In These Times leaked audio of Romney on a conference call telling employers that they should tell their employees who to vote for, at the 26:44 mark:
“I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope, I hope you pass those along to your employees.”
And several businesses, notably Koch Industries, have done just that.
Despicable.
[via Alan Colmes; image via Christwire]
[cross-posted at ABLC]
Richard
The fact that companies are now using social media like Facebook as an authoritarian weapon is a pretty disturbing development.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Tweety talked about this tonight. That guy who’s building the country’s (world’s?) biggest private house said he views his employees as his children, so it’s his duty to help guide them even in to the voting voting booth. He builds timeshares, so he truly is a Randian creator of things the world needs.
I wish I thought there would be some backlash against this, but while I’m sure most of these employees won’t give a fuck, there will be some who believe their jobs depend on Romney winning.
karen
Isn’t any of this illegal? A candidate telling their fundraisers to tell their workers how to vote?
rageahol
@Richard: isnt that what facebook was was designed for?
Frank
You can’t make this stuff up. Jeez oh man.
BGinCHI
The GOP is all for freedoms, but they can’t let people live in a democracy, for pete’s sake.
CREAM.
Cacti
I wouldn’t be surprised if the “originalists” on the Supreme Court found a new constitutional right for corporate persons to check your ballot as a condition of employment.
Splitting Image
Romney is, as usual, showing his liberal colours.
A true conservative would point out that employees should only count for three-fifths of a vote, as the founders intended.
Brachiator
@Richard:
Actually, it was inevitable.
And a vote for Obama helps secure their future. It’s nice of the plutocrats do deliver a public service announcement.
The rest is up to the 98 percent.
Joeshabadoo
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about employers telling them that if Obama is elected they could lose their jobs. I’m not sure if its happening more or that the GOP is so open about it that they notice it more.
Spaghetti Lee
Wasn’t there a time when intimidating people into voting a certain way was about as commie-bastard anti-American as you could get? Now not only is the Republican candidate for President doing it, he could probably find ten million people to write fervent defenses of him that revolve around the words ‘moochers’ and ‘privilege’ (as in ‘it’s a privilege to be able to vote).
I try not to hate this country in my most frustrated moments, but DAMN, it’s full of people who flat-out suck.
burnspbesq
Jeez. In These Times is still around? I thought it croaked around the same time as Ramparts.
Spaghetti Lee
@Richard:
Facebook is the greatest tool for snoops and scolds ever invented. I joined because I wanted to get in touch with some old friends, and I can’t fault anyone for doing that. I’d rather blame the fact that we live in a society with such fucked-up priorities that anything short of becoming a hermit is automatically assumed to leave you wide open to anyone with designs on your wallet or your personal life.
BGinCHI
@burnspbesq: I was walking around Wicker Park right after I moved here (2001) and I saw their office door and I couldn’t believe it.
Talk about stamina.
Remember The Progressive? That still around?
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
Of course not. The plebs will vote themselves infinite bread and circuses and stop working, and then where will our freedum be?
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@Roger Moore: We are not a Democracy. We are a republic.
dance around in your bones
I simply cannot listen to a 28 minute audio of Mitt Romney. Can’t we have a music/books/videos/pets/feel-good thread instead?
Also, that image looks like this guy which I am sure is intentional.
WTF, maybe I’ll just take a X.anax and go to sleep.
BGinCHI
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace: I hope you’re snarking….
BGinCHI
@dance around in your bones: Sure. Hilary Mantel wins a well-deserved second Booker prize for her excellent “Bring Up the Bodies,” part two of her trilogy on Thomas Cromwell and the Tudor period.
I highly recommend that novel and Wolf Hall, the first in the series.
The prose is sparkling. She’s just killing it right now.
Spoiler alert: some of Henry VIII’s wives don’t make it.
Roger Moore
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace:
More seriously, I think you can understand a lot about wingnuts if you assume that they see the whole world as a zero sum place. More freedom for you means less freedom for them.
