But then, “the business of America is business” is a 1920s quote (Coolidge).
VeniceRiley
Coke is not the same worldwide. Anyone who says that never had a Mexican Coke. Made with real sugar instead of high fructose syrup – It is superior in every way. You can find it in nooks and crannies around SoCal.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
This! Mental illness exhibits in many diverse ways, and racist theocratic Republicans show all the diverse symptoms.
J R in WV
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We have used this candidate selection trick a number of times. It they’re against ballot security, funding schools, a clean environment in their election propaganda, vote against them!
And the non-partisan judges they recommend!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Down in central Misery, when I was there for 22+ years, the state DOT headquartered in podunk Jeff City (which makes Ames look cosmipolitan–I go to Ames a lot for work) had a helluva time recruiting and *retaining* just about anybody not from Misery, particularly women and anybody with a hint of color in their skin.
They really tried, still do, to bring in a diverse work force but the location and the ossified locals drive just about everybody away within 5 years.
MattF
OT. A Newsmax reporter gets Psakied.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I can think of one company (there are probably others but being the family cook their the one I know of) that early and often wore their political heart on their sleeve during the Trump era – Penzey Spices hated that F*ck3r and didn’t care who knew it. And, if you want your food to taste better, buy their products. I don’t know if they qualify as a corporation but they are a going concern.
Betty Cracker
@Kathleen: That same book also decried policies that protect women from discrimination, domestic violence and sexual assault. But I bet if you polled Florida voters, maybe 1 in 1,000 would have any idea he wrote such a book. Maybe that many.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@MattF:
“The secret memo”
She’s beyond brilliant. I’m guessing the WH Press Corpse must generally hate her because of that.
boatboy_srq
@Jeffro: Not to mention all the regulations that, when it comes down to brass tacks, business would prefer to have and build against, than lack and have no clue what to produce. GOTea is allergic to regulation, where business, however much they denounce it, depend on it for consistency and reliability of product or service.
VeniceRiley
I think our wins in Virginia is what really scared the GQP. Because that’s how South Carolina and Georgia will look eventually, tipping point wise. The senate races in GA proved the point. They’re beyond scared of losing the statehouses and governorships.
Hoodie
@boatboy_srq: This. Most businesses value stability as much as or even more they value tax cuts, as taxes can be planned for and at least indirectly passed on to customers. The emergence of culture warring as the main theme of the GOP may have been a wakeup call to most corps that the GOP has become too invested in cultural controversy to promote stability.
J R in WV
@Baud:
The whole thing with New Coke was a well designed ploy to change the Coke recipe from using white sugar (expensive) to using high-fructose corn syrup.
New Coke was never intended to succeed, it was a pathway to Classic Coke, made with corn syrup.
Because of New Coke there was little way to directly compare original Coke with Classic Coke, and profits went up due to the lower cost of corn syrup sweetener.
It worked perfectly as designed, a slam dunk of marketing science!
Kay
Not all of the infrastructure bill will be popular, but broadband will be wildly popular and in GOP areas, too.
WereBear
@Brachiator: It’s a fantastic movie, not least because it’s as gripping as a thriller, though it is based on corporate antics!
New Deal democrat
@Ohio Mom:
Historically, the purpose of a corporation is to do precisely what the sovereign (formerly the King, now the State or Federal government) permits it to do, in return for not having the shareholders’ personal assets be subject to losses. Corporate charters were granted to undertake particularly risky business that the sovereign had a financial interest in, usually in increased tax revenue.
It was always a simplifying assumption of economics that corporations maximized their profits. Milton Friedman turned what had always been that simplifying assumption into a command: corporations *must* maximize shareholders’ profits, at the expense of every other priority (e.g., not harming the environment in the production of their products).
In one sense, we should welcome the gloves’ off attitude of the GQP. Because we ought to examine codifying in law what the obligations of shareholders’ ought to be in a modern society, in return from being shielded from personal liability.
