It doesn't matter if the CEO was an engineer or not in a previous life. The job of a CEO doesn't change and he did exactly what he was supposed to do: made shortsighted decisions that maximised profit and took the fall for it when the short-sightedness of those decisions blew up in their faces.
That doesn't change what I said. He did exactly what all boards expect their CEOs to do nowadays. No board of directors expects their CEO to have actual product knowledge.
It’s some weird rant that Isn’t relevant or accurate. The comment was they need to hire an engineer. That’s what Boeing use to do. That’s what many successful companies do that make products.
By all credible accounts the systemic issues at Boeing predate this CEO by probably 2 decades. Dave Calhoun seems to specialize in "troubled companies", i.e. he has never been anything more than a professional scape goat.
Edit: I didn't do enough research, he hasn't really been CEO at many places, just upper positions like director and board member. Still, the companies he specializes in seem to be the ones with reputations to cannibalize for money by cutting quality and screwing consumers, like GE.
They need to get back to the engineering mindset. This is why I think CEO bonuses on things like EPS are BS. It should be tied to things like engineering, safety, etc.
It should be something that must be returned if there's a severe fuckup within five years or something. Also they shouldn't be getting bonuses, they are already massively overpaid.
For most CEO, Bonuses and stock options are the bulk of their pay.
I have no issues with either or even their pay, but I have no issues with regulations around it since they are public companies. I do have issues with a product that should be safe with any bonus tied to profitability. It should be tied to safety.
I know this whole message is preaching to the choir but:
You guys managed to find like the one time in history that US military ordinance killed civilians that unequivocally wasn't our fault, when they were attacking a clearly military target under occupation from a clearly malicious invading force
And you are, predictably, complaining like it's our fault you put the airfield right next to a fucking public beach and then didn't sound any kind of warning that it was under active bombardment and knocked one of the missiles off its military target and it fell on some people
Russia is also claiming they shot down 4 missiles. Their track record suggests that's unlikely. This whole story reeks of bullshit. Lemme know when literally any other country reports civilian casualties and then I'll care.
Literal last minute decision on this one. SCOTUS is definitely running interference for Trump, without a doubt.
Biden should declare Trump a national security threat and have him assassinated. That's an "official act", is it not? Sure, it helps Biden immensely, but now who is to determine where an official act ends and a private self-serving one begins? Are those two necessarily mutually exclusive?
“When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” Sotomayor wrote.
Yep the dems wouldn't dare try to use this ruling to their advantage and then they blame everyone else when they lose and Republicans use every ruling to their every advantage.
Disclaimer: I have no idea what the right move here is. It's a shitty situation. "How Democracies Die" talks about it in quite a bit of detail, but basically, in the unfolding collapse of a democracy, there's a terrible temptation to start eroding democratic norms "in kind" in response to their eroding from the fascist side, but this is a mistake. You have to keep fighting on the tilted table without trying to tilt it back, because eroding the norms of behavior plays right into the fascists' hands and those democratic standards are horrifyingly hard to get back once you've broken the seal.
But, that being said, keeping in mind that this is satire to make a point: I don't think Biden should have Trump assassinated, or anybody. I do think that it would be a little more directly on the nose if he, as an official act, had Seal Team 6 ambush all the justices that voted for this (as an official act of course), take them with hoods over their heads and in ziptie cuffs to an undisclosed location, and then put up on YouTube the video of someone asking them a few questions in a bare concrete room in that undisclosed location, requesting that they clarify that this is really what they meant. Sort of bring some reality to what is the door they are trying to open, on a personal level, to them. Because I am 100% serious when I say that that is 100% very literally the door they have chosen to open. Sort of a "Let's close this door back up tight, right brother? Unless you are sure you want to open it? Really, like really for real sure with no backsies?"
If only. That would be amazing and thank you for the dream, but they've all got private security, I don't see how this could be done without someone being shot, which changes the whole context and would make it something that could be spun to easily.
