It’s time to declare the 43-year Reagan Revolution’s neoliberal experiment a failure, and outlaw or heavily tax the share buybacks that are one of its most visible markers…
Ironically, Reagan started out decimating air traffic control with wholesale firings. Now, we are faced with corrupt, dangerous corporate profits threatening us with planes breaking apart midair. THAT is the essence of “Libertarian” Fascism. . . The money is pocketed and we are left with substandard infrastructure.
I just bought some mayonnaise and realized that all the jars are smaller of all the brands? Did they get together behind closed doors and decide to make all of their containers smaller? Many products all got small at the same time from different companies? Those manufacturing machines cost a lot of money to replace?
The scam of buying back company stock is just one of the affects to our country that has occurred. Just one more action that makes a lot more of the middle class into the poor class which is all necessary in order to increase the billionaire class from nearly zero to around a thousand. This is why the GOP want to make as many Americans as possible poor and the number one way to do that is force women to have a child before she is ready. It makes poverty much more likely and outcome and the only way to have wealth is family size. The poor have the largest families because that is the only wealth they can create. It is just a fact that more extreme wealth requires more extreme poverty. If you ended poverty, there would be very few billionaires if any.
I forgot to remind everyone that one way the Repubs hide wealth of the country is to give the defense contractors more than they need. It hides our national wealth and they say we just do not have the money for other worthy social causes like getting rid of poverty. The richest nation on Earth has more than enough for all. They just do not want to get rid of poverty.
Many nations have no social security. They expect the young people to take care of the old people their parents. That forces people to have children also!
I thought the corporate tax cut was going to deliver higher wages and more research to make better products. Gee, it seems that the C-suite folks took the money for themselves, and of course, for their loyal shareholders none of whom care that perhaps if the planes fall apart in the sky the stock price might be affected.
Absolutely the case, but unfortunately Democrats and Republicans alike are complicit in a system that allows company executives or board members to sit on regulatory agencies. And I'm still waiting for Pete Buttigieg to rein in the airlines on junk fees, delays and cancellations (sic and sick).
Oh and my personal favorite is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin fresh off his multi-million dollar stint on the board of military contractor Raytheon for whom he is signing off on hundreds of millions in munitions for Ukraine! Talk about corruption and insider trading but oh those nasty Republicans.
Well Boris who should run federal agencies, Joe Shit the ragman who knows jack squat a about the agency he is regulating. Lots of luck with that? Put Joe the Plumber in charge of the FAA and Alice Homaker in charge of FDA.
Whitaker, your link above, was FAA’s deputy administrator during former president Barack Obama’s administration, and IIRC he did a pretty good job.
Steve Dickson, a former Delta Air Lines executive appointed by former president Donald Trump, stepped down as administrator 17 months ago.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Biden nominates former airline executive for top FAA job
Michael Whitaker previously served as the agency’s No. 2 official and would take over at a time when narrowly avoided crashes have shaken the nation’s aviation system
By Michael Laris, Ian Duncan and Lori Aratani
Updated September 7, 2023 at 5:55 p.m. EDT|Published September 7, 2023 at 9:44 a.m. EDT
A Federal Aviation Administration sign hangs in the tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. (Seth Wenig/AP)
President Biden on Thursday nominated Michael Whitaker to run the Federal Aviation Administration, choosing a former airline executive who previously was second-in-command at the agency to serve as its leader.
If confirmed by the Senate, Whitaker would begin a five-year term as the agency is grappling with high-profile near misses that have shaken confidence in aviation safety. He would be charged with modernizing FAA technology and replenishing its depleted ranks of air traffic controllers.
Some of that work would be familiar to Whitaker, who oversaw work on a next-generation air traffic control system as the FAA’s deputy administrator during former president Barack Obama’s administration. Whitaker was a longtime executive at United Airlines, working as a senior vice president with responsibility for regulations. He is currently chief operating officer at Supernal, a company that develops electric aircraft.
After safety breakdowns and outage, FAA leader seeks to reassure public
Whitaker, 62, holds a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and earned a private pilot certificate in 2014 during his time at the FAA, part of what he called a commitment to understanding technology and the challenges facing general aviation.
