Koch Industries, other CEOs warn employees of layoffs if Obama is reelected
Source: Yahoo! News
Koch Industries, the Wichita, Kan.-based company run by the billionaire Koch brothers, sent a voter information packet to 45,000 employees of its Georgia Pacific subsidiary earlier this month.
In it was a letter, dated Oct. 1, from Koch Industries president Dave Robertson implicitly warning that "many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences" of voting for President Obama and other Democrats in the 2012 elections, a list of conservative candidates the company's political action committee endorses and a pair of editorials: one, by David Koch, supporting Mitt Romney, and the other, by Charles Koch, condemning Obama.
"While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit," Robertson's letter--first published by InTheseTimes.com--begins. "If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills. This is true regardless of what your political affiliation might be." . . .
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/koch-industries-sends-pro-romney-packet-employees-195709471--election.html
Evil people doing evil deeds. They are going to steal this election, along with Rove and the GOP governors in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Mark it down.
Raster
(20,996 posts)And It is a crime. This is a prime example of the 1% attempting to overrule the will of the people by extortion.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)calimary
(80,522 posts)BASTARDS!!!
bjobotts
(9,141 posts)These are not "job creators"...they are job profiteers. Not one of them is giving people jobs out of the goodness of their hearts. The only time they give a person a job is if they are making money from that person's labor...period.
They hire just the amount of employees they need to make a profit. They will fire just the amount of employees that they are not making a profit from.
From now on correct anyone who uses the term "job creators" and tell them you really mean "Job Profiteers"...they are not a charity.
Pressuring employees with veiled threats of job loss is a bogfus threat since they will never have more employees than profits them...but they do take away employees free speech by making it well known they will make an example out of them and fire them...but they will also replace them if that job position is needed to gain profit. So screw these blowhards...your jobs are not in danger so vote how you want.
Evasporque
(2,133 posts)Voting Rights act of 1965
SEC. 11. (a) No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of this Act or is otherwise qualified to vote, or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person's vote.
(b) No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for exercising any powers or duties under section 3(a), 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12(e).
Any Koch employees in these states should consider contacting the State Attorney General's office.
more:
http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/time-off-to-vote-state-laws-for-employe-79115/
Kentucky
attempting to coerce, influence or direct an employee's vote for a political party, candidate, platform, principle, or issue through bribes, promises, favors, or other inducements;
Pennsylvania
threats, violence, intimidation or coercion to compel a person to vote or to refrain from voting at any election or for any person or question;
West Virginia
influencing an employees political views or actions;
depriving employment or threatening discharge from employment because the employee casts or refuses to cast his or her vote.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)Raster
(20,996 posts)truthisfreedom
(23,108 posts)to be the job creators they claim to be.
rsweets
(307 posts)Faygo Kid
(21,477 posts)I think they have already bought Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. All with hard-core, right-wing GOP governors.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)If you get out and talk to voters or call voters, you won't feel so down.
The campaign is going well. I'm in California. Admittedly there are more Obama voters here than elsewhere.
But still, in six hours yesterday, not one person said they would vote for the Republicans. You see Green Party, Libertarians, anything but Republican. People very much blame the Republicans for the bad economy.
And if they aren't blaming them in your state, it may have to do with the lack of enthusiasm and volunteerism among Democrats in your state. You have to get out on a street corner and just hold up a sign if need be.
I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but there really is no reason to feel that the campaign is going badly. It is going very well. The slump in the polls is very minor, and it will pass.
bjobotts
(9,141 posts)still_one
(91,807 posts)The Wielding Truth
(11,410 posts)still_one
(91,807 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)daleo
(21,317 posts)Youse guys better elect my guy, see, or there's gonna be trouble.
ailsagirl
(22,833 posts)Creeps
leftyohiolib
(5,917 posts)subsidies for a few favored cronies" sounds like the gop
ffr
(22,636 posts)They have an adversarial relationship with employees. We're just their dogs, to be put on top of their car when necessary.
Panasonic
(2,921 posts)CEOs are not exempted, and they may have to answer to the shareholders.
