I fired a client I've had for 20 yrs this week ( a 1%er)
Look, I expect a certain amount of "let um eat cake" from the wealthier clients. Pretty much all of them are offended by being expected to pay anyone for anything. They all have this disgusting sense of entitlement. But there comes a point when someone is just so putrid it's embarrassing to be in any way associated with them.
He's the last of my 1%er clients to be fired within the last 5 years and done after he spouted off about how great China is that they don't let pesky things like human rights or the environment get in the way of building high speed rail. He'd love it if we could be them and the undeserving masses of America could be slaves living in squalor while he could speed past at 300 mph in luxury comfort. The rant was breathtaking in it's boldness. He didn't make any effort at all to even so much as phrase his hatred of the non-1% in any sort of palatable terms. The man is clearly in full love and worship of of "Communist China".
I am posting this because I want everyone to understand that the outsourcing of decent American jobs to slave labor countries is not just about rich people's greed for more profit. There is so much more to that dynamic than money and a callous disregard for other humans. For many of them, there is a perverse joy that comes from seeing their servant's suffering.
When we fight for economic justice we have to keep this in mind. Our parents and grandparents in the early days of unionization fought hard for worker rights that are being dismantled. Not just to push wages down but to retrain the younger workers not to ask too much. Not to expect too much.... to just be grateful some 1% cares enough to be abusive to them kind of twisted thinking.
That is much of our battle. To make sure all workers everywhere understand their value and expect to be treated fairly and with respect.
= new reply since forum marked as read
artist. I have like no people skills. All my relationships have been abusive. I've been in therapy since I was 15. But I don't think it has been successful because I'm now back with an abusive boyfriend. I'm in seminary now, but all these people are so fucked up. So always I depend on people just being kind to me. I wish we had a program like they do in Canada where artists get a stipend every month. I need an apartment and a stipend. I'll never be able to have my own apartment, but I know how to use sex to get what I want, so I'll like never be homeless, but I'm going to be 34 soon. So yeah. I need employers and lovers.
A SLOW but RESOUNDING clapping applause......
in an earlier thread, i asked about that, and then didn't follow up, forgot where i'd commented, and had no time to chase it down.
yes, i miss molly too. she was an absolute pearl in the scum of TX, along with anne richards and now wendy.
sure wish you had some such pearls in TN; why don't you think about it?
(just a thought)
created by being given all of our jobs. The 1% are hoping that easy access to our oil drives down growing labor costs in Asia.
BTW: those labor costs are why Democratic Party is pushing for TPP, India is getting expensive and china is getting uppity.
Vietnam promises to work for 1/4 the price of India.
Make no mistake, conservatives dominating the festering US political system (yes, that includes Democrats, especially the "moderates" LOVE communism. Nothing brings capitalism and totalitarianism together like cheap unregulated labor and no environmental protections.
Speaking of festering, I wonder where Hillary is on TPP?
Right. The Queen of NAFTA says Asia first. The US somewhere farther down the line after multinational bankers and insurance companies.
More trickle down goat shit from the 3rd way.
Referencing 19 serious pre-NAFTA economic studies projecting zero net job loss if NAFTA were to pass, President Bill Clinton estimated the creation of 200,000 U.S. jobs within two years, and 1 million within five years, based on a projected export boom to Mexico. Twenty years after Clinton signed NAFTA into law, Global Trade Watch reports a 450 percent increase in the U.S. trade deficit, resulting in the export of almost one million jobs, and downward pressure on wages.
In fact, the average annual U.S. agricultural trade deficit with Mexico and Canada ballooned to almost three times the pre-NAFTA level, to $975 million within two decades of NAFTA's passage, eliminating an estimated one million net U.S. jobs by 2004, reports the Economic Policy Institute. As U.S. food processors moved to Mexico to take advantage of low wages, U.S. food imports soared. Public Citizen has tallied in a comprehensive report the promises by U.S. corporations to create specific numbers of jobs if NAFTA passed, and the consequent record of many of the same firms who relocated jobs to Mexico and Canada. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-swenson/nafta-the-transpacific-clinton_b_5523327.html
Lots of good info----Thanks for that!
