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Tag: Political favors

Is That A Sucking Sound I Hear?

By JGillman, Section News
Posted on Fri Sep 17, 2010 at 10:56:21 AM EST
Tags: Michigan, MEDC, Political favors, Corruption, Waste, Fraud (all tags)

To Meet the legal obligation and receive $125,000,000.00 from Michigan Taxpayers, A123 needs to create only how many jobs? In a Capitol Confidential piece today, Tom McMillin says:

McMillin poured through the legal documents on the deal and said that the company only needs to create 300 jobs by Dec. 31, 2016 to get most of the state money and doesn't need to create a single job to get the $249 million in federal aid. A123 Systems would have to create 350 fulltime jobs by August 2012 to have a $4 million loan forgiven.
"We keep hearing all these grandiose plans and claims of thousands of jobs, yet whenever I've tried to put those inflated numbers as requirements for getting our millions of taxpayer dollars, they always say, 'No,' " McMillin wrote in an e-mail.
"The fact is, A123 only has to have 300 new jobs to get over $100 million in checks (subsidies) from Michigan taxpayers. That's over $300,000 per job of our money and over $700,000 per job of federal money (which is debt laid on our kids). Real, independent studies show that these schemes, while getting some headlines, actually cost Michigan jobs, because existing businesses pay for those subsidies with higher taxes that would have gone to either preventing layoffs or hiring new employees."

Unless my calculator app on this PC has another one of those floating point problems of yore, I see $416,666 that Michigan taxpayers are paying per each required job in addition to the two times that of federal money.

(9 comments, 565 words in story) Full Story

We All Live In Poletown.

By JGillman, Section News
Posted on Thu Apr 29, 2010 at 10:19:36 AM EST
Tags: Michigan, MEDC, Political favors, Corruption, Public Good, Public Use, Waste, Fraud (all tags)

Anyone who has read my work here, or at MTTM on a regular basis, might have an understanding I am not a big fan of the MEDC, or for that matter, of any government funded operation that has as a matter of its business model, a mandate to give away tax payer dollars. I disagree with any particular favoritism by government, and any funding from government towards private business entities that essentially picks winners out of a basket of marketplace entries.

The reasons I disagree with these methods of "spurring economic growth" are many, but essentially, a direct credit or payment to a business for it to settle in a particular location is "Taking" from others who pay the dues (taxation) and giving to another without any benefit to the payers, and in some instances working directly against their best interests..

There are "Public use" vs. "Public good" arguments that look at government's practice of taking. The 5th amendment: "Private property shall not be taken for a public use, without just compensation", addresses a reasonable goal of keeping citizens whole when it becomes necessary to use what they own for the common use of the citizens. And in a smaller way, the taxes we pay, are presumably for the necessary operation of government services, which we also presumably benefit from "equally."

(4 comments, 830 words in story) Full Story