Using our own money to rob us blind.
May 16 2012
Mitt Romney is the apotheosis of Republican economics
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89 comments
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crocswsocks
16 May 2012 at 10:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thanks to Mitt Romney, I now know what “apotheosis” means. Thanks, Mitt Romney!
Janine: History’s Greatest Monster
16 May 2012 at 10:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Safety nets are for the rich.
Ing: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream So I Comment Instead
16 May 2012 at 10:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
He does like firing people.
augustpamplona
16 May 2012 at 11:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Heads they win, tails we lose.
scriabin
16 May 2012 at 11:21 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hmmm…
The aspects of the American system that this spot attacks make me sick. It always seems to me like the States is a place where people scream and yell about being screwed by evil big government, but have no problem getting screwed by evil big corporations.
That being said, certainly in jurisdictions outside of the US not all private equity works – or screws the system – like this. It tends to be a matter of scale. Small to medium sized corporate entities (whether operating in the private equity sector or otherwise) are, generally, not so bad. The bigger you get (and the bigger the dollar numbers get), the more the poison seeps in – and the less effective the government regulation becomes.
David Utidjian
16 May 2012 at 11:39 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
crocwsocks and Ing: To paraphrase someone (I forget who it was): “There will be a potheosis of firing.”
Anyhow… I don’t understand much, if anything, about corporate financial stuff but is everything he says in that video true? (watches it again)
I understand that I do(“we do”) pay unemployment taxes, the “UI” item on my W2s. But don’t employers also pay in to the UI system? Even if “we do” and “they do” does it make any difference?
'Tis Himself
16 May 2012 at 11:42 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I haven’t seen the video (it’s blocked on my work computer for some reason only the IT folks know). However I’ll tell you how Romney got his money.
His company, Bain, would look for profitable companies and take them over, borrowing money to do so. Bain would then loot the company, selling off assets, if there was a pension fund they would sell all its assets and “invest” in the junk bonds used to finance the takeover (if the bonds became worthless, oh well), cut expenses like maintenance and benefits, fire “extraneous” personnel, and otherwise gut what had been a profitable company, finally selling the worthless corpse for a pittance. Romney and his cronies would make several million and a bunch of people would be unemployed and without pensions.
Romney pretends he’s pro-jobs. His past performance with Bain shows what a lie that is.
gragra
16 May 2012 at 11:48 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yep. As an aussie living the USA for the last 10 years this is the one I just don’t get.
dougittner
16 May 2012 at 12:12 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Taxpayer subsidies and corporate bailouts are just examples of the “free market” in action. Privatize the gains, socialize the losses, that’s free market capitalism in a nutshell.
Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
16 May 2012 at 12:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Tis:
That’s a pretty succint summary of the video.
Spanish Inquisitor
16 May 2012 at 12:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yes, except the part where he sells the business for a pittance. Reich says he sells it for a profit.
Gregory Greenwood
16 May 2012 at 12:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
dougittner @ 9;
The ‘invisible hand of the free market’ – it’s the other god that Republicans worship and, just like Yahweh, a lot is promised in its name, but precious little delivered.
QFT. The entire system is not structured to support the vulnerable or protect the disadvantaged, but rather to make the rich richer and keep the poor so weighed down with money worries and the concerns of simply making it from one day to the next that they don’t stop and realise just how badly they are being exploited, or if they do then they are in no real poistion to do anything about it because the US is a two party system and both of those parties are in this corrupt shell game up to their necks.
Then again, the situation is not much better over here in the UK either. We are also a society run for the benefit of the connected and powerful, where all the parties ultimately protect the same interests by pretty much the same means, as was clearly demonstrated when Nick Clegg – leader of the Liberal Democrats, a notionally Left of Centre progressive party – sold every principle he ever supposedly stood for in an grotesque rush to enter coalition with the Conservatives and secure whatever scraps of power and privilege for himself he could, a coalition that has presided over economic catastrophe and the further degradation of civil liberties in the name of ‘security’.
