Internal pressure at my Fortune 50 company in Minneapolis has been boiling over so much that I'm not certain for how much longer its leadership team can remain quiet. Just about everyone is pushing for more information, hell even a statement or anything. It's just been radio silence because of concerns about shareholder value. But if saying nothing also reduces shareholder value then it's probably going to be a lose-lose situation.
Citizens United caused this. It's a decision that was bad for businesses if those businesses don't own any politicians. Corporations are forced to pay politicians or else they won't get the political favor they need to thrive. The business fundamentals aren't as relevant as they once were. So, any statements on things like the murders in Minneapolis can potentially help shareholder value but also harm government relationships because it's not the "correct" type of free speech. So, in the long run it's a net loss.
Ironic how the Citizens United decision was originally based on the concept of political donations being covered under the first amendment because corporations are people - yet the end result is the stifling of those same first amendment rights.
This is the reality exactly. There is an old-school belief that business should stay out of politics and that boycotting a business due to politics is pointless. The reality is the game was changed when we allowed untraceable money to enter politics from businesses.
This is especially stupid considering lots of businesses are owned and at least partially controlled by foreigners and foreign state actors. They've basically made the US the battle royale for worldwide corruption and bribery.
Bernie has made the abolishment of Citizens United his Raison d'être and correctly so. He knew that was the final move to bring forth total oligarchy and, as usual, no one listened or really understood because he is demonized by mainstream media and his message buried because he refuses to suckle at the corporate teet.
One of my favorite references. I have pretty bad Cassandra Syndrome right now as all of my friends and family ask how I predicted everything happening over a year ago while they were calling me histrionic. Yeah...sigh.
If you work for Target I can tell you I’ve deleted the app, found alternatives to shopping there and it was my primary grocer and home goods for over a decade.
Ok… Boomer? O.o did you just step out of 2011 or something?
There are no more ‘millennium’ first year college students as the youngest millennials are turning 30 this year and their kids are starting elementary school. We’re more than 10 years into Gen Z college students so you tried to put me down with late 00s, early 2010s digs and just shat yourself.
If you aren’t a bot, I hope this made you feel out of touch and ancient.
What I don't get about Citizens United is OK fine "coprorations are people too" and so get to donate; its weird logic and a bad decision. More importantly though, why can they use unlimited funds when normal voters are capped?
In fact the whole "unequal amplification is not a constitutional harm" is the biggest BS ever. Forget corps being allow to fund candidates just overturn the idea that "If spending is independent, it cannot corrupt the candidate" get rid of unlimited ads, films, billboards, “issue advocacy,” PAC spending.
So Apple can "buy" politicians, but only for the $20 lol
> Corporations need strong regulation or they will ALWAYS move toward maximizing profit.
At this point I think a lot of industries & businesses will simply need to be nationalized as we tax billionaires completely out of existence. That should be the baseline electoral position for any viable candidate as far as I'm concerned. Money out of politics and a 99% wealth tax on billionaires. I don't see how anything less would even start to really change things.
Agree, I don’t think certain businesses should exist. Competition works great for industries like tech, but there’s no competition in healthcare and private prisons.
Well, except tech startups, whose goals are to capture market share and/or conduct regulatory evasion until they have enough political clout or wealthy benefactors to capture those regulators instead. Amazon ran at razor-thin margins for a long time until their bet on cloud storage paid off, because investors were willing to forgo profits in the name of capturing the online retail market and consolidating it in one monopoly that could later exercise total control over that market.
Corporations aren't rational actors because they're controlled by irrational humans - and CEOs and Boards aren't conclusively or natively much more rational than your average mouthbreather on a golf course. If presented with a plausible-enough theory to justify them doing what they wanted to do anyway, they can ignore the evidence of how unpopular or unprofitable that idea is until someone with enough money to steal their customers comes around to force them to think otherwise.
Not really an exception, they are still betting on larger long term profit. They aren’t running on low margins with the expectation of that being the state of the business, it’s with a much larger long term expectation.
Another example of this is a large organization lowering prices below what a smaller competitor can do to drive them out of business. It lowers their margins short term with the hope that they do more damage to their competitors and reap much higher margins later that make up for it.
More like "Corporation majority stakeholders are trying to figure out whether their interests in being complicit with a fascist regime, have short-term downsides that offset".
They DESPERATELY want us plebs to shut up on all fronts, and keep buying from them.
Of course they are. Can’t offend dear leader and have a truth social post cause your stick to drop. Your life has always been, and always will be, worth less than the 1s and 0s that make up shareholder value.
