Restructuring

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to ushering in the New Future, whatever the financial consequences, which is why we continue to do what we do even when it is not popular or when it becomes extremely difficult.  This, incidentally, is one of the reasons we will triumph in the end.  Most entities have a series of short-term goals that often eclipse the long-term goals and cause them to participate in less-than-optimal behavior just to secure short-term support.  At the GPD, our secure appointments for life and our open approach mean that we are not affected by short-term fluctuations and you can be sure that we are always working toward our end goals.

Most of the corporate world, however, is more affected by investor confidence than by actual results, which is why we often see restructuring, downsizing, refocusing, and the like, often at the expense of the people and other world citizens that provide the labor base.

So, you may ask, why would be talking about this right now?  The answer is simple.  The New Company is again "restructuring" and refocusing, taking the energy that was until recently dedicated to stealing "Edgar's" patented churro recipe and to hole punches and moving them to their original cash cow: the brad.

According to internal memos we have acquired the hole punch market is saturated.  Those who have hole punches don't need to replace them as they last too long, and the number of new households requiring hole punches is so low that the profit margin is not enough to sustain their manufacturing and "marketing" efforts.  The result, they claim, is that they will let the non-evil office products manufacturers supply the world's hole punches and they will focus on their core competency: the brad.  We aren't sure whether this is an entirely financial decision, or whether it may be a fundamentalist movement within the New Company, but the effect is clear: the New Company is cleansing itself and focusing its substantial resources on making all citizens of the world dependent on brads and party to the oppression they symbolize.

Not fair

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not reticent to participate in politics, and we do so only when we have to in order to accomplish our grand designs.  At the same time, however, we do know our way around politics, and we know enough to know that claiming divine endorsement for your candidacy is simply not fair.

Perhaps the time WAS then...

Recently we reported about the New Company's cryptic memo "the time is now."  At the time we mentioned that we would share more details about the operation when it was appropriate, and at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased that it is now appropriate to share some of those details.  As near as we can tell from our intelligence, this is how it went down.

Several months ago when "Edgar" flirted with the idea of joining the Board of Dictators, the New Company became fearful and decided, as companies tend to do, to attack his source of income.  "Edgar" and his patented churros are legendary at most reputable churro locations around the world, and while there are still a few black market churro stands in most major cities we have been working hard to eliminate them and have made a fair amount of progress.  The New Company's plan was to increase the number of black market churro stands while simultaneously degrading the quality of the aforementioned stands, which would cause us to expend resources trying to prop up our uneasy relationship with "Edgar."  This much of their plan worked, as we did increase our operatives' churro duty.  Unfortunately for them, however, this increased churro duty did not affect our ability to carry out our other operations.  The New Company had grossly overestimated their churro-making capacity, which made it easy for us to crush their dummy churro franchises easily.

When this phase of the plan was in full swing, the fateful memo ("The time is now") was issued.  You who are reading this post already know of our cautious response.  The next day they made their move, but our operatives (and "Edgar's") were ready for them.  "Natasha" herself was involved in the operation that successfully defended the patented recipe, and we saw the New Company's operatives retreat in disgrace much more quickly than we had hoped.

At the time (and when we posted our previous response) we thought that this was what the memo meant, but new information has come to light suggesting that the New Company is more devious than we had thought.  Instead of merely attacking "Edgar" and his revenue stream, they were using this memo to also cleanse their own operatives.  It is now apparent that the New Company downsized by about 36.332%, and our initial investigations into who was "let go" suggest that it was the least loyal to their cause.  If the rumors are true, there may be more "restructuring" ahead, we'll keep an eye on the situation.

Oh, and before you start asking whether this will increase unemployment numbers around the world, rest assured that "let go" is quite a euphemism and that those workers whose relationship with the New Company was terminated won't be re-entering the workforce or collecting unemployment.  Perhaps the time was, in fact, then.

The time is now

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not valiantly fighting against evil, which is why we have been apprehensively watching developments since the New Company went silent with their cryptic message "the time is now."  It now appears that our fears were overblown.  The "time" that was "now" was the time for the New Company to steal the patented churro recipe that our reluctant ally "Edgar" has been using to finance his operation, and the New Company was unable to acquire the recipe.  We would like to thank our vigilant operatives for helping to thwart their operation, and we would like to congratulate "Edgar" on the strength of his defenses.  We'll share more details about this operation as we feel appropriate, but you can rest assured that the time was not now!