I fired a client once for much the same reason, and good for KentuckyWoman. Permanent dissolution of relationship at will and for cause. 
One of the perks of being an independent businessperson.
As for the guy, a wealth of studies have found that too much wealth is bad for morality and leads many, most but not all, to often extremely shabby behavior toward their "inferiors," an enormous group of almost all others of course. This one sounds very typical.
Since so much power has shifted into the hands of these people, away from We The People, we really all should know more about them. It makes fascinating reading, and appalling given the danger they pose to our republic. Of course, we're really talking about the upper part of the 1% pyramid, the wide bottom just being upper middle class these days.
I am so confused, though.
Your scum employer wants high speed rail so badly, he doesn't care who gets hurt. He needs to talk to the Koch Brothers, as they are the ones who DON'T want it and are blocking it everywhere:
http://www.attn.com/stories/295/monopoly-men-how-two-billionaires-are-destroying-high-speed-rail-america
"It turns out that the high speed rail debate is anything but dry, but if you spend ten minutes- or even a few hours- googling the topic, you’re bound to think otherwise. I began with California, given the sheer longevity of the project, and there’s plenty of discussion about the progress and setbacks of CHSR. The total cost of the project is estimated at $68 billion, and funding has unsurprisingly been the primary source of partisan contention. In 2008, voters approved Proposition 1A, which allocated $9.95 billion in funding and requires federal matching funds. Over the next few years, plans continued to progress; you can find a more detailed and accurate summary than the one I could give here.
In July 2012, Governor Jerry Brown signed an initial funding bill, which included the issuance of $2.2 billion in state bonds, unlocking $3.6 billion in federal funds for construction. But since then, U.S. Representative Jeff Denham of Modesto has worked to unravel funding plans in Washington. Denham introduced an amendment to the 2015 Transportation, Housing & Urban Development (THUD) funding bill, approved by House Republicans over the summer, which specifically prohibits any funding from being used for high speed rail in California. After blocking federal money for the bullet train, Denham then characterized high speed rail as a pipe dream to the media, citing the funding gap but neglecting to mention his own role in creating the shortfall. Still, that’s politics; I was beginning to get bored. Some people want to build the train, some people say the train is too expensive. This all sounded like a big boondoggle and a bigger headache.
But as I continued to research CHSR funding, attempting to make sense of all the numbers and propositions and amendments, a claim on a site called California High Speed Rail Blog caught my eye. In a post titled, “Don’t Let the Reason Foundation Railroad California,” from 2009, the author states, “One of the most persistent HSR deniers and opponents of the California HSR project has been the Reason Foundation. Funded in part by oil and auto companies, they were behind the notorious Cox-Vranich report released last year in an effort to defeat Prop 1A.” The Reason Foundation- I’d heard the name mentioned in connection with a few experts in a few articles, but what was it? How was Reason influencing the debate surrounding high speed rail? And did it have some sort of vested interest in doing so?
reason foundation
Like most think tanks, the Reason Foundation describes itself in the sort of generic terms it’s difficult to find fault with. The name alone suggests a decidedly non-biased group of stoic scholars, quietly pursuing truth from behind half-moon glasses and distinguished facial hair. The Reasonable Foundation of People Who Always Consider Information Carefully. The Foundation of Being Extremely Logical Like Basically Vulcans on Earth. The Seriously What Even is Partisanship We’re Just Doing Research Over Here Foundation. The page marked “About Reason” on their site gives a similar impression, stating, “Reason Foundation's nonpartisan public policy research promotes choice, competition, and a dynamic market economy as the foundation for human dignity and progress. Reason produces rigorous, peer reviewed research and directly engages the policy process, seeking strategies that emphasize cooperation, flexibility, local knowledge, transparency, accountability and results.” Choice? Competition? Rigorous? Research? Those all sound okay. And so it should come as absolutely no surprise that, one click away, on a page titled “Trustees & Officers”, I came across an all-too-familiar name."
Your rich dude needs to get with these other rich dudes and they need to get their shit together. It appears our overlords are at odds with each other...
And, fuck all of them, by the way