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
The New Coke thing was a marketing debacle.
The problem was that the company did taste tests where consumers said that they liked the taste of New Coke.
Consumers were never asked if they cared whether Classic Coke would be taken off the market and replaced by New Coke.
The response here was overwhelmingly negative.
Emma from FL
@Betty Cracker: Our local Publix has saved my ass during the pandemic. Great store shoppers, great delivery system. I really hate their relationship with the governor, but I am afraid that if there’s a boycott those wonderful folk would lose their jobs. And you know that the Florida unemployment system is like.
Geminid
@Jeffro: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce started hedging it’s bets last year, when it endorsed 20 Democratic Congressional Representatives. These included Sharice Davids (KS-3) and Abigail Spanberger (VA-7). Spanberger’s Republican opponent was endorsed by the Club for Growth, and lost by a few thousand votes. Until Spanberger beat Dave Brat in 2018, the Richmond suburban district had been in Republican hands for decades.
Kansas Republicans will try to gerrymander Sharice Davids out of her district this year.
Ksmiami
@Captain C: I knew there would come a day when corporate America would realize the neo confederate GOP isn’t good for business at all…
Ruckus
@Ohio Mom:
It is mostly the shareholders and those they hire that make the decisions that give direction to the company, and all the rest support that, or leave, because their paychecks depend on it, no matter how big or small those checks are. And if they don’t, they usually get asked, nicely or not, to leave.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ohio Mom: Adam Smith had this idea, but Milton Friedman didn’t bother to read The Wealth of Nations.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
But, this is who they’ve always been.
Just One More Canuck
@Steve in the ATL: lawyer says what?
Cameron
The family members behind Publix are sort of mixed-message in their Christianoid beliefs. I don’t know if they still do, but at one point they had an ESOP, which made them unique in the supermarket biz. Just to balance that, of course, internally (according to a news article I read a couple years ago) they have major problems with promoting the wimmins and people of un-straightness.
There are groups out there attempting to reclaim rural American, although I doubt that we’ll ever return to the radical farmers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Two groups I’m aware of are Rural Assembly and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I’m sure there are others.
Ruckus
@Steve in the ATL:
My understanding is that MBA stands for Must Be Asshole. I’m sure that isn’t 100% true but my experience does give a reasonable level of confidence in the concept.
Cowgirl in the Sandi
OT Question
My 96 year old father lives in Sarasota and we haven’t seen him since last February. We live in CA and have been vaccinated and so has he. Still, we are VERY hesitant to fly to SRQ because of all the bad stuff we have heard about Florida (flying, mask and vaccine resistant, toxic spill in the gulf, etc.). What advice can the FL Juicers give us?? THX
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I’m always reminded of the picture of Mitch in front of that huge stars and bars flag, shaking hands.
Jeffro
@Keith P.: I loved RAW ?
Ksmiami
@WaterGirl: I just want that fucker dead and some Guatemalan to take money from ppl who want to line up and piss on his grave.
WereBear
@Ruckus: UTTERLY true.
In fact, there was a teacher at an Ivy League school who tried to sound the alarm that the “new business” approach was a training program for tRump-like sociopaths, but he was squashed fairly quickly and the money machine rolled on…
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: Even Clarence F’ing Thomas now thinks we have to treat Twitter as a public utility and protect conservatives from the Terms of Service.
But the thing that actually let’s that public utility operate can’t be infrastructure, oh no.
WaterGirl
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Penzey’s is still wearing their political heart on their sleeve. They know the fight is still on, even though Biden is president.
WaterGirl
@VeniceRiley: Losing the 2 senate races in George scared all Republicans shitless.
cmorenc
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
There’s an ongoing Darwinian selection process wrt people who stay in economically limited or depressed rural areas and small towns vs people sufficiently motivated and able to find a way to leave for a more prosperous, dynamic area. Another way it’s been described is as a “brain drain”.
burnspbesq
@Kent:
You’re kidding, right? I drank Tab in law school. Diet Coke came on the market while I was studying for the bar exam. That was a game-changer for millions, because it didn’t taste horrible.
