2rafa
1d ago
It also involves listening to the Argentinian socialist in Rome, which American Catholics often seem to chafe at.
2rafa
1d ago
McDonald’s is in part a ‘real estate’ business because of its franchising system, wherein it acts as landlord to franchisees. McDonald’s therefore both makes money the usual way franchised restaurants do and on rent for those same franchise owners.
Red Lobster was not franchised. When it was sold in 2014, every single Red Lobster restaurant was owned and operated by the company itself. From an article from the time:
…Golden Gate, which bought the chain for $2.1 billion in 2014. At that time, virtually all of the real estate under Red Lobster restaurants was owned by the chain, which has no franchisees.
McDonald’s’ model isn’t typically attempted by most modern restaurant chains, even those that do franchise, because shareholders tend to prefer that excess profits are reinvested in growth or returned to them rather than used to buy commercial real estate which the investors could buy exposure to themselves to the extent that they want to.
2rafa
1d ago
I think the raw classical economics argument for prohibiting most forms of takeover defense isn’t completely wrong, but it also isn’t entirely correct. Im based in the UK which bans many of the major tactics used in the US, and I don’t think UK pubcos are run better than American ones on the whole, but I think to me the biggest issue I have with US public companies is super voting shares. These were illegal in London until about 5 years ago; every share had to have the same voting power to be (in practice) eligible for a primary listing in London and for inclusion in indices. They changed it under pressure from the government because British tech companies were IPOing in the US to preserve founder control. I think it’s a hugely negative development in ECM for shareholders, banks and the wider public.
Currently disparate impact has a carve-out for business critical reasons (which is why Google can’t be successfully sued for the fact that fewer than 15% of software engineers are black, for example). If that is maintained, then a college could argue that, say, only 5% of qualified candidates for an English literature professor job are Republicans and so they don’t actually do anything wrong if 95% of the English faculty are Democrats.
Yes, it’s a contradictory law because being ‘equal’ in terms of political party registration is going to unequally favor, say, white men for many jobs that are mostly done by liberals, since for example almost all potential Republican college professors (if political party is part of disparate impact) will be white males, and so correcting that would have a disparate impact on women/poc.
2rafa
1d ago
Private equity is just the corporate raiding/hostile takeover meme of the 1980s updated for the 21st century. Most medium and large private companies are very poorly run, the same way most major corporations were until the late 1980s. A combination of M&A and MBB consulting (mock them freely, but the sad thing is they were once necessary) dealt with most of the low hanging fruit in public markets, and takeover defense is now much better anyway, but in private companies things are still bad. PE is not typically a bad thing, and makes for more successful businesses that do more business and employ more people more often than not. Purely extractive moves still happen, but they’re disproportionately subjects of reporting and PE is now so well developed that (especially with higher rates) an extract what you can, sell-for-parts approach is less and less of a viable way to invest clients’ capital.
That said, selling corporate owned real-estate is a good thing for most businesses. There’s a reason why almost no major corporations other than super rich tech companies in the suburbs own their own corporate headquarters; when you own your premises, you’re a real estate company in addition to doing whatever else you do. Conglomerates are almost always undervalued by markets, it makes more sense for most companies to sign long leases, to focus on their core business as a pure play, and to leave real estate to asset managers and real estate developers who are valued on that basis and have expertise in that market.
2rafa
1d ago
GTA could never have been made by Americans, it’s inherently a pastiche of America by foreigners. Also, while it’s made in Scotland, it’s written by Englishmen.
2rafa
2d ago
Otherwise, no one would ever have to register for FARA (“I want to help Paraguay.
Almost nobody does, and indeed it’s telling that despite hundreds of ethnic and national diaspora interest activist groups in the US almost none of them violate FARA or even think about it.
You highlight public relations counsel, but a public relations counsel would be, for example, an American advising the Israeli government without reporting this interest, which the article doesn’t allege these billionaires did (it alleges the communication was the other way around).
are specifically asking them how to conduct pro-Israel advocacy.
