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Corporate Raider President? 12/1/2011 11:27:39 AM
Reaction to Newsweek commentary by Niall Ferguson
defending Mitt Romney's corporate raider background.
In the December 5th edition of Newsweek, Niall Ferguson outlines his reasons for supporting a financier in the next presidential election, namely Mitt Romney.
Ferguson isn’t bothered by Romney’s numerous flipflops trying to appeal to the rightwing branch of the party. Suddenly Mitt opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants who have lived and thrived in America for years, and he’s against a health care proposal that sounds like the one he signed when he was governor of Massachusetts. Ferguson's justification is that everybody changes his/her mind occasionally. Yet the GOP used that same argument to chastise John Kerry.
To his credit Ferguson wasn’t fooled at all by the Tea Party. He states, “On one side, there are conservative fundamentalists--The Tea Party--who think we can turn the clock back to before the New Deal, if not further.” Further would be the nineteenth century, when the Robber Barons ran roughshod over the working class, when women were denied the vote, when young black men were lynched if they looked at a white woman the wrong way, when revivalism was sweeping the country. Still Ferguson likes them better than the “Occupopulists,” I imagine because he’s a Republican and the GOP is afraid to tell these people they don’t want them around.
Ferguson is most impressed by Romney’s ability to take over a failing health care company and make 250 million doing it. The New York Times commentary portraying Romney as a corporate raider is viewed as “an unintentionally hilarious piece.” Maybe laying people off to make money is funny to Ferguson, but I’ll get my yucks someplace else, thank you. When you lay off your workers you lay off your customers. Maybe cutting corporate salaries and bonuses or dividends to your investors would be a better idea. Corporate remuneration is now 400 to one when compared with the average wage earner.
Romney wasn’t the only vulture circling that health care company. That’s what corporate raiders do; they gut the company of its assets, then take a profit, leaving it more vulnerable than it was before. I’m reminded of the corporate CEO who told President Obama that his first obligation was to his share holders. What about his customers? What about his employees? What about the country? Of course some of these outfits are International companies, many of whom ship jobs overseas. Corporate American is investing in a million jobs in Southeast Asia while America workers go begging. Corporate America gives money to a political party that targets public employees. Here’s a question for you: How does America improve education in this country while simultaneously taking away negotiation rights for teachers? Were Republicans ever serious about improving education, or was that just a campaign ploy?
Ferguson gets even funnier as his commentary continues. He criticizes the “99 percent” for wanting to tax the rich and give the money to the government “which has such a terrific record of managing money, after all.” Except Ferguson didn’t have a problem with George W. Bush, also a former businessman, although a poor one, when he started a war with Iraq and refused to pay for it, borrowing the money from China, whom the schizophrenic Republicans regard as evil incarnate because they’re communists. By the way, China hasn’t been to war since they fought us in Korea. Could that have anything to do with their two trillion dollar surplus? I’m also wondering how many of those Chinese factories that provide Wal-Mart and other American companies with cheap goods have American investors like Ferguson.
Want to bet Ferguson votes Republican no matter who they run? He should’ve been scared silly when McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, but I doubt he said anything. It’s really kind of sad that the Wikileaks guy was silenced. He was just about to reveal how many Americans had numbered Swiss accounts. Perhaps we would’ve found Grover Norquist’s name on that list.
