“Members of the Occupy protest movement should target companies like Apple, rather than protest at places like the docks in Oakland, California, says former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown,” MacNN reports.
“On Sunday the San Francisco Chronicle published an editorial by Brown, in which he accused the Occupy movement of hurting the 99 percent in the form of dock workers and truck drivers,” MacNN reports. “‘If the Occupy people really want to make a point about the 1 percent, then lay off Oakland and go for the real money down in Silicon Valley,’ the column reads.”
MacNN reports, “‘The folks who work on the docks in Oakland or drive the trucks in and out of the port are all part of the 99 percent. They take our goods from all over the state and export them,’ Brown continues. ‘The only thing those cats down at Apple are exporting are our jobs. Then they have the nerve to ask for tax breaks, and Washington obliges.'”
Read more: http://www.macnn.com/articles/11/12/19/apple.exporting.us.jobs.says.brown/#ixzz1h1ANZIz8
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Willie Brown ought to read this: Apple’s real market value: How many U.S. jobs it creates.
Yeah, go ahead. That will just hasten the demise of Occupy. Willie Brown is a d*ckwad. Apple provides so much to CA and this dork wants to chastise them, or have someone else do it. Why doesn’t he camp out and crap in the park?
Hastening the demise of Occupy is probably his intent.
“Stop protesting somewhere relevent, damnit! And go chase after targets that have nothing to do with the unholy coalescing of corporate and government in this country, while you’re at it!”
Don’t blame Apple for exporting jobs overseas. It’s the politicians like Willie Brown whose policy of accommodation to Wall Street’s wisdom that in order to meet the bottom line companies would be better downsizing their labor force with cheap foreign labor. Now it’s too late to reverse the policy without dire consequences for the US. The politicians should be blamed for the present situation.
you voted for em
… SOMEone voted for them. Maybe vsp was one of that number, maybe not. I’d love to say “you voted for them, if you voted NoPublican”, but that would suggest the Dems were somehow innocent. “Less often guilty” does not equal “Innocent”.
No, it’s politicians like Willie Brown who have no understanding of how a company actually works and who think that you can just slap another tax on corporations, they’ll pay it, and the city/county/state will have that much more money to spend irresponsibly.
The fact is that fewer taxes would lead to more companies and people locating in California, which overall would result in more tax revenue for municipalities.
Of course, all the money in the world wouldn’t help California learn to spend it wisely . . . .
… spend their tax revenues irresponsibly. Would you stop building or maintaining roads to cut taxes? Then you couldn’t ship your goods. Cut education? Where would you get the engineers to design your products? Cut the Police or Fire Fighters? How would you protect your property?
Strange how those most apoplectic about “cutting taxes” are enthusiastic about creating infrastructure to monitor the life of an unborn baby. “Saving money”? Bull-hockey!
You are an idiot. It has zero to do with the roads that liberals don’t maintain with the stolen over-tax money. You can’t build a new road or bridge these days thanks to the enviro-nazi-liberal-commies. You freaks and FLEA party idiots are destroying everything you go near on purpose. We hate you fools and will vote you out. GO TO HELLLLLLL!!!!!!!!
…someone is cranky about the lump of coal they’re gettin for Christmas.
What’s a FLEA party?
@”not all govts”… While I don’t feel the need to tell you to go to hell, I do feel the need to reinforce the notion that you’re an idiot. If you believe that by “cutting taxes” you would “stop building and maintaining roads” then you have no sense of perspective or scalability. Not to mention that you completely ignore the fact that reducing taxe rates often increases tax revenue by expanding the tax base.
And to respond to your fear-mongering that “Cutting the police and fire fighters” would cause you to lose “your property”… I just ask you to look at the recently released FBI Uniform Crime Report data for 2011. Seems like we’re heading in the right direction even though many municipalities I know of have been doing exactly that… “Cutting”.
