Saturday, July 20, 2024
Remember the movie Pretty Woman? Do you remember the business Richard Gere was in? He was in the business of buying a company whose stock was undervalued and whose assets were worth more than the price of buying the company. He would swoop in, sell off the assets, load the company up with debt and then leave it to rot. This is the same business as Mitt Romney was in at Bain Capital. They like to dress it up with fancy words and phrases but that’s what they were doing. This is the same thing that happened to Red Lobster, Dunkin’ Donuts too. DD is struggling to pay off the enormous debt that Peter Thiel’s buddies placed on it. I don’t see any difference between this and what happened on the Sopranos when someone asked for help with their restaurant. Tony ordered all kinds of stuff from the restaurant’s suppliers and sold it out the back door. Never paid their bills and eventually lit the place on fire.
If you take an Econ course you are told that a business must have a product or service someone wants and is willing to pay for. If you go to business school you are taught to look for businesses that you can extract the most amount of money from in the least amount of time. A person with a MBA is not trying to make a business better. They are trying to bleed it dry or as near to dry as they can get it. Then they wash their hands and declare there is nothing that can be done.
The Republican Party is in the business of helping these people make as much money as they can. They do this in the form of tax cuts for corporations and the ultra rich. They load the country up with debt and then when a Democratic administration comes in they howl that there’s too much debt and the government needs to cut spending and programs.
When Republican administrations are in power they try to get as many goodies as they can from the government. They try to get rights to drill on government lands and to cut tree too. They attempt to reduce regulations on medicines.
I recently heard an article on about trench collapses. When a trench collapses people die. A way to prevent that is to put barriers on the edges of the trench. This costs money, therefore companies try to avoid doing it. The article interviewed parents and spouses of the people killed. Each time the workers asked, begged, for wall supports. They knew and understood the danger. The companies did nothing. The dirt walls collapsed and the workers died.
What about OSHA? Yeah, what about OSHA? Turns out they can’t shut a company down. They can post signs. They can ask. They can even issue a warning, but that’s it.
Welcome to capitalism in America.
Too bad people don’t pay attention. This has happened so many times yet no one pays attention. Yes, the Republicans do rack up the debt and cry the same old tune after a Democrat has cleaned up the mess but can’t get caught up enough to shove it in the Republicans faces. Once prices are raised it is tough to get them to go back down. Makes me wonder about Kroger in this area. They are creating monopolies and no one is stopping them. They fill the stores with their crappy crap at half the price. No one buys it because it is so bad. They would rather buy the increased priced goods. When will it end? How will it end?
Let’s not forget where the root causes of the collapses in Central American countries that are driving forces behind the influx of migrants on the southern border. It’s the rotten fruit of republican policies and actions in their pursuit of profit for their donors. Communism has never flourished in a vacuum. The revolutions always are preceded by oppression.