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Anheuser-Busch wants your thoughts on its NFL sponsorship
Anheuser-Busch wants your thoughts on its NFL sponsorship in light of protests
By Kara Berg
kberg@bnd.com
October 02, 2017 9:42 PM
Anheuser-Busch wants to know how you feel about the NFL.
If you call 1-800-342-5283 and press one, you can tell the company how you feel about its sponsorship of the NFL, which has been under fire lately after an unprecedented amount of players kneeled or remained in the locker room during the national anthem.
When you call, you get this message:
“At Anheuser-Busch, we have a long heritage of supporting the nation’s armed forces, veterans and military dependents. The national anthem is a point of pride for our company and for the 1,100 veterans we employ. Please feel free to share your feedback after the tone.”
An Anheuser-Busch representative told Fox2 that the company was receiving a high volume of calls after many on social media asked the company to sever its sponsorship with the NFL.
The company released the following statement about the addition of the phone line.
“At Anheuser-Busch we have a long heritage of supporting the institutions and values that have made America so strong. That includes our armed forces and the national anthem as well as diversity, equality and freedom of speech. We proudly employ over 1,100 military veterans and we work every day to create an inclusive environment for all of our employees. Because only together can we achieve our dream of bringing people together for a better world.
The Anheuser-Busch phone line has always been available for consumer inquiries on a variety of topics, but we are not conducting a survey regarding our NFL sponsorship.
We have many long-term sports partnerships, including our NFL sponsorship, and while we may not agree on everything, we still believe in the power of sport to bring people together and overcome their differences. We have no plans to end our NFL sponsorship.”
Americans are sharply divided on whether NFL players should be allowed to kneel during the national anthem, according to a CNN survey. Overall, 49 percent say kneeling players are doing the wrong thing and 43 percent say it’s the right thing. But these views change sharply with age and race. Older white Republicans were more likely to say the players were doing the wrong thing, CNN found.
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article176690196.html
The Walmart subsidies
The argument has since spread all over the place and been used to rationalize all sorts of taxes, minimum wage increases, etc.
There is a rat's nest of nasty deception in this argument which needs to be considered. Even if we ignore that this is based on a sloppy propaganda white paper (extrapolating from a single store to the entire US) by a political faction, we still have some really big flaws with the argument.
The first is simply that the point of subsidies is to encourage behavior we want. Walmart is employing poor people. Usually, that is a desirable goal, particularly for the ideologies that spin this as welfare subsidies, but notice how in this case virtue is transformed rhetorically into vice.
Second, anyone who employs people who receive welfare is by this argument receiving the subsidy. The only way to avoid the alleged subsidy is to employ people who never receive any sort of welfare. Thus, anyone who employs poor people can be accused of this vice.
Thus third, it can't be fixed as long as one pays out welfare benefits of any sort. There is no correction that can ever get rid of the alleged problem because either someone will always employ poor people on welfare and run afoul of the welfare subsidy or no one will, creating a permanent unemployed class of people.
I see this causing problems for universal basic income schemes because since everyone receives the income, every employer can be considered to be "subsidized" and thus subject to whatever crazy scheme or punishment that can be rationalized. It's another failure mode that needs to be considered with UBI systems.
How lame can lame get?
Browsed through my email this morning. I can't really remember when or why, but apparently, I've registered with something called academia.edu. Gave them a fake email, fake name, fake species - the works. Academia - you expect them to have some academics, right? Check this out:
Academia.edu
Dear Some Guy,
1,615 people recently read one of the papers that mentions the name "Some Guy".
A total of 819 papers on Academia mention your name.
________________________
Seriously - that is the exact text of the email. Some Guy, the "name" that I use on sites when I'm checking them out. And, apparently 819 academic papers have mentioned my personna, and 1,615 people have read at least one of those papers.
Clicking the link, I arrive at a page that states:
Mentions
818
818 papers mention the name "Some Guy" or "S. Guy"
1,615 people recently read one of them
The Mentions feature helps you find your name mentioned in papers, books, drafts, theses, and syllabi that Google Scholar can't find.
