can't think of many bigger shithead moves than firing people over the outcome of an election:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/so-whats-it-get-fired-because-president-obama-was-reelected/58874/

11/9/2012 3:15:13 PM

Quote :

"The country already has a strong moderate-right leaning party. They're called Democrats."

this is the absolute truth, and is totally lost on far too many people.

11/9/2012 3:47:43 PM

Quote :

"can't think of many bigger shithead moves than firing people over the outcome of an election: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/so-whats-it-get-fired-because-president-obama-was-reelected/58874/"

If you know the outcome of that election is going to continue to have a negative impact on your business, and you were keeping people on the payroll hoping that a new administration may reign in some of the policies implemented in the last 4 years, I don't see anything wrong it.

I'm not trying to defend the guy, but the Obama administration has been hard on coal, so it's not shocking that they would initiate cost saving measures the day after he's elected.

Did you see how many layoffs occurred nationwide within 48 hours of the election? I'm sure that not all were directly correlated to the results, but those in industries adversely affected by the policies of the last 4 years likely were. That's business. The folks at the top aren't going to suffer, they're just going to cut costs elsewhere or move entirely.

[Edited on November 11, 2012 at 1:40 PM. Reason : .]

11/11/2012 1:40:07 PM

whatever their reasoning is, they're still shitheads

11/11/2012 1:58:31 PM

LOL

http://unskewedpolls.com/

http://www.examiner.com/article/do-you-still-think-the-polls-were-skewed?cid=db_articles

[Edited on November 11, 2012 at 6:48 PM. Reason : ]

11/11/2012 6:46:39 PM

^ Damn...Silver pwnt that Dean Chambers douche in every way possible...and that "unskewed Polls" site looks like 1996 Notepad html crap someone threw together in 5 mins...

11/11/2012 7:27:34 PM

Even worse yet, the Conservative media, including Fox News, were pushing that unskewed polls garbage HARD.

I have a friend who is normally pretty intelligent, buy into this. Needless to say, i will be mocking him hard for that. Hopefully Fox loses his respect as a result.

11/11/2012 7:45:55 PM

Even worse yet, the Conservative media, including Fox News, were pushing that unskewed polls garbage HARD.

I have a friend who is normally pretty intelligent, buy into this. Needless to say, i will be mocking him hard for that. Hopefully Fox loses his respect as a result.

11/11/2012 7:45:55 PM

11/11/2012 8:18:23 PM

^ LOL

^^ Dude, anyone that buys into the fox news/limbaugh bullshit isn't intelligent. I work with a guy who you'd classify the same way, but he believes every fucking thing he hears from Limbaugh. People need to learn to question their own belief systems rather than believing anything, no matter how retarded, just because it confirms their idiotic ideas.

[Edited on November 11, 2012 at 8:43 PM. Reason : ]

11/11/2012 8:39:12 PM

Quote :

"But I fact checked it three times ... Rush said it. Beck said it. And I heard it on Fox News."

11/11/2012 8:59:35 PM

^^ he voted Obama in 08...

He has other social pressures (ie new father in law to impress) that have swayed him one way.

11/11/2012 9:29:46 PM

NO SYMPATHY! lol

11/11/2012 9:45:09 PM

http://www.ericgarland.co/2012/11/09/letter-to-a-future-republican-strategist-regarding-white-people/

so much awesome.

11/12/2012 8:40:54 AM

^I see your link, and raise you:

11/12/2012 10:49:44 AM

That's a helluva sex change, Bill O'Reilly.

11/12/2012 11:26:08 AM

11/12/2012 11:26:13 AM

Quote :

"The two most popular petitions, Texas and Louisiana, have both drawn more than 10,000 signatures each as of Monday morning. The Texas petition needs only 7,000 more signatures to trigger an official White House response. "

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/11/secession-petitions-flood-white-house-website-149291.html

I'd be kind of sad about texas, but i wouldn't be sad about La.

11/12/2012 1:15:49 PM

^^^^ all of those things that they said Obama didn't do are things that Obama did, how do they believe this stuff?

11/12/2012 1:41:12 PM

So Obama didn't really lose the white vote in a meaningful way (I bet if you broke it down m/f, he did lose white males by unusual margins)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/11/08/president-obama-and-the-white-vote-no-problem/




But why hasn't the broader GOP realized yet they are woefully unrepresentative of the American people?

