The Democrat Thread

[mr_genius]

their founder is a giant douche, not surprised their employees are treated lik s***

 

lol. like 90% of the corporations that own the Democrat party

[StrangeSox]

lol. like 90% of the corporations that own the Democrat party

yup

[StrangeSox]

The AP has a story on the former head of Indiana's school system and current head of Florida's school system changing the way schools are 'graded' explicitly because a wealthy Republican donor's charter school was going to get a lower grade.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ap-excl...hanged-19807123

 

Former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising to hold “failing” schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett’s education team frantically overhauled his signature “A-F” school grading system to improve the school’s marks.

 

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor Christel DeHaan’s school received an “A,” despite poor test scores in algebra that initially earned it a “C.”

 

“They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work,” Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12 email to then-chief of staff Heather Neal, who is now Gov. Mike Pence’s chief lobbyist.

 

The emails, which also show Bennett discussed with staff the legality of changing just DeHaan’s grade, raise unsettling questions about the validity of a grading system that has broad implications. Indiana uses the A-F grades to determine which schools get taken over by the state and whether students seeking state-funded vouchers to attend private school need to first spend a year in public school. They also help determine how much state funding schools receive.

 

Accountability!

 

edit: links to the actual emails are available at the bottom of this page:

 

http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/a82...-School-Grades/

Edited July 30, 2013 by StrangeSox

[cabiness42]

The AP has a story on the former head of Indiana's school system and current head of Florida's school system changing the way schools are 'graded' explicitly because a wealthy Republican donor's charter school was going to get a lower grade.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ap-excl...hanged-19807123

 

 

 

Accountability!

 

edit: links to the actual emails are available at the bottom of this page:

 

http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/a82...-School-Grades/

 

He got voted out of office (which is quite an accomplishment for a Republican in Indiana). That's enough accountability, isn't it?

[StrangeSox]

He's on to the same grift in Florida, so not really. But really it's indicative of a lot of the "School Reform" movement. It's about privatization of the school systems and crushing public school unions.

[StrangeSox]

House GOP votes once again to defund ACORN, which hasn't existed for years.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/h...hp_ref=politics

 

"What’s the point? What’s it going to accomplish?” Boehner’s answer: “Nothing. It’s a hollow shell. It’s an Easter egg with no candy in it.”

[lostfan]

Obama is telling the GOP to lay out their jobs plan: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entr...-your-jobs-plan

 

This *is* their jobs plan though. Repeal Obamacare, build Keystone XL, and cut taxes some more, unemployment will fall to 2.5% by the 2nd quarter of 2015 and the deficit will turn into a $200 billion surplus.

[StrangeSox]

It's like Paul Ryan, super-serious-budget-policy-wonk's budget that projected negative unemployment 10 years out.

[Balta1701]

If everyone is making $16/hr in there the profit motive for the dollar menu goes away. So does the dollar menu.

Ah, tracked down the right quote. University of Kansas study out on this topic today.

Doubling the salaries and benefits of all McDonald's employees -- from workers earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour to CEO Donald Thompson, whose 2012 compensation totaled $8.75 million -- would cause the price of a Big Mac to increase just 68 cents, from $3.99 to $4.67, University of Kansas research assistant Arnobio Morelix told HuffPost. In addition, every item on the Dollar Menu would go up by 17 cents.

 

Morelix's research comes as fast-food workers across the country strike for a $15 per hour minimum wage. Workers are also protesting for the right to unionize without fear of retaliation. Protesters are holding strikes in seven cities over a four-day period, according to Salon.

 

Morelix looked at McDonald's 2012 annual report and discovered that only 17.1 percent of the fast-food giant's revenue goes toward salaries and benefits. In other words, for every dollar McDonald's earns, a little more than 17 cents goes toward the income and benefits of its more than 500,000 U.S. employees.

 

Thus, if McDonald's executives wanted to double the salaries of all of its employees and keep profits and other expenses the same, it would need to increase prices by just 17 cents per dollar, according to Morelix.

 

McDonald's declined a request to comment from The Huffington Post.

(Also pay attention to the fact that a substantial fraction of that compensation is executive pay. If mcdonalds held executive pay constant, or god forbid only paid their CEO $2 million, the price increase required to pay everyone $15 an hour is even smaller).

