Travelogue: The Imperial Capital

I have been out of pocket, as they say in the South, for the last few days. A project in the Imperial Capital has required me to commute from my estates in the ghetto to the capital each morning. Early days and long nights, with the addition of a vicious commute, has made the past week feel like a stay in prison. I’m just now getting my bearings about what has happened in the world the last few days. I am happy to report that the counter-revolutionary traitors have been rooted out and the city is prepared for the ascension of our new ruler next month.

Those of you in the provinces can never fully appreciate the scale of the Empire until you spend some time driving around the capital. Government, at least the Federal government, is an abstraction. You bump up against it when you file taxes or go to the post office. Otherwise, the Empire is just the background noise of the universe. When you spend time in the capital, you see it face to face. It is not an abstraction or background noise. It is the dominating feature of life in these parts, warping all the normal functioning of society.

It’s why anyone talking about reducing the size of government is either lying, crazy or terribly uninformed. Reducing the size of the Federal government means reducing the size of the Imperial Capital. Fairfax County, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, has over a million souls. The District is roughly 600,000. Start adding up the populations attached to the capital and you get to five million. Expand out to include the entire Baltimore – Washington area – the two cities are slowly merging into a megalopolis – you get close to ten million people.

That’s a lot of people with a reason to keep things as they are and maybe expand on them. Reducing the size of government is like saying we will reduce the size of Los Angeles or Manhattan. This sort of thing can only happen if the city falls on hard times or is sacked by invaders. It took decades to blight Detroit and they worked really hard at it. Their people are low-IQ morons. the Federal government is stocked with smart and clever people who know how to keep the party going. Any and all attempts to reduce the flow of cash into the city will be thwarted.

Another aspect of the Imperial Capital is that it is much more international than the rest of the country. Lots of smart people from other nations come to Washington to work on projects, lobby Imperial officials and otherwise benefit from proximity to the Imperial Capital. I’ve spent the week with people from all over, none of whom had a reason to be in the capital area, beyond economics. They left the provinces to make their fortune in the capital and they did. They get to live in big house and dine at nice restaurants, thanks to the generosity of you, the sans-culotte.

The result of this is the people inside the capital are blinkered. They simply have no idea what is going on in the countryside. it is why they are horrified by the Trump election. Donald Trump is their black swan. The people inside were sure that such a result was an impossibility. Imagine if you came home and found Big Foot riding a unicorn around your neighborhood. There’s simply no way for the people living in the capital to understand why they should accept limits. There can be no argument to convince them that the state must be reduced.

Throw in the fact that 7 of the 10 richest counties on earth are attached to the Imperial Capital and it is not hard to understand why the people living here love government. Even the chattering classes, who hold no official position, live like royals compared to the people in the provinces.Jonah Goldberg, for example, lives in a seven figure home, in one of the more exclusive neighborhoods in the area. He got rich making armpit noises and singing the praises of the managerial state, but mostly the latter. He’s not going back to the former without a fight.

That leaves two possibilities. One is the city is sacked by angry peasants or foreign invaders. The other is we run out of money. That last one is the most likely answer. The proposed tax cuts and reforms from Trump are getting an icy response from Washington, but the private sector is tapped out. They need a jump start to begin growing again. Eventually, we will reach a point where a choice must be made. Either the peasants sacrifice to keep the Imperial Capital stocked with cash or the ruling class tightens its belt. I would not bet on the latter.

My advise. Go long on pitchforks.

113 thoughts on “Travelogue: The Imperial Capital

  1. Pingback: No Break For Christmas! | OmegaShock.com

  2. It’s not just reducing the size of the federal government that is needed. The federal government is not the entity leasing the bulk of those office spaces and complexes that you see spread out all over Northern Virginia and the Maryland countryside between DC and Baltimore. In fact, the federal government in the DelMarVA area, while the single biggest formal employer, is not the employer of record for most VA and MD workers. It’s overwhelmingly the private sector companies/firms that feed on the government tit who employ the bulk of the workforce in the region. There are thousands of companies/firms of all sizes that make most, if not all, of their revenues by providing goods and/or services to the federal government or on behalf of the federal government. Most of the services provided by these companies are those that prior to 1990 were undertaken directly by the federal government or provided by government bureaucrats to the general population. Then in the 1990s, a lot of these services were privatized based on the rationale of reducing government expenditures in light of the Cold War ending. That trend toward privatization of government functions continued through the 1990s and accelerated under the GWB and BHO administrations. The result is that not only those who get their W-2 from the federal government need a big federal government. The many more hundreds of thousands employed by private sector companies that live and die by government contracts need a big federal government handing out the goodies. Trump (or whoever is in the White House) working with Congress can take action to reduce the size of the federal workforce but that will not be enough. At best, reducing the size of the federal workforce is likely to only result in more of those government responsibilities being farmed out to private companies as their lobbyists work deals with Congressional members (damn the pesky details in those revenue bills for various agencies!). If anyone wants to see real change in DC what needs to happen is that a revolution in thought must take place, i.e. Americans must be convinced as a whole of rejecting a decades-old habit of accepting as large a role of government sui generis in our lives as is the case today. Herein lies the REAL challenge.

    • Point taken Wayne. However, when I think of shrinking the establishment, I am also considering that most of what goes on is completely unnecessary and unproductive. Hence, when eliminated, all the Remora fish go away as well because there isn’t anything to do or money to do it with.

  3. It’ll take a tax revolt. Not pitchforks. At the end of the day, they can’t compel work. The whole system rests on a few very basic principles of a civil society. They can’t lock everybody up, and the parasites can’t refill a pool from which they are drinking.

    The plenary power of the President to issue pardons – such as for the nonpayment of taxes – provides a path to starve the parasites.

  4. Your observations as to the size of the Beast is proper. Your assessment of its reduction is not. An air burst 30kton nuke would work quite nicely and keep it that way for a very long time. Yes, a crude way to do it, but those blasted Russians again, figured that all out back in the ’60’s.