But it brings up the whole issue doesn't it? The court feels they will never have to deal with the consequences of any of this. Surely a trump-style president would never come after them.
This is something I think about a lot. The best way to defeat fascism is within the process with democracy -- because if we start playing by their rules to stop fascism, we prove them right in a sense. It's preferable to actually letting fascism happen, but it would severely weaken our democracy.
If voting is not enough, then the next best option would be for Biden to pull his own Jan 6 and refuse to certify the results and call in Seal Team 6. And then after doing so, order his own arrest for violating our laws and norms. The only way to preserve democracy after taking steps outside of democracy is to fall on your own sword.
It's like an alternate universe within the DC universe -- the Joker goes too far and Batman snaps his neck. When he arrives at the police, he carries the Joker's body and tells them to arrest him. Batman knew it was necessary to kill Joker, but he also knew he had to be held accountable for doing that. Any group which uses violence to end the fascist threat needs to turn themselves in afterwards to preserve peaceful democracy. It would be incredibly unfair to them, but it's necessary to prevent a new normal of violent anarchy.
SCOTUS cleverly ruled that bribery was legal before granting immunity. Otherwise, Biden could just officially order the DOJ to investigate SCOTUS for corruption.
I think they are relying on the scruples that most normal, adjusted people have to prevent him from doing just that. But from a completely outcome-based perspective, I kind of think it might be the best move to try to buy time to try to start fixing this compromised court and the damage they’re wreaking
I hope they don't block traffic. I don't know if any passed, but a few places were trying to make it legal to run over protestors blocking traffic. That would sure be a shame if they had to find out.
Well there's no rational reason why anyone would ever vote for that piece of shit in the first place. Their rationality went out the window decades ago.
I mean, that's what this comes to, right? If he ordered Seal Team Six to storm Mar-A-Lago to recover classified materials with deadly force, then he's operating in order to maintain national security via his authority as Commander in Chief. That would be legal under this ruling, correct?
I get that would lead to an actual civil war, and I get that their argument is important to shield the office from neverending frivolous lawsuits, but in being forced to rule so explicitly on this it seems like they've opened the door to political assassinations. All a President would need is a willing wing of the military and a superficial rationalization and there'd be nothing a court in this country could do about it.
You're missing that the Supreme Court is taking the piss and the District Court they're kicking this back to has already done their homework and defined the official acts versus unofficial acts. They're ret-2-go but the Supreme's did their job of punting this until at least October, since that's when they come back from vacation. So when the District Court punts it back up the chain to the Supreme Court, they have to wait for the Supreme Court to reconvene. It's fucking stupid, but it accomplished getting Trump nothing but a legal time-out.
Oh, ALSO:
Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.
They literally fucked us out of a ton of evidence with this part of the ruling.
But national security is. All they would need is a flimsy justification that the person was stealing state secrets (like Trump) or organizing a terrorist attack, which could include any contact with an armed or paramilitary group that's planning a protest. They could use state influence to coerce that group to take action, and the records of that planning process would be inadmissible per this ruling. It's not hard to come up with superficial reasons that do align with Constitutional obligations.
Edit to add: Hell, just look at the McCarthy era, or the Iraq war. It's not hard at all for a sufficiently shameless group of politicians to gin up a moral panic about national security. They don't even need evidence, they just need motive. We're real fucking close to the government being able to legally assassinate purported communists for subversion.
Just because national security is the domain of the Executive doesn't mean they can use lethal force on anyone they wish in any scenario they wish in lieu of effecting arrests for alleged crimes.
I mean, they have to sign some paperwork to make it an official act, but otherwise what's the difference? They don't have to arrest anyone according to this ruling, if I'm reading this correctly. Sure, us normal citizens probably do, but according to the court, presidents don't have to follow the law if it's an official act. That's kind of the basis of the dissent. It separates the rules we follow and our leaders have to follow.
You might want to reread the syllabus of the opinion. They differentiate between actions that may be official and ones that can't. About halfway down pg 4.