I kinda wish some medium sized companies would speak out, be denigrated on TS as “probably Antifa or something” by the Fanta Menace, and then everyone laughs at him. And then more feel the courage to speak up.
In the wake of Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal officers in Minneapolis, a growing number of corporate leaders, employees and Minnesota-based companies are speaking out. Some are condemning the fatal shooting and President Donald Trump’s broader immigration enforcement in the state.
But the response has also exposed a familiar tension in corporate America: Powerful executives and public-facing companies often stay quiet until internal and external pressures converge — and until they believe speaking out together matters more than speaking loudly.
It's February, they figured they could post a Black History month story and peace out till Valentine's Day posting then write a joke about March break
But now they have to navigate the absurdity of the federal government murdering citizens in the street with poise and the nimble lythe athleticism of a water dancer
Worst of all the AI suggestions were to burn corpo shit
This is about perception management, right now everyone who might want to can view those videos and see with crystal clarity that this violation of our constitutionally guaranteed right happened in broad daylight, both citizens execute for no reason discernable or credible.
I fully expect that each of the ICE officers will be forced by the national outrage to suffer "official" reprimand for violating the civil rights (in some nebulously defined way), and there will be no specific charges related to murder or violating due process or any of the obvious criminality. Murder charges are already off the table.
What is the entire job of the media, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, BBC and every other agency is to soften the facts in hand. Domestically this is already accomplished Renee Good is no longer discussed - I listened to two weeks of discussions and she's purposefully not discussed anymore. There is still a tolerated discussion regarding Alex Pretti but the tolerance for mentioning either of them will be eliminated from the media cycle before 2.15.2026. Nothing can prevent that - within the media control cycle.
Even with Alex Pretti , there was this wild use of language where the discussion was "well clearly the concern with Mr. Pretti was where two <bad apple> agents clearly brought more aggression to the interaction than was absolutely necessary. The new ICE director then informs us that clearly ICE needs to maintain their ability to bring those tools to the table, but that clearly there may have been some overstep here.
After a couple of more days Alex Pretti's name will be dropped from the cycle.
After a few days more Minneapolis will be dropped from the news cycle.
Not long after that mentioning either will be corporately managed as being politically motivated.
It has already been framed as being seditious or insurrectionist to suggest that ICE or Customs was acting illegally or as a rogue agency, this importantly could be used as further justifications to impose harsher measures against political or civilian opposition targets , which is why governors like Governor Walz (MN) or Governor Sherril (NJ) or Governor Ferguson (WA), have a tightrope , to say anything overtly in opposition to the tactics - however egregious invites the implementation of the insurrection act, which could cause martial law across particular state and/or the United States more broadly.
At a certain point in time these companies will lose the ability to go back and change their views. That’s the danger of licking the boot. They should tread very carefully
Corporations are staying in their lane and just selling products and services
Zero reason to make a statement or design products that will just piss off a ton of people
anyone just has to look at what happened when Target rolled out rainbow wear that probably had a consumer market of under 1% of the U.S. population and tried to make it front and center in the store . Or bud light where some random marketing lady destroyed the brand permanently
Corporations have been buying favorable political treatment for laws / monopolies etc since before America was even discovered
You’re acting like it’s something new just because it was for a guy name Trump ?
Even in the early 1600/1700s corporations and sugar farm coalitions were bribing colonial governors to ignore regulations and allocate favorable land to their trade groups etc
No one cares about political donations
Do you go to the grocery store and ask where the meat was butchered to make sure those guys didn’t donate to a political you don’t like or where the cows were raised , maybe someone bought off a political for favorable tax assessments for their farms
Why would anyone care how a slimy corporation responds to Current Thing. I couldn't care less that a company hasn't taken a public stance on the MN riots. They're all shit that will say anything to benefit their own interests.
They should be, because Pretti got his ass kicked by the authorities, armed himself, rejoined the fray, intervened in a heated situation, and got shot.
He didn't "deserve" it, but you don't go hands on with the authorities like that when you're packing heat: you flee.
Those insisting this was a "murder" got way ahead of their skis, at least corporates are cautious.
im-ba | 15 hours ago
Internal pressure at my Fortune 50 company in Minneapolis has been boiling over so much that I'm not certain for how much longer its leadership team can remain quiet. Just about everyone is pushing for more information, hell even a statement or anything. It's just been radio silence because of concerns about shareholder value. But if saying nothing also reduces shareholder value then it's probably going to be a lose-lose situation.