The nomination follows a protracted period in which the safety agency has lacked a permanent leader. Steve Dickson, a former Delta Air Lines executive appointed by former president Donald Trump, stepped down as administrator 17 months ago.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the agency needed a confirmed leader and Whitaker was the right person for the job.
“He knows aviation, he knows safety, he knows the FAA and he knows how to manage and modernize large organizations,” Buttigieg said in a statement.
Anyway, and this is important, none of his appointees have been CEO's, and the only people who know anything about the industry they regulate, are people who have worked in those industries. Not all who worked as executives in an industry, are craven bastards.
The fact that you call me Boris and the fact that you think pharamceutical industry magnates should be running the FDA means there is no reason to talk to you at all. You are truly disturbed and the fact that Thom Hartmann listeners are like this only proves how similar to Trump supporters they really are. In their own little neoliberal echo chambers pointing fingers at the other side while their side does the same or worse (eg Genocide Joe).
Boris You distort. Your comment is a logical fallacy. I said nothing about a pharmaceutical industry magnate.
The link you provided says that Dr Robert Dr. Califf, 70, a respected academic and clinical trial researcher who ran the agency during the last year of the Obama administration, has long been a consultant to drug companies and ran a research center at Duke University that received some funding from the drug industry.
That is hardly a pharmaceutcal magnate. Yet again you stoop to the dishnonest levels of Trump, Reublicans and Putin.
Boris if you think democracy is bad it will get 1,000 times worse with a dictatorship. That's why I vote blue but I can see that too many of them are also crooks and that they are evil, greedy capitalists also. So is Putin and almost all the Christian nations and Muslim apparently and Jewish?
You’ll be waiting a long time for the boy wonder to do anything substantial but be a poster gay boy for the administration. He, like AOC has a smart mouth, presents well on the spin/buzz media and does nothing to address the man out corruption of the airlines and other public transportation corporations. PS I am gay so don’t think I am a homophobic! Pete has not done his job! End of discussion.
There are certain cabinet positions which are in fact of no real consquence, as they have no real power or ability to change, do or monitor anything.. They are token positions.
Transportation is one. fact is that little can be done by any cabinet positions if there aren't any laws to enforce or use.
Congress legislates, the Executive executes the laws that congress make The president delegates execution to his cabinet. If Congress doesn't provide the money, or doesn't like the execution, it passes laws to nullify the power of the cabinet, and restricts it's budget, via the budgeting process. A fight which is going on now.
Ok so you are gay, why in the phuck did you see it necessary to call Buttigeg a "poster gay boy"
I agree with your depiction of Buttigeg, but the fact that he is gay is immaterial.
The president, be it Trump or Biden, does not personally select Cabinet members and advisors, they are not omnescident.
Someone has their ear, someone(s) with connections to vested interest who has skin the game, and people are selected and names placed on the Presidents desk, either because of their connections, or their level of competence (or incompetence)
There are two inconsequential cabinet positions, or rather two positions that benefit from incompetence. Incompetence not because of personal defects, because they are fish out of water and have no knowledge or experience in the field that they are suppose to regulate and oversee.
Transportation is one, HUD is another.
Let's take HUD, HUD is defintely a token cabinet positiion. The previous incumbent, Ben Carson, was an example of incompetence and. yes, affirmative action.
Marcia Fudge, a POC, had been for ages, an advocated for the small, especially black, family farmer.
Fudge was suggested as a candidate for Secretary of Agriculture, but was passed over for Vilsak, who had been a lobbysist for big AG.
The problem is the system. Their is a machine inside the beltway, that is run and greased by money, and money buys power and influence Regardless of the Administration in power., even rebels like the MAGAts are taken over by money. Meet the People who have given Trump hundreds of millons of dollars to make him the next president. https://popular.info/p/meet-the-people-spending-800000-or
AHIP and it's lobbyists killed Bernies single payor program, and wrote the ACA. Bernie was kept out of Obama's White House, but lobbyists admitted in, en mase.
Obama didn't know Rahm Emanuel, until Larry Summers breathed his name into his ear.