GoBlueInOak
@Ohio Mom: That was the predominant legal theory of corporate governance before Milton Friedman and his Chicago School came up with the theory that profit maximization for shareholders was the sole purposes of corporations. Much like the “originalism” theory of right wing jurisprudence, it was all entirely BS designed to enrich the already wealthy & powerful, and immiserate everyone else.
burnspbesq
@cmorenc:
‘Because college (and to a lesser extent the military) is the escape hatch. Story has been told over and over, from Steve Earle’s first album to the final episode of “Friday Night Lights.”
Cameron
@Cowgirl in the Sandi: I’m sure the real Floridians on this site can give you a better answer, but I think you’d be OK (I live a couple miles north of SRQ). The non-maskers I run into have almost universally been clueless rather than nasty. Airlines seem to be playing it fairly safe, although I haven’t been in SRQ in a couple years so I don’t know what’s what there. Ms. Cracker and others who have lived here a lot longer than me can probably tell you for sure if it’s cool.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Crap. McConnell’s always been unprincipled, he’s not nearly as dumb as TFG, and now it sounds like he’s desperate. Smart, unprincipled, and desperate is a rather terrifying combination of traits.
Redshift
@WereBear:
There are rural communities that have tried to do community broadband, but then they vote for Republicans who support cable monopolies crushing their right to do so. The “you should hate Democrats because of things that have no effect on your life, and ignore that Republicans are terrible on all the things that do” strategy in action.
WereBear
There’s another thing about Red States… it’s actively dangerous to be a target in them. Vox has an article summing up decades of moral panics orchestrated by right wing religious. Overwhelmingly, those who suffered were seen as marginal in such places: goth teens, the LBTGQ+, those with demonized hobbies or interests, women, etc.
The powerful and the compliant crusaded against the oppressed and the helpless. Because they could.
This would give me pause about venturing into such places at all, much less try to make a life there. I know of, online, a writer who bought a house in a place like that; it was something she could afford, in a nice little neighborhood.
I remember it because it was something like the opening of a horror novel… the weight of “you’re not from around here” became so toxic she discussed how increasingly erosive it all was… and then her blog was taken down.
Still not up again.
joel hanes
More than thirty years ago, the SF Chronicle’s excellent back-page columnist Jon Carroll taught me that all corporate advertising is designed to construct and support a single toxic lie:
People are made happy by using products.
People are _only_ happy when using products …
when in fact, people are made happy by having a goal and working toward it, by helping others, by engagement in life.
Betty Cracker
@Cowgirl in the Sandi: If it were me, I’d go see him, especially given his age. I’m in a rural-ish area well north of Tampa, so it’s very mask-flouty, and I hate going out in public, especially before I was half-vaxxed. But people seem better behaved in the urban parts of the state. When I visit my sister in Tampa, I’m amazed at the difference. The beaches and tourist areas might be a zoo, but if you’re there to visit your dad, you can avoid those. Perhaps Cameron can weigh in; I think he’s in that specific area. Good luck
ETA: Oops — he did weigh in before I refreshed the page! ;-)
Frank Wilhoit
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Delta (and such) are having more and more trouble every year hiring engineers and training them. A big part of this, which is not widely grasped, is that training is not a capital investment; it is an operational expense. It is never only a question of “how much does it cost”, but more importantly “what kind of money?” For these reasons, most firms find it more cost-effective to hire consultants (which is a capital expenditure), but the US consultants are aging out and not being replaced, and the pipeline of Chinese and Indian talent is going to start drying up one way or another. In twenty years it is going to be much harder and more expensive to keep planes in the air, power plants and factories running, etc.
