Comments on: Applied Materials to Acquire Semitool for $364 Million

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By Vud on 11-17-09

Eeee…

Hope this works out for Semitool and it’s Montana operations.

Applied is a survivor in the boom and bust Semiconductor Equipment manufacturing universe.  We’ll see if their BOOM is Montana’s BUST looking out ahead.

It truely IS a global world…You ARE one step closer to competeing with that $5.00 a day Chinese worker.

Hope it works out for the best.

By stella on 11-17-09

I can’t say I blame share holders for wanting to get out, especially with the state of the economy these days.  They just want to ensure a return on their investment, right?  They don’t want to lose it all when the burning ship of Semitool goes down.  Who’s to say that not selling would really be all that successful anyway?  Eventually, someone else with a better business model will come along with a way to do what Semitool does.  That will be all she wrote for Semitool.  Semitool has continually skipped on by for years, just keeping their necks above water by laying off half of the workforce when it starts looking a little murky.  Of course, they know those people will still be more than willing to come back to their old jobs, because what else is there to do in the valley with those skills?  And, when you are paid not much more than minimum wage to begin with, how do you even afford to move away to find a better paying job and a better life?? 

This whole thing was inevitible.. It sucks, to be sure, but it’s been coming for a long time.  Let’s just hope that Applied Materials at least coughs up a more decent lay off package than Semitool has been known to.

By stella on 11-18-09

http://www.semiconductor.net/article/389394-Applied_to_Acquire_Semitool_for_364M.php?nid=3572&source=link&rid=8217441&goback;=.hom

Here is a link to an article from an industry news source about the merger.  Even they are commenting on how the long term presence of Semitool in Kalispell may be in jeapardy.  Hopefully, it won’t come to that, but even more hopefully these guys will at least plan ahead and come up with some plan for what would indeed be disasterous for the valley if there were suddenly another layoff of several hundred people.

By Kalispell Native on 11-18-09

JB:  I can agree with you on that point.  Bye bye Semitool jobs.

By Kalispell Native on 11-19-09

JB:  That’s an interesting dichotomy right there.  As a current Semitool employee (I am not and haven’t been) the job market here would require a 2-3 year job search to find anything as a replacement job.  There is no other job ship to jump to easily.

By the way on 11-19-09

For one thing, whenever you have built up a huge corporation you then have to WISH that everyone who didn’t would appreciate what you have done and that you have the right to do with it as you please. 
One such entrepreneur in heavy highway construction that no one even remembers anymore said “there are easier ways to make money and funner ways to lose it”.  Did I get that right, Mr. Hilde?
Nobody should be the bad guy for moving on. 
Yeah the Flathead is no place to try to be a big manufacturer.  We haven’t the transportation system to supply it and we never will.  We don’t have the workforce for it because it needs people who will work for peanuts and can live on that with zilch for benefits.  Can’t do it here, but they can in Asia.  How do you compete with Asia?  You move there.  Sad but true.  Big fat greedy Americans did that to themselves. 
Okay.  What’s next.  Listen to those of us who say “the only thing Flathead has going for it is tourism”.  Figure out how to horn in on it at a level that will pay you enough to live here happily.  Or else move on before it gets worse because it will and nobody I know will disagree with that.

By woody on 11-21-09

the true problem is that this is the new “competitive free market” :
1. buy out your competitor and
2. then shutter the business. 

Forget the local economy-  forget the employees, forget the local tax base

Corporate America DOES NOT CARE!

these corporate entities are basically vultures - using tax laws and low import tariffs - which they created by lobbying and manipulating our elected representives - in order to create undue levels of profits in a corporate subsidized world.

What we need is a true trade Policy that benefits the entire country not just a few fat cats sitting around the pool waiting for the check to come in -  all the while crying about why they can’t pay a lower rate of taxes that a logger or secretary or teacher making 1/1000th the wage has to pay!

does any one really believe that China does not have HIGH tariffs on everything we try to sell in China.

Of course they do…..as does EVERY OTHER COUNTRY in the world -  except the USA.

Which is why the republicans got the weak-kneed democraps to cave on the BUY AMERICA FIRST clause in the Bailouts.

SO most of our bailout monies were actually sent overseas to help the unemployment rate in FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

AND as an historical footnote American Corporations were NOT IN EXISTENCE at the signing of the Constitution. 

And up until the 1880’s Corporations were only granted 40 year terms - at the end of that term they had to prove they were conducting business in a way that served the “PUBLIC INTEREST.

If not they were broken up.  Plain and simple. 

Time to return to some sensible trade policies and tax breaks for LOCALLY OWNED firms.

Tine for a tax break for the LOCAL SMALL BUSINESS OWNER!

By woody on 11-23-09

unions may been a little corrupt…and a few were taken over by tony soprano….. but their level of corruption is miniscule compared to the multi-national corporations…..

who own congress and our elected officials lock, stock and barrel…....

and show me where you found proof that the unions invested all their funds into chinese markets….

