I wanted to check on our car insurance, so I went to the progressive.com web site. The #1 priority of the company, as indicated from the position of this information on the page, is a commitment to diversity and inclusion (not actual diversity and inclusion, but a commitment). Measured by screen area and location, this commitment is roughly 100X more important than paying claims:
What do we see on the linked-to page?
Communities of color are #1 in importance (gold medal in the Victimhood Olympics). The LGBTQ community takes silver at #2 (the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community is simply left out). Everyone else is “marginalized”.
The lion kingdom uses Metromile because it rarely drives & it always ran by their headquarters when commuting. Not sure what a Greenspun would do, given the extreme amount of driving private pilots have to do to stay current.
I think that Progressive brand is meant to mean politically “progressive” by design.
“Measured by screen area and location
“What do we see on the linked-to page?
the screen area has to be progressive as the he/she/they/zir volume is also progressive.
Every business those days must have some sort of #Inclusion, #Equality, #Divercity, #Pride and the likes.
At my Big company, every month we are reminded of those #HashTags and every week there is an email inviting us to join one of those #JustCause meeting groups (at least 1 hour long, which also includes local in person follow up groups organized by a local leader).
At one of our Big company all-hands meeting, I posted a question asking for a monthly presentation by each product group showcasing their product so everyone at Big company learns of what we offer and the *diversity* of our technology. The question got voted to the top of the list by a fact of 100x over all other questions. It was answered by multiple CxO who were doing the presentation and agreed it was a great idea and that they will see that it gets done. This was over a year ago, to date, not a blip about it.
So here we are, my Big company cares more about some BS #JustCauses to brainwash us but doesn’t seem to care about educating us of the many *diverse* products we make.
* Big company is a well know multinational software company.
if their “BS” is so inefficient it should be easy for you to start a competitor to put them out of business?
baz: This is explained by the Harvard Business School magazine: https://hbr.org/2018/03/is-lack-of-competition-strangling-the-u-s-economy
There’s no question that most industries are becoming more concentrated. Big firms account for higher shares of industry revenue and are reaping historically large profits relative to their investment. … Ten years ago, the top four U.S. airlines collected 41% of the industry’s revenue. Today, they collect 65%. … In 1990, 65% of hospitals in metropolitan areas were “highly concentrated.” By 2016, 90% were. It’s a similar story in the beer business. Despite the proliferation of craft breweries, four brewers hold nearly 90% of the U.S. beer market.
—————–
A European company might not be able to afford to spend time, money, and effort on the activities that George describes, but a U.S. company need not worry about a more nimble competitor.
@philg that makes sense. Would you propose some kind of central planning of the economy to defeat monopolistic practices?
baz: Enforcing existing anti-cartel and anti-monopoly laws would be a start and isn’t central planning.
It won’t happen under the current rulers, because the monopolies are on their side.
@baz, here is another real world example.
At my Big company, here in my local Maskachusett office, we have a once a month Happy Hours event. My Big company offers free food and drinks (no alcohol) during this happy hours that last from 4 pm till 7. Do you know what else is offered during this happy hours? Fliers and weirdos walking around reminding us of #Inclusion, #Equality, #Pride, etc. BS. stuff.
Now compare this to 20+ years ago, before this Big company swallowed my well know Small company. The Small company too had Happy Hours but weekly. In addition to free food and drinks (yes, alcohol too), about 30 min was allocated for presentation in which we were updated with our accomplishments, customer satisfactions, promotion and recognition for job well done. No one was brainwashing us with BS stuff like Big company does now.
Now back to Big company. If someone is under performing, or during design and reviews meeting, if I disagree with someone or something, I better watch out how to express my disagreement. If I say “your idea sucks” then I’m labeled aggressive and asked to tune it down because I could *hurt* someone’s feeling. This was never the case with Small company where we were far more aggressive but no one took it personally.
We are no longer competing to make the best product, or offer the best solutions and services to our customers. We are consumed in this don’t-hurt-others-feeling, be-nice, BS stuff and are walking around eggshells.