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: We have a local election today too. There are two general council seats and two zoned council seats, neither of which is mine, and three school board seats. There is a candidate for each council seat who is an anti-masker; I think they believe they can all get on City Council and then immediately repeal the mask ordinance. I think they’ll all go down in flames, because people here have been pretty satisfied with how the City Council has handled Covid. As far as the school board is concerned, there’s one guy who seems like a trouble maker; he has nothing but criticism for the current board, and wants to “bring textbooks back to the classroom” because evidently a few years ago they went with materials mostly on Chromebooks that are provided to every student. Any other candidate will be OK, and he’ll be outnumbered even if he gets elected.
PJ
@joel hanes: You clearly aren’t buying and using the right products.
Geminid
@cmorenc: A few days before last November’s election, I drove back to Virginia from a seaside South Carolina campground. My route took me across rural areas, and several times I caught a Biden campaign ad on the radio, pitched to rural voters. Biden spoke of a goal of keeping more young people from leaving rural areas, and promised initiatives including expanding broadband and supporting rural health care. The ultimate goal is aspirational, but I think rural Americans will benefit noticeably from the Covid relief and infrastructure bills.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
We have a public electric utility here and it’s pretty great. Every once in a while I get a check for “dividends” or something. They applied for and got Obama stimulus money to put in a solar field and this year they are expanding it.
Years ago I worked in a tiny rural town (at the post office) and they had a public telephone company. Their own tiny phone company! Just wild.
laura
@joel hanes: Jon Carroll – what a lovely person. I still subscribe to the Untied Way at the holidays and all ginger tabbies are Orange Boys. Big hearty thanks for referencing one of the loveliest columnists to ever Grace the pages of the Chron.
smith
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: and now it sounds like he’s desperate
Around the time that TFG was trying to drum up his excellent coup, it occurred to me that we might be reaching a juncture at which the corporate powers-that-be would part ways with the GQP. Even more than tax breaks, corporations need a stable political framework to operate in. If our current divided polity did actually slip into a hot civil war it would not be good for business, to say the least. It seemed like this might happen when corporate funders claimed that they would withhold money to supporters of the insurrection, but the obdurancy of the GQP since then makes me think the corporations didn’t follow through. On the other hand, McConnell acting desperate is a very good sign.
topclimber
@Steve in the ATL:
JOMC has a good point. There are way more nasty comments about lawyers than MBAs.
Soprano2
It’s slowly getting better here in Springfield, but it’s a big problem here too. They don’t suppress the minority vote because it’s not big enough for that here. Once it gets to around 25% I figure they’ll try.
Soprano2
I think this was actually the impetus behind the voter repression law, not Trump’s loss. If they had won those two seats I don’t think they would have changed much of anything.
Redshift
I have a friend who. has lived out in flyover country for many years now who has some… interesting political views (still thinks Michael Moore is worth listening to, is certain Bernie could have won Indiana.) We had some frustrating conversations over the holidays. She has no sympathy for the wingnutty views, but has some sympathy towards economic hard luck, etc. One of the things that came up as to why people had the “burn it all down” attitude in 2016 is “nobody listens to them,” (which I’ve certainly heard repeated elsewhere.) My general reaction is wtf? Because as for politicians, none of the rest of us have any expectation that they’ll “listen to us” much, and during campaigns they get “listened to” out of all proportion to population. Similarly with the proportion of media set in their environment relative to population.
As far as I can tell, it translates to “they used to do what I want (because I’m white and a Real ‘Murican, and now they don’t.” And wanting to “burn it all down” because of that isn’t a reasonable reaction, it’s monstrous.
japa21
As Dorothy pointed out, today is local election day in our neck of the woods. As an election judge, I am here for 15 hours. In the first 7 hours we have dad 10 voters in our precinct.
