All the charts, salesmanship and goodwill in the world just don't work, and are far more expensive, than good old fashioned blackmail.
The health insurance industry came out with a report blasting health insurance reform. It was really nothing more than a blackmail note to the American People. It said don't reform and cut our profits or we will raise your rates. Of course, this blatant attempt at blackmail will go unpunished.
Blackmail has even become a common business practice. Whenever a business needs an improvement, decides to relocate or build a plant, the first thing it does is goes to government demanding blackmail or it will take jobs somewhere they will pay blackmail. Many states succumbed to blackmail by imposing working family oppressing "right to scab" laws, making union organizing difficult if not impossible.
What really strikes me as so outrageous as to almost be hysterically funny, is that after a company gets millions in incentives and tax breaks and infrastructure from a local government, it's leaders are then feted to great ceremonies and given keys to the cities they extorted the millions from.
All these Chamber of Commerce, Republican Party member businessmen, and women, I haven't forgotten the wonderfully toothed Carly Fiorina that Hewlett/Packard couldn't fire fast enough, claim to hate big government. One thing for sure. These jokers might not like the rest of it, but they sure love the big government teet they're constantly suckling.
13 comments:
Anyone catch the video of Anita Dunn on Glenn Beck tonight?
Stick a fork in Anita, she's Dunn.. Hee, hee, he
Or, like Dell in North Carolina - they take all that payola and THEN close up shop and move their business overseas and refuse to pay back all that "incentive" money, claiming they fulfilled their part of the bargain. North Carolina will now get shafted again as they spend millions litigating this clusterf**k.
These incentive programs are bullshit. They are as bad as those poorly written emails we all get promising us millions from some dead stranger in Somalia. And desparate communities, like ignorant, desparate people get sucked right in. It should be criminal - but it's not!
LOL
Truth,
I have been otherwise occupied lately, but I am returned. As usual you have nailed the problem. I have long been a critic of incentives to businesses to relocate. The problem, however, is that cities must compete with other cities for businesses.
Historically, businesses were centered in the northeast. Now those businesses are leaving and moving to the south. When does it become the responsibility of cities to protect their workforce and when does it become the responsibility of businesses to make a profit?
This isn't political. It is a matter of survival to working people. Texas has done a great job of anticipating the work market and adjusting.
Consequently, it is thriving and Ohio, who like other rust belt cities didn't get the memo about manufacturing, is floundering.
Manufacturing, high-tech, whatever is now on the horizon, where does it end?
Kind of a conundrum, eh?
Good day, sir.
Good to hear from you LaOT. I thought it might be playoff time for your soccer team or something. Or something bad like I was starting to bore you.
I wish I had a solution to the extortion businesses get away with on this subject but as long as governments are willing to pay, what can be done? Si I don't think my normal government solution is the answer. They created this problem through pandering to business interests. In several cases, workers may have contributed also. Years ago when I was selling Chryslers, we went on a tour of the plant in Hazlewood Mo. During that tour several of wondered why at least 3 out of 4 cars in the employee parking lot were other makes. The guide had no answer. The employees got a real sweet deal on new Chryslers.
I guess government didn't bribe the employees enough to buy the cars they were being paid a good wage to build. Sucks when my side acts like just as assinine as the side I usually bash.
That’s it. It’s over. Stick a fork in us. We’re done, the liberal PC police have won.
If you are a liberal blogger, then anything goes. If you are a conservative, then of course you’re a racist,a bigot, and a liar. The king of the racists Al Sharpen is a hero and all the conservative talk show hosts are not only wrong but labeled to be anti Americans because they DARED to disagree with the current administration's policies.
This country, the country I grew up in, the country I defended as a soldier, has ceased to exist. The United States of America has lost its mind. I may as well pack my shit and go live in a hut somewhere, just to escape the wanton stupidity that our society has degenerated into.