That is the trouble with mature democracies; the powerful vested interests, like the big oil conglomerates, make sure that they have all the electable parties bought and paid for ahead of time. After that, elections amount to little more than determining what colour tie the Prime Minister wears…
gluon
16 May 2012 at 1:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I wouldn’t be too quick to hold this against Romney in the upcoming election. There could be an upside. Maybe if he is elected President he can pull some kind of trick like this on China, or some other country, on our behalf!
rthille
16 May 2012 at 1:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
One thing that struck me as unclear or wrong is the idea that increasing the target company’s expenses (interest payments) would somehow raise profits. As I understand it, interest payments are no more deductible than other expenses which count against profits (like the cost of materials, etc). Am I missing something?
gluon
16 May 2012 at 1:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What struck me while watching this video is how much Republicans would, if they could get their way, spare us all from the “we foot the bill” aspects of this story. If they had their way there would be no unemployment insurance funded by taxpayers. There would be no government takeover of pension obligations of failed companies. Those people would just be SOL. And the extra tax burden that comes from the dodgy tax breaks would not be a trivial issue because there would be essentially no government, except for the military, and so no one would pay more than 5% in taxes to begin with. The Republican Utopia would solve all of these “we foot the bill issues”. And I don’t just mean this as snark. It’s a real issue with trying to show a video like this to a Republican friend. They just won’t buy the premise that we have any obligation to our fellow humans, that employment is a value alongside profits, that we should help people who find themselves unemployed or with their pension vaporized (to say nothing of sick and dying). They will tell you that… and it is hard not to laugh at this point… or cry…. churches and other private charities will take care of all of these people (like they do now!). So very little of this probably seems bad to Republicans.
Ing: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream So I Comment Instead
16 May 2012 at 1:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
They’re not making money from the profits…they’re short changing the xompany and taking anything not nailed down before selling it.
Daz
16 May 2012 at 2:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
…And then the company they’ve stripped to the bone goes bust, (a) putting even more workers (soon to be vilified as lazy scroungers who don’t want to work) onto publicly-funded unemployment payments or (b), if it’s deemed important enough, needing a huge publicly-funded bailout (because this is an example of the market being self-fixing with no need of government intervention).
'Tis Himself
16 May 2012 at 2:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Spanish Inquisitor #11
Since Bain is divesting itself of any financial interest in the company and has no further obligations for paying the debts of the company*, any money made from selling the company is profit. Reich and I were just emphasizing different aspects of the ultimate sale. There usually isn’t much money earned in the sale but it’s all profit.
*Remember, these debts were incurred during the takeover of the company and were transferred from Bain to the company.
unbound
16 May 2012 at 3:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@gluon – But what about the funds to pay for the police and fire departments, maintain / build roads, pay for the courts that more and more corporations are using to sue each other with, etc? That is that part that even rethuglicans do have to acknowledge.
Daz
16 May 2012 at 3:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
unbound
I’ve seen various libertarians argue that all these things should be privately financed, and available only to those who do the financing or are willing to pay the financiers—cash on the barrel-head, whatever price the market will bear.
No view, it seems, is so extreme that someone, somewhere, doesn’t embrace it.
unbound
16 May 2012 at 4:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Daz – Seems to be a competition on who can have the most naive or least compassionate viewpoint anymore…
baal
16 May 2012 at 4:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@rthille
The interest payment counts against income. This reduces the taxable amount the company has to pay on. Less taxes means the company can divert what would have been taxes to something else – like paying big salaries to the Romneys.
Rip Steakface
16 May 2012 at 5:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The “invisible hand” does very much exist, but it’s not the magical cure-all that libertarians insist it is. It’s just a plain force of nature.
It just weeds out companies that aren’t profitable. Profitable does not mean they’re ethical in the least bit – their entire goal is to be money-making machines. The only way we can prevent corporations from being assholes is by restrictions placed upon them by the people – in other words, the government.
I wouldn’t argue that corporations are innately immoral as a result of their nature. They don’t have the capacity for it. They’re amoral – and their boards of directors are the real assholes that make them into the immoral monsters they are in reality.
imthegenieicandoanything
16 May 2012 at 5:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Mitt R. is proof that the “Republican” Party is continuing their experiments to produce the purest possible toxin with which to kill the American form of democracy, all derived from odd fluids collected from the decaying remains of Richard Nixon.
The Dubya Bu–sh– strain was the first great success (from their reverse-Dr. Moreau-like point-of-view), but was still barely better than a prototype, since it was only able to be elected under specially pressured labratory conditions (and, even there, by the thinnest of margins).
