BAD BUSINESS POLITICS

We once lived in a time when selling products and services was a symbiotic relationship between buyer and seller, however, today with the inclusion of both politics and "surveillance capitalism", that mutually beneficial balance, has been disrupted and corrupted.  

Businesses today want to voice a political opinion and thereby alienate a large portion of the consumer base in order to appease another consumer base, but that represents a complete nativity of politics. 

Politics is called a dirty business for a reason. Politics is messy because there isn't a one size fits all, issue container, to hold the various and varying views of an electorate. Moreover, people hold grudges against those that hold views that they perceive as divisive, say perhaps the devolvement of the 1st and or second amendment of the Bill of Rights?

Businesses that employ "surveillance capitalism" which is the monitoring and gathering of marketing information on consumers, have already blurred the privacy rights of consumers by making the simple act of purchasing a product, a license for business to spy, collect, and sell our buying habits as a commodity. 

The oligarchy has reached well beyond our 4th amendment rights as government seeking knowledge on a person, already has an avenue of access through the volume of business data collected and preserved without a need for a warrant. Meanwhile Congress does what it does best, when it comes to protecting the rights of the people, nothing. That's right nothing, because not only is the donor bribery between lobbyist and our representatives the string that makes the doll walk and talk, it is also the campaign cash that silences those in charge of preserving our constitutional protections.

So when some businesses want to publically lecture, and or admonish with prejudice their paying customers, Americans are I assume, suppose to lay down and buy it? Boycott or accept it? But what if they can't boycott because it is the only purchase option left, in their one horse community? Angry consumers might continue to buy what they need from your divisive business, but what your marketing data won't show is their begrudge factor, turning their impulse buying into impulse boycotting quickly and with long lived resentment.

Trying to win back customers is much harder than making an initial sale. Once you have angered potential business, it is difficult to walk it back and be forgiven. There is a reason for the motto "the customer is always right" and it has less to do with their argument, and all to do with winning them over, and keeping their loyalty to your business.

So why would you stir a stick into a mucky caustic puddle and alienate potential consumers? Well, I don't know, but I know, it is a very obtuse business move that never ends well. Which is why any astute business, never plays politics. Why corporations and businesses are breaking that rule today, and paying the price, shows either oblivion or arrogance. 

However, the fallout effect for businesses that poke the taxpayers in the eye, might even become worse than just a loss of sales, given that America has become a crony capitalistic environment, the retaliation by consumers could become devastating in the form of being denied federal and state subsidies.

Delta might be the first of these companies to see a quid pro quo retaliatory reaction to their dropping of NRA discounts by way of seeing state bill (HB 821)  to suspend the tax on jet fuel, getting defeated by the  Georgia legislature. That bill's passage would represent roughly 40 million dollars in tax breaks for Delta Airlines.

Some people complained that it would be unfair to penalize individual businesses and lead to government getting into the discrimination game when passing laws. Others, myself included, believe there is already discrimination in the crony capitalist game of lobby laws to serve particular industries. Small business and start-up companies should not have to compete for tax breaks and subsidies being handed out to large corporations. Corporate bail outs and crony capitalism is not the free market enterprise that built the nation, and it is high time we pull in the reins on corporate welfare.

Business is in politics, to lobby for and against taxes, regulations and laws that hinder their productivity, however, in the last century business has become so cozy with Congress, that more often than not, it is business lobbyists, that actually write the legislation that ends up becoming law (Obama-Care), showing  how entangled and corrupted our mixed market and government have become.

If Delta Airlines, Enterprise, Hertz, Wyndham Hotels, SmpliSafe, Metlife, TrueCar, United Airlines, Best Western, Avis, Chubb, Paramount RX, Starkey Hearing Technologies, Allied Van Lines, Symantec and the First National Bank of Omaha want to drop NRA discounts and alienate NRA consumers, than they should be prepared to not only lose sales but equally to lose their place in the crony capitalist handout line.

If these companies lobby state or federal governments for tax breaks, lower regulations or request loans from government, taxpayers should lobby their state and federal officials against any favorable advantage to these companies. Good for goose, good for gander. 

America needs to return to the promise that all entrepreneurs can depend on equal playing field of competition in the marketplace. So if the consumers don't give these businesses their hard earned money and equally lobby their representatives against legislation that favors these businesses, then it would be a genuine push back, to show the power of the people. 

Looking ahead, if business sues based on believing government is blacklisting them, then perhaps this would actually end up in court and maybe, just maybe, taxpayers might see an end to crony capitalism or at least an ebbing, in the bribery game between business and politicians.