  5. My dream is to see a day when about 100,000 men armed to the teeth silently walk into the District if Corruption and without any exchange of words begin erecting scaffolding on the Mall. After hog tying and summarily hanging any pencil neck dumb enough to stay in the IRS offices, they draw straws on which agency to march on next.

    • From one Doug to another, I must heartily disagree. To do that without first having exhausting every peaceful form of redress first, up to rightfully defending yourself from bloody violence by the state, that’s not much more than mob rule, good luck, you would be no better than those you would hang and end up in the same boat of tyranny before long. Holding the moral high ground at all costs and suffering is a prerequisite to winning not only against the empire, but winning liberty long after those tyrants are vanquished.

    • I would first want to see a Deplorables One-Million March on DC too put the fear of God into the mofo’s. I don’t know what it would take to even make that happen.

      • I hear you LP!
        Remember the Tea Party rally? They went to the ends of the earth to make it appear like it was nothing, A million people showed up. You can bet it rocked them to the core. All that IRS intimidation, Lois Lerner, sicking the DOJ on the organizers, going after Sarah Palin, burning down her church, threatening her family, making calling her the C word a household term, calling us dirt people the perforative homosexual sex act, Tea Baggers.
        Oh ya, they where scared, like existentially terrified of that motive power. We all just adapted and improvised, and gave the The Great Fuck You by out voting their vote rigging and gerrymandering and elected an existential threat to them.

      • Lot’s of logistics work. How do people get there without clogging the roads? Where do they stay? What about security? Public hygiene (portapotties)? Food? Organizing people when they arrive? Will there be speakers, or just people intended to chimp out? Spreading the word so that everybody tries to arrive at the same date? (the web and social media will be a yuuge asset here). Counter-intelligence against those seeking to sabotage. It would take a small, dedicated, experienced staff about two months to organize it.

  6. The way to drain the swamp is to declare that the assets of the central government are being dispersed to the countryside in a military move. It is irresponsible to leave the major components of the govt geographically located in a single area because of WMD. Move 14 or 15 cabinet departments into the countryside. Transportation can move to Michigan, agriculture to Des Moines. Select secondary cities for the placement of the departments, and insist that the bureaucrats disperse their departments within the cities themselves. That way the govt can claim unused office space in the selected cities and spur economic development across the country. The fed employees that do not want to make the move can be dismissed and the departments re-organized accordingly. The removal of the bureaucracy from the capital district will leave behind museums in their former citadels. The bureaucrats who make the move will be impacted by their new non-governmental neighbors and money will be dispersed as the departments move. Supplies of all types will be less expensive in the countryside.

    • The creation of MIRV’s makes your point irrelevant. Doesn’t matter where they are moved. I say it is better if they just don’t exist. They should either be eliminated or cut to 25% of current size. Displaced bureaucrats can’t find jobs for their “transferable” skills, tough titty!

  7. After reading the first 48 comments, I’m disappointed in you guys today. As Z-man says, we cannot depend on the federal gov’t to reform itself. Storming the castle is a satisfying dream, but the reality is so ugly it has to be a LAST resort. I don’t want my kids and grandkids wiped out by a civil war.

    The ONLY realistic way to lasting reform is for us to employ Article 5 of the Constitution. We now – miraculously – have 2/3 of the state legislatures in Republican hands. These state legislatures can both propose, and pass, the Constitutional amendments needed to take power back from the feds, and there’s not a damn thing the Congress can do to stop it.

    We need for Trump to immediately go to work selling the country on the merits of an Article 5 convention of states. We need to pass Mark Levin’s Liberty Amendments. Why those amendments? Because it’s a great slate of amendments, already famous, and tied up in a pretty bow, and it WOULD PASS. Much easier than wrangling over what else to do.

    If we wanted more changes later, FINE. But getting the Liberty Amendments passed by the states would shrink DC – would shrink the federal government – would shrink debt and spending – would shrink centralized influence-peddling.

    If Trump really means to drain the DC swamp – he needs all the power of the states, and of the people, to do it. He cannot do it simply from the top down, or the inside out. We have to help him work from the outside in, and the bottom up. That’s what Article 5 was put in there for – so we could cut DC down to size ourselves, lawfully, constitutionally – and they cannot stop us.

    Yes it will take years of work – so what? What successful change doesn’t take years of work?

    Please go to Trump’s transition website today. https://apply.ptt.gov/yourstory/ He’s ASKING us how to make America great again. Tell him you want the Trump administration to lead the way in organizing an Article 5 effort to pass the Liberty Amendments. Passing these amendments would indeed solidify the promise of 1776, and increase freedom and bounty for all.

    • With the legislative and executive branches of the government nominally under the control of the Republicans, we shouldn’t have to invoke an Article 5 convention. With the two thirds of the states under Republican control, we should be able to pass any amendments we wish.

      In this way, we will discover just how effective Republican control of anything actually is without the risk of losing our constitution entirely. Republicans at all level of government have proven to be jealous guardians of the realm throughout my lifetime. There is very little indication that they have reformed themselves into whole-hearted defenders of the US Constitution.

    • “We need to pass Mark Levin’s Liberty Amendments. ”

      No we need term limits for the Senate and House(hello Mr. Trump). And we need take the debt limit away from 280 people in DC and give that power to 3/4 of state legislatures. “Throw the bums out” and “Take back the credit card”. That is how you motivate millions of citizens in 38 states to contact thousands of state reps and senators. Art V CoS: keep it simple stupid.

    • Pissing in the wind, my friend … pissing in the wind. The States and their “local” governments have been co-opted and don’t even know what States Rights are any more. The problem is liberalism and corruption widespread, systemic and rooted throughout. I like Mark Levin’s work as much as you do but … TPTB won’t allow that to happen. Hell, they have pretty much shit canned the Constitution and BoR over the past decades and except for this election loss had things pretty much where they wanted. No, words on paper won’t mean a thing to these people.