Attempts to reanimate John McCain using such methods, as well as by supplementing him with the excessively volatile Palin parasite, proved a complete failure.
Mitt is very nearly perfect, though even more expensive to implant than the early Bu–sh– model: “he” is empty of any human emotions that do not involve bullying, cheating, lying, and taking general “joy” in the harm he does, from a safe distance, to human and humanity.
How do they find people even more horrid and unworthy of respect or trust than GWBush?
madscientist
16 May 2012 at 5:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I hope he does one on how the global stockmarkets are nothing but legalized pyramid schemes.
Amphiox
16 May 2012 at 5:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
“how do they find people even more horrid… than GWBush?”
It’s quite easy when over three quarters of the party membership already qualify.
Daz
16 May 2012 at 5:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Off topic, but still money-related:
I just came across this rather interesting article on religious finances and subsidies in the US.
Gregory Greenwood
16 May 2012 at 5:56 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Rip Steakface @ 23;
Market dynamics of supply and demand and the like certainly exist, but the very phrase ‘invisible hand’ is often misinterpreted to imply an agency to the market itself – a form of naturally occurring super-efficiency that supposedly renders all regulation at best moot and at worst harmful.
As you say, many Libertarians and other small government obsessed nincompoops seem to view the free market as some perfect social panacea – a cure-all for everything from trade deficits to social issues such as poverty and discrimination, despite the fact that all evidence indicates the contrary. It is, to all intents and purposes, a supernaturalist mindset.
Up to a point perhaps, but it seems to me that some companies are capable of acheiveing a critical mass of influence such that even if they are complete economic basket cases they will still be propped up because the alternative would be to expose the great and the not so good of a given saociety to losses, even where the vested interests in question very much come from the camp of the free market apostles.
So, as may be expected, Libertarians and Right wingers of this stripe pair their lack of empathy and greed with rank hypocrisy; they state loud and often that the freemarket renders government largely obsolete (apart from running the military and interfering in what goes in in people’s bedrooms, that is) and represents the perfect source of self regulating social authority… right up until they are the ones who stand to lose out.
Rarely have truer words been written.
Which is exactly why small government conservatives want to pull the government’s teeth – it removes the principle force capable of balancing out the power of the corporations that they hold shares in, and thereby insures that their personal wealth and standing within the corporate world grants them near unassailable power.
Money, like any other form of power, corrupts. Once you start getting into the realms of the crazy amounts of money that fly about in big buisness circles, otherwise reasonable people can start acting like absolute monsters. In that sense, perhaps corporations – as concentrations of often largely unaccountable wealth and thus power – are structurally predisposed to warping the people who run them, and the constant drive toward deregulation favoured by small government conservatives and libertarians only exacerbates this situation.
gluon
16 May 2012 at 6:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ Rip Steakface “The only way we can prevent corporations from being assholes is by restrictions placed upon them by the people – in other words, the government.”
But corporations are people. ;-)
julietdefarge
16 May 2012 at 6:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The only apotheosis I like is this one: Prinz Eugen von Savoyen, a gay man who turned back the Ottoman army.
http://www.friendsofart.net/en/art/balthasar-permoser/apotheosis-of-prince-eugene
chrislawson
16 May 2012 at 6:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
rthille@14: There are variations on this scheme which eviscerate the company leaving it worthless after selling off its assets, but in this instance what is happening is that the assets of the company are not being sold off but being used instead as collateral for loans on high-risk investments.
@lots of people: The Invisible Hand is a metaphor, but it does describe the very real process by which open markets will tend to favour sellers who meet customers’ needs at the lowest cost. The problem with the Invisible Hand is that it is not the only force at work in the marketplace. Adam Smith knew this. Wealth of Nations is chock full of descriptions of ways the free market can be inefficient and anti-customer (e.g. monopolies, corruption, political expediency, intimidation by violence). Most contemporary advocates of free market theory have a cruder approximation of the real world than the fellow who came up with the concept over 200 years ago.
robro
16 May 2012 at 8:37 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Daz @#20 — Indeed. Given that the ideal social and economic order for Republicans and Libertarians is late 19th America, it’s not surprising that they want to stop the government from providing services like roads, fire protection, etc. Let the private sector handle it because that’s how those services were provided in those halcyon days. No matter that if you couldn’t afford the protection or the access, you didn’t get it.
