Impoverished Man Threatens to Fire All 7,000+ Employees if Obama is Re-elected

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Tiassa, Oct 11, 2012.

  1. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,634
    Yes. They are called libertarians, and feel that they should be free to do whatever they like without regard to evil government law.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Well they (the tax) most certainly are not trivial where I live. And, if you think they're trivial - then why are they there? Counties and States are going broke. Not to mention, from the federal level the illusion of productivity and the real reduction in unemployment (while we ship our productive manufacturing overseas) was REAL. And so Politicians really do get to demagogue this issue (which is why Clinton is loved for his demagoguery) and get reelected as the entire nation turned into house flippers.


    Anyway, you asked for an explanation and I gave you one.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    DO you REALLY believe that?

    If so you are confusing Libertarianism with Statism.
    Libertarianism has three main ideals the philosophy centers around:
    1. Do not iniate force against other people
    2. Private property rights
    3. Civil Law.


    As for the evil government law. It was the government that faked and lied us into the Vietnam War. Literally drafted 10s of thousands of Americans children and sent them to be killed all so a few arms manufacturers could make a quick buck. Need I mention WMD and Iraq?

    When you see North Korean worshiping the State... what DO you think?
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    See? See? You're not even a full sentence into your reply and already you're way off the mark.

    This is the whole problem and it's giving my carpel tunnel!

    How can you have a 'free-market' and at the same time 'subvert the will of the free-market' by electing politicians that do something to skew the market?

    YOU CAN'T!

    So? What's the solution? Let's see, there's the present way we do things. We regulate the market. Yes, and we let the corporations write these regulations and give them to the politicians who then game the market.

    Then, there's the old way: Laws that protect private property (starting with our bodies) and small less intrusive government...




    Answer this question: If the government CAN NOT skew the free-market, in any way, why on earth would a corporation donate to politicians? Why? They only buy politicians (like Mittens and Obama) because they're getting something for their money. Now, remember we have CIVIL LAW and we have PRIVATE PROPERTY. So, no, you're not going to be polluted by anyone or poisoned because that person would be sued, lose everything and go to prison.

    Now, please address my question.
     
  8. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    That one area, of the USA, the rest of the world had quit Slavery voluntarily.
    By we, I meant 'humanity' at large.

    The English as an example.


    The Civil War was fought to prevent the South from ceding from the Union. Slavery was on the way out and it didn't matter if the South left the union or not, they'd not have Slaves by the 1900s as the tide of human consciousness had turned against using THAT kind of force. We actually returned to a norm - the original more natural form of the human condition. Places like Japan tried slavery and gave up on it a thousand years earlier.

    It's unnatural and it takes a LOT of brainwashing to support it.

    Let's hope we, humanity, sees it's way to return to not using force against the laborer as well. I'm of the mind, we will

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Call me a positivist

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  9. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    That never happened. There are more people held in slavery today than at any point in human history.
     
  10. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,479
    can you make an argument with out a logical fallacy? I mean just try it you don't have to keep doing it. just take it for a spin and see how it feels you might like it.
     
  11. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,479
    doesn't matter what libertarians claim it matters what they do which you never seem to get. your judge not on your lofty ideals but on the horrors you actually unleash. I can claim I'm a fairy princess doesn't make it true. you have that problem with your religion... er ideology you think simply because it claims something it must be true.
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Even after the big, suddenly hugely profitable (with the cotton gin) plantations had been broken and their slaves freed by governmental force, some places in the Confederacy maintained a system of de facto slavery enforced by corporate interests (such as United Steel) into the 1950s and 60s - it was very profitable, even under informal and less efficient conditions than the overt legal plantation setup.
    Japan had official slavery of Japanese citizens into the 1600s, and later as personal servants for elites, despite having almost no industrial use for them (wet rice farming is not well adapted to plantation slavery, etc). Although the Japanese did then free the slaves of conquered peoples during military campaigns, when they did set up industrial agriculture and manufacturing, they found their own enslavement of Chinese and Javanese and other peoples to be very profitable and effective.

    Slaves revolt, oppressors fall, but slavery itself is not something most slaveowners "quit", or ever have. Governments - like Japan's, the US's, England's - break oppression and free the oppressed by force. Slaves revolt and kill their owners and free themselves by force to govern themselves. Or it doesn't happen.

    I know of no instance of a corporate entity freeing a population of slaves or any other oppressed people so as to efficiently employ them. Righties talk a free market game, but if they can get slave labor they will take it without a blink - slavery works, from a capitalist's pov.
     
  13. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    So you are an anarchist and I guess you are not familiar with monopolies. Monopolies existed without government intervention and are only mitigated with government regulation.
     
  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,634
    In terms of corporate rights vs responsibilities - absolutely. To conservatives and libertarians, corporations can do no wrong, and the only thing the evil government does is get in the way of the noble corporations.

    Yep, both governments and corporations do bad things. Fortunately we can change our government when we don't like it.

    Good thing we don't do that!
     
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,634
    We do it all the time. We prevent corporations from polluting so much that they kill people. Is that "subverting the will of the free market?" Yep! Does it skew the free market? Absolutely. Is it a good thing? Yes.

    Yep. And if we don't like what the politicians do, we get rid of them.

    Ah yes! The old way.

    Petitioner: The coal plant is making my children sick!
    Judge: Are they dead yet?
    Petitioner: No, but . . .
    Judge: Come back when they are; then you'll be able to prove harm. NEXT!