Greyjoy
I dare those companies to fire the 50% of their employees who they think voted for the wrong person (since statistically that’s about what it boils down to). Let’s see how long those businesses last, I double-dog dare them. If an employer thinks that a circle on a ballot is more important to them than the profit I earn for them with my labor, and that they think they can keep up by shitcanning a swath of their labor force for something so petty and then training in a bunch of newbies with the ‘correct’ political affiliation, then I’ll be happy to go work for their competitor. Pretty sure their competitor will be happy to pick up the slack while Firing For Romney, Inc. spends a year or so waiting for that trickle-down to make up for the sudden decline in quality and service.
Not that firing anyone for voting for Obama would be even remotely legal. “Creed” is a federally protected class.
BGinCHI
If I have to put this blog on my back and carry it I will.
You’re not heavy, your my brother/sister/weird cousin.
ranchandsyrup
Many of the radio stations that serve San Diego are based in Mexico. They have to play Mexican PSAs, which are hilariously awkward because they are translated roughly from Spanish to English. One of them lets voters know that employers cannot legally do this.
BGinCHI
@ranchandsyrup: Mexico: so close to America, so far from Tebow.
dance around in your bones
@BGinCHI:
Thanks, BGinCHI. I have heard these books mentioned here many times, but I still have an aversion to paying so much money for pixels on my kindle. Maybe I should spring for some used paperbacks.
Strangely enough, I was aware that
severalmanymostI think all but one? of Henry the VIII’s wives met a sad fate.BGinCHI
@dance around in your bones: They all met a sad fate, either by execution or by having to be Henry’s wife. Or both.
SatanicPanic
@ranchandsyrup: I LOVE those. They’re so sunny “with this new plan, your government is building a brighter Mexico” I just can’t imagine that sort of thing playing well here.
BGinCHI
You could also read a great novel like The Sisters Brothers (Patrick DeWitt).
Like True Grit?
This is better.
dance around in your bones
@BGinCHI:
I like the $2.99 kindle price. I’m currency challenged at the moment, but I might spring for this one. Thanks.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@burnspbesq: In These Times started after Ramparts croaked.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Is that Romney’s head grafted onto a Lt. Dangle picture?
Scamp Dog
What, exactly, would stop an employee from saying “Sure, boss, I’ll vote for Romney!” and then go vote for Obama? I’m a bit ticked off at the arrogant scmucks who do this, but I doubt this will have any major effect. Or are there some voter anonymity exposure scandals I haven’t heard about?
Sly
Rep. Joe Walsh said the same thing, but without the “and if you support Obama you should do the same” hedge for plausible deniability.
Tammy Duckworth could have killed ten thousand terrorists by herself and single-handedly rescued every U.S. soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan from certain death , and it still wouldn’t amount to the good she’d do the nation by putting that piece of shit out to pasture.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Scamp Dog: I don’t know about every state, but in California, at the entrance to every polling place, there’s a posted list of every registered voter in the precinct, their address, and which party they’re a member of. It wouldn’t take that much effort to have a flunky go around to polling places and take pictures of the rolls, and cross reference them with HR records.
ranchandsyrup
@BGinCHI: Ha!
ranchandsyrup
@SatanicPanic: The wingers hate the PSAs. Because, America, that’s why. They don’t get that their galtian overlords cheer off shoring in pursuit of profit.
Brachiator
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
And the people at polling stations would just sit back and let someone photograph a voting list? Page by page.
OK.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Brachiator: If its publicly posted info, what basis would they have to stop it? Not that I think it’s actually likely to happen. These emails are most likely empty threats.
TenguPhule
No, Occum’s Razor. They see EVERYTHING as being about them personally. The only cure for this, like all terminal stupidity, is death.
dance around in your bones
Ok, Los Angeles by X
“and now all our money’s gone – the phone’s off the hook”
ETA: a better use of your 28 minutes, IMHO
The prophet Nostradumbass
Actually, the taking pictures of the voter rolls isn’t even necessary in California.. The state will hand that info over to people for all sorts of reasons.
Kyle
Ever notice the people who bray the loudest about FREEDOM are the most authoritarian, bullying and controlling creeps?
Jay S
I have mixed feelings about this. Of course the employers that are making threats are bullies, but they are giving their employees valuable information. It tells them they need to be preparing to find other employment, no matter what the outcome of the election.