The Constitution is the highest law of the land. If it explicitly says the president can do something any law stopping him from doing that would be unconditional and voided, at least as applied.
Otherwise it would be like they amended the Constitution without going through the correct process.
The syllabus only says that SCOTUS can't decide the line between official and unofficial acts because it's a court of final review, and they offered a list of guidance to lower courts who they charged with making the distinction. They point to pp 16-32 for more detail on that guidance.
The guidance says:
Courts cannot consider motive
An act is not unofficial simply because it violates a law
Courts cannot consider negotiations with DoJ
Courts cannot consider negotiations with or influence of the VP if the VP is serving an executive branch function, but may consider influence of the VP if the VP is serving a legislative branch function (i.e. supervising the Senate)
Engagement with private parties is not an official act
Public communication of the person serving in the role of President is official, but public communication of the President serving in another role is not
Prosecutors cannot use a jury to indirectly infringe on immunity unless a judge has already ruled that immunity does not exist
So again, if a President sends a branch of the military to a) assassinate a terrorist or b) recover national security secrets, none of the allowable court considerations above come into play. Nor do they if the assassinated individual is a SCOTUS justice or a political rival. The executive branch and military are the only entities involved, no public communication happens, murder is OK if it's done in an official capacity, and planning records are inadmissible. A prosecutor would have no authority to bring a case, and a court would have no precedent to allow consideration of the charge even if they were brought.
The ruling says that INTENT cannot be questioned. The President can say whatever he/she wants after the assassination, and it cannot be questioned by courts. The Pres can say that the killing stopped an imminent terror attack. They can say the person was in the middle of committing a crime and had a (totally not planted) gun on them.
I get what you are saying, that extrajudicial execution is not a faculty given to the executive branch. In the US, the judicial system is supposed to have the power over adjudicating crimes. And US citizens have the right to trial by their peers. But the government has shown repeatedly in the past that when it comes to terror that they are more than happy to waive rights. See: Guantanamo, drone kills of US citizens, cops killing people who are only suspected of being a threat, etc.
"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
Of course that's only for Republican presidents. The Supreme Court has already shown that they don't care about precedent, so if Biden does something, it'll come back up and they'll find it was not an official act and can be prosecuted, no matter what it was.
The main thing you're missing is that the words of the court are meaningless. They'll always be able to use the next ruling to bend the outcome to the conservatives' whims.
This is a government of men, not laws. Always has been.
“When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” Sotomayor wrote.
One justice put that out there during oral arguments, but I've read the majority ruling and it doesn't mention assassinations. The dissenting opinion does mention the question of what acts fall within official duties, including political assassinations.
He didn’t want to pack the court so I’m not holding out hope that he’d empty the court either. Obviously assassinating justices would completely fuck the country up, but one could argue that the current justices are slow playing us into a fascist dictatorship.
Honestly, the quickest way out is to officially order the summary executions of the judges who established this new immunity - then pass a second law ordering that SCOTUS must always evenly represent all major parties, one out, one in.
Then get new judges in that will reverse the immunity ruling. That way this sort of problem won't come up again.
Sometimes the tree of liberty needs to be watered with blood. This is may be one of those times.
It's not all tied up in real estate. Recall he has a lot of the equity in Truth Social, which he is trying to sell at an inflated price to DWAC. He is just as much of an internet influencer these days as a real estate investor.
But I think it is telling that a key point of the trial was that he overinflated the value of his assets, and now that he has to put up cash, all of a sudden we find that he can't put up enough collateral, because banks are no longer taking his word on those valuations.
What's really unfortunate for him is that he claimed in depositions that he had $400 million cash on hand. So either he does have the cash or he committed perjury.
If it was a real substance in real estate, it should be easy to borrow the money he needs. So either his real estate is already mortgaged to the hilt, so he can't add anymore on top, or they simply don't trust the evaluations any more.
I really hope they start selling off Trumps stuff starting next week. In a fire sale, cents for the dollar.