Now that Conservatives, Republicans, Libertarians, and even some Democrats have convinced droves of people in the Nitwitted States to defund government, such “luxuries” as fire protection, emergency services, weather forecasting, etc are being hit hard, not to mention education and basic science research.
Here’s where the cock comes to roost: After the 1989 Loma Preita earthquake, the San Francisco Fire Department began offering neighborhood emergency readiness training classes. They tell you straight out in the first session that the reason for the program is that the SFFD does not have enough people or equipment to deal with any significantly large emergency…say, the next BIG ONE! They will be completely overwhelmed with the emergency in the high density areas (downtown) where many buildings will collapse and fires will rage through the remains. This is due in no small part to the deep cuts in the SFFD. The force is considerably smaller today than it was 10 or 20 years ago, including fewer fire fighters, less equipment, and fewer stations.
When the next big one hits SF, neighborhoods will be own their own to fight the fires (with garden hoses), pull people out of collapsed structures (with their DIY crowbars), treat serious injuries (rip those bed sheets), and start delivering shelter, food, and water for the survivors. Oh, and maintain civil order…i.e. stop the looting, assaults, etc…because the police will also be overwhelmed.
Not a pretty picture, but that’s what you get when people are more concerned with money than human beings, and when so many people are deluded by their beliefs…ideological and/or religious…that government and taxes are bad.
Rey Fox
16 May 2012 at 8:50 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
But at least he wasn’t a community organizer. *spits*
Rey Fox
16 May 2012 at 8:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Could we have gotten a more straight-from-central-casting villain in this election? Rich, stiff, out of touch, casually cruel to animals and students below him on the social ladder, and he had a company called BAIN. As in “bane of my existence”, and “I will break you”.
And he was the best they could come up with.
DLC
16 May 2012 at 9:38 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
While Robert Reich will never be Roy Zimmerman, his videos are good and informative. Were this 1720, Mitt Romney would be hunted down by the Royal Navy for piracy. Bain Capital (could there be a more appropriate name ? Bane ? ) was nothing more than a mordern day pirate ship. For all that, they give decent hardworking pirates a bad name.
brianthomson
17 May 2012 at 1:43 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’m not in the USA, and don’t have a stake in the race, but when I read about how Romney made his money, my first thought was “he’s Gordon Gekko from Wall Street“! Oh, but wait – Gekko was nasty, he didn’t go to church, he had no morals … Romney is different, right? He goes to church, he gives to charity (his church), he’s always smiling, never says anything as clear and unambiguous as “Greed is Good”. So that’s OK, then. Nothing to see here ..?
If the Obama campaign don’t jump on this comparison, I’ll be surprised and they’ll be negligent, since it’s obvious even to a Euro-peon such as myself. The Romney campaign will dismiss it as “liberal talking points” or whatever – as if anyone who brings this up is a sheep who had it fed to them to bleat – but the comparisons are so clear, they could work at a grassroots level, no Astroturfing required. (Sheep can’t eat Astroturf, anyway!)
In the movie, Gekko was arrested for insider trading, which I read as a requirement of the movie genre: the bad guy has to get his comeuppance. Real life isn’t as neatly scripted. If I was an American, I wouldn’t be as worried about Romney himself as I would be about those who would follow him in to the Executive Branch – like all those Goldman Sachs types who worked under Obama.
unclefrogy
17 May 2012 at 2:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
it is just like the practice of off-shoring labor I would include all of labor as now many “back office” functions can be done in asia. it is a great way to make more profit but is short sighted when everyone a given market off-shores enough of labor the market will find itself diminished then what. The kind of business Mittins was not one of building a business or even managing a successful one.
He is just a used business salesman
uncle frogy
quoderatdemonstrandum
17 May 2012 at 6:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Everyone interested in this thread should read The Corporation by Joel Bakan. The book is an excellent expose on the history and nature of modern corporations and the harm they do to society. He says that if corporations are people, they are sociopathic people.
video linky
humanape
17 May 2012 at 8:00 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Except for the fact corporations create hundreds of thousands of jobs with great benefits.