Cabinet members have no more power than the laws provide them, via the Executive, but that will all end with a Trump 47.
Nope just if, but honestly there are only five swing states with 61 electoral votes.
AZ-11, NV-6, MI-15, WI-10, PA-19
It takes 270 electoral votes to win
Going into the election the red and red leaning states have 235 Electoral votes, blue states are 226 electoral votes.
The Swing states in 2020 are no longer swing states, GA, NC, VA because Republican legislatures have passed over 100 voter Suppression laws, limited drop boxes, and have legalized armed poll watchers, not to mention scrubbed voter rolls of minorities
Muslims have threatned to sit out the election, vote third party or vote for Trump (despite his threat to deport them on Day 1)
Here is an Interesting statistic
State Bidens margin of victory in 2020 ---- Number of Muslims
PA --------------------------80.555 -- --------------- 149,661
WI ------------------------- 20,682--------------------68,699
And I haven't even mentioned black males, especially black, Philadelphia carried Pennsylvania because blacks are the majority population. And black males are notorious for stating that they will not vote for Biden, because he hasn't "delivered", the black community is even more homophobic than the white community, despite, maybe because, there is an over representation of black transgendered.
If these minority groups flip the finger to the Democrats, they will rue their pig headedness, as Trump has made no secret of his animosity to both, including deportation of Muslims
It seems the stock buyback scheme has been one of the principal ways the 1% shifted $50 trillion from the middle and working classes up to the top.....
John Oliver did a top notch job of an expose on Boeing a few weeks back. It's problems started when it acquired McDonnell Douglas, a defense contractor, Boeing specialized in passenger aircraft, with the acquisition a new Board of Directors and new CEO'S that were profit, not safety driven.
I just performed a search "Who owns Boeing", which is a good habit to get into, guess who the top shareholders are" Vanguard and Black Rock, the same names you will see in communications, health care, pharmaceuticals, chemcicals, media https://www.tipranks.com/stocks/ba/ownership
The complexites of high finance renders most Americans thoroughly incapable of understanding anything of its ramifications, therefore depriving them any considerate opinion. No doubt this labrythic obfuscation was carefully created, along with the primary reason, pure greed, to achieve that very result. Equally difficult is finding out which corporation belongs to which corporation. All by design. Intended complexity.
Most of what I have learned has come from enlightened posters in this format, to whom I am grateful, most certainly from our host, who stands alone not because he dwarfs all others, but because no other sources say much at all, certainly not regular journalist resources. The importance of people having more understanding of high financial grift cannot be over-estimated, since it is the hidden source of most of the pain Americans today suffer from. My thanks to those who address these issues.
Clean-up on Aisle 9! Seems legislatively that's all we Democrats do after some Libertarian or Republican jerk makes a mess of things.
Boeing's disasters are what happens when you buy the premise that industries and banks will self-regulate "because it is in their self-interest". What a damn joke. How naive.
Corporations are not PEOPLE! The people that run them barely act like people. They do forget the history. They don't think of employees as assets. Risks are accepted on a cost/benefit ratio.
Corporate boards and management never get past the dollar signs. We have to be the humans in this equation. Regulate is not a dirty word---it improves and saves lives.
Ironically, Reagan started out decimating air traffic control with wholesale firings. Now, we are faced with corrupt, dangerous corporate profits threatening us with planes breaking apart midair. THAT is the essence of “Libertarian” Fascism. . . The money is pocketed and we are left with substandard infrastructure.
Great term: “Libertarian” Fascism. Thanks.
It’s based upon Nancy MacLean’s book, “Democracy in Chains.”
Thanks!
Buybacks, then = Shrinkflation.
Hence, an inflated-with-air bag of potato chips contains fewer chips in the same bag, for the same cost. Thereby, increasing the price of each chip.
In a Plantation Economy we are merely sharecroppers, shopping for stocks and chips at the exploitative company store.
And, we get to pay the plantation owners' share of taxes, too; since his/her income is in Panama.
