A Local CEO Implores His People to Vote Romney
A tipster wrote, saying that the following screed was emailed by a local business owner to all employees on the morning of election day. The man sending it is David Buonerba, CEO of Trans American, a local customs brokerage. I don’t quite understand why businessowners can’t be satisfied with having a loyal set of hard-working employees, and has to give them a set of lies and try to force them to vote a particular way, especially when it’s palpably against their own interests.
A message from the C.E.O. on Election Day Nov. 6, 2012
Today is a very important day. I am voting for Republicans and urge all of you to do the same.
Gov. Romney has not only solid business experience but has the necessary leadership skills to lead our country in the right direction.
Not really. Governor Romney is a vulture capitalist. To the extent that “Bain Capital” is a business, it exists to swallow and regurgitate struggling businesses, using other people’s money as leverage. It’s a fantastic way for the rich to get richer, but hardly indicative of “leadership skills”. 
Some facts about Gov. Romney:
He is of impeccable moral character
He is a good father and husband
He is a very successful self-made businessman
He is well educated with an M.B.A. and law degree
He donated ALL of his (family) inheritance to charity
He donates at least 20% of his annual income to charity
His “15% tax rate” is our Capital Gains tax rate… he has already paid either corporat tax at 35% or personal income tax at 30%+ on the money that he has invested (that he pays the 15% on!)
Self-made? While he may have donated his inheritance proceeds, by the time George Romney died, Mitt was already quite wealthy. For him to be “self-made”, we’d be assuming that his father didn’t support Mitt throughout his youth. After all, Ann Romney explained that she and Mitt struggled through college, selling off parts of his stock portfolio just to buy Chateaubriand. As for Romney’s track record of taxpaying, we learned in the waning days of the campaign that Harry Reid was right – Romney likedly avoided paying any tax whatsoever for years through a carefully crafted loophole available only to the superwealthy.
Unfortunately, we know very little about Barack Obama’s background because he REFUSES to release his academic and personal records. Obama has never run a business and has no idea how to create value to grow the economy.
Mitt Romney didn’t release more than one solitary complete tax return, for one year. He released no academic or other personal records. Romney supporters have unclean hands on this particular whine. You don’t have to run a business to know how to run a government. See Collins, Chris.
Every single member of the TA family of companies knows far more about economics than Obama… we all (actually) balance our budgets. Obama promised to cut the national debt in half… he increased it by $6+ trillion. What’s a trillion $?…If you spent a dollar a second it would take you 2,700 (two thousand seven hundred) years to spend a trillion $.
Of course, this ignores the depression spiral in which the country was falling in the latter half of 2008. Also, the trillion-dollar war in Iraq paid on credit, which was waged by choice, not out of necessity. 
President Obama has no business experience and is a poor leader surrounded by a bunch of nuckleheads. He recently admitted, “I can’t change Washington from within!” What a profound admission.
Frankly, I agree with him and he should leave Washington ASAP, because it sure is a mess! Barack Obama won election 4 years ago on “Hope and Change”. The definition of hope is “to have a wish to get or do something”… we need more than more wishes after 4 years!
You can’t change Washington from within. You need people – the grassroots – to help change Washington from without. To attack that notion is to attack the very principles of representative democracy. As for Hope and Change, we got both. President Obama pulled us out of that depressionary spiral through the stimulus, which didn’t kill jobs, but grew them; which contained more tax cuts than any previous law ever passed.
On another very serious note, the Benghazi attack that killed our Ambassador and 3 CIA operatives on Sep. 11th continues to seep out each day and you’re going to learn in the very near future that Barack Obama has outright lied to us about what really happened… an left American’s behind.
This is a right-wing trope that has been repeatedly debunked, and also ignores the Iraq war, which killed thousands based on lies.
Gov. Romney has a plan to grow the economy that includes reducing taxes (for everyone), getting rid of obamacare and making the U.S. energy independent which will take our country in the right direction. The U.S. has more oil and gas reserves than any other nation in the world. Every time you fill your gas tank, just think of what you could do if you were able to keep at least half of those dollars in your pocket! I most strongly believe that if we have 4 more years of Obama, as Americans we will be much worse off than we are now.
Gas prices went from an average of under $1.50 before the Iraq War, and shot up past $3 and 4/gallon around the time of Katrina, and haven’t significantly dropped since then, except in the midst of the Bush global recession of 2008. The Republican answer to energy problems is to drill – a “solution” that takes 10 years to take effect.
I invite everyone to take time off during the day or leave early today to vote. Please coordinate with your Supervisor to ensure that we have no lapse in client service.
I hope they all voted for Obama to teach this asshole a lesson.
I think we can all go ahead and stop talking about Romney now.
