Monday Open Thread

15 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. For all the talk about healthcare CEO mega-salaries, the baseball player Juan Soto just signed for an annual average of more than double the current top healthcare CEO annual pay, on a 15-year contract. Or, Soto's total package was about 6 times the expected total one-year payroll for the entire Colorado Rockies team. On top of all that, most baseball is kind of boring and definitely not consequential for most people.

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   1. Juan Soto doesn't earn his salary by putting shareholders' profits above the lives of the insured.  As for baseball being boring, well, to each his own.  I'll take the Dodgers' series win over the Bo Nix/Sean Payton lovefest in this town every day of every year. 

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      1. I did say "most baseball," for what that's worth. I'll check in for the last couple innings of a meaningful game. But as you said, to each their own.

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         1. "To each his/their own"…?..You guys must be liberals or something.

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            1. "They" as a singular is not new, but has been a singular pronoun since at least the late 1300s.  Shakespeare (Hamlet): “’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear the speech.”

               George Bernard Shaw: “No man goes to battle to be killed. . . . But they do get killed.”

               Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice) (1813) "I always delight in . . . cheating a person of their premeditated contempt."

               Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (1837): "The person, whoever it was, had come in so suddenly and with so little noise, that Mr. Pickwick had had no time to call out, or oppose their entrance."

               But leave it to the GOP to deny facts and history and claim an attack on . . . well, they'll figure it out later. 

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   2. In cases of extremely high pay it can seem outlandish, but from a labor standpoint, Juan Soto is part of the working class. He is paid by ownership and while he has claimed a huge sum for the value of his labor, he does not control the means of production. Now if he owns other businesses as many high earning sports figures do, then these roles are reversed in that context.

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      1. Soto's ultimate boss, Mets' owner Steve Cohen, is a multi-billionaire who has had to settle matters with the SEC for 9 and 10-figure settlements.  Soto ain't the bad guy in this.  That said, I'd use him as a DH and leave the fielding to others with better gloves.  

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         1. What's that, an earthquake? No, it's our old buddy Voyageur rolling over in his grave and cursing because we're talking on Pols about a $765 million designated hitter!

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            1. I'm okay with that.  I'm also okay with Ohtani's deal.  Not okay with lax enforcement of SEC regulations and federal "white collar" criminal statutes. 

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               1. I'm with you on what you're not OK with, spaceman. Entertainers make bank, no doubt, and T-Swift's latest tour just grossed $2 billion. I only brought up Soto in the first place to compare raw numbers and because both Soto's contract and health care CEO pay were trending news. Denial of health care is a scummy part of America's modern system, no two ways about it for me. I've got minor problems with money in sports when taxpayers fund the industries and because it's tougher for people of limited means to afford going to games, plus the high-dollar dickfight of the Comcast/Altitude dispute took Avs and Nuggets games off local TV for years. We can all avoid sports if we want, but for the most part can't avoid health issues.

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2. Mike Littwin at the Colorado Sun wonders how Democrats are going to act to resist Trump & his minions …. 

   I object to Littwin's sense of that we ought to be collectively embarrassed for actions of Gov. Jared Polis:

   Or as Jared Polis embarrasses himself, and anyone who innocently voted for him, by enthusiastically endorsing perhaps the craziest of all the wretches, RFK Jr. And now Polis watches — with enthusiasm? — as Trump announces nominations of RFK-adjacent crazies, most of them anti-COVID vaxxers, to run the FDA, NIH, CDC and other key positions meant to keep America healthy.

   This could be the time for Polis to say he might have made a mistake in endorsing RFK Jr., seeing what has immediately followed his nomination. Holding your breath for too long, though, can’t be good for your health.

   Even with Polis expressing his wishful thinking that the "good" points of RFK Jr. somehow are reason to be satisfied (or excited) about his nomination, I still think Polis was the better choice in comparison to Heidi Ganahl, Walker Stapleton, or the odd people from minor political parties on the 2022 and 2018 general election ballots. [the 283,340 voting for him in the 2018 primary when he beat Cary Kennedy, Michael Johnston, and Donna Lynne may have reason for embarrassment … but even that would be debatable]

   But more importantly … how do you answer Littwin's concluding question —

   So, how will Colorado Democrats define themselves in what couldn’t be a more critical time?

   This is a time of testing. And Colorado, a bright blue state in which Democrats hold every statewide office, will be one of the key states to stand in opposition to MAGA World.

   It’s a test Colorado can’t afford to fail.

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   1. I suggest Democrats stop listening to the same old bullshit, and try very hard to NOT act like our leaders. Why has LB/POS backed off from calling me a knee-jerk leftie extremist every time I have pointed out the deep shit this country is in… not about to be in…IN. Take this seriously, people. It isn't reality TV.

      This is not a time to engage in Mugwumpery.

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3. A dude named Luigi Mangione has been detained in the UnitedHealth CEO's killing. The NYT says he had a "manifesto" criticizing health care executives and a weapon in his possession. I'm definitely not saying he's the guy quite yet.

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   1. A customer at a McDonald’s alerted an employee who called local police. The customer recognized him from photos circulated by media. It’s great when someone who can probably really use it gets the reward money; $50,000 from the F.B.I. and another $10,000 from the N.Y.P.D. 

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   2. Going to be interesting … sounds like people have tracked down Luigi Mangione's background —

      Freddie Leatherbury hasn’t spoken to Mangione since they graduated in 2016 from Gilman School in Maryland. He said Mangione was a smart, friendly and athletic student who came from a wealthy family, even by the private school’s standards.

      “Quite honestly, he had everything going for him,” Leatherbury said.

      AP has something about the family:

      Luigi Mangione is one of 37 grandchildren of Nick Mangione Sr., according to a 2008 obituary.

      Mangione Sr. grew up poor in Baltimore’s Little Italy and rose after his World War II naval service to become a millionaire real estate developer and philanthropist,

       

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