This was posted on a local blog, the
New Nebraska Network in response to a blog post by a local radio talk show host.
An Open Letter To Scott Vorhees and "The Boss"
Scott,
Here's a response to the chain letter from "The Boss" on
your blog(linkers, scroll down to the Friday 01-30-2009 entry). I did not find this on the intertubes, I wrote it. In the interest of fairness, please consider posting this rebuttal on your blog :
Dear "The Boss",
You are a liar. Your lies begin in the very first line of your open letter, when you use the phrase "My valued employees". Clearly someone who truly values his or her employees would not threaten them with the loss of a job just because Democrats won the national election. You can't pretend that the mandate given to the Democratic Party by U.S. voters, no doubt including some of your employees, is not what prompted your letter. I do not know you personally, but I sure know your type. I listen to them rant and rave every day as they call in to radio talk shows to which I listen, and I work with a few as well. Your letter drips with bitterness, fear, and spite. You may have been a wonderful person once, but you have been seduced and suckered by the right wing's politics of resentment. It is a strategy that speaks to our most basic fears of an "other" taking what is rightfully ours. Back when it was known as the "Southern Strategy", the thieves supposedly stealing from real Americans were lazy, shiftless, black welfare mothers. Nowadays the rhetoric is a little more P.C., though Latinos might beg to differ.
You also lie when you say the economy does not pose a threat to your employees. You do this because you won't own up to the fact that the deregulation, secrecy, and systemic, sanctioned corruption you have endorsed as a member of the dittocracy have caused the crisis we now face. The politics of resentment are all about avoiding personal responsibility, despite what your talk show idols may pretend. Now that things have gotten really bad, you won't admit that the conservative rule you sought has been an abysmal failure, you'll just say that George W. Bush wasn't a real conservative, even though almost the entire conservative movement backed him for seven of his eight years. At least Alan Greenspan, conservative/establishment icon and one of the architects of our debacle, had the cojones to admit that his free market fundamentalist ideology was "flawed".
You've probably got it in your head that today's economic crisis was created by banks being forced by liberal Democrats to lend to people who had no chance of paying their mortgages, and this somehow took down our entire economic system. Sure fits neatly into the aforementioned narrative of leeches sucking off the public trough causing all our woes, doesn't it? It's mostly crap, of course, as any economist not bankrolled by the banking lobby will tell you. Subprime mortgages made up only a small portion of the huge real estate bubble that conservatives continued to deny even as it was exploding. Economists who warned of the impending disaster were labelled lunatics or deranged Bush-haters by your conservative heroes.
Let's talk about what's really killing business in America-the fact that our health care system, the greatest in the world we are told, only works for those who can afford it, like you. "Let the market work," your kind said, "and all will be well." Well we tried that, friend, and guess what? It didn't work, and now health care costs are sucking the life out of Amercian companies who have to compete against businesses in all other advanced nations, where health care is deemed a right and not a privilege. U.S. voters have spoken, and they want a health care system that works for all people. But you won't have that. No, you'll punish your employees if the government tries to help them out in such a way. You're afraid you might get "taxed to death" and have to trade in your Mercedes for a Cadillac. Boo hoo hoo. Tell that to the people who need expensive life-saving treatment but can't get it because health insurers won't cover their preexisting condition. To them, death means DEATH, and it is coming sooner than it needs to, thanks to you.
"Boss", you act as if you alone can turn the economy around. What you don't seem to understand is that no business can thrive without consumers. Whether directly or indirectly, those lower class "slackers" you so despise pay your salary, and the salaries of all your employees. If no one can afford your goods or services, that tax cut you desire won't mean a thing. People are hurting outside your little bubble, friend. Many can't find a job, can't afford the basic amenities. One thing you and the powers that be have forgotten is that labor is the engine that drives our economy, not capital. It is so ironic that conservatives look to the 1950s as the high point of American prosperity and "family values". Families were so healthy in the fifties because we had a strong, secure, unionized middle class. Workers were valued as people instead of "human resources" to be used up and tossed away like peanut shells. A family could live reasonably well on a single salary. No more. Profit-obsessed business practices and conservative economic policies have done more to hurt families than gay marriage ever could.
Instead of shutting down your company, why don't you sell it to someone who truly values his labor force. Your petty and spiteful threats are a danger to the economic security of your employees. Then go and find that beach for which you long. We are trying to move this nation forward toward a new, more prosperous path, and we could do without your delusional denial of the cause of and solutions to our country's serious economic problems.
-Don Kuhns,
Omaha, NE
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