Well…I just have to laugh at the ceo’s on the right who have threatened to fire their employees and in some cases have started to lay them off after the Obama win…let’s not forget that these guys have done much better in the last 4 years of Obama than the previous 8 under ole GW, with corp profits at an all time high last year. So, this appears to me to just be a temper tantrum of the spoiled rich and they are mad that their employees didn’t listen to them, that they don’t have the power that the right has been telling them they have. I specifically want to address the meme that it is over taxation and regulation that is causing these layoffs, especially since it is the new talking point that the right has taken up and has used Murray energy as the poster boy…you remember Murray Energy don’t you? It is the coal company that has so little regard for the safety of it’s workers that it regularly kills some of them….and now the owner has started to lay off his miners, saying it is because of the Obama administration’s hatred of coal. This even made me laugh more since it is the free market that the repubs say they worship that is killing the demand for coal with the collapse of natural gas prices due to increased drilling and new methods of extraction. So, what should a company do to meet it’s energy needs? Continue to pay 40% more in cost as corporate welfare to the coal companies? These guys are just so pathetic that I can’t believe it…yeah, I can…just a bunch of crybabies that have been taught the country belongs to them and the rest of use might be allowed to live in it if it is okay with them…not anymore…geez…
Tag Archives: profits
How can one guy be wrong all of the time?
Well…I do hate to pick on one person all of the time..no that’s not true, I love to call out the idiocies and inconsistencies on both the right and left…but if you’ve been here before, you’ve noticed I do tend to to go after those on the right more…but I should because they are the ones that have taken idiocy to a new level that I could not have imagined a few years ago. This morning I was reading the Detroit News again (I know, why should I keep reading that right wing rag?) and our boy Nolan Finley is at it again…taking the president to task for going to the chamber and asking them to take part in the recovery by hiring. Well..old Nolan goes on either to lie, or to show his ignorance of economic reporting saying that companies are not going to hire until they are profitable when, as you and I and almost everyone else in the US knows, retained corporate profits are at their highest level in the history of the world. He goes on to assert that they are not hiring because of the repub talking point about uncertainty keeping business from being able to plan and know what their costs are going to be down the road. Nolan, Nolan, Nolan….the only uncertainty that business cares about it whether or not the billions they spent buying a republican house is going to give them free reign to steal more from the pockets of workers. You guys have created the uncertainty about the healthcare law….spending almost all of your time since the new congress started trying to repeal the law when you know it won’t happen and snowing your business buddies that the money they gave you is going to get them something; all the while collaborating with them to keep from hiring to make sure you have a new talking point.
But that’s not the worst of it….here in Michigan the earned income tax credit for lower income folks is being eliminated while business is given a huge tax cut…this is a tax increase no matter how the right tries to spin it…and these guys are held up as fiscally responsible when any time the previous governor asked for more taxes to help cut the deficit she was tarred as a tax and spend liberal. I guess it’s okay if you raise taxes on those that have no money, power or lobbyists…another example of the hypocrites that reside in the modern repub party….geez…
Aren’t you tired of being held hostage?
Well…I have been thinking about this one ever since a new governor was elected here in Michigan and one of his first acts was to propose changing the business tax structure to give corporations a huge tax cut carried on the backs of the workers who will be forced to take pay and benefit cuts to pay for them….these cuts for business would worsen our deficit here by 100% and be another huge transfer of wealth from you and I to the rich…again. The reason for these changes, along with the repub bowing to business interests, are the threats by corporations to move out of the state if they don’t get what they paid for when they gave the money to elect repubs to take control of all of Michigan’s government. The same thing is happening in Illinois, when the legislature there voted to raise taxes (from 4.8 to 6 percent) to deal with one of the most severe budget crises that any state faces and businesses have started those same old tired threats….never mind that most corporations have many ways to avoid taxes that you and I don’t…these ungrateful thieves have started to pout and want to take their ball and go home. I say, good riddance….these guys want all of the rights of citizens (that they were granted in the Citizens United decision) but they want nothing to do with the responsibilities. When was the last time you were given free land to build a house or had your taxes eliminated to keep you living where you do? I’ve had enough of the competition to make our workers into third world laborers who can never make enough money to live a middle class life while corporations and their political lapdogs rake in all of the benefits of those labors.