    Same reason you might contribute to a politician. So one that you like is elected.
     
  16. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Oh come on. Slavery was commonly accepted across the globe as the norm. That is most certainly not the case now.

    If you were a Slave owner in Rome, say you had just bought a working German, no one would have thought twice. If you had bought a young Syrian for sex, maybe the upper class would have scoffed a little. The lower class would have assumed you'd purchased what we'd think of as a wife. ALL the way up to a few hundred years ago.

    And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
    That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
    A home and a country should leave us no more?
    Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.
    No refuge could save the hireling and slave
    From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
    And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
    O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.



    Slavery is NOT the norm any longer.
     
  17. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Nice ad hominem.
     
  18. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Care to give an example of a true monopoly Joe? An instance where there was ONLY ONE supplier. Only ONE. No one else. Just a single person.

    Because as I understand it, it's only happened once and the price they kept their product at was low - extremely low.


    So long as there is a free-market, there can't be a monopoly because others will enter the market and compete.
    What do you think of patent laws and copyright? I think we should do away with them personally.
     
  19. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    And here's the difference. Corporations do not have the legal right to initiate force against you. Government actually DO initiate force against you and if you resist, even peacefully, they send some goons over in a clown suit and take you to prison 'for the good of society'.

    See the difference between the two?

    THEY ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT



    Also, Libertarians are socially liberal and so you could have just as easily said Liberals and Libertarians. Actually, the first part of the word comes form the classical meaning Liberal - as in, Civil Liberties.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2012
  20. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    The US Government, through your income tax money, is the largest polluter in the History of Humanity. They consume the most energy.

    You REALLY think Obama is any different than Bush Jr.?
    If he said he was Republican, then you'd think he's a goon. But, from an outsider, you wouldn't know the difference. It's only your confirmation bias that makes you think Obama is 'on your side'. He's not.

    Which is why we have trial by jury. It stands to reason the people in the community, possibly also being poisoned, will side with the plaintiff. Evidence of pollution is property damage so a civil case can also be made.

    Yeah, so they're use the so-called "regulations" you wrote to screw over the rest of society - which is exactly what is happening right now as we speak. A blind guy riding by on a bus could see that the Too Big To Fails are much bigger and have been stealing from the middle class all day long.

    NOT a single Bankers has been prosecuted by Obama. Not one. Even Maddoff - he was brought in under Bush.




    Anyway, Obama's going to get reelected and then you can be happy when he bails ON the middle class and bails OUT the upper 1% ... AGAIN. Or Mittens - he'll do exactly the same. There is no difference between the two of them.
     
  21. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,634
    I am curious, for those who believe Seigel has broken the law, what law is it that you believe he violated?

    I do believe his statement is unethical, in that he is using the threat of economic coercion to attempt to intimidate employees into voting for his preferred candidate, but unethical does not mean illegal. Employment is, by and large "at will." In fact, even if there is a law on the books he did violate, I think it's clear that that law would be itself of questionable validity under the First Amendment. There are cases where the IRS threatened to take away tax-exempt status on the basis of political speech, but (A) his business not tax exempt and (B) that is different matter entirely because revoking a tax exemption isn't a "punishment" legally (whereas any criminal penalty is perforce a punishment).

    I have no problem decrying his tactics on ethical grounds, but I am forced to conclude that I need to defend his right to engage in his odious speech (at least until we amend the Constitution to limit the First Amendment in some fashion).

    In contrast, I do believe that a law that made it illegal for a private employer to fire someone based on how they vote could pass constitutional muster, but so far as I know there is no such law...and in this case all he has done is talked about firing people (on the basis of who is actually elected, not on the basis of who the employees themselves may have voted for).
     
  22. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    The laws against voter intimidation, as we said at the time.

    There is an explicit law against using threats of economic consequences - explicitly including threatening to fire employees if they don't vote they way you want.

    That doesn't mean that you can intimidate your employees into voting for your preferred candidate under threat of firing. There are numerous exceptions to at-will employment doctrines along such lines.

    Well, then, you clearly don't know much about the First Amendment. Threats and voter intimidation are not covered under "free speech."

    On the contrary, this dirtbag is himself violating his employees' most fundamental right to free speech - their ability to freely vote for a candidate of their choosing - by issuing threats of severe retaliation.

    There is a Federal criminal law against voter intimidation.

    You are defending his right to violate a perfectly Constitutional law - on the books for decades now - by abridging the basic free speech rights of his employees.

    You are very obviously wrong about that.

    Probably you should have spent five minutes on Google before launching your whole stilted troll premise here, then.

    It does not take a genius to read the obvious threat between the lines, there. He's sophisticated enough not to come right out and say "vote Romney or you're fired," but the stuff about "Whose policies are a danger to your job?" is clear enough. If you're an Obama supporter, are you going to feel comfortable revealing that fact around the office, after such a letter has been distributed?
     
  23. seagypsy Banned Banned

    Messages:
    1,153
    In addition to what quadraphonics has already very eloquently covered, discrimination on the grounds of political affiliation is also against the law.


    If you notice the parts I bolded, he clearly harassed the employees on their political views as well as gave benefits (transportation to the polls or time off perhaps) to people who were Bush supporters. This is discrimination and harassment based on political affiliation. And this is all by his own admitting.
     

Share This Page