    • Um, given Congress’ track record for the last couple generations, I’m not about to turn them loose on the Constitution. I do trust them…to be themselves, at our expense. No thank you. Enforcement of our existing Constitution would go a very long way toward restoring our Republic, if only those charged with such enforcement had the will. Good luck with that…

  8. Pingback: Go long on pitchforksIowaDawg's Very Own Blawg | IowaDawg's Very Own Blawg

  9. Everybody here talking like they’d welcome a civil war to sort out DC should read up on the Russian Civil War following the Bolshivik take-over: At least 7 – 12 million casualties, mostly civilian, 5 years of devastation and anarchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War

    The Cloud People and their minions and hangers on will not go quietly all at once. THATS why it needs to be done via ‘reorganization’_! One agency at a time, guys.

    The first few hundred or thousand pitchfork wielders will be lucky to only be sent to some camp in some unpleasant part of the country rather then shot outright. The only way such an operation as is being suggested hereabouts would succeed would be for the troops to refuse orders to fire on mostly peaceful demonstrators. The Cloud People will be hiding behind them and, regardless of their sympathies, if you’re shooting at them they’ll be shooting at you, and they will be MUCH better organized, including heavy weapons and air assets.

  10. I have an idea. How about we, every April 15th, all go to the military District of Columbia and take half of their things. Half of their cars, half of their houses, half of their savings, half of their shopping and dinning locals, half of their economic growth options, half of their clothes, half of books, half of their entertainment options. But wait, there’s more. While we’re there let’s impose our moral world view on them and make their very souls saved by the grace of the nation-state, under color of law, for their own good, at gun point, or else. Yes, half of everything and then some! See how they like it. Fuckers. I’m way long pitch forks. Way, way long!

    Out of a kindness, I would tell them to read a little Jefferson, nonetheless, they still won’t understand it when the day of atonement comes, pity.

  11. Very true and to the point. My parents worked in the non-disclosed SAC intelligence business and I grew up travelling the world. My return to attend UMD in College Park put me in the center of that mess. Government is a tough nut to crack, but Donald Trump has put the hairline fractures in the shell.
    I released http://www.michaelfmartin.com/the-establishment-is-testing-for-a-communist-style-revolution/ today because tomorrow they will fail to sway the Electoral College. The establishment still has a few cards to play, and if we let them, it could get messy.
    I think your right, and even with Trump in office, nothing is going to stop the coming currency crisis. All it will take is for the Yen or the Euro to fall off the cliff and we will follow.

  12. My primary criteria for Trump success: did property values in the DC area drop? Did office space costs on K street drop?

    Very simple metrics, not much emotion involved.

  13. “Either the peasants sacrifice to keep the Imperial Capital stocked with cash or the ruling class tightens its belt.”

    LOL… You don’t need peasant sacrifice or ruling class belt tightening when you wield a fiat printing press!

    Can you say: The Fed?

  14. Five years ago Rick Perry pledged to abolish the Dep’t of Energy. He will be head of that Dep’t in a couple of months.

    • And Perry was a Democrat until he discovered the route to becoming governor required being a Republican.

      • An Al-Gore Democrat supporter in Tx. Perry would be preaching warming nonsense now if Gore’s prospects had seemed better to Perry and Gore had got elected to more offices than he did.

  15. Is Zincavage of the Tribe? The quality of his objections seem quite Anglo-Saxon unless perhaps Goldberg is family. The people who fled or were fired from NR are the most reliable incitement possible of Goldberg and the crew running that rag into irrelevance.

    • He’s most likely a troll from the cathedral. Notice how he personally attacked Z. That’s a sure indication, SJW light or cuck, not much difference in the end.

  16. I’m thinking the only course short of burn it with fire, is displacement of authority. Coordinated effort , once judges in place , to put states rights above those not directly vested to the Feds. Wholesale regulatory reform and an unwilling Congress must be brought to their knees in the way they allow Federal agencies to morph into rule making fiefdoms that are completely unaccountable to any but the lobbies (and everyone likes it that way ). It would take time, but a concentrated effort, again, once judges were in place to defend or uphold the crippling of DC, but a firm push to take the authority of the DC crowd an push it downstream to the states would be the way to do it. Also, the left has now decided they embrace states rights, so the time is right.

  17. “Jonah Goldberg, for example, lives in a seven figure home, in one of the more exclusive neighborhoods in the area. He got rich making armpit noises and singing the praises of the managerial state, but mostly the latter. He’s not going back to the former without a fight.” You lying sack of dog shit. Jonah Goldberg has done a thousand times better job than you opposing the managerial state.

  18. Hiring freeze, then move the department of Education to Detroit, Homeland Security to El Paso, Energy to Tulsa, and Interior to Billings. After a few years, move them again, just like musical chairs. Each episode ought to strip off a few layers.

  19. The largest employer in the state of Minnesota is the federal government; the second largest employer is the State of Minnesota. These numbers aren’t readily available as most list makers exclude government employees from their tallies.

    In Texas, the largest employer is usually listed as Texas A&M University at 50,000 employees. However the number of Federal employees in Texas as reported by the Federal government is 193,500; almost 4 times the number of Texas A&M employees

    These numbers hold true for most states that I’ve checked. While the DC metro area undoubtedly has the highest concentration of federal employees, the federal government is no slouch when it comes to the rest of the country. The problem is not larger than we thought; it’s larger than we can imagine.

