Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Unbelievable.

You have got to be living in an hermetically-sealed irony-proof bubble bobbing in an eddy somewhere outside the stream of history to write this:
Big corporations are fleeing for lower tax rates abroad. With reform legislation going nowhere, it’s time to think creatively and institute newfangled ‘non-desertion agreements.’
Dude, one of the complaints that nuanced cosmopolitan liberals have with Ayn Rand is that her villains are cartoonish caricatures, and here you go popping out an editorial that could have been written by Wesley Mouch. Tone-deafness on this scale is positively breathtaking. Atlas Shrugged was not an instruction manual, you knob.
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24 comments:

  1. The motto for pretty much all US politics seems to have become "Derping to idiocracy"

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  2. Wow. Just... Wow.

    A nice reminder that there's no bottom to the well of stupidity.

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  3. I thought the villains in Atlas Shrugged were quite believable and recognizable types. It was the heroes who all seemed a bit too competent and talented to be believable.

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  4. Crap. Fujita will have to add F6 to the douchenado scale.

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  5. To be completely fair, Ayn Rand's villains were cartoonish caricatures. Which doesn't change the fact that our would-be rulers do seem to have used them as templates while growing up.

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  6. Ayn Rand's early years are playing out in our present.

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  7. I'm afraid Atlas Shrugged is a bedside reading how-to manual for the ever hungry monster our goobernment has grown in to...

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  8. These guys are laughable. It's like they are so out of touch they live on a different planet but still somehow are making laws that affect all of us.

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  9. Atlas Shrugged was a collection of unsolved problems. The question isn't whether there are negatives but whether the negatives outweigh the positives.

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  10. Non-desertion agreements?

    I know! Have the govt take over the businesses!!
    A gang in the '30s did that and it was very efficient.
    (well, except for paperwork in triplicate)

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  11. Apparently, the idea is that US corporations, in order to be "good citizens", have to pay whatever our political masters... er, the representatives of The Will of the People, I meant to say... say they have to pay. Yep, if you want to enjoy the fruits of doing business in the good ol' US of A (including unions, regulations, multi-billion dollar lawsuits, and high taxes), you must prove your loyalty.

    Jebus...

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  12. Herman Goering bragged at Nuremberg about the Reich's death penalty for fleeing Nazi Germany with assets.

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  13. Since when have there been "nuanced cosmopolitan liberals" ? They have all been obliterated in the name of dogma.

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  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  15. See also this piece reciting the argument. Dave Johnson, author of the HuffPo silliness, appears to have subscribed to the school of thought, all too common these days, that if you repeat "We the People" often enough in a political debate, Thomas Jefferson magically appears and kick your opponent's ass.

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  16. "Non-desertion agreements"
    Doubtless with the corporate equivalent of the penalties Goering alluded to.

    Until now, "we have never needed to build a wall to keep our people in."

    We don't need to ask them to come to Berlin, it is coming to us.

    A Berlin Wall of Laws to keep our assets in.

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  17. Could this be the same guy who recently proposed 'exit fees' for those selling govt bonds?

    I guess we have to slide lower before we can make the turn higher. What a ride!

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  18. I remember hearing ridiculousness like this back in the 80's on 60-Minutes from the likes of Dan Rather... Jeeze that makes me feel old.
    The slimy toadies never stop trying to capture every asset. Why not abolish patent protection and just give any and all inventions to the Gov.?

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  19. George P. Burdell7:27 PM, August 06, 2014

    Now serving Directives 10-286, 10-287, and 10-288.

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  20. There is already an exit fee, for taking your wealth out of the country.
    This turned up in the news when one of those IPO internet billionaires tried to leave for Hong Kong?, as his IPO was heating up. Might be 20%, IIRC. Good luck trying to take a flight with a small suitcase full of cash. Turns out you can't do that anymore, either.

    No idea who/when this was done, but it sure smacks of socialist/communist/fascist history. The idea that you don't own what you have worked for, that it actually belongs to "the people", is unconstitutional. I'm thinking rope, tree, gov't functionary, some assembly required.

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    1. You can walk into an airport with 50,000 in cash, just expect to be questioned by the fourth TSA agent why are you carrying 1,000 in cash.

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  21. He, and his fellows including our President aren't tone deaf at all.

    This idea, the message, even the messengers and the words they use have been extensively poll tested and focus grouped to resonate with true believers, donors (actual and prospective), and seduceable swing voters. It's music to their ears.

    They don't care a hoot what sensible, or logical, or historically aware people tap their toes or not any more than Fifty Cents or Montgomery Gentry care about the people who read Opera News.

    This idea is like a Taurus Judge, its purpose is to be sold. In this case for greater political, social, extortion, and economic power.

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  22. But, "desertion" has a specific meaning, and applies only to *people*. I thought they were utterly opposed to treating corporations as "people"...

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  23. This "non-desertion" thing sounds like what Maryland tried to do to the Colts.

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