Employers that make this sort of threat, whether for real or bluffing, are not providing a safe place to work. Of course most of the stories I have seen are threats of the sort that if Obama is reelected I’ll have to fire a bunch of you, rather than a direct threat of firing people who voted for Obama. But it means the business decisions are divorced from the economic facts, and that doesn’t bode well for the future of the company.
dollared
@Scamp Dog: But that means zero advocacy for Obama. And no donations – public record.
The goal is suppression. It’s not just the vote.
The end game for our democracy is closer than we think. Just think of how much things have tipped in four years. Voter ID. Employer suppression. Citizens United. Those alone can easily tip a state election 5-10%, as we are seeing right now.
Mister Papercut
@dance around in your bones:
I cannot listen to any audio of WMR without being struck by how much he sounds like Robert Preston’s Harold Hill. Each time I hear the whole “the trees are the right height” or “the message of Wisconsin” spiels, I half expect him to break into “Seventy Six Trombones” immediately after.
max
@Scamp Dog: What, exactly, would stop an employee from saying “Sure, boss, I’ll vote for Romney!” and then go vote for Obama? I’m a bit ticked off at the arrogant scmucks who do this, but I doubt this will have any major effect. Or are there some voter anonymity exposure scandals I haven’t heard about?
Nothing. Nothing at all. The point of doing this is not that they can force their employees to vote for Romney, the point is to intimidate their employees into voting for Romney. And people as whole, tend to mind when told what to do. (Not forever, and not all the time, but most of the time.)
I think this is basically just evidence that the R’s are going all in on the ratfucking. They are going to pull out all the stops to bully, harass, intimidate and otherwise throw off D voters and lie, dissemble and otherwise lure conservatives type to vote. I wouldn’t expect any less from a low-rent Wall Streeter like Romney.
Spaghetti Lee: Wasn’t there a time when intimidating people into voting a certain way was about as commie-bastard anti-American as you could get? Now not only is the Republican candidate for President doing it, he could probably find ten million people to write fervent defenses of him that revolve around the words ‘moochers’ and ‘privilege’ (as in ‘it’s a privilege to be able to vote).
Well, yeah, but the thing is, the D’s were the majority party and the South was part of that majority so they were all ‘we must do whatever the government wants’. When that Northern Democrat/Dixiecrat alliance broke down, suddenly it’s all limousine liberals and black helicopters. When the Dixiecrats are on top, it’s all about everyone else obeying. When they’re on the bottom, it’s the worse dictatorship ever.
Wall Street types can line up with that because they think exactly the same for entirely different reasons.
Of course, there’s the underlying problem of the fact that the Wall Streeters want to screw the Dixiecrats good and hard. Meaning that the R’s have the same basic problem the Old FDR coalition had. Of course Lush Rimjob is going to threaten to create a third party. The South has been pulling that number since ever. (1937,1948,1960,1968,1972,1976 and etc.)
max
[”The South is revolting, sir!’ ‘Tell me about it!”]
dance around in your bones
@Mister Papercut:
It deserves a video clip :)
Redshift
@Kyle: Lakoff researched a whole book on the concept of freedom in different political persuasions. Apparently to conservatives, “freedom” means “freedom to do the right thing.” That’s where where they get bizarre conceptions like the idea that the wrong sort of protest is “abusing freedom of speech” rather than exercising it.
To us, of course, “freedom” where there’s only one choice sounds like the opposite. Very strange.
karen marie
@Scamp Dog: It’s not just that they’re telling their employees who to vote for, they’re also filling their employees minds full of lies. My roommate’s girlfriend, a none-too-bright early 20s fast-food worker, was told by her boss that Obama is making a law requiring a new certificate that prohibits her from working more than 30 hours a week. The whole explanation she gave me was totally effed up, made zero sense, but she believed it and was terrified.
I didn’t know this but in Arizona anyone who works with food prep has to have a food-handling certificate. The Republicans in the AZ legislature tried to pass a law in 2011 requiring people taking the test to present an “official” ID to keep “illegals” from getting food-service jobs. It failed to pass because the business interests threw a fit.
