Corporate Welfare Roulette
It's Not the Economy, Stupid. It's YOUR JOB!
Jim Hightower takes us for a spin inside the sleazy game of Corporate Welfare Roulette where politicos plunk down large sums of taxpayer loot in front of out-of-state corporations as “incentives” to win businesses to their regions ostensibly to “hire some people.” But Hightower reveals that jobs for local citizens don't appear to be a top priority when out-of-town corporations set up shop, as in the case of corporate person Dell Computer - who came to town, took millions of dollars in taxpayer money and then closed up shop to hire cheap labor in Asia instead.
Six years ago, Texas based computer giant Dell Computer headed to Winston-Salem, N.C. with the promise of delivering up to 1,500 jobs after being lured there by the “local poobahs.” After $318 million in tax giveaways, cash and other freebies to land the prize, and in October 2005, the town celebrated the glorious grand opening of Dell's $7 million plant. For everyone, it seemed, “the future was bright” – just not for the locals who needed jobs:
“However, one thing that governors and mayors absolutely hate to do is to face up to the fact that their prize has reneged, failing to deliver the promised number of jobs. Real bad politics.
Last October, four years and two days after Dell's gala opening in Winston-Salem, the giant suddenly upped and left! It abruptly announced that it would soon cut out for the cheap-labor havens of Asia, shut down the still-sparkling assembly plant, discard the 900 people it had hired (600 short of its promise) and kiss off North Carolina. Thanks for the memories. Adios, chumps.
Formerly gleeful politicos were now howling, demanding "every red cent of incentive money" back. But they had put down their money and taken their chances, and corporate gods are notoriously fickle. While much of North Carolina's subsidy had not yet been doled out, taxpayers still took a hit of about $17 million for its fling with Dell.
Meanwhile, the roulette wheel continues to spin, and more and more taxpayers across the country are learning that they're getting stiffed, receiving only a fraction of the jobs they were taxed to bring to their area.”
Got that? U.S. taxpayers ARE PAYING greedy corporate and politico pit-bosses for the privilege of being thrown out of local jobs in favor of cheap outsourced and insourced labor. And if that isn't enough to finally banish the Plutocracy's annoying, educated white collar American citizenry from the middle class, Rob Oak at The Economic Populist explains that the $787 billion in stimulus funds isn't translating into jobs for Americans, either, but is instead going to foreign workers.
Oh, the crappy crapshoots don't stop in North Carolina. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland is also giving millions in tax breaks to notorious Indian H-1B user and U.S. Job outsourcer TATA (TCS) , too:
“Ohio Governor Ted Strickland is quick to admit that he doesn’t “particularly enjoy heights.” So why would he climb into a cherry picker to be lifted 40 feet in the air? To show off a 196,000-square-foot office park in the Cincinnati suburb of Milford to executives from Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest tech company and a thriving part of the Tata Group conglomerate. To sweeten the deal, Strickland threw in $19 million in tax credits and invited the TCS crew to a state dinner at the governor’s mansion.”
What are the people of Ohio doing about it? I wonder how the blatant, great American jobs sell off is going down amongst the Ohio teabagger set, or if their unemployed and underemployed counterparts on the left, the fleabaggers, are still deploying racist epithets to assuage their doomed dope-man's burden in this war on America's middle class. Oh, and that Economy thing? How about some good old fashioned job and trade protectionism? You know, the same kind that actually works but the plutocrats told us was so bad?
Adios, chumps!
-2Truthy
2 comments:
As an American, I think I'd be less ashamed to know that Strickland and his ilk were simply corrupt pieces of shit who were selling their country down the river to line their own pockets. What's more depressing is the likelihood that he, and thousands of local political leaders like him across the country, are on the contrary just stupid, ignorant, emasculated pieces of shit who've been so irretrievably brainwashed and degraded by the corporate multi-kult that no other "business plan" beyond selling off the family silver, and fellating foreigners, ever presents itself to their imaginations.
Did you know, Red T. Oak, that Pigs ARE the smartest animal in the stye?
I don't know if politicians are all stupid or just a plain bunch of greedy busy bodies, or BOTH - but I DO recognize a suspicious, similar behavior pattern where they use their snouts to move the others in their way off the teat. This way, they get very, very fat but, so what? Isn't that why God created Pigs?
Post a Comment