Larry the Liquidator is on the Line

by

The current behavior of the Democratic Party and its allies in media and academia reminds me of the 1991 movie Other People’s Money.  The main character, known as Larry the Liquidator, specializes in acquiring companies for the purpose of selling off their assets.  When the film opens, his new target is a struggling company called  New England Wire & Cable Company.  Larry calls on the CEO (Jorgy) and says that by his calculations, the company would be better off from a shareholder standpoint (and hence from the CEO’s standpoint) being broken up and sold off in pieces.  Jorgy,emotionally connected to his family-founded company and  conscious of his position as the town’s leading employer, is appalled at the very idea and refuses to give in.

Nevertheless, Larry prevails in the resulting proxy fight, and the company falls into his hands.  But there is a deus ex machina…Kate, the beautiful lawyer who has been hired to defend the company, identifies a major new market for the company’s products: the stainless steel wire cloth required for automotive airbags.  (And, of course, Larry (Danny DeVito) has fallen head-over-heels in love with Kate (Penelope Ann Miller)

The Dems and their allies appear to care about the long-term existence of the US and the welfare of its people as little as Larry the Liquidator cares about the continued existence of New England Wire and Cable and its employees and customers.  They will happily sell it off to miscellaneous parties…various ethnic and gender groups and pressure groups…promising those groups an appreciation in their ‘stock’, in the form of government goodies or at least self-esteem and the pleasures of righteous anger. And regardless of whether those promises are actually fulfilled, the Dems and their allies will, like Larry, collect their substantial fee.

And, in fairness to Larry, there are indeed cases whether spinoffs, breakup, or outright liquidation is the best thing for a company, sometimes the only thing.  (That would likely have eventually turned out to have been the case with New England Wire & Cable absent Kate’s highly-improbably ‘invention’…it seems clear that Jorgy was not managing the company well in the existing circumstances…if he had been, he would have uncovered the wire-cloth opportunity himself..and was unlikely to change his ways.)  But breaking up a company is a very different thing from fragmenting a company and a society.  And, while Larry has had no prior involvement with NEWC, the Dems and their allies have mostly lived here all their lives and benefitted greatly from doing so.

 

 

41 thoughts on “Larry the Liquidator is on the Line”

  1. Interesting analogy David – and apt I believe. They are willing to segment society and appeal to each segment, at the expense of the whole.

  3. Your analysis gives them far too much credit. What the Democratic/Criminal Party is engaged in has a great deal more congruency with the eponymous 23rd episode of the Sopranos, titled “Bust Out”.

    It’s an appropriate term from law enforcement, describing how organized crime takes over a legitimate business, and then uses it to run up huge debts against its credit, make outrageous orders from its suppliers, and then have the whole thing collapse into a bankruptcy, leaving everyone screwed.

    This is exactly what the Permanent Entitled Class in Washington, DC has been engaged in since about the end of WWII. It’s just taken this long for it to become obvious that the entire shady edifice, whether calling itself Democrat or Republican, have been engaged in. Gravy train is running out, though, so watch out. It’s gonna be a mess.

  6. Larry the Liquidator could of course move on to the next victim after NEWC and do it again. When the Far Lefties who have taken over the once proud Democrats succeed in dividing & conquering, and thereby bring down the whole edifice, where do they go next?

    It seems more likely that the Democrat elite are more akin to Judas Iscariot than Larry the Liquidator. They have been taking 30 pieces of (first) Soviet and (now) Chinese silver to sell out the US, without any thought for the future.

    Still, the problem is us. Enough of us voted for Democrat Judases — and kept voting for them while they sold our industry to China and destroyed our education system and undermined the national finances. We will pay the price for that carelessness — as is appropriate. The sorry state of California is a good glimpse of the hell to which the Democrat elite are taking everyone, including their own voters and indeed themselves.

  7. Gavin, you keep saying “Democrat” like they were the only responsible parties.

    The sad reality is that the Republicans are just as culpable, and have been playing games saying that they really don’t stand for these things, all while they’re actively enabling the Democrats. Remember McCain, who campaigned on “get rid of Obamacare”, and then turned around and stabbed us in the back over the deal? How about how the Republican senators, again including McCain, took part in the attempted coup over “Russian collusion”?

