Monday, January 27, 2014

San Francisco... Stop The Busses, Comrade!!

With Lawhawk’s passing, it’s been a long time since we had a San Francisco update, but this is too good to be passed up. I love it when liberals turn on each other... like cannibal rats stuck on a ghost ship. Observe.

For the longest time, the hard left has waged a war against the noble automobile. They hate the car and all it represents: freedom, middle class aspirations, suburbia, and Americana. Boo! Down with the evil mount of individuality! Join the collective!

And there’s nowhere more hard left than the San Francisco area. If it’s leftist retardery, they’ve put it into practice. Not that any of it has ever worked, but like obsessive compulsive lemmings, they keep trying cliff after cliff. Vis-a-via the car, San Francisco was one of the first places to impose HOV lanes on highways and provide incentives for companies to force their employees to carpool or use public transportation. Use BART or die, capitalist pigs... use BART or die.

The Bay areas is full of tech companies, and tech companies are all excellent liberal citizens. They have all the traits. They talk about how unfair corporate America’s wage practices are and then they fire their American workers and replace them with imported Indians they can pay less. They talk about the glories of government control over the little people, but then they spend a fortune avoiding taxes in every country on earth. They talk about freedom and privacy then they spy worse than the Stasi. And they are huge environmentalists who pollute worse than the steel industry and whose executives have carbon footprints bigger than most cities. Yep, classic liberals.

Anyway, they are into bussing. With San Francisco wanting to force those pesky humans off the roads, the tech companies decided to help out. They bought a fleet of busses and they run them around to various bus stops where they pick up their employees. In so doing, they theoretically save on gas and pollution and they reduce both road clutter and individuality. It's a win-win for liberals.

But there’s a problem.

See, the bus stops they use were built by the city to be used by city buses. And the fact these good rich liberals are using government “facilities” without paying for them is an outrage! It’s such an outrage that a group of Nazis has formed an outrage group called “San Francisco League of Pissed-Off Voters”... stay classy, my liberal friends, stay classy. This group, which we shall call SLOP, wants these behemoth tech giants to pay their fair share for pulling up to these bus stops no one is using.

Interestingly, Google, Apple and some others have agreed to pay $1 each time one of their busses stops at these government facilities. This will raise about $100,000 a year for San Francisco. Naturally, this isn’t good enough for SLOP. They call this “a joke” and their reasoning is that these companies make a lot of money, so they should be charged more -- that's it, no studies, no economics, just pure class hate... tasty, tasty class hate. Even when they were told that state law forbids the city from collecting more than the cost of providing the services (which is $0 here), SLOP responded that they were sure the city could find other ways to get greater payments from these companies.

I love this example. Notice all the classic liberal/leftist touches:
● Liberals try to do what liberals want, i.e. get people to use buses, and end up upsetting other liberals who want to rape them for helping out.

● A total lack of realization that if they push this, the tech companies can simply pick their people up 10 feet before each “facility” and then there will be no money.

● The outcome they want does not depend on the “crime,” it depends on the wealth status of the “criminal.”

● An utter disregard for the rule of law when they want something.

● The use of profanity in naming their group... like naughty children.

● Everyone involved is an utter, utter hypocrite.
Yeah, liberalism is great. We should find more outrages that we can throw their way to really get them turning on each other. Thoughts? It's for a good cause...

79 comments:

Anonymous said...

This definitely brings back memories of Lawhawk's San Francisco Diaries all right. Those always cracked me up back in the day, from the opening Mark Morford quote to whatever bit of insanity he decided to write about.

Anyway, it's interesting to see SF come back up here, and what a piece of insanity this is... I'm still amused by SLOP, but the childishness of the name and the fact that nobody thought that someone could reduce their name to something unflattering like that. As far as the stupidity and problems of the plan itself go, I'm not sure I can add much more other than to say I'm glad I never seriously thought about pursuing a tech or gaming job out there when I was younger... O_o

- Daniel

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, I don't normally pay that much attention to San Fran anymore, but this was calling out for attention. This is hilarious liberal carnage!

