Posted on 01/13/2012 6:14:08 PM PST by VinL
■The film talks about layoffs at DDi Corp. and discusses questionable manipulation of stock prices after the circuit board company went public. But Romney had left Bain Capital a year before any layoffs and a public stock offering that ultimately netted Bain and Romney a big payday. The company’s subsequent bankruptcy filing came two years after Bain had largely divested from the company, and was the result of the dot-com bust. Moreover, the company emerged from bankruptcy, and its current CEO credits those early Bain investments for setting the foundation for the company’s current success.
■The film claims Romney was involved in the acquisition, management and demise of the now-defunct KB Toys. He wasn’t. Bain bought the toy company nearly two years after Romney left Bain.
■Likewise, the closing of UniMac’s plant in Marianna, Fla., occurred seven years after Romney left Bain and nearly two years after Bain sold UniMac’s parent company to another private equity house
Facts Strained in ‘King of Bain’
Someone told me it was Green-grinch. I think the 'Green' came from a video he did with a House Speaker, I can't remember her name..
Does time exist if there is no sentinent being there to observe its passage?
Does the concept of time exist if there is no one there to observe it’s passage?
The concept of capitalism does exist if there are no participants.
My original point is that Newt misframed his argument in seeking ethical capitalism, when it is ethical people that are necessary for such a choice to be made regarding a neutral concept, and in so doing, he is undermining the engine of freedom, and he is certainly smart enough to be able to make this distinction.
This is an intentional misframing, it is an unethical choice.
If I lived in an ideal world, I could perhaps do that, but it seems that I live in a damned world filled with many people whom I cannot love based upon my judgement of them. Perhaps that is a weakness in me, I don’t know, but that is the way it is for me.
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. The rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc. medical ethics; Christian ethics. Moral principles, as of an individual: His ethics forbade betrayal of a confidence.
Captialism is an economic system not a moral/ethical code. Ethics can be applied to human behavior of any sort. I don't know how descriptive or meaningful it is to describe capitalism as ethical or unethical. You can describe people and their conduct as ethical or unethical, but I don't know how you describe an economic system that way.
“Is there something unethical about capitalism such that it needs to be qualified by the word ethical?”
Lets say you have terminal cancer. No, lets say your daughter or your wife has it... I have the cure, and it costs only pennies. However, I own it and control it. You can buy it from me of course at my asking price. That’s capitalism at work.
You can pay me 200K or somebody’s going to die. It’s certainly capitalism and it’s certainly legal for me to charge whatever I want.
The question to you and others... Is it ethical?
“Does Gingrich consider it ethical to create campaign videos filled with 28 minutes of lies, smears, and distortions?”
Point to one lie, smear or distortion in the 28 minute video...
It’s hard because we are human. That is why it’s so important to strive to be more than what we are....imperfect as we are and imperfect as it will be. It is still ‘better’ than not trying to be ‘more’.
:)
You’re not getting it - I’m not saying Romney was doing something illegal, I’m saying he’s doing something I personally view as objectionable - and I can vote accordingly. No department of fairness involved.
This is what Newt is saying - with Romney as the nominee, Obama’s people will shine a spotlight on this, and hordes of other people will then equate Romney with “greedy a-hole” and walk away. Newt is not saying, “arrest him” or “regulate him”, he’s saying this is the type of guy you are looking at, and if he’d do that to companies, what will he do or promise to get what he wants?
Is your choice to sell me a cure that cost pennies for 200k ethical or not?
Don’t know, that’s your call. Life is a series of choices and consequences. You make yours and live with it, one way or the other.
If you believe that you will have to account for your choices to your Lord, then perhaps you will decide one way. If you do not believe in such an accounting, then perhaps you will decide another way.
But either way, your choice has nothing to do with the system of buying, selling or private ownership of the product you have or created.
Be careful, you are greying an otherwise clear issue by qualifiying it with a characteristic that does not apply to it, just as Newt has done, and just as those who are attempting to destroy and recreate our country are doing.
And from what I can tell, they will succeed.
The concept of capitalism does exist if there are no participants.
*************
How can a “concept” that can exist without participants and is “neutral” by your definition-— possibly enter the universe of ethics? Under such a hypothesis, how can such a “concept” drive anything- it existing solely as a conceptualization?
From what they were saying at FNC today the ‘King of Bain’ had some very gross errors in it. I did find these bad ones with a few minutes of google search:
■The film talks about layoffs at DDi Corp. and discusses questionable manipulation of stock prices after the circuit board company went public. But Romney had left Bain Capital a year before any layoffs and a public stock offering that ultimately netted Bain and Romney a big payday. The company’s subsequent bankruptcy filing came two years after Bain had largely divested from the company, and was the result of the dot-com bust. Moreover, the company emerged from bankruptcy, and its current CEO credits those early Bain investments for setting the foundation for the company’s current success.
■The film claims Romney was involved in the acquisition, management and demise of the now-defunct KB Toys. He wasn’t. Bain bought the toy company nearly two years after Romney left Bain.
■Likewise, the closing of UniMac’s plant in Marianna, Fla., occurred seven years after Romney left Bain and nearly two years after Bain sold UniMac’s parent company to another private equity house
Facts Strained in ‘King of Bain’
Former workers at the Unimac plant in Marianna, FL blame Bain Capital for management decisions made in the early 90s which led to poor quality. However, Raytheon was the company that owned Unimac at the time. Bain did not take ownership until 1998.
Mitt Romney is blamed for the plant's closing. Yet the plant did not close until one year after Bain sold it, and six years after Romney left Bain. The plant was closed and moved to Wisconsin by it's new owner. Unimac remains in business to this day.
It can’t enter the universe of ethics, nor should it. That is my entire point.
Man enters the universe of ethics when he endeavors to apply a neutral tool either rightly or wrongly.
A concept that can exist without participants can drive something, because we have chosen to use it as our drive.
If we stop using it, surely its concept will still exist, it will simply not be employed.
But what we have here is a user of the tool qualiyfing the nature of the tool by applying the human characteristic of ethical choice to it, and as a result, some begin to question the nature of the tool when they should be questioning the nature of the user of the tool.
Should this application be successful, the likely result will be a change in tools, but not a change in users, and such a choice will end with similar results, corruption and greed, because that is the nature of man, and not the tool.
Capitalism tends not to work in the third world because nobody gives a fig about outright theft. No one honors contracts. No one cares about doing an honest job for a fair price. It worked here because people did care about those things and the government, more often than not, enforced the rules and punished those who broke them.
Socialism and communism don't work in the developing world either. I think our government has overregulated the practice of capitalism hobbling it out of some sort of sense of "fairness" that is really the influence of interest groups and the political elites. The minimum wage is a good example.
That’s right, the life is on his head. I think that’s how God would see it, but so what?
In a free society, a man is free to make choices, including the wrong choice.
Otherwise, we can appoint a Board of Good Choices to oversee everyone’s choices, and certainly, this Board would be free of corruption and greed, just as all men are, and the definition of Good would never change or be subjective.
“Be careful, you are greying an otherwise clear issue by qualifiying it with a characteristic that does not apply to it,”
Nope It’s not gray at all. What Newt is rightfully pointing out is that under any system, behavior can be ethical or not. Capitalism is not the issue, ethics are. And Mitt doesn’t have any even though he may be a capitalist.
“Don’t know, that’s your call.” And it’s not my call, and in the case of Mitt it’s not his call either, it’s the voters call.
if he refused to sell the cure at a fair price
Who decides what is a "fair" price? The government or the marketplace? This is the kind of reasoning that gets us rent controls, the minimum wage, price controls, etc.
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