Uncle Cosmo
@VeniceRiley: You can find it here & there around Baltimore, too, hon – in 6-packs at 2-3x (or more) the price per ounce of the Murkin version. Not that it matters to me – cane sugar, HFCS, they’re both poison to the insulin-resistant.
gene108
@West of the Cascades:
This might apply to many politicians, but not McConnell. He’s a cold, shameless, calculating monster.
He may not have a lot of good options to go with publicity, but I bet he’s doing more behind the scenes to pressure corporations. I’m sure corporations have a wishlist they want Republicans to pass, if they get back in power. That’s where the McTurtle has leverage.
kindness
I ended up buying a TPM subscription and have been really happy with it. Took me a while to do it but I finally did.
Amir Khalid
@WaterGirl:
They don’t think it’s shameful. At least some of them believe voter suppression is an entirely legitimate way to win elections.
CaseyL
@WereBear:
It’s nuts. I have a whole raft of states and areas within states that I will no longer consider moving to, or even visiting, because they’ve been taken over by the worst of the RWNJs. I mean, the Deep South was never on the list, but now I’m leery even of places like Wisconsin and Montana! (“Goodbye, Yellowstone Park…” – happily, I’d already been there a few times.)
To be Frank
@Amir Khalid: it’s their heritage
James E Powell
@Kay:
Republicans who will vote against it will be running ads claiming credit for it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: Corporations are licensed by the state; the state has every right to impose conditions. A lot of people “conveniently” forget that.
WaterGirl
@Soprano2: Yep. For them, the election of 2 Democratic senators from GA was the earthquake on the fault-line.
Redshift
@Geminid:
I hope the PR the DNC and the Biden Administration are doing about it will help that get through. Big things the Democrats do are always designed to help rural Americans, because we want government to work for everyone and help people who need help, as opposed to Republicans who always eager to screw over anyone who doesn’t vote for them.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@WereBear: More like the original cotton gin, tobacco warehouse, lumber mill or general store. Add in the descendants who were able to afford to train as lawyers or doctors, the money to be the major investors in the local bank, and the capacity to anoint your preferred politicians. It’s not just two or three generations; in some places it’s 5 or 6, or even 8 or 9.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Redshift:
isn’t that the core of the Moore/Sanders messaging? that it’s really all about economics and not race or cultural resentments? I was a big Moore fan back in the 90s, he lost me in 2000, although I spite-watched Fahrenheit 9/11 (and even in the throes of Bush-hatred and the Iraq War I thought it was overhyped). Moore is to MSNBC what Glenn Greenwald is to twitter: people seem convinced of his importance and influence, but I don’t see it outside of those bubbles. I could be wrong about GG, I guess, because media Bigfeet do seem fascinated by him.
James E Powell
@WaterGirl:
And the narrative that emerged immediately was that Trump cost them both seats. I’m not so sure. I think that if McConnell had reversed on the $2000 and said that Loeffler & Purdue talked him into it, that they both would have won.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Brian Kemp has Stacey Abrams breathing down his neck in next year’s governor’s race.
Redshift
@James E Powell:
At least we’re not taking it lying down. Last night Rachel was showing billboards that are up in red states (from the DNC, I think), saying “Thank you, President Biden” on one end and “No thanks to [your GOP senator]” on the other.
trollhattan
@gene108:
McConnell is enough of a student of Trump to know with certainty that so long as the base applauds, he can say ANYTHING with no negative consequences. And to think he once held back.
WhatsMyNym
@VeniceRiley:
Costco was importing it (small glass bottles) and many small cafes/restaurants started getting it from them. I don’t know if they are they’re still bringing it in or another distributor has taken over.
SOoo much better than the junk they make in the states.
ryk
@japa21: I’m working our election here in Misery. We are still less than 100 voted out of over 3600 registered. It’s pitiful
Cameron
@Frank Wilhoit: Sounds like a good reason to bump Amtrak up to the same type of high-speed rail much of the rest of the world enjoys.