Yeah, I thought SLOP was appropriate. Or, if they insist, SLOP-V.

On the tech companies, from what I've heard, they are generally a nightmare to work for. They will pull in people, give them all kinds of goodies, work them to death, and then dump them. Electronic Arts is actually so famous for this that there used to be websites dedicated to the way they operate. Microsoft has apparently been on a binge of trading Americans for Indians in California. And the others are just as rotten. Goggle is essentially a police state in waiting.

Kit said...

Andrew,

And several protestors smashed a window.
LINK

Classy.

Anonymous said...

Ah, good old EA... I've heard stories about the way they treat their employees as well, all of which were absolutely disgusting. Like a lot of gamers I don't exactly hold EA in high regard myself, as much for their arrogant behavior, sloppiness (see: the SimCity debacle), and business practices such as requiring online multiplayer even in games that don't need it and especially their goal of having microtransactions in all their games (if they've backed down on either policy I haven't heard about it). As interested as I would be in the upcoming Dragon Age Inquisition normally EA's presence has me very wary about picking it up. As far as Microsoft goes I've been hearing horror stories about working for them even in high school, and I don't trust Google in the least either. It makes one wonder how a lot of these companies haven't collapsed under their own sleaziness sometimes...

- Daniel

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, They're just trying to pump some cash into the SF economy... broken window theory and all.

As an aside, is this really the time to carry an Affordable Housing sign? Talk about mixing your messages, unless they are claiming that homes were cleared to make way for the bus stops. Also, there's plenty of affordable housing in Oakland... or Detroit.

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, EA is notorious. I once read a massive essay detailing how they screwed their employees with Madden Football and it was shocking that no one brought a gun to work.

Microsoft is a mess... an arrogant mess. Ha ha, Window's 8 is a bomb!

What's funny about Google is that their motto is "Do no evil" or something like that. They apparently dropped the "no" some years back. Now they spy on everyone, violate privacy laws, sue for profit, cooperate with the Chinese and other totalitarians, etc.

Each of these guys is a classic example of how utterly hypocritical liberals are when they enter the business world.

Kit said...

"Don't be evil" is their motto.

Yeah, I thought the "Affordable Housing" sign was interesting but after the Occupy Protests with signs protesting everything from corporate greed to the wages of university mess staff, I was not surprised.

T-Rav said...

Aw...mentioning LawHawk brought a tear to my eye. :(

If we're looking for new ways to cause intramural violence, given that SF is in the spotlight, just bring up the outrageous rent. That should keep them busy.

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, I thought it was something like that. Apparently, they have a different definition of "evil" than the rest of the world.

On the Affordable Housing thing, I see this as an opportunity. I think we need to start sign bombing them whenever liberals rear their ugly heads:

"Plants Are People Too!"
"Keep your hands off Pluto!"
"Not more mud for oilz!"
"Free healthcare for animals!"
"Ban Cheese!"

AndrewPrice said...

T-Rav, Yeah, I miss Lawhawk too.

I'm surprised they haven't entered open war about the rents out there. What an expensive place!

Anonymous said...

Kit, that's a sight that had me shaking my head... I've seen protestors do some pretty dumb and immature things back when I was at UGA, but none of them were destructive like that. I just don't get the sort of insanity and stupidity they display by doing this crap.

Andrew, that EA is... When I first heard about them being consistent winners of Consumer Reports' Worst Company in the World I found it odd at first. At the time I was only vaguely aware of how rotten they had gotten, though research quickly turned up a record of arrogance and treating their customers badly. What really sealed it, though, was a blog by a wife of an EA employee that detailed how horribly overworked and mistreated her husband was. I didn't hear anything about the Madden developers incident you mentioned, but multiple stories like that indicates that there's some fire to go with the smoke. Me and a fair number of my gamer friends by and large refuse to buy their games, though every once in a while a game or series like the Mass Effect series will break down our willpower. Their goals regarding microtransactions is making it a lot easier to resist these days, though!

