"Fings Break"
19/10/12 09:55![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpolitics
From Monty Python:
Dino: You ought to be careful, Colonel.
Colonel: We are careful. Extremely careful.
Dino: Of course, uh, fings break, don’t they?
Colonel: Break?
Luigi: Well, everyfing breaks, don’t it Colonel (knocks a ceramic vase off the desk) Oh, there,
Dino: Oh see, my brother’s clumsy, Colonel. When he gets unhappy he, uh, breaks fings. Like, say he don’t feel the army’s playing fair by him, uh, he may start breaking fings, Colonel….
Colonel: Are you threatening me?
Luigi: No, no, no, no, no, whatever made you think that, Colonel?
Dino: The Colonel doesn’t think we’re nice people Louie,
Luigi: We’re your buddies, Colonel.
Dino: We want to look after you!
It's not just a few right wing crackpot business owners slipping their leashes and letting their enthused support for Romney carry them away to the point where they obliquely threaten the people who work for them. The idea comes from elected officials and candidates.
GOP Rep. Joe Walsh:
"If you run, manage or own a company tell your employees! What was the CEO this week that said, if Obama is reelected, I may have to let all of you go next year? If Obama's reelected, if the Democrats take Congress, I may not be able to cover your health insurance next year.
Mitt Romney, from Presidential Small Business Town Hall:
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. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, I hope you pass those along to your employees…
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.
These people are scared. Republican efforts to make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for many low income Americans to vote just aren’t enough. There are still a few members of the middle class, the ones who work in cubicles, who will likely get past the poll workers and actually get to fill out a ballot.
So, the GOP wants business owners to morph into the Vercotti Brothers. They want rank and file workers walking into the voting booth thinking, not of what a given candidate could do for them, but what their boss might do to them if his or her favored candidate doesn’t get elected.
Because the boss is worried! Honest! The boss wants to look out for you!
The boss just wants you to know that fings break.
Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 15:24 (UTC)Like banning FB in the office?
Tell me about that.
I neither feel power over me nor I feel my power over people I've hired... What am I doing wrong?
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 15:27 (UTC)Like laying employees off.
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 16:37 (UTC)Workers may stop working but you don't say they have power over the employer. Why?
And, as I mentioned below, "vote for XXX of I fire you" doesn't make sense cause the boss doesn't know your vote.
Any other "power" you have in your sleeve?
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 17:21 (UTC)Wow. How much reality are you willing to jettison to avoid conceding a point?
An employer determines whether or not an employee continues working and therefore has a regular paycheck, that enables the employee to pay for basics like food, shelter, etc, An employer determines whether or not an employee continues working and therefore has health insurance.
v: Workers may stop working but you don't say they have power over the employer. Why?
Because unless they have a strong union, they are pretty much at the mercy of an employer who can fire them at will. Workers who stop working without a union backing them up are likely to lose their jobs and get replaced.
"Men are cheaper than shingles," as one 19th century employer observed when asked why he didn't ensure the safety of his workers to avoid losing large numbers of them to pneumonia in a badly insulated work shed.
v: And, as I mentioned below, "vote for XXX of I fire you" doesn't make sense cause the boss doesn't know your vote.
But he can know the outcome of the election. The boss is trying to make his employers fear an Obama re-election, not out of what Obama might do, but out of what the boss might do.
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 18:13 (UTC)Funny. A man is such a passive thing as you tell this story, determined whether to work or not. Doesn't decide a thing.
It doesn't match my experience from both sides though.
You can't force me work if I don't wan to, and I can't force you to hire me if you don't want to.
It's a game for two.
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 18:39 (UTC)v: Funny. A man is such a passive thing as you tell this story, determined whether to work or not. Doesn't decide a thing.
It doesn't match my experience from both sides though.
What planet are you living on?
Because on the one where I'm living, being employed is pretty damned important, and many owho are either currently without employment or are struggling in low-paying jobs with no benefits show why. They include twenty-somethings staggering under a mountain of debt. They include 50-somethings who are discovering just how hard it is to find a job when you're over a certain age. It includes people who are making decisions nobody in an advanced western society should have to make about whether they are going to pay rent, pay utilities, pay for that medicine that keeps them healthy and/or alive, or that medical test that would alert them to the existence of cancer or some other serious condition, or that operation that would prevent them from becoming disabled.
v: You can't force me work if I don't wan to, and I can't force you to hire me if you don't want to.
No, but you sure as hell can force people out of work.
v: It's a game for two.
To people struggling to get by, it's not a "game."
And their struggle is not taking place on a level field.
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 18:59 (UTC)Life is hard, yes. Sometimes you have to choose.
It's not the first time I observe your deep and sincere indignation about the fact people ALWAYS have to decide for themselves.
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 19:14 (UTC)So you've shifted from pretending that bosses aren't more powerful than their employees to mocking what many people in this country are currently going through. I suppose that's progress of a sort. We can dispense with your entire earlier line of "argument" and deal with those snickers of yours aimed at people going without medicine and food.
"Choosing" between voting for the candidate you want and keeping your job is similar to the "choice" of friend of mine faced when she was confronted by a large scary man with a knife. She could lie still while he had sex with her, or she could lose an eye. Hey, it was her "choice," right?
Used to hear the same from a Soviet apologist back in the '80s. All those silly dissidents had the "choice" of keeping their mouths shut. They had only themselves to blame if they ended up in a gulag.
v: It's not the first time I observe your deep and sincere indignation about the fact people ALWAYS have to decide for themselves.
So it's your contention that the uninsured and the unemployed "decided" to be uninsured and unemployed.
Do the uninsured who die for lack of access to medical care "decide" to die?
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 20:03 (UTC)Have you eve been one?
>> Used to hear the same from a Soviet apologist back in the '80s. All those silly dissidents had the "choice" of keeping their mouths shut. They had only themselves to blame if they ended up in a gulag.
I strongly suggest you to read these dissidents, there are plenty translated. They knew EXACTLY what they face and what may happen.
It will also be a good reading on Big Government and welfare state, plenty of cross-training for you, if I may suggest.
>> So it's your contention that the uninsured and the unemployed "decided" to be uninsured and unemployed.
On this case I said "Shit happens".
(no subject)
Date: 20/10/12 20:29 (UTC)v : Have you eve been one?
Nope, but my father has, and I know a good many employers. They might disagree with me on some political issues, but they don't go so far as to pretend that their employees are on an equal footing with them when it comes to power in the workplace.
PFT: Used to hear the same from a Soviet apologist back in the '80s. All those silly dissidents had the "choice" of keeping their mouths shut. They had only themselves to blame if they ended up in a gulag.
v: I strongly suggest you to read these dissidents, there are plenty translated. They knew EXACTLY what they face and what may happen.
I have read them. Hell, I was reading Solzhenitsyn back when Harpers was excerpting his chapters on torture. Don't remember Solzhenitsyn or any of the other dissidents using the fact that Soviet repression was predictable as absolution for Soviet officials.
Frankly, I have to wonder about your notion of political freedom, since you apparently consider coercion no big deal. Perhaps you're one of those who considers Pinochet's torturing, mass-murdering Chile more free than Allende's non-torturing, non-mass-murdering Chile because Pinochet was a free market right winger and Allende was a leftist.
(no subject)
Date: 21/10/12 05:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/10/12 16:02 (UTC)Uh huh. That's what Siegel meant when he invoked the image of himself relaxing in the Caribbean while his erstwhile employees struggled to find jobs. Oh wait, they were probably all building fantastic mansions for themselves... Right?
(no subject)
Date: 22/10/12 07:28 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/10/12 15:29 (UTC)Nah, just a little dose of reality.