Corporate welfare has polluted our free enterprise economic system, creating an elitist Congress that works only for donors and it needs to be thwarted both for our economic health and our constitutional security.

Age of A- Quisling

The definition of quisling is a person who helps an enemy that has taken control of their country. In this case America's political enemy has been the social progressive Democrats and corporate lobbyist both eagerly trashing our Constitution, free enterprise and Judeo-Christian values. While the so-called opposition party of Republicans are being led by quislings in the House and Senate name Boehner and McConnell.

In fact, it might even be wrong to call them quislings for it assumes that they are turncoat conservatives when in fact they are the "SPOILS" (Selfish politicians only interested in legislating for special-interest).

Either way the American people are being treated as cattle while the corporate raiders use our representatives as paid ranch hands and rodeo performers (politicians in Washington) that rope, brand and fatten us up on promises, pledges and platitudes.   

Worse, than the quisling leaders are the silent following members in the House and Senate, that refuse to stand up against the Chamber of Commerce, lobbyist's bought, and insider trading establishment politicians.   

Senator Ted Cruz recently, confronted Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell on the floor of the chamber calling him a liar, because he had stated emphatically to the Senate that he made no deal with the Democrats on reviving the Export/Import Bank Bill in exchange for their support of the GOP Transportation Bill.

McConnell's lie became obvious when the only amendment allowed on the Transportation Bill was the Bank Bill, and all other amendments were rejected by the leadership as being  unrelated to transportation. (Hard to argue why the Export/Import Bank has any correlation to America's roads and bridges.) 

McConnell claimed "when there is overwhelming bipartisan support for an idea, even if I oppose it, it doesn't require some 'special deal' to see a vote occur on that measure. This is the United States Senate, after all, where we debate and vote on all kinds of different issues,..." but this poor excuse for self defense fails the sincerity test.

 Why? Because most Republicans oppose the bank and it was McConnell that used the "amendment tree" which is a procedural tactic, he had criticized Harry Reid for using when he was majority leader, and then he filed cloture on the Bill, to end debate.

If it looks like a lying duck, walks like a lying duck, quacks like a lying duck and has left scat all over the Senate floor like a lying duck,  then it must be a lying duck. 

More than ever before Americans are finally seeing the curtains fall down around the corrupt dealers in Washington, exposing their hollow souls and greedy egos, because of new forthright blood sent to Congress by grassroots American activism.

On July 24, when Ted Cruz of Texas stood up and called out the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over his lies and capitulation to the Democrat Party in favor of renewing the Export/import Bank Bill better known as the crony capital corporate welfare program, the silence in the Senate was notable. 

A few days later on July 26,  Orin Hatch of Utah, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John Cornyn of Texas stood up on the Senate floor and condemned someone for their lack of civility.

Was that someone the liar or the messenger? Were they upset with the someone that lied in leadership, or the someone that exposed the truth? Did they stand up for the American taxpayer and the Senator representing middle class constituents over corporate lobby interests or did they support the someone that sold out the 2014 voters?

Sadly and cynically these RINO SPOILS herded up to the Senate floor microphones and proclaimed support for the corrupt leadership, by calling for the messenger (Cruz) to be admonished. Perhaps voters in all states should be asking their Senators, if they stand with Cruz or corruption.

Coming into an election year that will have profound significance on the country's future and some might say, our last opportunity, to face a fork in the road, that either moves us further into decline or circles us back to common and familiar ground, we desperately need leadership with integrity.

We need principled representation. We need honorable public service. We need trust in office holders we hired. We need to bite the hands of all those political quislings, that are leading us to the corporate slaughter house. We need to ram our heads against the party pens and stampede Washington's K street congressional cartel until the voice of the people is heard loud, louder and loudest as our Republic intended.

The People's oval office is broken. The People's Senate is broken. The People's House of Representatives is broken. The People's judicial branch is broken. Yet, there is always hope, for WE THE PEOPLE are not broken.

Yes, our trust is damaged, yes, our cynicism grows stronger and yes our anger mounts with each election. But the American spirit, this intangible God given virtue that promotes a fiercely free foundation of righteous justice and individual liberty is not dead, not waning just quietly pondering when to arouse in fury.

 

Political and corporate thieves can pass legislation today, but they will always have to face the American people tomorrow. There will always be more believers of liberty than the controlling statists. There will always be re-ignition, even if we must restart in the ashes, because America is not a form for government it is a formula for freedom, and the recipe resides within each lawful citizen of our exceptional nation.

