Welfare State

This can't be good: According to the Treasury Department,
North Carolina is receiving more funds from the TARP bailout than any other state except New York: $28.5 billion!

Of course, to say that North Carolina is receiving it is a huge misstatement. Almost all of that money is going to Bank of America. The mega-bank is essentially being rewarded for unfair competition - using unsustainable business practices to put all our homegrown local banks out of business. Now it's up to the taxpayer to sustain the Charlotte empire. They're taking us over with our own money.

Meanwhile, Gov. Perdue just appointed career bureaucrat Dempsey Benton to oversee the new federal "stimulus" money coming into the state. [This after Benton's dismal failure as Director of Health and Human Services during which, among other things, the state's mental health system was revealed to be a giant scandal.]

The State of North Carolina gets $6 billion (not the $25 billion that Bank of America gets, showing us exactly where we fit in the pecking order) to "rebuild the state’s infrastructure, including highways and schools." Again, North Carolinians are coughing up tax dollars to the federal government, which it uses in return to take ownership of our critical infrastructure. Evidence of this is that one of Benton's assignments will be to "establish lines of communication with federal and state agencies." In other words, he will be working to make our state agencies part of the federal government.

Corporate Handouts

The UNC Center for Competitive Economies reports that North Carolina should end its system of providing tax credits to recruit businesses to the state, according to Forbes:

"The incentives that worked well 10 years ago are not performing as well today and suggests that the portfolio should be reallocated to capture higher returns and changing (to) the types of incentives that we use," center director Brent Lane told the Joint Select Committee on Economic Development Incentives.

If that means ending corporate welfare for select industries with large lobbying budgets, then all is well. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. The Fayetteville Observer reports that the "incentives" favored by the Center are just a more direct mechanism for funneling money to corporations:

The report said incentives expanded by then-Gov. Mike Easley are more useful. They include paying cash to companies for creating jobs.

Here's an alternative idea: Reduce state spending. End all programs that favor redistribution from one group (or one industry) to another. Reduce taxes across the board to reflect the fact that we no longer have so many welfare programs to administer. That favorable tax climate, and the hardworking population of North Carolina, are the only "incentives" industry should need.