Wednesday, September 19, 2012

What Price Douchebaggery?

[Quick programming note:  The Fabulous Stacia of She Blogged By Night is hosting the Camp & Cult Blogathon, which we hope to join in on later this week.  Check out her opening salvo: KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, then click here to sample the other worthy entries.]

As Mitt Romney has pointed out, firing people is highly enjoyable.  Like stimulating conversations with friends, long walks on the beach with someone special, or reading the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition while sitting on the washing machine during the spin cycle, it's just plain good fun.  But it's more than that; it's an act of profound patriotism.

Who is John Galt?  A crashing bore, if you wind up reading the last 60 pages of Atlas Shrugged after losing a bet.  But the more important question we face today is...Who is Kevin Price?

Well, he'll tell you a bit about that subject himself, both in the post below, and in his RenewAmerica biography, which is 367 words long (versus 614 words for the entire article).  Spoiler Alert:  He is not -- as his bio makes abundantly clear -- that guy from the Dos Equis commercials.
Operation "Atlas Shrugged"

In addition to hosting the Price of Business radio show and managing US Daily Review, I own a media and marketing company that is doing its part to keep this economy afloat. 
It's probably just as well that Hitler's efforts to conquer the world occurred in 1940, back when we still had a manufacturing base that could turn out the ships, aircraft, and munitions that allowed us to act as the "Arsenal of Democracy."  Nowadays, with our largely media and marketing-based economy, if Nazi Germany was poised to invade England, the most we could send them would be some spin.  And maybe some re-branding advice ("United Kingdom...It's got good name recognition, but frankly, the Other Leading Brand of empire is kicking your ass at the moment, so we were thinking -- go Younger.  Bolder.  More forward-looking.  Something like..Uni-Dom!")
Recently, because of the implications of the political races and the concerns of an onslaught of new regulations, taxes, and other laws that could follow if Barack Obama is reelected, some clients are now requiring a new term to their agreements — the ability to discontinue the contract, without consequences, if the president is reelected.
In contract law it's called Force lèse-majesté, or the "Act of Godless" clause.
I have been in business for decades and I have never seen anything like this.
Some  wingnut flinging fistfuls of bullshit around the Internet like a coprophilous Johnny Appleseed? You should get out more.
On the other hand, I have never seen anyone like Barack Obama
"Okay, there was that one guy on Benson..."
 nor have I seen such a war on the economy being waged by a president on his people.
After hours in the Oval Office, Obama likes to unwind by playing Risk with the economy, and occasionally Ka-Bala with foreign policy.

"Will it be war with Iran, or a Two-State Solution for Israel and Palestine?  Only the Eye of Zohar knows!"
Under Obama, the United States has the highest tax rates, the worst regulatory environment, and hostile liability situation of any industrialized country in the world.
And our once-thriving rates of polio infection are now lagging far behind Third World nations like Pakistan and Nigeria.   Thanks to the iron heel of the CDC, our iron lung sector is on life support.
My response to this new request is typical of most people who are involved in selling, "wait a minute, aren't you going to have to be in business regardless of who is elected?"
"Or do you hope to weasel out of our contract on the flimsy pretext that you're a figment of my deranged imagination?  Well it won't work, because there ain't no sanity clause!"
Most people who want such a clause are ready to answer and the typical response is, "not necessarily. If Obama wins, I will not be able to afford to stay in business." These people are serious; this is the new reality facing the country right around the corner.
We've never before been faced with this particular reality: that made-up people in unnamed industries may refuse to continue doing imaginary business with Kevin's fake online newspaper, US Daily Review, which looks like it aspires to be a rich man's WorldNetDaily.  Or perhaps they're canceling their contracts with his blog,  BizPlusBlog (apparently a regular blog combined with an enzyme-based, color-safe "pre-soak" treatment for stubborn laundry stains), where his bio describes him as the Publisher of USBusinessDaily.com, which seems to have gone out of business behind his back:

Online operations closed

We closed our online operations on July 31, 2012.