The video is a fair criticism of Romney. I have to vote for him anyway because I don’t much care for Obama’s idea that success is a bad thing that should be punished. A lifetime of working hard to become rich should not be punished with higher taxes.
I also don’t like Obama’s philosophy that government spending means more jobs. The jobs that last come from the private sector. All the government has to do is get out of the way.
I voted for Obama in 2008. I like him. I’m completely satisfied with his foreign policy, his protection of the environment, and other things. But this capitalist country needs a president who knows how capitalism works. Liberals are correct about a lot of things but they don’t understand free enterprise.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
17 May 2012 at 8:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Haven’t noticed that working. Your theology has some holes in it, which is shown by history.
What a Maroon, Applied Linguist of Slight Foreboding
17 May 2012 at 8:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Of course the number of jobs in the private sector has grown almost as fast under Obama as it did under Bush. It’s in the public sector that jobs are being lost (source).
But hey, capitalism doesn’t need teachers or cops or firefighters, right?
KG
17 May 2012 at 8:28 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
What a prize fuckwit.
theophontes 777
17 May 2012 at 8:29 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ DLC
The Crimson Permanent Assurance part 1 (Mitt snuffs it @ ~ 2:25)
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
17 May 2012 at 8:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Gee, until it ran into money problems, the city was spending $3,000,000 a year on road resurfacing. They hired private companies, who had to hire workers to do that job. And government doesn’t create jobs by government spending? Real trickle down effects from said government, versus imaginary trickle down effects from the rich keeping their money (according to your theology)…
theophontes 777
17 May 2012 at 8:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ humanape
Ape. Why don’t you take this story to the Chinese. With your advice they could be gurgling down the plughole nice and convivially with the ‘Merkins. Instead, they rode out the financial crisis, in large part due to massive government spending on infrastructure and other public works.
Idjit!
Louis
17 May 2012 at 8:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I SMELL LIBERTARIAN!!!!!!!!
Ew. I stepped in some libertarianism. Anyone got something to scrape it from between the grooves of my shoes?
Louis
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
17 May 2012 at 8:55 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Seven-day-old grog works, if your shoes can take it.
raven
17 May 2012 at 8:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Troll is making stuff up.
Obama is a prime example of hard work and talent succeeding in the USA.
Born to a mostly single mother who was always on the edge financially, half black in a racist society, and ends up with a Harvard law degree, US senator, and President of the USA.
Compare that to Romney. Father was governor and very rich and Romney grew up in wealth, went to private schools, and made even more money (legally) looting companies as part of the Wall Street economic-financial complex.
What a Maroon, Applied Linguist of Slight Foreboding
17 May 2012 at 8:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Soak it in a solution of 5 parts public education, 2 parts graduated income tax, and 7 parts government regulation of industry.
raven
17 May 2012 at 8:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Reality works but you have to scrape hard and often. Gibbertarianism keeps building up if you keep wading in it.
No permanent solution is known but some claim moving to Canada, Europe, or parts of Asia helps a lot.
Audley Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
17 May 2012 at 9:00 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Rey,
I like the back breaking metaphor. It suits how intelligently evil Bane’s business strategy is.
(+1 for the Batman/Knightfall ref.)
Hey monkey fucker! Doesn’t the argument that taxes=punishment get a little old? For shit’s sake, a child could figure out that taxes pay for stuff we all use– even the rich, even coporations.
If it means that much to you, feel free to move where there’s little to no taxes; you’ve gotta be itching to “go Galt” and prove us all wrong anyway, right?
Brownian
17 May 2012 at 9:03 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So much for the conservative myth of the lazy, unfireable, career bureaucrat.
Anyways, the hard workers of the companies gutted by Bain will be glad to hear they’ve been working all this time.
Honestly, humanape, don’t you ever get tired of being you? I mean, c’mon, unless you’re completely delusional, the occasional lucid moment would necessitate that some days, you look at yourself in the mirror and realize exactly what you are.
theophontes 777
17 May 2012 at 9:31 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ What a Maroon / All
Or what about a flat rate tax + BIG?
The advantages: Very simple and cheap to administrate (collecting tax and distributing social welfare is very expensive otherwise). Pumps money into ALL sectors of society. Offers support for those without work (who benefit the most in terms of BIG as a proportion of income), but incentivises earning at the same time.