Redshift
@bluehill:
In Virginia, it takes no effort at all — if they have an R next to their name (or are endorsed by them for non-partisan positions), they’re Trumpy. There are the extremely open ones like wackaloon Amanda Chase, but even the supposedly more sane long-time Republican officials are campaigning on “election integrity” and “Democrats kept your kids out of school for no reason!”
James E Powell
@joel hanes:
There is another aspect to this. People are made unhappy by status anxieties generated by the culture, which anxieties can only be relieved by purchasing goods & services.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In large chunks of the Rust Belt, union members would vote themselves pay cuts and reduced benefits if it meant screwing over “others”, bigger gun collections, and more meaningless local jingoism about ‘Murka.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: Your views on ATF (All Things Florida) are a whole lot more important than mine – I’ve only lived here about five years, and that’s in an old-fart community in Bayshore Gardens.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: M. Moore is fast fading in relevance.
As for Greenwald, I saw him troll anti-fascist researcher Emily Gorcenski a couple weeks ago. I thought, there goes that misogynist Greenwald again, punching down at a woman. Then I thought about Gorcenski’s crediblity in the fields of anti-fascist research and IT generally, and thought that actually, Greenwald was punching up.
NotMax
@Kay
1970s. Friends chipped in together and bought a farm in northeastern PA, maybe 10 miles outside of the nearest town of any decent size. Phone service provided by a tiny local company.
To call that nearest town (or anywhere outside of the service area but within the same area code) he had to dial 1 first. For long distance he needed to dial 1-1.
Which brings to mind Stan Freberg’s ditty about the demise of named telephone exchanges.
They took away our MurrayHills
They took away our Sycamores
They took away Trafalgar and State
They took away our Plaza, our Yukon, our Michigan
And left us with 47329768
Remember Susquehanna!
:)
Kay
@NotMax:
The residents got a payment if proceeds exceeded expenses, annually. They had a single employee running the business office and she would bring over mail trays with the monthly bills in her station wagon.
I guess it’s probably out of business by now. although the town itself has had a bit of a real estate boom- single family houses between 80k and 100k are gone half an hour after they’re listed here and people are paying 10 or 15k above asking. I have never seen anything like it here. They simply stopped putting up entry level houses after the 2009 crash. There’s much more demand than supply.
artem1s
@Ohio Mom:
not really. even Henry Ford understood the advantage of putting a price point on his product that would mean his employees would be able to afford it. It’s the same principal. The 80s Greed Is Good mantra was all about making a product so exclusive someone would pay a premium for exclusivity even if the premium was all smoke and mirrors. The GOP and (some businesses – Hobby Lobby for instance) has turned that mantra into dogma and is evidently willing to die on the cross for their deeply held belief that their dollars are greener and more American and more Xtian than those filthy lie-iberal Democrat dollars.
NotMax
@Kay
At least up until I decamped here in ’83, one of the places I worked (and sometimes lived at during the off season) in rural PA still had a party line. Our ring was two shorts.
Betty Cracker
@Cameron: Bayshore Gardens! You’re right across from Longboat Key then! :) IMO, Florida is too complex a place for anyone to understand the whole of it, so every resident’s thoughts are welcome. Well, except the wingnuts. Fuck those guys!
Kent
Yep, Diet Coke is right up there with smart phones, electric cars, and mRNA vaccine technology in terms of innovation.
NotMax
@Kent
Tab root beer wasn’t all that bad, actually. Tab ginger ale, on the other hand, sucked.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@MattF: There’s a secret memo going around is the new some people are saying, I guess.
Mike in NC
@NotMax: I had a thoroughly useless officer in my Navy Reserve unit in Baltimore in the early 90s. He worked for Pepsi and would love to bore people about how they arrived at creating “Pepsi Clear”. It was another product that died a quick death because nobody needed it.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: Not at all. Peter Drucker said
That’s been modified over time to suggest that retaining a customer is a higher job than creating one.
