Tag: corpocracy

Disney, Marvel, oppose religious liberty

Two prominent purveyors of cultural dysgenics join the NFL in threatening democracy in the State of Georgia:

The Walt Disney Co. and Marvel Studios indicated opposition to a Georgia religious liberty bill pending before Gov. Nathan Deal, saying that they will take their business elsewhere “should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law.”

With generous tax incentives, Georgia has become a production hub, with Marvel currently shooting “Guardians of the Galaxy 2” at Pinewood Studios outside Atlanta. “Captain America: Civil War” shot there last summer.

“Disney and Marvel are inclusive companies, and although we have had great experiences filming in Georgia, we will plan to take our business elsewhere should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law,” a Disney spokesman said on Wednesday.

It doesn’t speak well for Christians that they are so less willing to back up their beliefs with action than those whose objective is the dismantling and destruction of Christianity and Western civilization. I already refuse to use Disney products; it appears I will have to extend that policy to Marvel Studios as well. (I’m not going to bother changing the RP 2016 recommendations at this point, as Marvel’s actions thus far remain hypothetical.)

One hopes the governor does not give in to this corporate attempt to influence the political process. And if he does, I expect he will experience the consequences of putting corporate politics ahead of the clearly expressed will of the people.

Rubio and Fox News sold out America

It doesn’t get much more politically damning than this unexpected news of a media sellout. And it’s more than just the usual anti-Republican hit piece from the New York Times, because it leaves Rush Limbaugh, of all people, in a position to confirm it:

A few weeks after Senator Marco Rubio joined a bipartisan push for an immigration overhaul in 2013, he arrived alongside Senator Chuck Schumer at the executive dining room of News Corporation’s Manhattan headquarters for dinner.

Their mission was to persuade Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the media empire, and Roger Ailes, the chairman and chief executive of its Fox News division, to keep the network’s on-air personalities from savaging the legislation and give it a fighting chance at survival.

Mr. Murdoch, an advocate of immigration reform, and Mr. Ailes, his top lieutenant and the most powerful man in conservative television, agreed at the Jan. 17, 2013, meeting to give the senators some breathing room.

But the media executives, highly attuned to the intensifying anger in the Republican grass roots, warned that the senators also needed to make their case to Rush Limbaugh, the king of conservative talk radio, who held enormous sway with the party’s largely anti-immigrant base.

Looks like Donald Trump’s instincts served him well when he refused to genuflect before the cuckservatives at Fox. And Rush doesn’t appear to be inclined to give either Fox or Rubio any cover.

“Mr.
Limbaugh shed light on his interactions with the senators when he told a
caller frustrated with his criticism of Mr. Rubio that the immigration
position the senator had advocated “comes right out of the Gang of Eight
bill.” Mr. Limbaugh added, “I’ve had it explained to me by no less than Senator Schumer.”

I assumed Rubio was done after Trump beats him in his home state of Florida, but after this revelation, I think he’s done now. Even establishment Republicans will be appalled by his successful attempt to corrupt Fox News and turn it against conservatives, to say nothing of their joint attempt to turn Rush Limbaugh.

I like Fox and its pretty blondes better than the ABCNNBCBS cabal to which it is the alternative, but I’ve never trusted it and I haven’t watched it in over a decade. People at Fox helped kill my Media Whores book at Thomas Nelson because it criticized Bill O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin, so I’m well aware that they’re on the Republican Left, but this anti-American, anti-conservative collusion with pro-immigration Republicans and Democrats is stunning.

Mailvox: Keeping out SJWs

An email from a member of the Ilk who not only grasps the key concepts, but is putting them into practice in her HR department:

We [are a sizable] company.  I consider myself part of the “Ilk” and have been following your discussion of SJW’s for several years, including reading SJW’s Always Lie. As a result, we have become more proactive during the interview process for new employees, trying to discover if they harbor or are amenable to SJW ideas.

