mspart

Vak, can you explain this more? How is a huge increase in tuition and fees not as predatory as the banks? mspart

Ok, got it. If a person has WR's seal of approval, legit candidate. Otherwise, he/she doesn't belong, not legit, go home not worth taking anyone's time. You can't take me seriously? That's your opinion. But for my part it is difficult to take someone serious that refuses to acknowledge that RFK Jr IS a candidate for the Democratic nomination. Here's a tip: When someone does all the paperwork necessary to become a presidential candidate, they are a legit presidential candidate. It doesn't matter if you approve or not. To your tip for me: I knew nothing about Clinton when he was running. Hick from AK is all I knew. Therefore, he was not a legitimate candidate if I go by your philosophy. Funny thing that he won eh? And he was not the front runner at the beginning because "who the heck was he". Here's the deal and the optics: Joe won't debate. RFK Jr will debate. Who's afraid of who? Why won't Joe debate, and the many follow up questions from that. I am not a RFK Jr acolyte. I would prefer Biden win the nomination. He's as weak as it gets. I think in the end he won't be the nominee. It will be like Lyndon Johnson, just not enough support. He's running on "Bidenomics" and 34% of the people polled approve of his handling of the economy. There is no there there. And no one even on the left wants Biden for a 2nd term. I'm guessing he will bow out and Newsome and some other Ds will take his place. I'll bet they would be happy and excited to debate RFK Jr and wipe the stage with him. I will be enjoying the 4th of July with my family. I wish you a Happy 4th of July as well. mspart

Thanks for posting the participants. Funny not seeing JB on the list. mspart

White men are 30% of the population according to https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/555503-new-study-finds-white-male-minority-rule/ Therefore, at these schools, white males should be 30% of the school population. But apparently they were 12% at Stanford. So by their own rules they need to get more white males in there to reflect the general population. Isn't that their criteria? They weren't even abiding by their own criteria. That is interesting. mspart

So what good is having armed personnel protecting a school if they won't protect a school? The prosecution must not have established his intent not to get involved is all I can figure. What does the future hold now? No one will get involved? That's the precedent set here. mspart

I don't remember there being other candidates in 2020 on the R side and I don't remember there being a hue and a cry for debates. Trump was the candidate. I don't even know who they were. Were there 2012 D debates? Why not? I said RFK is bona fide because he is an official candidate on the D side. Just because you don't like him doesn't mean he shouldn't be on a debate stage with Biden. From what you are saying, Biden would wipe him off the stage. That would dim his star and he would not be a candidate for long. If Biden won't debate him, then I could say he is not up to the challenge. What is wrong with that? Would I automatically be wrong? I don't think so. Imagine if Kyle Snyder said, I've been at the top so long I don't consider any challenger bona fide therefore the spot is mine without a wrestle off for as long I want. Stupid example, but the stakes are much higher. He must prove his superiority just like Biden should. That's my opinion. I hope Biden is the D candidate because he will look silly against any opposition. Now I say that because that's what I see. But he seems to rally for debates so maybe not. I could have said neither Inslee or Harris were bona fide candidates because they didn't even make it to a primary election. But they were on the debate stage with everyone else before the first primary vote. The did what was necessary to be a bona fide candidate, just like RFK Jr, whether you like him or not. My guess is he would not get your vote. So that's really easy eh? All I know about RFK is that he is RFK's son. That's it. That is all I know. But he is a registered candidate and Biden should show him the door on the debate stage. What's he worried about? So you don't like RFK Jr, because he is a bad person. Therefore no debate is necessary. Got it. mspart

Where is the list of US wrestlers? Not finding it at themat. mspart

Well, is that a reason not to have a debate? Nobody took WA gov Inslee or CA senator Harris seriously as Presidential candidates yet they were on the debate stand before Iowa voted. Of course both left before Iowa voted because nobody could stand either of them. Your opinion of him not withstanding, if he thinks he can win the Primary, and if he is a bona fide candidate ,then he should debate Pres Biden, or rather Pres Biden should debate him. By saying he won't debate, Biden is saying he can't win a debate, if I may be so bold. Put up or shut up Joe. My feeling is that Joe will end up not running. The D's don't really want him, the American electorate don't want him, and neither wants Harris. The D's need a better candidate really, objectively speaking. The R's need better than Trump objectively speaking. mspart