As economy recovers, BIG can be increased, creating a feedback loop. (The commonwealth is there for everyone. It is the system to be optimised.) Of course everyone contributes. From corporations to churches.
Even will have to contribute.
What a Maroon, Applied Linguist of Slight Foreboding
17 May 2012 at 9:35 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Um, what?
Phalacrocorax, not a particularly smart avian
17 May 2012 at 9:42 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
brianthomson said:
On the other hand, he says things like “Corporations are people, my friend”. Too far-fetched even for Gekko?
humanape said:
Are you rich yet, humanape? Remember, you pull up the ladder only after you’re on top. Otherwise, you may be betraying your own selfish philosophy of helping only yourself.
theophontes 777
17 May 2012 at 10:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ What a Maroon
An example: How a Basic Income [Grant] Program Saved a Namibian Village. Link to Der Spiegel (English)
Essentially every citizen (or permanent resident) in the country gets a flat, basic grant from the government. This should be sufficient to cover basic living expenses. For the very poor, this has incredibly beneficial effects, from health, to education to starting a business. For wealthier people it has marginal effect, but because it is given to everyone, whatever their age or circumstance, it is seen as essentially fair. It is also cheaper to administrate.
Ing: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream So I Comment Instead
17 May 2012 at 10:06 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Humanape has never met a turd he didn’t mistake for a Tootsie Roll
johnhunter
17 May 2012 at 10:15 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
How do community organizers make money?
theophontes 777
17 May 2012 at 10:25 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
WUT?
Audley Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
17 May 2012 at 10:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No no no no no. This is not an important question. The important question is: how do idiots like you make money?
KG
17 May 2012 at 10:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Well one thing we can be absolutely sure of: if a certain ex-community worker who is now undoubtedly guilty of occupying a senior post in the executive branch of government while black, had ever earned money in any way that was even slightly fishy, we’d know about it.
raven
17 May 2012 at 10:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The same way Space Reptiles, Elves, and Bigfoot do.
Who knows, who cares? It has nothing to do with the post or any of the tangential topics.
BTW, speaking of non sequiturs, what color is the sky on your planet. Not that I really care all that much. Does Trollhaven even have a sky?
myeck waters
17 May 2012 at 11:47 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I don’t recognize your user name, johnhunter. Was that your first post here? If so, I’m glad you took the time to paint that giant I AM AN IDIOT banner on your shirt so we didn’t have to guess about where you’re coming from.
What a Maroon, Applied Linguist of Slight Foreboding
17 May 2012 at 11:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
theophontes 777, thanks for the explanation.
Phalacrocorax, not a particularly smart avian
17 May 2012 at 12:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
They earn a penny every time a Republican repeats a stupid talking point on the internet. That’s how Obama became a millionaire, don’t you know?
What a Maroon, Applied Linguist of Slight Foreboding
17 May 2012 at 12:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Also, they supply atheists with human babies for our barbeques.
Phalacrocorax, not a particularly smart avian
17 May 2012 at 12:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
True, but only white babies. The others are sold to Maoist guerrilla training camps where they learn how to take over the nation.
coffeehound
17 May 2012 at 3:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yeah! I remember way back in aught-one right through aught-eight when the economic growth of our great country was humming along at oh, say 1.7-1.8% under the great GW. There was a man who understood capitalism…….
'Tis Himself
17 May 2012 at 3:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
If you have any questions about free enterprise, this liberal economist would be happy to explain them to you. I can even talk down to you because, as the quoted statement shows, you prefer simplistic statements.
julian
17 May 2012 at 3:47 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
So you’re going to vote for the Republican?!
Here’s something you should understand about making money, human fuckwit. You don’t have to make other people money to make yourself money. You make tons of it just by bleeding those under you dry and cutting those trying to get a leg up down. In fact, it’s a wonderful way to make yourself obscenely rich.
coffeehound
17 May 2012 at 3:53 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, yeah and I’ll tell those teachers that I know personally that have been in the workforce for over 30 years that they’re in the public sector, therefore they don’t have jobs that last,halfwit.
cm's changeable moniker
17 May 2012 at 7:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You know that whole load-up-on-debt, sack everyone, PROFIT! thing?