Our kids go to school more hours per year than any other kids in the known universe, and yet millions of undereducated dolts “graduate” every year unable to read a job application but able to recite the Obama Mmmm Mmmm Mmmmm song. People love to bitch about the notion our kids should go to school year round, even though they already spend more time in school, ostensibly, than kids in other countries; meanwhile, Miss Teen South Carolina’s babblefest about not being able to find anything on a map shows us how effective our educational system is. Our kids can’t play outside at recess because they might get hurt and the parents will sue. Our kids don’t get any gym classes because they might get hurt and the parents will sue, or if they do get to do some sport-like event they all get a participation trophy because everyone has to be a winner. Meanwhile gubmint-provided skool lunch now consists of sugar-frosted Mountain Dew, and ice cream sandwiches. And of course, our schools are filled with underpaid, overworked teachers doing what they can with what little they are given, and I applaud their efforts, but the administrators who run these institutions are so enamored of red tape and bureaucratic bullshit and political-correctitude nice-nice pattycake fear of getting sued that you get shit like 6-year olds getting 45-day reform-school suspensions for bringing their Cub Scout eating utensil to school because it’s construed as a weapon. This same school district in Newark, Delaware tried to expel a fifth grader for bringing a serrated knife to school with a birthday cake. Assholes, the lot of them.
And now we have a 17-year old Eagle Scout in Troy, New York who has been forced out of school for at least 20 days for having a 2-inch pocket knife locked in his car. Matt Whalen, a senior at Lansingburgh High School, isn’t just an Eagle Scout, either. He’s also a soldier in the United States Army who recently completed his initial 10 weeks of basic training and is trying to get into West Point.
Whalen follows the Boy Scout motto and is always prepared, stocking his car with a sleeping bag, water, a ready-to-eat meal, and the pocket knife, which was given to him by his grandfather, a police chief in a nearby town no less. Hard to imagine a cop giving his grandson an illegal knife, no? But Lansingburgh High has a zero-tolerance policy and bureaucrats can’t ever see mitigating circumstances to any rules unless it suits their agenda, so when school officials discovered that Whalen kept his knife locked in his car, he says, they suspended him for five days, and then tacked on an additional 15 days arbitrarily after a “hearing”.
Glenn Beck is a lair because HE and HE alone had the guts to expose a communist by the name of Van Jones being an adviser the the president of the United States. Rush Limbaugh was denied the right to buy a Football team because of his right to speak out about something that he believed.
But the Football league is rampant with some of the CREEPIEST THUGS in America. But that's alright as long as they keep a conservative like Rush down..
.......Continued.....
No matter what a Charlatan like Al Sharpton says.
Yes we are done! Wake up people, both democrats and republican’s you've been manipulated and you are too blind or stupid to see it. And the poor little Muslims bless their little terrorist hearts, are getting their way while we are losing our freedoms.
I stopped reading your rant after two sentences ranter. You bore me.
Actually I thought his rant was pretty good.
Truth,
I agree with your reply to the ranter. I wish I had the staying power or psychosis to rant like that. I've felt for a long time that cities sold their soul for short term gains. Now, like the whore who moves on, the businesses go to the highest bidder leaving behind shattered johns.
Bored with you? Never happen. I don't agree with you much, but I love sparring with you.
Good day, sir.
Law and Order Teacher said...
Truth, I agree with your reply to the ranter. I wish I had the staying power or psychosis to rant like that.
He posted the same rant on Pamela D. Hart's blog. And probably on many other blogs. Did he even compose this himself or cut and past from somewhere else?
BTW progressives are pointing out how the insurance industry's report on how they are going to jack up prices is an extremely good argument FOR the public option. Let's hope this gains some traction... I was going to add "let's hope that Congress doesn't allow this blatant blackmail", but as you point out... it's quite common. Not quite so blatant though.
Right wingers love welfare, so long as it is corporations or the wealthy who are benifiting from it.
Very true WD. Very true.
I would like to exchange links with your site truthshallrule.blogspot.com
Is this possible?
Post a Comment