Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label politics of business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics of business. Show all posts

Saturday, May 13, 2023

The Republican Central Planning Committee


Having met with some "success" at legislating profits over the last 20 or 30 years, Republicans aren't trying to hide their shit anymore - on practically anything.

We're "anti-woman"?
Fuckin' ay right we are - here's 200 new laws that have been either proposed or passed making it illegal to seek an abortion, illegal to travel out of state for an abortion, illegal to buy an abortion pill, illegal to help a woman with any of the above.

We're racist assholes?
Damn straight. We're busing brown immigrants - no matter their status - out of state - cuz we don't like them and we don't want them here.
We "back the blue" whenever they're stomping on brown people.

We're anti-democracy?
What was your first clue?
Closing precincts where lots of Democrats vote?
Making it OK for the Texas AG to throw out the polling results in the single largest Democrat-heavy county?
Moving to kill early and mail-in voting?
Eliminating college campus voting?

And on it goes ad infinitum, ad nauseam, but particularly on economic issues the last few months.

So is it any wonder they're making moves to permanently ensure profitability in a few of their favorite kinds of businesses, while trying to put up a facade of "getting to the bottom of this", and actually making it illegal to consider anything but good little fascist criteria when deciding what investments are best for a given client?


Opinion
The day free-market Republicans became Soviet economic planners

Can you remember when Republicans still believed in the free market?

It was sometime before Donald Trump started routine attacks on the “globalists” of Goldman Sachs and the leaders of large U.S. corporations; before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used tax policy to attack the Walt Disney Co. because it dared to disagree with his “don’t say gay” legislation; before congressional Republicans harassed social media companies and book publishers over alleged “censorship” of their views; before they threatened Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Major League Baseball over their support for voting rights; before they vowed to use federal resources to retaliate against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for backing a few Democrats; before Republican governors enacted laws overriding private employers’ coronavirus vaccination policies; and before GOP-led states moved to disrupt interstate commerce to block abortion access and morning-after pills.

This week brought the latest evidence that the former party of laissez-faire capitalism has reimagined itself in the image of a Soviet State Planning Committee. Republican lawmakers are now telling investors which businesses they can and can’t invest in — and which investment criteria they will be permitted to consider.

The House Oversight Committee staged a hearing to denounce asset managers for using “environmental, social and governance” criteria, or ESG, when making their investments — and to plot ways to stop investors from doing this terrible thing.

“An unelected cabal of global elites are using ESG, a woke economic strategy, to hijack our capitalist system,” declared an overwrought Steve Marshall, Alabama attorney general and one of two GOP expert witnesses at the anti-investor hearing. For those who didn’t understand him the first time, Marshall used the word “elites” 13 times and “woke” 20 times in his opening testimony.

The other GOP witness, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, declared that there exists a “conspiracy” of ESG-minded investors. He was particularly worried that “asset managers who collectively own significant percentages of utilities’ stock are improperly influencing the operations of those utilities.”

Imagine that! The shareholders who own a company are trying to influence its operations! Will nobody rid us of this capitalist menace?

Legislatures in several red states have passed laws, championed by oil, gas and coal companies, that essentially pull state pension funds from investment managers unless they invest in — you guessed it — oil, gas and coal companies. Similar laws bar pension plans from working with investment firms that use ESG standards when deciding whether to invest in companies that trash the planet, abuse their workers or kill their customers. Led by Marshall and Reyes, 25 state attorneys general sued the Biden administration to block a regulation that allows retirement-plan investors to consider ESG standards. The rule doesn’t mandate that investors do so. It merely gives them the option.

The Democrats’ witness, Illinois treasurer Michael Frerichs, called the Republicans’ schemes “anti-free market and anti-investor.” The GOP officials would block asset managers from even considering whether a car company “is aligned with market expectations and preparing for the shift to electric vehicles,” whether a pharmaceutical company “has exposure to massive lawsuits because of its role in the opioid epidemic” or whether “health-care companies understaff their operations and jeopardize the safety of patients.” Said Frerichs: “ESG is simply additional information that investment professionals use to assess risk and return prospects.”

Apparently, a lot of investors agree with him, because the accountancy PwC expects ESG-related assets under management to grow to $33.9 trillion by 2026, or about one-fifth of the worldwide asset-management total. ESG, lamented Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), “is gaining ground on Wall Street.”