    Here is a site that I’ve not vetted, but offers easy access to what seems to be accurate numbers:

    http://www.governing.com/gov-data/federal-employees-workforce-numbers-by-state.html

  20. I was at a party just outside DC. I met a guy who wrote regulations for OSHA. Here’s my chance, I thought. I told him about the time I was working at a small company. First the OSHA inspector came through and said that all the doors had to open inward so no one walking along the hallway would get smacked in the face by a suddenly opening door. Two weeks later, the fire marshal did his inspection and said that all of the doors had to open outward so that if there was a fire, hordes of panicked workers wouldn’t pile up against the door, making it impossible to open.

    I explained that it was a good example of the kind of regulation that puts undue burden on small businesses and that regularly get disobeyed since there was no way to get a ruling on who was right, the fire marshal or the OSHA inspector. He looked at me rather pityingly and told me that there was a _process_ and that all of these kinds of things are cleared up before the regulation is released. I protested feebly that this was a real incident of a regulation that was not deconflicted, but each time got the same superior same superior smile and smug reply.

    On that day, I was that bureaucrat’s Bigfoot riding a unicorn.

  21. One thing I noticed when in DC were the number of young people working as assistants, advisers, researchers or aides for the elected officials.
    You can also see this if you watch congressional hearings and look at those sitting behind those being interrogated by the committee members and look at those sitting behind the interrogators.
    I first noticed this when I literally walked into my US Representatives office in DC (anyone can do this) to give him a piece of my mind about some topics of interest. He was not in, so they assigned some young, bright whipper-snapper to listen to my belly-aching and pretend they cared what I had to say (he was a decent fellow, nice chap; right out of college)
    Turns out that all these “assistants” are college grads / law school grads that went directly to DC out of school .
    IOW, they are fucking clueless.
    They have never held a real job in their entire lives (just like Obama) and they only know what their professors (read, lefty, academic egg-heads who live in a fantasy world where decisions have no consequences) have told them.
    IOW, they are fucking clueless.

    Just one reason, of many, why our government does such incredibly stupid things.

    • In 2010, a young guy working for me told me that his friends — about five years after college graduation — told me that his more ambitious friends were no longer planning to go work for Wall Street. They were all looking for jobs in DC.

    • Numerous of my law classmates went directly to jobs in DC as staffers for elected officials or interest groups, and others for government agencies. As a product of the Reagan era during my formative years and because I grew up as a farm kid in flyover country, I assumed they were making a yuuuuge mistake to forego the awesome money to be made in the private sector. Twenty-five years later I suspect most of them are contemplating retirement with their fully funded pensions and health care for life, having never worked a weekend in their life. I’m an idiot.

      • I’m an idiot as well. I was a long distance trucker and a owner-operator. My then brother-in-law was a union steward for the city’s municipal workers. He begged me to take a union job driving a garbage truck. I would snow plow on automatic overtime as well. I declined, thinking; Hell, I’m King Of The Road! I ain’t driving no garbage truck.

        Big mistake. He’s retired now with his solid gold retirement and his forever health bene’s, and I’m a schmuck with a bad back working part time at a crummy job.

        • A “schmuck” #2 who still has his soul. I too look around me and see those who worked for the .gov enjoying lavish retirements on my dime and wonder about my decisions. Given the chance to do it all again, I would make the same choices, but I’d have worked relentlessly to prevent the government takeover by the unions and the clerical class.

      • Ditto. As another child of Reagan, I thought my dad was crazy when he was strongly recommending that I try to get a job with the government after grad school and law school. I wanted to swim in the riches afforded by the free market. Boy was I an idiot. Not that I am a pauper, but my life would have been a hell of a lot easier working every day 7 to 3 on Flex time.

      • Well, I am sorry you are a lawyer, attorney but other than that I hope you did some good in your career. I guess I don’t hold the field in very high regard in a general sense.

        As for being envious of your “friend” who went for the easy way, I am always reminded of those who fought the good fight in the words of Gen. G.S. Patton:

        “You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON’T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, “Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.” No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, “Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!””

        Your friend has to live with himself and what he “did” taking the cowards way to easy street. Maybe the guys who do that don’t have much of a conscience in the first place, but you did it your way, and did not do someone else’s bidding. Your sir can be proud of the path you chose. Him, eh, not so much.

    • Our new representative to the Massachusetts general court is 22 years old. Let me repeat that: 22 years old. Never had a job, never will.

      • Ah, a fellow Masshole. We live in an odious land, my friend. I used to live in the district that sent Joe Kennedy III to Congress. People here would vote for a flaming bag of dog shit if it had the name Kennedy on it. Or just a D next to its name.

  22. Maybe Trump should employ ‘restructuring’ specialists from the provinces like hangmen in days of old. The hangmen used to be brought in from several states away anonymously to do their business and immediately departed anonymously as soon as their business was concluded. Prevented the relatives of the condemned from being able to exert ‘suasion’ against any local who might be in the trade. Or you could employ a roving band of restructures who show up at a particular building suddenly, take over the servers, change the locks and then escort out those riffed (RIF – reduction in force). Note, they get a package (hopefully a good one), a half day to clear out personal belongings and say goodby If they want (most don’t) but they are off premises by close of business without the means to reenter unescorted (that postal thing, doncha know).

    Thing is, both management texts and personal experience of ‘restructuring’ agree (for once) that it is far better to evaluate in secret with a small team and then bring down the hammer, swiftly, all at once. Otherwise the uncertainty is drawn out, those with abilities leave and those without good options due to local ties, spouse’s career, marginal ability, etc., are pretty unproductive. Management has to be able to say, “That’s it,everybody still here still has a job, maybe a restructured one, but job. So let’s start tomorrow with a clean slate”. Doing this well (restructured firm is now profitable – making remaining jobs pretty safe) is EXACTLY how Romney got rich and probably one reason why he was such a tough sell against Obama. Too many voters had taken part in such exercises over the last 15 – 20 years or knew someone who had. Even when it’s not you and even if you can see the economic logic of it, it still leaves a bad taste.

