I feel it more wanting to see it as a black and white issue than something with a ton of nuance. This deal had to have been complex, and for whatever reason they willingly sold to Unilever, I doubt any of us commenting here will ever understand. I wouldn’t want to be in their situation.

If people want to point out areas where they think they could have done better, let’s discuss it. But all we tend to get is “rich people bad.” I won’t totally disagree with that statement, but it seems like they have also done a lot of good for Vermont and beyond. They’ve given over 70 million in grants, but so what, right? Why not 71 million?!

I just think we’ve got better people to be mad at now than some hippies that went corporate. To just write off what they did because they got personal benefits as well is likely hypocritical. I never see these screen names talking about what direct action they’re part of or what solutions they’ve got. A little funny how that is.

If they want to complain or downvote, that’s their prerogative, but I bet it won’t accomplish as much good as what Ben and Jerry have done. 😉

I did, and that was why I felt it was a decent source.

The article is dispelling the part of the mythos, created by the public with some help from Ben and Jerry, that the sale was purely a legal issue of that they were forced to sell due to (mistakenly, according to the author’s take) believing they had to do what the majority of shareholders wanted them to do, which was to sell to Unilever, as their stock had lost 50% of its previous value.

That may be true or not, I’m not a business lawyer. But the law itself wasn’t so much the interest I had in this source. With it being written as a legal paper, I’m going to lean that the background they are giving is pretty impartial facts on what actually did take place. The history of the sale and why it occured is what is relevant to the point I’m attempting to make here, disagreeing with people say Ben and Jerry deserved this treatment from Unilever for being sellouts. That’s a moral and ethical argument, not a legal one, so all the legal stuff here is moot to the conversation I’m having.

The Ben and Jerry’s shareholder and Unilever prior to the buyout both wanted to ax the social missions of the founders to keep those profits for themselves. In response, they reached what they felt was a deal beneficial to all 3 parties, themselves, the shareholders, and Unilever, who was going to buy the company one way or another. In return for cooperation, Ben and Jerry ensured their social programs lived for another 25 years. My thoughts are that is a positive accomplishment and that rather than being greedy stakeholders, they extended their contributions to the betterment of society, while making Unilever do that, the exact opposite of what they would have done on their own. You guys want to crap on them, but they did an additional quarter century of good, at least partly at the expense of a megacorp that would not have done so. This is the kind of thing all you guys cheer here, but when executives do what you talk of doing, you still badmouth them.

Leftists have no bigger enemy than gatekeeping leftists. Ben and Jerry have given over $70,000,000 away, and I’m sure a good chunk of that was taken out of Unilever at this point. How’s that a dick move on their part?

Why are so many people here mad at Ben and Jerry while they tried to do the best they could?

The decision to sell sounds a lot more grey than comments are playing it off as. If people want to debate if they ever should have taken the company public that’s one thing, but B&J seem to have tried to make the best of their financial and legal situations while being beholden to shareholders, and laws that would have helped prevent being sold to Unilever didn’t exist in Vermont until over a decade after the sale.

Instead of being forcefully bought out, removed by Unilever, and had all their social agendas canceled immediately, they made a deal to continue to be able to serve in some capacity after the acquisition. They remained active with the company for 25 years, so they seemed to do a lot with their “empty promise” they were given by Unilever.

This is the summary I read on the story of their sale to Unilever. It doesn’t really support one side or the other, so take what you will from it, but treating them like jerks really doesn’t feel called for.

Thanks for the correction. I never trust my own memory anymore. 🤪

I learn so much important stuff from them. I listened to BtB for a long time and would check out different ICHH segments, but now I listen to near all of them. The Darien Gap stories were so amazing, I think everyone should listen to those, and It’s the only place I ever hear about things like Myanmar and what actually goes on at the border camps in America.

I think the NPS one was Garrison and the other one was Mia. The Atwater episodes were very helpful in seeing how we got to where we are with political news and social media today.

I’m always here, I just only try to post when I have something useful to add that I feel people would likely be receptive to.

Here are some links for you:

It Could Happen Here

BlueAnon: Alt National Park Service (This is the one I think discussed the ideas in my comment.)