And Republicans are determined to stop the free market — no matter how much it costs.

A study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a Fed economist, for example, calculated that an anti-ESG law in Texas will cost the state $303 million to $532 million in additional interest annually. The Kansas Public Employees Retirement System said anti-ESG legislation there could cause more than $1 billion in losses from early sale of assets and reduce returns by $3.6 billion over a decade. Public pension systems in Arkansas said an anti-ESG bill there would cause them to lose at least $37 million per year.

In the end, the GOP’s anti-capitalist binge is about culture, not economics. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) expressed his concern that ESG considerations would work against “certain disfavored groups in our society. People don’t like men. People don’t like people of European background.” ESG investors, he argued, “are the type of people who judge people by where their great-great-grandparents came from.” Other Republicans on the panel used their time to denounce the perceived “woke” wrongs of JPMorgan Chase, Nike, Anheuser-Busch and others.

Frerichs, a Democrat, pointed out the absurdity “of me defending the free market against a Republican legislature trying to have a planned economy mandating what businesses have to invest in.”

But the irony was lost on Comer, who tried to draw a link between his anti-capitalist crusade and his simultaneous attempt to prove wrongdoing by President Biden and his family. “We just had a press conference and showed bank records that showed the Biden family getting millions of dollars from places like China,” he said. “I wonder what types of ESG policies China” has.

China doesn’t have ESG standards, Mr. Chairman. It’s an authoritarian country with a state-run economy. Our free-market economy, which lets investors make choices free of the heavy hand of government, is vastly superior. I remember when Republicans used to think so, too.

When he isn’t laying waste to the capitalist system as a whole, Comer has been trying his all to take down a particular subset of capitalists: those with the surname “Biden.”

The chief Hunter hunter in the House, Comer had for weeks been hyping his investigation into business dealings by Hunter Biden and numerous other Bidens, suggesting that he finally had the goods on the “big guy” himself, President Biden.

“Joe Biden’s going to have a lot of explaining to do,” Comer teased on Fox News on April 11, promising a blockbuster news conference within two weeks. He claimed his subpoenas of bank records had uncovered “influence peddling” at high levels.

A week later, he claimed to have evidence that “10 or 12 Biden family members” were involved in “taking money from our adversaries around the world” and that “these adversaries were getting something in return” from Joe Biden.

On April 23, he told Fox News that he would “very soon” have a news conference at which he would detail the “influence peddling scheme” that he now claimed involved “at least 12” Bidens. Tossing out the words “launder,” “deceive the IRS” and “foreign agent,” he said multiple Bidens should be indicted, and he teased that the president himself might be “compromised.”

Then, on Tuesday, Comer told Fox News that “tomorrow is going to be judgment day for the Biden administration, the Biden White House.”

And so, after a month of hype, Comer and other Oversight Committee Republicans walked into the House television studio Wednesday and revealed … a whole lot of nothing.

He had not presented any evidence of wrongdoing by the president. He hadn’t presented evidence that the elder Biden — “the big guy” — had any involvement in his son Hunter’s businesses. Comer’s months of digging through bank records had found more than $10 million in payments from companies run by foreign nationals that went to Biden family members and business associates and their companies. But Comer produced no evidence that these payments were illegal or that any official government actions were taken in exchange.

The only thing he had to offer was more innuendo. “It would be hard for me to believe” that there was no official quid pro quo, he said, and “we believe that the president has been involved.” Said Comer: “We’re going to continue to look.”

After unwrapping his nothingburger, Comer gave the first question to a friendly reporter from the Murdoch New York Post. But even he sounded skeptical. Comer gave the second question to the Epoch Times, a far-right publication that traffics in conspiracy theories.

The reviews, even from the right, were savage. “I’m not impressed with James Comer’s Biden bombshell,” tweeted former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka.

Geraldo Rivera said Comer and colleagues were “struggling to find direct evidence of criminal conduct or corruption.” He said the investigators need to “put up … or shut up.”

On “Fox & Friends,” Comer got a dressing-down from host Steve Doocy. The charge of influence peddling is “just your suggestion,” he told Comer on Thursday morning. “You don’t actually have any facts to that point. You’ve got some circumstantial evidence. And the other thing is … there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.”

Comer had nothing. “Make no mistake, Joe Biden was involved,” he promised.

Just take his word for it.

