Folks,
You know my attitude towards seeling on the net, and putting any effort there,
I am generally against importers retailing on the net, I believe you ought to
sell to net retailers, not be one yourself...this is not so say I can't
imagine uses for the net...
For example, given that most retailers are starved for new items, and we are
new item introducers, and the net is dirt cheap way to offer new
ideas..perhaps trade show managers such as Little co. might be interested in a
venue that promoted new items from new companies..call it "virtual trade
show"...legitimate retailers place orders for your product and you attempt to
gain enough minimum orders to cover the minimum your supplier requires. I
have no time to pursue this right now, but I'd be willing to join a group of
people planning the execution of such an idea. let me know..
John
Saturday, February 27, 1999
No Substitutes For Tradeshows
Sunday, February 21, 1999
Corporate Welfare
folks,
I believe it was 1997 that Microsoft received $150 million taxpayers dollars
to promote exports of its products. I am all for microsoft in the marketplace
and like how bill gates operates (although I avoid his mediocre
products)...but such corporate welfare is unconscionable in my mind. Now I
come across and article in a R rated website, www.theonion.com (accidently!)
that has the following article...
Today is a typical day for 51-year-old J. Gordon Grantham III, as he
drives
his luxury-model Cadillac to a favorite restaurant to meet with potential
investors.
Over a lunch of $45 porterhouse steaks, a deal is brokered, and, using his
company
credit card, Grantham picks up the tab.
At first glance, this scenario might not seem terribly unusual. But J.
Gordon
Grantham III is one of the nation's approximately 2.6 million recipients of
corporate welfare.
Grantham, CEO of Global Tetrahedron Consolidated, one of the world's
largest petrochemical-manufacturing concerns, receives more than $850 million
a
year from the federal government in the form of tax breaks, incentives, grants
and
no-interest loans.
Defenders of Grantham's welfare-queen lifestyle say people like him
wouldn't
be able to survive without a lifeline of public aid. But many Americans are
growing
tired of what they view as abuses of the system. To them, Grantham and
corporate-welfare recipients like him are living high on the public dole,
growing fat
on the handouts of others.
"I work for a living," said Reston, VA, delivery driver Ted Schacht, 41.
"I'm a
responsible, tax-paying citizen. I can barely afford the insurance payments on
my
'91 Subaru. So why should my money pay for some welfare recipient's imported
Italian loafers?"
"These parent companies can't afford to support the subsidiaries they
already
have, but they go right on acquiring more of them anyway," said Ellen Gertsen
of
Medford, OR. "And who winds up paying for them? Hard-working taxpayers like
me, that's who. It's a damn shame, is what it is."
Defenders of the corporate-welfare system say such attitudes are
insensitive
and cruel. "These are not just corporate-welfare recipients; these are human
beings,
struggling to survive," said Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK), one of Congress' most
outspoken proponents of the current welfare system and co-sponsor
of the Aid To Companies With Dependent Subsidiaries Act. "They have households
full of domestic servants to support. Many of them can't even
provide decent housing for their polo ponies. Offering them a helping hand is
the only decent thing to do."
Corporate welfare accounts for 95 percent of all government welfare
expenditures each year, a figure many find excessive. Yet, according to the
recipients themselves, it is not nearly enough.
"Even after downsizing 75 percent of our domestic workforce and
relocating half of our manufacturing plants to Central America and the Far
East, third-quarter profit margins were still 15 percent off last year's
figures," says Charles Beeman, 47, associate vice-president of a multinational
textile conglomerate. "If I can't make ends meet by the end of the fiscal
year, I could lose my corner office."
"Most of the recipients we work with only get a few hundred million in
tax breaks a year," says Elaine R. Jansen, executive director of the
Corporate Welfare Survival Task Force, a D.C.-based group that lobbies for
welfare recipients' rights. "Come April 15, some of these people will
have no place to go with their unreported earnings. The least we can do as
compassionate human beings is provide them with a safe, warm tax
shelter."
Still, anti-welfare sentiment is growing, with critics arguing that the
system just fosters the welfare lifestyle.
"These people are exploiting the system to feed their destructive
habits," U.S. Rep. Douglas Verstadt (D-FL) said. "They say they need this
welfare money to survive. But how do we know they're not just using it to buy
drug companies?"
Worse yet, critics say corporate welfare leads to gang violence. In
recent years, Wall Street has become overrun with so-called
multinationals--"merged" companies that team up to enforce strict control of
their market-share "turf," often through brutal, hostile takeovers of the
competition. The advertising world is already overrun with the gang signs, or
"corporate logos," of these vicious aggregations of power, which
blanket the nation's streets as they ruthlessly mark their territory.
Such problems seem to be getting worse, prompting some corporate-welfare
opponents to take action. Last fall, the Wisconsin Legislature
passed CW-2, or "Corporate Workfare," an experimental program many hope will
become a model for corporate-welfare reform across the U.S.
Under the provisions of CW-2, welfare-receiving CEOs are required to
attend job-training seminars and adult-education classes, and work at
least 16 hours a week, to remain eligible for benefits. Though CW-2 has been
vociferously opposed by Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who
blasted it as "cruel and unfair to needy companies," the policy is winning
wide support.
"Before CW-2, Wisconsin's corporate-welfare benefits were so generous,
it turned us into a 'welfare magnet,' drawing lazy and indigent
corporations to our state from the poorest business environments of Chicago,"
said Wisconsin Sen. Fred Risser, co-author of the CW-2 legislation.
"But ever since CW-2 was implemented, the decent folks of this state have been
fighting back."
James Haltigan, CEO of Wis-Tek Electronics, is one of many Wisconsin
corporate-welfare recipients affected by the new law. Before CW-2, on
a typical weekday afternoon, Haltigan usually found himself at his large oak
desk, barking orders at secretaries. Today, he is standing on the side of
a public highway in a blaze-orange reflective vest, picking up litter for the
Transportation Department as part of a special CW-2 work detail.
"This is ridiculous," Haltigan said. "I had to cancel an important
conference in the Cayman Islands for this? My stockholders are depending on
me, and I can't adequately address their concerns if I'm stuck out here
collecting trash on I-90/94."
It remains to be seen whether such attempts at corporate-welfare reform
will be successful in the long run. But one thing is certain: More and
more Americans are convinced that the system, one way or another, has to
change.
As delivery driver Gus Drummond of Cincinnati put it: "Take, take, take.
It's time these freeloading welfare fat cats pulled their weight. This is a
global free-market capitalist economy we're living in, not some charity ward."