Archive for the 'Bad Products' Category
Friday, August 27th, 2010
TweedleRep and TweedleDem in Oregon
In the Age of Obama, a.k.a. the supply-side Reagan Revolution that was actually started by Carter, it keeps getting easier and easier to practice my SMBIVA pledge.
Here in Oregon, a state that has always been a net exporter of dollars to the Pentagon and has also never summoned the nerve to economically live up to its reputation as an “alt” place, we have a “race for Governor” happening this year.
It could not be more comical or less meaningful.
On one side stands an ex-NBA basketballer, Chris Dudley, Republican, whose supposed qualifications for the job are a Yale diploma and enough money and name-recognition to have purchased himself the primary.
Dudley, as clunky with words as he was with a free throw, presents himself in the TV ads through which this campaign, like all other major campaigns, takes place, as a competitor and an outsider, who will bring — wait for it — “new ideas” to Oregon. The “new ideas” in question?
I’ll get state spending under control, without raising taxes.
I’ll do everything in my power to help small businesses, instead of punishing them.
I’ll focus on jobs.
What else could one say to this hoary package of discredited claims, or to the spectacle of a proud Ivy Leaguer selling them as “new”? ROFLMFAO.
And what of the inevitable TweedleDem?
He, an ex-Governor who called the state “ungovernable” at the end of his last turn as Head Babysitter, and whose girlfriend is now under investigation for graft as a contractor who receives money from the public on the theory that what she does is “helping the state attract green jobs,” wants to “ask Oregonians for their help” in reversing the Great Depression III in the state. How?
Now, there’s a radical new plan of action, no? Maybe we Oregonians could all become six-figure consultants on how to run the world on vaporware…
If it’s possible: ROFLMFAO even more!
Market totalitarianism: It’s what’s for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and, of course, FourthMeal.
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
“The Role of the Consumer”
When they feel they’re safely talking amongst themselves, big business marketers get honest. Take the case of a thought piece in the latest issue of Advertising Age by one Andy Gould, senior VP of an ad agency in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Gould’s complaint:
Too Many Campaigns Still Ignoring the Role of the Consumer
OK. So what is “the role of the consumer”? Perhaps being asked whether you think using old growth timber to make toilet paper softer is something our society should be tolerating?
Not quite. Turns out the role Gould, whose firm works on the Cottonelle account for Kimberly-Clark, has reserved for “the consumer” is rather less substantial:
As I look back at two of our most successful campaigns this year, all the agencies involved identified the role of the consumer very early on. For Cottonelle’s Roll Poll, we decided every piece of communication should be geared toward getting people to vote on which way they rolled their toilet paper (over or under). For the Pop-Tarts Flavor Tournament, we wanted to put 20 flavors head to head in a March-Madness-style bracket, and have teens influence the outcome of each matchup until we had named a champion. Determining these things at the beginning of the process (at the same time as the messaging piece) gave us the time to make the work more interactive, and allowed us to structure things so that what users did and said during the campaign actually impacted the creative work.
Giving consumers something to do is one of the musts of digital work, but even outside of the digital realm, I think many of us believe it’s the best way to connect with people today. Doesn’t work that actually requires something of the consumer stand a better chance of creating genuine impact
And some people still dare to suggest that capitalism and democracy are two different things!
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
Dolts in High Places
Among the rules described by Herman and Chomsky is the one that says, to rise to a position of power in our market-totalitarian society, you either have to be a moron, or unfailingly pretend you are one.
Want proof? Consider the answer Christina Romer, the recently departed Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, provided to Bloomberg Business Week when it asked why unemployment is “higher than expected”:
BBW: Why do you think that is?
Romer: My guess is the main reason has to do with…the fact that [the recession] was caused by a financial crisis. Since it was such an unusual event, firms may have reacted more forcefully than was usual out of a fear of the unknown. Also, firms that couldn’t get credit may have had to lay more people off than normally.
What an absolute crock. First of all, Romer, a supposed world-class scholar on this very topic, wants you to believe that the current Great Depression III is the cause, rather than the consequence, of the widening gulf between economic production and employment.
Worse, her proffered explanation is a meaningless cloud of farts covering an exceptionally simple and powerful fact: Between 1990 and 2008, U.S. businesses tripled their computer investment/labor spending ratio. Computers are used for administration and communication, but they are also the core means of automating production processes. So, the simple fact is that capitalists are continuing to be capitalists. Their system works, for them. Over time, it employs fewer and fewer people per unit of output.
Being too stupid to track (or too well-trained to mention) this elementary process is the kind of thing that gets you the Presidency and the American Economic Association and a seat in the White House.
Romer is a Homer (Simpson).
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
Obama Streamlining Car-Loan Rejection Process
President Obummer, ever the valiant, true-believing, prevaricating babysitter of the status quo, is presently touring the Upper Midwest, peddling the notion that his tragically stupid bailout of the doomed, massively downsized automobile industry is some kind of jobs program, rather than a desperate effort to stave off public consideration of Peak Oil and the radical unsustainability of capitalism.
Meanwhile, how’s this for an Obamian gesture?:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration wants to simplify auto loan forms for consumers over the next few months, a U.S. Treasury Department official said today.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said the attempt to clarify car loan disclosures will be part of a broader administration effort to do the same for mortgages and credit cards.
