U.S. Politics

Wasn't it our current Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("Dr." Oz) who made it clear the only thing that proves a person 'matters' is contributing to the workforce?
 
Ru1977 said:
Wasn't it our current Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("Dr." Oz) who made it clear the only thing that proves a person 'matters' is contributing to the workforce?
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He did say something like that.

I was working on an article on some healthcare advancement or another last month, can't remember the specifics (healthcare's only about 10% of my work) but when the CEO I was interviewing said the phrase "Dr. Oz does have some good ideas" I instantly lost all interest in what the man was saying from that moment onward. The other exec on the Zoom call with us just deflated, like you could tell she'd told this guy to not bring that up in front of the journalist and he couldn't help himself. (I'm convinced you give almost every CEO in the country enough time, they'll out themselves as a fool or a fascist eventually. Someone in their org has to be there to tell them when to shut TF up in an interview.)
 
joshsquash729 said:
Not to mention many people can't work. My Mom is on disability because her spine has deteriorated to the point where even standing up causes her excruciating pain. I have a couple friends with various disabilities- chronic fatigue, long Covid, Charcot Marie Tooth, etc., some of them confined to wheelchairs or walkers. It's always been a point of contention with me how poorly folks with disabilities are treated in this country; accessibility and care is regional at best, and many of my friends getting SSDI barely make enough to live, let alone enough to have any extra to treat themselves to things. Not only that, but having to contend with all the folks saying they're either making it up or mooching off the government. They've all come to the realization at one point or another that, despite the base level pandering, the government would probably prefer a lot of disabled folks dead rather than provide them with enough care and service to live a meaningful life. Normally I'd at least be content knowing that they had Medicare/Medicaid to fall back on, but that won't really be a thing anymore before too long. So by keeping insurance tied to a job, they're literally dooming a large part of the population to, at best, a severely hindered quality of life.
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Dude, there's no 'probably' here. We're talking about the party that said you should let your old or sickly family members die of Covid because shutting down the economy for a few weeks was absolutely not acceptable to them. They also, as we've said, consistently want to tie your healthcare to your job. They are constantly referring to people in regards to how 'useful' they are to society. Republican politicians would 100% prefer you were dead than living but not working. Again, you are a slave to them. Nothing more. Property to be used and disposed of. It's insane to me that so many people can't see it when they aren't even shy about -saying- it.

Also, for some disabilities, trust me when I say Canada isn't any better. My wife has Long Covid and it's been completely debilitating. I've had to watch as her entire life fell apart and she went from being extremely active and outgoing to being essentially bed-bound with very small, unreliable bouts of being able to do things. And in Canada.. it's not even a 'real' disability. If I weren't providing for the family, she'd be homeless.
 
docsilence said:
He did say something like that.

I was working on an article on some healthcare advancement or another last month, can't remember the specifics (healthcare's only about 10% of my work) but when the CEO I was interviewing said the phrase "Dr. Oz does have some good ideas" I instantly lost all interest in what the man was saying from that moment onward. The other exec on the Zoom call with us just deflated, like you could tell she'd told this guy to not bring that up in front of the journalist and he couldn't help himself. (I'm convinced you give almost every CEO in the country enough time, they'll out themselves as a fool or a fascist eventually. Someone in their org has to be there to tell them when to shut TF up in an interview.)
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As someone who has to work with CEOs regularly, yes. Especially in tech, they are typically completely detached from reality, treated like wonderboys, and surrounded by sycophants who're only interested in pretending they never have a bad idea and making sure they're unaware of how poorly their companies are actually run. Bonus points if they unilaterally order the end of remote work flexibility while working remotely most of the time themselves. Bonus bonus points if they unilaterally order the end of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (to the financial detriment of their business) while having no idea what those actually are, or who benefits from them.
 
