Hippie court basically say it’s illegal to not offer jobs to certain people

Years ago, by way of some emails bein all “hey, wtf man?” and “okay dawg. i’ll back off cuz I agree thats not cool” style emails between CEO’s – Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe agreed to not poach each others employees. The employees didn’t like that because they of course want to be pursued for better deals for themselves plus leverage to demand more pay from their existing employer if a competitor is offering them a more attractive deal. The companies on the other hand could do more harm than good for themselves if they poach competitors employees either successfully or un, causing unnecessary friction. The companies decided that it was in their best interest to leave each others existing employees alone.

In 2011 the tech employees brought forward a lawsuit alleging a conspiracy that closed their options and capped their potential salaries. That totally happened, but that’s not illegal. It’s not even improper. No one was denied a job because of some evil corporate conspiracy – people were simply not sought out for positions within a corporation because they were already working for another corporation.

Bloomberg classifies this as “screwing over employees” as their report includes the image below. Actually, it is merely an effort by the companies to stop screwing themselves.

In pure anti-progressive traditionalism-as-law, the court actually used the allegation of this not being a standard practice as part of its slam against the corporations, creating a regressive and illogical precedent in a search for an excuse to restrict their freedom to make its own employee-poaching policies. Even though this is not true, as a memo released with the emails of the “do not entice away” agreement note, the argument would be just as terrible without that little/crucial inaccuracy.

The companies had conceded that the pacts “contained nearly identical terms, precluding each pair from affirmatively soliciting any of each other’s employees,” Koh noted. The judge stressed how unusual this kind of systematic plotting is—in the Valley or anywhere else. CEOs of rival companies may nod and wink to each other over drinks at the club. Competitors may refrain from going after a select number of one another’s most highly valued employees. In the antitrust case, Koh said, the defendants’ own experts admitted “they are unaware of these types of long-term, all-employee agreements ever occurring between other firms.”

In other words: This would have been 100% fine by the American judicial system if it was shadier and more conspiratorial. But since it was a legit agreement actually stated on the record and because companies usually don’t go on the record in legit ways, these companies must be penalized…for not being sketchier about their perfectly reasonable and legal agreements they make with each other.

Unfortunately you can sue for anything in America and there is no loser-pays rule in place (not that I think this case would even be a likely loss for the plaintiffs) so it was in the best interest of the tech corps to settle this rather than have to open up their records defending this frivolous allegation of something that isn’t illegal but that some people don’t like because they could have benefited if only other parties didn’t act in their own best interest. The problem is that even though “lets agree to not poach each others employees” is not against any rules, it is enough in the direction of something that sounds like a budding conspiratorial monopoly and there *are* laws against that. As far as I know, however, there is nothing actually wrong in any way to agree to not actively pursue currently employed people in efforts to convince them to be employed by you instead. As far as criminal collusion regulations go, it sounds more than a little bananas to be forcing companies to try and poach each others employees at a higher priority than any other employee pool.

But it sounds not nice and it involved billion dollar corporations (and often times millionaire employees, lets not forget), sooooooo… the 4 companies settled, agreeing to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to these employees. for the non-crime of not offering them new jobs…

How much do you think a reasonable amount to get paid for not being offered a job? A few hundred million divided up, enough, you think? A judge has to approve the settlement, so there is literally a person in charge of deciding if the person suing is getting enough money to be “settled” or not.

CNBC reports that San Jose, California U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said the proposed settlement amount “falls below the range of reasonableness.”

The four companies agreed to settle with the plaintiffs in April for a total of $324.5 million. The plaintiffs had planned to ask for about $3 billion in damages at trial, which could have tripled to $9 billion under antitrust law.

The case was based largely on emails in which Apple’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt and some of their Silicon Valley rivals hatched plans to avoid poaching each other’s prized engineers.

In one email exchange after a Google recruiter solicited an Apple employee, Schmidt told Jobs that the recruiter would be fired, court documents show. Jobs then forwarded Schmidt’s note to a top Apple human resources executive with a smiley face.

