Your Weekly Reader

Kiss Up/ Kick Down (How to remove the poor)

A child told her mother she wanted to be a libertarian when she grew up. Her mother said she can’t be both. (A funny story about Ayn Rand)

Modern Christianity (How not to convert the unbeliever)

(How Republicans are harming the Christian brand)

Adventures in Republican Misogyny (The meat market of Republican thought)

O’Reilly’s make believe war journalism (Bill O'Reilly has an amazing imagination)

Ron Paul celebrates the New Confederacy (Secession and violating the Constitution are patriotic!)

The Giuliani Story (Giuliani explains how he cannot possibly be racist)

(Guiliani's Inspiring Tale of Patriotism)

“They’re all around us” (The strange secret club of vigilantes who are the guardians of Freedom)

(They even have a secret handshake)

We went to war to stamp this evil out in Europe and Asia. (It was called WW2. What do we do when it happens here?)

Killer Business Model

Excellent article in the Washington Post about how furniture rental companies gouge three times the value of the furniture from people who can't afford to buy. This is called the Genius of Capitalism.

Faced with a need or a shortage, do you set about filling that need, that shortage, or is your first question how to exploit the shortage to the fullest advantage?

Is human vulnerability something to take advantage of?

Is poverty a profit opportunity for your company, the deeper the poverty the greater the profit?

Is someone else's helplessness part of your business model? When you see helplessness do you feel sympathy or greed?

Is helpfulness a naïve and foolish custom? Is it unbusinesslike to include generosity or humane consideration in your business plan?

Let’s imagine you manufacture flotation devices, lifesavers they’re called. It costs money to make them, so you sell them for a price. Naturally.

But here’s a business model: you provide flotation devices to lifeguards. Call these lifeguards sales agents and pay them a small commission. Then when someone is drowning don’t have your agent throw them a buoy free of charge, let the market set a price. Dicker with the floundering. Or rent the device to the person fighting for his life, loan the use of the buoy at so much per second. They’re really eager to rent, so set that rate as high as you can. Plus interest, compounding every second.

This is what’s known as a killer business model.

Republicans Are Not Their Brothers' Keepers

When a respected insurance man supports Obama's Affordable Care Act it's worth listening. The question he leaves us with is this: Why is the national Chamber of Commerce working so hard to screw over small businesses across the country?

Obama's healthcare reform would help small businesses keep their employees healthy at an affordable cost. It would also help the people who they do business with, the people who buy their goods. Their average customer would have fewer financial worries, fewer health worries, and would be a better consumer with more dollars to spend. Why do Republicans oppose something that would boost the Main Street economy?

There's a moral dimension to this too. Society is responsible for its most vulnerable members. It isn't an optional responsibility, but the Republican position gives the richest Minnesotans an opt-out clause. They pay lower tax rates than the rest of us now. Rather than put their taxes back where they were under former Republican governors, the Republicans in the legislator would rather cut the poor and the sick off entirely. An extreme position opposed by most Minnesotans, and rightly so. But they are standing firm on it. Better to lose thousands of poor people than inconvenience the wealthiest members of our society.

I'm reminded of a famous quote: "Let them die then and reduce the surplus population." It was Scrooge who said that, but it might just as well be a modern Republican.

These new Republicans (so different from the old moderate Republicans) manage to put a smile on their faces and dress nicely, so the unsuspecting, inattentive voters don't imagine what their policies really mean. They go to church on Sunday and worship Jesus, but the rest of the week they forget the Sermon on the Mount and their Christian responsibility to the poor.

What's more sacred is their solemn promise to very very rich people to keep their tax rates lower than everybody else's, even yours and mine. How is this good politics? How is it good business? How is it consistent with Minnesota values?