Smell the Freedom!

Here’s a Memo From the Boss: Vote This Way

Imagine getting a letter from the boss, telling you how to vote.

Until 2010, federal law barred companies from using corporate money to endorse and campaign for political candidates — and that included urging employees to support specific politicians.

But the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has freed companies from those restrictions, and now several major companies, including Georgia-Pacific and Cintas, have sent letters or information packets to their employees suggesting — and sometimes explicitly recommending — how they should vote this fall.

In these letters, the executives complain about the costs of overregulation, the health care overhaul and possible tax increases. Some letters warn that if President Obama is re-elected, the company could be harmed, potentially jeopardizing jobs.

David A. Siegel, 77, chief executive of Westgate Resorts, a major time-share company, wrote to his 7,000 employees, saying that if Mr. Obama won, the prospect of higher taxes could hurt the company’s future.

“The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job, however, is another four years of the same presidential administration,” Mr. Siegel wrote. “If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current president plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company.”

Companies can now advise employees on how to vote -- and they do

What’s next, company stores, and company scrip instead of paychecks?

Liberated from Federal Election Commission policies by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, employers that were once barred from advising employees on how to vote are now free to start telling employees how they should vote, and including some "or else" warnings.

And it appears some of them already have.

WFMY television in the swing state of North Carolina reported that the owner of a Taco Bell franchise encouraged employees to vote but, in his letter, also noted that the power of one vote is "enormous" and declared that "Obamacare creates a system that will force struggling businesses to cut your work hours to avoid paying for expensive insurance plans or tax penalties."

The station cited North Carolina statutes saying it’s a misdemeanor to intimidate employees to vote in a certain way.

In Wisconsin, activist groups have filed a complaint against the founder and chief executive of a loading dock manufacturing company, saying Rite-Hite chief Michael White broke state law when he emailed 1,400 employees warning that, among other points, "Every Rite-Hite employee in America should understand the personal consequences to them of having our tax rates increase dramatically if President Obama is reelected, forcing taxpayers to fund President Obama’s future deficits and social programs (including Obamacare), which require bigger government.... The other big impact on Rite-Hite employees, if President Obama is reelected, is the good chance of losing Rite-Hite insurance and being put into Obamacare.... Every opportunity to make up for lost profits to taxes will have to be evaluated."

A guest blogger for the Hill, which covers Capitol Hill, noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has begun encouraging campaigns to put political ads in employees’ pay envelopes, and that Romney has encouraged employers to "make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming election."

Major Retailer Urges Workers To Take ‘Civics Course’ With Anti-Obama Content

If you live in the Midwest and you’re working on a home-improvement project, you’re as likely to do your shopping at a Menards store as at a Lowe’s or Home Depot. With 270 stores and 40,000 employees , Menards is the third-largest home-improvement chain in the U.S., and one of the largest privately held corporations in the country. But Menards stores sell more than just lumber and building supplies; their employees are sold a bill of goods in the form of right-wing ideology.

This January, as the Iowa Caucuses were underway, Menards began encouraging employees to take an at-home online “civics” course that characterizes the economic policies of President Barack Obama as a threat to the success of businesses such as Menards, and by extension, to the employees’ own well-being.

Menards employees who sign up for the course are graded on their knowledge via a multiple choice pass-fail test, and those who pass the test are acknowledged in company publications and bulletins. While workers are not required to take the course, those who hope for promotions may feel pressure to do so, since it is clear that management is paying attention to who is or isn’t taking the at-home classes, which are conducted on the employees’ own time. The civics course is offered as part of a battery of courses, most of which pertain to products sold by the company, or other aspects of working at Menards.

AlterNet has obtained the online textbook for the Menards civics course. The third part of the textbook, subtitled ” American Job Security,” imparts a message similar to the letter sent by Koch Industries CEO Dave Robertson to retirees and employees of the company’s Georgia Pacific subsidiary, as well as the e-mail sent to employees of Rite-Hite, a Milwaukee equipment manufacturer, by company owner Mark White, urging them to vote for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. While the Menards course doesn’t offer an explicit candidate endorsement, it describes Obama policies in threatening terms, while policies that echo Romney’s proposals are portrayed in a positive and uplifting light.

First Amendment, bitchez!

SPN 8x05

Worth watching just for the ending - which, wow.

( Read more )

Well, I don't think anyone was using Queens for anything, anyway.

Fox News Laments Federal Government’s Role In Hurricane Relief:

While governors across the country have praised the federal government’s rapid response to Hurricane Sandy, Fox News sought to remind viewers of the evils of Washington, criticizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for “printing money” and relying on China to fund relief for victims of the storm.

On Thursday, the hosts of Fox & Friends argued that Americans affected by the hurricane could turn to private insurers for help and suggested that hurricane relief could be left to the states....

This is just absolutely batshit insane. Civilized countries do not ignore the destruction of major coastal cities. They have a coordinated national response. That's what government exists to do; it's one of the most fundamental, primary functions. This is an attack on the idea of nationhood itself - does Fox News not believe we're a single country anymore? Would it prefer we return to the days of private fiefdoms, where each landowner was also the functional government? Should we just let New Jersey wash away into the ocean? No big, we'll just remove one star (and maybe a stripe) from the flag? Should Wall Street just crumble beneath ...

Well, maybe they're on to something.

Oh my god!