    • Not to pick nits, but Romney got rich by using financial leverage to acquire companies which had American-based production, then firing the American workers and sending the production jobs (and frequently the equipment) overseas, usually to Asia. The “restructured” companies (read: no more expensive American workers) were then sold and/or taken public. Romney personally destroyed the lives of thousands of decent, hardworking Americans in flyover country, which is why he lost the election to Obama.

      Back in those days I was sparring with Scumbag Frum on his website. I told him repeatedly that the election was over the day the Obama campaign released this video:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLatxTzVE4w

      You can do a lot of things in America and still become President, but being a greedy corporate raider who profits at the expense of the misery you’ve created among working class Americans is *not* one of them. I’ll never forget watching Carl Rove make an ass of himself on election night standing in front of an interactive map of Ohio and contending that voters in the working class counties of Ohio would turn out and carry the day for Romney. They didn’t and Obama carried OH, as well as MI, WI, PA, and IA.

      I streamed Obama’s news conference on Friday while working. To Obama’s credit, he indicated clearly that the reason he was able to win his elections was that he spent the time and effort to understand the concerns of working class Americans, and tailored his campaign messaging accordingly. He effectively stated that Hillary lost precisely because she failed to connect with working class Americans.

      • Guest;
        Devastating ad: That video made Romney’s Bain Capital sound like it ran a series of Mafia bust-out scams but without using those exact words. Because it’s a DNC political add, only the union side of the story is shown although they were at least as culpable for the shutdown in 1994. IIRC, the plant in question was a minor supplier to the old Smith, Corona Marchant Co which had fallen on hard times due its core businesses (adding machines & typewriters) being devastated by technological changes, Asian competitors, highly burdensome labor contracts and sclerotic management.

        So what are the obvious moves here if you’re a free-market venture/vulture capitalist_? Buy control cheap (it it was profitable it wouldn’t be for sale), leverage the buyout, increase free cash flow to service the debt by ‘reorganizing’ the workforce (bust the union contract*) and reducing redundant staff (middle management is often where the real money is), then float/sell the new, now more productive company.

        Regardless of whether union obstructionism was as much to blame as previous management incompetence in this plant closure and the other cases cited in the video, there remains the small matter of the workers’ disrupted lives, which the video so expertly shows.

        I wondered greatly at the time of the 2012 primaries why the RNC couldn’t see the completely obvious lines of attack that the DNC would use against Romney, given how Bain partners had made their wealth: Cloud people obliviousness was a key part of the reason why Romney lost a potentially winnable election.

        But Romney would be the perfect guy to down-size one government agency after another.

        *Once the Fed Govt took over unions’ significant non-wage value added functions (Safety, Pensions, etc.) in the late ’60’s as part of Johnson’s Great Society, decreasing labor productivity (i.e. restrictive work rules, overmanning, etc.) became their sole raison d’être.

      • Guest: It wasn’t just financial leverage. The whole corporate raider gig is played looking for companies meeting certain criteria that can be dismantled and whose assets are worth more sold-off than left as currently applied. The workers, well, an after thought except for the financial considerations of severance packages, etc. which of course are hard negotiated down due to company circumstances.

        As for your comment about “To Obama’s credit …” I give him credit for diddly squat! He had nothing to do with his election. It was all done for him and if he contributed anything in content or tone, it was due to his drilling from years in the Indonesian madrasa, the associations from the communist party and the hustlers in the race and community organizing bit, ala ACORN. He ain’t got nothing! Never had, and still doesn’t. He is an idiot regardless of his skin color. Sorry Moochelle but that’s the truth. Stupidity doesn’t have a “color.”

    • Don’t forget that 17 of those companies filed bankruptcy after they were looted by Bain & Company with some of them spun off as private entities.

      I have no problem with Romney getting rich by following our laws–it’s not his fault the laws are what they are. My problem with him is that a guy with 17 bankruptcies to his name shouldn’t have been throwing stones at Trump because of his four bankruptcies.

      http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204331304577140850713493694

      • I don’t have a problem with what Romney did either. I probably would have done the same thing if I had the opportunity. But I would have had the presence of mind to understand that doing so would automatically render me unelectable as a candidate for President (let alone the years of booze, drugs, rock-n-roll, loose women, furry farm animals and Wellington boots). Who am I kidding . . . I’m going straight to Hell.

    • Al Baby! I like your thinking! Radical !!

      I think we needs us an Army of “Punishers.” We know who the bad guys are and where they live. Start at the top. Take the head of the snake completely off. We know who they are. And they know who they are. Maybe all it would take is a couple of examples and the rest of them would wind of with Billy Jeff down on Lolita Island without any further invitation.

  23. Since almost all of the States, and their pension and health plans, are also approaching or in financial extremis, there is going to be a huge food fight down the road. There are way too many Jonah Goldbergs in this country parasitizing every level of government and business…..I would advise skipping the pitchforks and going long ammo, and maybe samurai swords….

    • “… and maybe samurai swords…” = See Indiana Jones, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scene on swords versus guns.

      • The only weapon you, and all of us possess, capable of stopping government, is money. Specifically, refusing to give it to the government.

        When you stop paying your taxes, the results are predictable. But it has to be well organized. The few defiant rebels are too easy to pick off and haul away in chains. I remember earlier this year a group of ranchers somewhere in the USA made the sheriff back down in an armed stand-off. Imagine if your entire town decided not to pay taxes. Then imagine if that happened in every town across the US.

        The sound of coins not dropping into the government’s coffers have a much greater effect and is far more devastating than any firearm.

        • Unless, of course, if the gov in question can merely print money. Or move the decimal point on their bank accounts on a whim.
          The mercenaries get paid and you’re in deep do do.
          I read somewhere that if you fully confiscated all the income -100% of it- from all people making $300,000+ per year, you would only cover the deficit.
          Gubbmint don’t care about no income taxes. Those are just a method of discipline & control.