Windows 8 and the initial Xbox One fumble showed how bad Microsoft is, all right. I followed the Xbox One clusterf#&@ more closely than I did the Windows 8, but it stunned me that they even thought half of the stuff they rolled out the One with (always on Big Brother Kinect, always on Internet connection, no used games) was a good idea in the first place! Needless to say, I was amused at both the backpedaling and the PR black eye the One gave them.

Google isn't a company I trust at all myself. The closest I've come to using their services for anything but searching was having a GMail account for a time, which I found I never used so I just stuck with an old Hotmail account and a Yahoo one for business purposes. I've heard about the collaboration with the Chinese as well, which had me shaking my head. In a way I'm glad I haven't joined the smartphone age yet so I don't have to put up with any of these companies' platforms.

It does sum up their behavior well indeed. Just a little bit of research on these companies and guys like Warren Buffett turns up a lot of unpleasant stuff. No wonder so much of the business world is so screwed up.

- Daniel

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, I read that very blog post by the wife! Fascinating reading!

The Madden thing was the way they worked each year. They hired new people fresh out of school and gave them a schedule. Then they announced they were two weeks behind almost on day one. Because of this, they demanded massive overtime "just until we catch up." Only, you couldn't catch up because the schedule was rigged. Then they made promises of promotions if people just got through this edition of the game, "next year will be different." People worked themselves to death and then got laid off once the edition was finished. Rinse and repeat.

This was all brought out during a lawsuit over unpaid hours. The lawsuit actually hit most tech companies, but the game companies were the ones who spawned it. And yeah, I refuse to do microtransactions. I don't play those games.

I like my smartphone, so I have no choice, but to deal with them, but I view them as the enemy and I don't trust them about anything.

Anonymous said...

Andrew, it was definitely enlightening and disturbing, and it meshes with the Madden programming fiasco you just described. Aside from it being a crappy way to treat people, to go off a point that the EA employee's wife made, do they not realize that people who are that overworked and burned out are far more likely to make mistakes and create bugs? I get that it's a competitive industry and deadlines need to be made, not to mention if it was that big a problem Madden and Battlefield wouldn't sell like they do, but treating employees like that is just asking for some kind of trouble. Maybe it's just my imagination or I'm being oversensitive, but stuff like that and some of my observations of people's work lives around me makes me wonder if a lot of these managers are taking an attitude of "If you don't like it, good luck finding something else in this economy!" when it comes to the employees.

Few of the games I know will dispute how crappy microtransactions are, all right. Nothing will get me to stay away from a game faster. For that matter, I'm not thrilled about a lot of the DLC for games out there either. A lot of it just feels like cheap cash grabs, with few really worthwhile things like solid expansions out there. I realize neither are going to go away any time soon (if enough people didn't buy this stuff they wouldn't keep putting it out), but it can be depressing to see. Heh, who knew gaming would put me into cranky, reminiscing old man mode like this? The whole thing also makes me wonder if I shouldn't consider another medium for the story we discussed, too...

Smartphone-wise, I do plan to join the 21st century eventually, though it'll require a few different upgrades on my part to be able to afford one. I guess all any of us can do is be cautious around these vipers who are unfortunately necessary these days.

- Daniel

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, I think the world right now is in an odd spot where there is this perception that you need to win employees over with things like free cokes and game rooms and casual dress codes. But once they get these people, they drain them dry and then spit them out.

This works so long as you are living off a legacy like the base platform of Windows or Madden or the client base the firm had when it was a better firm, because you can live a long time as you slowly squander an inheritance. But you are basically incapable of keeping up with changes and you will slowly fade away.

Moreover, the effects are corrosive and they create an antagonistic relationship where the employees not only have no loyalty, but they are looking to be actively disloyal to strike back. And the longer term effects of this are highly destructive.

Anonymous said...

That's a good observation about legacies and inability to adapt, Andrew. It fits with EA, MS, and a certain nameless company I'm acquainted with quite well. I've seen the active disloyalty effect in a fair number of my former co-workers as well, and I agree that it's going to catch up with these companies eventually. I can't say I'll feel sorry for them when it does, either.

