"I create nothing. I own."

There's a lineage of evil in ownership of the Texas Rangers baseball team. First it was [the anti-Christ 43rd President] and now Dallas' own Tom Hicks, a leveraged buyout (LBO) specialist, a.k.a economic parasite. But the keyword here is 'leveraged' because Tommy boy failed to see the financial crash coming and got caught with his pants down: fully leveraged with his assets tied up and his cash flow dried up. First he defaulted on a $525 million dollar loan backed by the Rangers and Dallas Stars, then he had to go hat in hand to Major League Baseball and ask for a $15 million loan to make payroll. Some billionaire that is.

But it couldn't have happened to a nicer predator. As an LBO guy, it's Hicks' job to increase the value of assets acquired in order to justify the cost of the loan. There are all sorts of ways of doing this depending on each situation. Hicks doesn't create companies or products or services, he has to feed off the original efforts of others and then swoop in when he finds an opportunity. But this makes him Tommy on the spot, requiring him to make good on his loan. One way to do that is to cheapen the lives of workers, a fine American tradition.

The knife fights are a free perk

This from an article on one of the Swift meat packing plants Igor LBO'd:

Today Salcido is a plaintiff in two separate class-action lawsuits against Swift. One alleges that the company wrongly terminated dozens of injured workers to save on workers' compensation costs, slashing them from $6 million in 2002 to just $600,000 two years later, and another claims the company deliberately and systematically replaced native workers with illegal Guatemalan immigrants in a scheme to depress wages. While Swift acknowledges that it fired employees who'd been on injury-related restrictions for more than six months, it denies any wrongdoing. The company also says it did its best to obey immigration laws during hiring.

Nifty scheme, that. Once your body is torn apart, you get thrown out into the street. Think anybody else will hire you as such an obvious insurance risk? You think unemployment is bad, try being unemployable, in a foreign fucking country no less. And not content with Hispanic workers who apparently proved too feisty, Guatemalans were shipped in.

Caught in a no-win situation after the raid

"...many of whom came from the same highland area and spoke a Mayan dialect, not English or Spanish...When asked their names, many would point to their government-issued IDs or Social Security cards. Some had names like Smith and Johnson."

The Guatemalans were too fearful, too disoriented to complain about unsafe conditions and basically were used as kleenex - use one up, get another. Swift & Co tried to set up plausible deniability, but that did not stop a raid for illegal immigrant workers, causing one plant to shut down.

"...accounts of former workers reveal a brutal work environment in which safety precautions were persistently disregarded and failed to prevent injuries caused by slips and falls on greasy floors, rapid line speed or repetitive cutting with dull knives. Many of those interviewed said verbal abuse, intimidation and sexual harassment at the hands of supervisors were common, especially after they'd been injured or had reported safety violations to the Occupational Safety & Health Administration."

If you read these articles, the viciousness illuminated therein is of nightmare proportions. To have one person crippled for life and left to die is unconscionable. To make it systemic is beyond belief, a Nazi wet dream. I wonder how dear Mr. Hicks would respond if that were one of his children being victimized. Why is it monsters like this are allowed to roam free and even be lauded? What does that say about us?

Republicant unmasked

Dark Voices live among us and how we deal with them determines our fate. We listened to one such voice and made it President for eight years, bringing wholesale destruction we very possibly may never recover from. Having a job doesn't make you a good person. Making money doesn't make you a responsible citizen. A person's lifestyle doesn't determine his worth in the eyes of God. But we choose to keep such myths alive, to claim worth that is not due. And in so doing, we sow our own karma and allow the beasts among us to feed off our very lives.

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From our local D Magazine on the 100 Most Expensive Homes in Dallas:

#1 Cinda and Tom Hicks
$41,462,030

On the one hand, the investor and sports team magnate looks to be in trouble: he recently defaulted on $525 million in loans, he’s trying to sell off parts of the Stars and Rangers, and this month the $400 million loan he used to buy Liverpool FC comes due. On the other hand: he lives in a 28,996-square-foot house on 25 acres, and last year he used 10 million gallons of water.

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"But woe to you who are rich
For you have already received your full comfort "
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Lucky for us there's good news:

It's there when I look in your eyes