Easter eggs hidden all over the place. What's a poor chicken to do?
The MEDC is off the hook corrupt.
I know we have expressed issues before with the cronyism going on with the MEDC and its failures of transparency and effectiveness. Picking winners only works for ..the winners.
Its not hard to recognize unadulterated failure when we see it. If a person is hungry for the truth, its right in front of us. One need only look at hangar 42, RASCO, overpaying Film credits by 42%, and A123 just to whet the appetite!
But certainly, the MEDC provides a lot of high paying jobs for otherwise failed business leaders and political partisans. No way in hell will it willingly surrender the family secrets and threaten the taxpayer goldmine. Indeed, no dog and pony show of ‘allowing’ bids for outside agencies to measure it’s (the MEDC’s) effectiveness will ever meet the threshold of honest brokering.
Not without some pressure anyhow.
If you aren’t disgusted by the MEDC already, check out Mike LaFaive’s most recent piece. He writes:
“For many years, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation has always selected a friendly vendor to calculate the return on investment of its state tourism promotion funding effort (Pure Michigan), rather than seek bids from several possible choices. Last year, it finally requested proposals from other vendors for the right to make these estimates. The winner of the new contract — and the costliest bidder, too — was … wait for it … the very same firm (Longwoods International) the agency had for many years simply selected on a no-bid basis.”
Yeah Longwoods.
The same critters used to magically determine the efficacy of the PURE campaign throwing millions of taxpayer dollars to support a single industry in the state. The same company that has in its leadership, a former MEDC hack, and the same company which refuses to reveal its methodology for determining such success under the guise of maintaining trade secrets.
What could possibly be seen as a conflict of interest, a suspect deal, or a way to cover the oversized posterior of the queen Mary of corrupt economic development programs? Nothing to see here, folks, everything is proceeding swimmingly, yes?
Oh, and no worries that the cost for the translucent winner of the bid process is a little more expensive. Lafaive notes the nearly $50k difference in bid amount. Gosh, with Michigan’s growing budget and higher taxes thrust on all of us, we should celebrate that the difference is less than 100K!
READ the rest of it at the Mackinac Center site, and give the smelling salts to the legislative roosters in Lansing.
Its morning, and frankly just a little too quiet.
(18)Nuh Uh.
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Let's see if I have a handle of things--A non-gov. corporation that gets ALL it's funding from US--gives ALL to other non-gov corporations to create something that doesn't benefit US--but appears like it does? Sounds like a variation of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to me. TIF funding is unconstitutional and can only exist if given some "authority". And, putting the word "AUTHORITY" in the title means TAXES--LOTS OF THEM! TIF's consist of US funding development of private property. That's right--your property tax funds development of someone else's private property.
Last night I attended a LWV event for the BATA special election. In attendance, not counting the League of Women Voters board (all extremely nice liberals) the panel and media, was me and my bud; and a man who saw my bud on the news just minutes before. It was being taped for later airing on the GOV channel. We sat through their dog and pony show and had to write our questions on cards. I knew my questions had a good chance of being asked, being but one of three people there--all were about the TIF language of the ballot proposal. These questions redirected the conversation--so my guess is this might not ever get aired. FUN, FUN, FUN.