- Daniel

Tennessee Jed said...

liberals on liberals ..... it's kind of like soft porn (l.o.l.)

Kit said...

Andrew,

Do you have link to story on the Madden thing. Found the EA spouse story but cannot find the Madden story.

tryanmax said...

So, I'm apparently not finding the broken window link? I see the inexplicable housing protest, but I'm missing something. Not that I don't know what a broken window is. The mish-mash protests seem to be an increasing phenomenon with the lefties. I honestly think they are still more crazy than the right-wing...they just don't have any radio guys out in front.

On games, I've never been a hardcore gamer. SNES was my heyday. The last EA game I bought was American McGee's Alice and before that Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit so, yeah, a little out of the loop. I did jump all over the GTA bandwagon, though, but I'm not hearing any hate on Rockstar, so far, so maybe I picked a good one?

On smartphones, I hang my head in shame as I've just taken possession of a 2nd-hand iPhone 4s. *sigh* At least Apple didn't get my money for a new phone. But as far as I know, they are just as bad as the rest. Please nobody tell me that Amazon is evil, b/c I love my Kindle.

tryanmax said...

Kit, would you please share a link to the one you found? You're a better searcher than me, it seems. Thanks!

Kit said...

Tyranmax,

I haven't found it yet.

AndrewPrice said...

Jed, Yes it is. LOL!

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, No, I don't. This was back in the mid-1990s and I may have seen it on television. I'm not even sure if I ever saw the story online or not, and if I did, it likely was at one of the millions of sites I used to frequent that vanished.

Anonymous said...

Tryanmax, here's the link to the EA spouse's blog.

- Daniel

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I've heard that Amazon is evil, but it's coming from the ideologues and the biased, not the public and not from their deeds...

1. The right hates them because they don't focus obsessively on short-term profits -- Rush rants about them periodically. Plus, they hate them because their CEO is a COMMIE LIBERAL!! But then, who isn't these days?

2. The left hates them because they take advantage of tax "loopholes." And they pay their CEO more than their employees. They've also slammed them for unspecified evil employee practices, although the employees seem to rave about the company and flock to work there.

3. Publishers hate them because they've murdered the publishing industry... they let the trash through the door (Oh Heavens! How will Americans know what not to read?) and have stolen their monopoly profits.

4. The little guy, i.e. Walmart and Target and Best Buy who crushed the mom and pop shops, hate them because they don't pay sale tax everywhere, so they are destroying "the little guy."

Everyone else seems to love them.

AndrewPrice said...

P.S. As for Apple, yeah, they're evil, but at least they're openly a cult, so you know what to expect. The others hide behind the "we're good guys" flag. Apple makes no bones about being villains.

Anthony said...

I'm a hardcore gamer and the only Madden lawsuit I've heard of filed by an employee (as opposed to trial lawyers claiming to represent buyers) is the one at the link below.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/01/24/court-overturns-ruling-in-madden-creator-s-case-against-ea.aspx

Electronic Arts has scored a legal victory in its defense against John Madden Football creator Robin Antonick. Last July, Antonick was awarded more than $11 million in damages on his claim that EA had used his intellectual property without permission. Yesterday, U.S. district judge Charles Breyer overturned that ruling.

Breyer cites the manner in which the jury reached its decision in the lower court as the basis for his ruling. The jury heard from an expert witness, but was not shown the original game alongside games through 1996 (covered by the previous ruling). “Without the opportunity to view each of the versions, the jury had no basis for evaluating whether the changes addressed altered each subsequent game," Breyer said.

---------------
The last EA game I bought was a Sims 3 Expansion pack for my oldest daughter. My brother got Battlefield 4 on the PS4 and it lost his single player save data a couple of times.

Its worth noting a lot of videogame companies have shipped insanely buggy games. Rockstar's GTA5 boasted an online mode that was broken for months (they didn't let reviewers review that portion of the game prior to release), NBA2K14's online mode somehow broke itself shortly after it shipped, Bethesda's Skyrim eventually became unplayable on the PS3 due to a nasty glitch that they knew about but hid from reviewers, Sony's Gran Turismo 5 shipped half finished.