[bmags]

The dollar menu is a loss leader, they probably would either get rid of it entirely or keep it at $1. Another reason why it's so hard to project hard economics on things like min. wage increases.

[cabiness42]

Just got "defriended" by my ultra-liberal cousin on Facebook.

 

Her: Typical angry pro-choice rant about men trying to control women's bodies

Me: Standard response about the baby being it's own body and not part of the woman's

Her: "You don't have a uterus so your opinion doesn't count"

Me: "Didn't you just have a hysterectomy?"

[Balta1701]

Just got "defriended" by my ultra-liberal cousin on Facebook.

 

Her: Typical angry pro-choice rant about men trying to control women's bodies

Me: Standard response about the baby being it's own body and not part of the woman's

Her: "You don't have a uterus so your opinion doesn't count"

Me: "Didn't you just have a hysterectomy?"

Yes hysterectomies are hilarious.

 

I think you put this in te wrong thread. Laughing at women's medical conditions belongs on the other side.

[Y2HH]

Ah, tracked down the right quote. University of Kansas study out on this topic today.

(Also pay attention to the fact that a substantial fraction of that compensation is executive pay. If mcdonalds held executive pay constant, or god forbid only paid their CEO $2 million, the price increase required to pay everyone $15 an hour is even smaller).

 

That article is all kinds of dumb.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Y2HH

[southsider2k5]

Ah, tracked down the right quote. University of Kansas study out on this topic today.

(Also pay attention to the fact that a substantial fraction of that compensation is executive pay. If mcdonalds held executive pay constant, or god forbid only paid their CEO $2 million, the price increase required to pay everyone $15 an hour is even smaller).

 

Thank sarbanes oxley for that

[StrangeSox]

sarbanes oxley forces corporations to overpay executives?

[StrangeSox]

Job group from US-based multi-national corporations (MNC), domestically and abroad.

Edited July 31, 2013 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

I spent way too much time having to figure out what all the abbreviations were on that unlinked image.

[StrangeSox]

U.S. is pretty straight forward, as is BEA as a source. The only other abbreviation is "MNC" or "multi-national corporation." I made a typo in the post and changed it, hopefully it's clearer now.

 

The takeaway is that the extreme mobility of capital means that fewer and fewer jobs are available in this country. More or less the "structural unemployment" argument when combined with technological job losses via automation or improved efficiencies leading to redundancy.

[lostfan]

sarbanes oxley forces corporations to overpay executives?

performance incentive loophole where the CEO's bonus is tax-deductible. Ripoff of taxpayers, the corporation's employees, and their shareholders all at once

[StrangeSox]

Ah, got it. You could eliminate that loophole without junking the rest of S-O though, right? I don't know that S-O is the best regulatory system we can create, but clearly something was f***ed up with Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson etc.

[lostfan]

I'm not sure that is the same thing as S-OX, 2k5 probably knows better than me. That loophole got added in during the Clinton years and was supposed to be a compromise on corporate tax rates, but the performance benchmarks are laughably easy to get around.

[southsider2k5]

sarbanes oxley forces corporations to overpay executives?

 

Public disclosure of salaries led to a nice explosion of competing salaries.

[southsider2k5]

Ah, got it. You could eliminate that loophole without junking the rest of S-O though, right? I don't know that S-O is the best regulatory system we can create, but clearly something was f***ed up with Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson etc.

 

Most of it is a compete waste of resources. Think about it, if you were willing to cheat the books by inflating asset prices, which was illegal then as well, what is going to stop you from signing one more piece of paper saying that you aren't really cheating anyone?

[StrangeSox]

Public disclosure of salaries led to a nice explosion of competing salaries.

 

There was a huge drop from 2002 to 2003, following a big run-up prior to S-O's enactment. There was a big ramp-up leading into the housing/banking bubble, but that popped and we're still at pre-SO levels.

 

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-pa...ical-chart.html

 

Given the two significant recessions we've had since 2002, I don't know that we can even claim correlation let alone causation.

[StrangeSox]

Most of it is a compete waste of resources. Think about it, if you were willing to cheat the books by inflating asset prices, which was illegal then as well, what is going to stop you from signing one more piece of paper saying that you aren't really cheating anyone?

 

So how do we prevent that sort of accounting fraud?