I recently received an email from GlobalBankingMegaCorp congratulating me on my “new” credit limit increase — said increase no doubt being fueled by the fact that I haven’t charged anything on their poxy card for over six months and have instead been paying down the balance.
Then, lower down, there was this lovely little incentive to spend more with them (note the sting in the tail):
LOL they must think I was born yesterday.
It’s all very well to boycott foul companies like Anheuser-Busch and Target, but what are the alternatives available? Reader JC_in_PA writes about one such organization:
“Kim,
“I heard the founder of this company on Mornings with Maria (Bartiromo) radio show, she’s a legit conservative in business broadcasting. To counter the ESG nazis driving American companies to adopt insane Global Cooling Climate Warming Change postions, and kowtowing to the LBGTQRSTUVWXYZ fanatics, he created a business network for businesses called Public Square, to proclaim their opposition to this nonsense by proclaiming a set of principles that guide their business practices and connect them with like-minded consumers. I’ll relay my experience with them shortly, but this is their statement of principles.
“Our Values
“I heard that interview a month or so ago and never checked out their website. But I needed new blue jeans and I’ll be damned if I’ll buy from Levi Strauss or Wrangler with their anti 2A stance. So I started emailing American jean manufacturers (there are a surprising number of them) with something like the following. ‘I need new jeans and while I don’t need you to make a positive statement of support for 2A, I need to know you have not made any public statements which are anti-2A, I just need to know you are at least neutral.’ Needless to say, crickets, all around.
“So I went to Public Square’s website and found L.C. King Manufacturing, a 115 year old American company making quality work wear at reasonable prices, and got a 25% discount from them for a Public Square promo code! The site is fairly new, but they have a number of clothing companies, housewares, skin care… all sorts of stuff, and the network is growing. I find it fascinating. Much as I love the travails Bud Light and Target are going through right now, I think this is better than boycotts. Spend our money with firms that actually RESPECT their customers. What a concept!
“Anyway, I don’t do this often, but I thought you might find this blog-worthy, and I’d sure like to get the word out about this group.”
And now you know. I especially like the links just under the masthead:
That’s some good-looking stuff right there.
Give them a shot, and let’s do our bit for the America we want, as opposed to the fucking shit we’re having shoved in our face every day.
Here’s an interesting take on the whole Bud Light debacle:
“When the company was bought over by InBev, a lot of things changed [from] when it was owned by Anheuser-Busch. You know, it’s an American brand,” the whistleblower remarked.
He explained that the company previously offered many benefits prior to its purchase by InBev. Through the fall in sales for the Bud Light brand, the former employee stated, the corporation could restructure both employee benefits and its company standards through layoffs and renegotiating contracts.
“Bud Light has been failing for many years. We’ve talked about that for many years. The numbers of just, you know, little by little deteriorated. And it feels like they said, ‘Let’s put this nail in the coffin,’” he said. “Now we have a lot of layoffs, a lot of loss in production. It would be easy for them to restructure, let’s say, pay or contracts.”
“It’s too obvious that they wouldn’t just mistakenly do this and not expect these repercussions. Anybody could tell you what was going to happen,” he commented.
Um, maybe. Okay, I’m not so sure about that. In the first place, when it comes to giant corporations, never ascribe to malice what can also be ascribed to stupidity. Sometimes it happens, but that ain’t the way to bet.
The most telling rebuttal to this assertion is quite simple. Regardless of whether Bud Light was in decline, or not, it was still the best-selling beer brand in the United States. And yes, while A-B might have stood to gain from restructuring salary scales or employment contracts, I hardly think that those savings would equate to anything like the amount of money that’s been lost (and will continue to be lost) from their plummeting sales and the equally-dismal drop in their share price. If some toad in Finance suggested this, he needs to be castrated, in the corporate sense, because if even someone like me can see this, then he’s truly stupid.
Regardless of everything else, you just don’t willfully destroy your #1 brand, especially when it’s as large a brand as Bud Light. The sums of money are just too vast, the possible repercussions too dreadful because they’re unknown — the ramifications could see A-B split up as a company into separate operating companies (Michelob, Busch, etc.) and the loss of economies which stem from shared brands would cripple all of them. They’d become no different from a bunch of craft brands — and regardless of what anyone thinks, A-B brands are about as far from craft beers, in both quality and consumer regard, as one could get.