But, based on the tone of your comments, I get the feeling that you think Govts would never have ENOUGH money. So, please tell us… How much is ENOUGH?
If the existing tax rate is overly burdensome, then reducing it has the *potential* to increase future tax revenue by stimulating growth. However, I am not aware of anyone credible who has proven that the current U.S. tax rate is very far away from the optimum. The relationship between tax revenues and tax rates is undoubtedly complex and nonlinear, but I can guarantee that as the rate gets very low, revenue will undoubtedly follow. Why? Because the growth that would be necessary to offset such cuts would be unsustainable and highly inflationary.
The GOP was selling wishful thinking in the 2000s when Bush sold “tax cut and spend” as a logical economic approach while deriding the Democrats for “tax and spend” in previous decades. And by making people believe that tax cuts are the only possible solution to our current economic problems, the GOP is selling the same goods for the current Presidential election cycles. Tax cuts are appealing medicine to a pill popping society because they seem so easy and painless. In truth, however, some people get to keep more money while the majority receive a promise of future prosperity that never quite seems to materialize.
There is no easy and painless way to escape from our past overspending. It requires commitment and sacrifice to fix major problems like the ones that we currently face. We have to accept cuts in services at the same time that we acknowledge the need to maintain or even boost tax revenues to move towards a balanced budget status.
The ridiculously generous benefits, particularly retirement benefits that the California Employees Labor Unions have are the biggest place to cut. But no Democrat would ever say or do anything that would piss off a union. Otherwise they wouldn’t get their election “donations.”
Sure. Because the rest of the “protests” have been so effective too.
The Chief
A moron? This does not come close to portraying the depths of his stupidity. The only people more stupid than Willie Brown, are those who put him in office, keep him in office, and give him voice! People are stupid. In the words of Jesus… They are sheep. And that’s not a compliment.
… y’all are not from San Francisco, folks who know Willie Brown, at least by close reputation. You folk are bitter Republicans leveling ad hominem attacks on the Democrat in hopes of discrediting his ideas.
How grade school of you. Grow up. I’m sure there are valid arguments to attack his comments directly. Pitiful!
Really? When did Willie work in the private sector, other than as a lawyer to get his foot in the political door?
He has no sound basis for the rational that he fosters on others. Just something to hearken back to the old times, when there were solid reasons for movements, which are now mostly BS.
It’s a wonder that he is from Texas.
… the man. I was saying the naked, negative, truth about most of the whack jobs who were attacking him – rather than attacking the ideas he presented.
About politicians from Texas? I’m sure not ALL of them are ignorant fools, but I’m pretty sure that those I’m familiar with are. Some few can be amusing in their ignorance. Not all.
And there you have it: Willie loves EMPLOYEES . . . but he hates EMPLOYERS. You can’t argue with his reasoning. (Or can you?)
willie brown is an asshole. you should read some of his blog entries on sfgate. he is just a tool.
Although Apple has a lot of money, they are not using it to contributing to economic inequality! What a retard this guy is. Occupy is not simply about “you have a lot of money”; it is protesting “you’re using your corporate money to buy elections” or “you’re simply shipping jobs overseas” or “you’re gaming the financial markets for your own personal gain even when you wiped out all of our 401ks”.
… shipped the vast majority of its manufacturing jobs overseas. Yes?
And they had better luck at it than my previous employer, who was well and truly beaten for doing the same to mine.
Still … Dell kept its “manufacturing” in Texas … and got clobbered just the same. Maybe it was their “me-too” designs?
Brilliant. This just days after it was announced that Apple is going to start manufacturing their mobile processors in Texas. Even without that, Apple employees thousands of Americans, and creates ecosystems that employ many times more. Moron.
Thank you!
And what about that giant space ship that Apple is building in California? Does that idiot think Apple is flying it in to Cupertino, CA? Idiot!!!
Brown is clueless and uninformed!
Dumbest thing I’ve read all day. Congratulation Willie for moronic comment of the day.