Note that we no longer accept credit card payments - just checks - for our Live Programs.
I had my suspicions about Kevin's vaunted business acumen, but here is proof positive that as far back as July he knew that Obama would win in November,  allowing him to beat his clients to the punch by going out of business first, avoiding the rush and probably getting higher prices for his office chair and fax machine at the subsequent yard sale.
When I think of how these business owners are responding to the political economy they live in today, I think of the great novel by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. The novel is about businesses and their owners going on strike in response to excessive and even oppressive government taxes and regulations, largely putting the country out of business.
If Obama wins, we might just wake up on November 7th and find that the United States has closed their online operations, and are no longer accepting credit cards.
It appears many companies are getting poised to do just that after the elections, as seen in the example of working with our clients above as well as untold number of surveys painting a similar picture. However, would not waiting until Election Day be a great example of doing "too little, too late" (which is how, as they say, wars and battles are lost). If businesses are planning something like Atlas Shrugged, shouldn't they do it today in order for it to have an impact in November?
I dunno, Kevin.  Obama has cut taxes on small business -- 18 times according to some measurements -- and it's not like the financial sector is groaning beneath the leaden yoke of regulation.  The stock market is booming, the automobile industry is one the rebound...I'm not exactly sure who has the incentive to Go Galt.  I guess the Media and Marketing industry could try vanishing overnight, but if you don't leave a breadcrumb-like trail of perpetual motion machines, you may be be disappointed in the number of leggy, sexually insatiable railroad heiresses who come looking for you.
In my own company, I have roughly 1/3rd the people working for me than I had in 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn in as President. I know this sounds harsh, but I would get rid of those I have left, right now, if I could still stay in business. I am not quite willing to go all the way on my own "Operation Atlas Shrugged," but I am willing to make my business as lean as it has been in years in order to make a point to the voters that this situation is bad and only getting worst.
In some philosophies, having the courage of your convictions might require you to give up your job, your home, your income in order to make a principled point.  But in Objectivism, you can make the same point by taking all that stuff away from your employees.  So simply by becoming job destroyers, the job creators can teach the 47% a lesson without having to go live in a crevasse in Colorado.
So, attention business owners; you know you will likely have to let go of some (if not many) of your employees if Barack Obama is reelected, so why are you not doing that now when it can still make a difference?
 Don't "Go Galt" -- make your workers do it.  What are you no longer paying them for?
 Business owners should vote with their pink slips today in order to have the political environment to rebuild the economy tomorrow. 
It takes a village to raise a child.  Unfortunately, we had to raze the village in order to save it.  On the bright side, without the annoyingly nurturing village around to retard progress, the child is now available to work in a sweat shop for $2 a day.  Let's fire her to make a point about how mean Obama is to the rich.
This will not happen if Barack Obama is reelected. It is painful to do, I'm sure, but it is better for your employees to let them go temporarily today (after all, the elections are only around 8 weeks away), then having to have to dismiss them permanently as victims of an Obama second term after November. Vote with your pink slips... do it today. Do it for your employees and the country.
"You remember when Nathan Hale said, 'I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country'?  That's pretty much the way I feel about your jobs -- I'm very Founding Fathery that way.  Anywho, sorry about you losing your home and your health insurance Bob, but by throwing you out of work, I'm building a brighter future for the both of us.  I know you keep saying you can't see how bright the future looks, but that's only because the overpass you're camping under blocks direct sunlight.
So fire an employee for America!
It's what Thomas Jefferson would do!  (Well, Jefferson would probably enslave an employee, then have six illegitimate children with her, which is actually worse than firing, while having the ironic effect of producing greater job security.  But I bet Button Gwinnett would do it.  And maybe Zipper Whipple.)

Anyway, while I don't have employees, I'm considering firing myself, because satire has officially gone the way of the buggy whip.

18 comments:

M. Bouffant said...

Oh please job creators, please!! Throw us right in the briar patch there.

Naturally, those fired will all go on unemployment immediately, but you'd have to be some kind of business super-genius to figure that out ahead of time.

Carl said...

He looks like the little weasel who busted the Dead Poet's Society.

Carl said...

Recently, because of the implications of the political races and the concerns of an onslaught of new regulations, taxes, and other laws that could follow if Barack Obama is reelected, some clients are now requiring a new term to their agreements — the ability to discontinue the contract, without consequences, if the president is reelected.


And naturally, this douchebag doesn't get the joke and laugh it off, but turns it into a screed against Obama. I guess his clients don't have much faith in his ability to run a...

ONLINE OPERATIONS CLOSED

WE CLOSED OUR ONLINE OPERATIONS ON JULY 31, 2012.

Note that we no longer accept credit card payments - just checks - for our Live Programs.


Oh.

So his clients are worried he might flip out and go all "Colombine"?

Ugluks Flea said...

Given the wingnutty slant of his bidnesses, his clients (i.e. advertisers) are probably just as delusional as he is - gun nuts, gold hoarders, survivalist gear sellers, etc. - so they very well might believe wholeheartedly in their "oppressed white man" communal fever dreams.