I mean, yeah, there’s plenty of ‘maximize profits’ cases out there, but for some industries that’s critical because your R&D and capex come out of your profits, and in some industries that’s life and death. But it’s far from most industries.
I mean, bottom line with corporations is that with a few exceptions, they are extraordinarily small-c conservative. They don’t want to piss anyone off, so anything that has been elevated to culture war status they stay away from because even if they’re siding with the majority, they don’t want lose any existing customers on the other side. But yeah, they’re also smart enough to look at the landscape for when they are forced to take a position and pick the one that will look best in hindsight.
But they’re also smart enough to tell the difference between a durable, principal stance and some bullshit daily outrage. They’re particularly worried about black boycotts, because the black community doesn’t fuck around with theirs. Not like Trump saying to boycott Coke and then the very same day being caught hiding his Coke bottle on his desk. The Montgomery Bus boycott was almost universally upheld within the community and lasted a year.
This is why they ignore most boycotts, but pay close attention to others. And this also pisses off conservatives because their threats are ignored, because they aren’t real threats. But Stacy Abrams or Jim Clyburn, etc even hint at a boycott and they’ll jump because they know if they call for it, it’ll hurt, a lot.
...now I try to be amused
@smith:
I hadn’t thought of it that way before. Thanks.
However, many of the kids cities “kidnap” were in fact rejected by their parents and other rural people for being LGBTQ or questioning the family religion. Leaving town was a matter of survival for them. In Red America you’re either all-in or all-out.
Kayla Rudbek
@CaseyL: I felt safer in rural France, Belgium, and the Netherlands (bike and train tour in 2019) even though I speak minimal French and no Dutch, than I would feel in certain areas of the United States if Mr. Rudbek and I would do a bike tour. And I wouldn’t have said that about the USA when I started dating Mr. Rudbek back in the 20th century.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Dunno if you saw the link to extraneous Pepsis on a recent morning. Just in case, here it is again.
P.S.: Ad for Mango Pepsi showed up on MSNBC earlier this month.
;)
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: I would be, except that I live at the intersection of Old Fart Avenue and Strip Mall Boulevard, i.e., right off Rte 41. Too far inland. HOWEVER! Given the serious environmental fuck-up in progress, I suspect red tide effects will reach all the way to the Atlantic within a few months. So everybody wins – I’m assuming that Gov. DeCovid will announce that exposure to red tide cures the pandemic.
boatboy_srq
@Cowgirl in the Sandi: SRQ when I was last there split east-west, roughly at Beneva Road. West of there is pretty moderate, and rational, but there was an embryonic MAGAt community on the east side – especially east of I-75 and into Lakewood Ranch. Stay toward the water (Swift/Tuttle and westward) and you should be fine, especially on Osprey Avenue or Main Street. Ridgewood Heights, Southgate, Rosemary, St Armand’s, Siesta Key Village should all be OK. Flights into SRQ are stupidly expensive, but TPA is a decent airport.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
They have convinced themselves that they are not just right, but righteous in thought and action, that there is a superior segment of humanity, that they belong to. It is almost completely fruitless to try to convince them otherwise, because they have people telling them exactly this from different directions. Fox, religion, conservative politicians. All telling them basically the same story and the only way they can get away from that is to want to get away, to run. It doesn’t matter that all they are told is bullshit, they don’t have much if any way to hear different.
Martin
@Cameron: Easier said than done.
It’s not just a matter of putting faster trains on the tracks. Grades need to eased, tracks need to be much flatter and more stable, you need to electrify the rail and have the power to drive the train, you need to increase the radius of curves, lengthen switches, modify overpasses to protect from the air rush of the train, etc.
