Race to the Bottom?

MOAR SOUTHERNERZ BE TAKING URR JOABS!!!

Georgia gets ready to make a bid for the North American Audi manufacturing plant. While this might be exciting that more manufacturing is taking place in the Deep South, I despise the fact that the main discussion centers around which states will offer the most robust subsidies for these industries. According to the article, Georgia offered Kia $400M in breaks, and Tennessee offered Volkswagen $500M.

Yes, I realize that these are subsidies that include tax exemptions for taxes that wouldn't exist if the plant was built somewhere else. Hell, as a Southern Liberal, I'm all about using strategic subsidies to encourage development where appropriate. It just chaps me that people may not realize just how much of the store the state gives away to land these developments, and I definitely want the dialouge to be more honest.

People need to know, after all, how much the state is making off such a robust investment. People also need to know how this sort of thing plays with the "small government" narrative. Such expenditures are often labeled as "pork" or "bailouts" when a less politically-savvy political party makes deals of this kind.

Of course, I am glad to be proven completely correct about the root cause for the Seattle vs. South Carolina Boeing dust-up. It is all about the subsidies, baby.

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Will Build Train for Water

High speed rail from Atlanta to Chattanooga (and later to Nashville). In exchange, Atlanta gets water from the Tennessee River. Sounds win, win to me.

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The Flood

Jerz and I have often spoken of government waste over the years.

Is anyone ready to start questioning why the best plan available to the Midwest and South is to blow up the levees?

I mean, if you have to destroy something and cause a catastrophe in order to escape and even bigger catastrophe, what does that tell you?

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New Seasons

NFL Playoffs begin next week. Saints are in. Falcons are in. Patriots and Ravens await at the end of any road to the Superbowl. Playoffs rarely get better than this.

A host of college teams have yet to play. Even with TCU's epic Rose Bowl win, Auburn & Oregon are still on tap to light up a scoreboard down in the desert. The Bayou Bengals and the Aggies are still on stage in Dallas, and there is a game still to be played in the Superdome.

But football season ended in sackcloth and ashes for my beloved Georgia Bulldawgs. As DADvocate mentioned in an earlier comment, both of the previously elite SEC programs that each of us hold dear have finished this season with more losses than wins.

And if you had told me any time since 1997 that Georgia AND Tennessee would have losing seasons AT THE SAME TIME, I'd have told you how much oceanfront real estate I could sell you in Oconee County, Georgia.

At least DADv gets to enter the new season knowing his team was legitimately robbed of a winning effort by a rule loophole. His team was overmatched in Nashville and still had enough in the tank to notch a win, barring the official buffoonery. His team has a solid coach that got more effort out of that group of players all year long than could reasonably be expected, considering recent events at the flagship university of the Volunteer state. Those players wanted to win that game.

Contrast that to the Georgia Bulldawgs, who obviously had something else on their minds, as they have seemed to so often in recent history. In the past, I have called the 2009 and 2010 seasons of UGA football "rebuilding years," meaning 2010 is the rebuilding year we should have undergone in 2009. But that doesn't seem to be the case. "Rebuilding" at least suggests that there is a blueprint, or a plan of some type; perhaps the laying of a foundation for later success. I'm not sure if our current architects actually have such a plan, or are just winging it as they go along.

This is a significant change from all my earlier opinions, save one. Though he WILL be coach of the Georgia Bulldawgs in 2011, I wonder if Mark Richt WANTS to be coach of the Georgia Bulldawgs in 2011. The new season will answer that question, finally.

And it will do so rather swiftly. Georgia's next opponent is Boise State, in Atlanta, for the Chick-fil-a College Football Kickoff Game.

Not only will we know the answer, swiftly, so will the rest of the college football watching public.

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