I don’t believe a word that comes out of their lie holes.
12 Likes
13 Likes
Rick fucking Skeletor Scott…
I can’t even…
you all know that this fucking state that I call home, will be instrumental in handing the orange anus the election.
I want to beg your forgiveness as I will do all I can from my rock here off the southern shore, but with the deck so stacked that the convicted Medicare fraudster could even be elected as governor, let alone US Senator, coupled with tRump ass-kisser Ron DeathSantis to bumfuzzle yet another presidential election, I despair.
I am truly sorry, these men do not represent us.
~ your most humble Florida Man, Jefe
15 Likes
Hey, up here in Virginia the Senators do nothing except cradle the balls of the defense industry.
Keep fighting the good fight!
12 Likes
Pennsyltuckey can cast no stones after 2016.
Looks like we may redeem ourselves this time.
13 Likes
Hmm. I’m thinking insurance fraud. I can believe someone might tag thd circle a or the biden 2020. But both? It was the homeowners themselves
4 Likes
How that supposed to work since that’s a state jurisdiction? (So long as they get their electors done within the required time before the Electoral College.)
I’d almost think that they weren’t serious about states’ rights. /s
2 Likes
“ The strong demand for the money-losing company’s stock is all the more remarkable given that its founders have put in place one of the most aggressive governance structures ever seen. The shares of Palantir’s three co-founders—billionaire investor Peter Thiel, Chief Executive Alex Karp and President Stephen Cohen—are structured so they could become more potent as the men sell down their stakes, according to securities filings. Through a unique feature of the voting structure, Mr. Cohen, for example, could still effectively control the company by owning just 0.5% of the shares.”
“ Palantir also has an unusually long list of deals between the company and its executives, which are known as “related party transactions” and tend to make good-governance advocates groan. Palantir lent $25.9 million in 2016 to Mr. Cohen, who repaid most of the debt in August using some of his shares. Company loans to top executives aren’t permitted for public companies.
Palantir’s voting structure represents a new frontier in the push by startup founders in recent years to maintain control after they flip to public ownership—even as, in many cases, they give themselves the option to reap windfalls from selling the most of their shares.
Palantir’s structure “takes it to another level with concentrating power with the founders,” said Anita Dorett, associate program director at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.”
——
Not sure what stock owners are buying here if they don’t have the privileges that ownership entails. More of a bond with no guaranteed interest rate and no priority on the income.
9 Likes
They’re just throwing shit at the wall to see what they can get in front of the Supreme Court
Once they have an audience SCOTUS can throw the election for their guy and make up a rationale later
This should be unthinkable but it’s what already happened in 2000
11 Likes
It’s yet another phase of late-stage capitalism transitioning to cronyism and oligarchy: now even the shareholders get screwed over. One of the core reasons that Facebook doesn’t make the changes it needs in a timely way is because Zuckerberg has the same kind of voting control.
That set-up is good for the founders, which is why when I’m helping them design a term sheet I advise them to structure things that way. On the other hand, it’s bad for shareholders, which is why I’m usually advising them to avoid such terms in an investment decision. By the time a company like this reaches the IPO stage, though, (long after my involvement) FOMO usually wins the day.
Self-dealing is another aspect of late-stage capitalism. In the end, WeWork existed mainly as the primary customer for its founder’s real estate business. That’s plain toxic.
9 Likes
3 Likes
They’re disrupting stock ownership. When they decide to pay the board $100 million a year for their service - your vote won’t count.
It’ll eventually be that the owners of founder stock will insure that they can skim value off and that chump stock holders won’t have any say.
11 Likes
It’s already happening. The WeWork founder had a similar voting arrangement. When the board and shareholders had finally had enough with his self-dealing and irresponsibility, the only way they could make him go away was by paying him $1.7-billion (this amount was later reduced, but the whole situation is outrageous).
9 Likes
Given what they actually do, I wonder how much of it is about stopping shareholders from injecting morality into their business model.
5 Likes
In most cases it’s a tertiary concern at best, since shareholders are notoriously amoral. With a business like this, though, and with a fascist like Thiel at the top, it rockets straight to first position.
11 Likes
Pension funds should be especially wary about these forms of non ownership.
9 Likes
It is :cringe: a false flag operation. But, it really is a false flag operation!
Meanwhile Lindsey Graham is moving the goalposts on whether a vote of the people will even count at all.
9 Likes
It’s one more power struggle between the states and the Supreme Court
“The People” are at best tangentially involved, as usual
5 Likes
Then of course it would be out of the question to put your thumb on the scale by rushing through a potentially unqualified New Justice, right Lindsey?
Frankly, though, I think they’ve overplayed their cards by depending on SCOTUS to bail their asses out. They can probably count on Thomas, Alito, and Kavenaugh, but definitely not Roberts and probably not Gorsuch. Gorsuch is reactionary in many ways but he’s also a stickler for rules.
9 Likes