Plaintiff attorneys argued Koh should approve the deal because the workers faced serious risks on appeal had the case gone forward.

I get the emotional appeal of wanting businesses to do things that benefit you and getting mad when they only benefit you a lot instead of more than a lot, but I don’t see the anti-trust criminality in emailing someone in your field of businesses and deciding to not fkk with each others employees.

Colluding to keep safety hazards in your products a secret from the public, blacklisting certain people from being hired when they apply to work for you, or conspiring to artificially jack up prices across an industry – these are criminal and immoral practices of antitrust corporate scummery. These 4 companies did nothing near any of that. This is stupid and unreasonable.

Corporations Murder People?

I’ve been seeing the digital image and hand written sign that says “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one of them” for months and I keep asking “who has been murdered by what corporation?” and no one can ever answer. I suspect I know why…

If the answer is “no one” then the sign is meaningless.

Sorry to give away the ending, but: The answer is “no one” and the sign is meaningless.

It should read “I’ll believe corporations are people when one commits murder”.

If there is a case of an American corporation murdering someone then show it to me so I can publicize the event and look into why it wasn’t properly prosecuted and why the corporation wasn’t executed. It’s not impossible that a Corporation murdered someone and then got away with it while continuing to do business but… no. nevermind. it’s pretty not-possible.

What the legal classification of a Corporation being a person means is not that if you carry it’s documents with you in your car then you can drive in the carpool lane or anything stupid like that – it just means that a corporation can’t be deprived constitutional rights. or in other words: people can’t be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively in commerce (and form a corp). i.e: Corporate personhood says that the government can’t deny fifth amendment rights or free speech rights to a group of people in a corporation just as they can’t to an individual. hippies hate that rule because they hate anything designed to make a profit and that is what a corporation is, so hence their fight against corporate personhood.

But if a corporation murdered anyone then it definitely should be executed. I’m just waiting for the facts behind this phrase…

Dear Hippies: Using clever slogans only remains clever if their content makes sense. If there is no factual basis for your sloganeering then you’re not making a point, you’re unmaking it.

I’m eager to hear all the cases of murder where the perpetrator was a Corporation, so if you’re one of the people who keeps posting this sign on facebook – send em on in!

Show me the time that McDonalds sent out an order to shoot a guy or when Microsoft had someone beat to death in a Dennys parking lot. That’s what murder is, fellas. Willful intent and success at killing innocent humans. Microsoft making shitty products is not murder and McDonalds making fatty food is not murder and only murder is punishable by execution. So. Have at it and i’ll update this post with all your examples.

Current instances of Corporate Murder: 0

UPDATE: Well this is embarrassing. In search of an example that makes this line make sense, I found this image below. Shit. I totally forgot about that time Wal-Mart killed 3 thousand innocent civilians. NEVER FORGET.

This sums up how hippies view private businesses exercising free market capitalism as something to be scared of. which is a sign of a mental disorder or extreme narcissism because people buying things they want would only “scare” the most twisted Communist-minded utopian douche.

Dislike a chain of stores all you want, but if stores selling grooming products, toys, household items, tools, clothes, vitamins, and groceries frightens you, you have some pretty deep psychological problems.

UPDATE: Cory leaves the following comment:

New Forests Company

you lose.

I didn’t know I had bet anything so I don’t know what it is I am losing, but I’ve also never heard of this Corp, so I took to Google which surfaced the following:

The New Forests Company is a UK-based sustainable and socially responsible forestry company with established, rapidly growing plantations and the prospect of a diversified product base for local and regional export markets which will deliver both attractive returns to investors and significant social and environmental benefits.

Oh… UK-based…that might be why I’ve never heard of them and their website says they operate in Africa. I’m not so sure that the American state of Texas can apply it’s death penalty laws to a non-American corporation (nah, I’m just putting it that way to soften the blow. the truth is that I know for a fact that that’s how it works), but if this corporation has been convicted of killing anyone then thats still pretty big, American or not.