From the Sotomayor dissent, which is joined by both Kagan and Jackson: Today's ruling "reshapes the institution of the Presidency" and "makes a mockery of the principle . . . that no man is above the law." The decision "gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former president from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent."
The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.
Sotomayor does not use "respectfully" with "dissent" here or at the end of her dissent, which concludes: "With fear for our democracy, I dissent."
The people who need to read this are either the psychopaths who implemented the strategy to get these conservative hacks on the court, or the grossly gullible base too illiterate to find let alone comprehend this dissent.
No Russia is completely responsible, if they hadn't occupied it, Ukraine wouldn't have to fight to get it back. Fuck Russia your rhetoric is stupid. The Russians are the Nazis and Putin will die in a bunker.
........I'm hoping for Putin to be brought in and put on alcatraz. Yes, I know it's been abandoned as a jail. I figure fuck it, put him in, lock him up, and then absndon it again. If he lives he lives, if he starves, he starves.
Various countries' intelligence services have started ringing alarm bells about this: disgruntled young men who feel like they don't have a future is, well, a national security risk.
It's a real shame, how we mortgage young people's future for tax cuts for the old & rich today.
What's a real shame is we're not doing anything about it simply because young men are people.
Feminism didn't arrive because women were "a source of trouble" or anything. It's because women deserve a life of freedom of choice, independence, and inclusion in society.
Why aren't we striving to provide young boys and men with the same sense of purpose and ideal? Shouldn't be borne out of a sense that they'll be a problem later but rather because it's just right.
Feminism absolutely arrived because women made themselves a source of trouble.
I just came back from the National Park at Seneca Falls NY about women’s liberation. Women are even still today working for equal rights, and women’s right to vote came after 70 years of activism and fight.
We will get improvements to housing, wages, health care, and every other good action we need from our leaders and wealthy powerful society, when we make it more uncomfortable for them to keep helping themselves than to change and help the rest of us — and not one minute before.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
The worst part is the guy they’ll vote for to “shake things up” will be taking even more from them. It’s a combined failure of education and success of social media disinformation and misinformation.
I don't think that's true (well, your second sentence; your first is absolutely correct).
This kind of thing has been happening before the advent of mass and social media: this is just basic human tribalism at play. The only difference is scale.
People want to feel like they belong, and the political Left has done a really bad job at talking to the anxieties of the poor, especially young, male poor. The populist Right, meanwhile, has had a plan and has welcomed these people with open arms.
The Left abandoned the poor because it's political leaders fell in love with neoliberalism. And I don't think I can blame them, because triangulation worked very well and made a lot of people very rich while also cutting the traditional right-wing parties off at the knees. The problem is that it left the Left vulnerable to being flanked by right-wing populists who were ready to give comfort and validation to disadvantaged people; answers that were simple, easy and appealing, and make them feel like they were being listened to.
I can see how the leadership of, eg, the US Democratic party, or the Liberals in Canada, might be shocked by this, but for anyone involved on the ground this has been brewing since at least 2000. The real warning signs should have been when people of colour and LGBTQ folk started getting nervous about how progressive governments were big on empty gestures but very quiet when money was on the line, but the loss of young, working-class men happened a couple decades before that.
It's like we have an entire political class that slept through how the 1930s and 1940s happened. Which is of course, facetious, but it seems true, and the reason is because they didn't, and still don't, want to see it because they have been making too much money off of the problem.
So what about his seat on the board and what about the Director of the board, Bradway?
At the end of the day, it’s the board that’s signing off on the high level strategy. They need to be held accountable too. The CEO isn’t the top of the pyramid. The board is.
Thank you! Folks around here are always baggin' on CEOs like they're the top dogs. Nope. The Board often orders them to do stupid shit, and sometimes they're brought on to do stupid shit. Hence the golden parachute thing. Damn straight I want paid if you fire me for doing what I was told.