No wonder why the rest of the world are beating us. Just wait another generation when the brainwashed K-12 kids make it into the workforce.
baz, laws are related to moral standards, something central planners, Democrats and their monopolist financiers has been fighting hard against.
baz: Econ 101 says that if you don’t have open markets and competition you’ll suffer inefficiencies, reduced wealth, and slower economic growth. There was always a carve-out for “natural monopolies” such as electric power distribution (too expensive, in theory, to have competing sets of powerlines to every house) and water distribution. Those natural monopolies had to be regulated so that they wouldn’t extract huge profits from consumers. Today we have some “network monopolies”, e.g., Facebook, that aren’t in the old textbooks. You also have distortions created by the government itself, e.g., giving labor unions monopolies on supplying labor to a factory, that might end up leading to more interventions (patches on top of patches) in search of improved efficiency given that people aren’t willing to go with a totally free Econ 101 market for labor.
Not every government action is an example of “central planning”. The libertarians, for example, will say that they want government-run courts to enforce contracts and they also want a government-run military to stop invasions (NYT says one is headed for the border right now… https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/world/americas/mexico-migrant-caravan-photos.html ). Libertarians are not advocates of “central planning.”
(Econ 101 also relies on an assumption that market participants have perfect information. So a government regulation that required disclosure and/or the maintenance of authoritative records could boost economic growth. The European system in which land title is clearly recorded at city hall (and cannot be challenged) is an example. Eliminates the need for title insurance and reduces the legal complexity of buying and selling real estate since it is easy to figure out who owns what. See https://www.dlapiperrealworld.com/law/index.html?c=FR&t=sale-and-purchase&s=transactional-process&q=registration-of-title )
@baz – Nope, it’s kind of incredibly silly to assume that the ultimate territorial monopoly – the government – can save us from monopolistic corporations. In fact, in every actual historical case of a long-living monopoly it’s crystal clear that it couldn’t exist w/o explicit support of a government.
What props up these Big Business monopolies and oligopolies is the legal fiction of corporate personhood – the shareholders and executives of corporations are pretty much shielded from liability – i.e. they can keep their past gains and past salaries even after corporation is found guilty in court. Oh, and most “regulations” ostensibly intended to protect consumers are, in fact, shielding corporations from liability – the courts presume that as long as all formal requirements of relevant regulations were followed there is no harm to the consumers. (FDA is probably the worst example of this… pharmas routinely kill people by tens of thousands with misrepresented or unsafe products – and nobody goes to jail. Vioxx, anyone? That one killed more people than the entire war in Ukraine.)
Plus, of course, the government-enforced “intellectual property” which is nothing more than transferable monopoly grants. Quite a lot of monopolism (tech, pharma, entertainment, etc) crucially depends on “IP” and government enforcers propping up abusive business models which wouldn’t exist in a free market.
@philg – The “natural” monopoly is very different than an enforced monopoly. A sole producer which keeps its position as a natural monopoly by the virtue of being able to provide cheaper or better goods than potential competition. Natural monopolies are not immune to competition, and thus are unable to abuse customers with monopolistic practices.
The “regulation” of the natural monopolies is doing exactly the opposite from what its proponents say – by creating regulatory compliance barriers it makes competition less attractive and shields the monopolist from the potential competition, thus converting harmless (or even beneficial) natural monopoly into abusive enforced monopoly.
(With utilities there’s yet another level of monopolism – the governmental one – these businesses have to obtain all kinds of permits and licenses from local governments in order to build and operate infrastructure on “public” property. This process is widely abused by government officials to obtain all kinds of kickbacks for themselves.)
@philg, my 5 cents: stretching electric wire via overland powerlines is a very quick process. As erected same poles used by phone and cable companies to stretch their cables. It should be relatively easy to build or rent poles. Right now electric companies pay monopolist significant electricity transfer fees per kWt but I see no reason not to rent existing / stretch new wire instead.
That’s a good point. It probably would be smarter to say that pole ownership had to be separate from power distribution and then we could in theory rely on competition to keep the price of distribution fair. But we don’t want multiple sets of ugly poles so we would still need to regulate pole rents (maybe pole dancers could do this since they have experience? Hunter Biden’s plaintiff, for example).
@george a
> If I say “your idea sucks” then I’m labeled aggressive and asked to tune it down because I could *hurt* someone’s feeling.
