We have been discussing how mean=spirited and nasty the presidential campaign has already become on both sides. With Republicans called Obama a socialist and a Muslim, Democrats are saying Romney would not have killed Bin Laden . . . and now that he is vampiric.
The new ad, “Steel” describes GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that was bought by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital. One former mill worker says “We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer, a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.” “Mitt the Job Destroyer” is still better than “Vlad the Impaler” but they seem to be saying that he is both.
The question is how strong the anti-vampire vote is. After all, Obama is no Buffy The Vampire Slayer himself, but then again who is?
Before the Republicans denounce the ad, they should consider that there could be some positive aspects to an undead president for the GOP:
1. They work nights.
2. They truly can take the bite out of crime.
3. They are always taking the pulse of voters.
5. One meeting of the Group of Eight would leave a group of one.
6. The GOP would finally secure the Goth vote.
7. We would finally have a president who is all bite and no bark.
8. Republicans can re-use those “Drill, Baby, Drill” signs.
9. No one is more anti-evolution than a vampire.
10. Perfect for the slogan, “Better Undead than Red.”
Source: Washington Post
@Matt: Employees owning company stock has influence.
Not really. I am speaking as somebody that has been a principle owner in multiple corporations and LLCs, and been on the board, and answered to a board.
What matters to corporations is CONTROL, and most are careful to keep control in the hands of the very few; young corporations (meaning with living founders) tend to concentrate power in the founders, and sell control very dearly: For example, for millions of dollars they may give venture capitalists one or two SEATS on the board.
Even when founders die off or control is lost to big investors, if the employees collectively own less than 50% of the stock, they probably do not even have a representative seat on the board. They are just like regular stockholders, with really no say in the operations of the company at all.
That is all by design from the start; the people with power take every legal route they can to keep it and keep shareholders powerless. Employees or not.
Employees owning company stock has influence. Remember Enron? Do you want the electricity to go out in California again? Good job, Kenny boy.
@Dredd: The problem is people for the most part are really just lazy. They do not want to understand business, they do not want to understand risk, they want a very simple model where they do some work and get paid a guaranteed amount for it and that is that. They do not want to be partners, or members of an organization or a co-op or anything else that puts any demands on their time.
There are many things even a few hundred thousand people together could do that would reduce their cost of living by 30% or more, but they won’t, because it is too much risk and effort to be involved, and much easier to spend more and complain about the markups.
That includes, by the way, buying whole corporations and running them fairly for a profit. You will know when Occupy is serious the day they actually start putting their money AND their time where their mouth is. If the Occupy Bank starts operations, or an Occupy Health Insurance, or a real Occupy Energy corporation, then I will start to think Occupy is serious.
Tony C. 1, May 16, 2012 at 9:10 am
@Dredd: there are approximately 11,300 employee stock ownership plans for over 13 million employees in the United States.
Yes, I have been members of three and I designed one. They are effectively glorified savings programs, nothing more. The employees do not get enough stock to influence the company, the company may match some fraction of their stock purchase. It is like buying company stock at a 15% discount or so, but it still takes the employee’s own money, deducted from their paycheck, to do it.
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Well, in that case Occupy has their marching orders:
I look forward to it, because I do not intend to work on Maggie’s Farm no more.
“Karl Rove insists on using cash from wealthy Republicans to inflict more damage upon America:
An independent group favoring Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney is launching a $25 million, monthlong advertising campaign in 10 states against President Barack Obama, further escalating an expensive TV ad war in presidential battlegrounds six months before Election Day.
Crossroads GPS plans to open the effort Thursday by spending $8 million on a TV ad that castigates Obama on the economy by using his own words against him.
