If anyone can refute me — show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective — I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.
“
—
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (6.21)
#1yrago Private equity bosses took $200m out of Toys R Us and crashed the company, lifetime employees got $0 in severance
Private equity’s favorite shell game is to take over profitable
businesses, sell off their assets, con banks into loaning them hundreds
of millions of dollars, cash out in the form of bonuses and dividends,
then let the businesses fail and default on their debts.
The result is the retail apocalypse,
where predatory giants like Walmart and Amazon are able to topple their
vulture-capitalist-weakened prey, creating a feedback loop that
enriches the shareholder class and destroys American businesses, leaving
workers high and dry.
The (current) poster child for this con game is Toys R Us,
whose private equity owners borrowed more than $5 billion to buy the
company (with a $400 million annual debt service plan). The new owners
quickly took the company into bankruptcy, defaulting on that giant debt,
after paying themselves $200 million (including tens of millions in performance bonuses to the C-suite in the same year the company declared bankruptcy).
Now the company has announced that it will also default on all severance
payouts to the company’s 30,000 employees, including employees who
worked at the company for decades, skipping Christmas and Thanksgiving
with their families to staff the stores, now slated to get literally not
one penny.
“There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.” – Jorge Luis Borges, Atlas
The Senate will not vote on any legislation to protect U.S. elections from foreign interference, a Republican committee chair said, despite the consensus of the intelligence community that Russia will once again seek to hack election systems and manipulate American voters in 2020.
The reason, said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Wednesday, is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has decided not to bring any election security bills to the floor for a vote. […]
The Cyrus the Great Cylinder is the first charter of right of nations in the world. It is a baked-clay cyliner in Akkadian language with cuneiform script. This cylinder was excavated in 1879 by the Assyro-British archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam in the foundations of the Esagila (the Marduk temple of Babylon)
In 1971, the Cyrus Cylinder was described as the world’s first charter of human rights, and it was translated into all six official U.N. languages. A replica of the cylinder is kept at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City in the second floor hallway, between the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council chambers.
Joe Arridy was a mentally disabled 23-year-old who was falsely accused of rape and murder of a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Pueblo, Colorado. He was put to death on 6 January 1939. Arridy was officially pardoned in 2011 (72 years after his death) as evidence proved he was coerced into confession.
Arridy was known for spending his time on death row playing with a toy train, given to him by prison warden Roy Best, who called Arridy “the happiest prisoner on death row.” He was liked by both the prisoners and guards. His execution was commented on by warden Roy Best “He probably didn’t even know he was about to die, all he did was happily sit and play with a toy train I had given him.”
For his last meal, he requested ice cream. When questioned about his impending execution he showed “blank bewilderment” and it was clear that he didn’t realize the meaning of the gas chamber, telling the warden “No, no, Joe won’t die.” He even saved some of his ice cream for after the execution.
He was reported to have smiled while being taken to the gas chamber and was only momentarily nervous until the warden grabbed his hand and reassured him. (Source)
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
