#texas two-step

Today (Oct 16) I'm in Minneapolis, keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. Thursday (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

"I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." The now-famous quip from Robert Reich cuts to the bone of corporate personhood. Corporations are people with speech rights. They are heat-shields that absorb liability on behalf of their owners and managers.

But the membrane separating corporations from people is selectively permeable. A corporation is separate from its owners, who are not liable for its deeds – but it can also be "closely held," and so inseparable from those owners that their religious beliefs can excuse their companies from obeying laws they don't like:

https://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2014/10/13/hobby-lobby-and-closely-held-corporations/

Corporations – not their owners – are liable for their misdeeds (that's the "limited liability" in "limited liablity corporation"). But owners of a murderous company can hold their victims' families hostage and secure bankruptcies for their companies that wipe out their owners' culpability – without any requirement for the owners to surrender their billions to the people they killed and maimed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Corporations are, in other words, a kind of Schroedinger's Cat for impunity: when it helps the ruling class, corporations are inseparable from their owners; when that would hinder the rich and powerful, corporations are wholly distinct entities. They exist in a state of convenient superposition that collapses only when a plutocrat opens the box and decides what is inside it. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Key to corporate impunity is the rigged bankruptcy system. "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," so every successful civilization has some system for discharging debt, or it risks collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/bankruptcy-protects-fake-people-brutalizes-real-ones/

When you or I declare bankruptcy, we have to give up virtually everything and endure years (or a lifetime) of punitive retaliation based on our stained credit records, and even then, our student debts continue to haunt us, as do lawless scumbag debt-collectors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

When a giant corporation declares bankruptcy, by contrast, it emerges shorn of its union pension obligations and liabilities owed to workers and customers it abused or killed, and continues merrily on its way, re-offending at will. Big companies have mastered the Texas Two-Step, whereby a company creates a subsidiary that inherits all its liabilities, but not its assets. The liability-burdened company is declared bankrupt, and the company's sins are shriven at the bang of a judge's gavel:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit

Three US judges oversee the majority of large corporate bankruptcies, and they are so reliable in their deference to this scheme that an entire industry of high-priced lawyers exists solely to game the system to ensure that their clients end up before one of these judges. When the Sacklers were seeking to abscond with their billions in opioid blood-money and stiff their victims' families, they set their sights on Judge Robert Drain in the Southern District of New York:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/23/a-bankrupt-process/#sacklers

To get in front of Drain, the Sacklers opened an office in White Plains, NY, then waited 192 days to file bankruptcy papers there (it takes six months to establish jurisdiction). Their papers including invisible metadata that identified the case as destined for Judge Drain's court, in a bid to trick the court's Case Management/Electronic Case Files system to assign the case to him.

The case was even pre-captioned "RDD" ("Robert D Drain"), to nudge clerks into getting their case into a friendly forum.

If the Sacklers hadn't opted for Judge Drain, they might have set their sights on the Houston courthouse presided over by Judge David Jones, the second of of the three most corporate-friendly large bankruptcy judges. Judge Jones is a Texas judge – as in "Texas Two-Step" – and he has a long history of allowing corporate murderers and thieves to escape with their fortunes intact and their victims penniless:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#shoppers-choice

The Texas two-step. He saw her sitting alone sipping her drink slowly and her eyes were barren and so cold. She held her whiskey like an old lover. So tightly. The Austin, Texas Irish pubs filled with people seeking nothing and finding peace in the whiskey and the gin. He sat next to her and he asked her. Sleeping pretty flower, do you need a flesh drink? She turned to him and she looked him…

There's a song in the movie that I really liked but I can't find the name or artist for it!

Here's a section of the lyrics that I happen to remember.

"Living red rope velvet with the lipstick and lace. Just a millennial girl in a brand new age. I'm making waves. "

(I think I remember it correctly. I know for a fact at least most of this is right because I replayed the scene the song was in after finishing the movie so I can try and identify what song it is... But no luck).

i expect this song is probably called "waves" or "making waves" or maybe "I'm making waves" but idk.

The Greek Aisle Premiering Saturday, June 2, 8pm/7c. Starring Nikki DeLoach and Apostolis Totsikas. When Georgia travels to the Greek island of Corfu to finalize an inheritance, she unexpectedly discovers that marrying her handsome co-inheritor is the only way to meet the requirements.

Texas Two-Step Premiering Saturday, June 13, 8pm/7c. Starring Heather Hemmens and Brendan Penny. Olivia returns to Texas to help her aunt with her country music bar that's fallen on hard times and reconnects with Luke, her childhood sweetheart turned cowboy, and her passion for dancing.

The Love Heist Premieres Saturday, June 20, 8pm/7c. Starring Lyndsy Fonseca and Peter Porte. Celebrity stylist Kayli must team up with hotel security chief Mills to track down an iconic piece of fashion history after it goes missing on her watch before the Chicago Costume Gala.

This ship has almost no content, but in the little it has, there are a couple of jewels.

The person you ship Engie with: YEEHAW!