The Trump Presidency

Discussion in 'Politics' started by joepistole, Jan 17, 2017.

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  1. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    It is just this sort of thinking that allows corporations to act immorally IMO.
    Of course Corporations are obliged to act morally, sometimes even more so than their management and shareholders.

    Whilst I fully understand your intent and agree I have only extended it to indicate that the common line is as you have posted and I would contend that this line is in fact one of the main reasons we have a problem. Corporations are the tools of people just as much as a jet fighter dropping bombs on civvies is. As with the fighter jet pilot bombing civies a corporation has responsibilities and moral obligations.
    One of Trumps main issues is that he sees the legal abstraction of a corporation as a way to absolve himself of any personal responsibility and that is crazy USA capitalism at it's finest. IMO

    "The companies only responsibility is to make a profit"
    is the fall back cop out when morality is being questioned. Of course it is Bull sh*t....
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    In point of fact, corporations have no morality. They are not people.
    Legally, publicly held corporations are forbidden from acting against the financial interests of their shareholders as described in the investment descriptions. A corporation that takes its investors money and deliberately loses it to avoid acting "immorally", without legal coercion or contractual agreement in the financial disclosure materials, would lose if sued.
    Tools don't have responsibilities and obligations. The jet plane itself has none, for example.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2017
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  5. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    That is like saying a car is responsible to drive safely. Oddly, it is the irresponsibility of drivers that have resulted in "smart cars", that will park themselves "responsibly".

    A corporation is NOT a person, regardless of SCOTUS. It is an entity that has been given the same rights as persons, but when it goes bankrupt the owners are NOT responsible to pay the debt from their own profits.
    Fraud is not committed by Corporations, fraud (immoral acts) are committed by persons.

    I seem to recall a 700,000,000 dollar bailout not too long ago, for immoral "creative corporate financing", i.e. "fraudulent practices" by Corporations. Who exactly made the decisions for those "creative practices", the Corporations or Management?
    Did anybody actually ever go to jail for that? Can't very well put a corporation in jail now, can we?
    I see these capital letters LLC, behind corporate names more and more often. Does that not translate into Limited Liability Corporation?

    I am not saying that all corporations are "managed" by immoral people. But some are, and that is not the corporations fault. It's management's immorality.

    As an accountant myself, I can assure you that my computers were completely impartial and had no moral obligation for keeping my books honest. Unfortunately it was my moral and professional responsibility to inform management that other departments of the company had over-extended their debt load, which resulted in default and eventual bankruptcy.
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    If i am not mistaken a llc, plc etc limits the liability and thus resonsibility of only the shareholders and not those employed by the shareholders via a corporate structure.
    If the employees act and make immoral (illegal) decisions they can be punished accordingly.
    An employee, for example, a director, can be sent to jail for illegal ( immoral) acts, just as fighter pilot can for war crimes.
     
  8. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Basically the need to make a profit or to follow orders does not absolve the employee or the soldier of legal (moral) responsibility.
    To say so only reinforces an extreme form of capitalism. One that places money above everything, ( law... included)
     
  9. douwd20 Registered Senior Member

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    Capitalism and the relentless pursuit of profits and growth have supplanted religion as the guiding force of the planet. It transcends governments, borders, oceans, peoples. Governments exist really to support capitalism nothing more. Some manage to be more egalitarian in their efforts to lasso or contain it but they are a slave to it.

    The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth — as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury — as well as unrivaled military and economic power — for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us. The mania for ceaseless economic expansion and exploitation has become a curse, a death sentence. But even as our economic and environmental systems unravel, after the hottest year in the contiguous 48 states since record keeping began 107 years ago, we lack the emotional and intellectual creativity to shut down the engine of global capitalism. We have bound ourselves to a doomsday machine that grinds forward, as the draft report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee illustrates.

    The Myth of Human Progress
     
  10. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Correct, the corporation is a BUILDING with computers and PEOPLE in it. The corporation is a tool, no more human than a car or a hammer.
     
  11. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I agree with most of this...but would add..
    What the world needs to focus on is always "sustainability".
    Nature's evolutionary principle is founded on sustainable outcomes and so too should human endeavor be founded.
    There is no doubt that the evolutionary principle will, with out exception come to play, and if that means the human race is lost to this universe then that will be the sustainable outcome, because we as a race are far from living in a sustainable fashion.
     