Or maybe that’s just a useless, unproductive statement?
I know it’s hard to understand, but maybe more of your companies workforce is motivated by these practices. You still contribute your labour to their bottom line, so you’re hardly in a position to criticise.
Baz: I think you’re on to something. Companies hate older workers and want to get rid of them but the Feds make this illegal. So Corporate America puts on some social justice dressing to get rid of the oldsters and inspire the youngsters. The cause is something that won’t cost actual money or effort. 2SLGBTQQIA+ sex acts are cheered on, for example, while no attempts will be made to alleviate poverty or disease.
I am on JetBlue right now and the very first category of movies offered is “Pride Picks” underneath which it says “celebrating PRIDE”. Costs nothing to put this category #1 rather than “Comedy”.
“Companies hate older workers and want to get rid of them but the Feds make this illegal.” How so? What are fake performance reviews are for?
I sense jealousy of washed out mature (multi-millionaire) programmer who envies us working drones in our advanced ages who are getting hired and new gigs every few months or years.
How do the Feds force companies to do what the market won’t? See https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination for how the Feds try to stop employers from getting rid of those over 40 (or not hiring them to begin with). There would be no need for a law if employers actually wanted these people.
> while no attempts will be made to alleviate poverty or disease.
Why would you expect private industry to have these as goals?
> Why would you expect private industry to have these as goals?
Because they talk about “equity” and “equality of outcome” all the time? One reason for 2SLGBTQQIA+ was to deflect from and destroy Occupy Wall Street.
perplexed: Corporations know that they need older workers to keep things going. Nevertheless they would love to get rid of them.
They do currently take over existing open source projects written by Gen-X idealists. It works like this:
1) Hire a couple of insignificant but influential project politicians who never really did much.
2) Have them push the new social justice agenda of the day (#MeToo followed by #BLM followed by #2SLBGTQQIA+).
3) Introduce CoCs to protect the rulers and weed out dissenters.
4) Have them accept tens of unproven and mediocre younger people into the project. This means that the politicians now stay in power by popular vote.
5) Have the younger people complain about the communication style and lack of 2SLBGTQQIA+ devotion of Gen-Xers.
6) At the same time, accuse Gen-Xers of not helping enough with knowledge transfer.
The productive people now leave silently or are expelled, and the project becomes a corporate steered churn-fest where code is rewritten by people who do not understand it and where useless features and new layers of indirection are added.
@baz, your last reply to me, is a divergence attempt to not answer my comment. You did what progressives and libertarians do when they cannot make their point.
Since you commented on my original post, let’s get back on point, shall we?
Tell me, why it is OK for an organization to keep promoting, week after week and month after month the ideologies of #Inclusion, #Equality, #Divercity, #Pride and the likes but leave out — no actually *suppress* the ideologies of other groups such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Shinto, Islam, Sikhism, to name some. Those other groups get mentioned and remembered for about 2-3 day during the whole year. Does #Inclusion and #Equality means their-way-or-the-highway?
George A.: Thou shalt have no other gods before The CEO!
Religion is only allowed if it serves the rulers. These days it tends to promote unwanted individualistic tendencies like the notion that there are God-given rights.
@Anonymous, you said it well.
It amazes me how today’s hotshot come on board and sell vaporware and POC (prof of concept) projects as ready for real world consumption.
In my 30+ years as a software engineer, I have seen a lot. The think that scares me the most is corner cutting that goes on in today’s software development. I have seen data sensitive and mission critical code get shipped without proper test code and testers testing without an understanding of the product they are testing.
The irony is this, every *new* technology we hear of today, existed 30+ years ago. Today, we give them a new buzz word or create a fancy UI to dress them up. Of course, today’s generation don’t know this.
@philg, regulations do exists but how do you explain hiring seniors into consulting roles that do not even considered on company payrolls? And for employment, there are no special benefits for 40+ olds. Have never heard about 70 years old taking a parental leave or a sabbatical although I am sure such people do exist.
> George A.
It’s very simple. Because it’s a free country.
Has the free hand of the market wiped these company policies from existence? No.
Has the central planning committee decided they can’t do so? No.