        • Re: “The sound of coins not dropping into the government’s coffers have a much greater effect and is far more devastating than any firearm.”

          One reason the powers-that-be are so in favor of digital money and abolishment of physical currency and coins is that they will have total control over it, via their proxies in the banking system. Since your pay will only be a series of numbers in cyberspace and no something physical which you can hold in your hands, they will be able to control it as they see fit. If a given subject/”citizen” does something the regime likes, their account can be credited; if that individual does something that displeases the ruling class, a penalty in the form of a deduction can be assessed. If a dissident needs to be silenced, access to his digital wealth can be cutoff altogether.

          • @ Georgiaboy61 – I fear that time is just around the corner as we move closer and closer to a cashless society. Now that iPhones and Smartpones have pay-point ability, why would anyone want to bother with paper and coins? I don’t even use paper tickets at the airport or train anymore, I check in online and scan the QR code off my phone to pass entry. As this generation becomes more and more comfortable with the idea of not carrying currency, and more an more stores accommodate this new means of payment, it will be that much easier for governments to control it.

            In my opinion, the idea of hoarding currency is pointless when a government can change it at any time as we saw with the conversion to the Euro. And as America experienced with gold in the 1930’s, it takes only a simple stroke of a pen to make possession of gold illegal, and thus pointless as a means of exchange.

            My brother-in-law and I were discussing this topic and he asked if I was stocking up on gold. I told him after the economy collapses, we would be better off with a shipping container of cigarettes since they are the standard currency of the imprisoned.

        • Right on Karl. Consent, withdrawal of consent is the greatest weapon ever devised.
          What is more effective is a plurality of people who create a zeitgeist, an unorganized resistance, a spontaneous movement of people, a sea change in thinking along the same lines. Like right now, how many here haven’t thought of a tax revolt, how many here have, raise your hands!, how many of us would love to defy the status quo, and stop paying tribute to the corrupt greedy bastards? That is where preference cascades begin from.
          Consent is so powerful, many of us can not fathom it’s audacity, until it is that epiphany.

          This great and fun short story is a masterpiece, a template of your consent.
          It’s the best allegory I’ve ever read that defines why consent is not only such a motive power, but that it is something that can not be taken, it can only be given, and that is the thing that matters most right there:

          And Then There Where None
          http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php

        • Well Karl, you amaze me! Getting a little rebellious in your old age, aren’t you? I didn’t think the Germans had it in them to rebel or even consider such.

          But your idea is a good and popular one but unfortunately never gains traction. I think everyone it too afraid of the big bad monster lurking out there. They only think about themselves and forget about the power of millions acting in concert.

          I call it “Don’t feed the beast.”

          Don’t let some comments fool you. The Fed needs every frick’in buck they can get their grubby fingers on. That is why the IRS is so powerful and April 15 is so locked into the nations psyche.

          • @ LetsPlay – Ah, see. And just when you thought you had us all figured out! 🙂 We’re not all the goose-stepping imbeciles, mindlessly parroting the party line the as movies portray us. As I have said before, western countries may have a different approach to problem solving, but we all have the exact same problems.

          • Karl, time for German’s to put a torch to the racial guilt card the cultural marxist keep dealing.
            Time to get rid of that insidious vile creature in a pant suit and her fellow marxists. German’s must withdraw their consent, Make Germany Great Again. You got to secede in mind and heart from the State.

            This is enlightening, it’s not much different than the attack on dirt people and our traditions everywhere. We are all bitter clingers and Deplorable’s.

            The Attack on the Traditional German Family
            https://vertigopolitix.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/first-blog-post/

          • @ Doug – The guilt card is a difficult one to overcome for one simple reason – there are still Germans and Jews living today who experienced what happened. This is not the case in America with the blacks as there is no one with a living memory of that episode in American history. However here in Germany, almost every German family has a personal war history and a living relative who can still talk about it. Our race card will remain active for at least one or two more generations. And I’m very sure there will be groups who will make a point of bringing it up again in 2045.

          • Karl, the cultural marxist win by making you submit to their lies and bigotry. They are the real racists, they created the term racist out of whole cloth my friend, responsible for more genocide than all of the human race combined in all of history.
            They always lie, they always project what they are guilty of on their enemies. It a guilt trip writ large. Remember it is the marxists, the dark forces of Fabianism who where behind and created the bloody cauldron of both world wars. “Order out of chaos”.
            Sometime here the Germanic peoples are going to have to say enough with the race and class warfare baiting, and false narratives, best sooner than later, it will only be more difficult down the road. That genocidal psychopath in a pantsuit running things is a key member of the human extinction movement. Don’t you see how cunning the commie bitch is, how she is playing you guys? One of the goals of importing violent bloody murdering raping musloids is to cultivate that whole German guilt thing till you all are terrified of your own shadows. It’s totalitarianism 101. Use fear to control people, make everyone you can afraid, and the ones that are not afraid stick out like a sore thumb and you now divided a people, and the people not afraid are easy to pick off at your leisure.
            And besides Karl, your a sharp minded fellow, common sense says how can you be responsible for something you didn’t do? Seriously man!
            That’s like me being guilty of slavery in my country’s past because I’m a White Man. In a marxists wildest dreams I am. They can take their dogma and shove it. Sure I feel empathy for people who suffered. Any decent moral person should feel remorse. The human race can be a blood thirsty savage species. It still don’t make me one by association. To rule me, define who I am, by guilt, Fuck You. Because fuck you thats why.
            I think the German people are a great people. You guys got a hell of a lot going for you.
            Make Germany Great Again. Just like us for Yanks, it all begins with each of us. And I’m rootin’ for you.

        • There is also the possibility of restricting food. I would imagine a megapolis of Washington and Baltimore has largely pushed out food production in favour of large houses with gardens that aren’t farmed much. Once the peasants outside stop growing food and shipping it in, the end is pretty much on the horizon.