On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), another avid Hunter hunter, offered this explanation for the latest failure to produce evidence of wrongdoing: “People that commit criminal acts try not to leave a paper trail.” So the lack of anything incriminating merely proves that the Bidens were very good criminals! “You have to infer these things,” Johnson told Fox Business. “You’re not necessarily going to get necessarily hard proof.”

Of course, if Comer is going to “infer” guilt based on the $10 million in foreign funds received by Biden family members and business associates over 15 years, he would also have to infer that Trump family members, who have received hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign payments since his election, are more guilty by orders of magnitude.

Alternatively, we can all infer that Comer is not very good at this, that Biden hasn’t done anything wrong — or, most likely, both.

Grand juries aren’t generally known for their comic timing, but you’ve got to give credit to the one that just indicted Rep. George Santos.

The jurors, sitting in Central Islip, N.Y., returned their indictment of the Long Island Republican on Tuesday, charging Santos with, among other things, “fraudulent application for and receipt of unemployment benefits.”

The very next day, House Republicans began debate on the House floor of H.R. 1163, the Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act.

One of the 35 co-sponsors of the bill? George Anthony Devolder Santos.

“The Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act takes much needed overdue action to recover fraudulently paid covid benefits … and prosecute the criminals responsible,” proclaimed the irony-challenged Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

If House Republicans really wanted to take a stand against unemployment fraud, they could expel Santos, who is accused of defrauding taxpayers of almost $25,000 in unemployment benefits during the pandemic while he earned a salary of approximately $120,000. But they need his vote.

Outside the courthouse after his arraignment Wednesday, Santos thanked House Republican leadership for standing by him. “I appreciate leadership for being patient,” he said, telling reporters, “I have to go back and vote tomorrow.”

And that he did. The House passed the unemployment fraud bill Thursday afternoon on a mostly party-line vote. Among the “ayes” was Santos.

There are three weeks to go until the United States defaults on its debt. Let’s check in on where Republican leaders stand.

“The solution to this problem lies with two people, the president of the United States … and the speaker of the House.” — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the White House driveway on May 9.

“That would come down really to Chuck Schumer and the president.” — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the White House driveway, two minutes later.

“Well, you might as well do it [default] now.” — Former president Donald Trump, May 10.

Odd how the GOP is suddenly all in for the government picking winners and losers.

Saturday, June 18, 2022

Ukraine


War is stupid. We've started to understand that human society falls apart unless we adhere to good, sound business principles - not the least of which is:

There are 3 kinds of people - employees, clients and vendors. It's really stoopid to go around killing any of them, because it decreases the prospects for the success of the enterprise.


‘In public there are only jingoistic voices’
How Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to divide Putin’s elites

Nearly four months into Moscow’s all-out war against Ukraine, Russian troops are making relative gains in the Donbas. By all appearances, however, the Kremlin has failed to realize the invasion’s original goals. And peace talks with Kyiv have ground to a halt. Meanwhile, back in Moscow, Russian elites have splintered into three camps — a “peace party,” a “war party,” and a “silent party” that somehow includes heavyweights like Moscow’s mayor and the prime minister. Meduza’s special correspondent Andrey Pertsev reports.

There are still a fair number of people among the Russian elite who support ending the war against Ukraine. According to three sources close to the Putin administration and one source close to the Cabinet, this “peace party” is currently hoping for Moscow and Kyiv to return to the negotiating table — despite the fact that talks have been virtually frozen since early April.

Prominent members of the “peace party” include VTB Bank CEO Andrey Kostin, Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov, and Sberbank CEO Herman Gref, Meduza’s sources said. Two sources also noted that this group’s position aligns with that of brothers Mikhail and Yury Kovalchuk, who are said to be members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

These five members of the “peace party” have all come under a variety of international sanctions following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But their hope is that some sanctions would be lifted if peace talks resumed, allowing Russia to re-enter international finance and tech markets.

That said, the two sources close to the Putin administration stressed that the “peace party” is in no way a united front, and that its members aren’t making any joint efforts to lobby for diplomatic negotiations: “All they have is a common understanding that the ‘special operation’ needs to end as soon as possible and [that they need] to look for some common ground in the West.”

