Time to throw a few rich pricks in one of these again.
It takes a very special kind of person to be this much of a prick:
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.
Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.
Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.
"This is the demise of a civilization," said Marcus. "This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm watching this happen and I don't believe it."
It's pretty impressive to see people that aren't even slightly concerned that there might be a hell, isn't it? So let's recap. Bank executives, who took your money and made shitty decisions with it, have appealed to the government for more of your money so they don't go out of business. Then they spend a portion of your money to ensure that you can't have the rights and protections that you deserve.
And fuck Home Depot. "This is how a civilization disappears?" Yeah, god knows they don't have any civilization in Germany or France. It's a fuckin' Hobbesian state of nature over there these days.
Honestly, the older I get, the more I understand the guillotine.
One of the first blog-based books, the anthology Special Plans examines Feith's role in misleading America into war. Buy from 
Srsly, Jude, this is how revolutions start. And it won't happen when things are as scary as they are now. It'll be when things start looking up, when people can spend a little less of their time worrying about their paycheck, and start spending a little more of their time wondering who fucked us up in the first place.
I would not want to be one of those bank execs when that time comes.
Posted by: BuggyQ | January 28, 2009 at 08:47
And you know, I don't know what Citi Group did with their money, but they doubled my interest rate this month.
Posted by: Hell Kat | January 28, 2009 at 09:08
BofA has my mortgage for the next 6 years, so I'm kind of stuck, and I don't shop at Home Depot. I hope this gets coverage beyond Huffington and First Draft. I haven't seen it anywhere else, but it would sure be nice if it snowballed.
Posted by: Sue | January 28, 2009 at 10:54
Now I know why I call it "Home Despot." But this should wake people up and make them realize that the REAL reason Home Despot is letting 7,000 people go is not because they are falling on hard times but because this prick Bernie Marcus can't have a cut in HIS pay.
Yeah. Fuck Home Despot. I'm talking my business to the new Ace Hardware and True Value Hardware stores that opened up within biking distance of my house.
Posted by: mothra | January 28, 2009 at 11:41
the upper don't SEE, so they cannot get it. i think a few guillotines and executions like they do in china might help. tho even in china, they still do it.
Posted by: pansypoo | January 28, 2009 at 12:40
Hell Kat, I think if you put this in the right frame, you'll feel a lot better. They doubled your interest rate, you say? See, that's all part of entitlement reform. Because they're entitled to your money. I mean, that's how the bailouts work, isn't it?
Posted by: lambert strether | January 28, 2009 at 14:59
A lot goes back to an earlier First Draft story asking that the businesses not get any more money till they show all.
Even then, if they get a dollar and they spend a dollar on something else, how do you prove that the dollar they spent is or is not the dollar you gave them.
Posted by: MapleStreet | January 28, 2009 at 16:14
I believe the French at the time of the revolution came up with a series of Permanent Tax Cuts for the wealthy.
As in all things French, it was truly a work of art. All though these PTCs [Permanent Tax Cuts] where a one time deal, recipients could count on never having to pay another tax in there lives. What's more these PTCs actually helped revenues just as the Laffer curve would have predicted had it been scrawled on a cocktail napkin back then. Yes, Permanent Tax Cuts even had the support of the lower class crowds and many of the wealthy elite simply lost their heads over the PTC program.
I wish I could remember the name of the guy who worked out the details of the Permanent Tax Cuts, was the guy's name Guillotine?
I think we need some of those marvelous French PTCs in this country.
Posted by: S Brennan | January 28, 2009 at 16:29
Jude,
Great post. And the picture.... so apropos!
Personally, I advocate a 95+% wealth tax rate for all those M-F'ers taking the big govt bucks and then screwing the Peoples...
Guess that makes me a bomb-throwing revolutionary or something...
SP
Posted by: ServingPatriot | January 28, 2009 at 19:21
Hey, Mothra: I work in the biz, peripherally, and Ace Hardware and Tru Value are actually what they call buying groups, which is where a bunch of independently-owned retail outlets get together in a group so they can use their collective power to get the same kind of prices out of their suppliers as the big chains do. It's all very socialist, and I support it wholeheartedly. Please, spend your money at members of buying groups. They're on the right side of capitalism.
Posted by: Interrobang | January 29, 2009 at 21:33