That depends entirely on what the ‘guidance’ was, but again, nothing in the article guarantees or even makes likely a FARA violation. If a Russian-American attends a free lecture at the Russian consulate (delivered by a state university employee) on “Russophobia” and then becomes a pro-Russia activist, completely unpaid and without being under any direct instruction of the Russian government or any Russian agent, that isn’t a FARA violation according to most understandings of that law.
2rafa
2d ago
Reversing or at least heavily limiting disparate impact seems inevitable with this court. Roberts and ACB will be unhappy with it but if something as ridiculous as this happens they won’t really have a choice because of the sheer volume of litigation it would unleash.
2rafa
2d ago
The Democrats could technically pack the Supreme Court by abolishing the senate filibuster and using a 51 seat majority + the presidency to do so, sure. I suspect that at least several senators would balk at it, though, such that their current majority is insufficient. If they got back to 56/57 seats it would be viable, although of course as soon as the GOP had a President and senate majority it would be immediately neutered by them doing the same.
2rafa
2d ago
I mean, technically ‘white people’ are already a ‘protected class’ under the law as a racial group, and states like California make political ideology a protected status too (which is seemingly why Damore was able to negotiate a nice settlement with Google). What is more relevant is practice; since almost all major white collar economic activity occurs in deep blue states and cities, activist progressive judges and district attorneys can always selectively apply these laws to favored groups. It’s very rare for criminals who attack whites to be charged with racially aggravated offenses.
2rafa
2d ago
If college admissions were determined by “algorithm” (paper or digital) then that algorithm would be obtainable in lawsuit discovery. If that algorithm involved rectifying disparate impact (to apply this law) by bolstering eg. black and Hispanic scores, it would directly contravene not only last year’s SCOTUS judgment but also the previous judgment that ruled direct quotas explicitly unconstitutional. It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.
2rafa
2d ago
The majority of settled land in the white settler colonies (US, Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa, Argentina) was not directly purchased from natives. Even prominent supposed historical sales, like the purchase of Manhattan, are not actually confirmed, just rumors written about later by other travellers. In Israel much land was purchased by Jewish settlers, much wasn’t. As in the other settler colonies, much of the territory was also simply claimed, or was purchased from absentee foreign landlords, or allocated by or purchased from other colonial authorities at that time. The Jews did insinuate themselves with ‘various local factions’, not least the legal administrators of the territory (the British) under the legal treaties that ended the First World War and which determined the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
helped that faction defeat all the others
British Jews played an extremely prominent role in the expansion of the British Empire and ultimately in victory in WW1. Cecil Rhodes and other highly prominent British imperialists were agents of British Jewish families like the Rothschilds. British Jewish financiers funded the expansion of Empire and in part the defeat of the Triple Alliance powers. On the eve of the defeat the British began the process of agreeing to an eventual Jewish state in Palestine. This does not appear too dissimilar from those Spanish American examples.
2rafa
2d ago
The Foreign Agents Registration Act only applies to:
people and organizations that are under control of a foreign government, or of organizations or of persons outside of the United States ("foreign principal"), if they act "at the order, request, or under the direction or control" ("agents") of this principal or of persons who are "controlled or subsidized in major part" by this principal.
It does not apply to those who act voluntarily and of their own accord in sympathy with a foreign nation or the agenda or interests of that nation, provided it is not at their command.
Simply lobbying for a better relationship between two countries does not violate FARA in any case unless action is taken on order or request of said foreign government or an agent thereof.
Dual loyalty, which is to say the moral, spiritual, tribal or ethnic loyalty of an American citizen to a foreign nation and their acting in the perceived interest of that nation of their own free will and not under the direction of said nation’s officials, is not a violation of FARA and is not a crime in the United States.
2rafa
2d ago
The media doesn’t seem to have an issue depicting women of color as incompetent leaders per se. Consider Abbott Elementary, which is probably the most successful network sitcom to come out of the US in recent years, set at an inner-city school in Philadelphia. The principal, a black woman, is depicted as fundamentally incompetent, lazy, poorly educated and self-serving, having obtained her position solely by blackmailing the district superintendent about an affair. The other teachers, white and black, constantly complain about her.