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  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    The world needs to know the meaning of the "Exponential function". If we did, the word "growth" would take on a whole new meaning.
     
  13. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    "exponential function"<=>sustainability??
     
  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Yep, in short continued growth in a limited space or with limited resources , eventually results in a zero growth pattern, if it wants to provide sustainable conditions. Prof Emeritus Albert Bartlett explains this a excellent lecture, which touches on the main resources which eventually will force a zero growth condition.

    This phenomenon is already beginning to reveal itself.
     
  15. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Trump about to dump Tillerson?

    Trump deliberately provoking Kim of NK in to giving the USA an excuse to destroy it? ( retaliation strike?)

    It makes sense in a way. If NK wishes to be a major threat to the USA and the world generally then it has to learn how to deal with the stress that being one creates. Being a nuke weapons power comes at a cost. No room for paranoia sort of thingo...

    Strategy abstraction:
    "If Kim proves to be as crazy as he portrays (launching a first strike) then best we get this whole thing over with before he has thousands of those missiles mass produced "




    "Russia has accused the United States of trying to provoke North Korean leader Kim Jong-un into "flying off the handle" over his missile programme to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country."
    src: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-...trying-to-provoke-north-korean-leader/9213772
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2017
  16. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Trump has just self incriminated himself regards what he knew about Flynn and his subsequent obstruction of justice. His recent tweets are damning and obvious.
    I wonder how they can be ignored by the powers that be?
    No doubt they will be... but I wonder what justification they will use this time.
     
  17. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    That's easy. Trump didn't know what he was saying. When you lie everyday, nothing you say will be held against you.
     
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I doubt it escaped Mueller's attention. Mueller is interviewing all who were involved in the elections and the staff of the WH. This list is becoming shorter and shorter and leading higher and higher up.
     
  19. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Unfortunately, even if Mueller were to prove the worst (absolute treason), Trumps supporters would still back him up... And the GOP will never remove their most effective smokescreen and scapegoat, until it stops benefitting them to use him.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    His lawyer, John Dowd, claimed that he - not Trump - wrote that tweet.
    That's desperation. This is turning into a bunker situation.
    (Unless Dowd did that deliberately, to make himself a material witness and thereby give himself an escape route from Trump's legal team).

    But Trump may still survive as President - and if he does, damn.
     
  21. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I read a piece in the Financial Times today pointing out that, now the Republicans have their tax bill through, their continuing reasons for supporting Trump are much diminished.

    I also heard a very depressed Republican commentator a few night ago, saying that the GOP may now be fatally tarnished by its support for Trump. He claimed that many in the party now really believe the president is mentally ill!

    So I would not be surprised to see some distancing take place. If Mueller gets Kushner, that could really gather pace.
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Not quite yet.
    How very strange it is to see that kind of assessment.
    In what fantasy world has the Republican Party been newly "tarnished" by its support of Trump?
    You gotta wonder what these people think the Republican Party has been and done these past forty years.

    It's one thing to declare oneself a Tea Party guy, disapproving and independent of W&Cheney's record in office. It's another entirely to forget that W&Cheney were and are Republicans, and the Republican Party supported them with enthusiasm. So were and are Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Michelle Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes - at one point we had an elected, upper echelon, fully credentialed, grand high pooh-bah Republican United States Senator filibustering his own bill on the Senate floor, at another a Republican Congressman yelling "you lie!" at the President of the United States during a formal speech (in which he wasn't lying, btw), at a third a Republican Congressman brandishing a snowball in the House chambers to disprove global warming, at a fourth a Republican Congressman opining in public that women who were "legitimately raped" did not get pregnant, throughout we had Republican elected officials declaring in public that chained stress positions, cold and heat, sleep deprivation by abuse, and repeated suffocation, were not torture.

    The only things missing were stilts, a red nose, comical ties, makeup, and an orange wig - so they went out and got the ties, makeup, and orange wig, big deal.

    You cannot tarnish the current Republican Party. The Tribe That Rubs Shit In Its Hair is invulnerable to tarnish.
    Of course. It started before Trump was elected - we had posters right here saying they really voted for Pence, not Trump. Trump might even go down in the Republican Revised Standard Historical Documents as a Democrat, alongside whoever started the Iraq War, whoever ballooned the US public debt, and whoever deregulated the banks and then bailed them out.
     
  23. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    A very funny caricature. Pity you are not a political cartoonist.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
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