Cuomo's Brownshirts put squeeze on AIG

[The Painter]

Believe it or not, you are not entitled to make money unethicly.

Yes you are allowed too. You are not allowed to make it illegaly. There is a difference. As for entitled, I don't know what yo mean by that.

 

[leftysergeant]

Yes you are allowed too. You are not allowed to make it illegaly. There is a difference. As for entitled, I don't know what yo mean by that.

The law allows it right now because, under the brainless theory of coporate personhood, it is considered a violation of human rights to forbid them to lie about their product. By what stretch of the imagination is this a good thing for an ethical society? Are we born with an inherent right to be greedy, lying sleazebags without consequence?

Hardly. We have every right to pass such laws as will protect us from the consequences of the actions of lying sleazebags.

How do corporations think they get a pass?

 

[Kthulhut Fhtagn]

If it is ethical to let corporations in financial trouble default on production workers' pensions, what is unethical about cutting off golden parachutes for management?

Two wrongs make a right, gotcha.

 

[FlamingMoe]

I'm standing up to the lazy maggots who think that the people who create their wealth should sacrifice when times get tough so that the invcestor class does not.

The investor class is just there to move the credits for wealth created to places where other working people can create more wealth. When it ceases to perform that functiuon, it is uselss or worse and needs to be brought back in line. Time for the investor class to learn their pace in the scheme of things.

To hear you talk it seems you think "their place" is either under your jackboot-heel or the end of a rope slung over a tree limb.

A contract is a contract, even if you don't like the terms or the people who made it. That's why it's called the rule of law and not the rule of leftysergeant's vengeful whims.

 

[Kthulhut Fhtagn]

The law allows it right now because, under the brainless theory of coporate personhood, it is considered a violation of human rights to forbid them to lie about their product. By what stretch of the imagination is this a good thing for an ethical society? Are we born with an inherent right to be greedy, lying sleazebags without consequence?

Hardly. We have every right to pass such laws as will protect us from the consequences of the actions of lying sleazebags.

How do corporations think they get a pass?

False advertisement is illegal.

 

[rwguinn]

Please don't call lefty a liberal. He is considerably more readical then mainstream liberalism.

Hey-
If you're going to stick me with Rush Limberger as THE spokesman for my POV, then YOU HAVE to accept Lefty as THE liberal POV.

Fair is Fair!

 

[mhaze]

If the AIG guys are guilty of fraud or other illegal activities, throw the book at them. If incompetent, then they should never see the inside of a executive suite again.
The problem I have is the lynch mob atmosphere I see about this.

In the actionable sense, I suspect everyone on this thread would agree with this.

The "lynch mob atmosphere" demanding of an apology, whether it was the seamy low side of political demagaugery or everybody just getting carried away.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Hey-
If you're going to stick me with Rush Limberger as THE spokesman for my POV, then YOU HAVE to accept Lefty as THE liberal POV.

Fair is Fair!

Hey. It wasn't dudalb who crowned Limbaugh as the True King Of All The Conservatives.

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

Conclusion:

In a 6-to-1 decision, the Court held that the College's corporate charter qualified as a contract between private parties, with which the legislature could not interfere. The fact that the government had commissioned the charter did not transform the school into a civil institution. Chief Justice Marshall's opinion emphasized that the term "contract" referred to transactions involving individual property rights, not to "the political relations between the government and its citizens."

... :|

This is the decision most often used to say a corporate entity is a private person. Because, they are treated as such.

.. Anywya, I have to say that - really, AIG's not entirely to blame, only partially.

 

[leftysergeant]

To hear you talk it seems you think "their place" is either under your jackboot-heel or the end of a rope slung over a tree limb.

When they go back to moving capital to where it can be used to make stuff and employ people, and stop trying to run the country like their interests were what really mattered, I will stop suggesting that corproations be abolished. The working class have no reason to totlerate their existance other than as a means of redistributing wealth.

A contract is a contract, even if you don't like the terms or the people who made it. That's why it's called the rule of law and not the rule of leftysergeant's vengeful whims.

When all workers' pensions are restored, I MIGHT have some sympathy for some fat cat who suddenly finds the lines of his golden parachute cut.

Contracts with labor should be honored ahead of any with managem,ent or investors in every case. Labor has earned it.

