-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
David Siegel is the founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, a privately-held national timeshare company and resort developer. Siegel recently sent an e-mail to his 8,000 employees stating that “if any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company.” Siegel fails to provide an explanation how an increase in his personal taxes could be offset by firing employees. If firing employees brings in more money for Siegel, then his labor force is padded with the unproductive. Otherwise, Siegel’s actions would appear to be spiteful.
Siegel’s e-mail displays his bitterness at a perceived lack of appreciation and his profound sense of entitlement. The e-mail is full of strawman arguments and devoid of critical thinking.
Siegel writes:
The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job.
The economy, after four years under the Obama administration, is keeping your job safe. Is there a better argument for his employees to reelect Obama?
Siegel complains:
[members of the press] want you to believe that we live in a class system where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
Maybe that’s because income inequality is growing, as shown by the chart on the right. The media are simply reporting this fact.
Siegel then goes into a long spiel meant to show how much he’s under-appreciated. We see Spiegel’s bitterness when he writes:
Now, the economy is falling apart and people like me who made all the right decisions and invested in themselves are being forced to bail out all the people who didn’t.
Siegel contradicts himself. At the top of the e-mail, the economy wasn’t a threat and now it’s “falling apart.” Siegel also displays his lazy thinking by simplifying a complex set of circumstances into an easily digestible us-versus-them theme. Many people, through no fault of their own, lost everything because of decisions made by the 1%. Siegel continues:
The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed 42 years of my life for.
A classic strawman argument. Siegel just makes things up out of whole cloth.
Siegel isn’t much of an economist either:
Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate business, not kill it. However, the power brokers in Washington believe redistributing wealth is the essential driver of the American economic engine.
No, business is stimulated by demand. As Paul Krugman observes, “Now, however, we’re seeing a much more widespread attack on demand-side economics. More than that, it’s becoming clear that many people don’t so much disagree with the idea that demand matters as find it abhorrent, incomprehensible, or both.”
Siegel adds:
You see, I can no longer support a system that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive.
More lazy thinking. Siegel sees an American divided into two disjoint classes, but that’s where his ability to analyze the situation ends. Siegel doesn’t understand, or want to understand, that the bulk of the unproductive are where they are because George W. Bush, and his policies and lax regulatory oversight, caused a worldwide recession. That’s the same George W. Bush that Siegel credits himself with putting into the White House. Is it any wonder that Siegel is not appreciated?
Seigel is advocating giving the disastrous Bush policies another chance, just so he can save a few dollars on his income tax. Greed has no shame.
H/T: Michael LaBossiere, Think Progress, Gawker, The New Republic, Kevin Drum, Think Progress.
Why not to vote for Romney . . . or Obama. H/T Atrios:
http://avedoncarol.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-purpose-of-voting.html
Every worker is at the mercy of every employer in this country because we have returned to the really bad old days before unions, before labor laws that were enforced back to the days were super rich people like Romney admired for their ruthless treatment of their employees. There was a time when a man like Siegel would be subtle about his disdain for his employees. There even was a time when a man like Romney, his father George comes to mind, believed that fair wages and fair treatment of the workers in his factories was both morally good and good for business but this is not that time. We praise the corporate harvester who loads companies up on debt fires loyal and productive workers, outsources American jobs, plunges companies into bankruptcy while taking millions in fees and then shelters that income in off shore accounts. Worse yet, we allow the harvester to tell us don’t believe the facts of my life just listen to me talk and give me the Presidency. I DESERVE IT! The rest of us are expendable units, no rights, no value unless it is to put more money or power in his hands.
This country has lost its way. It has begun to look sound and fell like many dystopic movie about the corporate controlled future. We allow corporations to pollute our air so that they can make millions and they tell us to thank them for it.
Mr. Siegel is a bad man. He cares about one thing himself . He is the new face of America, not the open handed and open hearted fantasy of our early days. He and Romney make Gordon Gecko look like an amateur.
BF, seems to me that Nick did not major in logic. He has been shown repeatedly that it is not his strong point. In addition to throwing up a strawman, he is equating skill and doggedness as an interviewer with Neilson ratings. That is a false equivalence fallacy. So we got a twofer out of Nick in one comment. Well done. Shall we try for three?
I heard that he “time shares out” the services of the bride in the photo. Could that possibly be true? Please comment if you know anything. I am not that far away.
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/17/plutocrat_bosses_to_employees_vote_romney_or_else/ Plutocrats are paying to intimidate voters. They are threatening workers. They just have to have Romney in office to make sure their agenda is carried out.
Nick wrote: “If Schultz is so “formidable” then why doesn’t anyboby[sic] watch him? His ratings hardly even register.”