    No, the Republican elites are just as culpable as the Democratic ones, and in some ways, I think they’re even more evil. Look what they did to the Tea Party, and ask yourself why you’d trust them any more than the Democrats?

    Frankly, the entire cabal needs to be thrown out of office and their position in the permanent bureaucracy that is Washington DC. None of them are what they claim they are–The Democrats are criminals, the Republicans are Democrats in disguise, and the bureaucracy is more interested in perpetrating itself than doing its duty. They all need to go, period.

  9. “the Republican elites are just as culpable as the Democratic ones”
    Yup, Trump is hated by the GOPe because he might perhaps actually try to end the gravy train.

  10. Kirk: “The sad reality is that the Republicans are just as culpable …”

    I endorse your statement 100%, Kirk. The Congressional Republicans are, with very few exceptions, worthless.

    I tend to focus my ire on the Democrat elite because they are the ones actually running the show. Congressional Republicans are basically there in the role of court jesters. Even when the Republicans controlled House & Senate, they made no serious effort to change the direction of the country.

    But don’t excuse ourselves. We are the ones who have allowed the creation of career politicians and unfireable bureaucrats. The sad situation is that we have allowed this perversion of democracy.

    The only bright spot is that the system created by the Powers That Be (mostly Democrats, it must be admitted) is unsustainable, and will collapse. Let’s hope that WE (US, YOU & ME, All of us) do a better job next time in creating whatever political structures arise from the unavoidable coming chaos.

  11. If our political and social system is truly rotten to the core (irredeemable), then it will collapse in a short and dramatic way. Trump has shown us that it is possible to reverse this course incrementally, even if imperfectly. Rather than fight and try to survive a revolution in the streets (I have made my preparations), I’d rather put my meager assets into supporting the few who will stand firm and try to grow support for such an incremental approach. At least we have had some movement in the right direction.

    For me the key in this election is to get Trump re-elected and keep the senate. Arguably the biggest impact Trump has had is in judicial appointments and he needs the senate to continue that work. If we can close the gap or flip the house, so much the better. The signal to the opposition would be clear, and present the opportunity to hold the weak ones’ feet to the fire (figuratively). I have found that there are important and competitive senate races where support may bear results. My source is Senate Conservatives. Change is usually at the margin. Folks like Cruz and Cotton encourage me, imperfect as they may be.

    The rolling collapse of the blue strongholds offers an opportunity in this election, but in the long term recapturing the educational system is key. Fundamental changes in funding and choice/competition are required.

    There are no quick fixes, only destructive collapse can happen in the near term. If it took 100 years for the progressives to capture the commanding heights, it will take much the same effort and time to banish them.

    Death6

  12. I’d rather put my meager assets into supporting the few who will stand firm and try to grow support for such an incremental approach. At least we have had some movement in the right direction.

    And almost all of them are Republicans. Tom McClintock should have been Governor of California but was taken down by RINO Bill Simon who then lost to Gray Davis. McClintock is still in the House, like Nunez another red CA rep.

    The Democrats purged their less leftist members by not supporting them in 2010.

    I’m not sure about Kevin McCarthy but he is another Congressman from red CA.

    The Democrat Party is now the party of Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn. The Republicans failed in the 90s but some are salvageable. Not enough honest people want a political career.

  14. I must have watched the wrong movie.

    A dozen times.

    I thought Larry (DeVito) was the good guy in the movie.

    The whole movie is very good but if you don’t have time for it, at least watch Larry’s speech to the company owners. A/K/A stockholders.

    https://youtu.be/62kxPyNZF3Q

    He explains what is going on and why.

    It’s a stand up and cheer moment.

    John Henry

  15. Death6….”Rather than fight and try to survive a revolution in the streets (I have made my preparations), I’d rather put my meager assets into supporting the few who will stand firm and try to grow support for such an incremental approach. At least we have had some movement in the right direction.”

    Agreed. And there *is* a difference, overall, between Dems and Republicans. When the attempted political lynching of Kavanaugh was occurring, for example, two Senators stood up up against the mob very strongly: Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins. Did any Dem do the same? *Would* any Dem have done the same? In actuality, what we got from their side was an unhinged attack against the entire male gender from the ridiculous Mazie Hirono.