Those who even ask that pension funds be allowed to go into default without the consent of labor should (and, if there is a God, will) burn in hell. They have sinned.

 

[FlamingMoe]

When they go back to moving capital to where it can be used to make stuff and employ people, and stop trying to run the country like their interests were what really mattered, I will stop suggesting that corproations be abolished. The working class have no reason to totlerate their existance other than as a means of redistributing wealth.



When all workers' pensions are restored, I MIGHT have some sympathy for some fat cat who suddenly finds the lines of his golden parachute cut.

Contracts with labor should be honored ahead of any with managem,ent or investors in every case. Labor has earned it.

Those who even ask that pension funds be allowed to go into default without the consent of labor should (and, if there is a God, will) burn in hell. They have sinned.

Rule of leftyseargeant's vengeful whims. Got it.

I was just wondering: in a previous life, did you slaughter any Romanovs?

 

[leftysergeant]

I actually like the idea of regulated capitaslism. Competition is good for a society, as long as it doesn't become a duel to the death.

Capitalism is a sensible way of redistributing wealth. Redistributing wealth creates more wealth for society as a whole.

Concentrating wealth into a few hands just leads to a two-layered society of aristocrats and peons.

For eight years, the perfumed princes of Wall Street have tried to make labor cower before them with the threat of just closing all the factories and loading them onto barges to moor off the coast of any nation with a submissive enough work force.

Maybe a little dose of fear of consequences might do to them what having a conscience does to normal people.

I have no problem if all of Wall Street gets nationalized and the phone banks of Mumbai get unplugged. Times are tough. If the people who got us where we are are not going to sacrifice, they should at least feel badly about themselves and the state they have brought us to.

 

[INRM]

Parky76,

Its better then "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists"

True, however because it's a little bit better doesn't necessarily make it acceptable.

 

[Skeptic]

Concentrating wealth into a few hands just leads to a two-layered society of aristocrats and peons.

Actually, the USA is one of the most socially mobile societies that ever existed.

If you want to see REALLY stratified societies, look at the Communist world: where those who had the power to regulate the economy (all for the good of the people, of course) were the "Inner Party" members who got all the good stuff.

"The good stuff" is a relative term, of course: it meant they could afford to live more-or-less like a lower-middle-class American, since their regulations destroyed all initiative and efficiency. Those not in the "Inner Party" of the regulators simply lived in poverty.

 

[leftysergeant]

Actually, the USA is one of the most socially mobile societies that ever existed.

When there were vast tracts of land available and useable for the purpose of expnading wealth, yes, we were.

When we had presidents like FDR who made sure that capital was not used to abuse working people, and that it was taxed, we were.

Nowq that we alre pretty well out of land that can be developed without doing serious ecological harm and the capitalists can buy our jobs out from under us and send them off-shore, not so much.

You die-hard capitalists need to get over the idea that ecconomics is not a zero-sum game.

The resources from which we draw wealth are finite. Live with it.

Capitalism has become a carcinoma.

 

[dudalb]

Capitalism has become a carcinoma

Well, Marxism was not so great either.

 

[BPSCG]

Capitalism has become a carcinoma.

Every once in a great while, someone writes something so monumentally silly, so completely devoid of reason, logic, common sense, and support of empirical evidence, that I feel I'm doing the world a disservice by not repeating it in all its glorious absurdity, so that people will not accidentally gloss over it.

Capitalism has become a carcinoma. leftysergeant, March 27, 2009

 

[leftysergeant]

"All growth is good" could serve as the mantra of the investor class or a carcinoma, with the same outcome.

 

[dudalb]

I guess "investor class" is just the new term for the good old "Capitalist, Bourgeosis Exploitors Of The Working Class".
I can't wait to find out whan the new term for "Dictatorship Of The Proletariat" is.

 

[leftysergeant]

I guess "investor class" is just the new term for the good old "Capitalist, Bourgeosis Exploitors Of The Working Class".
I can't wait to find out whan the new term for "Dictatorship Of The Proletariat" is.

Actually, it means "That class of people who derive their livelihood by the use of money to obtain, trade and otherwise manage the means of production and distribution of wealth within an ecconomic system."

Our investror class has adopted the "all growth is good" mantra and gone pillaging down the road, thinking that the road has no end, and that new plunder is always waiting over the horizon.