Sergey Chemezov, Andrey Kostin, Herman Gref, and the Kovalchuk brothers did not respond to Meduza’s inquiries prior to publication. However, some of them have made public statements in recent weeks cautiously criticizing certain steps taken by the Russian leadership. For example, in a recent column for RBC, Sergey Chemezov deemed Moscow’s policy of total import substitution ineffective:

“Replacing everything is senseless, economically impractical, and simply impossible. Not a single developed country in the world does this. Isolation, including technological isolation, and attempting to do everything on your own is a road to nowhere. Russia should remain part of the globalized world, where development is impossible without international partnerships. The West’s betrayal is no reason to close windows and doors.”

Andrey Kostin also penned a column for RBC. “The sanctions are permanent. Globalization in its previous form is over. The world is likely to once again rigidly divide between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ This is the Cold War 2.0,” he declared. At the same time, Kostin acknowledged that globalization brought Russia “significant economic benefits,” including “a modern financial sector, which was created in just a few years practically from scratch on the basis of American and European [...] technological platforms, tools, and business practices.”

According to one Meduza source, these op-eds were no coincidence. The members of the “peace party” have long understood that continuing the war would lead to a serious economic crisis, the source explained. However, many of them refrained from speaking out publicly until now, because “no one talks about the difficulties; in public there are only jingoistic voices.”

Indeed, until recently, the most outspoken voices have been from the “war party.” The National Security Council’s deputy chairman, ex-prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, publishes regular tirades against the West on his Telegram channel; Putin’s first deputy chief of staff Sergey Kiriyenko has taken to giving public speeches about the “fight against Nazism”; and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Petrushev recently declared that Russia isn’t “chasing deadlines” in its war against Ukraine.

According to Meduza’s sources, the “war party” also includes State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, United Russia General Secretary Andrey Turchak, and the leadership of the security agencies, such as the FSB. (This is corroborated by public statements from these officials.)

At the same time, Meduza’s sources described the “war party” as an “amorphous structure without a single coordination center.” Not to mention the fact that some of its members are not on good terms. Vyacheslav Volodin and Andrey Turchak, for example, are critical of each other even in public. Two sources in the Putin administration also told Meduza that Volodin and Kiriyenko’s relationship also leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, this rift dates back to 2016, when Kiriyenko succeeded Volodin as Putin’s first deputy chief of staff.

At the end of the day, however, representatives of the different camps can only demonstrate their position by attempting to influence Putin’s stance on the war. “Kiriyenko brings [Putin] papers on the Donbas [and] on the country’s economy as a whole. The security officials [siloviki] discuss the front,” one Meduza source explained. In turn, members of the “peace party” have allegedly presented Putin with a proposal plan for Western countries on the partial lifting of sanctions.

Two of Meduza’s sources underscored that at the moment, Putin is more sympathetic to the “war party” than the “peace party” — since he himself is “enthusiastic about the war and the annexation of territories.” “Taking the Donbas is important to the president, even if it takes a few more months. Then you can negotiate to stop the advance of troops,” one source explained. “Especially since Putin understands that it would be very difficult or even impossible to go further. But a captured Donbas is a negotiating advantage.”

There’s also a third camp that might be able to influence Putin’s stance — the so-called “silent party.” This party is made up of officials and businessmen who prefer not to speak out about the war, if at all possible. According to Meduza’s sources, the most prominent members of the “silent party” are Primer Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. A Meduza source close to the Putin administration and a source close to Mishutin’s Cabinet said that ever since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the prime minister, who was once known for carefully crafting his public image, has been trying to “stand out” less and to comment only on the government’s economic decisions. “The presidential administration offered him additional PR support, but he refused — he doesn’t need it now,” a source said.

In early June, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin visited Luhansk and held talks with Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic” (Moscow announced its “patronage” over both Luhansk and Donetsk at the end of May). However, according to two sources close to the Putin administration, the Moscow mayor “didn’t have a burning desire” to visit the LNR: “Sobyanin doesn’t want to associate himself with this, he tries to act like ‘I handle Moscow — the rest is none of my business.’ He had to be forced [to go] to Luhansk. Putin advised him to go, after that Sobyanin gave in.” Sergey Sobyanin and Mikhail Mishustin did not respond to Meduza’s questions prior to publication.

For the time being, the president's support has the “war party” advocating for a push to seize as much Ukrainian territory as possible. While the “peace party” has faith in the “pragmatic attitude” of Western countries and the Ukrainian authorities, who, Kremlin officials believe, may sacrifice the Donbas for the sake of peace. Kyiv officially rejects the possibility of any such agreement with Russia.