She’s not registered to vote because, she says, voting doesn’t matter. I explained to her that voting won’t change her immediate situation but can definitely have an effect in the long run. It made me so sad. If everyone who believes their vote doesn’t count voted, we could possibly get somewhere.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
California Elections Code
18541. (a) No person shall, with the intent of dissuading another person from voting, within 100 feet of a polling place, do any of the following:
(1) Solicit a vote or speak to a voter on the subject of marking
his or her ballot.
(2) Place a sign relating to voters’ qualifications or speak to a
voter on the subject of his or her qualifications except as provided
in Section 14240.
(3) Photograph, video record, or otherwise record a voter entering
or exiting a polling place.
(b) Any violation of this section is punishable by imprisonment in
a county jail for not more than 12 months, or in the state prison.
Any person who conspires to violate this section is guilty of a
felony.
(c) For purposes of this section, 100 feet means a distance of 100 feet from the room or rooms in which voters are signing the roster and casting ballots.
fuckwit
Freedom is just another word for bullying, to the rethugs.
Freedom means: freedom to run over anyone who is in between me and whatever I want.
It’s a very strange worldview, but not uncommon. Most humans think and behave that way at some point in their lives– like when they’re 2 years old.
J R in WVa
@BGinCHI:
Oh, NO! Don’t give away the secret plot twist!
That always ruins history for me, we know what happens before we get to the end of the book! ;-{)
Really, my wife loves history, and while we were on a short road trip to spend some time with her college room-mate (only 40 years ago now!) we came home with two crates full of books, half her history and half my science and SciFi. I get the best history based on her reviews.
Labor history is her fave, it’s hard to believe the sacrifices the labor organizers made to bring us the 8 hour work day and workplace safety. Hard to believe (not really) the weapons Republicans have used to reverse the gains those labor organizations made in the past 30 years.
Now people don’t believe the Democratic Party was responsible for the 40-hour work week – they think it was a gift from Republican bosses! Amazing, the power of the big lie.
magurakurin
@Spaghetti Lee:
I don’t know, boss. I really don’t see anyway that Facebook has affected me negatively in anyway at all. I trade photos, jokes and links with a small group of others. I think the mileage really, really varies with Facebook. For example, you could sign up, put absolutely no info, use a fake name, search for old friends, send them a message, get their email address, and communicate with them by email.
And everything aside, I just don’t get all the Facebook hate. It’s not all that anyway, and if you don’t want to have an account there is absolutely no pressure to have one. Not having a Facebook account hardly seems to qualify as “being a hermit.”
raven
@magurakurin: It’s like people making a big deal out of not having a tv, it’s like some bbig badge of honor. Who gives a shit? Have it, don’t have it, watch it, don’t watch it.
Joey Maloney
@burnspbesq: I think ITT is web-only now. Chris Hayes has made reference a couple of times on air that he got his start with them.
Soylent Green
Vote for Bobby Newport, or Sweetums will move its factory and lay off all of its Pawnee employees.
priscianusjr
I certainly don’t think it’s right for employers to tell their employees how to vote. But on the other hand, I don’t understand how they could know who their employees voted for unless they asked the employees and got a truthful answer. IANAL, but I would think asking them would constitute workplace intimidation, considering what they had already said.
priscianusjr
@dollared:
aimai
@Brachiator:
Yes, of course you can photograph a voting list. Its a public record. You can’t go into the poll and do it but poll watchers listen for the crossing off of the names. The record itself is posted at the Clerk’s office in advance. Again: its a public record. Lots of people register as Unenrolled or Independent because they don’t like their neighbors knowing their party ID.
aimai
aimai
@Redshift:
It wasn’t until I read Albion’s Seed, Four Folkways in American History, that I began to understand how much these political distinctions were based on long term cultural divisions stretching back to the founding of the country. Basic concepts like Adulthood, Independence, Religion, Work, Freedom, Masculinity, Femininity, Childhood, Courage, Strength, etc..etc…etc… were all different in the different areas of settlement. The Republican attitude towards a lot of things has, since the big flip with the Southern Democrats, become very distinctively a mashup of South Atlantic and Appalachian ideologies. One is aristocratic and the other is authoritarian and libertarian. Its a pretty toxic stew.
aimai
MaxxLange
If Romney wins, I’m canceling every recurring contract or expense that I can. I’ll be careful to explain to the cable company etc that I am doing so because I’m going to have to hoard every dollar to pay for health care, food, and shelter in old age, so I no longer have any discretionary income to spend on their services.