          Still, the writers and thinkers in the Imperial capital can always force the resupply of food by, er, writing articles and talking on TV shows about the need for food to keep coming in. I believe that will always persuade the rabble who grow stuff to quickly come to their senses. Otherwise it’s all the secretaries and filing clerks being ordered out on foraging…

    • I don’t think Zman meant “pitchforks” literally. It was, what do you call it … a metaphor for fighting implement … weapon of death and destruction. A method to dispose of your enemy once and for all. Get my drift./sarc ha ha

  24. If it’s going to happen we have to do a better job than the French. Reading both volumes of The Old Regime and the Revolution by deTocqueville is pretty depressing when you realize that the same functionaries who enforced the centralization under the Bourbons not only survived the revolution but went on to be the organizational heart of the Terror and gave us Napoleon and thirty years of continental war. They were exterminating the wrong people when they went after the nobility. We have to do a better job.

    • Hey! (-:
      We did do a better job once already, and the great thing is the French helped us in the end, then walked away. They could have taken the entire country if the King wanted, we where sitting ducks. We get a re-do here, that don’t happen like ever. The template for a proper successful revolution for liberty is right there ready to be used again. (Not the milk toast pablum agitprop and lies they taught us in school).

      • France was already a basket case economically when they helped us in our revolution. They did it all on borrowed money that ended up raising their public debt to the point that they couldn’t even pay the interest. It was why they ended up having to call the Estates General and went down in flames. They didn’t walk away out of the goodness of their hearts but because they couldn’t have paid their soldiers.

        • They where pretty well spent out fighting the British Empire in other places by then. But since when did not having the money to make a conquest to get more money in the future stop any self respecting tyrant? Which kind of gives the french due credit for doing the right thing.
          Personally, I’d bet a left nut the French didn’t want to mess with the Patriots is more the reason they hightailed it.
          They lost in the French Indian War, to the very men who fought against them who later where the real effective warriors, the same men of Roger’s Rangers, who became the Officers who were able to fight effectively against the Brits like in the Carolina’s.

        • But you know something teapartydoc, there’s another way to do what Zman says is impossible, that is to go around the Leviathan and leave it to wither on the vine.
          It involves a combination of things, all of which basically create a crisis of irevelancy and illegitimacy for the clouds. Trump is a huge factor. No matter what they do to him they make him stronger and themselves weaker. Us dirt people gave them the finger big time on election day, not only by electing Trump, but by rejecting their corruption and agenda. A resounding act of peaceful redress heard round the world. Whatever the Donald is, he is President because of us dirt people. And that the thing right there, Trump is powerful, far more powerful than the clouds could imagine, because us dirt people, our consent, our will, is the most powerful thing.
          I believe it is very difficult for most people, and I’m going out on a limb here because exactly it is unfathomable to many, and apostasy to many, our consent as American’s, is both the most powerful weapon ever created, and the most creative force ever devised. That for most of this Republics history people who crave power and wealth over us dirt people have strived relentlessly to diminish and remove us from our consent, and the only reason that cesspool on the Potomac is what it is today is because they could only be that what they are because they figured out how to garner tacit consent. The moment that changed, and it did change make no mistake, their “power” evaporated like a fart in a hurricane.
          It is going to take time for the long term far reaching tangible effects of withdrawal of consent to show up.
          And to those who doubt this thing called consent and it’s withdrawal and just how powerful it is, well it is right in front of you, it smacked you upside your head. The Clinton global organized crime syndicate and it’s affiliated members in the western hemisphere got their arse’s handed to them on Nov. 8th. Us dirt people, us bitter clingers, us trailer trash and Okies, us Deplorable’s, Tea Bagger’s, domestic terrorists, us right wing radical racists, us gun toting mouth breathers, we beat the motherfuckers, we won. We won huge. And whats even better, that is nothing compared to what we are capable of.
          And anyone who says different needs their head examined.

          • You’re right, but this was only one round in what promises to be a very long, ugly war…

    • .223 or .556….go with what’s most readily available and has the widest number of weapons available ta hand.

      Sure, the smaller caliber may only inflict wounds, but wounded are more disabling to the structure of the foe.

      • Who was the great Austrian military philosopher who said in war quantity has a quality all it’s own?
        You got to think like a Guerrilla, you don’t have unlimited resupply, what you can carry and cache is your supply.
        Trust me, on semi auto in a firefight you can burn through 300+ rounds in minutes. Go with .556, you can hump close to twice the combat load-out for the same weight, more opportunity for battlefield pick-up resupply.
        Have a designated marksman run a .30 cal precision semi auto, everyone carries an extra mag or bandoleer for him. Having a DM on overwatch is the next best thing to a belt fed. Have 2 DM’s, they can spot for each other, and provide better fire suppression.

          • Get yourself some citizen combat training courses. They are profoundly transformative.
            This guy below, Max, made of the right stuff. He teaches small unit infantry tactics at many levels. SUT is the basis of all combat. To say it empowers you is an indescribable understatement. Max’s operation is in WV. It’s a great experience.
            First a British SAS, then a counter terrorist commando, immigrated to America, joined up became a Special Forces operator, then a combat medic. About as patriotic an American you can know
            https://www.maxvelocitytactical.com

            There is a high speed fellow out in the Rockies, Name of John Mosby, he runs classes all over. Another Special Forces operator. Max and John’s philosophies and teaching style parallel each other.
            https://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com

            Both these men are of the highest caliber. They have risked and risk much doing what they are doing to help us citizens become learned in the ways and thinking of self defense. There is an important distinction to their teaching that is unique among most of the tactical instruction. It is combat orientated, and orientated to the asymmetrical environment of combat defensive tactics, processes and thinking. A whole other thing from so called square range “tacticool” schools.

