I was reading about JEB! Bush’s campaign problems (h/t). This struck me in particular:
The campaign is removing some senior staff from the payroll, parting ways with some consultants, and downsizing its Miami headquarters to save more than $1 million per month and cut payroll by 40 percent this week, according to Bush campaign officials who requested anonymity to speak about internal changes. Senior leadership positions remain unchanged.
Republicans often tell us that they want to run the government more like a business. I didn’t realize they wanted to run their campaigns like a failing business: Cut payroll but keep everything “unchanged” at the top. No matter how much the senior leadership fucks up, they’re untouchable.
No, the problem isn’t that senior leadership managed to take the campaign all the way to single digits in the polls and money drying up! They still deserve what they get. I assume they’re mostly Bush family loyalists, so why should they suffer just because the campaign they’re leading is flailing?
To be clear, I’m not even saying you should count Bush out yet. A similar thing happened to McCain in the ’08 primary. And getting rid of at least the consultants makes sense. But keeping the same people at the top is pretty shit.
When they say they want to run government “like a business,” they don’t mention that 90% of businesses fail. Is that a failure rate we want for our schools and colleges, highways, ports and airports, police and fire departments, the military, regulatory programs, entitlements, and other public services we depend on? In other words, do we want the entire government to resemble the VA? That’s what they’re promising us; would you vote for that?
@1 I’m very happy with the VA. I use it for my care and it’s been very good. They care for a lot of our veterans and it distresses me when people talk it down all the time. Not because it can’t be better but because there are efforts underfoot to slash funding and turn it over to thieves that support Republican liars and rats. The same liars and rats that want to fight all wars, all the time.
Taking this to extremes, wasn’t slavery a way of doing business?
@3 Slavery is a way to reduce labor costs (not eliminate them, as slaves still have to be fed). Although de jure slavery was formally abolished in our country 150 years ago, Republicans are still trying to reinstitute forced labor through such devices as “workfare” and making prison inmates pay for their room and board. The only way they can do that, of course, is by working in prison industries for 10 cents an hour. Someone makes a lot of money from that nearly-free prison labor.
The GOP is the party that freed the slaves, but in name only. Today’s GOP is very different from the Party of Lincoln. In 1860, Republicans were liberals, and the conservatives of that time wanted to preserve the slavery status quo. Politics is mostly about economics, and conservatives are mostly about cheap labor. That hasn’t changed in 150 years, only the party labels have changed. Now, liberals call themselves Democrats and conservatives call themselves Republicans, instead of the other way around. Cheap labor is still the core driving force of conservative politics.
This article explains the central role of cheap labor in virtually all conservative policy positions:
http://conceptualguerilla.com/.....e-minutes/
Panic time for the Bush family dynasty.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/je.....cy-stands/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I don’t expect Jeb! to drop out before the early primaries validate that this fetus (i.e., his campaign) is dead, although it could happen, but if the fetus (i.e., his campaign) doesn’t start breathing soon he may not be one of the finishers.
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi.
Still at the top.
Fun to note how the topic was about jeB! and his campaign staff, but bob twists the topic to democratic politics. Republicans often tell us that they want to run the government more like a business. Liberals want to run government like a government and have it help everyone, not just the people at the top.
IMHO, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz should go, so… one out three. Wasserman-Schultz is acting too much like a business person.
But I understand your desire to remove any liberals who have helped thwart your conservative tribe’s agenda to gut the social safety nets, block any movement toward a living wage, support cheap labor policies and generally return us to the 1800s.
@ 8
Better, if not for people who tell you things you don’t want to hear, you would never hear things you don’t want to hear.
No, it’s not a Corporate Lie that large numbers of jobs might be lost if the national minimum wage were increased to $10.10, Better.
If not for someone like me pointing that out, would you know?
@9 Really? All those businesses who can’t hire workers for $7.25, so they pay them $10 (see, e.g., Walmart, McDonalds, etc.), will fire those workers if they have to pay them $10.10?
bob, as a supporter of cheap labor, I understand that you can never ever admit that efforts to pay a living wage are beneficial for workers. If your ideology cannot handle the idea of a living wage, how is it going to deal with the coming unemployment caused by automation and algorithms?
http://www.sentinelsource.com/.....41c96.html
So far all you republicans do is demonize the poor and gut their safety nets.
The story illustrates that politics isn’t like running a business. It could be that Jeb actually needs to jettison and replace some senior folks. If he did so in politics that is the death knell of a campaign, though sometimes a politician survives and thrives afterwards. Though the folks jettisoned tend to know the skeletons in the closet and those come out. Not for the thin skinned. Of course as long as Trump and Carson are outpolling him and are in the race he’s in a tough place until actual votes are cast. He may have to do something tough like ignor some early results hoping for a few early wins and then winning in Florida and Texas, Then again New Hampshire and Iowa may go his way and he will have an easy ride from there.
Or could Trump have really screwed up by ending up President.
It’s the Bush way: cronies fail upwards (Rice was the only National Security Adviser ever to preside over Americans dying on our own soil from foreign terrorist attacks — after which she was promoted) and Brownie is always doin’ a heckuva job.
Why people vote for performance like this is not something the trolls here ever bother to explain.
It’s the Bush way: cronies fail upwards (Rice was the only National Security Adviser ever to preside over Americans dying on our own soil from foreign terrorist attacks — after which she was promoted) and Brownie is always doin’ a heckuva job.
Why people vote for performance like this is not something the trolls here ever bother to explain.