Remember back about a year and a half ago when Lowe's Motor Speedway owner Bruton Smith blackmailed threatened the Cabarrus County Commission and the state of NC that he was going to move the track out of NC unless they gave him $80 million worth of incentives?
Max wrote a fantastic piece about the whole affair here.
Well, it turns out, the NCDOT is using $3.5 million of the stimulus money to pay off Smith's extortion of the taxpayers. The Charlotte Observer has the story:
The N.C. Department of Transportation plans to spend $3.5 million
in federal stimulus dollars for road work by Lowe's Motor Speedway in
Concord.
The
project is part of $75 million in road improvements Bruton Smith asked
for two years ago in return for keeping his racetrack in Concord. The
city of Concord and Cabarrus County agreed that Smith would pay for the
work and be reimbursed years later.
So we give millions in bonuses to AIG executives who run the company into the ground and now we use stimulus funds to payoff another billionaire's road in front of his money-making speedway.
this needs to go to citizens against government waste web site, great post.