BlueAnon: Assassination False Flag and Liberal Election Denial (This is basically the Part 1, but not really necessary to listen to first. I started with the Alt NPS one since that sounded more interesting.)

Was listening to a podcast this morning discussing BlueAnon and why people believe in conspiracy theories so readily. There was a quote discussing actively believing or non-believing being so much more attractive than basic disbelief. The activity makes us feel like we have some power or control over a situation instead of it just being an immutable way things are.

There was a decent bit of sympathy for the conspiracy believers, because many of them just are grasping for some shred of hope, as unbelievable as it may be. If our choices got us into our bad situation, surely if we make better choices, we can get ourselves out. If we think 99% of us are systematically entrapped in an oppressive system led by the most powerful, where is our hope?

The article was not as hopeless as I expected, which is a little reassuring. It was just slightly over half saying homelessness is an individualistic issue, while 40+% said it’s systematic, so we’re not too far off the deep end. The victim blaming leans hard conservative, as you probably suspect already.

Seeing the homeless can be bothersome to people for a variety of reasons, but I’d have to think if you’re also part of the same group that leans against removing those social safety nets while also being in the same group that limits workers protections and preventing us from having healthcare provided to us as a human right, there’s some self-aware part of the subconcious that knows they’re one misstep, accident, or medical event from them being there, and seeing these people can be a painful reminder that those face-eating leopards are out there waiting.

I’ve been giving it my best. I keep learning more history to see even this is nothing really new. I get more disappointed that we never learn for long.

I didn’t expect anyone to make me laugh on this topic, so congrats!

My pleasure. It’s a big disappointment to me that with a story this consequential and as many news outlets as we have, that people really have to search out stuff this basic. The pictures make it instantly clear what is going on and why.

I am also concerned with migrant detention being used to do what is known as prison gerrymandering, especially with Trump trying to hold a mid decade census which has never been done. I see no other reason to do such an undertaking while cutting aid.

Here’s a breakdown by CNN comparing present and proposed districts.

These look to be the most egregious changes:

Here’s a model on how gerrymandering works for anyone that needs it.

A huge advantage of gerrymandering is after they do it, one would need to wait a few election cycles to build the evidence of the voter suppression, and by then the government can be packed with people supporting the suppression anyway.

He’s got great taste in animal friends! 🦉

That wasn’t my takeaway from the article. This sounded like it would be pooled and divided up to keep as many of the small regional stations operating as possible, and they acknowledge that they won’t all make it but they want to save what they can so these pockets of the country are specifically not left to only be served by mainstream for-profit media.

The money is not aimed at PBS and NPR, better-funded national organizations that will survive without government support. Instead, the Knight Foundation and others are focused on the scores of public radio and TV stations that have historically received more than 30 percent of their support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a taxpayer-backed company that announced it would shut down because of the funding cuts. Many of those stations are in rural areas, like remote regions of Alaska and Kansas, where residents don’t have access to alternate sources of news and information.

If anyone is truly interested in seeing NPR/PBS being saved in it’s current scope and hasn’t yet read the article, I thought it was very worth the read. It’s NYT, but a gift link so you can read it all without any hassle.

They ran the clock out successfully for the legislative session, but another session starts tomorrow and that will start the attempt to pass it over again.

“This will teach you not to enter our country illegally,” Colmenares said one ICE official told him in Spanish. He wanted to explain that wasn’t true in his case but could tell there was no point. He got off the plane and was loaded onto a bus to prison.

Several of those interviewed said suicide crossed their minds. Ramos said he thought: “I’d rather die or kill myself than to keep living through this experience. Being woken up every day at 4 a.m. to be insulted and beaten. For wanting to shower, for asking for something so basic. … Hearing your brothers getting beaten, crying for help.”

Four talked about a man who started cutting himself and writing messages on the walls and sheets with his blood: “Stop hitting us.” “We are fathers.” “We are brothers.” “We are innocent people.”

None of the men in the article did anything wrong. Even the ones that “entered illegally” were required to do so by US law. They were in compliance with the instructions they were given when they got here. And this is what they got for it.