11/12/2012 6:09:27 PM

Looks like polls were mostly Romney-biased

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

11/12/2012 6:32:06 PM

Quote :

"But why hasn't the broader GOP realized yet they are woefully unrepresentative of the American people?"

because their blinders prevent them from realizing this. and unfortunately this election probably won't kick them in the ass enough

11/12/2012 6:32:30 PM

http://io9.com/5954568/12-facepalm-moments-when-us-politicians-talked-about-science-and-technology?utm_source=io9.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation

11/12/2012 6:35:49 PM

I think its interesting that internet beats phone calls

11/12/2012 7:09:20 PM

Quote :

""can't think of many bigger shithead moves than firing people over the outcome of an election:"

Chic-fil-a is doing the same thing. I know a general manager there and he said:

Quote :

" an email from cfa corp. to all operators and inc. employees two days ago informing them of new regulations and changes that will be coming now that obama was re-elected and obamacare is on it's way to being fully implemented. it's a big disincentive to becoming a multi-unity operator and will be hard for those who already are."

11/14/2012 12:37:47 AM

heaven forbid these CEO's look out for their employees

11/14/2012 12:45:07 AM

i know, it's as if businesses place the highest emphasis on making money or something.

11/14/2012 12:58:05 AM

They will be looking out for them...

...just less of them.

Nobody cries when a robot replaces a dozen assembly line workers.

Nobody should cry when one healthy/happy person displaces a few dumpy bastards at Chick-Fil-A.

This is progress.

11/14/2012 7:31:00 AM

Personally I'm a big fan of the people who prepare my food not being ill.

11/14/2012 9:24:23 AM

That is a luxury we simply cannot afford.

11/14/2012 9:54:59 AM

can we start a John McCain credibility watch thread separate from this?

5 years ago this guy was a solid leader in the republican party who constantly reached across the aisle, had decent values, and got shit done

now he's calling for a watergate investigation into Benghazi, when he, of all people, should know how intelligence works and how information changes daily at the outset

the man went mad with the thought he could become the president and just continues to double down on every thing he can - he just constantly tries to get his name entered into the news cycle

11/14/2012 12:28:18 PM

yeah that is odd. It does come off as trying to reach out to the base.

11/14/2012 1:39:00 PM

He's just a bitter old man.

Haha, Obama just called out McCain directly over this.

[Edited on November 14, 2012 at 2:06 PM. Reason : :]

11/14/2012 1:41:42 PM

McCain strikes me as a straight shooter, but it's problematic in his case. He's not terribly intelligent or well informed and his own party and inner circle only present him with one lopsided view of things

11/14/2012 2:39:48 PM

Meh, I never cared for McCain. Anyone who can't do the NC State pre-game clap is suspicious in my book.

11/14/2012 2:46:05 PM

hahaha

11/14/2012 2:55:16 PM

After the Keating Five deal, McCain should just shut the hell up and continue to suck away at those sweet, sweet government teats like he's done for close to 4 decades. What a damn con artist.

11/14/2012 6:43:36 PM

I'll miss Papa John's, maybe next time they should try having fewer than 50 employees like the local pizza shops they've pushed out of business all over America. Hopefully Walmart's next.

It's almost as though the utter domination of big businesses over small ones has to do with the economies of scale and their reliance on exploiting desperate low-skilled laborers that by the nature of their function cannot be outsourced to China.



[Edited on November 15, 2012 at 11:56 AM. Reason : .]

11/15/2012 11:55:19 AM

Is the firing or scaling back of employees in place of or in addition to the 2 or 3 cents more John was claiming he was going to have to charge per pizza if Obamacare went into effect?

11/15/2012 12:02:19 PM

^^ that type of thing will end up backfiring. It makes them look really bad.

11/15/2012 12:21:46 PM

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021103548

Sound points about Papa John's comments.

Quote :