Have lawsuits or other judicial rulings said you can’t Say Pride? No.
What remedy are you looking for here?
baz: This is the remedy:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/deadlineusa/2009/feb/18/firefighter-sexual-harassment-gay-pride
The entire deranged woke movement walks on very thin ice, no matter whether it is defamatory tweets, code of conduct NKWD troikas that kick out people without due process, or sexual harassment by relentlessly exposing everyone to the bedroom practices of a minority.
The only reason they get away with it is because the non-woke generally want to be left alone and don’t want the public harassment that would come with a legitimate lawsuit. Things are changing however, see Rittenhouse or Depp.
@baz: Yeah, we know progressives are using the system to subvert the system. It isn’t a mystery, it’s right there in Rules for Radicals.
You guys don’t care what or whom you destroy or the methods you use to accomplish it, and I learned that from one of the primary sources. I don’t know what it will take to stop you. But eventually it will stop.
I used to have a subscription to Z Magazine and The Baffler in Chicago. I read Lewis Lapham when he was still alive! I haven’t burned this book, because I’m keeping it to offer as an entombment gift to someone I know very well.
“Class Struggle or Get it In the Neck: Part 2” by Noam Chomsky
https://zcomm.org/zmag/
Right now you’re reaching you and your fellow travelers are still ascendant, I know you take care of each other, and have for decades. The real problem has been that most Americans have not understood what you’re really all about. But I know – because I’ve been there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_H._Lapham
I hope you have fun at the next meet-up.
http://bostoncommunists.com/
Sorry, I forgot the link to the Bible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals
There’s nothing in the news that you can’t find in that book. And very little in higher education, either. There are lots of people who have been captivated by it over the years — and the ones who are insufficiently loyal are now punished.
I have to say it’s been a tremendous show. You’ve done a countless amount of damage and intend to continue inflicting it. Eventually even Bill Maher is going to the Gulag! He’s just trying to avoid it!
@baz, you answered your own questions incorrectly, the correct answer would have been “No, not yet, but it is starting”.
In addition to the link that @Anonymous provided, here is another one “Satanic Temple asks Boston to fly flag after court ruling” [1]. Don’t be surprise when some other group, or gasp, the NRA, will want to fly their flag.
Also, Philip already provided a link to a study that shows the negative impact this is having on companies. And if you think at my Big company folks are not fed up with this BS, you are so wrong.
For crying out loud, this free country of ours, that gives us free speech and freedom to preach your BS ideology, should be reminded and remembering, daily, to thank the indigenous people from whom we stole the land and resources. Those folks have zero, ZERO voice compared to the #Pride, #Inclusion, et. al. BS and yet they live and die in misery even to this day.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-religion-boston-massachusetts-37ddcf21ee814cf3affd0f1e36d59f4b
@George A.: don’t try to reason with baz. He is, as Toucan Sam would say, a “dumb dumb.”
@george a
If you accuse someone of dodging a question you could at least have the courtesy to answer one yourself.
What remedy are you seeking – a constitutional amendment removing the freedom of speech?
@alex
you are, as I would say, a fucking loon.
@baz: I’m sure where you’re going to be in hell, the loons will be circling overhead. Fuck You.
Alex: are you sure that these attacks on baz are in the spirit of the moderation guidelines? Or, even without the guidelines, adding to the debate in a productive way? We don’t have to agree with baz, but we can still take time to hear his point of view.
@baz, from the outside of the discussion it seems that you are advocating that disallowing George A to express himself is part of guaranteeing free speech. You are confused, 1st Amendment is not to guarantee free speech of the prison warden, it is not threatened in any way already.
@perplexed
That’s a confusing take. I’ve advocated that GeorgeA start his own business that is unencumbered by such time wasting as Pride et al.
He’s perfectly within his *rights* to tell people he works with they are dumb and their ideas are bad, but that’s not exactly what I would call constructive, problem solving or offering up better ideas.
Truth to tell, Baz, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether or not you meant that as a compliment. I certainly do apologize if I interpreted you wrong, Comrade:
“…Winston turned a little sideways in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away….He held some important post in the FICTION DEPARTMENT….It was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking….Every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc….Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man’s brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.
Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.
“There is a word in Newspeak” said Syme, “I don’t know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse: applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.”
So which is it, @baz? Are you abusing me or praising me?
@baz, as someone noted on this thread large companies are controlled by millions shareholders, i.e. nobody except large investment houses that overlap with large governments. Together these entities can close any company. Every small company depends on government guidelines and even are companies like Amazon seek government business (it may be an indication that it is overpriced. You are missing essence of 1st Amendment, nobody should fear of their livelihood or lifestyle because of honestly participating in discussion started by company management.
@perplexed
Your thesis is that (in the U.S.A.) private business is essentially an extension of the government and therefore bound by the Bill of Rights, with regard to Freedom of Speech, Unreasonable Search & Seizure, etc?
> nobody should fear of their livelihood or lifestyle because of honestly participating in discussion
I guess I just fundamentally disagree with that. If someone in my employ said “The Gays should be rounded up and shot” ( as some rightwing pastors indeed say ) I don’t feel I should be forced to continue employing them.
baz: That is a silly example, because the amount of people who want to eliminate all gays is tiny. Moreover, what you attribute to certain right wing pastors is actual hate speech and not protected.
In other words, you are taking the worst case and try to make it seem like current firings and cancellations are justified and lawful. This is not the case. You can be fired for asserting that reverse racism exists or questioning female oppression or CRT (as two Google engineers have found out independently).
Incidentally, Google is a great example for the monopolistic effects that philg mentioned. Google was built around 2000 by a small number of libertarian or classical left engineers. The search results were best around 2005-2007.
Google hired more and more people, the company became more bloated, search results got worse but we see social justice doodles every other day. New projects and features are often scrapped after a year. Smaller companies are bought for real innovation.
It still works because the fundamentals are in place since the early 2000s. Advertisers want Google, websites sometimes allow the googlebot but not others, etc.
A monopolistic company of that size can easily support 30% parasites and 60% of capable engineers working on the wrong things to keep them busy and prevent them from working for the competition.
@baz,
I answered your questions by telling you how you should have answered your own questions: “No, not yet, but it is starting”
The remedy is simple: keep your ideology out of public places just like I keep my own out of public places. I don’t go around, inches from other people’s face and spit on their face, week after week, all year long preaching them about Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc, why should I accept your #Pride BS on my face? For God sake, there are more #Pride flags and slogans on public places and public land then the symbols or slogans of all, yes, ALL, other religions or ideologies combined.
You are suggesting that I start my own business so I won’t be bothered by time wasting #Pride BS. Well, have you forgotten about the bakery shop owner (this is just one example) who refused to bake a #Pride cake and got fined “A Colorado Baker Is Fined For Refusing To Make A Cake For A Transgender Woman” [1]?
You said this is freedom of speech. Well, that’s a big fat lie. You are not practicing freedom of speech, you are pushing your ideology like cults do. In fact, you are even far worse then cults, you are hiding behind #Victimhood and getting funded by tax payers to promote your ideology over all others.
Look, I have no issue with your #Pride BS. Do whatever you want, but, please, please keep it to yourself in your own home / bedroom. Don’t spit it on our faces and most of all, do not, I repeat, do NOT brainwash your ideology into our public schools. THAT’s when you have crossed the line.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1007594289/baker-fined-for-refusing-to-make-cake-for-transgender-woman
I think the real problem with baz’s dream of enforcing political orthodoxy as an employer, e.g., retaining only those who wave the rainbow flag, is that not every employer has the correct political beliefs. Suppose that an employer is an observant Muslim who believes that male homosexual acts are immoral. The employer could then be on the wrong side of history and fire employees who choose to display rainbow flags on their front lawns. baz’s idea is a good one only if all employers are good people.
@Philg been tried did not work https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/aerospace-co-electroimpact-agrees-to-pay-485000-after-ag-finds-shocking-discrimination-against-muslims/
@Philip,
> baz’s idea is a good one only if all employers are good people.
You need to put quotes around “good people” to add more emphasize on what it means. “good people” are “good” only if they see eye-to-eye with folks like Baz.