This is one of those logical fallacies that you have been committing on a regular. Popularity is not a reflection of intelligence or ability. Trying to argue that the two are related is a strawman.
He must have took his ideas from the banks.
Threatening everyone with Mutually assured destruction.
enochwisner wrote: “Frankly, though, the hand that feeds you should certainly be able to express the terms it thinks best and most necessary to continue doing so, and any ruling to the contrary is a violation of reason if not of law.”
I’m not sure if an employer can be categorized as “the hand that feeds you” given that employee/employer relationship is mutual. Right now there is a shortage of jobs and employers have relatively stronger position in that relationship, but that isn’t a rule. There are times in the not so distant past when there were a surplus of jobs and the employees service was valued and competed for by employers. Trading your skills and time for pay is not a handout. People don’t earn degrees just so they can be better at begging for charity.
All individuals have the protected right of free speech, but threatening employees for holding a particular political view is not part of that protection(or at least wasn’t until Citizens United, as I understand it). Whether this situation that I’ve linked to fits that model is up for interpretation, as I believe you have stated as well.
The right of a person to vote without fear of reprisal is protected, right? I’m not necessarily saying you argued the contrary. Just trying to get a bit more specific and to try to understand your thoughts a bit better.
On Democracy
Plutocrats Want to Own Your Vote
October 19, 2012
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
The new Gilded Age is roaring down on us – an uncaged tiger on a rampage. Walk out to the street in front of our office here in Manhattan, look to the right and you can see the symbol of it: a fancy new skyscraper going up two blocks away. When finished, this high rise among high rises will tower a thousand feet, the tallest residential building in the city.
The New York Times has dubbed it “the global billionaires’ club” — and for good reason. At least of two of the apartments are under contract for more than 90 million dollars each. Others, more modest, range in price from 45 million dollars to more than 50 million dollars. The mega-rich have been buying these places “looking for a place to stash their cash,” a realtor from Sotheby’s explained to the Times. “A lot of what is happening,” she said, “… is about wealth preservation.”
Simultaneously, the powers-that-be have just awarded Donald Trump the right to run a golf course in the Bronx, which taxpayers are spending at least $97 million to build — what “amounts to a public subsidy,” says the indignant city comptroller, “for a luxury golf course.” Good grief — a handout to the plutocrat’s plutocrat.
This, in a city where economic inequality rivals that of a third-world country. Of America’s 25 largest cities, New York is now the most unequal. The median income for the bottom 20% last year was less than $9,000, while the top one percent of New Yorkers has an average annual income of $2.2 million.
When the Supreme Court made its infamous Citizens United decision, liberating plutocrats to buy our elections fair and square, the justices may have effectively overturned rules that kept bosses from ordering employees to do political work on company time.
Across America, this divide between the super-rich and everyone else has become a yawning chasm that studies indicate may stifle jobs and growth for years to come. At no time in modern history has the top one hundredth of one percent owned more of our wealth or paid so low a tax rate. But in neither of the two presidential debates so far has the vastness of this astounding inequality gap been discussed. Not by Mitt Romney, who is the embodiment of the predatory world of financial capitalism. And not even by Barack Obama, whose party once fought for working men and women against the economic royalists.
But as appalling as all this may be, here’s a new revelation of which you may not be aware. The plutocrats know it and love it — and the rest of us should be forewarned: When the Supreme Court made its infamous Citizens United decision, liberating plutocrats to buy our elections fair and square, the justices may have effectively overturned rules that kept bosses from ordering employees to do political work on company time. Election law expert Trevor Potter told us that now “corporations argue that it is a constitutionally protected use of corporate ‘resources’ to order employees to do political work or attend campaign events — even if the employee opposes the candidate, or is threatened with being fired for failure to do what the corporation asks!”
Reporter Mike Elk at In These Times magazine came across a recording of Governor Mitt Romney on a conference call in June with some businessmen. Romney told them there is “nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business — because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision — and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.”
Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign event with coal miners in Ohio. (AFP PHOTO / Saul Loeb)
Two months later, Governor Romney was campaigning at an Ohio coal mine. In photographs and on video you can see miners arrayed around him, steadfastly standing in support, right? They work for a company called Murray Energy and attendance at the rally — without pay — was mandatory. Murray Energy is notorious for violating safety regulations, sometimes resulting in injuries and deaths. The company has paid millions in fines – and in the last two years also donated more than $900,000 to politicians, all of them Republicans. The CEO, Bob Murray, a well-known climate change denier and cutthroat businessman, insists that his employees contribute to his favorite anti-regulatory candidates – or else. In one letter uncovered by The New Republic magazine, Murray wrote, “We have been insulted by every salaried employee who does not support our efforts.” So much for voting rights and the secret ballot at Murray Energy!