Lurking Canadian
Romney’s contempt for democracy has been clear since the “quiet rooms” bit. I’m kind of surprised the OfA people haven’t hammered him on it, but that probably means it wouldn’t work.
Matt McIrvin
@priscianusjr: The idea here isn’t to say, “I’ll find out who voted for Obama and fire them.” It’s to say, “If Obama is reelected, his policies will force me to close down the plant and fire everyone.” To low-information voters this could be extremely effective.
Or, if they’re more like the Queen of Versailles guy: “You serve at my personal pleasure, and I’ve already got mine. If Obama is reelected, it will make me so mad that I will close down the plant and retire to the Caymans, ha ha ha.”
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure the SCOTUS that decided Citizens United would rule this protected speech, since it’s an expression of political opinion rather than an individual threat.
However, just because something is protected speech doesn’t mean that encouraging people to say it isn’t unbecoming of a potential president.
bjacques
Those bosses are doing it all wrong. They should take a lesson from “the Colonels” in the outback of Brazil. (“The Colonels” is the popular name for the big landowners and their descendants, because in the past, military officers were paid off with huge tracts of land.)
Just before an election, “the colonels” gave all the peasants brand new shoes for their left feet. If the vote went as desired, the peasants got right shoes. Similarly, they got upper dentures and, afterwards, lower ones.
Matt McIrvin
…You know, it isn’t as if these kinds of tactics were just now discovered.
But it used to be that unions were the countervailing force, with their thumbs on the scale in a pro-worker direction. The same people who approve of bosses telling employees how to vote will tell you that when a union gets involved in electoral politics, it’s illegitimate bullying and a threat to freedom.
paulj
A worker voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.
hep kitty
Can it get any more disgusting, revolting, vomit-worthy?
INHUMAN?
These guys won’t be happy until they each get their own coronation and utter fealty and submission of the unwashed masses. This is just absolutely unacceptable and should be shouted to the rooftops by the media.
(–crickets chirping–)
hep kitty
@aimai: This is a great book and really defined for me how there are different interpretations of “Liberty” as well. It really helped me get where the libertarians were coming from.
For instance, slaveowners could claim that emancipation deprived them of their “liberty” to make money. They wouldn’t have ended up plantation owners if they hadn’t been born “winners” which is the litmus test as to who gets the liberty to do what to whom. They’re special.
Alex
California Labor Code section 1101 et seq. prohibit interfering with or threatening an employee with job loss based on their political activities.
hep kitty
@aimai: We southerners want kings, we want big daddies to make all our decisions for us, for good or ill, and tell us what to think. After reading the book, I began to believe that, in the end, we are royalists. Ready to lick the boots of those more successful and authoritative than we are. If they cause us to suffer, we say it’s “God’s will” – we never question big daddy, we know he has our best interests at heart!
Prosperity gospel, also, too
jurassicpork
When reason fails… Bully!
Interrobang
@Redshift: Note, too, that their concept of “freedom” is exactly the same as the Christian concept of “free will”: God could prevent people from sinning, but somehow it’s better if God gives us the “freedom” to choose to do the right thing, under the threat of Hell if we don’t. They’re just replacing God in this case with other authorties.
NorthLeft12
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
As a Canadian, I really don’t get why you guys [Americans] register as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Who’s business is it who you support? What happened to privacy?
That is one of the many things that boggles my mind about your political process.
rachel
@NorthLeft12: To vote in Republican or Democratic primaries, for one.
steve
I will never, ever have a Facebook account. The idea that your every action and belief and association should be completely exposed to anyone is fundamentally incompatible with healthy participation in society.
Mnemosyne
@NorthLeft12:
As rachel said, stating your party affiliation has to do with primary elections (ie figuring out who is going to represent the party in a specific upcoming general election). Unless you want to vote in primaries, you don’t have to register for a specific party. I was “Decline to State” in California until 2000.
TenguPhule
The Irony of threatening the people who both make and deliver their morning office coffee is completely lost on them.