[poconopundit]

The first chapter of the book, The Great American Jobs Scam, traces the history of this fraud to Raytheon in Massachusetts.

The chapter discusses the history.  How Bill Weld got involved and it rippled to support Fidelity Investments.

I believe the principle should be to NOT favor any particular industry or company except in rare cases -- and in minor investments.  And the reason is you are tampering with the free enterprise system with its built in checks and balances.

Everybody in business needs to have SKIN in the GAME.  The rewards should go to those who take the risk themselves.  And you must also pay the penalty of failure.  "That's the breaks of Naval Air" as the airdales used to say.

Trump was right when he said: if you ship jobs overseas, then you will pay a tax penalty if you try to bring those goods or services back to the U.S.  It's a similar proposition to this and it's where Bernie intersects with Trump.

Elizabeth Warren is actually right when she says the public helped rich people succeed because the public built the roads and infrastructure.

There's a moral responsibility for a company to pay its fair share of taxes.  Home owners, plus small and medium sized businesses do, so why should large corporations be exempt or pay a smaller share.  Amazon and Walmart are killing small shop-owners and they are getting the biggest tax breaks.

* * * * * *

Now one of the next steps, I think, is to explain the the key principles in some visual form -- something that's easy to read.

It's one thing for a FReeper to understand this stuff.  But what about your average Joe Six-Pack and Jill Wine-Cooler?  They are not political junkies and never will be.

H. L. Mencken discusses this huge problem of a republic in a Chicago Sunday Tribune article in September 1926:

To the [politically illiterate] class, as to children, much of what now passes for news, and is dished up in endless columns every morning, is wholly uninteresting.  Its members... are quite incapable of comprehending politics save as a battle between two men, A and B.  In the strict sense, all ideas are beyond them.  They can only grasp events.

Are they interested only in crime?  I don't think so. What they are interested in is drama.  The thing presented to them must take the form of combat, and it must be a very simple combat, with one side clearly right and the other clearly wrong . They can no more imagine neutrality than they can imagine the fourth dimension.  And when they see drama, they want to see it moving.

... The journalism of the future, that is, the mob journalism -- will move in the direction that I have indicated.

Now at the time, Mencken was talking about the value of tabloid magazines such as today's New York Post.

But the tabloid of today is clearly Facebook.  That was created for the masses.  So now, with Twitter being acquired by somebody who believes in free speech, perhaps the next opportunity for Twitter is to expand free speech content into electronic tabloid space like Facebook has done.

[qaz123]

One more thing I’d like to toss out there as I know there is someone out there that knows a bit more about the money and accounting part of this mess...

With the advent and advances of things like CGI, many things that needed to be done “in person”, in the past, are now done with computers. Especially with regards to special effects.

There doesn’t seem to be many “blockbuster movies” anymore where they spent $100,000,000 making it.

In Covington, Ga there’s a place called, CineLease. Small time facility, nothing like those things out west in Hollywood, that seem like cities themselves. Right now they’re filming in a small dive bar in Covington, The Depot. Their trucks and equipment take up the small parking lot out front but nothing crazy and they aren’t even effecting traffic. Chances are they’ll be there another day or so, if they’re not gone already.

It seems like most of what they’re filming in Georgia, for all the hype, is small stuff, Netflix movies/series, tv shows, commercials, Amazon productions, maybe a few location “shoots” here and there.

The Walking Dead, for the most part, was filmed in the woods and abandoned industrial sites around Senoia, Ga. However, the folks that made that show gave the city of Senoia the small subdivision(Alexandria) they built for part of the show and they’re now selling the homes.

So, after all that, my point......Kemp and the rest say that the industry generated $4.2billion in economic activity. No idea where they get that number, but for all intents and purposes, why didn’t they say $4.2gagillion. How much, collectively was spent on all the filming? Did it all add up to $1,200,0000,000. I can’t imagine renting out a dive bar in Covington costing all that much.

Is the industry filming in this state for FREE. Sure, they spend X-amount of dollars. But are they getting all of it back with the tax credits, in addition to being able to write off all the expenses?