Monday, December 08, 2014

It Got Me Thinkin'

Which is always a little dangerous, but anyway - here's a little bit of a thing:



'Conservatives' are always yammerin' about how they want Gubmint to run more like a Bidness.

My contention is that's pretty much exactly what we've been seeing for 20 or more years, and here's why I think it:  Congress Critters are privy to lots and lots of information that's either not known to the rest of us, or that they get to know about way before we get to know  about it; AND, they get to make rules and regulations that can easily tilt the money chute a little (or a lot) in the general direction of their own bank accounts and portfolios.  So while we have managed to put certain safeguards in place to make it harder for them to give themselves raises in their salaries, we've done practically nothing to keep them from creating a very slick and lucrative money-laundering apparatus that funnels shitloads of cash into their pockets, even if it does happen behind a thick veil of toxic fog.

Meanwhile, Corporate Bosses get to do this in a slightly more open way - but it's still pretty fucked up.  CEOs and Directors and Senior Execs get paid a lot, but the way they make the real money is by putting policy decisions in place that benefit them greatly at the expense (often) of everybody else.

Ask a simple question: why are so many companies spending so much (~$2.4 TRILLION) buying their own stock?

Then ask: what's the Comp Plan look like for those Bosses?  

I'm betting dollars to dingleberries that those guys are gonna make more than a few bucks over and above their salaries if the company stock performs well, and what better way to boost the value of a share of your stock than to make it look like it's a hot property because "somebody's snapping it up like crazy"?

And when you're in bed with the politicians who conveniently vote against close enforcement of the rules you've already gotten them to weaken, then collusion and cronyism and outright bribery become the orders of the day, and simply the usual and customary way of doing business.

It gets really complex and convoluted, and I'm not pretending to know what all is wrong or what all needs to be done.  But I think it points back to the need for Separation-Of-Powers solutions; we have to rebuild the firewalls - the ones that keep Businesses and Governments and individuals from becoming too big and too powerful.

Cuz always remember - a business is not a democracy.

Monday, August 12, 2013

And That's The Real Problem

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth Univ have been studying the various aspects of River Health along portions of the James River, and while they came up with some rather alarming levels of toxins present in the blue crabs taken from the river, what they really discovered was a Political Controversy.  Imagine that.

Richmond Times Dispatch:
State officials say the public is not in danger.
“We do not have any reason to believe that current microcystin levels in the James River present a health threat,” said Rebecca LePrell, the Virginia Department of Health’s director of environmental epidemiology.
 Yeah, but:
(river ecologist Paul) Bukaveckas acknowledged that his expertise lies in river health and not human health.
“The only thing I can say is that in crab muscle tissue in certain times of the year, the toxins build up to levels that the World Health Organization considers unsafe for consumption.”
And just so we know what the big deal is (Ecotoxicology report out of California EPA from 2009):
Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, are a family of single-celled algae that proliferate in water bodies such as ponds, lakes, reservoirs, and slow-moving streams when the water is warm and nutrients are available. Many cyanobacteria species produce a group of toxins known as microcystins, some of which are toxic. The species most commonly associated with microcystin production is Microcystis aeruginosa [1]. Upon ingestion, toxic microcystins are actively absorbed by fish, birds and mammals. Microcystin primarily affects the liver, causing minor to widespread damage, depending on the amount of toxin absorbed. People swimming, waterskiing, or boating in contaminated water can be exposed to microcytins. Microcystins may also accumulate in fish that are caught and eaten by people. Finally, pets and livestock have died after drinking water contaminated with microcystins.
In the end, at least for some folks, it's all about the money:
Blue crabs are Virginia’s top commercial seafood catch and produced a $24 million harvest last year.
“Consumers can be utterly confident that the product they are purchasing is of the highest quality,” said John Bull, a spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which manages fish in Virginia’s tidal waters.
I'm not dismissing the potential for undue harm that can befall a particular business or even a whole sector when we get alarmed about something - especially when the alarm sounds a lot like "there's something wrong with the food".  That said, I need to feel more confident that the alarm isn't simply being muffled artificially (if not dismantled completely) - which has become something of a habit for way too many people in positions of power.

