Mort Zucker Wants Rich People to Destroy America.

[Big Orange]

Mort Zucker feels that Obama should kotow to the United States of America's ruling plutocrats like a loyal dog or words to that effect:

Mort Zuckerman: If Obama Isn't Nicer to Us Rich People, We Will Destroy America

Did you think the health of the American economy was governed by supply and demand, overlaid with interest rates, worker productivity, and other things having to do with how well we make, distribute, buy, and sell stuff? Wrong! The American economy rises or falls based on whether or not the country's very richest people believe they are being properly respected and made happy. And Politico reports that the sensitive rich people are not happy with the Obama administration:

In the eyes of corporate America, President Barack Obama relied on a healthy dose of industry-bashing to sway votes in Congress for health reform and the new Wall Street regulations signed into law Wednesday.

Now those efforts threaten to undermine the one agenda item essential to Democrats’ hopes in the midterms and Obama’s chances for reelection: turning around an economy still just a half step out of recession.

The nation's corporations, Politico says, feel wrongly blamed for the economic crisis, so now executives don't want to hire people or spend money.

Billionaire and pundit Mort Zuckerman told Politico, "There is still a great deal of anxiety over the demonization of business, and it is a serious problem":

Executives “really feel there is a deliberate attempt, as a populist political measure, to blame the business world for all the problems we have been having, when, in reality, the housing bubble was provoked by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And it wasn’t business or the public that lowered interest rates and created the credit bubble. It was the Federal Reserve.”

Why didn't those reckless government affiliates listen to wise titans of business, like Mort Zuckerman, before they went ahead and inflated the housing bubble till our whole economy collapsed? Here's Zuckerman in 2005:

What we're seeing today is a re-enactment of a historic American homeowning tradition....Today, homeownership has become the single most important element in the widest participation in an era of rising wealth. This is an ownership society for real.

Anyway! That was old news. What matters now is that if Zuckerman and his peers don't get treated better, they will stop trying to participate in the economy at all, and we will all just have to stay in this recession till we're sorry.

The Obama administration, Politico reports, already blew one chance to make things better when it failed to include leaders of the banking industry in the signing ceremony for the financial reform bill they had tried and failed to defeat:

“The obvious political thing would have been to pick the 25 biggest financial companies impacted by this bill and personally invite the heads of each one,” a financial executive said.

Through this insensitivity, Obama made it look as if the banking industry was opposed to reform. Why is the president endangering America by insulting our financial leaders this way?

Slate

It seems like many Generation X-ers and certainly the majority of Generation Y in the Anglo-American world are ending up militantly anti-Corporatist, arguably more anti-Corporate than the pre-Baby Boomers, but not against the concept of business and employment, but more against the current system that's seriously debilitated job security and affordable housing.

[aerius]

Zuckerman's a fucking self-serving jackass. He blames the housing bubble on Freddie & Fannie along with the government, yet it was the banks which lobbied to get the rules removed so they could get the whole mess started and offload the mortgages & crap onto Freddie & fannie in the first place. It was the finance industry that got all the laws & regulations removed so they could go hog wild with all kinds of financial engineering bullshit, and then stick the government & taxpayers with the bill. He so full of shit that I don't even know where to start, I might as well try to have a logical conversation with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

[Pelranius]

Zuckerman is also owner of the shill US News & World Report. If he and his friends want to take their toys, divest themselves of their American properties and go away, someone else will simply come in and play (George Soros would make such a killing).

[Zixinus]

Executives “really feel there is a deliberate attempt, as a populist political measure, to blame the business world for all the problems we have been having, when, in reality, the housing bubble was provoked by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A

Of course they'll blame them! Meanwhile, they're the ones that made those offers to the public, it was the bankers that allowed people taking credit that they could not pay back, they shifted business towards riskier enterprises, they're the ones outsourcing whatever and whenever possible and so on. But they'll never take their own blame, no, they'll blame the general population on whom they thrown their debt so they themselves won't have to pay it.

Rich people are not better than normal people. Financial companies are subservient to the government and law, not partners to it. They are to obey the law, not write it. They are not needed to write financial reforms and they should have absolutely no say in it, because they are not the duly appointed law makers. They have no place in the signing ceremony of the bill. Their place is to obey it.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Welcome Americans, to the world according to your ruling class, now the newest bottom-barrel dumping-import from the Third World. The Third World, especially America's tightly-gripped colonial sphere in Latin America, has been dealing with "dedicate yourself to appeasing the tiny rich (even foriegn) ownership class or we'll destroy your country" for decades (and the U.S. calling it a "victory for democracy"). You see, it is the Iron Laws of Economics (the same validity as gravitation, as per Ricardo) dictate that you must bail out unaccountable oligopolistic or monopolistic enterprises at the public deficit, endlessly increase defense spending in good times and bad, and slash your public services first and foremost.

