relationships # 5 / civilized ku # 368 ~ pure, unadulterated populist bullshit - PT. 2
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 08:33AM 
A Congressman • click to embiggen
At dinner with the Congressman • click to embiggenOne of the more popular populist lines of BS which has been taken to heart and soul by the poor (or near poor / struggling) deluded "little-guy" saps is that their life would be so much better if the big bad government would just let the market work its magic by getting of the backs of the the ruling oligarchs / oligarchies, re: "burdensome" taxes and "restrictive" regulations. They believe this big lie to be true because the oligarchs and their operatives have told them so and they, the little guys, know that those guys, the oligarchs, never tell a lie.
But, in fact, much more often than not, what's going on in my neck of the woods is a prime example of how the oligarchs are decimating the middle class (not to mention the working poor).
It seems that a big regional energy provider, National Grid (natural gas and electricity), in our area - an enterprise which made $1.5 BILLION in profits last year - has decided to outsource much of its information services work, including software programming, computer networking, and other functions. The net result would be the loss of up to 1,200 jobs in here in the NE region.
This corporate "citizen" is not under any pressure to outsource other than to increase profits. Apparently $1.5 BILLION isn't enough.
A visit to the National Grid's website will result in a tip-toe through the tulips of corporate double-speak wherein they extoll their virtuous "community involvement" and "corporate giving". Hell, they even claim to "support programs designed to help improve the way people live, work and play."
How they can make that claim with anything approaching straight face is way beyond my ability to comprehend.
That stated, what is even further over the horizon of my ability to comprehend is gullibility of people of the "populist" bent who do not grasp the intent - the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away - of this blatant sleight-of-words attempt to distract them from the real business at hand - profits over people, the new gold standard of American business.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: No sooner had I finished penning pure, unadulterated populist bullshit - PT. 3 than Ron stopped in and made a few salient points on the above topic including one that I believe is the key to the entire problem we face here in the good ole US of America, re: "we, the people" - as Ron states:
We need to weed out the greed and corruption and that starts with having integrity ourself.
However, Ron still insists on using the populist nomenclature "big government" as a disparaging phrase to describe what ails us.
IMO, Ron, and others like him, need to give it up. The problem with our government at this time is corruption (which most likely includes some element of greed) that stems from the influence of big money and the big business oligarchies that use it to buy the kind of governance that suits their interests.
That corruption is independent of the size of government - governments of all sizes, small, big, and somewhere in between, can be and have been corrupted by the influences of money and greed.
The same is true of business - big, small, and somewhere in between. Greed corrupts across the board, independent of size. Bernard Madoff was a small-time operator, business-size wise, but he was corrupted by greed in exactly the same way as the big-time big-business oligarchs at AIG, BOA, Enron (how quickly we forget), et al were.
IMO, Ron, and others like him, need get out of the "big government" bashing biz and get down to the root of the problem - "we, the people". IMO, greed and corruption percolates from the bottom up. It does not trickle down from the top to the bottom.
Reader Comments (4)
holy crap that looks like someplace I'm glad I wasn't.
Big Business, Big Government, Big Money, Big Power (not electrical), Greed, and Corruption, these are the ones destroying our society. IMO, you are not going to fix the problem of big business with big government. They are all one and the same. Big Money and Big Power already select who controls Big Government. The only problem they have is “We the people”. This is the dilemma Obama is facing. Does he go ahead with his agenda against the will of the people? Where will we be and who will be in control, if he is successful with the Cloward-Piven strategy. Don’t be duped by their anti capitalist ranting. One of the largest Big Businesses is the Federal Reserve Bank. Who control it?
IMO, we need to hit the reset button. Go back to our founding documents. “We the people” need to be the one who make sure that honest people with integrity rise to positions of power, whether they be Democrats, Republicans or what ever. It’s only these kind of people that can rein in Big Business and Big Power.
I agree with you. Big Business needs to be controlled. But, lets not throw out the baby with the bath water. We have the best system in the world. We need to weed out the greed and corruption and that starts with having integrity ourself.
a very good watch last night...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN7612IQaIQ
Congress' chief economic watchdog talks about her work with Jon Stewart.
Those of us in Big Business who are still around after such "outsourcing" also hate it. it invariably leads to lower quality, harder working realtionships and greater effort than otherwise would have been the case.
I can't remember a case where such a move has really improved the bottom line (in an overall economic sense) despite any savings the accountants may claim.
On the other hand, there can be cases where outsourcing helps - by adding (not replacing) a lot of general grunt work than can be hard to get at home.