I thought an example of a recent interview would be of value to others in business as a model for modifying their hiring process.

Like many applicants, today’s had recently left a job.  We have always asked, “Why did you leave your last job?”, listened to the various responses, like: “the company downsized”, “change in management”, etc.  However, other common responses now require further questioning.  Responses such as, “I didn’t get along with my boss”, “I had an issue with a company policy”, or other answers that indicate some level of dissatisfaction with the previous employer require more in depth questioning.

When asked why they left the last company, one applicant said, “I just didn’t like some parts of the environment and am looking for a better place to work.”  Years ago, that innocent-sounding response would not have drawn any attention.  Not any more.

The manager immediately picked up on the “problem with previous employer” tone underlying the answer.  So, further questioning was required.

Manager: “Really.  What was part of the environment you didn’t like?”

Applicant: “Some of the employee interaction just wasn’t for me.  It wasn’t professional enough.”

Manager: “That makes sense.  I wouldn’t like that either.  What was an example of unprofessional behavior?”

Applicant: “It was really just the way one of the manager’s treated some of the people.”

Manager: “Oh.  That can be frustrating.  What did the manager do?”

Applicant: “He treated some of the people in the call center unprofessionally.”

Manager: “Ok, but what do you mean by treating them unprofessionally?”

Applicant: “Well, he acted inappropriately around them.”

Manager: “When you say “inappropriately”, what do you mean?”

Applicant: “Well, we all thought it was harassment.”

Manager: “What kind of harassment, like yelling at people?”

Applicant: “No. Some of it was sexual harassment.”

Manager: “Oh no.  That’s not good at all.  So, you just left and didn’t do anything about that kind of harassment?”

Applicant: “No.  I spoke to lots of the other phone reps and we all agreed it was harassment.”

Manager: “So, after you spoke to the other reps, did you file a complaint?”

Applicant: “We tried.”

Manager: “So, when that didn’t work, did you file a lawsuit or do anything?”

Applicant: “That’s what we ended up having to do.  It was just that bad.”

Everything past this point was just the formalities of ending the interview without making the applicant feel like they were just arbitrarily eliminated from consideration.

The point I’m trying to share is the amount of effort, time and question asking skills it took to finally dig down to the real issue.  Most small and medium businesses are not used to “digging” during their interviews.  I know, having been guilty myself and many other business owners I know admit they do not “dig”.  If the person looks good, i.e. like they can do the job, they get hired.  That mindset used to work, but in today’s PC environment is too dangerous to the business’ survival, so it must be changed.

When a person finally admits to being the instigator of some type of action against the company and involving other employees in their “dissatisfaction”, then that seems to be a good example of an SJW.

I can hear the “moderates” saying something like, “But maybe they were sexually harassed.  It’s not fair to disqualify them when they were the victim of harassment.  They weren’t the problem.”  Conceptually, I agree.  However, the distinction seems to be the involvement of others or engaging in activities to “punish” the perceived offender; these are SJW characteristics.  A conservative person would simply have left the job if the environment was that uncomfortable.

So, hopefully this is of some value to others as they learn to keep SJW’s out, but I also hope you’ll comment on how you see the interview process being better utilized to screen SJW’s.  Also, how do you respond to the “moderate” mindset described above when it comes to hiring people?

I think questions such as “have you ever lodged a complaint against your superior” or “have you ever been party to a lawsuit against your employer” (prohibited by Federal law) should probably be added to the standard interview repertoire. A better approach would involve asking “have you ever been the victim of harassment”, as the average SJW is going to assume you are on her side and be eager to tell you all about how everyone from her kindergarten teacher to her previous boss treated her shabbily.

After which you smile, thank her for her time, and circular file the application. Unless, of course, you’re looking to be hit by complaints of one sort or another within weeks of her first day. SJWs Always Lie.

Learning to talk

As a general rule, it’s a terrible mistake to take your lead on communication from actresses:

“Woman in a Meeting” is a language of its own.