I have a call in to an old pal at the poison center in Richmond, but as of now, he hasn't called me back.  Update when/if that happens.

hat tip = Blue Virginia

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Today's Dead Americans

I haven't posted much lately on how stoopid we are about guns, so I'm playing a little catch-up here:
Lexington KY: 
Police in Cumberland County are investigating after a five-year-old boy playing with a rifle accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister.
The incident happened at about 1 p.m. CST at a home on Lawson's Bottom Road. Police say the five-year-old was playing with a .22 caliber rifle when it went off an hit his sister. The child was transported to the Cumberland County Hospital where she was later pronounced dead by the Cumberland County coroner.
 --and--
Nashville TN:
A 4-year-old boy grabbed a loaded gun at a family cookout and accidentally shot and killed the wife of a sheriff's deputy, authorities said on Monday.
The shooting Saturday evening was inside the Lebanon home of Wilson County Deputy Daniel Fanning.
Fanning was showing his weapons to a relative in a bedroom when the toddler came in and picked up a loaded gun on the bed, officials said. The weapon discharged as soon as the child picked it up, hitting 48-year-old Josephine Fanning, said Wilson County Sheriff Robert Bryan.
Josephine Fanning was pronounced dead at the scene. The child was not related to her or her husband.
--and--
Oregon City OR:
A 9-year-old girl who was shot in the head around 5 p.m. Sunday afternoon in Oregon City died shortly after, according to Oregon City Police.
Police say the initial report was that the mother's boyfriend was cleaning a handgun inside the house when it accidentally discharged. The bullet shot through the wall of the house, located near 12th and Division streets.
Police found the girl in the backyard upon their arrival where she had been playing, reports said.

A LifeFlight helicopter transported the child to Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, where she was pronounced dead shortly after her arrival.
Fun With Numbers:
Per CDC, in 2011 there were 14,675 reported accidental shootings in the USA.


40 every day - and that's just the shit that happens by accident, and that's just the ones that require a visit to the hospital, and it's just the accidents that get reported as accidents.

Total Non-Fatal gunshot wounds of all kinds per year = 200,000 (more than 500 every day)

The Univ of Penn study from a few years back found that while the cost of Medical Care was around $17,000 per gunshot injury, the total lifetime cost beyond the medical expense (business productivity, personal income and earnings, etc) jumps up into the Billions - over $100 Billion every year, with about half of the tab being picked by taxpayers.

So here's the thing for you "conservatives":  if you just can't get with any kind of Gun Control because Freedom!!! - you get to shut the fuck up about what a clear-eyed-capitalist, taxation-is-theft, libertarian-super-genius you are.  You ain't shit.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Boycott Frenzie

From Addicting Info:
Fox Business Network reported recently that Zane Tankel, CEO of Apple-Metro, an Applebee’s franchisee group for the New York City area, said that Applebee’s “won’t hire more people” because the Affordable Care Act would cost the company “some millions of dollars.” Consumer anger erupted nearly immediately and brought with it a Twitter hashtag calling on consumers to #boycottApplebees.
Great - now we can add Applebee's to the list.  Not that I need any more good reasons to avoid going out to a phony-looking cookie-cutter franchise joint for some shitty food.  It's just that it gets a little hard to keep it all straight.

Chick-Fil-A
Papa John's
Applebee's

Generally, you shouldn't be punished for speaking your mind, but if you decide to beat up on your employees because of your mis-perception of something that hasn't even happened yet, then you're the one who's got a beat-down coming.

And BTW also too - letting your personal politics make your business decisions for you means you're something of a fucking idiot and you should probably not be in charge anymore.

Saturday, January 07, 2012

Romney Is As Romney Does

via Wonkette:



We've been told for a very long time that 'creative destruction is the natural order of things'; that if we go against the forces of the Free Market we'll only get bad results from our good intentions.

(I realize giving Romney et al the benefit of the doubt here is a huge strain on credulity, but I need to bypass the demonization for a moment.  Besides, I imagine it'll be a good long time before we see a shortage of opportunities to call him names.)

Anyway - the intent was not to stiff these guys and put them out of work.  The intent was to make the company more efficient - more competitive in a global market, to help it evolve, and thus at least to survive long enough to hire these guys back; or to thrive in a way that pumps enough dollars into the local economy so other companies could hire them.  That's how it's supposed to work.  That was the intent.

But I can't look at what actually happened to the people who made up that company and then make any credible claim that 'capitalism didn't fail those people, they failed capitalism'.

So if our intentions were good, and we got bad results anyway, then we have to examine our Methods and Practices to find better ways of doing things.