          • Hey, once a Boy Scout always a Boy Scout: Always be prepared was our creed.
            Seriously LP, it comes down to the simplest of things, how you think. They way I figure it, it all begins with each of us, that in the best intentions, there is no voting our way out of this, voting as intended was to keep ourselves from having to vote our way out of this to begin with, and that is where we have to be once again, that my consent is the crux of my self determination and individualism.
            The real battle is for hearts and minds, that to be an individual in liberty means you are not alone. That this is our culture, it is something very unique, it is viable and righteous, that because it is always under attack by forces of darkness means it is right, that culture is upstream of politics, and real politik, that it is more powerful than anything, it is why America became what it is. It is why we win.

        • Actually, I think it was one of the modern Dimmocrats’ predecessors, Stalin, who said it.

    • 7.62 X 39 and an SKS. Inexpensive ammo and rifle, so I’ve been told. It doesn’t make that unpleasant sharp crack the .223 round makes. SKS is pleasant to shoot, very accurate out to 150 yards, so I’ve been told. An attractive bit of kit, too.

        • Hips and heads John… if it comes to that. I believe in us dirt people, we are better than they are and we win with peaceful means. We already are winning. Hard to tell what the empire will do, if they employ force and violence to retain power. I figure it’s not so much our arms, but the fact we have not used them against the empire yet that is a defining thing. Look at the lengths they went to execute LeVoy Finnicum to stop them from exposing the links of corruption they found in the computer records to the Clinton’s, and rig their prosecution of the others from the Bundy Ranch standoff and the Burns Oregon peaceful occupation of the Malheur wild life refuge. The connection of corruption between the Clinton crime syndicate and the specious use of federal assets to protect those mineral resources is instructive to the potential for those federal actors in vests and plates employing violent force to quell dissent.
          It must have been a serious shock when the juries nullified the feds cases and exonerated the protesters.

          • “It must have been a serious shock when the juries nullified the feds cases and exonerated the protesters.”

            Key word “nullified”. Now that the election is past, the awareness of jury nullification needs to be spread far and wide, soonest. The true role of the jury is to try the “law” as well as the alleged crime. If the “law” is not supported by our Constitution, “not guilty”. This is not to say we acquit crooks, murderers, etc. You know, actual criminals; they get hung…

    • The best rifle is the one for which you have enough ammunition.
      If you can, have a tool in as many popular calibers as possible. That way you can claim unused ammunition from encounter sites and keep yourself supplied longer.

    • Dispersal of assets. The correct military option in light of the war on terror and the existence of WMD.

    • Thats a great question. An insurgent movement of Deplorable’s have laid siege via hearts and minds already. Waging MAGA siege warfare. The empire is in panic right now, metaphorically they have raised their drawbridges in the form of doubling down on their narratives, created hasty defenses such as it’s the Russian’s fault, the fake news, the regime is laying in a shadow government of stay behind actors and operatives as we speak, striking back with crisis as a means in the form of faithless elector’s, the last is hilarious irony, they are seeking shelter from the wrath of the dirt people behind the US Constitution and precepts of Republican form of government.

  25. Ordinary people I know think we need to haul Congress en masse into the street and shoot them. This is becoming a middle of the road opinion.

    We here on the fringe retain our position perhaps due to a better grasp of numbers: both houses of Congress together don’t comprise even .005% of the problem.

    • “These people are playing with matches… I don’t think they understand the scope and scale of the wildfire they are flirting with. They are fucking around with a civil war that could last a decade and cause millions of deaths… and the sad truth is that 95% of the problems we have in this country could be solved tomorrow, by noon… simply by dragging 100 people out in the street and shooting them in the fucking head.”
      http://taxicabdepressions.com/?p=1193

      • He ran a great blog some time ago but posts so rarely now it’s (sadly) hardy worth mentioning.

        But even all his earlier posts ar a great read.

    • Heh, that was back in the day. Now we have an army of Deplorables! And thanks to our freedoms, we are armed to the teeth. I am Spartacus! I am William Wallace! I am GS Patton! I am Wm Sherman! I am Chesty Puller! I am Deplorable! Death to Despicables!

      • I am Trump, hear me roar!!! (I always knew that stupid song would be good for something)

      • That “Sherman” reference isn’t going to take you very far where I live. The South voted overwhelmingly for a Billionaire from NYC and we aren’t in the mood to be put down by the ProgreSSives anymore either.
        As Ben Franklin said ,”We either hang together, or surely we will hang seperately”.
        IMO, we fly the flags of the 1775 Revolution, but if demonized the South will split and fly the Crossed Stars again.
        btw, Patton came from CSA officer corp. stock.

    • We don’t need no Goth’s or Hun’s, there’s the dirt people with rope and rifles who hold 90% of the land and it’s resources. If you didn’t notice, they showed up on election day and had a non violent revolution.
      The imperial city may look daunting in it’s leviathan guise, but it is an illusion, full to the brim with an Amerikan Nomenklaturer, whose power is predicated on theft and extraction from the productive and the appearance of legitimacy it can continue to do so via threat of force and use of violence it defied, a system of fiat money and fiat administrative tyranny, fiat rule of men. So to me Illegitimacy is it’s stock in trade. It could never have become the monstrosity it is without being illegitimate to begin with.
      It’s downfall will be it’s attempting a bloodless coup to counterbalance the withdrawal of consent, and a clear mandate, read will of the governed, of the dirt people.
      It now functions to survive it’s own illegitimacy, everything else is a side show. This is prelude to dirt people resistance it can not survive without becoming an aggressive totalitarian domestic police state, which it is for all intents and purposes on the cusp of becoming.
      The practices of it’s political meddling and wars on other people, other sovereign nations, is going to be brought home if they are not stopped.

      • Was always satisfied to have learned how to reach out and “touch” some(one)thing at 500 yards early in life. Always gives one the ability to execute Plan “B”. There are an awful lot of us. Often not where one expects either…

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