"Last week, John Schnatter, the founder and CEO of Papa John's Pizza, announced that the Affordable Care Act will raise the cost of his pizza 11 to 14 cents each, or 15 to 20 cents per order. In 1988 I cashed in my retirement account and started a factory making leather furniture in Thailand and within 2 years we had grown the company to 450 employees and dominated the discount leather furniture market in Europe, replacing cheap discount production in Italy with better quality and lower priced product. IKEA was our largest, but not only customer and Ingmar Komprad came to visit our factory. We had Thai and Japanese shareholders, shipped more than $ 10 million a year, paid our workers 30% more than the market and had zero turnover. A few years later they took down the Berlin Wall and IKEA took our model to Poland where the inflated post liberation currency made labor virtually free and they could ship directly to their European stores, saving a 20% warehousing fee. We had signed personal guarantees on our loans we lost everything, house, retirement account. But I really enjoyed it, everyday was a different problem solving exercise. I did learn however to look at markets like a CEO and I am continually shocked how idiotic statements by American CEOs are allowed to stand. Now I am not talking how their are idiotic from a public policy or morals point of view, as this one is, but how they are idiotic from a CEO point of view. I keep waiting for somebody with some business background to make the points in the national media but they never do. Putting aside all morale, ethical, human issues regarding the wisdom of adding of dimes to a pizza so that the employees can have access to a doctor there are numerous reasons why they are just plain stupid from a CEO's point of view. 1. Marginal increase in costs are completely irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is are you going to get a cost disadvantage versus all of your competitors. Is Papa John's going to have to pay an additional 20 cents a pizza that other pizza makers are not going to have to pay? Of course not. So where's the harm? To think of it another way the direct cost of gasoline that goes up because say "President Romney attacks Iran and with 1/3 of the oil going through the Persian Gulf gas prices would go to $ 6.00" would have a much greater multiplier effect on Papa John's per pizza cost because not only would his raw material costs, direct energy costs and delivery costs would go up much much more than the lousy 20 cents he has mentioned. But Schnatter doesn't really care about this because he knows that if those costs go up for him then they will also go up for all of the other Pizza makers. For this reason marginal increase in costs are completely irrelevant if they are applied to all the manufacturers equally, there is no competitive advantage or disadvantage, they are irrelevant to the manufacturer's position in the market place. 2. It eliminates one of his major benefit nightmares Now Papa John's doesn't have to fight it out in the benefit wars where a competing company poaches his workers by offering better benefits. Working as a management consultant my first task was to ask the CEO what his major problems were. They were never the real problems but you had to let the guy ventilate. Sometimes they would say "unions" and this was never the case. Most of the time they were in prevailing wage bids so that the union rate had to be paid whether they were union or not. I would ask "since you are costing and paying on prevailing wage set by they government and your union now becomes responsible for discipline (if you had a problem with a particular worker he could simply notify the shop steward and they would send that pipe fitter back to the shop and get another one) where is the disadvantage? None. By having a universally defined benefit Papa John's is spared the headache of trying to compete in the market place trying to convince workers that his companies health benefits are competitive with another company, they are now all going to be more or less equal. 3. It puts more disposable income into his customers pockets What is Papa John's major problem? Disposable income in his customary base is declining. The Affordable Health Care Act will mean that when the working Mom has to go to the doctor and get breast examination or a new prescription her monthly budget isn't going to be wiped out. Now when she is on her way home from the doctor and doesn't have enough time to make dinner, she can order a pizza rather than feeding the kids breakfast cereal. There is a famous story about how Ford increased his daily labor pay to $ 15 per day even though he had plenty of workers willing to work for half of that. He wasn't being generous, he needed them to be able to make enough money to buy a car. I predict that eventually the management of Walmart will become big advocates for increasing minimum wages. They are coming quickly to the point where there are not that many quality locations to build new stores. They are trying to expand the range of quality products and services that they provide to get in more customers. But as the disposable income of the middle and lower class continues to disintegrate they will see (and I believe that they are already seeing) that the per trip ticket for their customers start to decline. In the stock market they are competing against other companies for investment and they are required to find ways to increase profits. For their domestic market they are fast approaching the point where the only way that they can increase profit is to increase the per ticket total of their customers buying and that can only happen if the minimum and working wages at the bottom increase. 4. Communicating a negative message to your employees In addition to all of the above is the callous, heartless point that John Schnatter is communicating to his employees. He is saying I will not provide and I do not care if you have access to medical services and he is putting his lack of care with a price tag, 20 cents a pizza. Businesses can only be successful on the long term if a) their suppliers win b) their employees win and c) their customers win. If any of those three are threatened then the long term viability of the business is uncertain. Papa John's has now communicated to all of their employees that they are nothing more than cannon fodder and are completely disposable. This puts Papa John's at a competitive disadvantage in hiring and attracting the best workers, or keeping morale up. And he created this disadvantage without gaining any comparative bottom line advantage. It doesn't help your bottom line to alienate your employees, especially when you do it without actually increasing your bottom line performance, it is an unforced error. Of course there is the whole moral, ethical and public policy point of view as well. But looking at it strictly from a business point of view Schnatter's comments rise to the level of a junior high school business class. If I was a major shareholder in Papa John's I would be worried about how competent a CEO was managing my investment. The fact that the media simply passes on statements like this without challenging them simply shows again that they are becoming less and less professional with each election cycle and are completely intimidated by business people no matter how senseless their comments are."