How do you feel about Prish Moran’s unapologetic mixing of business with politics (throwing an “Obamarama” victory party at Sweet_ness 7? I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I admire people who don’t feel the need to censor their beliefs and who create businesses that are extensions of their own personality and priorities. On the other hand, on the perhaps slight chance that she has any conservative employees, I wonder how they feel about it.
I think that retail service companies would do better to either stay out of it or remain neutral. For instance, 7-11’s choose-a-cup thing was cute and didn’t offend anyone. I remember when Roaming Buffalo started tweeting pro-Collins crap in 2011, people came down on him like a ton of bricks. It was a dumb business move. Sort of like Carl slapping anti-Obama bumper stickers on his rent-a-cars.
I can’t resist asking.
What causes David Buonerba to be called an “asshole” in the post for sending employees a politicized email which could be read in a minute while being paid, while Prish Moran isn’t called that for having her employees be at a politicized event for hours while being paid (listening to who knows what things being said about Romney and his supporters)?
I don’t see anything very bad about either of them doing what they did as long as it was during paid hours. The point about it being a dumb business move might be true or not, depending on many factors.
But what makes just one of those business owners an “asshole” for it? Only the red/blue difference?
(Edit: Disqus won’t let me fix that showing up as replying to Jesse. I should have clicked the other Reply.)
What are you talking about? I wrote the post above before I knew Prish Moran had done anything. Are you seriously complaining that I didn’t call her an asshole in my comment when I first learned of what she had done, to maintain some sort of balance of insult? I’ll point out that I didn’t call the food truck guy an asshole, either, so your supposition of red/blue is just ridiculous.
Any question I ask is a logical inquiry, not a complaint.
Yeah, I asked what’s the reasoning for you calling him an “asshole” and not her, if both were politicizing their employees’ workplaces. I don’t see how it matters which you knew about first or which was in a post or comment. Your reply to Jesse looked like changing the subject to it being a dumb business move. That isn’t what your post focused on.
If you’re saying the reasoning has nothing to do with red/blue …. okay, fair enough, but then what is it? I’m not saying there can’t possibly be other reason(s). It’s just that none look apparent so far from what you wrote, thus the asking.
Because I think trying to scare your employees into voting the way you want them to vote is an asshole move. I don’t know the details about what Prish Moran did, and Prish Moran’s acts or omissions don’t validate what this guy did.
While it’s a fair point we don’t know if she ever said any “scaring” type of anti-Romney words to employees, I also don’t see anything in what you quoted from his letter that looks like scaring.
Some looks dumb (like implying gas prices would be halved – looks as dumb as ’08 Obama saying deficit would be halved), but mostly it looks well within usual bounds of political arguing both sides do all the time outside of work.
I don’t see any threats of layoffs for example, no extreme doomsday scenarios, no conspiracy theories.
So if I’m following correctly that you’re saying any boss is an asshole if she or he ever expressed any anti-Obama or anti-Romney strong campaign rhetoric to employees during work hours, then that would answer my question.
I really wanted Romney simply because I agreed with his plan for the country. But yesterday afternoon, I felt compelled to give myself the talk that this is the greatest country in the world and neither Obama or Romney were the anti-Christ and whoever won represented the will of the people and we move on together. My young children knew I was pro-Romeny so they wanted Romney too but they also seemed anti-Obama, which no doubt they picked up from me. This made me realize I was instilling the wrong values….there has to be inherent respect for the president.
As such, a co-worker had sent me the link below earlier in the day so I had both my kids watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVkfNUxRh7g&feature=player_embedded
On a related note, Romney did the best any Republican candidate could do and a hypothetical I had often wondered was answered: what if everyone voted so these turnout models didn’t matter. Last night, everyone voted and what you saw is the GOP can come close, but the wingnuts are killing us with suburban women and minority groups, particularly Latinos. Thus, if the Tea Party continues to drive us we will eventually end up on the wrong side of history, even if we get have few near-term successes in the off years like 2010.
Well said. Unfortunately, I am already hearing pundits like Krauthammer bemoan their “choice” of another moderate candidate, instead arguing that they will only win elections by moving further to the right.
What these people do not understand is that selecting Romney wasn’t a political strategy. He was the only even remotely palatable choice amongst the many far-right lunatics the GOP had for nominees. Had they went with someone like Santorum or Bachmann, Obama would have crushed them. There is a reason these guys lost to begin with.
I hope they get the message, but I doubt they will.
Mike, I couldn’t agree more. Romney really was the best of the lot. Anyone else in that field would have lost by 6 points or more. I have no problem with a conservative agenda, which is what I think Romney was pushing. But when the nutty right manages to bring rape into a political conversation, I actually begin to wonder what am I doing in this party. Seriously, why would you go anywhere near a question on rape? Fucking lunatics are killing us.
Pundit, please write about the NYS Senate. Someone needs to ask Tim Kennedy what his short bus caucus will do if they become king makers.