Yes, seeking asylum is legal. Asylum seekers must be in the U.S. or at a port of entry (an airport or an official land crossing) to request the opportunity to apply for asylum.

"There’s no way to ask for a visa in advance for the purpose of seeking asylum,” says Byrne. “You just have to show up.”

However, the Trump and Biden administrations have restricted access to seeking asylum at the border. Currently, asylum seekers are effectively blocked from exercising their right to request the fundamental protection of asylum. - Rescue.org

What makes someone considered to be here illegally is nothing more than what the government decides to make it illegal. When the people in charge are racist and cruel, that gives them a lot of freedom to deny a lot of freedom. With him talking about stripping people of legally granted citizenship or natural born citizenship (Elon, Rosie O’Donnell, Zohran Mamdani), what keeps any of us safe from being taken away if we say or do the wrong thing?

Despite whatever position you may have on these people or them being here, this isn’t a just way to treat anyone. This is cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

My biggest gripe with the rise in violent talk is that it comes off like those commenters trying to get other people riled up into do that violence for them.

If you feel the justice system has failed and there is no other recourse, than that is one thing. But I keep seeing all these comments saying “why aren’t you out there doing anything about it?” and my first thought is always “well I haven’t seen your face on the news…” As far as I’ve seen it’s still all right wing nutters doing all the violence. If you aren’t out there doing something dangerous, why are you here telling others to go do that thing while you sit at home?

You’d call someone a hypocrite if they were on here every day telling other commenters they should feed the homeless, but you found out they don’t volunteer or donate or whatever. But I got to scroll past a bunch of keyboard warriors on every political or news thread throwing tantrums about why “nobody is doing what must be done.” Justified or not, if people start going after others, it’s going to go badly for both sides. If you won’t put your money where your mouth is, why are we all forced to read it?

If you’re serious, spouting off about it on a public forum is pretty stupid. If you’re not serious, you’re making the rest of us look stupid to anyone checking out this platform. I feel that’s a pretty fair assessment without judging your opinions or anyone else’s. We’re all wrestling internally with where our limits of tolerance are these days, but we can talk with each other productively about it, or we can rant and rave like a bunch of violent cavemen, but I know which one of those environments I’d rather be in.

In my HOA almost all of the board members own multiple units and they don’t even live in our neighborhood. I know one is a realtor, as she sold me my place, and another is just an investor.

They’re not always the most pleasant people, but they do an ok job the majority of the time. People seem to hate owning a house but still getting told no on things.

I don’t know if they actually vote multiple times, but I think we’ve had less than a half dozen rule changes in the almost 20 years I’ve been there.

They have a vested financial interest in making the neighborhood as attractive and successful as the rest of us. While their motivation is purely a financial interest, the petty and self-centered things I’ve seen my fellow residents try to demand is crazier than anything our board has actually done.

I imagine so. Everyone is looking to “see results,” but for the majority that is just going to mean make them invisible, while for the actual homeless, the answer is much more complicated and less popular with a lot of other people.

It’s very disappointing, but I don’t know how you get good people in a job like that. With so much responsibility, up to having people’s lives in your hands, while having to usually reach some type of consensus with other people, half of whom act like it’s their job to make you fail, and having the majority of the population second guess you on every action you take or don’t take, I’d never want that job.

With power consolidated into so few people in a top down power structure, it may only leave bull headed know it alls and egomaniacs in those positions. Add in our current technocrats pushing AI and this is the slop I think we’re going to start seeing much more often.

I commented in another post today about San Francisco’s mayor canceling his personal plan to address homelessness because after starting it against the advice of the actual people working to address homelessness, he tried a quick fix to Steve money to make the problem go away, he found the exact same issues those volunteers told him he was going to have. I know if I were stuck in the job, I’d be wanting to solicit experts for everything like this, but at the same time, your term would probably be over before you got anywhere.

Perhaps we’re just reaching the limits of what our current power structures can handle? It feels like everywhere is in just about the same mess these days.

Sounds like Grok is writing policy now.