Dayton suffers another economic blow with the departure of NCR

The city of Dayton and National Cash Register have shared a unique history with one another, intertwined in communal growth and technological innovation. It was NCR, founded by John Patterson (whose name decorates many a fixture and street sign through out the city) in 1884, who spurred great economic growth around the Dayton municipality during the early part of the 20th century.

The student neighborhoods that so many University of Dayton students have come to know and revere were once the original housing provided to employees by NCR so they could live close to their jobs and maintain affordable and respectable homes. Although NCR extracted most of its' manurfacturing out of the city, it still retained corporate offices employing over 1,200 Dayton area people until now.

After rumors began circulating that NCR planned to pack it's final bags for Georgia, Ohio politician's began to scramble to prevent the exodus. Efforts made to communicate with the company were met with a wall of silence, despite Govenor Ted Strickland (D-OH) reportedly offering the company around 31 million dollars in incentives to say. There have also been allegations that Georgia may be using Federal stimulus money to purchase the building which will eventually be leased to NCR. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has been said to be investigating that allegation and will be exploring what legal options, if any, Ohio may have concerning it. Finally, NCR released an official statement declaring their official intentions of moving their final offices to Georgia:

“The decision to consolidate functions in Georgia and build a technology-focused corporate headquarters campus is right in line with our business strategy to drive growth, improve our innovation output, increase productivity and continually upgrade our focus on the customer,” said Bill Nuti, NCR’s chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Aparrently their business plan does not account for the 125 year old relationship between Dayton and National Cash Register. This startling economic hit comes admist continually rising rates of unemployment, especially in the Dayton area, whose unemployment numbers have reached a towering 13% compared to the national average of 9.4%.

During it's tenure with the City of Dayton, National Cash Register, brought such innovation in cash registers and related products like integrated liquid-crystal displays, bar code scanning for retail, automated tellar machines, and self-check out equipment.

When NCR checks out of Dayton for the final time, it is predicted they will take over 1,200 jobs with them, leaving this increasingly desolate city in an even weaker economic position.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer Says Get On Your Bikes And Ride-Republicans/Centrists Say No

This Bipartisan thing has really come back to bite President Obama in the ass. American's are on board with the President and the notion that if drastic and deliberate action is not taken soon, we will be in economic peril. All of this is obvious. Terrible concessions are being made in the name of "bipartisanship". It just needs to stop. President Obama won with a landslide victory. I am not saying its any kind of a mandate aimed at ignoring Republicans, but I am saying this: Republicans need to acknowledge that eight years of their neo-conservative ideas have been one of the biggest contributing factors to why we are in such a quagmire right now.

Republicans, "centrists", blue-dog democrats and the rest are concerned with spending. All they can talk about is how big government is bad and how this is a "pork" stimulus bill. I can see their smug faces right now. American's don't care if this spending spree is going to continue to increase the nation's deficit in such a time of need. Eliminating "pork" from the bill doesn't put real pork on the kitchen table.

People need to be put to work. That is the only thing that is going to jump start this economy. Rather then spend stimulus money on taxcuts, each dollar would be so much more effective if it were put to use for public works projects, health care research, green energy projects, etc. This is not socialism and the right wingnuts need to stop trying to make people think that it is. Our nation's infrastructure is literally on a direct path crumbling beneath us and it will only get worse. What's an easy way to employ people? Bid out the contracts!

Check out Rep. Earl Blumenauer common sense regarding this:

With this latest attempt to strip bike funding from the recovery bill, Republicans have once again demonstrated how out of touch they are with their pathologically short-sighted attacks on bicycles. To their detriment, they are continuing their trend from last Congress of using the most economical, energy-efficient, and healthy forms of transportation as their whipping post. Investment in bike paths will not only improve our economy, and take our country in the right direction for the future; it is exactly the kind of investment the American people want.

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Think about it: More than 50% of working Americans live less than 5 miles from work, an easy bicycle commute. Already more than 490,000 Americans bike to work; in Portland, 8% of downtown workers are bicycle commuters. Individually, they are saving $1,825 in auto-related costs, reducing their carbon emissions by 128 pounds per year, saving 145 gallons of gasoline, avoiding 50 hours of being stuck in traffic, burning 9,000 calories, reducing their risk of heart attack and stroke by 50%, and enjoying 14% fewer claims on their health insurance.

Nationally, if we doubled the current 1% of all trips by bike to 2%, we would collectively save more 693 million gallons of gasoline - that's more than $5 billion dollars - each year. From 2007 - 2008, bicyclists reduced the amount Americans drive by 100 million miles.

I am big cycling enthuist myselfe and I wish more people would get into it. I bought a road bike in fine condition off of craigslist for 40 dollars. Spent about 20 more dollars doing some minor repairs and it was good to go. It is now my sole form of transportation (no car) and my sole form of exercise (way to lazy to work out). I think I heard somewhere once America has an obesity problem...well this might kill two birds with one stone.

This post was a little all over the place, mainly because I was trying to squeeze in a bunch of ideas in about 15 minutes with no real plan...I'm going to be refocusing my efforts in the next few days and hopefully get the next entries more cleaned up and organized before I post them.