It should not be, but it is. You will think that you have stated the case simply and effectively, and everyone else will wonder why you were so Terrifyingly Angry. Instead, you have to translate. You start with your thought, then you figure out how to say it as though you were offering a groveling apology for an unspecified error. (In fact, as Sloane Crosley pointed out in an essay earlier this year, the time you are most likely to say “I’m sorry” is the time when you feel that you, personally, have just been grievously wronged. Not vice versa.)

To illustrate this difficulty, I have taken the liberty of translating some famous sentences into the phrases a woman would have to use to say them during a meeting not to be perceived as angry, threatening or (gasp!) bitchy.

“Give me liberty, or give me death.”
Woman in a Meeting: “Dave, if I could, I could just — I just really feel like if we had liberty it would be terrific, and the alternative would just be awful, you know? That’s just how it strikes me. I don’t know.”

“I have a dream today!”
Woman in a Meeting: “I’m sorry, I just had this idea — it’s probably crazy, but — look, just as long as we’re throwing things out here — I had sort of an idea or vision about maybe the future?”

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Woman in a Meeting: “I’m sorry, Mikhail, if I could? Didn’t mean to cut you off there. Can we agree that this wall maybe isn’t quite doing what it should be doing? Just looking at everything everyone’s been saying, it seems like we could consider removing it. Possibly. I don’t know, what does the room feel?”

As with most erroneous conclusions, the fault is in the assumptions. “You will think that you have stated the case simply and effectively” is where the problem is. Where the writer, and the actress before her, are wrong is in believing that their feelings about how they have stated the case are conclusive.

In all communication, the primary responsibility lies with the person talking, not the person being addressed. If people regularly misinterpret you, the fault is almost always your fault, not theirs. If women “speaking their opinion” are often perceived as angry, then, assuming they are not angry, it is obvious they are inadvertently or unconsciously sending out signals that are easily misinterpreted as anger.

The problem, I suspect, is that many women have zero self-confidence. That’s why about 50 percent of all individual female products are sold on the basis of claims that they will improve the buyer’s confidence. (The other half concern divulging the secret of an envied woman’s success in looking prettier than the buyer.) And what most people lacking in self-confidence do when they are trying to state their opinion or speak up for themselves is either a) apologize in advance in the manner demonstrated above or b) overcompensate and come off as angry.

It’s absurd to say that women are speaking in this way out of fear of being perceived as Terrifyingly Angry, they are doing so because they are Ridiculously Insecure.

The fact is that if you have to steel yourself and work yourself up to simply stating your opinion, or worse, do so just to cite a straightforward fact, you are almost always going to come off badly. Your behavior and expression will not be consistent with your message. Most of these women who think they are just stating the case simply and effectively would be shocked if they saw a video of themselves doing it and saw their furrowed brows, angry facial expressions, and heard how their voices were raised as if in anger.

Compounding the problem is that the natural solipsism of women combines with that lack of self-confidence so they make it all about themselves. Note how many “I” references there are in the three examples above: nearly four per example. Just to be clear, the normal male response to this rambling “I just feel that I think I should be able to express what I feel is the right thing to do” is “who the fuck cares?”

Women are also more inclined than men to see criticism of an idea they have expressed as personal criticism and react angrily to it. Does someone telling you “that’s a stupid idea” make you angry and feel personally attacked? Well, then you probably ARE angry and your speech and facial expressions accurately reflect that.

Now, I’ve been in more than a few business meetings with women, and certainly some have spoken in a way that I would describe as “Oh Sweet Darwin, get to the fucking point before we evolve into a new species and all of this becomes irrelevant”. But plenty of them speak normally, without either anger or apology, and I’ve noticed that those tend to be the more competent women. No drama, no theatrics, no uptalk, just normal, straightforward communication.