Citizens United caused this. It's a decision that was bad for businesses if those businesses don't own any politicians. Corporations are forced to pay politicians or else they won't get the political favor they need to thrive. The business fundamentals aren't as relevant as they once were. So, any statements on things like the murders in Minneapolis can potentially help shareholder value but also harm government relationships because it's not the "correct" type of free speech. So, in the long run it's a net loss.
Ironic how the Citizens United decision was originally based on the concept of political donations being covered under the first amendment because corporations are people - yet the end result is the stifling of those same first amendment rights.
Strict_Weather9063 | 14 hours ago
Buckley V. Vallejo caused this, Citizens United compounded the problem. Corporations need to be stripped of right and returned to their proper place.
Jkuz | 12 hours ago
This is the reality exactly. There is an old-school belief that business should stay out of politics and that boycotting a business due to politics is pointless. The reality is the game was changed when we allowed untraceable money to enter politics from businesses.
hahaha01 | 11 hours ago
FEC vs Beaumont is the way we fight this.
Dugen | 8 hours ago
This is especially stupid considering lots of businesses are owned and at least partially controlled by foreigners and foreign state actors. They've basically made the US the battle royale for worldwide corruption and bribery.
pghreddit | 12 hours ago
Bernie has made the abolishment of Citizens United his Raison d'être and correctly so. He knew that was the final move to bring forth total oligarchy and, as usual, no one listened or really understood because he is demonized by mainstream media and his message buried because he refuses to suckle at the corporate teet.
MGFT3000 | 6 hours ago
He is Cassandra
pghreddit | 6 hours ago
One of my favorite references. I have pretty bad Cassandra Syndrome right now as all of my friends and family ask how I predicted everything happening over a year ago while they were calling me histrionic. Yeah...sigh.
No_Goose6779 | 3 hours ago
Cassanders.
MGFT3000 | 3 hours ago
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 It was right there, and I totally missed it.
Canacarirose | 12 hours ago
If you work for Target I can tell you I’ve deleted the app, found alternatives to shopping there and it was my primary grocer and home goods for over a decade.
ZekeZonker | 7 hours ago
French shareholder-owned Target only has over-priced foofy crap idiot millennium first-year female college students buy.
I've been in Target maybe 2x's in my life way back in the 70's and 80's.
Canacarirose | an hour ago
Ok… Boomer? O.o did you just step out of 2011 or something?
There are no more ‘millennium’ first year college students as the youngest millennials are turning 30 this year and their kids are starting elementary school. We’re more than 10 years into Gen Z college students so you tried to put me down with late 00s, early 2010s digs and just shat yourself.
If you aren’t a bot, I hope this made you feel out of touch and ancient.
SirCliveWolfe | 8 hours ago
What I don't get about Citizens United is OK fine "coprorations are people too" and so get to donate; its weird logic and a bad decision. More importantly though, why can they use unlimited funds when normal voters are capped?
In fact the whole "unequal amplification is not a constitutional harm" is the biggest BS ever. Forget corps being allow to fund candidates just overturn the idea that "If spending is independent, it cannot corrupt the candidate" get rid of unlimited ads, films, billboards, “issue advocacy,” PAC spending.
So Apple can "buy" politicians, but only for the $20 lol
digitalnomad_909 | 4 hours ago
Best answer Citizens United is destroying the fabric of the US.
Ell2509 | 14 hours ago
Corporate America is lacking a spine over everything related to Trump.
There, fixed it.
syn-ack-fin | 12 hours ago
Corporations have one reason for existing, profit. The only ethics they have relate to their ability to maximize profit.
Case in point, Moderna develops life saving vaccines, they are pulling away from vaccine trials because of current politics:
> You cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the U.S. market
Corporations need strong regulation or they will ALWAYS move toward maximizing profit.
NihiloZero | 10 hours ago
> Corporations need strong regulation or they will ALWAYS move toward maximizing profit.
At this point I think a lot of industries & businesses will simply need to be nationalized as we tax billionaires completely out of existence. That should be the baseline electoral position for any viable candidate as far as I'm concerned. Money out of politics and a 99% wealth tax on billionaires. I don't see how anything less would even start to really change things.
syn-ack-fin | 7 hours ago
Agree, I don’t think certain businesses should exist. Competition works great for industries like tech, but there’s no competition in healthcare and private prisons.
kylco | 12 hours ago
Well, except tech startups, whose goals are to capture market share and/or conduct regulatory evasion until they have enough political clout or wealthy benefactors to capture those regulators instead. Amazon ran at razor-thin margins for a long time until their bet on cloud storage paid off, because investors were willing to forgo profits in the name of capturing the online retail market and consolidating it in one monopoly that could later exercise total control over that market.