Mike Elk also discovered that the Koch Brothers, David and Charles – who have pledged to spend multimillions defeating President Obama – have sent a voter information packet to the employees of Georgia Pacific, one of their subsidiaries. It includes a list of recommended candidates, pro-Romney and anti-Obama editorials written by the Kochs and a cover letter from the company president. If we elect the wrong people, Dave Robertson writes, “Many of our more than 50,000 US employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.” Other ills? Like losing your job?
It’s snowballing. Timeshare king David Siegel of Westgate Resorts reportedly has threatened to fire employees if Barack Obama is re-elected and Arthur Allen, who runs ASG Software Solutions, e-mailed his employees, “If we fail as a nation to make the right choice on November 6th, and we lose our independence as a company, I don’t want to hear any complaints regarding the fallout that will most likely come.”
Back in the first the Gilded Age, in the 19th century, bosses in company towns lined up their workers and marched them to vote as a bloc. Now, the Gilded Age is back , with a vengeance. Welcome to the plutocracy – the remains of the ol’ USA.
I think 2012 will be remembered for something much more then the Presidential election. It will be the year the myth that rich people are smarter than everyone else was buried.
The ol’ better to be quiet and thought the fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt. These blowhards… Trump, Romney, Adelson, etc. are dumb as dirt… I can imagine without daddy’s money in most cases (or lack of a morale compass in the others), these guys would be asking if I wanted fries with my order and screwing it up anyway.
If Schultz is so “formidable” then why doesn’t anyboby watch him? His ratings hardly even register.
enocnw,
If you were putting me out of a job to ship it to China, I would be pissed at you too.
Don’t get a hernia doing the heavy lifting for the vulture capitalists who are gutting the middle class economy. They ship the jobs to China and other places where workers will labor for 1946 wages in sweatshop conditions, and the corporation gets a tax break from the IRS for their moving expenses. That needs to stop, and instead of a tax break, there need to be punitive taxes for outsourcing. That will never happen under a Republican administration and Republican controlled Congress.
Otteray Scribe – And why not close the plant? Why not elect to deny a hatchet man a target to swing at?
If you don’t like me, what good will come to me for agreeing to let you talk with me? And if there’s to be no good in it for me, why should I do it?
Yesterday, The Ed Show was broadcast live from Freeport, Illinois, home of the Sensata plant. Rather than face the cameras and the formidable Mr. Shultz, Bain owned Sensata closed for the day and sent workers home. The plant was shut down and the gates locked. That did not deter Ed. He broadcast from there anyway. Did any of their executives show up to appear on camera? Come on, ya gotta be kidding.
Story at the link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147312/-Bain-closed-Sensata-for-a-Day-rather-than-face-the-TV-Cameras-of-the-Ed-Show?detail=hide
Blind Faithiness – I expect the 1st Amendment allows employers some way in which to express their political views, even to their employees. I won’t pretend to know if Romney’s request is necessarily a request to trespass on the limits dictated by the Court’s ruling in Citizens United. That’s for a judge to determine. Frankly, though, the hand that feeds you should certainly be able to express the terms it thinks best and most necessary to continue doing so, and any ruling to the contrary is a violation of reason if not of law.
Siegel – any business owner – is within his prerogatives to close his doors for any reason or no reason at all – including the event of President Obama’s reelection. All the hard things one may say about such a choice may be true (if you are one who would cast your ballot for the president) or false (if you are one who believes a vote for the president to be next to treason – and there are such) – but it is also Mr. Siegel’s prerogative to be as big a horse’s ass – or patriot, according to an observer’s politics – as he likes.
Consider the alternative to the freedoms Mr. Siegel seems willing to abuse.
I’ll repost this from the other day.
Romney speaking to the National Federation of Independent Business by phone, at around the 26 minute mark, states “I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.” _emphasis mine_
Direct lobbying(subtle or not-so subtle intimidation) to employees by employers was illegal until Citizens United.
http://youtu.be/ucuMHuVlIW0
Again, who are his buyers….. people that have his kind of money don’t stay at his places…… they have their own homes….dufus….
“Westgate Founder David Siegel was found guilty of sexual harassment in a lawsuit brought by former Westgate employee Georgette Meyers. Meyers worked for Westgate for 14 years. She claimed that Siegel offered a million dollars to have sex with her. Meyers claimed that she had to repeatedly fight off unwanted advances from Siegel, and a Florida court awarded Meyers $5.4 Million in damages in February 2008.”
http://tinyurl.com/9mpfhuv
What a pig!
I heard that Romney supports this technique.