Just talk. It’s not that hard. Stop couching and overcompensating and trying to frame, and foreshadow, and pre-convince, and talk. If you think X, say “I think X.” That’s it. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to apologize for it or get upset if someone comes back with “I think X is stupid, I think Y.” You think what you think. They think what they think. It’s not a sin or a crime to disagree.

Amazon goes after the fakes

I’ve been expecting them to take action to shut down fake reviewers for some time now, but apparently it took being embarrassed in public to make it actually happen. More than a few SJWs should be shaking in their shoes.

AMAZON, the world’s largest online marketplace, is suing more than 1,000 people suspected of selling fake reviews in one of the biggest legal actions to uncover hidden identities on the internet.

The web giant is mounting the unprecedented court action to strip 1,114 alleged fake reviewers of their anonymity and force them to pay damages for the “manipulation and deception” of Amazon customers, according to court documents filed in America on Friday.

It is the first time any company has taken action against its own reviewers on this scale, according to legal experts, and could have far-reaching implications for privacy and the way consumer websites are policed.

The clampdown comes after an undercover Sunday Times investigation, in which a ghostwritten ebook was published on Amazon and fake reviewers were paid to push it to the top of one of the online retailer’s bestseller charts.

I’ve spoken to two Amazon executives about the problem, and they both agreed that fake reviews are a real problem that strikes at the legitimacy of their entire review system, and therefore, their business. They didn’t necessarily agree that anyone who leaves a fake review should have their ability to review permanently removed and have their account suspended for 90 days, but they agreed that some form of negative incentive would be in order.

Amazon is full of SJWs, but they are mostly at the lower levels. The mid-level and higher executives aren’t much interested in politics, they are interested in selling. Anything that gets in the way of that is likely to get steamrolled.

Fair play for FATCA

It looks like the Law of Unintended Consequences is about to strike the US federal government again:

This week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will announce its final package of measures under its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project that would enable foreign governments to tax overseas earnings of American companies. If the United States fails to make changes of our own before that plan begins being enacted next year, this effort, which The Wall Street Journal called “a global revenue grab,” will ensure much of these American earnings stay overseas permanently.

Considering that the US government claims the right to force foreign banks to track and report its citizens, it’s not going to have much of a leg to stand on when foreign governments start claiming the right to tax the earnings of US corporations with bank accounts in their countries.

This is why it is so reprehensibly stupid for the US to insist on intervening in sovereign lands; by doing so it sacrifices its own claims to sovereignty. It is unlikely that Putin would have intervened in Syria if the US had not intervened in Ukraine and Syria. This foreign cash grab probably would not have been successful without FATCA.

Fire local, hire global

Okay, that’s not entirely fair. But it does raise some serious questions when Microsoft is simultaneously a) laying off 7 percent of its workforce while b) lobbying hard for more H1B visas to permit it to import more foreign workers.

Up to 7,800 people will be laid off globally, the company announced Wednesday morning. Most of the jobs are within its smartphone hardware business. Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) had 118,600 employees as of March 30, with about 60,000 of those workers in the United States. The cuts represents about 7% of its staff.

This is Nadella’s second major restructuring. He announced 18,000 layoffs in Nokia’s devices and services business last year, following Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30)’s acquisition of the handset maker.

Of course, I don’t think anyone is even remotely surprised that the Nokia acquisition didn’t work out well.

Rumblings of tech war

This article is amusingly incoherent concerning the growing fears of US technology companies concerning Europe:

One message so far from the corridors around the World Economic Forum
in Davos: U.S. technology companies are very worried about the backlash
they are now facing in Europe. From their standpoint, Europe
risks shooting itself in the foot by rejecting the cutting-edge
technologies they have brought to the continent. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? Look at it from the European point of view.

Europe
once led the world in mobile technology: The Global System for Mobile
Communications, developed in Europe, became the global standard. But
that was a long time ago. Now, most innovation in information and
communications technology comes in waves from across the Atlantic.

With America’s vibrant capital markets giving them billions of dollars in risk capital, they can absorb the successful European tech enterprises—look at Skype Technologies, swallowed by Microsoft Corp.