The sad truth is that the fact that developers can patch games post-release due to hard drives and the internet and consumer acceptance of launch slop has encouraged sloppiness among many developers.

Moving back to employee treatment, here is a link to an interesting article discussing crunch (a conversation sparked by a tweet from a PR guy bragging about all the dinners a development team was eating at the office).

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/202444/

AndrewPrice said...

Thanks for the link Daniel. I knew that one was out there. That's worth reading if you want a look into a tech company... or major law firm.

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, I'm amazed how buggy Madden remained year after year. And the reason they never fixed it was that they never intended to. They concentrated on getting everything updated, adding a veneer of a new game, and then shipping without ever touching the core itself -- that's the "legacy" I mention above. The original creator of Madden did a hell of a job in the first couple editions. Since that time, EA has only managed to tinker around the edges in edition after edition. The reason that has worked is because they killed off the competition by shutting down 2K. Had they not done that, then I think Madden would be dead by now because they lacked the ability to make genuine changes to the game.

On the lawsuit, it wasn't a Madden specific lawsuit. This was a small part of a bigger lawsuit going on in Silicon Valley about whether or not tech workers needed to be compensated for overtime. The industry claimed the employees were exempt and that overtime was all incidental to meeting the schedule. The workers, however, claimed they weren't exempt and that the industry rigged the game so they were working almost as much overtime as regular work. The Madden stuff was one part of that, but the suit was focused more on (I believe) Oracle or Google.

In the end, the workers won, but I never followed up with how that played out.

BevfromNYC said...

This makes me sad and happy at the same time. I miss feeding off LawHawk's SF reports and I admit that I played "I bet I can top your crazy town" with the happenings in NYC. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost...***sigh***

SF is a special level of liberal that not even NYC has acheived yet. Though with our new administration we will probably be there (or surpass) by the summer.

Specifically, it just shows how there will always be some fringe group who will protest something for some reason. And the scale of the "middle to the fringe" just shifts right or left depending on the region.

And I will fight you with my counter-protest "DON'T TAKE AWAY OUR VELVEETA CHEESE!!!" Though since Velveeta is only technically "cheese food", then I guess we can work something out. But I am kind of in the "FREE HEALTHCARE AND OTHER STUFF FOR PETS AND THEIR OWNERS" camp, so prepare to be called all sorts of names like "pet traitor" and "pet-hater", 'kay?

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I enjoyed the competition to see which of you could come up with the craziest stuff, even if you were at a distinct disadvantage being in the more sane town. But it sounds like NYC has elected to close the "crazy gap."

True, there will always be some idiotic fringe group to whine about everything.

Pet h8ter! LOL! I think it would be funny to show up at these rallies with competing crazy signs -- "Free Cheese For All" and "Save The Earth, Ban Cheese." Then stand in different parts of the crowd like you genuinely had no idea the other guy was there too. You know you'd make the news for that... at least the late night shows.

tryanmax said...

Thanks, Daniel!

tryanmax said...

Sign submission: "Wool is Murder"

AndrewPrice said...

LOL! Nice! That almost seems real... but not quite. Bravo!

BevfromNYC said...

Oh, btw, one of the greatest liberal hypocrisies to me as to do with Microsoft (Bill Gates) and Apple (Steven Jobs) who "give all their money" to worthy liberal causes.
1) You never hear their names come up when liberals rage on about "evil rich corporate evil people are only worried about the "bottom line" taking all their otherwise good American jobs overseas. Gates and Jobs et al. are the worst offenders and further to that, both made their billions off the back of Chinese slaves. IMHO, they are no better than 19th Century Southern slave owners.

Interesting that Koch Industries employs mostly people right here in the US, yet they are the epitome of "evil rich corporation"...

BevfromNYC said...

STOP GRAZING IN OUR LIFETIME!
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, It is funny that a few donations to liberal causes can get liberals to overlook all the "crimes against humanity" liberals normally scream about. You are absolutely right about both Gates and Jobs. From all accounts, Jobs was a monster of a human being too. Yet, they've canonized him.

On Gates, there's an interesting side issue. He's used his money in Africa on various issues (e.g. malaria) and where he's gone, he's been very effective about solving the problems. This has (liberal) begging organizations furious. They are screaming that his solutions "are crowding out" other solutions and that his success is absorbing all the donor money.

Said differently, they're pissed that he's succeeding and in the process is taking away their cushy "for-life" jobs.

Said differently again, they care more about staying employed "helping people" than actually helping people.

AndrewPrice said...

"NO ONE OWNS THE WIND! STOP WIND FARMING!"

tryanmax said...

"crowding out" other solutions?

Is that like, "How will we know whether sustainable homeopathic herbal chanting cures malaria if Gates' pharmaceuticals wipe the disease out first?"

AndrewPrice said...

That's exactly what it is -- "Hey, he solved the problem and now no one wants to try out solutions!" Of course, putting it that way wouldn't play well. So they talk about "crowding out".

Some have added to this that the problem with Gates is that while he may solve the problems with his methods, his methods wouldn't have worked if he didn't have as much money as he does... hence, they are theoretically not valid solutions because not everyone will have as much money, and the world will be sorry if they accept his solutions.

Good luck figuring that out.

Koshcat said...

I had heard just a tidbit of this "controversy" and was confused. I thought it was a great idea to have Google go pick up its workers and bus them to the work site. You probably have a more direct route and don't have to sit next to the homeless guy who smells of piss and vomit.

As for EA games, I always buy them used. I haven't purchased a new game in years and even then it was probably in the bargain bin.

Koshcat said...

As for these companies being evil, I blame the workers. Can you image if Toyota did this? There would be strikes and protests. Why aren't the workers marching about? These companies will continue to treat the workers like dirt if the workers continue to let them. And where are the unions? This is a real worker abuse issue rather than the fake bullship the through about in places like Wisconsin.

I know, I know...hypocrites.

BevfromNYC said...

SAVE KALIFORNIA KALE - KILL THE DELTA SMELT!

Okay that one was in memory of LawHawkSF...

Critch said...

Liberals will cut off their nose to spite their face...they generally exude immaturity and poor thought processes. Here in Missouri there was a small market for automobile tyres that were shredded and burned with coal in power plants to supplement it. Now the problem with old tyres is that people and businesses dump them all over the place. They are natural breeding grounds for mosquitos. A person could get maybe $.50 for a tyre or even a dollar, so there were tons of people picking them up gas stations and the sides of roads, much like I did soda bottles in the 1960s. So, we had a small market for tyres, Youi have to remember that there is a lot of energy in a car tyre. Then the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the Feds got together and squashed this market..so now people are dumping the tyres and the mosquitoes continue to thrive...but you can pay $1.00 and the gas station will keep your tyre and get rid of it for you. Stoopidity in action folks, just like the busses in SF.(I love how the English use "tyre" to distinguish them from "tire" as in work too hard.)

Kit said...

"NO ONE OWNS THE WIND! STOP WIND FARMING!"

Andrew, for some reason that reminds me of this 11sec clip from Futurama.
LINK

BevfromNYC said...

Koshcat - Is it that these companies pay their employees exceptionally well that they don't protest the bad treatment? It's really hard to complain about your employer when you are pulling in a high 6-figure salary and making/playing/testing videogames all day...

AndrewPrice said...

How about these...

STOP DEVALUING POETRY! END DECONSTRUCTION!

ARCHERY KILLS!

KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY BODY LOTION!!

AndrewPrice said...

Bev and Koshcat, The bad tactics tend to be used against people in their 1-3 years out of college. Those people tend to stay quiet because they are still trying to impress the boss.

But a lot more of them are starting to voice their anger, especially as older workers are being laid off even as the industry goes to Congress and claims it can't find qualified workers in America... can we please have more Indians?

AndrewPrice said...

Koshcat, That's classist. Everyone should be made to sit next to the homeless, especially the rich!

AndrewPrice said...