“We need solutions, not just promises,” says a 60-second commercial that’s to run in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
As the AP article points out, Rove’s group isn’t the only pro-Romney group planning on dumping millions into the presidential campaign: Restore Our Future, the Romney-aligned Super PAC staffed by former Romney aides, has spent $4.3 million in anti-Obama attack ads. The Koch brothers’ Americans For Prosperity has spent $5 million. And another group called American Future Fund is spending millions as well. (I’ve personally seen AFF ads several times over the past couple of days in Columbus, Ohio.) Between those groups, you’re looking at something in the neighborhood of $40 million spent nearly a half-year before the election—and that doesn’t include anything from the Romney campaign itself. Bottom-line: It’s going to be a nasty, brutal election, and President Obama’s enemies are going to be coming at him from all sides, with tons of cash. ” From the Daily Kos
I read all the comments. I think that Elaine M is the talented one here. When I see the photo or Romney I just wanna say: “Atta Girl Willard.!”
Comments are moderated now?
@Dredd: there are approximately 11,300 employee stock ownership plans for over 13 million employees in the United States.
Yes, I have been members of three and I designed one. They are effectively glorified savings programs, nothing more. The employees do not get enough stock to influence the company, the company may match some fraction of their stock purchase. It is like buying company stock at a 15% discount or so, but it still takes the employee’s own money, deducted from their paycheck, to do it.
A similar thing is done with options, which I have also received and benefited from. Those are better, but again, options come with no voting rights. My options, when I was directing a division for three years, when we were successful and I was vested and able to cash them in, essentially doubled my salary for those three years. Which was wonderful, but the big boys (venture capitalists and founders) made about 50 times ALL the option cash put together. The only way employees get wealthy is when the outcome is a block-busting world-shaker household name, like Microsoft or Intel or Google.
For the management paradigm of “voting their managers in or out” the premier example you are looking for is WL Gore and Associates, a privately held corporation with “inverted management,” aka “lattice management,” that has been written about extensively. There are no bosses, everybody is an associate, and any employee can turn down any job any time they want. Pay and compensation are determined by peer review of the team(s) you choose to work with; team leaders are chosen by the team members. Higher managerial positions are elected by the employees that will answer to them, and can be replaced by them; this is true all the way up to and including the CEO.
It works; WLG&A is consistently voted one of the best 100 companies to work for. But it requires the owners of the corporation to restrain their greed. In most corporations, “profit sharing” with employees is less than 2% of profits, at WLG&A, I have heard it is well over 50%, and WLG&A also consistently chooses maintaining a culture of collaboration and teamwork over larger profits or greater efficiency.
As an example; they do not allow more than 175 people to work in a plant. Gore (the architect of the culture) claims that once a factory gets to about 200 employees, there is a phase change among them; that is when employees stop referring to “what we are doing” and start talking about “what they are doing,” with “they” being “management.” In other words, he thinks that is when the culture becomes adversarial, when employees stop feeling like their input matters, and that spreads like an infection.
His solution was simple, around 175 people, he builds another factory, to be independently run and split in half by volunteers choosing to stay at the old factory or move to the new one. Equipment is apportioned and moved, or new equipment bought as needed.
Gore says even if it is next door on the same land using the same parking lot, this solution works. It can cost a lot, and on paper it seems less efficient than one giant factory, but ultimately, because of the cultural difference, it ends up being far more productive. The employees in a factory answer only to those teams in their factory. All the factory managers meet to coordinate production work for products, which may be shared or they may agree to specialize in one product or another, whatever makes sense.
But to arrive there, it took somebody that was NOT trying to maximize every penny of profit and telling employees “my way or the highway,” and refused to take the easy way out and implement hierarchical militarized these-are-your-orders management.
It took a person that was willing to give up some profits in order to keep his employees happy. The fact that happy and engaged employees are two or three times as productive as unhappy and disengaged employees makes sense (at least to me) but I do not think Gore’s original intention was a cynical calculation to tap that potential, I think he did what he felt was morally right, and that turned out to be profitable.
It is possible he might have been more profitable had he been more draconian. It is possible the problems Gore noted early on would have festered into unions, low productivity, lower margins and company-busting issues. Either way, the fact is that the principled path of caring about employees has produced a large stable company that is profitable enough to make the Gore family wealthy, without exploitation or the hatred or resentment of their employees; and that to me is a fine and admirable outcome.