How private equity actually works these days.
These days, it’s more like venture capitalism. And VCs make things like Facebook, right?
Brownian
17 May 2012 at 7:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hey, humanape,
Here’s a capitalist who claims to understand capitalism, and from his explanation, it appears you couldn’t be more of a fucking moron if you tried.
Fuck you.
Ing: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream So I Comment Instead
17 May 2012 at 7:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Mitt Romney understands our economy
he used it to steal money and eliminate jobs, stealing from those pooer to enrich himself
I want him in charge of the country!
cm's changeable moniker
17 May 2012 at 8:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@Brownian, you should probably also watch:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12324
birgerjohansson
18 May 2012 at 8:22 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Speaking as an outsider, you ‘mericans either need to get rid of those Blue Dog democrat Rethug enablers -creating a real political alternative- or create a million Rorschach clones (the film/graphic novel one). I like the idea of messy payback.
Anri
18 May 2012 at 9:30 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Taxes.
Are not.
A punishment.
Please, please stop making yourself look enormously stupid by saying they are.
carbonbasedlifeform
18 May 2012 at 10:50 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I recently attended the retirement party of a friend who spent 30 years working for the City of Naperville, Illinois as a fireman.
I’m quite sure that I care even less for bald-faced liars such as yourself.
KG
18 May 2012 at 10:53 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I disagree: I think it’s very much for the best that humanape displays his enormous stupidity so openly.
Louis
18 May 2012 at 11:01 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Taxes are punishment?
Fuck me! I never knew.
Waaaaaaait a second. How did all these roads and hospitals get here? They’re quite useful, they are. It’s almost like these good things were paid for by some centrally administered source of funding collected by the UK government.
Nah.
Excuse me, I’m just off to the Inland Revenue to get some “punishment”. I hear they administer spankings and call you “a very naughty boy”, if you ask nicely.
Louis
Brownian
18 May 2012 at 11:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Frankly, humanape can do nothing else.
carbonbasedlifeform
18 May 2012 at 11:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Answered by Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations:
Amphiox
18 May 2012 at 11:19 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Louis, Louis, Louis, don’t you know?
Those hospitals, roads, police departments, firemen, safety regulations, are all part of the punishment. They are the honey trap that lures you into and keeps you bound in the gilded cage of government managed civilization! Those shiny interstates(or British equivalent thereof) are the very CHAINS that enslave you like a domesticated animal.
Soon enough you are robbed of even your desire for and capacity to obtain, true god given FREEEDDOMM!*(Braveheart scream)
* the ability to live as god intended, alone in the woods wrapped in the skin of the bear you strangled with your own bare hands. Flint spears allowable only if you planted, nurtured, harvested, and processed the tree, climbed the mountain, discovered and excavated the quarry, and knapper the spear point yourself. Jawbone of ass optional.
Anri
18 May 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Good point, KG.
I was just hoping agaisnt hope that the ape-flung poo might end up going in a different direction for a little while. On the “better to be thought a fool…” principle.
What a Maroon, Applied Linguist of Slight Foreboding
18 May 2012 at 12:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not to mention that the availability of hospitals and roads and all that to poor people means they’re more likely to live longer, to travel near you, to get an education and compete with you for jobs, and so on. And all that makes it that much more difficult to exploit or kill them for fun and profit.
Just another example of how Big Government tramples on your liberty.
Rev. BigDumbChimp
18 May 2012 at 12:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
oh groan.
“Free enterprise” doesn’t exist. Except maybe in Somalia and really, not even there.
Brownian
18 May 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Because fuckheads like humanape don’t seem to grok this point.
There are concepts in public health called PYLL, or years of potential life lost and DALY, or Disability adjusted life year which allow us to measure the relative costs of diseases in the number of healthy, productive years they remove from a person’s life.
The economic implications of healthy, productive are not incidental in the use of these types of measurements.
It’s people like humanape who don’t understand capitalism, rather than the rest of us.
Louis
18 May 2012 at 2:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Amphiox, #83,
But but but I already live like that. Am I DOIN IT RONG?
Louis
cm's changeable moniker
18 May 2012 at 4:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Louis, you do everything wrong. That’s why we like you. ;)