Tag: automobile

The Grand Rapids Press is reporting that Farmer's Insurance will today announce plans to create 1,600 jobs in suburban Grand Rapids.  Maybe.  

I mean, the announcement is coming today and Governor Granholm will be there giving a speech and looking extra gubernatorial... but the actual creation of 1,600 jobs is a little more iffy.  

The announcement is expected to coincide with expected approval of huge tax breaks for Farmers by the Michigan Economic Growth Authority Tuesday morning...

The company would have 12 years after completing (two new) facilities to create 1,000 additional jobs at the campus in order to qualify for a 100 percent employment tax credit.

Farmers would need to create 1,400 jobs by the end of the 17th year in order to qualify for the final year of tax credits.

The only other certainty is that the Democratic governor had to offer a 100 percent tax credit (that's all of it, for the arithmetic-challenged) to convince a company already located in Michigan to consider expanding their operation effectively over the course of two decades.

Fingers crossed, knock on wood and any other superstition of your choosing that Farmers comes through but the recent track record of MEGA hasn't been that hot.  Won't stop the mainstream media from fawning all over the Governor, though, and giving her credit for creating thousands of jobs that won't exist until her kids are approaching the big 4-0.  

Going to go out on a limb and guess there won't be a reporter at the presser or anywhere else in the state with the stones to call the Guv on her tax policy hypocrisy, either.  The best kept secret in the state of Michigan is how much faith the Democratic administration actually places in tax CUTS as tools for economic stimulus and job creation.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the state where automobile manufacturing plants continue to be shuttered, laid off Michigan auto workers can do little but look on as another auto manufacturing operation gets set to open somewhere else.  The Detroit News is reporting that the auto manufacturing hotbed that is... Louisiana... is set to build a few extra cars.

A well-financed company is close to choosing a shuttered north Louisiana site to start a new automobile manufacturing facility, creating up to 1,500 jobs, according to two elected officials from the region.

State Rep. Jim Fannin would not identify the company but said the vehicles would be its first and would be built at a former Guide Corp. plant in Ouachita Parish. He said Gov. Bobby Jindal would make an announcement about the deal Wednesday.

Monroe City Council member Arthur Gilmore said the project, which would build fuel-efficient vehicles, involves California venture capitalists Ray Lane and John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, which has been extensively involved in "environmentally friendly " projects and companies.

Got that?  California environmentalists are set to open a green-car manufacturing outfit in Louisiana.  Not Michigan, where our workers, engineers and infrastructure have been built for the last one-hundred years specifically for projects like this.  Louisiana.  What do they have that we haven't?  I mean, besides a dynamic, successful economic conservative in the Governor's office.  

Then again, maybe the more relevant discussion is about what Michigan has that Louisiana doesn't.