    I need to go make another contribution to Susan Collins; back later.

  16. Lindsay Graham could have helped expose Spygate, but instead he helped cover it up.
    The only GOPer who seemed to really care about it was Devin Nunes, and the GOPe basically just helped Adam Schiff undercut him completely.
    They are all useless.

  17. lindsay graham has a lot of influence from qatari interests, which involve egypt libya and syria, through their purchases of south carolina real estate,

  19. Yes – though MCS I’m afraid it is interesting in the terms of the Chinese curse – may you live in interesting times. I didn’t think anything other than sleezy journalism could roil the country more in the next month and a half.

    By the way, does anyone know anything about the Carabella/Sydney, Nebraska business? My brother really likes Tucker, but he said the tirade about the New York money interests and the poor Nebraska town were kind of beside the point and it irritated him. Apparently it was a family business built and the next generation wasn’t interested in it, besides liking the money offered. I kind of thought something like that might have happened from the program, but of course, we Nebraskans always have a soft spot for small Nebraska towns and hope that as many can be kept alive as possible. I wondered if any of the rest of you knew anything about this and if it was really a bad guy coming in or the inevitable? I think I’ll try to watch this movie and it sounds similar, but, of course, there wasn’t, apparently, any deus ex machina patent in Sydney – that could be because there wasn’t anyone around with imagination and a creative mind or there just wasn’t any way out. You can always get my brother started on great patents major companies keep and don’t exploit properly.

  20. You sorely mischaracterize the movie, AND Larry. One almost thinks you missed the entire point of it.

    The entire movie (and the play it’s based on) is the ANTI-Wall-Street. Its central character is sympathetic, he’s a human with human needs and desires (unlike Gordon Gecko) and serves a highly useful societal purpose.

    This purpose is embodied by the final scene, which is one of the best closing scenes of all time.

    A final scene which starts with Gregory Peck’s Jorgy getting up and giving this AWESOME speech about pride of place, and making things and so on and so forth, and he does it in that marvelous Peck voice, and you just know — you know that, while Larry may win, he’ll have to CHEAT, somehow, to do it.

    Instead, Larry gets up and starts talking…. and in the process, without that Peck voice, he fucking just flat out CARPET BOMBS Peck and everything he said. Destroys not just his argument, but the foundations of it, the nature of it, the thought of it, the air around it, the purpose of it, the will behind it… in fact, he pretty much just drops Tsar Bomba onto it… :-/

    I’m not going to ruin the scene with how — though I will provide you with a link to it — but I seriously DO recommend you, instead, hunt down the movie and watch it, so you have full context.

    Peck’s speech:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJRhrow3Jws
    Larry’s response:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62kxPyNZF3Q

    I know, this has nothing to do with the destruction and chaos that the liberals are wreaking on their own party, but… the events of the movie most decidedly are not what you’re suggesting. In no regard do they represent the efforts and activities of the Dem/Libs’ behavior.

    In fact, lefties seeing this movie would despise it — because Larry not only wins, he’s right, and any rational person knows this at the end of the movie. And no liberal would ever admit that such an obvious capitalist moneymonger like “Larry the Liquidator” would ever be right

  21. Reminds me of my late father-in-law. He had been head of the largest bank in the state but when they were bought out with the advent of branch or interstate banking, he voted with the new owners to eat the surplus pension funds. The over-funded pension was their biggest asset and liquid to the new owners.

    Then when his term came to retire (or be retired) he discovered that he was getting screwed too and HIS pension would be be the measly legal minimum now.

    I loved the guy but his complaints served as wake-up call to the risks of trusting big business.

  22. Note that Larry did not come in with the objective of taking control, replacing Jorgy with somebody better, and fixing the problems with the company…and the movie implies that such fixing was indeed possible, as the lawyer’s idea about the airbags suggests (and there were no doubt many other things that could have been changed/improved about the company), as some corporate raiders would do. His approach was strictly transactional, he wasn’t interested in *operations*.

    Neither are the Dems.