Corporations aren't rational actors because they're controlled by irrational humans - and CEOs and Boards aren't conclusively or natively much more rational than your average mouthbreather on a golf course. If presented with a plausible-enough theory to justify them doing what they wanted to do anyway, they can ignore the evidence of how unpopular or unprofitable that idea is until someone with enough money to steal their customers comes around to force them to think otherwise.
syn-ack-fin | 11 hours ago
Not really an exception, they are still betting on larger long term profit. They aren’t running on low margins with the expectation of that being the state of the business, it’s with a much larger long term expectation.
Another example of this is a large organization lowering prices below what a smaller competitor can do to drive them out of business. It lowers their margins short term with the hope that they do more damage to their competitors and reap much higher margins later that make up for it.
EuenovAyabayya | 6 hours ago
> Corporations have one reason for existing, profit.
Ackshually it's to limit individual shareholder liability, as part and parcel of that maximizing of profit.
philomathie | 10 hours ago
This is a very American way of looking at the world, and exactly why you are in this mess.
syn-ack-fin | 7 hours ago
Your comment offers no info. Can you expand on that? Where in the world do companies follow ethics rather than profit without heavy regulation?
philomathie | 12 minutes ago
Countries with a strong sense of moral and social responsibility. You see it all the time in the Netherlands.
NEBanshee | 7 hours ago
More like "Corporation majority stakeholders are trying to figure out whether their interests in being complicit with a fascist regime, have short-term downsides that offset".
They DESPERATELY want us plebs to shut up on all fronts, and keep buying from them.
AngryRepublican | 13 hours ago
I don’t fucking care for anyone “threading a needle” on the topic of fascist murder.
Lagneaux | 13 hours ago
Their plan is "if we stay REALLY still and quiet, maybe they will go away"
erublind | 12 hours ago
Anne Frank tried that strategy, it did not pan out.
BassmanBiff | 10 hours ago
Not sure that's a great comparison when these companies actually have some power here
1wrx2subarus | 8 hours ago
Say what? Did Corporations have to thread a needle on WWII? Imagine putting that in a CEOs speech!!
I’d argue the only ones that did that were those that were complicit which included Ford, IBM, Hugo Boss, BMW, Volkswagen, and quite a few others.
I mean it doesn’t get much worse than IBM who provided the counting machines for concentration camps.
EuenovAyabayya | 6 hours ago
Nobody should be expecting faceless corporations to lead them out of anything.
InnerWrathChild | 15 hours ago
Of course they are. Can’t offend dear leader and have a truth social post cause your stick to drop. Your life has always been, and always will be, worth less than the 1s and 0s that make up shareholder value.
MRSN4P | 14 hours ago
I kinda wish some medium sized companies would speak out, be denigrated on TS as “probably Antifa or something” by the Fanta Menace, and then everyone laughs at him. And then more feel the courage to speak up.
NothaBanga | an hour ago
MOD pizza had an ad at the register that claimed they have the "Good Kind of Ice." They changed their single stall restrooms to all genders.
Quite tongue in cheek.
[OP] yahoonews | 15 hours ago
From NBC News:
In the wake of Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal officers in Minneapolis, a growing number of corporate leaders, employees and Minnesota-based companies are speaking out. Some are condemning the fatal shooting and President Donald Trump’s broader immigration enforcement in the state.
But the response has also exposed a familiar tension in corporate America: Powerful executives and public-facing companies often stay quiet until internal and external pressures converge — and until they believe speaking out together matters more than speaking loudly.
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/corporate-america-threading-needle-respond-100000806.html
Aska_Feld | 14 hours ago
Putting designer wallpaper over the wasteland of their (lack of) morals.
Magjee | 12 hours ago
It's February, they figured they could post a Black History month story and peace out till Valentine's Day posting then write a joke about March break
But now they have to navigate the absurdity of the federal government murdering citizens in the street with poise and the nimble lythe athleticism of a water dancer
Worst of all the AI suggestions were to burn corpo shit
/$
Dry_Tourist_3126 | 14 hours ago
bruh yeah it’s wild how they try to play both sides just to avoid losing customers. pick a side already lol
_Damien_X | 11 hours ago
They probably see what Budweiser tried to do and failed miserably and are scared to fail the same way.
Elrox | 10 hours ago
They should instead look at Tesla which continues to inexplicably fail upwards.
markth_wi | 13 hours ago
This is about perception management, right now everyone who might want to can view those videos and see with crystal clarity that this violation of our constitutionally guaranteed right happened in broad daylight, both citizens execute for no reason discernable or credible.
