The story of what happened at your company is distasteful. I guess I don't know about "disgraceful". People seem to forget how powerful businessmen treated workers years ago. People fail to connect history to what's happening today.

I worked for the first part of my career in the auto industry. If you ever visit UAW headquarters in Detroit, there's a huge mural-photo in the lobby showing Walter Reuther (the guy that started the UAW) leaning on an overpass leading to the big Ford Rouge plant, with blood streaming down his face resulting from the beating he took at the hands of the management thugs hired by Henry Ford to attempt to put down union organization.

The leader of Ford's anti-union thugs was a guy named Harry Bennett, who for a number of years actually ran Ford as the elderly Henry Ford got less involved in the company. Bennett was eventually fired by young Henry Ford II, when he took over the failing company during WWII. If you want to read a little about what really was a disgraceful display of capitalism, read the Detroit News article entitled "The Battle Of The Overpass" at the following website...

detnews.com | Michigan History

Then I moved to Chicago, where for decades the Irish immigrants living in a South Side ghetto were taken advantage of in dangerous, filthy dirty jobs at the Union Stockyards for embarrassingly low pay. By the way, that's where the oft-referred to Saul Alinsky made his name by organizing the stock yards workers to lay claims for better pay and working conditions by using his now-famous "Rules For Radicals" in leading the worker revolt against the owners of the meat packing plants.

Fast forward almost 100 years to today. The most powerful in our country are still taking advantage of the lower and now middle classes. There are all kinds of reasons why beating workers or putting them in physically dangerous working conditions isn't permitted any more. But now capitalism is based on things like leveraged buyouts, financial derivatives, legal manipulation of laws and regulations, lobbying to get the laws changed, and Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi schemes.

The effect is the same unfortunately. The rich are continuing to get richer at the expense of the working class. The stock market continues to value those activities by the wealthy with escalating stock prices. So I would posit that not a whole lot has changed in 100 years, except the "tools" used by the capitalists are more sophisticated and complicated. But in the end the effect is the same as it was 100 years ago, and it's called American capitalism.

I guess I'd be interested in knowing how many here who call themselves conservatives totally committed to capitalism and what the private sector can accomplish really understand the history of what they stand for? I'm not suggesting that any other system is better--certainly not socialism or communism. But I just wonder how many "conservatives" really understand the history of what they call themselves and are so committed to?