Interesting article on crony capitalism in Virginia.
From the article:
And while conservatives have had a knee-slapping good time ridiculing the Solyndra debacle, corporate welfare is a richly bipartisan problem. For obvious reasons, it enjoys the support of Republican-leading corporate honchos and Chambers of Commerce, which are sometimes as allergic to a truly free market as your run-of-the-mill campus Trotskyite. Business leaders often like nothing better than a government-supplied leg up on the competition.
Republican politicians often happily oblige. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, for instance, has doled out cash and assistance to a host of businesses big and small: Backcountry.com, an online retailer, received $300,000 last year. General Electric got the same amount to recruit and train workers for an IT center in Henrico. Virginia spent millions to bring a Microsoft data center to Mecklenberg, and doled out millions more to help billionaire filmmaker Steven Spielberg film a Lincoln biopic.
When he zeroed out funds for public broadcasting, McDonnell insisted, "We must get serious about government spending. That means funding our core functions well, and eliminating spending on programs and services that should be left to the private sector." Recruiting and training workers for General Electric qualifies as a core state function?
Here's a place to cut first.
Another quote since most of you won't (or can't) read the article:
People in government do not possess special wisdom that allows them to see better and farther than people in private business. Yet they often act as though they do.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/o...es-ar-2177970/