    

YOU CAN’T BLAME A TWO SIDED COIN

For decades the Democrat Party has promoted their socialized big government policies on the American people, and deftly managed to get feckless members of the GOP to join them. When those policies failed to deliver or came up scandalized they always had the ability to blame the GOP.

The Democrat’s excuses were numerous but predictably pre-cast protests. One familiar excuse was that the GOP resisted raising the revenue for the program and therefore its failure was caused by underfunding. It might be considered a lame excuse for any paying attention, but it has worked for Democrats with the sound-bite information voter.

Another deflection deception by the Democrats for their failed policies was that the legislation did not go far enough. They blamed the GOP for watering down their Bill to the point that it stalled and sputtered its effectiveness.

The Democrat’s remedy to all of their failed policies has always been twofold, double down on the funding and undue the Republican amendments to their bills that wrecked the workability of their otherwise successful plans.

 

Yet, what do they say now that the American people know that Obamacare is wholly a Democrat Bill? There is not one GOP fingerprint on that bill. It is their healthcare reform bill, their scheme of funding, their rules and regulatory dictates without a peep of input from the GOP.

Well, we see that Obama and the Democrats are desperate to seek a scapegoat. Their usual straw man is absent from the room. So guess who Obama and the Democrats are trying to pin their donkey tail on the excrement leaking from their uni-corny healthcare bill?

Yes, the insurance companies, the same companies that jumped into bed with the Democrats out of lust and fear. Americans should not feel sympathy for those Insurance companies, but we should know that they are getting screwed. Why did they agree to lie in bed with Democrats to begin with, you might ask?

Well, here is the short simple basic answer; greed and control. You see, the insurance industry knew that the Congress was going to pass legislation governing their industry sooner or later. They knew that some of the proposals being kicked around by both Democrats and Republicans would hurt their profits.

Therefore, it is like a child being told by parents that their room will be cleaned, either the child will clean it, or the parent will come in and clean it. The child knows if the parent cleans it then they will throw out their prized possessions not appreciating the treasures and treating them as trash. 

The Democrats allowed the insurance companies to write Obamacare under their editorial approval. This allowed the big insurance companies two benefits. One the insurance companies would have more control over their own fate. Two, these big insurance players would be able to handcuff their smaller competitors legislating them to fail under Obamacare and then gobble them up and to grow and get bigger. The fact is the Democrats have screwed those insurance companies. Well, suffice to say pity, is the last thing Americans should feel for any companies in bed with Washington.

Americans knew that Obamacare was not written by Senators and or House members especially when Nancy Pelosi intoned the infamous oxymoron “We have to pass it, to know what’s in it.”  Yet cynically, the Democrats and the White House made fools of both the insurance companies and the American people.

They knew that they needed a bridge to cross the country’s private insurance market ocean before they could institute a single payer government run healthcare system like Europe. Deviously they intend, and still do by the way, to tank the big insurance companies profits (by regulating them to fail) then get Congress to come to their bail out rescue.

Once the government takes over WellPoint, Cigna, Aetna, Humana and United Healthcare as it did General Motors then passing a single payer plan is easy. Americans will be duped into believing in free healthcare even though as we all know nothing is free. The cost of every commodity in the American marketplace will skyrocket with increased taxes in order to pay for the single payer or national healthcare. Worse the quality of healthcare will take a nose dive.

The Democrats assumed that they had snookered enough American and that the website would be functional, such so the sheeple would flock to sign up for Obamacare’s exchanges and it would be popular even though some would be unhappy by cancelled policies. In fact Obama and some Democrats still believe they can sell this turkey forward. Sorry but this tofu turkey and all its fixins can’t be blame on the GOP.

Did Obama lie? Did Nancy Pelosi and her Democrat Party lie? Wake up Americans, they not only lied they are still lying to you about this fraudulent bill that dances with the devil of details. This is a one sided coin in a con game that is still being tossed in the air to decide America’s future.

The bill has never been constitutional regardless of Justice John Roberts legislating from the bench that a penalty is now known in our English language as a synonym for a tax. Next time you get a speeding ticket, or watch a football game you might as well call your ticket a tax and the referee’s flag for a face mask grab, a 15 yard tax. 

Obamacare needs to be repealed. Obamacare needs to be seen for what it is, a fraud. The Democrats need to be told again by the electorate that we don’t want a single payer big government solution to healthcare as we expressed in 2010. This time we need to work extra hard to cull the cancer of liberal ideology that threatens our nation’s foundational free market and small government history.