  23. A liquidator is just that, someone interested only in turning assets into cash and moving on. No development, no fixing, just cash in hand and it’s your problem now. There’s a good reason that they are associated with bankruptcy. A viable business is worth more than the sum of it’s pieces, liquidation implies that only the pieces are left.

    Value is in the eyes of the owner. If the owner is a stockholder that hasn’t seen a return or descendants of the founder that have no interest in taking the trouble to run it, there’s lots of room for predators. If whoever gets control is only interested in quick cash, that’s what happens. If the new boss is the sort that salvages and repairs, then that’s what will happen, at least for a while.

    The perspective on the floor might not be that different. Being laid off when a process is automated isn’t that much better than being laid off so the riggers can haul the machines somewhere else.

    More to the point: What are the Democrats about? I think the commenters above that draw a parallel between the way the mob will mine cash out of a legitimate business until it collapses are closest to the truth. The difference is the realism, one might almost say honesty, of the mobsters that know exactly what they are doing and simply don’t care. The Democrats, of course, insist that they are only interested in benefiting all of us with their superior wisdom. All that stands in their way is those of us stubbornly refusing to stand aside while they remake society in the image of whatever crack-brained idea they have this week. When we’re all disarmed and they can label as illegal any expression that they find objectionable, it will all go much easier.

    When the new Public Well Being officers (calling them police will be five years of reeducation) discover that cattle prods are much more productive of confessions than investigation, who’ll question it.

    Surely, Pelosi realizes that she can’t hold onto power for much longer, that she’s gone just as far as she ever will. Is she so deluded to think what she is destroying is necessary or just that her children and grand children will be nimble enough to keep on top of the wreckage as the country collapses into anarchy?

    Concerning people like Romney and Will, are the grapes really so sour that seeing the Presidency delivered to a demented doddering puppet is preferable to Trump? I had not believed they were such small men. Regardless of the election, they will soon become invisible.

  25. The purity will tell. I understand that just breaking up a caster bean without removing the husk will test positive while producing concentrated ricin takes more effort and infinitely more care. Seems a long shot in terms of actual danger to Trump even without taking mail screening into consideration. How likely is he to open his own mail?

  26. Seems a long shot in terms of actual danger to Trump even without taking mail screening into consideration.

    Hey, it’s the thought that counts.

    Anyway, along the lines of it taking only one side to destroy a political system, a year or two ago I happened to hear a couple bernie bros talk politics.

    Apparently Ilhan Omer had received a death threat. Someone left a threatening message on her phone- I presume at her congressional office, but no matter. This was proof that rethuglicans were the evilest people ever to live, etc, etc.

    Inspired, I took more notice than usual of the never-ending leftist attacks and threats on their political opponents, instead of just accepting them as normal. I was surprised at how many there actually were. Most memorably, in the week or two after that, Susan Collins husband was forced to quarantine for a couple weeks because someone sent a package of white powder to their residence. Susan Collins- milquetoast moderate from Maine who might not even vote for the upcoming gop supreme court nominee because it would be mean, or something- was getting pretend anthrax sent to her house.

    This is terrorism, pure and simple. Yet for the left, it’s business as usual- and it’s getting worse. For all intents and purposes they’ve already telegraphed that they won’t accept election results if Trump wins- and what else remains to resist that but open warfare?

    Interesting times…

  27. “Hey, it’s the thought that counts.”

    There’s still a useful distinction to be drawn between someone putting a bit of flour or a crushed seed in an envelope and someone going to the considerable lengths and hazard of procuring the real thing. Also between someone picking up a gallon of gas on the way to a “peaceful demonstration” and staying up all night playing Mr. Wizard with real explosives. At the risk of putting thoughts into otherwise empty minds, how many even know that you have to use genuine glass for your Molotov cocktails?

    A genuine attack would put a great many random people at risk. That is the essence of terrorism. The person least likely to be harmed would be Trump.

    The Democrats have moved to making explicit threats to try to intimidate voters. That has never been a winning strategy before, generally just the opposite. The MSM seems anxious to convey them expeditiously to the rest of us, rather than covering them up or rationalizing them as they would have in the past. That, by itself, is a form of terrorism. This smells of true desperation. Unfortunately, a cornered weasel is a dangerous weasel.

