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Why S.C. Lost The Volkswagen Plant

HINT: IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LINDSAY LOHAN

FITSNews - April 25, 2008 - In all fairness to us, that picture of Lindsay Lohan is incredibly relevant to this story. How so? Well, she was in a movie with a Volkswagen once, which is good enough for us.

Anyway, the real news coming out of the famous German automaker this week wasn’t good for South Carolina. Specifically, Volkswagen isn’t coming to Anderson County, although it’s not because people in Anderson County are tragically retarded and magnets for all sorts of crazy.

No, according to an inside source at Southern Business and Development, the real reason VW told SC to take a hike was Gov. Mark Sanford … well, him and BMW …

Here’s the skinny:

Gov. Sanford, now well into his second term, has been critical of large incentive packages given out to major corporations, such as an automaker. Last year, Gov. Sanford vetoed a bill that included incentives for Michelin, which announced it would expand its already massive operations in the Upstate region of South Carolina by another $350 million. The South Carolina Legislature overrode Sanford’s veto, so Michelin received its incentives to expand in the Palmetto State …

… will BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer let VW into his own backyard? It’s our opinion that would be highly unlikely. Will Gov. Sanford pony up an incentive package for VW that will likely be close to $300 million after publicly saying last year, “Does it make sense to eliminate essentially all taxes for large corporations and not do the same for small businesses?” That, in our opinion, would be highly unlikely, too.

Nope, look for the prospective VW plant to land in either North Carolina (Rocky Mount or Linwood), Georgia (Pooler) or Southside (Emporia) Virginia.

BMW has also reportedly been a real pill about using public-private partnerships to expand South Carolina’s vastly diminished global shipping position, as they apparently are pretty big fans of the sweetheart deals they get from that ass-clown Bill Stern and his commie buddies over the state-run Ports Authority.

Also, it could be that our “skilled” workers are almost as retarded as our elected officials, no doubt thanks to our increasingly expensive but still ridiculously shitty public education system we’re providing.

As usual, way to go South Carolina!

UPDATE - For those of you who say that we do nothing but bitch without offering a solution, how about let’s start by eliminating income taxes, allowing the marketplace boost our non-competitive school system and running our ports like they were in a democracy, not a friggin’ Warsaw Pact nation.

Oh, and governor, a few incentives for major job creators every once in awhile wouldn’t be totally out-of-line … 

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