Maybe so, but RFK says things that matter whereas Joe can't. Maybe we should look at content rather than delivery here. mspart

Notice that the SCOTUS ruling points to the Constitution and Law. Dissents point to emotionalism and non law based arguments. That is the difference in approaches. What feels good vs the Constitution and law. Who is attempting to legislate from the bench? mspart

Ah, I see the conundrum. mspart

If you want the best and the brightest, who cares if one ethnic group is over represented or not. You have the best and the brightest. Harvard artificially kept out qualified applicants based on their ethnicity period. That is not right per 14th amendment, and the Civil Rights Law, as SCOTUS points out. It doesn't matter if what Harvard wanted felt good, it is against the Constitution and the Civil Rights Law. Not sure how this will be applied to anything outside of Universities and Colleges. But I would think it will become the standard for businesses and the Federal and State and local governments as well. mspart

Yes, the whole point of this case was the curtailing of Asian students getting in to Harvard and UNC. What is the good reason to keep them out? mspart

If I were to say what the article says, someone on here would say, how do you know that? Prove it!!!! So to not punish everyone to go through that, I paste the article so everyone knows how I know it and then I comment on it a little. You may not like that WR, but that is why I do it. No doubt you would be one of those asking me to prove my point. Well, you aren't saying that are you. Because I put it out there. All you can complain about is that I put it out there. Weak sauce. mspart

Not a chance. They have said there will be no debates. Period. Unless there are. mspart

Sophomore year, weighed 99. Junior 105, senior had a growth spurt to 113. Yeah, I was good at football back when I was 6 and 7. To your other point, right on. Hoefully his folks are savvy enough to invest that money for him. mspart

pinfall does sound stupid. It is either a Pin or a Fall. PinFall is redundant. Just my $.02. mspart

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ab-inbev-announces-new-ad-campaign-as-bud-light-sales-continue-to-crater-120039088.html AB InBev announces new ad campaign as Bud Light sales continue to crater Sales of Bud Light declined 28.5% during the week ending June 17. Bud Light's parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) is out with a new ad campaign highlighting the workers behind its products as sales continue to take a hit following its campaign with influencer Dylan Mulvaney earlier this year. On Wednesday, the beer giant announced the new campaign, called "That’s Who We Are." The first ad, dubbed "We Make the Beer," includes a 30-second and a 60-second spot that features more than 140 Anheuser-Busch employees, growers, wholesalers, and partners in the campaign's ad. AB InBev's Bud Light brand lost its top spot in the US beer market to Constellation Brands' (STZ) Modelo and is now going into its third month of declining sales following its partnership with Mulvaney, a transgender influencer and TikTok personality, which prompted a boycott among certain US consumers. In the week ending June 17, sales of Bud Light declined 28.5%, according to Nielsen data received from Bump Williams Consulting. That's an acceleration from the 26.8% decline seen in the week prior. Volumes were also down 31.1% compared to a 30.3% decline the week before.... That will take care of it. A new ad campaign will bring back the 25% of lost beer sales. Heck fire, why didn't we think of this sooner!! mspart

To your first paragraph, I attribute that to the high gas prices and more prevalent use of EVs reducing the purchase of gasoline. The carbon tax or fee is not considered a gas tax and does not go for roads etc like the gas tax does. It is essentially a slush fund for the state to do with what they like. You would think that would be to help along renewable energy projects but it could be used for anything. So if gas taxes are going down like you say, the CO2 fees are not included in that, which is why Inslee and his crowd are quick to say that the CO2 fees are not gas tax, but a CO2 environmental fee. I agree to your second paragraph. But there has been no news about a pipeline issue that I have read or heard. Inslee used that as one item that was causing the gas prices to be high. His main point was the gas companies gouging the heck out of us. That was my point about them only targeting WA, and not any other state. That makes no sense. If they were gouging WA, they would be gouging the other 47 contiguous states as well. But they aren't as reflected in the national gas prices. WA being #1 for high gas prices is strictly a result of the CO2 fee. That's my opinion. But I think it is backed up by facts and data. mspart