We need to start a new movement where there is a price to pay for selfish corporate behavior…let’s find out who these creeps are and just stop buying from them…it’s been too long that corporations have been able to do whatever they want and hold the rest of us hostage to their whims….it will never stop unless we do….geez….
This has been troubling me…
Well….as I said in an earlier post, I am trying to lower the outrage quotient and try to be a more reasoned voice…in fact, the name that I proposed for this site was “A Reasonable Voice” but when my son was putting it together for me, he thought the title should be “Overeducated and Unemployed” and when I got a look at the first template, I had to agree. It also made me laugh…
I know this isn’t the topic that I promised but sometimes I have to write what is in my head or I’ll lose it…I promise the one on the political middle tomorrow.
There were a couple of articles in the newspapers over the last couple of days that made a connection in my brain that I haven’t seen anywhere else so here goes….of course, you know about the Supreme Court decision giving corporations the same rights as citizens to give money to political campaigns? Then today, I read that the profitability of corporations is back to where it was before the economic meltdown and they are sitting on “mountains” of cash but no one is investing to create more jobs. This could be a leap, but with the rights that corporations have been given as “citizens”, doesn’t that mean that they have responsibilities, too? And not just to their shareholders, but to the society as a whole? I’ve talked about the flipside of the people screaming and demanding their rights; that it has to be balanced with the responsibilities to this society.
I think it also points out the fallacy of the reliance on the private sector to create jobs where there is no check on their power to do whatever they please….using the Chinese model to wrestle more and more work out of the individual; thinking only of their bottom line and of the obscene bonuses that are granted to their ceo’s while they complain about “government interference”. If they are being interfered with, why are their profits the same as when the Bushies were running the show? Geez….
How much profit is enough?
Well…this is one that I have been thinking about for quite a long time now…and this post was inspired by the simple thing of trying to find a softsided, 12-pack cooler to replace the one I’ve had for a few years. For months now, I have searched and searched every store in the area, looking for one that was made in the USA to support my fellow workers but I got to the point that I just gave up and bought one that was made in China. As an aside, since I lost my job at a local furniture manufacturer for the stated reason that my job was no longer needed, (and I guess the 15 million dollars per year in cost reduction I gave them wasn’t either), I have become a more conscious consumer; trying to buy American when possible but also making note of how the retailer treats their employees. Needless to say, I will never shop at Walmart. I can’t believe that all consumers are only motivated by price, but the choice of supporting our fellow Americans has been taken away by CEO’s whose only motive is more and more profit and the resulting bonuses that accrue to them from that profit. Personally, I would have paid 30 to 40 percent more for the cooler if it was made in an American factory that paid a living wage and healthcare to their workers….so those workers would be able to buy American made things that could put me and many like me back to work.
What if, instead of hundreds of millions of dollars going to the CEOs, a company would take, say, half of that and invest it in an American manufacturing plant that would employ 2 to 3 thousand workers? Would Ford’s stock price have plummeted if it had made 1.5 billion dollars and put on 10 thousand more American workers instead of the 2 billion it made? Yeah, I know it would have because the stock price is driven by the greed of the traders who could make a lot of money by shorting the stock and who don’t give a damn about anything except their next bonus and the new BMW…but I think that distorts decisions that would be made if they didn’t have to think about Wall Street.
When are we, as a people, going to stand up and say no more…no more billion dollar payouts for one hedge fund trader, no more CEOs making hundreds of millions while all they do is lay off people and line their own pockets? No more political protection for oil companies who make obscene, record profits and ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Geez…
Oh, if you’ve read this post and remember that I drive a 1993 Mazda and have the urge to call me a hypocrite, don’t…because the Mazda was made in a Ford plant in Flat Rock Michigan by American, union workers….and it has almost 300K miles on it..that’s what I call quality….