CTV said:
As someone who has to work with CEOs regularly, yes. Especially in tech, they are typically completely detached from reality, treated like wonderboys, and surrounded by sycophants who're only interested in pretending they never have a bad idea and making sure they're unaware of how poorly their companies are actually run. Bonus points if they unilaterally order the end of remote work flexibility while working remotely most of the time themselves. Bonus bonus points if they unilaterally order the end of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (to the financial detriment of their business) while having no idea what those actually are, or who benefits from them.
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Oh yeah. I actually took a huge pay cut to get out of tech after my third CEO in a row who had the common sense and business acumen of a kumquat. The dumbest motherfuckers I've ever met have been tech CEOs and it's not even close. When I write about healthcare, I'd say like, 25% of the CEOs are competent, if still psychopathic. Tech? Proof that stupid rises like hot air. I mean three CEOs in a row I wouldn't ask to feed my cats let alone run the company my career depended on.
 
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CTV said:
As someone who has to work with CEOs regularly, yes. Especially in tech, they are typically completely detached from reality, treated like wonderboys, and surrounded by sycophants who're only interested in pretending they never have a bad idea and making sure they're unaware of how poorly their companies are actually run.
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I read a post on Bluesky the other day that said something like, "Things all fell apart when CEOs stopped getting their news through the filter of their executive assistants and started using Twitter." Algorithmic social media has cooked people's brains—those at the top especially.
 
TheSameIdiot said:
I read a post on Bluesky the other day that said something like, "Things all fell apart when CEOs stopped getting their news through the filter of their executive assistants and started using Twitter." Algorithmic social media has cooked people's brains—those at the top especially.
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It's funny, I worked for one DECENT (not ethically decent, but of decent intelligence) tech CEO, and he regularly allowed himself to be called out on his bullshit by his hippy activist sister. I knew his executive assistant pretty well and she told me his sister would regularly say things like "you only think that way because you don't have to worry about money, try thinking about how normal people view it" a LOT. He was still a dimwit but he actually listened once in a while. He was also the CEO whose first words I'd heard him say was "I will never call this company a family. You have a family at home. We're a baseball team. People get traded, people change positions, nothing is permanent." He got forcibly shoved out by a venture capital buyout and the company, which was quietly successful, got absolutely curbstomped into the ground by bad leadership decisions a year after he left. I won't say he was a good CEO but he was the last one I worked for I might consider pissing on if he was on fire.

Every CEO I ran into after that would have a daily whinge-fest about something he heard on Twitter or that an investor had given him a hard time about.
 
The reality is that cream doesn't rise - shit floats. Practically everyone I've ever worked under in a high level position has been some type of absolute fucking idiot. Even if it just comes down to a greedy dipshit rich guy that quite literally has no idea how to even connect with regular people and thinks a 'regular life' costs basically nothing so why do we even really need a minimum wage? That sort of mentality.

It's staggering to me that, while I am reasonably intelligent, I have never worked under someone that I genuinely believed was smarter or more capable than me. Our system does not reward intelligence or ability. It rewards viciousness, callousness, and disregard for basic decency.
 
They only know force. It's the one tool in their bag and when people don't respond to it the way they want they don't know what to do except kick and scream and cry about the mean old media.
 
I've been saying for years now that since there is no possible way they could deport all the millions they supposedly want to, they will eventually wind up using them as slave labor.
 
jonaskane said:
I've been saying for years now that since there is no possible way they could deport all the millions they supposedly want to, they will eventually wind up using them as slave labor.
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I suppose that depends on how quickly citizens lose their power and/or how quickly citizens accept the idea of keeping people as slaves again.

In the interim, they're -selling- people into slavery (let's be clear, that's what's happening with these deportations) and outright stating that American citizens are the ones that should be the slave labour in the US.
 
I've already seen suggestions from MAGA on Facebook to turn 'those criminals' into slave labor.

It never ceases to amaze me how you can be one or two clicks away from total batshit crazy on FB.
 
jonaskane said:
I've already seen suggestions from MAGA on Facebook to turn 'those criminals' into slave labor.

It never ceases to amaze me how you can be one or two clicks away from total batshit crazy on FB.
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That doesn't surprise me, actually. Especially if they're reading the articles about how Trump deporting all the farm workers could end up causing borderline famine conditions. For people that just want their food, but also 'hate illegals' - makes sense to just say 'well, they're not human anyway so just use them for free labour until they die.'

I've long said that conservatives haven't changed. These are still the people that went to literal war to protect their ability to own other human beings.
 
www.theguardian.com

Musk’s AI firm forced to delete posts praising Hitler from Grok chatbot

The popular bot on X began making antisemitic comments in response to user queries
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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