Koch Brothers may have all of their assets seized by the U.S. Treasury for evasion, fraud, intimidation, RICO charges pending.
progressivebydesign
(19,458 posts)Seriously. This shit smacks of the same North Korea and China bullshit. It's exactly the same. Their employees should unionize, after thousands of them file for stress disability.
The KochSuckers wont' be happy until they have ALL the fucking money, and they're John Bircher racists, to boot.
bpollen
(110 posts)But I know that if management is pushing a candidate or even a slate of candidates, I will be heavily leaning the other way when I get to the ballot box. For the same reason that, when I encounter someone who says "trust me", I count my fingers after shaking their hands....
Initech
(99,881 posts)ruffburr
(1,190 posts)That if the workers across the country would stand up together and say up yours to all these corps that in short order when they can get no product or move no product we would be able to demand fair pay universal health care and solve a myriad of issues.I realize that people are scared to take a chance with their job that they hate everyday,bills etc, But I must say it could bring about the changes that we need so badly,Just a observation
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)They will no longer hide in the shadows, calling shots via their political puppets.
Now, they are going public and telling all the little people what to do...or else.
Well I say...FUCK OFF. Take your billions and shove it up your ass!
DBoon
(22,256 posts)either we own them or they will own us
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)The government has to pay just compensation for properties taken but how do you figure that?
If the economy is going to be as bad as the Koch Brothers seem to suggest in that letter, then their factories here aren't worth much. The US could take them and pay "just compensation."
Panasonic
(2,921 posts)and say "Don't spend it all at once!"
aletier_v
(1,773 posts)Time to tax the shit out of them.
chuckstevens
(1,201 posts)In 1896, primarily Eastern bankers and business leaders back William McKinley, while most of rural America backed William Jennings Bryan. Urban, blue collar workers were never really sold on Bryan and they became fearful when many factor owners across the nation told their employees not to bother coming in if Bryan won the election. Sadly, it worked.
Now I know Karl Rove fancies himself to be the Mark Hanna of today (McKinley's architect), but in 1896, they didn't have the internet and DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND! Go Obama Go!
newspeak
(4,847 posts)where greed, corruption was a benchmark and labor had no rights. it looks like they are attempting to go backwards. I can just imagine the maniacal look of greed and lust when they think of basically "prison" slave labor. oh, those fences around the building is not keeping the laborers in-no, it's keeping those trying to get a job, out. and those nets we put around the building is not for those attempting to suicide, no, it's for safety in case someone falls off the building.
these sociopaths dream of the day when they can do business in america like any other third world country and they fully control the government-any old dictator will do. CEOs in this country are the highest paid in the industrialized nations. they value ever increasing profits over the welfare of the american people and the well being of this country. I do not consider them americans, and that includes mittens.
the eighties was a mindless greedfest, where healthy american companies in the black were raided and then sold to any foreign entity. the employers weren't even a second thought, some being generational employees. if this is the new SICK mindset, i want no part of it.
if these unamerican CEOs can "threaten" with fear and intimidate their employees to further enrich themselves, then this country is dead. might as well rename it "corporate states of america." oh, and yes, there is class warfare and WS, ceos, plutocrats started it when they began screwing labor, scamming, threatening and installing those wacko blowhards in the media to convince most americans to go against their own interest.
krispos42
(49,445 posts)And, I find it ironic that the Kochs, of all people, are complaining about "favored cronies".
lastlib
(22,895 posts)Liberal Veteran
(22,239 posts)Any business owner who threatens their workers in this manner or tries to sway the vote of their employees through intimidation or statements like this should be put away in a supermax facility with no possibility of parole.
Freedom of speech does not give one the right to threaten or extort a person's voting.
awake
(3,226 posts)"federal law bans intimidat[ing], threaten[ing], coerc[ing], or attempt[ing] to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person . . . to vote as he may choose."
http://www.trolp.org/main_pgs/issues/v16n2/Volokh.pdf
Panasonic
(2,921 posts)And Koch Brothers is an organization that is corrupt and trying to influence people.
and-justice-for-all
(14,765 posts)aquart
(69,014 posts)There is a fine old curse: May you have a mansion of a thousand rooms richly furnished. And may you spend every night going from room to room unable to get a night's rest.
