I was reading Krugman today about how Starbucks did a Komen with the “Come Together” campaign to make customers pressure their Congress reps and senators to shred the social insurance programs when I decided to look up the infamous “Fix the Debt” website. It’s run by some shadowy group of rich people called the CEOs Fiscal Leadership Council.
Starbucks does a Komen
The CFLC is populated by the usual suspects of deadbeat corporate executives that we’ve seen in the past 4 years. The CEO’s of Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and AT&T are on the list. But so is T. Rowe Price, the 401K specialists. (There couldn’t be a conflict of interest there, could there? Nahhhh) According to the Huffington Post, the CFLC consists of some of the most notorious pension plan underfunders. Isn’t that sweet? They are leading us to give up the only means of surviving in old age after they raid their company pensions to pay those M&A bonuses. Now that’s Leadership.
Then I got to wondering, who commissioned this group? I mean, was there a Congressional decree? Did the President assemble this meetup of malefactors? Because, how else did they get the “Leadership Council” thing in the title? Who do they think they are leading? I don’t remember asking for leadership off the so-called “fiscal cliff”. I’m wracking my brains trying to figure out who appointed these guys, and they are almost all guys. Wait, let me check. There are 4 recognizably female names on a list of approximately 150 members. Good job, guys! Does that mean women can’t be leaders or that they resist being lead? Clarification is needed here.
And then I started to think, why don’t we left of center unpaid pundits (yes, I do flatter myself. If I don’t, no one else will) have a leadership council or many leadership councils?
For example, where is the Senior Research Investigators Leadership Council that will put pressure on Congress to stop listening to whiny pharma CEOs who keep telling our elected officials that they can’t find good help anymore?
How about a New Deal Democrats Leadership Council to tell Congress to stop listening to whiny rich CEOs that robbed us blind in the past four years?
Or a Dirty Fucking Hippy Leadership Council to tell Congress to get its shit together and do the right thing before we get our shit together and run against them? Just an idea.
Or a La-La-La I Can’t HEAR You Leadership Council that will help Americans kick the cable TV news and talk radio habit so they’ll stop being suckered in by self-interested CEOs whose messages clog the airwaves.
Add your Leadership Council titles and purposes in the comments section. I formally commission the best Leadership Council idea. No, no, don’t thank me. I take on this burden of Leadership for You.
Filed under: General | Tagged: Komen. CEO Fiscal Leadership Council, Leadership Councils, Paul Krugman, social insurance programs, Starbucks, underfunded pensions |
The Confluence 
Control Guns At Least As Well As We Control Cars Leadership Council
But cars don’t kill people, people kill people. One of the truly weird tidbits from the Washington Post is the Republican belief that it does not matter if we go off the Fiscal Cliff on December 31 because Wall Street is closed on January 1. It does matter to them that it be settled before January 2. Of course, many of these fools will be gone by January 3 as will the rules of the Senate that allow a silent fillibuster by one, unknown Senator to stop business.
Meanwhile, at Mitch McConnell’s insistence, Joe Biden is the chief negotiator for the White House. Biden’s idea of negotiating is to give everyone what he or she wants. So no cuts to Social Security and bigger tax cuts are preserved.
Know what? I think we need another shock to the market. No, seriously. People have to be really alarmed at the extent to which they are at the mercy of Wall Street. All their retirement money is locked into a corrupt system and the bankers will yank that chain until people are so angry they’ll out occupy the occupiers.
I’m sick of having the economy held hostage by the market and the assholes who risk our money on it. Let’s go over the fricking cliff already. At this point, I have nothing to lose.
There is no “fiscal cliff”. there never was any such a thing. What there is, or coulda shoulda been, is/was a “fiscal reset” back to Clinton Era rates. We shoulda hit the Clinton Reset Button. We still should.
Obama and the Republicans co-conspired to engineer the “fiscal cliff” as a Disaster Crapitalism Shock Doctrine terror tool. President Droney McCatfood should be nicknamed the “Shock Doctor”. Barry McCatfood – – Shock Doctor. Has a wring?
The Obama-McConnell Plan is to shock the monkey till the monkey gives Obama-McConnell everything they want. But what if the monkey goes past fear all the way to hate-filled rage? (Back when I was a security guard, I remember OTHer security guards . . . the ones who had to secure the Research Animal Facilities . . . speaking about how one must never ever get close enough to the monkey cages to where the monkeys could reach out through the bars and get their little hands on you. Their little hands were stronger than you knew or could ever know. Could it be possible for all the shocked-out monkeys to put their little hands on ObaMcConnell . . . start ripping little handfulls of flesh out of ObaMcConnell’s face?)
I heard the so-called Payroll Tax Holiday has been ended. I fully support ending it. Obama pushed it through to destroy Social Security by defunding it over time. The only Democrat I know of who protested was Senator Harkin of Iowa (for whom I voted in the 1990 primary). So now I will remind my Dem officeholders not to touch the Payroll Tax either . . . that I know very well that lowering it was part of the Catfood Conspiracy, and I will never vote for any Democrat who permits it to be “lowered” again.
riverdaughter
you wrote: (yes, I do flatter myself. If I don’t, no one else will).
c’mon, i am flattering you all the time in my comments ‘cuz you are always demonstrating extreme braininess in your analyses. so there!
as for the leadership council, how ’bout: down with the old leadership leadership council? it’s kinda clumsy but you get my meaning.
keep stinging ’em like a bee in the new year!
Come on, it’s me:
“There are More of Us Than You Women’s Leadership Council”.
I would not blame the Starbucks employees for writing come together on the coffeecups. I have read that they are being pressured and extorted to do so by every level of manager up the chain to the Big Boss.
I might start going to Starbucks to see if I can do some sly conversational counter-propaganda with the helpless coffee servers and cashiers. Undermining the “fiscal cliff” meme with the “propaganda scare-tactic” countermeme and the Hit the Clinton Reset Button counter-slogan and so forth. And how Come Together is a conspiracy against Social Security which I have more faith in than I have any faith
in my so-called 201k ( yeah right).
The Social Benefits Defense Leadership Council
or The Social Benefits Leadership Defense Council . . . whichever sounds better.