[7 minutes on Google later]: It appears there have been no convictions of murder, but some villagers in Uganda gave eye witness reports that New Forests Company security officers killed some unnamed people. Hmm… this is some pretty odd conviction standards: an unnamed eye witness gives an out-of-court report that a non-America Corporation killed an unnamed person or persons in Uganda under unknown circumstances and that has a relation to the American constitution and American law of Corporate Personhood somehow? But of course even if I accept that part – this “some guy killed someone somewhere” is not conviction worth testimony. If Cory – or any of you reading this – has evidence that the New Forest Corporation actually did instruct a murder hit on any individuals in this Ugandan village then even though it’s not American and not subject to our laws, it would be a decent non-American example. I will email Cory and ask if he has info pointing towards just that (which I assume he does on account of me losing) but if you know anything about this you email me too and i’ll update accordingly.

Developing…

UPDATE: Jason comments with more argument that is along the same that leads me to realize more clarity is required for the issue. First, Jasons comment:

Failures of corporations routinely cause harm and death to humans. If you have to ask for sources, then you clearly aren’t paying attention. These abuses are ‘settled out of court’ in civil suits and never reach the criminal justice system.

Google for ‘wrongful death settlements’ and be careful who you believe until you’ve followed their money trail.

I appreciate the attempt in this comment, but it’s no good unless you can also provide examples of when Texas has ever executed someone due to a failure. Who has ever been executed for murder because they failed at safety conditions around their house or property? This comment argues far more that a Corporation is a human than it does against it (again: un-making the point). Humans routinely cause harm and death to humans. So what relevance does that have to the question posed here, which is “What corporation has murdered someone?”. Humans murdering humans are not settled out of court and neither would a corporation murdering anyone. Causing harm is not murder and “causing” death is not even necessarily murder. Wrongful death settlements are in no way examples of murder – they are examples of wrongful deaths.

The search continues for the American Corporation who has ever murdered anyone, ever – OR – the Texas execution of anyone who has ever been involved with wrongful harm or death of someone parallel to that of a corporate example.

Walgreen owns Walgreens

Did you know that the Corporation that owns Walgreens is named “Walgreen”?… So the “S” on the chain of drug stores isnt plural – it’s ownership. the chain is literally “Walgreens” cuz it belongs to the Walgreen Corp. whoah…

Info on the chain from the Fortune 500 list:

The country’s largest drug chain, with 7,697 total stores, Walgreen continues to perform well. Its April 2010 purchase of Duane Reade has paid off already: The acquisition improved sales and accounted for about half of the company’s growth.

The company also is building its house brand, having launched a major advertising campaign to promote Walgreen-branded products earlier this year. Online growth is another focus: The chain bought Drugstore.com in March for $429 million.

Intolerant hippies on the attack again

John Mackey – the founder, CEO and marketing genius behind Whole Foods – finds himself in an organic, unsustainable mess with his carefully cultivated affluent, liberal customer base after penning an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare.”

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

And then proceeds to list them. The column is definitely worth the read if you’re even a little interested in the subject. In his list are evidently outrageous things like “Enact tort reform” and “Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.”

This, to the intolerant closed minded brainwashed bubble living freaks of the granola left is completely unacceptable…

Andrew Brietbart notes the absurdity on display here through a Washington Times column on the subject:

Mr. Mackey, a free-market libertarian, is now at the mercy of an unforgiving grass-roots mob intent on destroying his company. More than 25,000 people have signed on to a Whole Foods boycott on Facebook.

“Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives,” the online petition reads. “Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods’ anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities.”