That's a wild assumption OTM, you know that don't you? mspart

You can deny your intention all you want but it is there for everyone to see. By saying he made "wild assumptions throughout his Tweet" you are saying he's an idiot and you know better than him what's going on. Otherwise, how are his assumptions wild? So if you know his assumptions are wild, where is the document and explain how it was found at the house of a man who has been charged with classified documents? You don't have an answer do you? But you are asserting this guy's assumptions are dead wrong by calling his assumptions WILD. Just reading what you wrote and concluding things based on tone and the written word. Something you should be very familiar with. mspart

The items in bold are what Vak assumes this bozo on Twitter is assuming. mspart

Expanding their market - Yes, that is what every company should do. But the effort was counter productive (as you say) in a way that should have been considered in their strategy meetings. It wasn't. They had no clue. Again, fodder for business school lessons on the hard knocks of being oblivious to your clientele. That VP of Marketing talking down to her clientele like they were rubes, unworthy, and "fratty" with their infantile humor had an effect. She felt like they needed to entice a higher type of being to drink Bud Light. You know at least 50% of the people are going to be not amenable to something political, either left or right, or being belittled. There is no denying that Transgenderism has become political and no denying that she belittled her clientele. That's the lesson for the business schools to teach. This whole situation is why you don't discuss politics or religion generally and why businesses should stay away. Just make and sell your stuff and leave the politics, culture, and religion discussions to others. Let's say AB did it different and disparaged Transgenders. Would they have lost 25%? Maybe. But why get into it? mspart

https://abcnews.go.com/US/washington-passes-california-expensive-state-gas-aaa/story?id=100284315 Washington state has overtaken California as the state with the highest gasoline prices. The average price of regular gas in Washington is $4.93 a gallon, up 33 cents from the same time a month ago, according to AAA. California's average price for regular gas is $4.86 a gallon, 7 cents cheaper than Washington, AAA data shows. The price of gas in the state is up 6 cents from this time a month ago. California has often been the state with the highest gas prices, with drivers paying an average of $6.40 a gallon in July 2022. While the average price of gas in Washington is $4.93, some motorists are paying over $5 for gas in some counties, according to AAA data. The average gas price in King County, Washington, which is the home of Seattle, sits at $5.09, according to AAA. Skamania County's average price for gasoline is $5.32, the highest in the state. The national average for gas is $3.58 as of Wednesday, according to AAA. What could possibly explain this. WA Gov Jay Inslee says it is two things: 1. A critical pipeline is off line and this is drying up supply 2. Those darned oil companies making their record profits and he is going to ensure the legislature investigates when they come back into session in Jan. Well, those are good theories. I have not heard of any pipeline that has gone off line. And the oil companies are just gouging WA state? Not OR, not CA, not ID, not MT, not NV, not UT? I'm not buying that. But what I am buying is a new climate tax that Inslee got through the legislature that causes the oil companies to buy CO2 indulgences at auction. The expected rate for the indulgences was predicted to be roughly $0.46/gallon. And that is about where it is at plus one of the highest gas taxes in the country. WA taxes gas at 49.4 cents/gallon with an additional CO2 levy of 46 cents/gallon for an almost $1/gallon of tax per gallon. Obviously the legislature will not find that this new law is the problem. Because they wrote that law and stated it would only add pennies to the cost of gas. Yeah, roughly 46 pennies. So they were not wrong, but implying very little change to the cost of gas. No wonder the national opinion on government doing the right thing most of the time is at an all time low. Inslee lying through his teeth when the reason for high gas prices is obvious. Obviously you guys out there in the hinter-webs don't care. I just thought it was interesting to share. mspart