Your argument that “it is starting” is a court case from *2009* and a more recent one where the courts are saying Boston must fly religious groups flags? I fail to see how that decision is a win for you.. it seems to confirm the courts don’t like stifling free / religious expression.
You also still fail to declare what remedy you seek in the corporate inclusivity / pride / movement of the day. You “don’t want them to talk about X topic”.
Ok – what law / regulations could _possibly_ make that happen?
> Ok – what law / regulations could _possibly_ make that happen?
As noted above (and ignored by you): sexual harassment laws. Or religious sensitivities:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/may/20/steelworker-sues-firing-after-calling-gay-rainbow-/
I find the whole rainbow movement behaves like Email spammers: They perform very explicit actions in their parades and force everyone to learn about and admire the nonsense.
If a straight pride parade were to extol the virtues of manhood enlargements (the classic spam) in a graphic manner and corporations mandated admiration for the practice, you could expect thousands of lawsuits within a week. And they would be reported by the mainstream press, unlike the religiously motivated lawsuit mentioned above.
What happened to Flo? Was she deprecated into some cheesy clipart? Used for something dirty and then dumped in the Pit like that Ahhhhnold movie Raw Deal from 1986?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqnOny5m38I
It’s too bad, even though I always preferred Amy Poehler to Flo, myself, but that’s no reason for Progressive to treat her so badly! She’s been such a trouper! Anybody can be clipart of a caricature of a person!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWOExT1F6UI
I suppose I’d have to settle for the Geico Gecko. He’s just as “touched” and progressive but he’s an unusually well-spoken reptile. He’s kind of a gentleman for someone essentially cold blooded and carnivorous.
https://animals.mom.com/geckos-reptiles-amphibians-10249.html
I trust you will do the research to find the best insurance you can regardless of the cultural noise.
BTW: If you trust moms, a gecko is “considered good luck in Hawaii”….
Good reason to strike them off the list, and never consider again.
This corporate leftist B.S. needs to stop. They can take their D.I.E. and just die.
Why does it need to stop? Surely you’re not suggesting central planning of an economy.
@baz – Because it’s basically fascist. A very small group of plutocrats, given legal license to print money, has concentrated the control over big business (and consequently, government) to the extent where it’s hard to say where one starts and another ends.
The interpenetration of business and government is the so-called “third way” aka the economic system of fascism, as explicitly defined by Mussolini. (Hayek’s Road to Serfdom explains it pretty well).
So… that small group holds controlling or very large positions in all large businesses (check, for example, holdings of Blackrock or GS), so if they say “today we promote diversity”, the corporate execs say “yessir!”. The agenda of this small group has clearly became unhingedly anti-human and totalitarian (Malthusianist population reduction, population replacement with destitute and thus obedient serfs, and wholesale destruction of Western culture embodying ideals of classical liberalism and morality). And now these same people vocally supporting D.I.E. agenda just as vocally support, finance, and arm actual Mein Kampf-touting Nazis – complete with swastika tatoos, WW2-era Nazi insignia, lots of big guns, and predilection to torture of their critics.
They are the ones doing de-facto central planning. And the only way to beat them (other than violent rebellion, which seldom ends well) is refusal to cooperate. Boycott the bastards.
Woman who claims she got a sexually transmitted disease from an ex-boyfriend after sex in the back of his Hyundai Genesis is awarded $5.2 million settlement from his CAR INSURANCE company
The woman and the insured were in a romantic relationship going back to 2017
A three-judge panel found that the judgment entered against GEICO through earlier arbitration proceedings was valid
GEICO sought to undo the action, claiming errors were made in Jackson County Circuit Court
The insurance giant also argued the settlement agreement was not done in line with Missouri law
The company filed motions seeking a new hearing of the evidence and for the award to be tossed out
The company appealed after those requests were denied
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10897967/Woman-claims-got-STD-ex-awarded-5-2-million-insurance-company.html
Thanks for this link. It is a fascinating case. How can it be established whether she got her disease from having sex in the car, from having sex with this same partner in some other location, or from having sex with her various Tinder friends?
