Get rid of the tax favorability of debt accumulated for acquisitions, and require them to have a higher ratio of their own capital investment to any debt used in acquisitions. That would scare off most private equity firms doing a quick cash grab and stealth liquidation.

Thank you for this, Laura. And thank you to Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren for calling out these vampires. It always amazes me that people who know nothing about an industry think they can “disrupt” it, when all they do is fuck it up worse...

“Fairly popular” might be stretching things a bit, but then again I did spend a lot of time hate-lurking there. I’m sad to see it go, especially for it to be jobbed like this.

I don’t know about y’all but the wording of this letter (as printed in the HuffPo article linked below) just screams “We are confident about…

If closing Splinter News was really about profits, they would have had some goodbyes, kept the site in the family for a little while, and folded some of the writers over to other blogs. Instead, they cut it, laid everyone off, and forbade the writers from other blogs from even mentioning it. The execs are doing it…

The fact that they didn’t even get a farewell post just felt like an extra gut punch for absolutely no reason.

Nope, it’s been explicitly prohibited:

Not to mentioning shutting down a fairly popular politics website while we are in the middle of a fucking Constitutional crisis unfolding right in front of our eyes

Since this is obliquely about Splinter’s demise, and we’re already talking about it in the comments, here’s something I would post there if it still existed.

Or hell, even an old school roasting of someone leaving the site, even if by leaving the site, it is leaving the group of G/O sites to an untimely death.

I wish your shithead executives would let you and your readers publicly mourn Splinter. It is missed.

Ashley, I’m glad you’re still here. I will miss your other colleagues. 

*sadly, I could not find a better quality video

my Lord, how many Swarovskis died to make those things

It just now Dawned on me what you did there.

Wow, the guy really is in an Ivory tower.

Especially if Trump is soundly defeated in 2020, rather than removed/dead/term limited. Once his legacy is clearer because a little time has passed, they will all wash their hands of him and act like everyone else is an asshole for not letting it go. Your redneck relatives will come back out of the woodwork all mad…