I fully expect that each of the ICE officers will be forced by the national outrage to suffer "official" reprimand for violating the civil rights (in some nebulously defined way), and there will be no specific charges related to murder or violating due process or any of the obvious criminality. Murder charges are already off the table.
What is the entire job of the media, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, BBC and every other agency is to soften the facts in hand. Domestically this is already accomplished Renee Good is no longer discussed - I listened to two weeks of discussions and she's purposefully not discussed anymore. There is still a tolerated discussion regarding Alex Pretti but the tolerance for mentioning either of them will be eliminated from the media cycle before 2.15.2026. Nothing can prevent that - within the media control cycle.
Even with Alex Pretti , there was this wild use of language where the discussion was "well clearly the concern with Mr. Pretti was where two <bad apple> agents clearly brought more aggression to the interaction than was absolutely necessary. The new ICE director then informs us that clearly ICE needs to maintain their ability to bring those tools to the table, but that clearly there may have been some overstep here.
After a couple of more days Alex Pretti's name will be dropped from the cycle.
After a few days more Minneapolis will be dropped from the news cycle.
Not long after that mentioning either will be corporately managed as being politically motivated.
It has already been framed as being seditious or insurrectionist to suggest that ICE or Customs was acting illegally or as a rogue agency, this importantly could be used as further justifications to impose harsher measures against political or civilian opposition targets , which is why governors like Governor Walz (MN) or Governor Sherril (NJ) or Governor Ferguson (WA), have a tightrope , to say anything overtly in opposition to the tactics - however egregious invites the implementation of the insurrection act, which could cause martial law across particular state and/or the United States more broadly.
The death of truth.
Nofanta | 13 hours ago
Yea well corporations depend on investors and no investor wants a company doing something unrelated to making money like making political statements.
MGFT3000 | 6 hours ago
But they’re ok with them funding the political crimes
Nofanta | 6 hours ago
Corporations buy influence from politicians so the company can raise more money from investors.
MGFT3000 | 6 hours ago
I understand. I’m saying it’s disgusting. There’s something very broken in a system that cares only about making money whatever the cost to humanity.
PrettyEnvironment936 | 13 hours ago
lol yeah, you'd think they're prepping for a tactical mission, not a weekend hike or something
Hope25777 | 12 hours ago
At a certain point in time these companies will lose the ability to go back and change their views. That’s the danger of licking the boot. They should tread very carefully
shatterdaymorn | 11 hours ago
The ads social media is putting on their death videos should be illegal.
Profits from murder and this asshole brags.
JessicaSavitch | 11 hours ago
No they’re not. They’re showing us who they are…
CaptBFPierce | 11 hours ago
The Fascist is the Capitalist's best friend.
geeves_007 | 11 hours ago
When saying "We oppose killing protesters" might hurt shareholder returns.
End stage capitalism
ZekeZonker | 7 hours ago
BOYCOTT ALL CORPORATIONS
MGFT3000 | 6 hours ago
Is anyone keeping a list of corporations that have spoken out against it?
The only one I know of is Patagonia.
CJspangler | 12 hours ago
Corporations are staying in their lane and just selling products and services
Zero reason to make a statement or design products that will just piss off a ton of people
anyone just has to look at what happened when Target rolled out rainbow wear that probably had a consumer market of under 1% of the U.S. population and tried to make it front and center in the store . Or bud light where some random marketing lady destroyed the brand permanently
WillBottomForBanana | 10 hours ago
Why is their lane donating o the presidential inauguration fund?
CJspangler | 10 hours ago
Corporations have been buying favorable political treatment for laws / monopolies etc since before America was even discovered
You’re acting like it’s something new just because it was for a guy name Trump ?
Even in the early 1600/1700s corporations and sugar farm coalitions were bribing colonial governors to ignore regulations and allocate favorable land to their trade groups etc
No one cares about political donations
Do you go to the grocery store and ask where the meat was butchered to make sure those guys didn’t donate to a political you don’t like or where the cows were raised , maybe someone bought off a political for favorable tax assessments for their farms
youappeartobeajerk | 13 hours ago
Why would anyone care how a slimy corporation responds to Current Thing. I couldn't care less that a company hasn't taken a public stance on the MN riots. They're all shit that will say anything to benefit their own interests.
wyocrz | 7 hours ago
They should be, because Pretti got his ass kicked by the authorities, armed himself, rejoined the fray, intervened in a heated situation, and got shot.
He didn't "deserve" it, but you don't go hands on with the authorities like that when you're packing heat: you flee.
Those insisting this was a "murder" got way ahead of their skis, at least corporates are cautious.