Desensitization to Corporate rule in the news today

[h3rm35]

If this was a planned outgrowth to the manufactured economic crisis, the overlords are even more intelligent and long-sighted than I gave them credit for:

Your Ad Here, on a Fire Truck? Broke Cities Sell Naming Rights
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/us/cit...h_20120625

Quote:After Baltimore officials made the wrenching decision to close three fire companies later this summer, the City Council initially sought to avert the cuts with a new money-raising strategy: it passed a resolution this month urging the administration to explore selling ads on the city’s fire trucks...

...in exploring the option, Baltimore is joining dozens of other financially struggling cities, transit systems and school districts around the country that are trying to weather the economic downturn by selling advertisements, naming rights and sponsorships to raise money.

Such marketing schemes have long been used by sports teams and some arts organizations. But now, straphangers in Philadelphia buy fare cards blazoned with ads for McDonald’s and ride the Broad Street Line to AT&T Station (formerly Pattison Station), where the turnstiles bear the company’s familiar blue and white globe.

KFC became a pioneer in this kind of unconventional ad placement earlier in the downturn, when it temporarily plastered its logo on manhole covers and fire hydrants in several cities in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee after paying to fill potholes and replace hydrants.

Pizza chains now advertise on some school buses, as a growing number of states consider allowing school districts to sell ads...

This has been going on on a less blatant level for some time, as noted in the excerpt, (they forgot to mention the rising level of product and logo placement in movies and other media over the last decade,) but can you imagine how tantalizing the prospect would be for hot sauce ads on a fire-truck? How about The Disney Channel's kiddie-porn on gym lockers? I'm sure if you think about it, the things that pop out of the most disturbing corners of your imagination will eventually become a reality.

How long will this trend take to get to the state level?

a breakdown from 2011 of the states most likely to go bankrupt

[yeti]

It's sad watching the USA go to shit from just across the border.

[h3rm35]

It is, isn't it? any time there's a job offer out there for someone with a jack-of-all-trades type resume that might create an opportunity for citizenship, give a shout out.

[yeti]

(06-26-2012 05:10 AM)h3rm35 Wrote:  It is, isn't it? any time there's a job offer out there for someone with a jack-of-all-trades type resume that might create an opportunity for citizenship, give a shout out.

You could get a job in the Alberta/Saskatchewan oil patch pretty easily.

[h3rm35]

sounds sexy... I was hoping not to sell my soul though.