Democrats have no shame. They continue to lie about Obamacare, when they ask that it be fixed. How do you fix a con game? How do you fix a rigged outcome? When should you expect a coin to come up heads when it has tails on both sides?

Obamacare isn’t a train wreck it was a planned crash of the private market that just imploded years before it was intended to blow up. Don’t be fooled by the Democrats that are falsely feigning both ignorance and sympathy for the millions suffering shrapnel, they are still playing their con game.

THE SOLAR POWERED RUNWAY

Secretary Stephen Chu is being chewed out by the House oversight committee on the loan guarantees given to the solar panel company that went bankrupt in August of 2011 after receiving 535 million taxpayer dollars.

Watching the hearings reminds me of a blast from the past. The senate hearings on Organized crime in the 1960’s in which Mafia bosses denied being anything other than being upstanding American citizens.

Stephen Chu claims no previous awareness of any of the politically motivated e-mails involving Solyndra by White House, investor George Kaiser, Office of Management and Budget or Soylndra executives until they were reported in the press days before he testified.

Apparently Stephen Chu the White House and the Democrats want Americans to believe there is no scandal, no illegality, no undue political influence, no break from SOP (standard operating procedure) and no incompetency.

Interesting that both the CEO and the CFO of Solyndra (Brian Harrison and W. G. Stover) both pleaded their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions about their company to Congress weeks earlier given that all is above board in this “un-scandal”.

We have now learned that the White House was involved along with the DOE in requesting Solyndra to delay announcement of its bankruptcy and layoffs from its plan in October 28, 2010 until November 3, 2010.

Collectively we dawn a deadpan face as the political games played in Washington has jaded us all to expectations far from great.  Is anybody shocked that the White House tried to bury the evidence of the failed Solyndra that it took down the runway as the latest fashionable future in energy?

Americans know how the political game works or should we more aptly suggests doesn’t work for the people. The altruism in Washington to set policy that benefits the public  is a pretense Americans know well.

Retuning to my mafia analogy, we all know that in order to be a part of any corrupt cabal one needs to either be just an unscrupulous person begging membership or a patsy to be used.

Stephen Chu is a renowned physicist that truly believes in green energy and although his left leaning political belief in global warming makes him culpable to conservative criticism, no one seriously views him as corrupt.

Instead this good guy geek was brought into the Chicago political gang and given the job of Secretary of the Department of Energy for two reasons reputation and naivety.  How else does this administration manipulate favoritism to his campaign fundraisers (Kaiser) and make it all seem coincidental?

The worst outrage of the Solyndra story of course is the disputed legality of the loan restructuring that put taxpayers out in the cold as a secured creditor while the private investors went to the head of the line.

Stephen Chu seemed calm under fire when he explained to Congress that when the DOE learned that Solyndra had a serious cash flow problem the government was left with two choices. One pulls the loan and ensures Solyndra falls quickly into bankruptcy where taxpayers would take a bath or restructure the loan. Chu’s argument for the latter involved Solyndra’s half built building that would not become a salable asset unless it was completed.

However, most Americans are rightfully confused that if the reason to not pull the loan was to insure that the taxpayer had asset equity to liquidate if the company went under, then how did it benefit the taxpayers to be made secondary creditors over private investors?

In business there is always the paradoxical choice of what to do with a high volume sales customer that does not pay their bill. Shut them off and you lose those sales while chasing your money in court or keep extending them credit and hope they will adhere to a payment plan and not beat you out of greater debt. However, I know of no such plan that involves handing your receivables over to a third party in which you lose either way if the customer pays or defaults? 

This can only happen in a government managed or should we say mismanaged loan program. We have seen politics mixed with many endeavors such as war strategy and we know it is a toxic mixture. No American is surprised that politics mixed with business not only creates failure, corruption, favoritism, waste, inefficiency and fraud but worse it displays a public disdain.

The Democrats on the Committee shrugged their shoulders that this was not a scandal, but a normal expected outcome of the policy to lend taxpayer dollars to losing causes. The fact that the government threw half a billion dollars on the green energy betting table and it lost was no big deal. The fact that the loan was restructured to make the taxpayer insolvent happens every day.

The idea that Stephen Chu should even be questioned given his impeccable credentials to the Democrats is the only outrage.

Yes, this administration found the perfect patsy in Stephen Chu to kill two birds with one stone, pay back Obama’s fundraising friends and use a green energy company to laud the president’s environmental success story.