The show is written and created by a black woman. I think a lot of complaints about woke in media are fair, but the claim that PoC are never depicted negatively is not; most minority media creators do not seem to have issues portraying non-white people as venal, stupid, lazy and so on where it serves the story.
2rafa
2d ago
We agree that some women give bad and self-serving advice to men just like some men give bad and self-serving advice to women. Nevertheless, just like most men know implicitly that women prefer tall, handsome, successful men, most women know implicitly that men prefer slim thick women with big naturals. I’m unsure about the confusion.
2rafa
2d ago
I don’t think the argument translates the way you imply. Nevertheless, if we can obtain truly identical animal products (meat, leather etc) without harming animals I would consider it morally justifiable to wind down the process of farming them. Similarly, it is fair to acknowledge that without the Iron Dome Israel would likely have killed far more Palestinians than it has in order to prevent Israeli civilian deaths. October 7 shows the limitations of this strategy, however, such that the relevant analogy (that of, say, not beating the shit out of your toddler who keeps punching you) is not wholly fair.
Israel can prevent some Palestinian attacks. Nevertheless, the genocidal urge remains and it is transparently impossible to prevent (at this time) all Palestinian anti-Jewish violence with solely defensive means. This justifies ongoing violent retaliation without significant concern about ‘proportionality’.
2rafa
2d ago
I find it difficult to square such a blanket "right to resist" with moral demands that immigration be considered an unalloyed good.
I’m a conservative and fundamentally don’t think that immigration is an unalloyed good.
Yes, anti-Catholic activists like Lewis Levin were completely correct that large scale Catholic immigration irreparably damaged America. Men like Philip Hart and Ted Kennedy are in substantial part responsible for a lot of the negative consequences mass immigration has had on the US. I don’t consider any of this a particular topic of dispute.
2rafa
2d ago
But again, this is standard practice in these kinds of tribal conflicts, see October 7. I don’t think it makes the case that Jews are worse than Arabs; in fact far earlier than 1948 there had been violent Arab campaigns against Jewish settlers including slaughter of civilians, mass rapes and so on.
2rafa
2d ago
Why would I listen to him more than to British or American or Australian ‘anticolonialist’ historians who are also fundamentally ideologically motivated to hate civilization.
2rafa
2d ago
I think different American groups would still take sides, no differently to how they have over Russia. Israel would not collapse or be immediately destroyed if the US decided to treat it as a neutral third country.
2rafa
2d ago
I don’t think Americans are under any moral obligation to ‘support Israel’ (monetarily, militarily, or merely ideologically). It’s not a hugely interesting conflict in that it’s the kind of situation that happens all over the world, all the time. Its unique popularity as a topic of political discussion is entirely for two reasons: the first being the unique success of Jews as intelligent market dominant minorities in Western countries, and the second being the growing centrality of the conflict to global Islamic identity and in particular, in recent decades, to the extensive global propaganda effort the Iranian Shia movement has attached to its support for the Palestinian cause with the global ummah. So you have two billion Muslims, some of whom are involved in fighting their own proxy conflict, against a small but very wealthy, influential and intelligent population who see the conflict as an existential war (something few non-Palestinian Muslims do). This elevates a run of the mill tribal conflict to something of greater interest for many people. Then there are secondary factors which are not mostly responsible for people caring but which add intrigue like nuclear weapons, Christian views on Israel and Jewish eschatology, US-Russia-China great power conflict in the wider region and so on.
2rafa
2d ago
Even the most dedicated pro-Israelis concede that Palestinian casualties have always far exceeded Israeli ones, but Israel's war is the "extremely restrained" one?
It’s ridiculous to suggest that developing defensive technology that reduces your civilian casualties means you no longer have the right to respond to attempted acts of war against civilians to the same degree.
Many tradcaths seem to consider other tradcaths apostates especially because there’s a big gradation in terms of their relationship with the actual church as an institution (see FSSP vs SSPX), views on the pope and so on.
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