_____________________________
And, these fuckwits take themselves seriously? They hope to pass themselves off as some sub-species of academics?
Should I laugh, or should I cry?
I might be nice if I could remember why in hell I even visited their site to start with. Maybe I was researching something like 'The resurgence of troglodytes in academia'??
Happy End of the World
I think I may have figured out at last what is making the Human Race so unhappy, and it's not just to do with chasing after little green pieces of paper. It occurred to me recently, but I'm getting rather forgetful these days. Let me see if I can remember.
basic income thinkings
My crude idea here is that basic income should be a reward for participating in a healthy, growing economy, not merely taking from the rich. That is an unhealthy attitude. It should be higher, if everyone is doing better, including the wealthiest.
My thinking is along the lines of the trust that runs the Alaskan Pipeline. Most Alaskans get a share and the better run and more profitable the pipeline is, the better the payout, leading to incentive to run things well rather than run things for the short term.
I'm not yet prepared for well developed ideas about how basic income should operate, but I think it should be highly predictable in how it operates and using metrics that are difficult to game. For example, no sudden and unpredictable changes in the level of payouts from machinations by politicians. No feedback from inflation (say by basic income being merely the printing of money combined with automatic inflation adjustment mechanisms, combining to create runaway inflation of the system).
Almost strictly pay-as-you-go or "revenue neutral" seems a good idea since money sitting around becomes a political target.
So here's a couple of ideas to put into the ring (oriented around the US where I live):
Basic income is all surplus federal tax revenue acquired by the US above its expenditures. Would generate incentives to run a balanced budget one way or another and encourage reduction of other expenditures.
and
Basic income is set in combination with a moderately progressive income tax at a level where a set percentage of the populace gains money. For example, it could be set so that the median income breaks even, thus half the population gains and half loses income. Incentives here would be to increase median income relative to everything else since that would be the basis for the payouts.
Keyesians might want to tool things so that basic income drops in good times and increases in bad times.
Jailed for writing to the BBC
The BBC has a story about a German schoolboy jailed for writing to the BBC.
Karl-Heinz Borchardt was 18 years old when he was arrested by the Stasi in East Germany for writing to the BBC. In communist East Germany, listening to a foreign broadcaster was a crime, and Borchardt had been listening to the BBC's Letters without Signatures on its German service.
Much to the ire of the East German regime, the BBC programme gave an extraordinary insight into the physical and emotional lives of a cross-section of GDR society for more than 25 years.
"It was like coming up for air," says Borchardt - a form of release for a young, curious mind locked in the suffocating atmosphere of the communist state.
The methods employed by the Stasi to track down "criminals" who wrote to the BBC were quite clever.
They took saliva samples from the licked envelopes to identify blood groups which they cross-checked with doctor's records. They traced fingerprints on the paper, sourced the ink and collated an extensive archive of handwriting samples.
They caught Borchardt by cross-referencing the handwriting on one of his letters with that on a piece of school homework that he'd handed in.
He spent eight months in prison before being sentenced to two years for "attempted subversive activities" in conjunction with an enemy broadcaster.
Carry On Brexit
The farce continues.
Chief champion of Brexit, Nigel Farage, very recently backed the German far-right AfD without a hint of irony. Suzanne Moore in the Guardian tells the bigger story.
Very recently tens of thousands of people in the UK marched to protest against Brexit.
Of course, if you're an EU citizen from one of the other 27 countries living and working in the UK, things are uncertain and uncomfortable.
“Everybody shrugs their shoulders and says ‘you’ll be all right, your husband’s British’. We’re fed up of hearing this. I don’t have a home to go back to. It’s not as if we’re teenagers going back to mum and dad, I’ve spent my whole adult life here. To tell us we have to be treated like criminals, have fingerprints, pass an English test, it’s insulting.
“This is an abuse of human rights and our family lives. Every day I am questioning do I want to remain in a country where the majority of British citizens are not speaking out for us?