  28. We were all supposed to freak out when some weirdo in a van in FL mailed fake bombs to a bunch of libs. I’m sure this ricin story will receive the same attention from the FBI and the media…

  29. There’s s distinction to be drawn between someone putting a bit of flour or a crushed seed in an envelope and someone going to the considerable lengths and hazard of procuring the real thing.

    I suppose, but the point is that sending fake anthrax to Susan Collins and shooting Steve Scalise are both acts of terrorism.

    I’m intensely and viscerally tired of giving these people a pass because they merely send fake anthrax, or just club someone with a skateboard and then claim they were peaceful protesters when their victim shoots back. It isn’t helped that I see a full-on media freakout when someone does a similar thing and sends fake bombs to leftists, as Brian notes, or when I hear bernie bros exclaim that all conservatives are evil vermin because Ilhan Omer gets a death threat left on her phone.

    The American left today is nothing more than swarm of terrorists. They are violent whenever and wherever they think they can get away with it. When they think they can’t, they make phony bioterror attacks and march through residential areas calling the police when people react.

    I further note that hese violent scum have already made it plain they will not accept election results if they lose, and have been openly plotting to stuff ballot boxes.

    This is not a recipe for a peaceful future.

  32. Again: You people REALLY need to see the movie.

    Maybe I should, but my opinion of Hollywood is such that I have no interest in being a customer.

    In this example I expect I’d end up wanting to punch my screen.

    No thank you.

  33. I’ve seen it twice, and it’s worth seeing. Here’s a pretty good review by Roger Ebert:

    https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/other-peoples-money-1991

    …he liked it, except for the last scene, which he felt was “felt tacked on, manufactured, concocted out of a Hollywood studio’s knee-jerk need to provide a smileyface ending that was not in the spirit of the film.”

    Actually, I think there’s more too it than that: Kate’s discovery of a major market opportunity that the company had been ignoring demonstrates that Jorgy was not doing a very good job at running the company, however beloved he might have been. (And if you need to rely on your SEC lawyer to come up with product and marketing ideas for you, you’re usually going to wait a long long time,) This was consistent with the movie’s attempt to make Larry vs Wire & Cable a little more than a pure black-and-white affair.

  35. Xennady:

    Maybe I should, but my opinion of Hollywood is such that I have no interest in being a customer.

    In this example I expect I’d end up wanting to punch my screen.

    No thank you.

    Do as you wish, but realize, first off, that this is a 25yo movie. It doesn’t reflect anything CLOSE to modern Hollywood. Second, that it is, as I suggested, the ANTI-Wall-Street — it’s a decidedly illiberal movie that Hollywood has tried to forget, in that it shows “Gordon Gecko” to be not the paper-thin straw man capitalist beast that Oliver Stone painted, but a very real human being with a valid and worthwhile social purpose. YMMV, but I consider it to be one of the better movies from semi-modern Hollywood that has a serious purpose. I suspect you will appreciate it, rather than throw bricks at it.

    I do agree with David’s take, and Ebert’s. The final bit at the end is an attempt to add a “feel good, we don’t have to tear it completely apart” ending to the movie. I don’t know if this scene was in the final play, I couldn’t find anything that discussed changes, in IMDB or via search. I agree, it feels tacked on.

    While researching it, I did bump into this, about Jerry Sterner, the playwright:

    He is buried in Washington Cemetery behind his old building in Brooklyn. His headstone is inscribed sardonically with: “Finally, a plot.”

  36. Do as you wish, but realize, first off, that this is a 25yo movie.

    I take your point. I regret that I feel the way I do, and I feel a bit feel guilty that I’ve turned thumbs down on a movie I probably would have enjoyed if I’d seen it when it came out. I certainly appreciate your commentary about the film, and that you tried to talk me down from the crazy tree I now inhabit.

    But.

    A 25yo movie is like something from a country that no longer exists, made by an industry which has effectively collapsed. This saddens me- just a bit- and it used to enrage me, because at one time I spent a lot of time and money watching movies both in theater and later rented from Blockbuster. It was something I very much looked forward to, long ago.

