The N&O’s Highly Selective Outrage

The N&O yesterday rightly criticized an $830,000 earmark discovered in the state budget, devoted to sewer system upgrades at a golf course in Duplin Co.

But its hard to take their objections over appropriations “helping out a specific business” seriously just days after they gushed over the prospect of Raleigh making the short list for Amazon’s ‘second headquarters,’ with the help of taxpayer subsidies.

“Certainly it’s true that the state and the region will have to step up with the necessary incentives, but Amazon’s arrival would be a monumental plus with long-term benefits…..There are, in short, a number of pluses and few minuses for this headquarters…”

The “necessary incentives” that the N&O editors here gloss over will no doubt run into the hundreds of millions, if not billions.

That they barely blink at this massive taxpayer handout to Amazon while generating an entire column lambasting an earmark worth less than one-twenty thousandth of the state budget is demonstrative of their muddled, inconsistent thinking on economic issues.

Indeed, their criticism of the golf course earmark could just as easily apply to the Amazon situation, merely on a larger scale – yet they are not concerned one whit about the potential for doling out exclusive handouts and privileges to Amazon.

So Dixon’s state and local government are hitting all the boxes here. He’s They are potentially spending a huge chunk of taxpayer money on a golf course corporate development – Warsaw  Raleigh officials say it will help the town – even though thedevelopment  one of the world’s largest corporations could do fine without it.

And this appropriation, by the way, is waaaaay larger than other earmarks helping several other towns, and unlike those other appropriations, it benefits one main business.  (emphases added)

For a consistent, principled opposition to corporate welfare throughout the years, peruse Civitas’ archives on the topic.