However, even though the emperors clothes are now revealing their transparent see through exposure it will be the patsy dressmaker (Chu) that will take the fall not the man gliding on the runway stage as the once Chicago super model that now struts in Washington.

I PAID FOR THE STICK NOW HIT ME HARD!

Obama is the poster boy of Wall Street campaign money receiving 11.8 percent of his 2012 campaign funds from the financial district and 6.9 percent from lawyers which represents a lion’s share of all his contributors.

The word hypocrisy seems exhaustibly overused in light of both Obama and the Democratic Party’s sympathy overtures to the Occupy Wall Street protesters that rail against Wall Street influence.

It seems oxymoronic that these rich capitalists would be bankrolling those that want to over-regulate them, tax them excessively and now backstab them by sympathizing with those that want to shame them for being rich and successful?

Is this what happens to people who are successful in this country? Do they acquire wealth and equally acquire masochist complex about being rich and successful?

By giving money to a Party and a candidate that bites and slaps the hand that feeds the class warfare against them makes the average American perplexed. Why? Why is Wall Street giving money to Obama? Why is Wall Street giving money to the Democratic Party that wishes to bridle their future earnings through socialist’s policies?

Are they so ashamed of how they earned their wealth that they want a public pillory to whip their well fed backsides raw to cleanse their rueful pangs of guilt when they see so many others struggling?

There is a difference between Warren Buffett and the Koch Brothers in the viewing of wealth. Buffet believes in social justice which is fascinating given the fact that he earned his wealth in the Wall Street casino game. He never produced a product but instead invested and traded on the success of American business.

 The Koch Brothers inherited Koch Industries from their patriarch Fred C. Koch who developed a new method for refining heavy oil into gasoline. Koch Industries is an example of an American entrepreneurial success story that produced a highly marketable product.

 Both Buffet and the Koch Brothers have been charitable with their wealth yet the contributions are as different as one’s left hand is to one’s right foot.

Buffet is bankrolling Obama and is fully immersed in the social engineering belief that money and power is to be used to play favorites in redistributing wealth.

Koch Brothers have donated countless monies for fostering entrepreneurial opportunities along with conservative think tanks like The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute as well as giving the Tea Party Movement support.

One is showing appreciating for the opportunity they realized through the capitalistic American Dream by giving back that hopeful prospect to other Americans to materialize that same chance at success.

While the other wants to play god on earth believing philanthropy used to change American society is part of the responsibility of wealth achievement.

The political ideological differences of the rich may be as divided as the two party system of American politics yet in this economic climate of class warfare orchestrated by a highly partisan administration why are the wealthy buying mace and self flagellating by continuing to support Obama?

This whole notion of class warfare in America has been orchestrated from the beginning by the Democratic Party, Socialist Party, Unions and other anti-capitalists left-wing groups in their constant speech mantra that blames the haves (rich) success for the have not’s (poor) failure.

The Democratic Party has been indoctrinating the notion of “blame everyone but self” undermining America’s long tradition of rugged independent individual responsibility for years.

The notion of equal justice in which law is the equal playing field of rules for all Americans, has been systematically undermined by Democratic policies. For far too long Democrats have exercised social cronyism or “social justice” by preaching to minorities and low wage earners that the fault lies “in the stars” not in their own individual control.

It is a Marxist tactic to foment anger at capitalism and create a government dependent class (worker) against the (wealthy) class business owner.

It is not remotely similar to Tea Party protests when Van Jones an avowed communist, cynically co-opts American ideals by calling his group the “Return the American Dream” protest a “spirit of Madison” movement. He purposefully perverts American history and expressions for his sophistry knowing the Marxist socialist’s agenda is finally undressed exposed and repugnant to the majority of Americans.

In fact it is the Marxist socialists Democratic government policies that have swamped the American landscape with so many laws, regulations and legal liabilities that today’s entrepreneur cannot bring good ideas to market.

So again why are rich Americans, corporations and Wall Street bankrollers still supporting Democrats and their class warfare agitators? Why are bundlers from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and countless law firms still contributing to an ideological left that has put a bull’s eye on their backs?

Is this just about political hedge funding in which the game is to stay favorable with whomever Party owns the influence in Washington? Or is it that Corporations already own both political parties and by equally dolling out the money to (Marxist) left and (corrupt) right so they can disguise the otherwise visible puppet strings?

Now more than ever America needs the genuine patriotic spirit of the Tea Party Movement to grow stronger, recruit more participation, be alert and watchful and most importantly stay informed.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. (James Madison)