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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Foxx Files: How the Congresswoman Tries to Have It Both Ways
Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's indignant letter in yesterday's Watauga Democrat newspaper is classic Foxx: ignore what I've always said and listen only to my election-year pandering. Everyone who has followed Madam Foxx for a nano-second knows she's hostile to Social Security, and I should hope that someone will dig out those past statements. (I would, but I'm trying to skin a different skunk today and just don't have the time.)Suddenly (if we're to believe her letter in the Watauga Democrat, which we don't), she's the great champion of Social Security. Buffalo dust!
Which reminds us of how she's pulled this kind of stunt in the past. For example, the great Dell computer corporate welfare gambit of 2004-2005. Foxx was serving in the NC Senate when it voted in November 2004 to grant millions of $$ in tax breaks, etc. to the corporation to set up a plant in Forsyth County. But Foxx, who has always publicly said she opposes corporate raids on the taxpayer and who never misses a vote, managed to miss the vote on the Dell giveaway.
Scott Sexton, the Winston-Salem Journal columnist, couldn't dodge the irony of then encountering Foxx's broadly smiling face sitting on the stage when Dell subsequently hosted a tour of the new Forsyth plant. Foxx posed for pictures of herself with Dell's founder, Michael Dell (the picture above).
Sexton made a point of asking her if she'd changed her position on corporate welfare, and you can read how she dodged and bobbed and weaved, trying to get out of the trap she'd laid for herself.
She's doing the same exact thing in yesterday's Watauga Democrat.
Oh yeah, and how did that Dell deal work out for the taxpayers of North Carolina?
Labels: corporate welfare, Dell Corporation, Virginia Foxx
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Dell to Forsyth County: "See ya, suckahs!"
Don't we love us that corporate welfare!
Don't we love us that corporate welfare!
Labels: corporate welfare, Dell Corporation
Monday, September 28, 2009
HoneyBaked Ain't So Sweet
The HoneyBaked Ham Co. is a large national corporation and, as such, exemplifies corporate values to a tee. Case in point:
Richard Huether, an employee at the HoneyBaked Ham Co. store in Cary, N.C., was closing the store in Crossroads Plaza last April when a gunman approached him, attempted to rob him, and then shot him in the stomach.
Huether has been on worker's compensation since April. When those benefits expired, HoneyBaked Ham terminated his employment, canceled health benefits for him and his family, and helpfully suggested he would be better off on the government dole. Or as Laura Leslie put it, "why should the company cover the medical bills [Huether] incurred defending its store when it can stick taxpayers with the bill instead?"
That's just one reality of health insurance in America today.
Richard Huether, an employee at the HoneyBaked Ham Co. store in Cary, N.C., was closing the store in Crossroads Plaza last April when a gunman approached him, attempted to rob him, and then shot him in the stomach.
Huether has been on worker's compensation since April. When those benefits expired, HoneyBaked Ham terminated his employment, canceled health benefits for him and his family, and helpfully suggested he would be better off on the government dole. Or as Laura Leslie put it, "why should the company cover the medical bills [Huether] incurred defending its store when it can stick taxpayers with the bill instead?"
That's just one reality of health insurance in America today.
Labels: corporate welfare, health care
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Winston-Salem Baseball Stadium Boondoggle
Sunday, April 05, 2009
What Dopes We Were Department
Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines, who'll be seeking his third term in this fall's elections, is beginning to ask rude questions of Dell Inc., which graciously accepted public subsidies a few years back from the taxpayers of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County for their plant down there ... to the tune of over $20 million. Dell stipulated that it would be employing 1,700 full-time people by October 2010.
Current problem is that Dell has been laying people off, not employing more people, and the corporate honchos apparently refuse to tell the local governments just how many people are currently working at the plant.
Joines is pissed. Or at least he's acting pissed (see upcoming reelection bid referenced above). Apparently, he's never heard of the gimme-gimme arrogance of big corporations.
Current problem is that Dell has been laying people off, not employing more people, and the corporate honchos apparently refuse to tell the local governments just how many people are currently working at the plant.
Joines is pissed. Or at least he's acting pissed (see upcoming reelection bid referenced above). Apparently, he's never heard of the gimme-gimme arrogance of big corporations.
Labels: Allen Joines, corporate welfare, Dell Corporation
Friday, December 05, 2008
Goo-Goo-Google, Goodbye?
North Carolina, rooked again?
Google on Thursday formally withdrew its application to get incentives under the [North Carolina] state’s Job Development Investment Grant program. The company in 2007 won a JDIG award, which gives companies tax withholdings in return for creating jobs and making investments, but it never signed the documents to cement the deal.
According to the state, Google was to get $4.7 million for creating 210 jobs and spending $600 million over four years.
But that’s not how it’s turned out so far. Google has built one data center building where it employs about 50 people – fewer than the 100 it expected to hire initially. And construction has stalled on a second building now that workers have finished its shell.
Sources tell Triangle Business Journal that the company has informed all construction workers, from engineers to laborers, that there won’t be any more work on the site for a while.
Labels: corporate welfare, Google