He goes on to note that WholeBoycott.com, features unintentionally comical video testimonials from aggrieved former customers. *yawn*

Greta Van Susteren asks Russell Mokhiber, organizer of a boycott against Whole Foods if CEO John Mackey is a bad guy. “Yeah, I do. Yeah, he’s a bad guy.” Greta, playing defense for the controversial right to disagree tells him”You stun me”. Whole Foods supporter Cyrstal Jones provides balance and sanity in this segment. Greta apologizes to her for having her “horns locked” with the Whole Foods boycott organizer.

More from Breitbarts WashTimes article:

But Mr. Mackey missed the key ingredient of modern liberalism: intolerance to the ideas of nonliberals. And this miscalculation may prove to be devastating to his multibillion-dollar business.

Everywhere one looks these days, the intolerance of self-avowed liberals is on display. Especially since Mr. Obama came to power.

The purportedly open-minded and empathic among us who now run everything – save for NASCAR and Nashville – openly wage war against those who dare disagree.

Some man-on-the-street reactions worth hearing:

Besides, Boycotts are stupid, unless you’re boycotting baseball:

Boycotts are stupid. Well, except my boycott of baseball. But that’s different. It’s not a boycott so much as it is that I just don’t enjoy the sport as much now that I realize that most of the people involved in it have no integrity on the doping issue. Plus, it’s just way too slow. I prefer the fast pace of golf.

But back to boycotts, the Whole Foods boycott really seems odd to me because there is a lot to like about Whole Foods’ philosophy. If you want to encourage small brands that use organic farming — if you want to encourage a different kind of neighborhood store — if you want to encourage less waste from plastic bags — if you want to eat good food … then you shop at Whole Foods. But the CEO has some thoughts on health care that you disagree with, so you throw all that out the window and boycott? That makes no sense to me.

Wendy Kaufman’s firing from Snapple still bothers me

That’s what Neil Cavouto says, but it bothers me too dammit!
Who is Wendy Kaufman? Besides a long islander who went to the High School all my neighbors went to (it was about a mile away, but I went to private school), she is the Snapple lady!

According to an interview with Fox News, Wendy was fired in March by an executive of Cadbury Schweppes, the most recent owner of the Snapple brand. This information was disclosed during an interview with Neil Cavuto, which aired on his Fox News TV show, “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on May 8, 2008. Wendy’s appearance on the show prompted the creation of many fan sites, including a Facebook group entitled “We Love You Wendy,” which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13161379790

HISTORY OF WENDY AS THE SNAPPLE LADY:
From her Wikibio: In 1991, she began working for Snapple Beverage Corporation for her best friend’s father, Arnie Greenberg, one of the three founders of Snapple.

When Kaufman was a young child, she wrote her one and only fan letter to Greg Brady (Barry Williams), which went unanswered. So, at Snapple, when she realized how many people where trying to connect with the company, she took it upon herself to answer all the letters, since she remembered how terrible she felt when he never replied. This led to her being referred to as “The Snapple Lady”.

When it was discovered that Kaufman had been answering Snapple fan-mail in her free time (because nobody in the office wanted to do it themselves), their brand new advertising agency, Kirshenbaum & Bond, developed a campaign around her energetic personality. She appeared in television, radio, and print advertising until 1994 wherein she answered letters written to Snapple with witty responses. Kaufman’s 1990s Snapple ad trademark was to appear on camera with her head barely peeking out over the Snapple reception counter, giving the viewer the impression that she was incredibly short in stature (She is officially 5’2″). Wendy continues to get a kick out of telling people that she was the real “Head of Snapple”. She would begin each commercial by saying in a thick New York accent that she received a letter from a particular Snapple fan, who would then be included in the commercial.

Kaufman’s humorous Snapple ads were well-received, especially among members of Generation X, and she was partially responsible for a jump in Snapple’s sales from 23 million dollars a year to 750 million a year in 1995. She was let go in 1994, upon Snapple’s sale to Quaker Oats. However, when Quaker sold Snapple to Triarc brands in 1997, they reinstated Wendy as the Snapple goodwill ambassador.