Bron,
You have got to be kidding, right? Drones were being used by Bush along with killing thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Elaine,
You are right. George was stifled at every turn. Except or wireless wiretapping, Iraq, Gitmo and torture, etc.
Bron,
“If Bush had sent a drone on a strike and put one up a 16 year olds back side, he would have been impeached.”
Oh, sure. The Iraq War was just a harmless mistake. Good grief! Poor wittle W. He had to be so careful. Nobody let him get away with anything!
Bron,
Bush had no more rules than Obama. Like Romney, he was simply more thuggish and slow and a little more easily frightened.
Bron: Bush would have never been impeached for any reason- and we had reasons enough without making up anything at all.
Bron: in Germany they solved the problem by giving Labor a seat on every single corporate board of directors……that is why they are one of the biggest exporters with high labor costs and a good economy. Labor is respected, honored and involved in the inner circle of corporate power.
Brooklyn Bridge:
yep, we just water board them and give them culturally sensitive meals.
But I do have to say, I admire Obama’s sense of style. “You republicon boys dont know how we do it here in Chicago, you dont bring a gun to a rocket propelled grenade fight, you bring a hellfire missile”.
Obama is a street fighter, no rules. Republicans got their panties in a bunch just over water boarding and even tried to make it legal. If Bush had sent a drone on a strike and put one up a 16 year olds back side, he would have been impeached.
I don’t think we can know the nasty things that Romney is capable of unless he is elected president. Then we’d find out.
Not really, we saw what Romney was capable of in Massachusetts.
Regardless, I started to loose my fear of the Republican bogyman when Obama tossed away the public option in his secret meetings with the Insurance giants. By the time he declared that the President has the right to assasinate anyone anywhere on planet earth, with no judicial reveiew, my pavlonian rejection of anything not Democrat had pretty much vanished.
I am not saying Romney is a better person than Obama. How could I? Obama is a Democrat and therefore by definition a better person, right? Right. You think I have faith in Romney? He is a pawn just like Obama. He has no more sense of ethics or morality than Obama. In fact, if you were to take away their party affiliations and just put them in a room together (on a heavy dose of sodium pentathol) you would find two peas in a pod. They are functionally identical; even their belief system. Both are Reganites.
But there are at least two significant differences back out in the every day world of intense tribal loyalties. One is that Obama has the Democrats in his pocket and the Democrats control the Senate and two Obama is far more shrewd and intelligent than Romney. He may be the lesser of two evils, but he is by far the more effective in his evil.
Brooklin Bridge,
I don’t think we can know the nasty things that Romney is capable of unless he is elected president. Then we’d find out.
Elaine M.
I agree with you. And you are not the only one from MA.
Romney is a horrible man. He wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the nose. He is or would be, nevertheless, far less effective in the nasty things he could accomplish than the nasty things Obama will accomplish and all in all he is probably more candid/less shrewd than Obama.
Brooklin Bridge,
I don’t have any faith in Romney–nor any respect for him. He was governor of my state. Soon after he was elected, he started campaigning around the country and badmouthing the state he was elected to represent. He is a member of the 1% who really doesn’t give a damn about the common folk like me. I have no use for him.
That said, I don’t have much faith in President Obama. He has been a big disappointment.
shano:
“Bron: the corporate state wants to have a little talk with you……”
Fuck corporate America. All they do is take money from tax payers to offset their business costs.
Labor needs capital and capital needs labor, it should be a symbiotic relationship with each getting value for what they are trading.
That doesnt happen because the government is so involved in economics there is no real way to know what labor is worth. I posit that labor is worth far more in a free market than it is in the bastard we work within. Which is another reason why large corporations have a vested interest in a socialized marketplace. It keeps real wages low.
I keep saying the way to punish business is to make it operate sans the support of government. But liberals are too afraid that the little guy will get hurt, well guess what, the little guy is being hurt now and it isnt capitalism that is hurting him. Most Liberals are so focused on hurting successful people they could care less about helping the man in the street, he is just a means to an end. They arent interested in raising peoples lot in life they only care about tearing down the successful.
Go look at what is happening in Puerto Rico.