Can’t, Apple’s stores are too packed with customers. Microsoft stores, however, have plenty of room and the Occupy movement would be the only way they would be filled.
And yet, there is a valid argument to be made that those manufacturing jobs, (which number close to 1 million) could be moved to the US. You might counter with, “evil union labor keeps them out.”
Well, when the average worker is making $11/day, you might want to consider who you are calling a d**kwad.
The high wages here would price Apple products a universe beyond the competition who use cheap foreign labor. That would kill Apple, the best company ever. Wages in foreign countries have to go up, and maybe a start for that is to get China to stop manipulating it’s currency and to require human and worker rights for countries in the WTO.
Like Willie Brown, Willie Sutton had a nose for money, reputedly having reasoned that one robbed banks, because “that’s where the money is.”
Dinosaur Willy should stop Brownnosing to the Occupy forces & get himself informed. He should be thankful that the Valley’s most effective mouthpiece has been reincarnated somewhere. Otherwise, he’d be sorry for his crap talk. Discounting the thousands of jobs at the Cupertino campus, how many American households are dependent on the Apple Store for their livelihood?
Willie’s as informed as he wants to be.
Those occupiers should be occupying the offices of the UN, World Bank, IMF, the MSM, and many college professors. Why? Because all of these have been supporting the development of other countries and the alleviation of poverty in those countries via the export of our jobs (and the exporting of goods from these developing countries into the US).
Will these occupier campers have to fall behind the Apple camper when the Apple TV is released?!
Willy Brown is as corrupt as they come!
The Occupy people are socialist fools (that’s redundant). If they had any brains they would occupy D.C. for creating a hostile environment necessitating business do most of the things they are complaining about. Businesses should pay taxes. We should pay taxes from the income we earn working for businesses. If we made laws that were creating an attractive environment for businesse, more would come.
Well, you already get to enjoy an attractive business environment if you’re a mega-rich corporation. You get to be tax-exempt(see link), be effectively unaccountable and untouchable by regulators, and the vast amounts of money you spend bribing politicians(which is legal and called “lobbying to pretty it up) allows you to write the law.
The results of this attractive business environment seem to be less than positive for the 99% of the population that aren’t like billionaire CEOs and upper management, though. Hey… Maybe somebody should protest it…
I meant businesses should not pay taxes.
Is willy not aware of what’s inside those trucks?
I remember Steve Jobs when he went before the city council to lay out the plans for the new campus say that although Apple could move to a cheaper place (and I suppose they must have a lot invitations to do so) they liked being where they are and keeping the jobs there.
so you now have a California leader saying go “protest against Apple”…
OMFG, Willie! You’ve done it again! You’ve set a new world’s record for ignorance. I thought you had one that would last a century or more after you forced PG&E to close the Hunters Point power plant, but this is even better. BTW, how’s that Hunters Point economy doing now without any industry at all? Even the strip joints must have dried up and blown away by now.
The Occupy protesters are already at Apple…they are waiting in line for out-of-stock products.
Apparently his folks named him appropriately. Quit playing with yourself and call Mary with a beard. He might just give a shit what this moron espouses.
Poor Willie needs to be freed and start doing his own job: making just wise and fair laws.
Our politicians tend to believe that because they have a microphone in front of their nose, their words will be taken as truth, just because they spoke it. They also believe the people they are supposed to serve are a bunch of idiots. They should start doing their own job and get their own house in order.
Also, to add to MDN’s take, how many jobs Apples’ products help people do … very well.
If you think of how many developers depend on their livelyhood through the Appstore, there are many tens of thousands more jobs created by Apple, and the vast majority are in the U.S. Then there are the accesories market that create more household income, …….etc.
You get the idea.
Can’t they occupy Time magazine HQs and the newsstands that sell that magazine for better cover shots and coverage?
Once an idiot, always an idiot.
You hold no office so you are no longer relevant.
Just shut up!