Well…a nice article by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post this morning kind of crystallized something that has been rattling around in my head for quite a while and highlights something that I think has been downplayed in the whole Bain Capital/creative destruction argument that has been presented as justification for the destruction of companies and lives by the right. While the entire emphasis has been from the investor side and the rightful assertion that people should make money from their investments, what about the investments of the people that work at these companies? The investments of time, loyalty, and forgone opportunities that came from listening to the promises of management and choosing to contribute to the growth and success of those companies has largely been ignored in the calculus of how the rewards should be distributed. Why should the investor class walk away with 88 percent profits yearly on their investments (as happened in one 10 year span at Bain) while the workers whose companies were gutted and ransacked by Bain walked away with nothing to show for their decades of service? It is just the latest manifestation of the contempt that the right has for labor and anyone who is not in the 1 percent…geez…
Category Archives: Misc
Need to set a few things straight…
Well…this one is going to kind of fit with the title but not all of it….so here goes…first, the only reasonable person dropped out of the repub race today when John Huntsman decided to quit…but I can understand why…the repub party is so far to the right now the John Birchers would be to their left and I never thought I’d see that. I do miss the reasonable repubs like Jerry Ford that got things done for the country, not just their party. But that was then, and this is now and I don’t think we’ll see the “big” politicians again…those whose only thought was to try to do the best for the country and it’s people no matter if they were dems or repubs. Oh, one of the things that I want to get straight is that I’m not really against business or capitalism per se…it is unbridled and unregulated capitalism that I can’t stand and rail against almost constantly as you know. There is nothing wrong with companies making money, but why do they have to squeeze every penny out of their workers and give it to those who don’t really need more? I think one of the questions that people that already have so much should ask themselves is “how much is enough?” Once you have millions, why do they have to continue to take when an extra 100 bucks week would mean a lot to one of their employees? Where were these people raised? And, who taught them that to care about others and fairness is a bad thing? I wasn’t brought up that way but I see the trend in a lot of younger folks today…I wonder why…and how can we fix it? Just thinking….
More Keystone nonsense…
Well…just saw an ad that attacks Obama for the delay in approving the Keystone pipeline and I needed to comment on this boondoggle again….if you’ve been here before, you’ve read my previous comment that took to task the lies that are used by big oil and the right to get this environmental disaster in waiting approved….and this new ad just adds to these lies with a new one and one that has not gotten much press lately..at least not in the media that I read. That new lie contends that this pipeline will help the US with energy independence when it is just not true…all of the oil that goes to the refineries through this pipeline will be exported to other countries…none of it will be used to lower prices or to meet demand here in the US. So, who benefits from the risk from this pipeline? There is only one group that benefits…the oil companies…and that is the dirty little secret that supporters of this debacle don’t want you to know…geez….
378 million reasons to hate Apple…
Well…I’ve never been a fan of Apple products and the iron-fisted control that they exert over their use and, as such, have never owned one…with that disclaimer out of the way, I do need to comment on the news that came out yesterday that the new CEO there is going to be compensated 378 million dollars…yep, you heard it right…one person at Apple is going to make more money than entire countries do…doesn’t anyone else see anything wrong with that? Especially when Apple outsources all of it’s production to sweat shop factories in China? How many American’s could they employ if this idiot only took say 50 million dollars? Or, how many dividends could they pay to stockholders? Just another example of why people are showing up at “Occupy” rallies and the conversation has changed in this country to highlight this nonsense…especially when you can’t even say with a straight face that this idiot “earned” the money…so, I will shout into the wind again…Boycott Apple until this nonsense ends…geez…
Have to comment on ole Nolan…
Well…I was just reading the Detroit News (yeah, I know, it will rot my brain but I do need topics) and a little article from ole Nolan caught my eye for its nonsense that blames Democrats and liberals for the financial problems that beset Detroit. Nolan, Nolan, Nolan….how stupid are you? I will admit that Detroit has been looted by mismanagement over the years and has never been a model for good government, but, to blame the loss of population and the shipping of jobs overseas on the democrats is to blame the victim for having his life stolen from him. It is the republican party’s pro business policies that have led to outsourcing; to moving auto jobs to Mexico taking millions of other support jobs that used to pay a living wage but now, what jobs are left, don’t pay enough to pay taxes on let alone add to the tax base that has fled. So, Nolan, your anti labor and anti human screeds are getting tiring…how can you have so much hate inside and still call yourself a human being? Geez….
Okay, might be cheating here…
Well….had a nice morning and prime rib for lunch and I thought I’d come back for a couple of minutes and just noodle around a bit….it’s been kind of a trying week or so and I’m not sure why…have been really tired lately and it is showing up in dead legs on the bike…oh, well…there hasn’t been any trail weirdness to report or any dreams either, and I am getting kind of concerned with that…something is out of whack and I’m not sure how to fix it…so I won’t think about it for now…
Oh, there is one thing in politics that I find funny…what is the state of the republican party when even George Will is going after other republicans? In his column yesterday..or today, I’m not sure…ole George went after Newt for his crazy assed attacks on the judicial branch of the government….something that I commented on a few days ago and, even though it’s very seldom that I agree with or even read one of George’s columns, it was good to see some sanity from the right for a change. But, I would prefer that they stay as crazy as they are….because then the only constituency they will have left will be the tinfoil-hat crowd….
