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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
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
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Another Unwelcome Ripple
We're beginning to figger out the Republican philosophy for handling the U.S. economy: privatize profits while socializing losses. As in ... Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Seems ever more likely that we taxpayers will be saddled with the losses from bad management, while the CEOs and their fellow suits make off with the profits.But immediately after reading about Fannie and Freddie and little Hankie Paulson, the Bush administration treasury secretary, and their mutual benefit tea party, we also noticed this warning note about the Dell manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem.
The Wall Street Journal is saying that Dell may sell the plant just three years after the corporation received more than $6.5 million in city incentives and nearly $1.2 million in county incentives. There's something called a "claw-back clause" in the incentive deal that would force the company (supposedly) to pay back up-front incentives if it sells or closes the plant before Oct. 2010. If it closes or sells the plant between 2010 and 2015, it's liable for only half the incentives.
That's if Dell decides to honor the contract. A company that needs to downsize as badly as the W-S Journal suggests it does might find ways to get outta town scot free. Isn't that why they have lawyers?
What's up with Dell's cash-flow?
The plant and the employees ... are on the wrong side of an industrywide trend toward slowing desktop sales and surging notebook sales as the price of notebooks continues to fall. Dell has said repeatedly that it has no plans to assemble notebooks at the Forsyth plant, citing much lower production costs overseas.
Labels: bank failures, Bush economy, Dell Corporation