No, the whole thing is just way too Machiavellian and too complex — and trust me, it’s not like InBev is staffed with people of the strategic vision of, say, the German General Staff of WWII, even. They’re a bunch of Belgian and American bureaucrats, a breed not known for their perspicacity. And let’s be honest, the Belgies are among the wokest people on the planet, so I’m more likely to ascribe all this bullshit to simple corporate vanity.
Of course, if I’m wrong and this really was just part of some diabolical Master Plan, I hope it all falls apart and the whole A-B/InBev house comes crashing down. The world will survive and who knows, we might just end up with a few decent beers out of the wreckage.
I got a good chuckle about this one. (For those of you who don’t care about professional golf or golf in general, what follows isn’t about golf, despite the circumstances.)
It’s been announced that the breakaway LIV golf circuit (funded by the Saudis) is going to merge with the established PGA circuit, which means that all the Sturm und Drang sobbing about “rebels”, “traitors”, “mercenaries” and so on is just meaningless piffle (as it was at the time anyway).
Former President Donald Trump is nothing if not prescient on some of the biggest cultural and business issues of the day.
The latest example of his Nostradamus-like ability to see into the future can be found in his 2022 prediction that the upstart league LIV Golf would merge with its rival the PGA. That pronouncement came to fruition on Tuesday.
“All of those golfers that remain ‘loyal’ to the very disloyal PGA, in all of its different forms, will pay a big price when the inevitable MERGER with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big ‘thank you’ from PGA officials who are making Millions of Dollars a year,” he shared on his social media app Truth Social in July 2022.
Of course, some people had a problem with this because Trump:
“To be clear, only Trump is talking about possibly merging the organizations,” author Michael D’Antonio wrote in July 2022.
And as for the announcement itself:
In response to the news, CBS Sports reporter Kyle Porter tweeted, “Truly gobsmacked today. Of the 10,000 different outcomes, this was never talked about, never discussed, never even floated. Everyone who would have known was at the PGA two weeks ago, and nobody even came close to hinting at it!”
…except Donald Trump, a year ago.
Let’s face it: I don’t want the U.S. to be compared with France on anything (okay, maybe when we start making better food).
From none other than Martha Stewart:
In an interview with the magazine Footwear News, the author, TV personality and entrepreneur slammed hybrid work culture, saying that people cannot “possibly get everything done working three days a week in the office and two days remotely.”
Stewart’s comments come as more managers push for an end to the work-from-home trend that took hold more than three years ago at the start of the pandemic.
Stewart compared the state of in-person work in the United States to France, calling it “not a very thriving country.”
And of course, she’s right — and not just about France.
Here’s a humble suggestion for managers whose employees refuse to stop working from home: for all those days that they don’t come in to the office, pay them 33% of their rate. Then, for those who still refuse, use the savings to train their replacements who will want to show up for work.
I’m so sick of people who expect to get paid well, but refuse to do the amount of work that deserves such compensation.
And say what you like about ol’ Martha, but nobody ever accused her of being a slacker.
I see that following their woke cock-up (is there any other kind?) last week (my commentary here), Heckler & Koch have reversed course faster than Clint Eastwood finding out his date is a trannie:
The next day, Heckler & Koch revealed a colossal corporate change of heart. It deleted the tweets and seemed to suggest someone may have been fired.
Didn’t help, judging from the responses:
- “I’d expect nothing less from the brand that will never compromise.
- “Finally, a company that understands the toxicity of engaging in identity politics.”
- “A fully-armed and bikini-clad apology would smooth things.”
- “Someone got fired!”
- “No, not good enough. Send me a free gun.”
- “I’m so sick of the PC crap… Folks have enough to deal with without having to worry about offending some thin-skin’s sensibilities.”
- “This almost does it. Need an ad with a good-looking woman in a bikini…with guns, and a beer…”
- “Nope, I’m still upset! I will be requiring a VP9 and an HK45 as reparations before my feelings are unhurt.”
Companies need to keep tighter control on their employees’ social media, methinks — and especially if said employees have access to the corporation’s social media.
Beyond that, HK got reminded of something like a gun-safety lesson: Don’t point your tweet at anything — including your marketshare — that you aren’t willing to destroy.
Yup.
In the meantime, here’s a gun bunny to make us all happy again:
I know, she’s not carrying one of H&K’s overpriced guns, but that just shows her good sense (which is more than they have).