    However, since then Hollywood has worked really hard to convince me that they don’t like my kind- white, conservative, male- which means they won’t be getting my money. And at this point I can’t even get worked up enough to complain about all the specific things they did to chase me away. I simply don’t care enough any more.

    Shrug.

  37. OK, but I would suggest that this is the kind of movie you can use to convince the middle-of-the-road types why the liberals are wrong. That final scene is nothing less than amazing — I’d put it in a list of the best movie endings of all time — I mean they truly set you up to expect a cheat from Larry the Liqudator, and instead he just literally blows all the “standard liberal arguments” out of the water. If The Devil inspired John Lennon to write Imagine, then God inspired Sterner to write this… I am amazed it got made. No way in hell it gets made today.

    Also funny, given that DeVito is at least a strong leftie, not a total dipshit nutjob but very much standing on the left, yet he’s been in two different movies — this, and The Big Kahuna — which are very much not standard liberal set-pieces. It’s kinda like watching Babylon 5, a paean to anti-government libertarianism, and then interacting with JM Straczynski, who is a raging leftie (I know this from personal interaction. He banned me from his FB page when I backed him into a corner and exposed his two-faced hypocrisy).

    I am mystified how they can write and act in these things, yet not absorb the merest scintilla, the tiniest iota, of the subject matter. The Left utterly CANNOT learn from experience, it seems…

    Again — I think you’re missing the boat by not rewarding things that ARE good and using them as tools to educate the young, if not anyone else.

    Joan of Arcadia, a TV series, is another example of something like that — it’s about God and interacting with Him, and does an amazingly even-handed job of it. I can note only one major complaint about it, and I’d say that is… picky. I’ll give it to them. I think it is literally the best thing out there for people who are having issues with the idea of God and can’t accept aspects of His relationship with humans and the world. It’s a modern day, easily approached apologetic for Him. It can help bring people to God.

    Who cares where it came from? Why is that relevant, if it can do the job of conversion?
    ;-)

  38. the Democrat elite are more akin to Judas Iscariot

    Don’t go there. Judas, or someone like him, was necessary. The entire incarnate G*d endeavor would have ended quite differently if Jesus had died in bed as an old man. Life is complicated enough without stressing about free will and predestination.

    It’s like the “time travel is not possible or someone would have killed Hitler” idea. What if it has been/will be done, many times, and Hitler and WWII is/was the best possible scenario?

    Is the current situation necessary or the best possible? I certainly hope not, but I don’t care to spend time contemplating the issue.

  39. This might be more insightful than you know. Recall Larry’s comment in the speech:

    This company is dead. I didn’t kill it. Don’t blame me. It was dead when I got here. It’s too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead! … We’re dead, alright. We’re just not broke.

    Larry isn’t killing NEW&C, he’s just trying to save what can be salvaged.

    To the Democrats (and RINOs), America and the Constitution are already dead. They are fighting over its remains, and fighting for power in the vacuum once it goes “broke”.

    To the Trump and Tea Party Republicans, it is still alive and can be fixed. These are two radically incompatible views, and explain why we can’t just “get along.”

  40. Tjay from Tampa…”To the Democrats (and RINOs), America and the Constitution are already dead. They are fighting over its remains, and fighting for power in the vacuum once it goes “broke”. To the Trump and Tea Party Republicans, it is still alive and can be fixed. These are two radically incompatible views, and explain why we can’t just “get along.””

    That is a very interesting point. And I’d suggest that Larry didn’t really make a serious attempt to understand what options/strategies might be available to fix the company, because *that wasn’t his business model*…he was Larry the *Liquidator*, after all. And similarly with the Democrats.

  41. David : That is a very interesting point. And I’d suggest that Larry didn’t really make a serious attempt to understand what options/strategies might be available to fix the company, because *that wasn’t his business model*”¦he was Larry the *Liquidator*, after all. And similarly with the Democrats.

    I concur he did not, but then, that’s not his job. That’s the job of the CEO/President, their staff, and the stock holders.

    He’s decided (probably correctly) that the CEO/President and staff are sufficiently incompetent/uninventive that they can’t fix it.

    Remember, it took a complete outsider to find a possible fix to sell to Larry.

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