State of Oregon Gave Nike $2 Billion to Subsidize Its Growth
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No wonder Nike appears to have the best talent conveyor system. Oregon gave them $2’Billion in subsidy. Even I could corral a lot of talent with just $1 Billion. Saw this low in a story about Tesla getting subsidy and indicating how Tesla may be apparently a small timer at the subsidy trough compared to other major corporations and industries.
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150602-story.html
Isn’t it time for Adidas to move their headquarters to Lawrence and for the state of Kansas to give adidas $2 Billion, so Adidas can stack its teams as well as Nike appears to? Doesn’t THE LEGACY deserve it, if this subsidy crap has to go on?
P.S.: Elon Musk was in good form. He said if he cared about subsidies, he would go into the oil and gas business. He added Tesla and Ford were the only American car manufacturers not to have gone bankrupt.
P.P.S.: Tesla is building such superior luxury cars, and promising to do the same for $35,000 cars in two years, that the private oligarchy’s water carriers appear to be being asked to get out front and attack Elon for answering speculative questions about terra forming Mars and Musk answering speculatively that nuking Mars’ poles might be one way to warm the Martian climate sufficiently for terraforming. Oooooooooh, oooooh, bad Elon, he talked about nuking Mars!
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge! Don’t buy Elon’s electric cars, because he wants to clean up earth and ruin Mars with terra forming, while we want to keep polluting earth and keep Mars clean. HOWLING! Consumer Reports just announced Teslas test so superiorly (sp?) that they have had to revise their ranking system. The bailed out, deeply subsidized petro-car companies have to stop claiming electrics cannot be built. And so Elon has to be portrayed as a crazy. What a surprise! Somewhere up in heaven Preston Tucker is laughing his ass off and shouting GO, ELON, GO!!! And Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, who said electrics were the future back in 1914, are cheering Elon to expose the do nothing’s also. And Steve Jobs? He is shaking his head and saying, “Well, of course insanely great products can be built.”
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I don’t think people realize that there really isn’t a difference between athletic shoes and blood diamonds. I venture a guess that there has been equal hardship in the manufacturing of shoes in Asia as has been in excavating diamonds in Africa. Drug cartels could learn a thing or two from a basketball giant like Nike. Their level of corruption runs through every facet of their industry, from the high visibility of lobbying local, state and federal politicians all the way across to their low visibility corrupt production practices in Asia, hidden to protect “trade secrets.”
My hopes are we someday get a Justice Department that really goes after mob organizations, like Nike. Good chance the evidence is already there, spilled by brave informers, like UBS informant Bradley Birkenfield, and Hervé Falciani’s theft of HSBC’s files… and others. Nike has been operating a monster slush fund in Swiss banks for decades… free from taxes and the ability to transfer funds “below the radar.”
And let’s talk about manufacturing…
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I fear we Americans are all somewhat in the position of Northerners in the 1850s. We oppose slavery, prison labor, peonage, and child labor, and hope other regions that practice them stop, and try to discourage our own regions, but we benefit enough from the trade and consumption enabled by the exploitation that we do not successfully organize to move forward to stop it by rule of law backed by force. I fear the equivalent of a great global civil war one day to put a stop to the abuses. And I fear it will it will come one day when yet another infrastructure as spatially decisive to control as rail and telegraphy were, seeks to exploit our virtues and vices in this matter to divide and conquer us again, as occurred when bankers and railroaders mobilized north and south against each other with slavery politics to grab control of transcontinental rail and telegraph construction in order to.grab control of global maritime trade crossing the Western Hemisphere.
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@jaybate-1.0 What kind of prison labor are you referring to? Does my heart good down here to see the guys in their orange jumpsuits picking up trash along the roads, followed by a van pulling a trailer with supplies and a port-a-potty.
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@brooksmd Me too! Let’s move to Arizona and become Sheriffs!
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Good question.
The kind I was referring to was that kind reputedly maintained under adverse conditions by the millions in China and certain other far eastern countries largely as a wage dampener on the paid labor force, thus serving a traditional function analogous to chattel slave labor, but not called slave labor.
But I am not opposed to all prison labor. Decent work and accomplishment are good for most anyone’s self esteem, especially those among us marginalized by society and engaged in substance abuse and related crime. But I am opposed to a steady diet of work as punishment; that has never made sense to me. Work as punishment robs work of its only real net benefit for economy, culture, state and individual. If Self punishes players with the stair master daily afterwards regardless of their subsequent behavior, there ceases to be learning or benefit. The goal becomes escape not getting better.
I am not naive. There are some incorrigibles. But they are hardly good workers or altered by punishment. Confinement is about the only thing to do with them.
Obviously there are grey areas and obviously I am no penal expert, but I don’t enjoy or approve of inflicting routine suffering on those on my team, whether they have screwed up or not. Citizens are my fellow citizens whether in prison or out, until we execute, or deport them. And I am against capital punishment morally and in principle in a republic even though there are times when my individual emotions get the better of me regarding crime. In those moments I would hope my fellow citizens and rule of law would restrain my (and others) calls for execution. The DNA stats are in. We are imprisoning and executing significant numbers of innocent persons and we have the power and authority and technical feasibility to stop doing it, and should.
But I digress.
I am specifically opposed to the abusive and exploitative kind of prison labor maintained at levels of prisoner supply aimed at maintaining an alternate labor force used to dampen wages and be ready to be moved to forced labor camps under military command in the event of martial law declaration. These are incarcerated labor forces that are human rights violations and crimes against humanity waiting to happen for at least the last century or two that I have read some about.
That’s what I am against, and for, in a short form on this issue.
Rock Chalk!
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I would like to see convicted perpetrators receive a prison sentence AND a retribution fee (and prison rent) that must be paid in full to the victimized parties (and the State) before being released from prison. If these people want to ever walk free in our society, they have to “pay” their dues. They harm so many people and aren’t held accountable for the damage they cause. Prison time is like vacation for many of these people. Free food and digs. Often luxuries they didn’t have on the streets. Most are professional criminals that game the system. (my generalization doesn’t consider the thousands upon thousands of those convicted on simple drug possessions… a huge travesty in our system!)
They should receive a wage for their efforts with most of the proceeds going to those who were damaged and the State for their “rent.”
You can’t teach individuals without enforcing accountability. The entire system now is a “free lunch” for criminals with all of us “paying the ticket.”
We don’t need a brutal system… that just raises the brutal mentality. It should be fair, but it should be strict and realistic to the harm these people cause others and society.
It takes accountability if you want to teach responsibility.