Huffman is ostensibly following Elon Musk's lead, and last I checked, Musk had pretty effectively chased away a massive amount of what one might call "rational" advertisers. Reddit is absolutely following a similar path, and soon enough there will be advertisers who no longer want to be associated with a toxic brand.
It's not just similarities; Steve Huffman is openly and directly copying Musk. Honestly, given Ex-Twitter's performance, I have no idea why any investors are allowing that.
spez doesn't care. He's realized that, despite his best befuddled efforts, reddit is failing and that no one else will hire him for a cushy CEO job. He wants to take his bag and leave while the getting is still (relatively) good.
They almost exclusively bought Teslas and Polestars and are now complaining about maintenance costs? I remember a few years ago, the first time Tesla wasn't on the very bottom of the JD Powers Initial Build Quality list the editors put up a special note that it wasn't because Tesla had gotten better, only because Polestar was even worse.
Seems like Hertz's main problem is common sense.
I'd really like to rent a Hyundai Ionic 5 for a road trip next summer but I can't find anyone local that rents any electrics other than Teslas.
Ehhh, EVs, and modern cars in general, have a bit of a bad habit of adding a bunch of technology that makes what used to be pretty cheap repairs way more costly.
It used to be if you had a fender bender that tore apart your bumper, you were able to replace the bumper for pretty cheap, like maybe $100 just for the part, couple hundred for labor, because it's just a big piece of molded plastic.
Now, the bumpers often house tons of sensors, often up to and including rear-view cameras. Now to replace your bumper and all the sensors, the bill is $5k.
Some of that's not even that modern. I got in a small accident in my 2007 Prius and they had to replace the entire front of the body. The bumper, grill, and front quarter panels are all shipped as a single piece.
I think you might have gotten taken advantage of as I'm pretty sure the front quarter panel is not attached to the front bumper and can be replaced individually.
The grill I'm not sure about but I'm pretty sure I've disconnected the bumper from the front quarter panel on my 2007.
I could also be misremembering the details, it was 10+ years ago and insurance made me take it to the dealer for body work. I remember it was a lot of the front end though.
Edit: I suddenly remembered the details. When the bumper crumpled it broke the clips on the quarter panels that attached it to the frontend assembly. So they had to replace the quarter panels too.
Modern cars - even in 2007 - were designed to crumple in an accident. I'm not surprised that those panels also go enough damage that they need to be replaced.
Though of course I have no information on this incident. I'm just speculating based on general knowledge without knowing specific facts that are relevant.
I am kind of happy that I cheaped out on my car when I bought it. The only real issues I have had were that the speakers bugged out so that one side sounded like faulty wiring inside a tin can, and the Bluetooth connection made it impossible to make or take calls while driving as it blasted the caller or recipient with aggressive loud static. None of these really needed fixing, music is nice but not a must have and I could blame the car when I didn’t want to talk to people when I was driving or running errands. The new owner hasn’t seemed to notice or has no complaints…
Funnily enough, I thought I’d have to sell the POS at a loss, but I got money back that covered my car loan and afforded me an e-bike at least.
Tried with an EV car from a car pool for a while as well, but the e-bike was so much better.
They have a bunch of Chevy bolts in the fleet too. I loved renting them because they were cheap and fun to drive. I'd return them with almost no charge left for their$25 fee, because they were slow charging and I normally didn't have a place to go up for long spells.
NGL the venue was not a bad rental. Just not something I would own. I literally was lost in a parking lot looking for my car and was basically standing next to it when I hit the panic button to find it. It looks like so many other things its hard to find it.
Even the Ioniq 5 is susceptible to this issue. A few people have hit road debris which dented the case around the cells and they were quoted $60,000 (CAD) to replace the entire battery so insurance totalled both cars out.
I've been eyeing this thing to buy since it was released but now I'm second guessing that after hearing this. I assume it's due to Hyundai not having a large enough supply of battery packs in order to have a robust supply of replacement parts, so hopefully they can reduce that price by an order of magnitude once they do.
reuters.com
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