Okay, here’s the reason for no lyrics…
Well…I guess I’ve never told you why I’ve stopped quoting lyrics in my daily posts here and I really want to share that with you guys….I have gotten a few e-mails from record companies telling me that I am violating their copyrights by using the lyrics…even though I make no profit from this stuff….so, I guess I’ll challenge them to come after me…I don’t really have anything left for them to take so what the hell….
“Attention all shoppers, it’s cancellation day….the big adios is just a few hours away….it’s last call to do your shopping at the last mall…”
Bring it on….
Boycott “Top Gear”….
Well…I am outraged at what Jeremy Clarkson said yesterday about the workers striking in the UK to try to maintain their pay and pensions…this idiot came out and said that the strikers “should be shot in front of their families” and that they have gilt-edged pensions while he has to work for a living. Given the fact that the taxes of these strikers pay his salary through the parent company of his tv and radio shows; the BBC, and that he makes more than a million dollars a year just screwing around with cars, I think he should just shut the hell up and go back to his privileged life…I know I’ll never watch “Top Gear” again….and I think no one else should, either. Geez….
Okay…have thought about this for a few minutes and I do have to protect this idiots rights to say what he thinks whether or not it was a joke…it will still make me less likely to watch his show, though…..it’s what makes a free society and to be consistent to my beliefs on this subject I need to support his right to be an idiot…
Gonna be a little nostalgic…
Well…I am sitting here listening to Pandora on my computer and it sparked an idea in my head bout how much the delivery of music has changed so much just in my lifetime…I remember when I was young the nights where the weather conditions were just right and you could get WLS AM from Chicago and imagine that you were in that city….and listen to music that hadn’t made it to our little town yet….here in GR we had a heated rivalry between the two powerhouse AM stations that played rock and soul music…and there were even WLAV people and WGRD people who would only listen to the station they liked but I liked them both…in truth, they both played the same music fom Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones, the Temps, The Tops (that the Temptations and the Four Tops for those of you that didn’t grow up in that time) but that didn’t stop people from choosing their favorites…something like being a Ford or Chevy person…both perfectly good brands but you would never be caught dead buying the other brand. This continued until I was about 12 or thirteen when the magical new thing called FM came into being, but that was even preceded by some “underground” stuff that was being tried by the AM stations. One of the ones I remember was a show called “Campus After Hours” that ran on LAV, I think, and brought long form music that was beginning to break the 3 minute AM radio format and exposed us to bands we had never heard of and songs that were not the designated “hits” from bands we already knew.
Then came FM radio…I have such fond memories of WLAV-FM from here in GR and the wonderful times of the 70′s and 80′s…and the DJ’s from that time…Aris Hampers, Ed Buchanan ad Alison Harte actually knew and loved the music they were playing…and at that time there was no where else to get the insider information about the bands and exposure to new music you could get there. I heard “Nantucket Sleighride” by Mountain for the first time there…does any FM station have the guts or the freedom to play that live, over 30 minute song anymore? On any night you could hear George Carlin, then the Who followed by Pure Prarie League and Frank Zappa….then back to Cheech and Chong…I heard the “Dave’s not here” sketch for the first time listening to LAV and I can still remember laughing so hard that it hurt….I guess what I wanted to say is that those were wonderful days…and I know they can’t be recaptured….but I can still miss them, can’t I?
Gonna keep pounding this one home…
Well…read an interesting article in “The Guardian” this afternoon about all of the crowing the 1%’ers do that they create jobs and earn the ridiculous money they make and the politicians that still believe that nonsense…and I am going to keep pointing this stuff out until I can’t write anymore or things change. But, the first point on productivity that I touched on briefly last week is that from the late 40′s until the late 70′s, productivity and real wages of the middle class were basically a 1:1 ratio; that is that as productivity rose 118% in that time, real wages rose about 122%. Since then, though, from 1979 through 2009, productivity has risen almost 80% but the real wages of the middle class has fallen by 4% and the rich have taken all of that additional production for themselves in the form of bonuses and higher pay to the tune of a 279% increase. Can anyone see that from a pure economic standpoint, this concentration has stripped huge amounts of demand out of the economy since the the middle class has less and less of the pie to spend? It is something I have been saying for quite some time now…as the rich and corporations have been squeezing every last penny out of you and me, who is going to be able to buy the goods and services that make any economic growth sustainable? We are seeing these effects now in sluggish growth and stagnation that have become the hallmarks of this type of wealth concentration…and I finally hope someone cares….other than me, that is.