I just bought some mayonnaise and realized that all the jars are smaller of all the brands? Did they get together behind closed doors and decide to make all of their containers smaller? Many products all got small at the same time from different companies? Those manufacturing machines cost a lot of money to replace?
The scam of buying back company stock is just one of the affects to our country that has occurred. Just one more action that makes a lot more of the middle class into the poor class which is all necessary in order to increase the billionaire class from nearly zero to around a thousand. This is why the GOP want to make as many Americans as possible poor and the number one way to do that is force women to have a child before she is ready. It makes poverty much more likely and outcome and the only way to have wealth is family size. The poor have the largest families because that is the only wealth they can create. It is just a fact that more extreme wealth requires more extreme poverty. If you ended poverty, there would be very few billionaires if any.
I forgot to remind everyone that one way the Repubs hide wealth of the country is to give the defense contractors more than they need. It hides our national wealth and they say we just do not have the money for other worthy social causes like getting rid of poverty. The richest nation on Earth has more than enough for all. They just do not want to get rid of poverty.
Many nations have no social security. They expect the young people to take care of the old people their parents. That forces people to have children also!
I thought the corporate tax cut was going to deliver higher wages and more research to make better products. Gee, it seems that the C-suite folks took the money for themselves, and of course, for their loyal shareholders none of whom care that perhaps if the planes fall apart in the sky the stock price might be affected.
Exactly. What do they care? They’re flying their private jets everywhere anyway. Doesn’t affect them.
They probably fly in Cessnas. Safer.
Can o sit down next to you. I wasn’t born yesterday either
Absolutely the case, but unfortunately Democrats and Republicans alike are complicit in a system that allows company executives or board members to sit on regulatory agencies. And I'm still waiting for Pete Buttigieg to rein in the airlines on junk fees, delays and cancellations (sic and sick).
Name one company executive or board member sitting as head of a regulatory agency appointed by Biden.
Oh and my personal favorite is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin fresh off his multi-million dollar stint on the board of military contractor Raytheon for whom he is signing off on hundreds of millions in munitions for Ukraine! Talk about corruption and insider trading but oh those nasty Republicans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/09/07/faa-biden-nominate-michael-whitaker/ Former CEO for Hyundai in their division developing air taxis.
Well Boris who should run federal agencies, Joe Shit the ragman who knows jack squat a about the agency he is regulating. Lots of luck with that? Put Joe the Plumber in charge of the FAA and Alice Homaker in charge of FDA.
Whitaker, your link above, was FAA’s deputy administrator during former president Barack Obama’s administration, and IIRC he did a pretty good job.
Steve Dickson, a former Delta Air Lines executive appointed by former president Donald Trump, stepped down as administrator 17 months ago.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Biden nominates former airline executive for top FAA job
Michael Whitaker previously served as the agency’s No. 2 official and would take over at a time when narrowly avoided crashes have shaken the nation’s aviation system
By Michael Laris, Ian Duncan and Lori Aratani
Updated September 7, 2023 at 5:55 p.m. EDT|Published September 7, 2023 at 9:44 a.m. EDT
A Federal Aviation Administration sign hangs in the tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. (Seth Wenig/AP)
President Biden on Thursday nominated Michael Whitaker to run the Federal Aviation Administration, choosing a former airline executive who previously was second-in-command at the agency to serve as its leader.
If confirmed by the Senate, Whitaker would begin a five-year term as the agency is grappling with high-profile near misses that have shaken confidence in aviation safety. He would be charged with modernizing FAA technology and replenishing its depleted ranks of air traffic controllers.
Some of that work would be familiar to Whitaker, who oversaw work on a next-generation air traffic control system as the FAA’s deputy administrator during former president Barack Obama’s administration. Whitaker was a longtime executive at United Airlines, working as a senior vice president with responsibility for regulations. He is currently chief operating officer at Supernal, a company that develops electric aircraft.
After safety breakdowns and outage, FAA leader seeks to reassure public
Whitaker, 62, holds a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and earned a private pilot certificate in 2014 during his time at the FAA, part of what he called a commitment to understanding technology and the challenges facing general aviation.
