In Illinois there is a gubernatorial race between Incumbent Pat Quinn and 1%er Bruce Rauner. Rauner, perpetually states his low expectations for his success by letting everyone know his role model is Scott Walker.
Rauner said: "We may have to go through rough times. We may have to do
what Ronald Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. Sort of have to
do a do-over and shut things down for a little while. That's what we're
gonna do."
Billionaire real estate investor Sam Zell agreed with capital pioneer
Tom Perkins that wealthy Americans are being unfairly criticized and
said that the 1 percent work harder.
"The 1 percent are getting pummeled because it's politically
convenient to do so," Zell said, an interview Wednesday on Bloomberg
Television’s "In the Loop" with Betty Liu.
People "should not talk about envy of the 1 percent, they should talk
about emulating the 1 percent. The 1 percent work harder, the 1 percent
are much bigger factors in all forms of our society."
Pressed by restive shareholders and revved up by a growing bubble in
the corporate lending market, the company's leadership and a group of
sophisticated Wall Street bankers embraced Zell's vision, piling the
company with a total of $13 billion in debt.
Despite signs that
Tribune Co.'s newspapers and television stations were under growing
pressure from a slowdown in advertising revenue, the executives and
their bankers were confident that Zell could make the deal work by
selling off key pieces of Tribune Co. and reinvigorating the rest with
the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that had helped the billionaire
generate his fortune.
Instead, Tribune Co. toppled into
bankruptcy court less than a year after the sale closed, where it
remained mired for four years. Zell's hand-picked chief executive, Randy
Michaels, was pushed out amid a cloud of scandal, having failed in his
attempt to transform an old-media conglomerate into a fast-moving
digital competitor. And the company, whose local assets include the
Chicago Tribune, WGN-Ch. 9 and WGN-AM 720, lost crucial time in its
quest to develop a new business model.
Many participants were
richly rewarded. A group of Tribune Co. executives got close to $150
million in cashed-out stock and other payments triggered by the deal,
while the company's banks and advisers collected almost $280 million in
fees — the kinds of compensation that helped drive the record boom in
corporate buyouts that preceded the global economic collapse. But there
would be significant costs, too. The deal blew up for the banks, and
many of its architects face litigation aimed at clawing back their
gains.
I guess if you have the cojones to dump $13,000,000,000 of your debt on someone else and then talk about how hard you work, then maybe we should not stop at hero worship. Maybe you should get more votes in our society also!
"The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes," Perkins said.
"But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a
million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"
"We've got a country that the poverty level is wealth in 99 percent of
the rest of the world," he said. "So we're talking about woe is me, woe
is us, woe is this." He added that "the guy that's making, oh my God,
he's making $35,000 a year, why don't we try that out in India or some
countries we can't even name. China, anyplace, the guy is wealthy."
Konheim's comments are sure to provoke the inequality crusaders. After
all, here is the wealthy CEO of a luxury company that sells $800
sequined dresses and $250 clutches saying that people who make $35,000 a
year should be grateful.
The Wisconsin congressman said he had forgotten that his office sent
letters — with his signature — to the Energy and Labor departments
asking for money from the stimulus program on behalf of two companies in
his home state.
The best part of his sorry excuse for his blatant lies is this:
"After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them,
and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way
matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled," Ryan
said in a statement late Thursday. "This is why I didn't recall the
letters earlier."
You can not blame the Congressman since they treated them like "constituent Services" and in time time he has been in Congress, he can't remember ever partaking in constituent services, so how could he remember this. It must have been a rogue staff member that actually tried to help the 1st Congressional District.
No answer yet if that staff member has been found and disciplined.
Even during his explanation, Paul "Harvey Dent" rAYN (R- $350 bottles of wine), contradicted himself.
"That stimulus didn't work," Romney said at an Ohio speech in June.
"That stimulus didn't put more private-sector people to work."
Yet
in Ryan's letter to the Labor Department in October 2009, he backed the
Energy Center of Wisconsin's grant application for stimulus money "to
develop an industry-driven training and placement agenda that intends to
place 1,000 workers in green jobs." The company did not win the Labor
Department grant, federal records show. Despite the letter, Ryan echoed Romney's position on Thursday.
"Regardless,
it's clear that the Obama stimulus did nothing to stimulate the
economy, and now the president is asking to do it all over again," he
said.
When you stand for nothing, you will say anything! To be fair though, maybe pink slip paulie is just upset that his favorite band penned in Op-Ed stating
Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine
is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music
has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.
Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or
his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision
of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical
to the message of Rage.
I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we
condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American
imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we
call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent
choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!
Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in
him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against
workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against
the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.
This just in...paul ryan picked his new campaign song!!
Today when Romney the Robotic Republican was confronted by a 99er in South Carolina with “What will you do to support the 99 percent seeing as how you are part of the 1 percent?”, Mitt responded with a variation of the old Republican standard, "why don't you just get out of here..."
Let me tell you something: America is a great nation because we’re a united nation. And those who try and divide the nation, as you’re trying to do here and as our President is doing, are hurting this country seriously. The right course for America is not to divide America and try and divide us between one and another. It’s to come together as a nation. And if you’ve got a better model, if you think China’s better, or Russia’s better, or Cuba’s better, or North Korea’s better, I’m glad to hear all about it. But you know what, you know what, America’s right and you’re wrong.
Nice travelogue. Notice he left out the 37 or so countries that rank ahead of us on a lot of other rankings.
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