[aieeegrunt]

Executives “really feel there is a deliberate attempt, as a populist political measure, to blame the business world for all the problems we have been having, when, in reality, the housing bubble was provoked by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A

Of course they'll blame them! Meanwhile, they're the ones that made those offers to the public, it was the bankers that allowed people taking credit that they could not pay back, they shifted business towards riskier enterprises, they're the ones outsourcing whatever and whenever possible and so on. But they'll never take their own blame, no, they'll blame the general population on whom they thrown their debt so they themselves won't have to pay it.

Rich people are not better than normal people. Financial companies are subservient to the government and law, not partners to it. They are to obey the law, not write it. They are not needed to write financial reforms and they should have absolutely no say in it, because they are not the duly appointed law makers. They have no place in the signing ceremony of the bill. Their place is to obey it.

Actually you could probably make an argument that rich people are worse than normal people. The corporate world having a higher instance of sociopathy for example. Just going from my own experience, I know a lot of wealthy persons, and there is exactly one I know who isn't a collosal selfish prick with a huge entitlement complex.

My uncle is a multimillionaire who owns one of Canada's largest trucking and storage companies. When he bought his palatial mansion in Caledon outside Toronto 20 or so years ago his closest neighbour was John Candy. My grandmother recently moved and he sent one of his moving teams out to do it for her, and then fucking billed her 30 dollars an hour per worker for it. This fucking cunt is sitting on a pile of cash that would make Smaug jealous, owns a moving company, and he fucking billed his own fucking 89 year old mother to move her stuff.

First against the motherfucking wall. I'm ashamed to be related to this fuck. Wow, it's been a week and I'm still so angry I'm shaking as I type this.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Well, that's what revolutionary terrors are for, I guess.

[Vehrec]

You should get that bill and nail it to his door. If it works for Martin Luthur, it probably won't work for you, but at least it will be dramatic.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Wow. That's, um...

If Canada's business laws are anything like America's, anything delivered or done for free, without upfront negotiation of fees and service charges, is considered a "gift." This is primarily protection against a scam, IE, you send a company a pallet of sub-par printer paper, wait a week or so for them to be half-way through it, then send an invoice that you may or may not (depending on how thorough you are) have bribed a postal worker to arrange to be 'lost in the mail' for that time; at a ludicrously overpriced fee, of course. Essentially extorting companies into paying a ridiculous sum of money for a crap product they never ordered, lest you sue them for nonpayment on products delivered and take them to an even bigger payday.

Presumably, your uncle didn't pre-arrange the $30/hour/worker deal with your grandmother, otherwise you probably wouldn't be so upset. Maybe he thought it was a clever joke (if he really is empathically blind that may be,) but if not, I'd suggest you or your grandmother hire a lawyer. There's something fishier than a day down at the docks about sending a crew from a company you own to do a family member a favor (which is presumably at your own expense, as the men are still being paid,) and then ambush-billing them for it.

[JME2]

It seems like many Generation X-ers and certainly the majority of Generation Y in the Anglo-American world are ending up militantly anti-Corporatist, arguably more anti-Corporate than the pre-Baby Boomers, but not against the concept of business and employment, but more against the current system that's seriously debilitated job security and affordable housing.

Hmm. Now the question I have is will that discontent build enough to be in position to force change upon the system before my generation goes under?

[Ritterin Sophia]

Okay so, I was thinking we should go ahead and start designing new heraldry now, in anticipation of this 'ruining of America'. How does everyone feel about this:

[ShadowDragon8685]

Okay so, I was thinking we should go ahead and start designing new heraldry now, in anticipation of this 'ruining of America'. How does everyone feel about this:

Amusing, but no. Americans would never embrace that symbology. However, if the coloration were red, white, and blue, I might be able to see something like a group of three people with the traditional Eagle landed on the shoulders of the rear two: a soldier with his rifle slung, magazine noticably absent from the magazine well, an industrial worker with a spanner or possibly a power gun in his hand (or maybe a sledgehammer, though very unlikely because no matter how unlike the Soviet hammer, it's still a hammer,) and a woman in a lab coat with a beaker in hand. Use white for the clothes, red for the faces and hands and equipment, white field and blue band circular with fifty white stars all around it.