If you’ve got a desert to build over, it’s easy. If you’ve got an authoritarian government that lets you just bulldoze people’s houses, it’s easy. If you’re building it after the US Army Air Corps firebombed your infrastructure into dust, it’s easy. But if you’re trying to retrofit it through exiting cities and suburbs is is wildly difficult. Not impossible. The UK is doing it. It can be done. But it’s going to cost a LOT, and that’s tough when 60% of the country believes that the key to being a good, successful, free person is driving an F-150.
Cameron
@Martin: No argument here. It’s a question of which unpopular argument sells. Probably none of them, so we’re screwed.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Conservatives see only money coming into and out of their pockets. If politicians want to do any of the removal process, they must be absolutely wrong, the end. That leaves liberals right out because they actually want to spend money on fixing stuff. KY and the ACA is an example. The gov did nothing but change the name, and people thought it was great.
Matt McIrvin
@J R in WV:
This is a popular rumor, but it’s not true. The shift to HFCS happened gradually before the New Coke incident and was largely complete just before it happened. All actual evidence indicates that the New Coke thing was exactly what it appeared to be, a marketing mistake that the company managed to recover from. Most likely it was conceived as a logical extrapolation from the surprise success of Diet Coke: New Coke was basically the Diet Coke recipe with the artificial sweetener replaced with HFCS.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-coke-fiasco/
Ruckus
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
They likely are a corp. It is a better structure than any other way to set up a business, for a number of reasons. The first small business I owned was a corporation, which made far more sense, for legal reasoning.
Betty
@Ohio Mom: Court decisions over the years have sided with shareholders against all other stakeholders, including employees. That can be changed. Corporations are creatures of statute. In other countries, the other stakeholders are specifically identified as having important interests by statute. Could it happen in the US? Ask Delaware.
Ruckus
@topclimber:
More people have an opportunity to see and deal with a known lawyer than a known MBA. Also, there is a good chance that if there are lawyers involved, at least 1/2 of them will be against you and earning money for that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Absolutely true, and for a reason; the Founders were very leery of corporations, their experience being with the Honorable East India Company, a monopoly. Adam Smith didn’t like them, either.
Omnes Omnibus
@CaseyL: Do you ever travel east of the mountains in your own state?
rikyrah
The corporations watched as the GOP allowed Dolt45 to absolutely tank this economy and kill 500,000 people.
They also realize that the GOP did nothing while he did all this.
Ruckus
@Kayla Rudbek:
I spent a bit of time in rural Belgium and Netherlands 50 years ago and had very few and very little problems with not speaking the language. Far fewer problems than I did being stationed in South Carolina but not speaking proper cracker.
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I absolutely love this.
Bravo.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
I have been waiting for you to do a post on this.
rikyrah
@laura:
That’s fabulous :)
rikyrah
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I am in love with their roasted Garlic.
Their lemon pepper,
and the Greek Spice, with fresh lemon juice and olive oil as a marinade….oh my…
I buy a lot of their other spices, but, since I love grilled chicken, these are my favorites for chicken.
Bill Arnold
@VeniceRiley:
Since nobody else has mentioned it
Here’s why Coca-Cola bottles have yellow caps right now (Talia Lakritz, Apr 1, 2021)
Bill Arnold
@James E Powell:
At least one would have won, I agree.
It was an error on McConnell’s part. He misread the fast and confusing messaging at the time. Oops. :-)
SWMBO
@Mike in NC:
My daughter wanted Pepsi clear. Loved the taste. Didn’t like the migraines it triggered. We stopped after the first purchase.
SWMBO
@rikyrah:
My daughter was 18 on the last day to register to vote in Florida in 1996. My sister told her, “So long as you vote Republican, you have my blessing.” She has pretty much voted the straight Democratic ticket. She asked me once who she should vote for (locally, since she moved to go to college). She said she didn’t have time to check into every single person/issue on the ballot. I told her to ask some well meaning fool there (there would always be someone there who would tell her what to think) and then go vote against their preferred candidate. She said years later it was a great time saver and it’s true. There’s always someone you want to vote against even if you’re not sure who to vote for…