The nomination follows a protracted period in which the safety agency has lacked a permanent leader. Steve Dickson, a former Delta Air Lines executive appointed by former president Donald Trump, stepped down as administrator 17 months ago.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the agency needed a confirmed leader and Whitaker was the right person for the job.
“He knows aviation, he knows safety, he knows the FAA and he knows how to manage and modernize large organizations,” Buttigieg said in a statement.
Anyway, and this is important, none of his appointees have been CEO's, and the only people who know anything about the industry they regulate, are people who have worked in those industries. Not all who worked as executives in an industry, are craven bastards.
The fact that you call me Boris and the fact that you think pharamceutical industry magnates should be running the FDA means there is no reason to talk to you at all. You are truly disturbed and the fact that Thom Hartmann listeners are like this only proves how similar to Trump supporters they really are. In their own little neoliberal echo chambers pointing fingers at the other side while their side does the same or worse (eg Genocide Joe).
Boris You distort. Your comment is a logical fallacy. I said nothing about a pharmaceutical industry magnate.
The link you provided says that Dr Robert Dr. Califf, 70, a respected academic and clinical trial researcher who ran the agency during the last year of the Obama administration, has long been a consultant to drug companies and ran a research center at Duke University that received some funding from the drug industry.
That is hardly a pharmaceutcal magnate. Yet again you stoop to the dishnonest levels of Trump, Reublicans and Putin.
Man stubs toe, Boris reports foot amputated.
Boris if you think democracy is bad it will get 1,000 times worse with a dictatorship. That's why I vote blue but I can see that too many of them are also crooks and that they are evil, greedy capitalists also. So is Putin and almost all the Christian nations and Muslim apparently and Jewish?
I will send more as I am at workright now, but this in one of the higher profile ones. Of course, those who listen to Thom and are cheerlaeading for Biden would not be aware of this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/us/politics/robert-califf-fda.html
And Boris, your solution is then Trump, Putins butt buddy.
Again Boris, your solution to Biden and the Democrats is Putin's surrogate Trump.
You have yet to respond to or deal with that. You charge Biden with Genocide and Imperialism and ignore the genocide and imperialism of Putin.
Catliff has been an academic since he left the agency. He'll have to follow the OGE rules.
You’ll be waiting a long time for the boy wonder to do anything substantial but be a poster gay boy for the administration. He, like AOC has a smart mouth, presents well on the spin/buzz media and does nothing to address the man out corruption of the airlines and other public transportation corporations. PS I am gay so don’t think I am a homophobic! Pete has not done his job! End of discussion.
There are certain cabinet positions which are in fact of no real consquence, as they have no real power or ability to change, do or monitor anything.. They are token positions.
Transportation is one. fact is that little can be done by any cabinet positions if there aren't any laws to enforce or use.
Congress legislates, the Executive executes the laws that congress make The president delegates execution to his cabinet. If Congress doesn't provide the money, or doesn't like the execution, it passes laws to nullify the power of the cabinet, and restricts it's budget, via the budgeting process. A fight which is going on now.
Ok so you are gay, why in the phuck did you see it necessary to call Buttigeg a "poster gay boy"
I agree with your depiction of Buttigeg, but the fact that he is gay is immaterial.
The president, be it Trump or Biden, does not personally select Cabinet members and advisors, they are not omnescident.
Someone has their ear, someone(s) with connections to vested interest who has skin the game, and people are selected and names placed on the Presidents desk, either because of their connections, or their level of competence (or incompetence)
There are two inconsequential cabinet positions, or rather two positions that benefit from incompetence. Incompetence not because of personal defects, because they are fish out of water and have no knowledge or experience in the field that they are suppose to regulate and oversee.
Transportation is one, HUD is another.
Let's take HUD, HUD is defintely a token cabinet positiion. The previous incumbent, Ben Carson, was an example of incompetence and. yes, affirmative action.
Marcia Fudge, a POC, had been for ages, an advocated for the small, especially black, family farmer.
Fudge was suggested as a candidate for Secretary of Agriculture, but was passed over for Vilsak, who had been a lobbysist for big AG.