The administration’s goal is “to help consumers get the information they need to make the choices that are right for them,” Wolin said in the text of a speech being delivered today at the New England Council in Boston.
ROFLMFAO. This is exactly, precisely the same sales proposition as the one at the heart of those scurrilous “know your credit score” commercials — the suggestion that ordinary people’s problem is ignorance or complexity or anything and everything but their shriveling incomes. Low and sinking incomes yield low credit scores and car-loan rejections. The form you have to fill out before being rejected is the pimple on that elephant’s ass. But that’s what these creeps are peddling as “change.” Zit cream for the rumps of social diseases.
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Feds Massively Subsidizing Electric Boondoggle
The first 4,400 purchasers of General Motors’ new Chevrolet Volt hybrid car are receiving a free gift from the public in excess of $10,000. This takes the form of a $7,500 tax credit, plus a gift of a home charging station that starts at $2,500 excluding installation (and the installation requires an electrician rewiring part of your house).
This, in a nation with a pathetic, decrepit, elite-strangled and financially imperiled public transit system.
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
ROFLMFAO of the Day
The New York Times today features a book review of Denial: A Memoir of Terror, by Jessica Stern, pictured at left, a faculty affiliate of the Belfer Center’s International Security Program and a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.
It isn’t directly related to big business marketing, but in this review, Ms. Stein utters one of the most remarkable lines I’ve read in a long time, a line that speaks volumes about the totalitarian, Big Brotherian nature of this society and its elite-training institutions.
After attributing terrorism against “us” to a string of psychological and cultural factors she apparently doesn’t connect to politics or history or the distribution of world power (such are the requirements of maintaining Harvard and NSC connections), here is Stern’s epic howler:
“Harvard is a humiliation factory, and yet we don’t produce a lot of terrorists.”
OMFG. I mean, really? WOW! I almost fell out of my chair. Seriously.
I won’t waste your electrons reciting the marathon list of torturers and war criminals trained and housed at Harvard. You can do that yourself with a bit of internetting.
But permit me two items, won’t you?
1) Neo-Harvard-Man poster-boy Barack Hussein Obama is presently commander-in-chief of two wars, both pointless, one patently illegal. He has substantially increased the rate of drone bombings and military assassinations in both these festivals of mass death.
2) From Wikipedia:
Henry Kissinger received his B.A. degree summa cum laude at Harvard College in 1950, where he studied under William Yandell Elliott. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University in 1952 and 1954, respectively. In 1952, while still at Harvard, he served as a consultant to the Director of the Psychological Strategy Board. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich).”
Kissinger remained at Harvard as a member of the faculty in the Department of Government and at the Center for International Affairs. He became Associate Director of the latter in 1957.
Kissinger played a key role in a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia to disrupt PAVN and Viet Cong units launching raids into South Vietnam from within Cambodia’s borders and resupplying their forces by using the Ho Chi Minh trail and other routes, as well as the 1970 Cambodian Incursion and subsequent widespread bombing of Cambodia. The bombing campaign contributed to the chaos of the Cambodian Civil War, which saw the forces of dictator Lon Nol unable to retain foreign support to combat the growing Khmer Rouge insurgency that would overthrow him in 1975.
The CIA provided education for the military officers directly involved in the coup against Allende,[33] and funding for the mass anti-government strikes in 1972 and 1973; during this period, Kissinger made several controversial statements regarding Chile’s government, stating that “the issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves” and “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.”
On September 11, 1973, Allende [was overthrown in a US-backed coup led by] Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who [appointed himself] President. A document released by the CIA in 2000 titled “CIA Activities in Chile” revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet’s officers into paid contacts of the CIA or US military, even though many were known to be involved in notorious human rights abuses.
On September 16, 1973, five days after Pinochet had assumed power, the following exchange about the coup took place between Kissinger and President Nixon:
Nixon: Nothing new of any importance or is there?
Kissinger: Nothing of very great consequence. The Chilean thing is getting consolidated and of course the newspapers are bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown.
Nixon: Isn’t that something. Isn’t that something.
Kissinger: I mean instead of celebrating – in the Eisenhower period we would be heroes.
Nixon: Well we didn’t – as you know – our hand doesn’t show on this one though.
Kissinger: We didn’t do it. I mean we helped them.
Kissinger took a similar line as he had toward Chile when the Argentine military, led by Jorge Videla, toppled the democratic government of Isabel Perón in 1976 and consolidated power, launching brutal reprisals and “disappearances” against political opponents.
During the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002). Kissinger supported FNLA, led by Holden Roberto, and UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) insurgencies, as well as the CIA-supported invasion of Angola by South African troops.
The Portuguese decolonization process brought US attention to the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, which lies within the Indonesian archipelago and declared its independence in 1975. Indonesian president Suharto was a strong US ally in Southeast Asia and began to mobilize the Indonesian army, preparing to annex the nascent state, which had become increasingly dominated by the popular leftist FRETILIN party. In December 1975, Suharto discussed the invasion plans during a meeting with Kissinger and President Ford in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Both Ford and Kissinger made clear that US relations with Indonesia would remain strong and that it would not object to the proposed annexation. US arms sales to Indonesia continued, and Suharto went ahead with the annexation plan.
In an April 3, 2008 interview by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution, Kissinger re-iterated that even though he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq he thought that the Bush administration rested too much of the case for war on Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.
Insofar as it produces historic personages, Harvard produces almost nothing but terrorists.
