January 11, 2015 at 7:02 pm
Norm Kelly says:
'a thorough review of the current recruitment programs certainly is a welcome idea, lawmakers should first make sure that those programs have the resources they need to be able to succeed'. Sounds like a very LIB way of doing things. 'We need to pass the bill before we know what's in it'. How has that worked out for us? That was a lib idea also. Why wouldn't we want to know what's in it before we let it become law? If it's going to suck as bad as socialized medicine sucks, why wouldn't we want to know this in advance? And if the true cost of socialized medicine would be as far off the mark as the estimated cost of Obamascare has turned out to be, wouldn't we want to know the truth FIRST?! Of course we would want to know the truth first which is why we were Gruber'd.
The author suggests a thorough review of incentives is a good idea. But we should continue to spend taxpayer money on government money games even if the review isn't done. The tax payer money give-away might not work. We won't know until the review is complete. But, with intelligence leading the way, let's go ahead and spend the money anyway. That way if the review shows that incentives fail we'll still have some money for pols to play games with. Cuz this makes sense? Or because we should never attempt to prevent pols from playing games with OUR money?
Mitt is an investor. He & his company decide who to invest in based on lots of research. When he makes a good decision, it's good for him, it's good for his company, and it's good for the company that he invested in. This is his business that impacts me absolutely NOT AT ALL!
Then there's politicians. They have absolutely zero money of their own to play investment banker with. ALL of the money that pols play games with must be confiscated first from someone else; a lot of someone elses. And when pols do a poor job of selecting winners & losers, we all lose! It doesn't just affect those who CHOSE to participate. It hurts all of us, all the businesses that were forced to pay higher taxes & fees in order to allow some other business to get paid by pols to play in our state. And there's a good chance that the business that lost to the business that was bribed by the state is a competitor. So not only does the company help pay for their competition to be bribed into the state, they are also potentially losing business to their unfairly advantaged competition.
No matter how you slice it, bribing businesses to move here by penalizing everyone else already in the state is illogical and should be immoral. How about the recent case where another state offered an incentive so huge that it's disgusting? How much would it cost taxpayers & businesses in our state to have competed with that scheme? How often can our state, we taxpayers, afford to bribe businesses to do business here? And how negatively does this bribe scheme affect businesses that are already here and lose business to the new, state-sponsored competitor?
What part of playing games, often times losing games, with taxpayer money, money that does not belong to pols, make any sense to anyone? How does ANYONE, not just pols, but anyone justify taking money from one person, group, business in order to pay off some other, as yet unknown, entity? The existing businesses are known as to how they impact the economy, how much money they bring into the state, how well they satisfy their customer base. The new entity is an unknown from these perspectives. So why spend gobs of confiscated money to bribe that business to do business here?
Taxes to pay for police/fire people. Taxes to pay for roads/bridges/infrastructure. Taxes to pay for school buildings. Taxes to pay for required services such as DMV. All considered reasonable and acceptable. Taxes to bribe businesses to move here. Taxes to pay for socialized medicine. Taxes to build solar farms. Many other examples are possible. Should be illegal. Are immoral. Don't force me to participate in schemes dreamed up by some do-gooder because it's that persons hot-button do-good idea. Let the do-gooder do the good by themselves and recruit like-minded individuals. Every time you implement a program to satisfy some scheme because someone wanted to take care of their hot-button becomes confiscation. Required monies to pay for required government 'services' is simply taxation. Fluff monies, like bribing out-of-state businesses to move here is confiscation. Hiring a public schools administrator when the state already has a public school administrator is confiscating tax dollars. Paying the original public schools administrator might be necessary. But 2 people in the same position is immoral and considered confiscation of tax dollars to support such schemes. Necessary spending = taxes. Bogus spending, wasting money = confiscation.
