You Can Only Have Second Thoughts If You Had a Thought to Begin With: A Chattanooga Story
This weekend was the end-of-summer graduation at Auburn, and like all such events, it brought an avalanche of rental cars to our Loveliest Village on the Plains™. Amidst the ubiquitous Chryslerbishis and engineering-excellence-cum-fleet-staple Camrys, I spotted a couple of newish Jettas and Passats wandering about town, crooked rental bar stickers applied with obvious indifference. I saw one particular rental Jetta sitting in the parking lot not far from the bookstore when I went to pick up some cut-price tomes. Coated in dust and wearing those ugly DUI-style New York plates, it was a forlorn sight. I couldn’t help but think of it as a reminder that the road to hell can be paved with tax breaks as often as it’s paved with good intentions; at least that’s the case if you happen to be governor of Tennessee.
One hundred and fifty years ago an invading Union army was halted at Chattanooga by the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg. The Battle of Chickamauga was one of the bloodiest days of the entire Civil War, and a resounding defeat for the Northern forces. Today Southeastern Tennessee faces invasion from another union— an actual labor union, the United Auto Workers (UAW)… One hundred and fifty years ago, the people of Tennessee routed such a force in the Battle of Chickamauga. Let their descendants go now and do likewise.
Umm, yeah. Somehow I doubt that one is going to make its way into the hands of Chattanooga’s black employees, unless it comes to them from a UAW organizer. But let’s not get too hung up on gung-ho neo-Confederate lunatics; let’s talk about money.
“Volkswagen is a good company, and it didn’t make those mistakes” such as were carried out by the Detroit Three, he said.
Guess not. So here we have a man who despises the UAW and blames them for the collapse of the domestic automakers, while at the same time cheerleading for a troubled auto company in his home state that made exactly the same “mistakes” and faced the same obstacles that, in his own opinion, killed Detroit. So either he’s totally ignorant of VW’s record in the US (likely), or simply lying through his teeth to cover his own ass about the feasibility of this deal ever paying off (also likely). Truth be told, it doesn’t matter if the UAW comes to represent the workers at Chattanooga or not. Corker’s already lost, as has Governor Bill Haslam and all the other politicos that pushed this particular bit of corporate welfare to their citizens. The VW dream of a happily expanding company that doles out paychecks to grateful, un-unionized citizens while taking subsidies out of their back pockets has already been shattered. If unions arrive in Chattanooga, Tennessee’s political elite will have nobody to blame but themselves. I have a feeling they could have avoided this mess just by doing a little homework.
Correction: This article incorrectly attributed a quote to Senator Bob Corker, which should have been attributed to Professor Lowell Turner of Cornell University. TTAC apologies for this error.
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Hell if I ran a business I would do the same thing, when some idiot politician tries to lure businesses into a state with tax breaks or short time deals, the people that elected him/her should know what they have coming. The best way to get business in a state is to have the lowest taxes and Cheapest cost of doing business as the norm, which democrats refuse to accept, although I doubt They don't realize such as fact. BTW, may want to do a little history checking before making a fool of yourself, the civil war was not fought over slaves, but rather unfair taxation, I find it hard to believe that is no longer taught in school. No need to be divisive.
It's rarely difficult to find data to support whatever conclusion you have decided is the correct one. As Mark Twain was famously quoted, there are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics.