Horrible bosses!
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Horrible bosses!
Philadelphia's filthy rich CEOs got a lot richer (32.6 percent, on average) last year, and they did it by freezing your pay and slashing your benefits:
ONCE UPON A TIME - when the local founding Pew family was still in control - workers at Sunoco's sprawling Marcus Hook refinery joked about working for "Uncle Sunny," the kind of company in which a generous health plan for early retirees was negotiated with a simple handshake.
But today the dwindling number of time-clock punchers at the region's largest oil refiner say that they're so shell-shocked from the loss of 400 jobs at Sunoco's shuttered South Jersey site, a looming pension freeze and news that workers under 50 now won't be getting that retiree health coverage, they cringe at what might be next.
"Your blood pressure is up from the time you check in until the time you leave," said Dave Miller, president of Local 10-901 of the United Steelworkers, which represents some Marcus Hook workers. His union cohort, Mike McLain, nodded in agreement: He was six months shy of his 50th birthday when Sunoco killed off the future-retiree health benefits for its under-50 workers.
But at least one Sunoco employee did all right by "Uncle Sunny" in 2010: its CEO, Lynn Elsenhans.
Elsenhans arrived at Sunoco in 2008 to carry out an aggressive program of cost-cutting. That apparently did not include her own compensation package - which rose last year by a staggering 524 percent, to more than $11.7 million.
They earned it, right? Maybe. But such gross inequality tears at the fabric of society. The rich can do things in our current so-called democracy -- buy candidates and elections, for example -- that you and I can't. And their formula for boosting their individual company's bottom line -- and lining their own pockets in the process -- is crushing the broader economy, creating a middle class with no money and no confidence in the future. But go ahead -- bow at the powerful altar of the (rigged) "free market."
The international Elite don't care about you, your community, your state, your nation or anything else - just themselves and their lifestyle, and how extract more wealth from the world and societies.
So when I read comments from ignorant posters I wonder how they became puppets of these International Elite - so damaged and clueless about real wealth.
Real wealth is given and shared. It isn't extracted and hoarded.
Yet, these puppets just parrot the same extraction and wealth CONCENTRATION concepts of their ideological icons and don't realize that wealth concentration means the STARVATION of the other PEOPLE in their SOCIETY.
Stupid, reckless, mindless puppets of the International Elite.
But you wont accept meaningful spending cuts, without which will still lead to unsustainable deficits.— RG- We have reached the point where a Conservative, largely ignorant of thorough analysis, pretty much blindly defends these unbelievably greedy, hypocritical ("cost cutting"), bumbling CEOs and shamelessly excoriate the worker. Granted, yes, the CEO is there to maximize earnings, and ultimately the stock price. So how has Ms. Elsenhans performed? Last year earnings growth was -59.62%. The 3-year stock price return is ~13%, but lags in relative performance. Granted a significant portion of that price movement is systemic, due to a general recovery, but energy as a sector didn't drop this precipitiously, suggesting that relative, adverse price performance in the stock was due to lousy performance. So how did the CEO get rewarded for relatively terrible peformance? Exactly. It's despicable, and is an example of a totally broken BofD structure. Oh what do you know look who's the Chairman, and has control over the compensation structure of the executives!— Murrayman
- RG, I'd accept heavy cuts in discretionary spending once we've gotten the economy back to health, so it can absorb the shock. In fact, I'd even settle for no new taxes provided we make the overall burden more progressive and close special interest loopholes that impede natural innovation. As for your silly hair-splitting over federal and state taxes, since when did collective state tax policies have no impact on the national economy, or become immune to right-wing orthodoxy? I've always maintained that federalism is an outdated drain on economic growth by duplicating unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and taxation, while the modern economy has long been nationalized and is now globalized. If the right and left can meet each other half-way on this, and we all can dump our 2nd wave ideologies for thinking outside the box (sorry for the cliches), we can be the great nation JFK and Reagan each dreamed of.— montani semper liberi
- Good post, msl. RGs posts are pure rubbish, plain and simple -- data mining blog comments. "or become immune to the right-wing orthodoxy" -- when a Democratic moderate capable to being labeled Marxist took office... or before that.— Murrayman
- //Factoids: The U.S. loses some 90 billion per year in corporate taxes due to financial contortions using overseas subsidiaries. //
Great. Get every cent of it and you only have $1.3 trillion per year to go in order to close the gap.— General Turgidson - Maybe if they weren't paying for all the folks who retired at 50 instead of 62/65 there just might be something left!!!— sarah89
- Theres nothing rubbisg about math and expinential growth of dent and interest. Do it yourself on Excel. Assume an ultraconservative 8% growth of det, 5% GDP growth, and 3% interest. The interest payments still grow to an unmanageable % of GDP.— RG
- And if you think discretionary spending is the main budget driver in the future, you havent seen the projections on entitlements.— RG
- ===}}} Great. Get every cent of it and you only have $1.3 trillion per year to go in order to close the gap {{{===
Looks like Bucky has been studying at the RG School of Binary Thinking again.
Here's a hint, Bucky - reducing corporate tax loopholes is not mutually exclusive with other measures that would reduce the deficit, such as increased top-end income tax rates, cuts in defense spending, and entitlement reforms.
Tough concept, I know, but keep working on it and I'm sure you'll get it eventually.
The point of the excerpts I posted is that they put a lie to the inane talking point that reducing taxes necessarily increases employment.
Work on that for a while and I'm confident that you can understand that also.— Talking point sleuth - Entitlement reforms will never come. The AARP is already running scare ads, and Reid and Pelosi have said theyll never support it. The system will collapse, but shoot a bb at the train by collecting that $90 bil if itll make you feel better.— RG
- ===}}} And if you think discretionary spending is the main budget driver in the future, you havent seen the projections on entitlements. {{{===
Here's what exposes the faux "outrage" about chicken-little deficit whiners: they oppose addressing a fundamental aspect of future deficit expansion - health care costs. Of course, their constant whining about taxes on the uber-rich and corporations also help to expose their Fraudytood.
Libertarian extremists such as RG use faux "concern" about deficits as a cover to obscure their real interest - a radical transformation of society so that their precious tax dollars don't have to go towards helping folks that they call the "parasite class," - you know, like tens of millions of working poor, tens of millions of elderly that require help with medical costs, and tens of millions of children born into poverty.
Because, you know, they want out country to be more like the libertarian Shangri-La you can find in other countries such as.....
Oh...
Wait...
There are no such countries. As far as democratic societies with high standards of living, we actually rank near the bottom in taxes and at the top in the cost of healthcare.
— Talking point sleuth - We can put healrh care right next to housing abd college as things govwernment promised to make affordable. The only reason hc costs affect the deficit in the first place is bc gov decided to get involved via medicare. The die is cast and we're approaching endgame. Then youll get a clue on what forced disorderly austerity looks like.— RG
- The social welfare model has existed for a very small blip over human existence. The model is unsustainable and will collapse. Sovereign debt is the event horizon.— RG
Comment removed.
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