[Vehrec]

...dude, check your sarcasm detector.

[Simon_Jester]

Though it's not a bad idea for a Socialist!American national emblem, if you want something that's visually distinct from the Soviet symbolism.

[Coyote]

Another spoiled pampered crybaby threatening to "go Galt". Please.

Wait, I thought dissing the President during a time of war was un-American.

[ShadowDragon8685]

...dude, check your sarcasm detector.

My sarcasmometer's in full operating order. Maybe yours is getting cross-feed from all the negative current sent my way, though.

That was supposed to be totally tongue-in-cheek, even if it would be a pretty cool emblem to see made visual.

[Patrick Degan]

Hmm... Sounds like Zuckerman and his ilk have been reading Atlas Shrugged a little too much in recent years.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I wonder what would be the result if we sectioned off a nice hundred or two hundred square miles of the Middle of Nowhere, Midwest Plains, called it non-American territory, and said that anyone wishing to settle there was free to move in. And provide absolutely no support whatsoever.

And made it absolutely clear that the eyes of America were not on that patch of land.

[LadyTevar]

isn't that called an Indian Reservation?

[ShadowDragon8685]

isn't that called an Indian Reservation?

No, because the Feds can - and will - pinch you on an Indian reservation.

I mean let them have their damn Atlas Shrugged zone of no Federal Oversight. Who wants to bet within a year they'll either have abandoned the project, found out that holy shit, running a city takes a hell of a lot more than they thought it did, or they'll be paranoid lunatics hiding behind barbed wire, trenches and machine guns, paranoidally terrified of the bandits and raiders (real or imagined, most likely imagined,) who're looking to cross the border and make a lot of quick bucks at the expense of some fat rich old white guys.

[Patrick Degan]

isn't that called an Indian Reservation?

No, because the Feds can - and will - pinch you on an Indian reservation.

I mean let them have their damn Atlas Shrugged zone of no Federal Oversight. Who wants to bet within a year they'll either have abandoned the project, found out that holy shit, running a city takes a hell of a lot more than they thought it did, or they'll be paranoid lunatics hiding behind barbed wire, trenches and machine guns, paranoidally terrified of the bandits and raiders (real or imagined, most likely imagined,) who're looking to cross the border and make a lot of quick bucks at the expense of some fat rich old white guys.

It could be called "Galtland".

[Knife]

It would be nice if someone with some sort of position in the government had the balls to tell them, if you want to go, go. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

It won't happen, but it would be nice.

[Big Orange]

Another spoiled pampered crybaby threatening to "go Galt". Please.

Wait, I thought dissing the President during a time of war was un-American.

Between Mortimer Zuckerman's tactless, pompous moaning and the shocking dickery of aieeegrunt's greedy uncle a dangerous, delusional kind of hubris has festered amongst the Anglo-American super-rich in recent decades - but with over two decades of not being said "no" to in their enclosed wealth bubble it's not surprising that their hubris is becoming more suicidal by the year. The disgusting wealth maldistribution is an act of arrogant, avaristic hubris.

I doubt the economically downtrodden populace of the USA are going to almost spontaneously rise up ala France and Russia, with rebel tank battallions rolling down Wall Street and Constitution Avenue, more likely in a worst case scenario the USA is just slowly going to go fallow (imagine Detroit writ large), with the US Military slowly degrading and eventually becoming the largest, most expensive collection of giant paperweights in the world.

[Starglider]

Business executives as a group have generally lost any/all respect for their workers or the countries they operate in. US business leaders had a surprisingly high amount of this in the mid 20th century, but the 1980s paved the way to discarding such attitudes in favor of 'I've got mine' and 'profit at any cost'. The general population developing a loathing of wealthy elites, if it actually happens, is a wholly appropriate albeit three decade delayed reaction to that.

[JME2]

I doubt the economically downtrodden populace of the USA are going to almost spontaneously rise up ala France and Russia, with rebel tank battallions rolling down Wall Street and Constitution Avenue, more likely in a worst case scenario the USA is just slowly going to go fallow (imagine Detroit writ large), with the US Military slowly degrading and eventually becoming the largest, most expensive collection of giant paperweights in the world.

It's sad that Detroit's collapse could serve as the national standard in coming years, but seems more and more likely as things progress currently.