Here is an interesting article on ESG investing I found on yahoo finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/good-riddance-esg-200637182.html Good riddance, 'ESG' Rick Newman ·Senior Columnist Tue, June 27, 2023 at 1:06 PM PDT Woke is walking. Larry Fink, CEO of investing giant BlackRock, said he’ll no longer be using the buzzphrase “ESG,” which stands for environmental, social, and governmental factors when evaluating companies to invest in. ESG investing gained some popularity in recent years as a set of non-financial metrics to help guide conscientious investors toward ethical companies and away from malfeasant ones. Supporters argue that ESG investing, while fostering a clear conscience, also generates superior returns. Yet like any do-gooder effort these days, ESG investing also produced a politicized backlash, mostly from conservatives protesting liberal overreach, or the “woke mind virus,” as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis likes to say. Fink says the term and the concept of ESG have been “totally weaponized” and “misused by the far left and the far right.” Fink has been a leading proponent of ESG investing, so his about-face may mark the beginning of the end of this socially conscious trend. I’m shedding no tears. ESG investing may have been worth a shot, but it has turned out to be counterproductive, outdated, and ineffective. For one thing, research suggests ESG investing might produce higher short-term returns only because the trendiness of it leads to more short-term demand for certain ESGish tickers. Over the long term, ESG returns are nothing special. Markets should also do what markets are good at, which is maximizing profits and efficiency. Other institutions should regulate pollution rules, police corporate governance, enforce the rights of all minority groups, and pursue the other goals of ESG investing. There’s never a bright line delineating where the market ends and government begins, and the ESG movement has been a kind of trial-and-error effort to move those lines a little bit, which is fine. But the experiment failed. Here is how each leg of ESG investing flopped. Environmental. The biggest push along this axis has been the movement to disinvest in fossil fuel companies. Be careful what you ask for. Guess who benefits when free-market economies start to move away from oil and natural gas: Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other unsavory oil-producing nations that don’t care about ESG values. This played out in stark fashion last year when Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine and energy prices soared, producing a windfall for Russia to use to finance its war. Here in the United States, enviro-president Joe Biden faced a huge political problem as gasoline prices skyrocketed to $5 per gallon. The ultimate irony was Biden, a green-energy acolyte, begged US drillers to produce more oil. Everybody forgot that most of the US and world economies still run on fossil fuels. The ESG mindset on energy is binary: Renewables are good and fossil fuels are bad — get rid of fossil fuels as fast as possible. This is completely disconnected from what’s happening in the world and even from the best-case scenario for green-energy adoption. The world will need a lot of oil and natural gas for decades, and gas is even a crucial “base load” fuel that will allow the faster adoption of renewables. Pressure to disinvest in companies that produce vital commodities we depend on today is foolish. The better approach is a steady transition from one to the other without jumping so fast you cause self-defeating shortages. When ESG investing kicked off, governments weren’t doing much to combat climate change. Now they’re doing a lot. Biden has signed the most aggressive legislation in US history to incentivize green energy adoption — and the evidence so far is that it's drawing even more private-sector money into renewables than most people anticipated. There will be stumbles, but that’s a lot better than a minority of investors trying to accomplish this through market manipulation. Social. Who sets the rules for what is socially acceptable behavior at publicly owned companies? This is obviously a minefield for CEOs, with the recent Bud Light fiasco showing that outreach to one group can enrage other subsets of customers. ESG investors want to favor companies demonstrating the most tolerance toward the widest group of people, which is laudable. Maybe just do not do it through your portfolio? There are already laws against discrimination and other types of abuse. Corporations struggle with social policies because there’s a giant clash of cultures nationwide, whipped up by frothing politicians like DeSantis and Donald Trump and amplified on cable news and social media. There are plenty of activists to fight these battles. Doing so in the name of investing returns is kind of silly. Governance. Aren’t investors supposed to take account of corporate governance as a matter of course, and not as some special side venture? Isn’t that