Critch, That's so typical. Whenever people do something good, the government comes along and bans it and then lets someone else do the same thing for a fee. It's like out government is just messing with us like it's some kind of test.

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, Yep, those people.

BevfromNYC said...

"...Everyone should be made to sit next to the homeless, especially the rich!".

I know you are kidding a bit, but I do believe that anyone who works as an executive and board member of a government-funded public transportation systems like trains, subways and bus services in, let's say, major metropolitan areas should be required to travel by same especially during rush hour.

AndrewPrice said...

A bit? LOL!

Bev, I think quality managers are typically seen as using the products they make...or services they provide. I'm not big into forcing anyone to do that, but I wouldn't vote against a city ordnance that required it.

Kit said...

Personally, my sign would say "DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING!" and "CAREFUL NOW!" ;)

BevfromNYC said...

Kit - Those are perfect!

How about:

"I AGREE WHOLEHEARTELY"
"I DISAGREE VEHEMENTLY"
"I DON'T KNOW!"
"CONVINCE ME I'M WRONG!"

That would pretty much fit any occasion! I see all sorts of marketing possibilities!

tryanmax said...

Bev, It'd be better if you tweaked the first two:

"I Agree Vehemently" and "I Disagree Wholeheartedly"

Kit said...

Bev,

I must confess. I did not come up with it: LINK

BevfromNYC said...

Kit - I LOVE Father Ted! Very funny stuff!

BevfromNYC said...

Tryanmax - Those are reasonable changes and we could use both versions as Conservatives tend to take the more direct approach and Liberals like to confuse people.

How about "JUST SHUT UP! or the more polite 'PLEASE STOP TALKING!"

We can market it right before any major speech like say the SOTU tomorrow night.

Anthony said...

Bev and Andrew,

If Latin America is any indicator the people working for comparatively low wages in China are probably in a much better situation than the average Chinese worker.

Before we met, my Honduran wife worked in a maquiladora (clothing manufacturer) before they decamped to an even cheaper country (the labor union movement had been getting stronger). She was sorry to see them go because they paid better money and conditions were better than was the average in Honduras.

Don't get me wrong, I think that globally speaking workers are being the eight ball nowadays (there's always someplace cheaper companies can go if workers or even governments don't give companies what they want) but some workers are benefitting which is good because as far as I can tell the process is irreversible.

Based on past evidence, consumers don't care if a product (says, games or televisions) or services (nods towards call centers) are build/based abroad so long as they are good, cheap and reliable.

Anthony said...

Andrew said:

On Gates, there's an interesting side issue. He's used his money in Africa on various issues (e.g. malaria) and where he's gone, he's been very effective about solving the problems. This has (liberal) begging organizations furious. They are screaming that his solutions "are crowding out" other solutions and that his success is absorbing all the donor money.

Said differently, they're pissed that he's succeeding and in the process is taking away their cushy "for-life" jobs.
-----
I remember some organizations complaining about the Bush administration (which dispensed a lot more foreign aid than the Clinton administration) seeking to rationalize the process. Traditionally an NGO gets foreign aid and does something and then everyone moves on.

The Bush administration wanted to know what the cost per action was and how much the actions helped people so they could funnel more money to those who were most effective. That was foreign thinking for many NGOs. It was like 'We do stuff that we think helps! That should be enough!'.

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, I'm a believer in free trade... but liberals are not. For years, these guys have decried "slave labor" whenever someone like Nike did it and they attacked the right for advocating it. But now they do it and they think nothing of it.

But the bigger issue to me isn't that they go offshore, it's that they fire Americans and then try to import cheap competitors.

As an aside, Americans do care about where things are made when they are expensive. We were looking for a new washer recently and everyone from the repairman to the various salesmen told us right away which models were made in the US as compared to Mexico. I asked why and they said that everyone wants the US made models even though they were made to the identical specs. The repairman too said that that was the number one issue people ask about when they ask him to recommend a replacement -- that it's made in the US or Europe.