BTW, Forbes estimated the actual cost increase to be no more than 4 cents. I wouldn't be surprised if he raised it 20 cents and then added a second 21-car garage to his mansion.

[Edited on November 15, 2012 at 12:31 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2012 12:30:13 PM

here's another one for thegoodlife3; probably not the best thread for it, but keeping with the theme of "passing on the costs" of Obamacare by corporations and job cutting to curb the costs.


http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/15/florida-restaurateur-to-impose-surcharge-for-obamacare/
Get ready to pay more for your Grand Slam.

Quote :

"A Florida restaurateur who operates roughly 40 Denny’s locations and five Hurricane Grill & Wings franchises in Florida, Virginia and Georgia intends to add a 5 percent surcharge to customers’ bills to offset costs from ObamaCare beginning in January 2014 when the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented. “People are trying to find ways to avoid the penalties and to avoid having to pay for ObamaCare,” John Metz told FoxNews.com. “Everyone’s looking for a way to not have to provide insurance for their employees. It’s essentially a huge tax on all us business people.” To further offset the costs, Metz, who oversees roughly 1,200 employees as president and CEO of RREMC Restaurants, LLC, said he also will slash most of the staff's time to fewer than 30 hours per week. That change will be announced to employees next month, he said. “I want to explain it to everybody, to let them know what’s coming down the pike,” he said. “We like to keep our employees informed.” The changes will force some front-of-the-house employees to look for second jobs, Metz said, but he simply cannot afford the penalties associated with ObamaCare."

obamacare supporters were warned, but apparently they thought the large corporations would just take it; y'all had to realize those greedy sumbitches wouldn't do that, right?

11/15/2012 12:52:24 PM

Quote :

"Is Papa John's going to have to pay an additional 20 cents a pizza that other pizza makers are not going to have to pay? Of course not. "

Actually, yes they will. Businesses with fewer than 50 employees are exempt. So any increase in competition as a result will come from pizza shops run by Moms & Pops or robots.


[Edited on November 15, 2012 at 1:01 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2012 1:00:24 PM

Quote :

"obamacare supporters were warned, but apparently they thought the large corporations would just take it; y'all had to realize those greedy sumbitches wouldn't do that, right?"

I don't think you understand how supply and demand works. These companies didn't have their prices artificially low just to be gracious, prices are at all times as high as they can be without losing too much business to competitors. If a company instead chooses to absorb the cost (Such as by cancelling a 2 million free pizzas a year program...) then their prices stay the same, and as a result get a higher volume of sales than the company that chooses to raise the price instead. They can only safely raise their prices without fearing a sales-volume drop if they know for a fact that every single competitor will do the same.

In other words, some idiots run businesses, and this will weed out a few of them who decide that short-term profits are more important than long-term viability.

[Edited on November 15, 2012 at 1:04 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2012 1:03:45 PM

There is also an average salary limit requirement for that

11/15/2012 1:08:07 PM

http://news.yahoo.com/mccain-misses-classified-briefing-while-blasting-white-house-170656090--abc-news-politics.html

Classic...McCain misses a classified briefing on the Benghazi attack so that he could hold a press conference demanding information about it

11/15/2012 2:19:58 PM

CNN's interview with McCain is gold:

Quote :

"When CNN approached McCain in a Capitol hallway Thursday morning, the senator refused to comment about why he missed the briefing, which was conducted by top diplomatic, military and counter-terrorism officials. Instead, McCain got testy when pressed to say why he wasn't there. "I have no comment about my schedule and I'm not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media," McCain said. Asked why he wouldn't comment, McCain grew agitated: "Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?” When CNN noted that McCain had missed a key meeting on a subject the senator has been intensely upset about, McCain said, "I'm upset that you keep badgering me.""

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/15/mccain-skips-benghazi-briefing-gets-testy-when-questioned-by-cnn/

11/15/2012 10:20:23 PM

Couldn't be more emblematic of the GOP right now: Too busy grandstanding to do their job

11/16/2012 9:53:26 AM

Possibly the best argument in support of the gays marrying, everL

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6846855/gay-men-will-marry-your-girlfriends

11/16/2012 2:10:02 PM

set em up

11/16/2012 3:46:00 PM