…because they’re cutting hours to compensate for the burden of Obamacare: the penalties for success. I know that the boycotters are defining ‘success’ as ‘reinstating the hours,’ but your average retail franchise is not actually a megacorporation and it does not have the resources that apparently the average member of the Online Left thinks that it does. If they did, they’d probably be offering their employers healthcare. Note that in the HuffPo article above Taco Bell made it a point to note that their corporate restaurants weren’t cutting hours – no! REALLY? – but I’m not sure that the author of said article really got that distinction.
Anyway: if the individual franchises don’t have the money to put up with Obamacare, they’ll pursue a strategy that will at least allow them to stay in business. If the Left successfully targets an individual store or franchise, the end result will default to… no more store or franchise. That means less jobs. Also, less stores.
Moe Lane
PS: Mind you, the ability of the Online Left to push an issue in, say, the town of Guthrie, Oklahoma (population: 10,191) is an interesting question. It seems to be a perfect little test bed to see how well these folks do outside of their comfort zones.
Fewer. Fewer hours/stores.
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I’ll take my reply off-air.
The problem is that the little dears seem to think that businesses have a limitless supply of money that isn’t being shared for the common good. Pointing out the realities that they refuse to admit only gets you a puzzled look or foot-stomping outrage at the unfairness of life.
Show me the money. Why don’t we just ask these liberals to start a business and comply with the regulations and show us hot its’ done. This isn’t like gymnastics. They seem to think they know so much, let them do it.
They do show us how its done: pretend to be a green energy come, bilk the gov for millions, then declare bankruptcy. Give some money back to the dems and everybody is happy
D#$%, you got me. Of course no one notices when all those employees are abruptly let go and the new fiscal cliff bill has to include more funding to pay off these losses, but their heart was in the right place, and that really does trump everything.
Could they find a democrat in OK?
I’m sure there are a few .. check the colleges.
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Mew
There was also one in congress recently. Boren.
Yes, of course there are Democrats in Oklahoma. Back in the twenties, they had so much overwhelming influence that when some hundreds were murdered during the Tulsa Race Riots they mostly covered it up. The mass grave has still not been found. The state government only admitted that something happened last decade. Gene Stipe, a Democrat who entered politics during the thirties, was a mover and shaker. The Feds finally caught up with him, again last decade (2000-2010), and he had the influence to get punished with community service, giving advice to the state legislature.
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This not the same as online left.
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First, some of Oklahoma Democrats are white supremacists, or feel the need to justify why they aren’t white supremacists. Secondly, there might not exactly be huge numbers of Leftist Democrats in Oklahoma with deep enough political roots to grasp the history of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, much less to have really overwhelming influence within it.
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The online hardcore left probably correlates with the hard left. I suspect that in Oklahoma, the left tends to concentrate in Norman (big college town) and maybe Tulsa (also a big place with a college that might support some number of leftists). I have no idea what that means for Guthrie, as I have little clue where Guthrie is in relation to the other two.
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For each national party there are up to fifty state parties plus some odd other parties, for territories, DC, et al. The Democrat parties do not all march shoulder to shoulder, with the same step and tread. Claims of the big sixties discontinuity tend to ignore that it couldn’t have been a case of all of a suddenly having the manpower to replace all party officials at all levels, and still have all of the parties be a going concern. I imagine those claims, where they have any basis at all, tend to come from the big cities faction of the Democratic Parties. The big cities factions would have started out mostly northern, been much more congenial to the left, and would have been much more complicit with white supremacism rather then pursuing it as a platform in its own right. This would obviously be more suited to a cosmetic appearance of change.
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Oklahoma would have had less ability to support big city type factions in the sixties. Furthermore, the Norman and Tulsa political factions of the day might not have been suited for leftists to show up out of nowhere and change things from the ground up.
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The internet active leftist Oklahoman that may be most familiar is Mercedes Lackey. IIRC, she is a Democrat who came from out of state in the eighties, I suspect at the time without a deep understanding of the the history of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.
“First, some of Oklahoma Democrats are white supremacists, or feel the need to justify why they aren’t white supremacists.”
This is no different than Democrats from anywhere else.
As you say, they conflate the franchisor with the franchisee. Just because corporate Taco Bell/Yum made hundreds of millions of dollars does not mean that the guy who owns 3 stores in Alabama is flush. Doesn’t mean he isn’t flush, but not so flush that he can pay for healthcare for 100 people. I think I saw a quote about the Applebees franchises, that if an individual store clears $100,000 for the owner, after all the expenses are paid, then it’s doing well. Healthcare expenses/fines could easily wipe that out.
Drive a business that doesn’t tow the line out of business? Just means more customers for the businesses that do. Workers be damned, the Chicago way is all about supporting the cronies and flunkies.
Moe, Moe…You’re attempting to use real logic. You must convert to Lefty Logic 101 in which driving a business OUT of business creates more jobs because people go on unemployment…or something like that.
No, they don’t think they’re driving a business out of business. They are in a constant state of surprise and confusion by the real world results of perfectly reasonable leftist decisions. There’s still former union Hostess employees trying to put the pieces together about what happened. The rich have infinite money, its a known leftist fact, it dones’t matter if that rich person runs Hostess or just owns the local Tastee-Freeze, its the same.
I’m reminded of the sheep in the fourth Hitchhiker’s book, that were constantly being surprised at everything, from the sun coming up in the morning to all the green stuff in the fields.
As a native Oklahoman, I can answer that for you right now. The Online Left has NO ability to push an issue in Guthrie, or indeed anywhere in Oklahoma that does not fit into one of the following categories:
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1) The low-income areas in OKC and Tulsa.
2) The ritzier areas of important OKC/Tulsa suburbs (Norman being the most obvious example).
3) Areas immediately adjacent to major universities.
4) Towns with major concentrations of minorities.
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Conspicuously absent from that list — eastern Oklahoma, typically the strongest area of Democratic support on a regional level. It still is, actually. But things were getting so bad over there (for given D-oriented values of “bad”) that Dan Boren decided not to defend his Congressional seat, and they have now elected their first TRUE Republican (as in, not someone who was originally a Democrat and then switched parties) in state history.
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So, no, they won’t be able to push anything in Guthrie. But they’re perfectly welcome to waste resources trying.
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(SIDE NOTE: I love this line. “Owners of fast-food franchises across the nation are blind-siding hourly employees by cutting their weekly hours…” Plenty of Republicans/conservatives/libertarians with access to microphones and soapboxes were screaming into the former from atop the latter for the entire last year and longer. This is PRECISELY what they said was going to happen. If you didn’t expect it, you weren’t paying any attention, and I don’t feel all that sorry for you.)