Itching will accomplish that.
bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)Hearings and subpeonas after the election.
And if Obama wins, a tax audit that will make their head spin.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him ....
...
...You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you?
... who could believe reports of what goes on every day among the inhabitants of some countries, who could really believe that one man alone may mistreat a hundred thousand and deprive them of their liberty?... Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: ... it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing; there is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself provided it does nothing against itself. It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude.
...
Resolve to serve no more and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces...
Unless, of course, one prefers the serfdom, the chains, the lazyboy and the SUV, the future you have at the hands of your Master, or the "uncertain hope of living" free.
La Boetie wrote this in 1548, for these people, for us. You can find the rest here.
Turbineguy
(37,127 posts)But what it really is, is the the strike of the Looters.
lib2DaBone
(8,124 posts)Could this be why Homeland Security is deploying drones and millions of rounds of hollow point ammo in the Unites States?
lastlib
(22,895 posts)Intimidating voters is a crime, and should be charged accordingly.
I HATE these evil fuckwad bastards!!!
May they burn in hell!!
Thrill
(19,178 posts)That's basically what this is
Pauldg47
(640 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)They are not as smart as they think.
lovuian
(19,362 posts)and still they are way behind
Zorra
(27,670 posts)You start messing with workers lives like this, you better make sure you have really, really good fire insurance.
Because some people might get really pissed off.
Honestly, if angry workers burned all the Koch Brothers shit to the ground because of this terrorism, the Koch Bros would totally deserve it, and would have no one else but themselves to blame.
You play with fire like this, you may literally get burned.
Selfish, thoughtless, dumbass rich people thinking they can walk all over anyone they want.
Norbert
(6,028 posts)and it is.
It works both ways. I haven't bought Quilted Northern and Angel Soft in years. Even my ass has standards. Brawny, Marti Gras or Sparkle? No way. Bounty all the way. Dixie Cups are off limits to us. If anything has the Georgia Pacific logo on it I put it back on the shelf and buy the competetors brand, even if it is not on sale.
I've been looking at labels for the past 2 years in an effort to buy more Made in the USA merchandise. This plays into my buy non-GP products as well. I was surprised at the things I WAS buying was actually made by them.
Buy Georgia Pacific products and you are helping the Kochs and their vision of Amerika.
I am the same way.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)You win.
Kablooie
(18,547 posts)Many of us see this election as setting the direction of the country for years if not decades due to the Justices that are likely to be replaced in the next 4 years. If Obama wins the balance will probably remain about the same as today, leaning toward the right. If Romney wins the court will tip over to be irretrevably extremely conservative for years to come.
Democrats see this as a huge change for the country. Koch sees the status quo as a huge change for the country. As always, the right creates fantasies for themselves and then believes them.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Megahurtz
(7,046 posts)In any event, fuck Koch brothers. Then I would take my unemployment and go elsewhere. I would enjoy nothing more than to watch these overbloated corps. go down.
Did I hear a pun in there?
LeftinOH
(5,339 posts)Megahurtz
(7,046 posts)to show what lying Kochsuckers these greedy brothers are....
---------------------
"Revenue, employment continue to grow at Koch Industries"
....."In 2011, the company had its best year ever with revenue of $110?billion. Its on track to exceed that this year"....
http://www.kansas.com/2012/09/13/2487352/revenue-employment-continue-to.html#storylink
--------------
The Kochs are lying sacks!
Evasporque
(2,133 posts)Smilo
(1,944 posts)quite strongly - but only hinting and saying how the Obama administration has hurt his business - he is still doing very nicely, still raking in the dough and living high on the hog - so I really don't see him as being hurt by Obama.
Panasonic
(2,921 posts)And tell him to prove that his business is suffering.
tawadi
(2,110 posts)Hope that draws out twice the number to the polls November 6th.