It almost sounds like he won't be playing somebody really rapey:

NEWLY REVEALED: THE OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS FOR ‘JANE GOT A GUN

“Young and pretty with a soul of pure steel, Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) is a good girl married to one of the worst baddies in town. When her husband Bill turns against his own gang, the vicious Bishop Boys, and returns home barely alive with eight bullets in his back, Jane knows it’s time to ditch the dress for a pair of pants and strap on her own gun. As the relentless leader John Bishop gears up for revenge, Jane’s best hope for her family’s survival rests with her old love Dan Frost (Michael Fassbender) – a gunslinger whose hatred for Bill is only slightly overshadowed by his love for Jane. Together Jane and Dan spring clever traps, luring Bishop’s men to certain death just as their old feelings for each other resurface amidst the flying bullets.

Is this too much of a change for him? Are we sure he can handle the stretch?

QOTD (okay, paragraphs of the day)

Matt Taibbi:

[T]he storm has become a flash-point for a new media meme: Obama is for big government (which is suddenly a good thing), Romney is for small government (and wants to take rafts and blankets away from flood victims), and goodness gracious, aren't we lucky that we got to see such a clear, real-world demonstration of the important philosophical differences between these two candidates in the week before the election.

The only problem with this new line of rhetoric is that it isn't really true. The almost certain reality is that we'll end up with a big (and perhaps even a rapidly-expanding) government no matter who gets elected. People seem to forget that this time four years ago, George W. Bush was winding down one of the most activist, expensive, intrusive presidencies in history, an eight-year period that saw a massive expansion in the size of the federal government.

In the abstract, most Americans want a smaller and less intrusive government. In reality, what Americans really want is a government that spends less money on other people....

The truth is, nobody, be he rich or poor, wants his government services cut. Drive up and down route 128 outside Boston, you'll see a lot of affluent white people waving Romney signs, complaining about entitlement spending. But about four thousand percent of those same people working along the high-tech ring there are totally dependent on the Pentagon contracts that keep doors open at companies like Raytheon and General Dynamics.

Here in the tri-state area, and especially in the lower Manhattan region I'm staring at out my window right now, you'll get much of the same – lots of whining now about deficit spending and the parasitical 47%, but also conspicuous silence a few years ago, when in one fell swoop, taxpayers had to spend about twice the amount of the annual federal budget just to save bonus seasons on Wall Street for the few thousand of our local assholes who nearly blew up the world economy.

The point is, we will end up with a big government no matter who wins next week's election, because neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama is supported by a coalition that has any interest in tightening its own belt. The only reason we're having this phony big-versus-small argument is because of yet another longstanding media deception, i.e. that the only people who actually receive government aid are the poor and the elderly and other such traditional "welfare"-seekers. Thus a politician who is in favor of cutting services to that particular crowd, like Mitt Romney, is inevitably described as favoring "small government," no matter what his spending plans are for everybody else.

But everyone lives off the government teat to some degree – even (one might even say especially) the very rich who have been the core supporters of both the Bush presidency and Romney's campaign. Many are industrial leaders who would revolt tomorrow if their giant free R&D program known as the federal military budget were to be scaled back even a few percentage points. Mitt's buddies on Wall Street would cry without their bailouts and dozens of lucrative little-known subsidies (like the preposterous ability of certain banks to act as middlemen in transactions when the government lends money to itself).

And if it's not outright bailouts or guarantees keeping the rich rich, it's selective regulation and carefully-carved-out protections from competition – like the bans on drug re-importation or pharmaceutical price negotiation for Medicare that are keeping the drug companies far richer than they would be, in the pure free-market paradise their CEOs probably espouse at dinner parties.

The evolution of this whole antigovernment movement has been fascinating to watch. People who grew up in public schools, run straight to the embassy the instant they get a runny nose overseas, stuff burgers down their throats without worrying about E. Coli and sleep happily in planes they know have been inspected by the FAA (I regularly risked my life in Aeroflot liners for a decade and know the difference), can with straight faces make the argument that having to pay any taxes at all is tyranny. It's almost as if people feel the need to announce that they don't need any help with anything, ever – not even keeping bridges safe or drinking water clean.

This post is for the aca-fans

I am become history. And don't forget to follow the OP's link.

So everyone's been following the Nate Silver thing, right?

Short version: Nate Silver used to be a sports statistician who used mathiness to predict baseball players' performance. He then moved to political blogging, using mathiness to assess the state of various races based on polling data. After the 2008 election, his blog moved to the NYT, where it is widely read and is a comfort to liberals everywhere because he generally finds that Obama has about a 70% chance of winning.

So, of course, he's come under attack from a lot of political pundits, especially conservative ones, who prefer to rely on their "sense" of the race, and/or the very latest poll, rather than - you know - facts. Here's one summary of the criticisms; I've also been laughing over People Who Can't Do Math Are So Mad at Nate Silver for days.

Some of the more bizarre attacks on Silver have - I shit you not - accused his fans of drinking coffee, and of Silver himself of being sorta gay. Which, apparently, he is, but it's unclear what bearing that fact has on his statistical models.

I personally loved Atrios's tweet:

one wonders why media orgs have been spending so much money on polls all these years if we could learn more from goat entrails

— Atrios (@Atrios) October 31, 2012

But by far the most informative piece, at least to me, has been TNR's discussion of how the criticisms of Silver from political pundits mirror the criticisms that used to be leveled at sports statisticians - until sports fans learned math.