Seattle Jew: Big Huskies Acoming?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Schwartz
Date: Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Aaup] Oregonian: Nike's Knight opposes tax measures
To: Janelle Taylor

Tx. Janelle

Fair, balanced .. just the truth!

Given the censorship of news on the camopus and especially on the AAUP listserv, I will not post my response to this on the AAUP listserv. I did, however, want to say thank you and express my thoughts about how this may be relevant to Dr. Wise's claim that her board membership is not entangled with her job.

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I have heard that Wise believes she can change Knight's POV!

What point of view? If anything, I suspect Knight might well be willing to add the Huskies to his collection of football teams. He has given well over a $100,000,000 to the Oregon athletic Dept.

To be fair, he has also built some academic buildings on campus in memory of his family. As a donor he may fit the long running mantra that athletics stimulate donors to give to the entire University.

As for UO athletics, Knight has said he wants the team to be self supporting! ... That is he wants to create a not-for-profit UO atheltics program that would, I suppose, not be dependent on the state.

Put in perspective, his donations would hugely increase the UW endowment ... but would raise the specter for many of us of the UW becoming more of a big ten style campus ... an academic appendage to a professional athletics enterprise.

Is this what Dr. Wise means when she says that she believes she can influence Nike to do good?

Is this related to President Emmert's desire for a new stadium?

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 8:24 AM, Janelle S. Taylor <jstaylor@u.washington.edu> wrote:

Of possible interest in connection with the question of Provost Wise's position on the Nike board (issues surrounding which will, I believe, be up for discussion at today's Faculty Senate meeting). Oregon's recent income-tax measures will boost state revenue and avoid drastic cuts to higher ed and human services, and for this reason have been welcomed by some here as a model for how Washington too might avert impending disastrous budget cuts to UW, among other important agencies and institutions. Nike's chairman Phil Knight has publicly opposed these measures and issued a veiled threat that Nike may leave the state if the legislation were passed (see below).

Janelle Taylor

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January 17, 2010, 6:39AM

The Oregonian

Nike chairman: Anti-business climate nurtures 66, 67

By Guest Columnist PHIL KNIGHT

Forty-six years ago, when Mark Hatfield was governor, I started a small business in Oregon. In our first year, sales totaled $8,000. I am proud that
it eventually became a major employer in the state.

It has been my hope that other entrepreneurs would similarly pursue their dreams in Oregon.

They won't.

Measures 66 and 67 should be labeled Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law II.

They will allow us to watch a state slowly killing itself.

They are anti-business, anti-success, anti-inspirational, anti-humanitarian, and most ironically, in the long run, they will deprive the state of tax
revenue, not increase it.

The current state tax codes are all of those things as well. Measures 66 and 67 just take it up and over the top.

The state of Washington has no income tax. Its unemployment rate is 20 percent lower than Oregon's -- before 66 and 67. These measures would give
Oregon the highest income tax rates in the country.

Reputable economists forecast 66 and 67 will cost the state thousands -- maybe tens of thousands -- of jobs, and that thousands of our most
successful residents will leave the state.

We are way too anti-business as we are now. The state in past years was headquarters for The First National Bank, US Bank, Pacific Power, Willamette
Industries, Georgia-Pacific, Jantzen, White Stag, G.I. Joe's, Monaco Coach, Meier & Frank, among many others. They are now headquartered elsewhere, are
controlled by non-Oregonians or no longer exist.

One Fortune Global 500 company remains. But its founder and chairman is not merely an economic man. He has webs between his toes. But he, too, has some
limits.

Do you really think any of these overseas "business trips" our leaders take will bear fruit? Can they get a company to move to anti-business Oregon
without waiving taxes, passing even more burden onto the rest of us?

There are words to describe what we are doing with 66 and 67: It is called a death spiral.

Phil Knight is co-founder and chairman of Nike Inc.

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