I couldn’t find that….

and if a few bad apples means we have to throw the entire labor movement under the bus then we have to apply that standard to religion and the christian churches, to big business and the investment firms, etc etc etc

and apply it 10 fold to the ultra-wealthy….....

who for the most part:

1.CREATE NOTHING OF VALUE…...
2. shuffle a few papers around for hundreds of millions a year…
  (did you know that the CEO of United Health Care - a company that has been caught multiple times defrauding Medicare makes more in 1 MINUTE than the average American makes in a year!)
3. have corrupted our elected officials into doing the bidding for the very few over the objections and rightful ownership by WE THE PEOPLE…..
4. use much more of the Commons than the rest of us
5. create much more pollution
6. and pay WAY WAY lower tax rates than the rest us

making the ultra-wealthy a bunch of FREELOADERS on society

and a cancer for the USA and the entire world…....

that’s why from 1933 until Reagan the top tax rate for those making more than 3 million was 75-90%

which led to stable growth and rising incomes for WE THE PEOPLE

and created NO BUBBLES that the wealthy used to indebt and indenture WE THE PEOPLE…..

and reagans trick was to drop the top tax rate down from 3 miilion a year to 50,000 a year…..

and putting Social Security monies into the general fund of the governement

and let’s remember that the wealthy DO NOT PAY SOCIAL SECURITY TAXES (over 106K)

so reagan lowered taxes on the wealthy and RAISED TAXES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS -

and that was the LARGEST TAX INCREASE in US HISTORY!

and we’ve had multiple bubbles and busts since then….every time furthur indebting the middle and workng classes…..

until we now work more hours, receive less benefits, live shorter lives, work longer before retirement, are the least upwardly mobile society, pay more for health care,  and receive less vacation than any other industrialized country in the world,

and that’s a free market?

the market has been GAMED by the wealthy…...

Tax the rich….. let’s go back to a sensible tax rate of 90% on those making more than 3 million a year…....

By woody on 11-23-09

it IS ON TOPIC….. semitool is just anther example of trickle down economic theory where the wealthy destroy everything they touch…...and so bye bye to the good jobs at Semi-tool…..

and JB I could crae less what you think…...

actually if that post bugs you I’ll add another one!

We are enemies in the political spectrum -

you are a corporate hack and I stick up for he working poor…...

you be hamilton and I’ll be arron burr!

By Billy on 11-23-09

JB; Do you agree 90% with woody?
Woody has plenty of thumbs up.
I think woody is doing a great job of showing the patterns of the global corporate masters.
I don’t blame the legislators for getting in bed with the elite. They have the most comfy beds and great breakfasts. Nice vacation spots.
I wonder what the poor folks are doing today?
In death all are the same.
Do what thou will.
Cremation of care.

By woody on 11-23-09

time to make BACON!!!!!!!!!!

By JB on 11-23-09

Better a corporate hack than a backwoods hippie like you,  woody…

By Vud on 11-23-09

Trickle down works best during boom times.

In my eperience companys like AMAT hemmorage money during the boom times, mainly due to shear laziness.
After all what businessman is taught to leave money on the table for someone else to pickup?

When lean times come…and they always do, they cut back mercilessly.

If you want to see what trickle-down’s advantages and disadvantages look like in sharp contrast look at a company that ALWAYS keeps their pencils sharp:  WALMART.

By JB on 11-23-09

Not that I particularly care for anyone’s opinion - but Ray Thompson is ruthless in running Semitool as a company; he did not particularly care for the people that worked for him at all.  He paid them the lowest wages he could get away with and worked them mercilessly.  During his layoff “purges”, he got rid of anyone who was “not pulling their weight” during the lean times and then hired new personnel during the boom times, all the while collecting tax incentives.

NW Montana is better off without Semitool - the valley needs local small industry with local logistical support that can weather lean times while prospering in boom times.  There are industries that possess such capability, such as alternative energy production.

I don’t want to see people suffer - I really don’t.  It breaks my heart to see people go without basic necessities.  But I will not be coerced into some argument that redistribution of wealth will benefit all - stifling creativity and innovation, all the things that made America a great nation, and reducing us into a nation of entitlement mavens and handout seekers.

By woody on 11-23-09

JB said, “Better a corporate hack than a backwoods hippie like you,  woody”

Well I guess you’re a Success JB!!!!!!!!

and if thinking that an economic system should reward those that create the value in it

or that a clean environemnt is a good thing…...

or that the working class is subsidizing the wealthy

or that the war in iraq is a crime

or what’s good for wall street isn’t good for main st

or that social justice that doesn’t depend on the size of one’s bank account

makes me a backwoods hippie -  so be it

rather that than a self porclaimed corporate hack

the very thing the Founding fathers railed against…..

and of course the corporations will give NOTHING to WE THE PEOPLE

we’ll have to fight the corps and people like you for every inch of success we make for the middle and working class

but just as we won workers rights to a safe workplace, the war to allow women to vote, the war to clean up the environment, the war against child labor, the war for the rights of african americans to vote, etc etc etc

we WILL WIN IN THE END

we may suffer setbacks at the hands of the bigots but we will prevail -  much to your distain JB - I’m sure….

at least you’re honest in your distain for the working class - I’ll give you that…...

By hotfishmt on 11-24-09

TO: The on line yackers…....Woody & JB…...why not swap e-mail addresses…....so the rest of us don’t have to read your dribble…....ENOUGH IS ENOUGH…...spare the regular readers some sanity…..and take your insanity toe to toe vai your own personal e-mail address????

By day dook r jobz on 11-30-09

jb&wooody;please exchange phone numbers and argue via telephone.  both of you post train wrecks and derail almost every discussion.