THIS MODERN WORLD TOON: Romney's gaffes & how to lose even with them

[yurbud]

Last edited Mon Feb 13, 2012, 03:43 PM - Edit history (1)

This sounds eerily accurate.



By accurate, I meant Obama's reaction.

Romney's business practices are sociopathic beyond the reach of satire.

[LadyHawkAZ]

1. Tom Tomorrow always nails it. n/t

[yurbud]

2. satire is so hard anymore.

[yurbud]

3. What could you say about Romney's business practices that would be too extreme for people to believe

or too extreme to be true?

[Capitalocracy]

4. Not far from the truth...

Greg Palast on Romney backer Paul Singer:

In the case of Singer, for example, he made his first billion off of the asbestos industry. By the way, they’re called vultures because they wait for things to die. They want things to die, industries, countries, that’s how they make their money.

In the case of asbestos, Owens Corning Company and a couple of others had hid from their workers the fact that their product was going to kill them, that it gives you asbestosis, and most of their workers have some form of it. You end up… your lungs turn to mush, and you drown within yourself. It’s really a horrible way to go.

When this was uncovered, the asbestos manufacturers, including especially Owens Corning, went into bankruptcy. And they agreed to pay all of their future profits to their workers to cover their medical costs and the deaths that were coming.

Paul Singer bought Owens Corning out of bankruptcy for peanuts. I can’t remember the number, but it was a negiglible sum, because they were bankrupt, and no one thought that they’d ever recover, because they owed all this money to their workers.

Singer then went on a massive lobbying campaign in New York and in Washington and got the attention of a powerful politician in Washington named George W. Bush. Bush threw the… under the guise of tort reform, was able to help Singer knock down the payments to the dying workers. And it’s estimated, you know, everyone can have their estimate of what the workers would’ve gotten, but they ended up taking about 20%, about 20 cents on the dollar, of what they were owed for their illnesses and this compensation for pain and suffering, and obviously, death. I mean, loss of income…

Full transcript here: http://subscriptorium.com/702/2samples/1pakman

[yurbud]

5. sometimes my students are shocked by this kind of stuf because they still believe

there's some kind of moral floor beneath which our politicians and business people won't stoop, simply because it's wrong if not illegal.

Not only is there no floor, but not even thinking about the floor seems to be prerequisite to reaching the highest levels of success in both arenas.