Also, they absolutely do care about call centers. I hear this all the time and I'm seeing companies advertising now that you will get to speak to an American when you call. I've also read about a good number of companies who are pulling their call centers back to the US because their customers simply don't like talking to Indians or Romanians. Commercial companies in particular are now demanding access to US-based customer support.

AndrewPrice said...

If we're tinkering with slogans, how about "I VEHEMENTLY AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY!"

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, I remember that too. They were furious at Bush because he dared to ask questions like "is it working" and "what does it cost." These NGOs really do seem to think that the purpose of their existence is to employ their own people so they can run around feeling good and "raising awareness" without actually solving anything.

I had no sympathy for that and I applauded Gates and the others who steered their money in a different direction and started solving these "unsolvable" problems.

darski said...

I think my fave "protest" from the People's Cube is this one:

http://www.zazzle.com/free+pluto+equal+gravity+for+all+planets+tshirts

This happened when 'they' decided that Pluto didn't qualify any more... now that is injustice indeed

AndrewPrice said...

darski, Nice! LOL! Here's your link: LINK.

Anthony said...

Andrew,

I really hope you're right about Americans giving preference to local products.

BevfromNYC said...

Anthony - Don't get me wrong. I think that it is short-sighted to compare minimum wage in the US versus wages in 3rd World countries. These people are earning a living that keeps their family fed and clothed and a roof over their heads where otherwise if that factory leaves (for whatever liberal reason) they lose their source of income.

However the reason I compare Jobs and Gates to 19th Century plantation owners is because of the hypocrisy of it and because they act like it. The workers work in poor conditions with "overseers" so that they do not directly have to see the dirty business of manufacturing. They take all the profits because they pay nothing to produce their products and then sell them for astronomical prices (and profit) But the hypocritical part is that then they make political statements about how bad exploitation of the worker is and how Billionaires should pay more in taxes"

If Gates spent more time and money bringing back some of those jobs he took overseas, he could create more American taxpayers rather than yammering on about how 20-30 billionaires should pay more of their"fair share". And that could create more tax revenue which benefits us all.

BevfromNYC said...

"REPEAL THE LAWS OF GRAVITY! THEY WEIGHS US DOWN!!"

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, Not in all things. I'm seeing it when (1) the product is expensive and people want to be sure it was made right, and (2) services where they will need to speak to the company if something goes wrong.

As an aside, you're going to see a boom in manufacturing in the US again. In fact, it's started. Obama will claim credit for it, but the real reason is that foreign wages have been rising everywhere to the point that it's now competitive to open new factories in the US again for most things.

AndrewPrice said...

"SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!"

"LISTEN TO THE CHILDREN!" Oh wait, that one's real.

BevfromNYC said...

Btw, is anyone going to watch the SOTU address tomorrow?

AndrewPrice said...

GOD NO!

You?

Rustbelt said...

"WHATEVER ALLOWS THIS ANGRY MOB TO GET WHAT IT WANTS SO WE CAN GET TO THE BAR!"

Kit said...

Rustbelt,

That. Is. GENIUS!

AndrewPrice said...

Rustbelt, Nice! Very practical! :)

AndrewPrice said...

You know, now that I think about it. We are talking about a mob of leftists. How about this:

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE US ALIVE, PIGS, SO DON'T EVEN TRY!"

Rustbelt said...

Kit, Andrew, thanks, guys!

And, just to add to the earlier conversations, I thought EA stunk when my brother (the family gamer), complained about how the Madden series was little more than glorified roster updates with extremely poor play selection. The problem, of course, could easily be solved with downloadable updates. But, alas, then EA and the NFL would lose money on cartridge sales...and we all know how EA and Roger Goodell are hurting for pocket change these days.
Now, I just hate EA completely.

And since there's also been remarks made about evil, liberal CEO's, I'm going to borrow another Youtube commenter's post, "who's running THIS meeting? Steve Jobs?"

Rustbelt said...

Andrew said:

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE US ALIVE, PIGS, SO DON'T EVEN TRY!"

But Andrew, leftists don't believe in killing (themselves). I'm not sure how many people would buy it.

AndrewPrice said...

It's worth a shot, isn't it? :D

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