“Why are they not on the street demonstrating? If this happened in France and there was such discrimination against British citizens, I would be out on the street.
Some of us have written letters, demonstrated, argued, donated to legal challenges etc. but there is more to be done. It's not over yet.
If Mrs May's government lasts into 2018 I'll be very surprised.
Hail Farage!
The Guardian reports that Nigel Farage, former leader of UKIP and Brexit campaigner will address a far-right rally in Berlin on Friday.
The South East England MEP will appear at the Spandau Citadel in the west of the German capital to talk about “developments in the European Union, Brexit, direct democracy” and “how to make the impossible possible”, according to AfD MEP Beatrix von Storch, who is hosting the event.
A granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister, Lutz von Krosigk, von Storch is a leading member of the anti-immigrant party, which has realistic aspirations to enter Germany’s parliament for the first time in federal elections on 24 September.
Godwin! See what I did there?
Farage speaks highly of that Nice Mr Putin:
In the run-up to Britain’s EU membership vote in June 2016, Farage said the then-US president, Barack Obama, had behaved “disgracefully” by warning on the economic consequences of a leave vote, and praised the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who, he said, “maintained his silence throughout the whole campaign”.
And, of course, he didn't have a good word for those lily-livered liberals' next choice either:
Two months later Farage appeared at a rally with Donald Trump, where he stated: “I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me.”
Never mind, they way things are going in North Korea we might all be put out of our misery sooner rather than later.
Here's one. Putin, Farage and Trump walk into a bar. The barman says to Putin, "What can I get for you and your friends?" Putin looks the barman in the eye and replies, "I will have little water to toast great nation of Russia. I never met these two before. I don't know them from Adam." The barman replies, "Your vodka is on the house."
Daily Science Fiction (mostly pretty short stories)
Amateur writers, but some of them are pretty good. I thought I'd share this humorous take on airline safety with everyone. Visit http://dailysciencefiction.com for more!
On second thought - the story loses formatting when I c/p it. Looks like crap, and I'm not bright enough to fix it. Direct link to story - http://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/humor/oliver-buckram/darkening-skies
Enjoy!!
Is this a fluke?
All-righty - I have just nominated myself for a smart ass award with my post here - https://soylentnews.org/~FakeBeldin/journal/2592?&noupdate=1#comment_560273
And, it crosses my mind that a lot of folks here probably use multi-meters from time to time. I wonder how many of you might be using a ten dollar meter, from the bargain bin, at your local auto parts store? Maybe I can convince some of you to upgrade . . .
Like many of you, my first meters were cheap. As an apprentice or a helper, money is tight, so you're not willing to waste money on an expensive meter. But, those cheap meters can cost your life!!
Check the fuse in your multimeter. Is it a glass fuse? Most are, and if that thing is ever hit by a real high energy surge, it will become a plasma grenade, right there, in your hand! Check this PDF http://support.fluke.com/find-sales/Download/Asset/2041429_6001_ENG_A_W.PDF
Personally, my money goes to Fluke. Don't take that as a super-strong endorsement, it's just what I've settled on. There are other companies that make good, safe, quality meters, but my first decent quality meter was a Fluke 77 original. Not a Series II through Series IV, but an original Fluke 77 without a Series designator. Today, I'm very happy with the Fluke 179 - it feels right, it's reliable, and it's like a Timex - takes a licking and keeps on ticking.
If you read that PDF above, you may feel safe using your cheap multimeter, because you never get into Cat III or Cat IV. There's not enough energy to be really hazardous, you say. Hmmmm. Maybe. And, maybe not. Watch some crazy Aussies blowing shit up, then analyzing the results - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-FZP1U2dkM
I just want to make everyone aware that those ten to fifty dollar meters are a safety hazard. Make your own mind up. Maybe you don't need all the features that I need - all of which adds to the cost. But, whatever you do, you most likely need all the safety that I need. You probably enjoy the use of both of your hands, as well as both of your eyes! Just think about it . . .