These U.S. companies— Google, Facebook , Amazon and others—are disrupting industry after industry. Publishing, telecoms and retailing have already been convulsed. Now, the companies, and Google in particular, are turning their gaze from consumer-oriented to business-oriented platforms.

That is a big deal for growth-starved Europe and for its biggest economy, Germany, which leads the world in high-quality engineering. Europe’s car industry is a leading employer, its suppliers reach through the continent, and it is one of the biggest spenders on research and development. Germany’s machine-tool manufacturers are deservedly renowned.

But much of the future profit for these industries won’t flow from punching metal but from the networks they will use to manage information—for example, taking the cars where they want to go, catering to passengers with entertainment and retail experiences as they travel—and it’s a strategic question who owns them.

Isn’t it good of those US technology executives to worry so much about Europe shooting themselves in the foot? They must have tremendous empathy! Or could it be that they are not telling the truth and it is something else that worries them?

Such as, perhaps, the possibility that they will be legally locked out of Europe due to their enabling of US goverment espionage and their continued disinclination to show any respect for various European privacy laws?

Ocean-front diplomacy

Never let it be said that Obama doesn’t think ahead:

President Obama announced sweeping changes to U.S. policy with Cuba on Wednesday, moving to normalize relations with the island nation and tear down the last remaining pillar of the Cold War.

Under the new measures, the United States plans to reopen its embassy in Havana and significantly ease restrictions on travel and commerce within the next several weeks and months, Obama said. Speaking from the White House, he declared that a half-century of isolation of the Communist country “has not worked.”

“It’s time for a new approach,” he said.

The history-shaping overtures come after more than 18 months of secret negotiations with the Cuban government of President Raul Castro. The final touches appeared to be arrangements for a series of simultaneous prisoner releases.

It’s probably one of the smartest moves of his presidency, if not the smartest. Cubans don’t vote for Democrats anyhow, and no one gives a damn about them anymore since they’re massively outnumbered by Mexicans now. It’s all upside for Obama; no doubt there are plenty of big-money interests just slavering to snap up Cuban real estate.

I’d be astonished if he doesn’t come out of it with a sweet post-presidential villa.

“Women have no idea”

And here I thought we’d be more productive with women in the workforce. Tapping into that vast pool of hitherto untapped talent and all. And yet, Dr. Helen is unimpressed with her sex, nominally at work:

Apparently, rather than focusing on their own jobs, men are supposed to spend their time playing therapist to how women think and feel. And of course the author has no understanding of how hard it is for men to even interact with women at work, given all the rules and regulations. One “tip” in the article tells men not to be afraid of tears:

    When Paul Gotti of Cardinal Health gave performance reviews, he says that, without even realizing it, he was easier on female directors: “I didn’t want them to cry, to feel bad.” He recognizes now that this was no favor. They should have the feedback “so that they can grow too.”

    Ms. Flynn of Flynn Heath Holt says that her firm has found that men aren’t only afraid of tears but of getting in trouble with “the diversity police” for speaking harshly, or of women being “too high maintenance, or [that] she’ll ask a million questions.” As a result, “men are scared to death to give us feedback…. They’ll let women run astray and off course and be fired before they’ll take the chance to give them feedback.”

    Her advice: Be honest. That doesn’t mean you have to be blunt, adds Mr. Schwartz of the Energy Project, which is more than 60% female: “I’ve learned it’s a balance between honesty and empathy. Honesty without empathy is cruelty.”

Women have no idea what men in the workplace are dealing with when they
work with women. And men, despite what the author thinks, are not there
to babysit women by telling them to ask for raises, brushing away tears
and “twisting” women’s arms to ask for her own promotion.

I suggest learning to refer to “equality” and to say “look, you’re a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need any help from a man to do her job” will be vital for many men in the corporate environment. Black knighting and ruthless compliance with all workplace regulations is the optimal way to circumvent the lunacy.