The problem is the system. Their is a machine inside the beltway, that is run and greased by money, and money buys power and influence Regardless of the Administration in power., even rebels like the MAGAts are taken over by money. Meet the People who have given Trump hundreds of millons of dollars to make him the next president. https://popular.info/p/meet-the-people-spending-800000-or
AHIP and it's lobbyists killed Bernies single payor program, and wrote the ACA. Bernie was kept out of Obama's White House, but lobbyists admitted in, en mase.
Obama didn't know Rahm Emanuel, until Larry Summers breathed his name into his ear.
Cabinet members have no more power than the laws provide them, via the Executive, but that will all end with a Trump 47.
Are you suggesting that trump will be our next President in 2025? I certainly hope not.
Nope just if, but honestly there are only five swing states with 61 electoral votes.
AZ-11, NV-6, MI-15, WI-10, PA-19
It takes 270 electoral votes to win
Going into the election the red and red leaning states have 235 Electoral votes, blue states are 226 electoral votes.
The Swing states in 2020 are no longer swing states, GA, NC, VA because Republican legislatures have passed over 100 voter Suppression laws, limited drop boxes, and have legalized armed poll watchers, not to mention scrubbed voter rolls of minorities
Muslims have threatned to sit out the election, vote third party or vote for Trump (despite his threat to deport them on Day 1)
Here is an Interesting statistic
State Bidens margin of victory in 2020 ---- Number of Muslims
PA --------------------------80.555 -- --------------- 149,661
MI--------------------- 154,188 --------------------- 241,848
WI ------------------------- 20,682--------------------68,699
And I haven't even mentioned black males, especially black, Philadelphia carried Pennsylvania because blacks are the majority population. And black males are notorious for stating that they will not vote for Biden, because he hasn't "delivered", the black community is even more homophobic than the white community, despite, maybe because, there is an over representation of black transgendered.
If these minority groups flip the finger to the Democrats, they will rue their pig headedness, as Trump has made no secret of his animosity to both, including deportation of Muslims
Reagan again. So much harm to the US can be traced back to his administration.
It seems the stock buyback scheme has been one of the principal ways the 1% shifted $50 trillion from the middle and working classes up to the top.....
John Oliver did a top notch job of an expose on Boeing a few weeks back. It's problems started when it acquired McDonnell Douglas, a defense contractor, Boeing specialized in passenger aircraft, with the acquisition a new Board of Directors and new CEO'S that were profit, not safety driven.
I just performed a search "Who owns Boeing", which is a good habit to get into, guess who the top shareholders are" Vanguard and Black Rock, the same names you will see in communications, health care, pharmaceuticals, chemcicals, media https://www.tipranks.com/stocks/ba/ownership
The complexites of high finance renders most Americans thoroughly incapable of understanding anything of its ramifications, therefore depriving them any considerate opinion. No doubt this labrythic obfuscation was carefully created, along with the primary reason, pure greed, to achieve that very result. Equally difficult is finding out which corporation belongs to which corporation. All by design. Intended complexity.
Most of what I have learned has come from enlightened posters in this format, to whom I am grateful, most certainly from our host, who stands alone not because he dwarfs all others, but because no other sources say much at all, certainly not regular journalist resources. The importance of people having more understanding of high financial grift cannot be over-estimated, since it is the hidden source of most of the pain Americans today suffer from. My thanks to those who address these issues.
By
Clean-up on Aisle 9! Seems legislatively that's all we Democrats do after some Libertarian or Republican jerk makes a mess of things.
Boeing's disasters are what happens when you buy the premise that industries and banks will self-regulate "because it is in their self-interest". What a damn joke. How naive.
Corporations are not PEOPLE! The people that run them barely act like people. They do forget the history. They don't think of employees as assets. Risks are accepted on a cost/benefit ratio.
Corporate boards and management never get past the dollar signs. We have to be the humans in this equation. Regulate is not a dirty word---it improves and saves lives.
Many of us (if not most) hold mutual funds rather than common stock.
There are ETFs that track companies that buyback stock but I wasn't able to find how most mutual funds have fared.
So where's a petition to sign? Or some other actionable guidance? It's important to know these details, but it's also important to take action.