That case is just jaw dropping. Also that it was a panel of judges and not a jury (which tend to award a lot of money). The chutzpah of the attorney is just out of this world. It just goes to show that having a law degree pays way better than having a gun and doing a hold-up to get people’s money:
Los Angeles personal injury attorney Miguel Custodio, co-founder of Custodio and Dubey LLP, told DailyMail.com that the settlement was reasonable.
‘If you think about it as an injury sustained while in that person’s vehicle, then it totally falls within what an insurance company would be required to pay,’ he said.
‘Usually, injuries to passengers are the result of a collision, or slamming the door on one’s fingers, that sort of thing. But while a lawsuit over contracting an STD from the insured driver may be the first of its kind, this award shows that it’s not a stretch for someone to file against an insurance company for any actions occurring in a motor vehicle.’
‘The lesson to be learned here is that people need to broaden the scope of what an injury is,’ Custodio continued. ‘Most people would not think that contracting this disease is an injury suffered in a vehicle — though it definitely is.’
The ratio of CEO pay to the bottom rung of the ladder should be – at the maximum – 25:1. All the lefty CEOs currently running our world said “fuck that!” and they’ve done it deliberately, especially in the technology companies. There is only one moral reason why: they want a revolution.
https://deming.org/peter-drucker-advocated-a-ratio-of-20-to-1-for-ceo-to-average-worker-pay/
Right now, you can get a job as an Amazon shift factory worker at $15/hour+benefits. You’ll work really hard and it will destroy your body. The CEO of Amazon should not have a salary+benefits package of more than $375 per hour+benefits, and should only be able to liquidate stock options after 10 years.
If $375 an hour plus benefits isn’t enough to cover Jeff Bezos’ tits and side boob giggles, that’s too bad. These guys are all plunderers. We should give them all Viking hats to wear around in the final days before Ragnarök.
That kind of austerity won’t go over well with the rest of the progressive scumbag elite in Europe, but we should try it here.
https://themarketherald.com.au/fancy/jeff-bezos-invests-400m-into-superyacht/
Jeff Bezos shows what kind of man it takes to use all that money well:
https://www.irishmirror.ie/showbiz/celebrity-news/amazon-billionaire-jeff-bezos-unrecognisable-25840149
@philg: I suppose not. But he’s the one who dropped the f-bomb first. I’ll try to be more careful with @baz and I apologize to you if I’ve been abusive to @baz and his rights and persona.
Alex: if others are intolerant we have to double down on tolerance for opposing points of view!
@philg: I understand your point. The other day @baz called gun owners insufficient males cowering in fear of Black Lives Matter. Maybe next time he’ll say that Jews run Hollywood.
It’s not the first time he’s resorted to that stuff, either; but in the larger sense I know you’re right. If it was my blog I would be doing the same thing, and I do apologize to you. But not to him.
And this just in “Bishop Issues Decree on Nativity School” [1].
“After discussions over the past few months in an attempt to find alternatives to flying the Black Lives Matter and gay pride flags outside the school which are inconsistent with Catholic teaching, Bishop Robert J. McManus of the Diocese of Worcester has issued the following official decree regarding the Nativity School in Worcester. The decree is being published online today in The Catholic Free Press, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Worcester.”
“After prayerful consideration of this matter, I, the Most Reverend Robert J. McManus, Bishop of Worcester, holding before me my pastoral responsibilities to this particular Church, in view of canon 381, §1, hereby declare and decree the following:
• The Nativity School of Worcester is prohibited from this time forward from identifying itself as a “Catholic” school and may no longer use the title “Catholic” to describe itself;
• Mass, sacraments and sacramentals are no longer permitted to be celebrated on Nativity School premises or be sponsored by Nativity School in any church building or chapel within the Diocese of Worcester;
• The Nativity School is not allowed to undertake any fundraising involving diocesan institutions in the Diocese of Worcester and is not permitted to be listed or advertise in the Diocesan Directory;
• The name of Bishop Emeritus Daniel P. Reilly must be removed from the list of the Board of Trustees of Nativity School.
This decree is effective immediately.”
Let’s see how long this decree will survive. How quickly will a lawsuit be filed by the ACLU, #Pride, #Equaity, etc. Of course, they will use public money.
[1] https://worcesterdiocese.org/news/bishop-issues-decree-on-nativity-school