why we have a whole elaborate set of reporting requirements governed by the Securities and Exchange Commission? What more do you need? Again, this is a bit of a guise meant to assure favored companies do the right thing, whatever the right thing is. If you doubt the effectiveness of plain-old corporate governance, watch what happens to a company’s stock when it discloses it has received a Wells Notice or files an 8-K report providing notice of some accounting irregularity. The intent of ESG investing won’t go away, even if the phrase or the concept does. There are a lot of investors who want to feel good about the companies they invest in. Larry Fink and other smart money managers will find ways to serve them. If they could honor the cause without being so judgy, it would be a worthy evolution. Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman But there is more: https://grist.org/economics/bp-exxon-shell-backing-off-climate-promises/ Why are BP, Shell, and Exxon suddenly backing off their climate promises? As oil giants rake in record-breaking profits, they have begun tapping the breaks on much-publicized initiatives. .... But in recent weeks, these oil giants have begun tapping the breaks on these much-publicized initiatives. BP walked away from its target to reduce emissions by 35 percent by 2030 — once lauded as the most ambitious, tangible goal in the industry — promising a cut between 20 to 30 percent instead. Shell said it would not increase spending on renewable energy this year, contrary to expectations. Meanwhile, Exxon has pulled back funding from its decade-long algae effort. These quiet announcements coincided with their recent blockbuster earnings reports, which were celebrated by executives and excoriated by politicians like President Joe Biden, who called them “outrageous.” Buoyed by oil prices soaring above $100 a barrel last year, the oil giants roughly doubled their profits from the year before, with BP raking in $28 billion and Shell $40 billion. Exxon, the oil major that has been the least enthusiastic about renewables, reported even better results — $56 billion, up 143 percent from the year before and a record for a Western oil company. “We leaned in when others leaned out, bucking conventional wisdom,” said Darren Woods, Exxon’s CEO, in a call with investors, praising his company’s resistance to pulling back on fossil fuel production. So why are oil companies slowing down on renewables now, when they have plenty of cash to spend and the world is grappling with the alarming fires, floods, and droughts spurred by climate change? The ease of short-term profits when oil prices are high and the political cover provided by concern about “energy security” have played a large role. Heartened by last year’s flow of oil cash and dissuaded by the rising costs of installing wind and solar, executives are turning away from the longer-term payoffs promised by renewable investments. Climate advocates say that Big Oil’s recent moves should serve as a wake-up call for investors and regulators that oil companies plan to double down on fossil fuels for as long as it’s profitable. ... The rising costs of rare earth metals, used in wind turbines and solar panels, may also be slowing down oil companies’ spending on renewables. The cost of a stationary solar installation, for instance, rose 14 percent globally between the summers of 2021 and 2022, according to a BloombergNEF analysis. BP has pushed back against criticism that it’s changing course. Earlier this month, the company updated its strategy to increase spending on low-carbon energy from $1 billion last year to between $3 and $5 billion each year by 2025. After announcing Shell’s earnings at the beginning of February, Wael Sawan, the CEO, said that the company planned to increase natural gas production and would not be ramping up spending on renewables this year. In 2022, Shell’s capital spending on “low-carbon” initiatives (a broad definition that includes gas) had increased to $3.5 billion, almost a 50 percent increase over the prior year. But the potential clean-energy profits of tomorrow don’t make good business sense when oil and gas are making sky-high profits today, Sawan explained. “We cannot justify going for a low return,” he said during a conference call. “Absolutely, we want to continue to go for lower and lower and lower carbon, but it has to be profitable.” Yes, BP and Shell announced last week that they would go more lean on their renewables and focus on petroleum. Why? Because renewable is too expensive and doesn't bring in profits. Petroleum does. Simple economics that anyone can understand. This is similar to why BlackRock is not touting its ESG bonafides anymore. It doesn't bring in the profits that it thought it would. Course correction. I have nothing against renewable energy, but it is not enough to solve the world's energy issues. A thoughtful transition would be much more likely to succeed rather than eliminating fossil fuels quickly in favor of renewables. Which has been the effort up to now. mspart