It does make a twisted sort of sense, though - the base desire with all the Galtian wingnuts is that everyone is to properly Respect Their Ahthoratay, but that is sort of hard to achieve when you've gone Galt and are off living in a uni-bomber shack. With this plan, he instead gets the best of both worlds: can still live somewhere with indoor plumbing and cable, but still gets to exalt in the suffering of others for not respecting his aforementioned Ahthoratay.

I can only conclude wingnuts must be intellectual masochists, since everything they purport to believe is generally completely filled with fail.

Thorlac said...

He's more full of shit than an overflowing colostomy bag.

Cole said...

Surely, this guy is actually sane and his writing is some "modest proposal" satire.

Yes?

If this guy is serious, then I weep at the pathetic imbecility this once hopeful nation full of promise has been reduce to. Better it had died a quick death than this lingering senility.

Helmut Monotreme said...

How the hell are people who think it is the height of business acumen to strip a working organization of the resources it needs to grow or endure periods of financial hardship, considered to be business gurus?

Does he tell farmers in time of drought to burn the crops and eat the seed corn?

Does he imagine unemployed people will be more inclined to vote republican?

Please Mr mouth breather, fire every one of your employees, lose all your clients, deprive us of your business and political advice. Watch in awe as your competitors hire your ex employees, take your clients and cash those checks you thought were yours.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Perhaps he's going for a difficult prize, Cole.

The most absurd right-wing crybaby on the internet.
~

heydave said...

Isn't this guy and his friends supposed to be in other space ship?

Anonymous said...

Well, ol' Kev here is exhibiting the same kind of genius thinking on the part of "job creators" that got us into this mess back in 2008...and way back in 1929....and made the Gilded Age such a happy time for the average American....

Cole said...

The bright-shiny of the Gilded Age still strikes people stupid with greed and delusion.

I'm a museum professional in a town (in)famous for its Gilded Age mansions. Couple of years ago I'm taking the audio tour of one of these monuments to greed, by way of doing professional research on competing venues, and I overhear conversations of the pink-faced, overweight mid-westerners touring near me.

"Isn't it magnificent?" "Couldn't build things like this anymore...damn union labor would cost a billion dollars." "What a shame we won't see anymore beautiful buildings like this in America." "You know, there wasn't any income tax in those days's why there was so much wealth around to build houses like this." Chuckle Chortle, etc.

I felt like telling these good folks that this was PRIVATE PROPERTY in the day. They would never have seen the inside of houses like this unless they were one of the hundred families on the Right List, or they fucking worked their asses off for a few bucks a week and a place to sleep (if they were really valuable). Plenty of folks ready to take their place as soon as they got to old, sick or injured to carry out their duties, and fuck any retirement or social security.

Besides, in a mature society folks could still create magnificent buildings for purely aesthetic reasons, with no need for rich assholes, whose only talent is gathering money, to pay someone with real talent to build a house.

Kathy said...

In your Kevin Price photo, he looks like he's trying to push a snout out of his face. Ugly.

Stacia said...

I dunno, Kevin.

This struck me as SO funny for some reason. I started imagining how many times a day he must hear a sentence that starts with "I dunno, Kevin..." that I couldn't stifle the giggles.

Still, I have a feeling that Kevin here is about to close up shop and is blogging a warning salvo to his employees in an effort to mitigate his guilt. Having just been fired from a Republican-run business myself, this is looking pretty familiar to me.

And Cole, as a "pink-faced, overweight mid-westerner" I would like to object that the weight, geographical location and/or coloring of the dipshits you overheard had anything to do with their epic dipshittery.

Cole said...

My apologies, Stacia. Being from the South, I guess I falsely assume everyone takes being insulted for where you are from as just good ole American fun.

In future, I'll pick, um.... Los Angeles area! Yeah, nothing could go wrong with that choice.

Stacia said...

No worries, Cole. I live in Manhattan, KS where the birther who tried to get Obama off the Kansas ballot is from, so perhaps I'm a little touchy about the subject lately.

Anyway, I hear those liberal Los Angeles elites all look like... oh, hey Scott, I didn't see you standing there.

Weird Dave said...

Wait. If Obummer is reelected gun and gold sales are going through the roof.

Opportunity Kevin, opportunity.

Li'l Innocent said...

"...Anyway, while I don't have employees, I'm considering firing myself, because satire has officially gone the way of the buggy whip."

Not satire of this calibre, Buster. Get your ass back in front of that keyboard.

Scott said...

Anyway, I hear those liberal Los Angeles elites all look like... oh, hey Scott, I didn't see you standing there.

I'm not. I'm standing over here.

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