McCrory Veers Off-Message

"Under the Dome" reports that Gov. Pat McCrory explained that MetLife is coming to North Carolina because of "the very good business climate."

Whaaa? He campaigned on the premise that business under Gov. Perdue was hobbled, discouraged, flummoxed, and  mistreated and that only massive new tax breaks could bring the mega-corps back to our doorstep. And his puppet-masters at the Pope Empire continually flogged the idea that the business climate in North Carolina sucked.

Well, now, apparently it didn't suck that bad under Perdue, who actually gets the credit (?) for snagging MetLife's attention in the first place.

'Course, $94 million in tax breaks and other goodies that all the rest of us are paying for helped some -- about which, Gov. McCrory Knows Nothing knew nothing, nuth-think!

Does Not Pass the Smell Test

WRAL reporting:

METLIFE: Gov. Pat McCrory said Monday that he played little role in a deal to attract insurance giant MetLife to North Carolina in exchange for more than $90 million in state incentives.

"My first direct involvement with the company was a day or two before the announcement where I called the CEO...we had a probably 10-to-15 minute conversation," McCrory said. 

While he was running for governor, McCrory worked for the law firm Moore and Van Allen, a company hired by MetLife to negotiate the incentive package. Last week, McCrory dodged questions about whether he knew about the pending deal when he worked in client development for the firm. Asked the same question Monday, he said, "No, not all – was not aware of it." 

It's not clear when MetLife hired Moore & Van Allen, but the company began discussing a move to North Carolina about nine months ago – while McCrory was still employed by the law firm.

"My commerce secretary led that recruitment effort," the governor said Monday.

Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer, March 11, 2013

Corporate Welfare & Cronyism, McCrory-Style

Back during  his campaign for governor, Pat McCrory talked much about his dislike for corporate welfare ("economic development incentives"), and criticized his Democratic opponent for considering them necessary.

But last week, McCrory proudly announced that North Carolina would be awarding some $94 million in tax breaks ("and other incentives") to MetLife to relocate part of its operation to Charlotte and Cary. (More was promised by the local governments involved.)

Wait! That reversal of a campaign promise has a back-story. The MetLife deal for tax breaks was "brokered" by blue chip Charlotte law firm of Moore & Van Allen, for whom McCrory worked until about 30 minutes before he was sworn in as governor. Believe me, Moore & Van Allen is raking in plenty on this deal. About everyone is, except the taxpayers of North Carolina and the taxpayers of Mecklenburg and Wake counties.

According to some eye witnesses, McCrory literally ran away from reporters rather than answer their questions about his own involvement in this particularly rank example of "incentives":

McCrory refused to answer any questions about the deal, ignoring reporters' questions as he followed his aides to a waiting car. He took no questions during a similar event Thursday in Raleigh. 

The big jobs announcement resurrects questions about McCrory and his work for Charlotte-based law and lobbying firm Moore & Van Allen. McCrory said last year he performed "client development work" at the firm, but is not a lawyer and had no specific clients. [WTVD]

But wait! There's now a question about ethics and "Executive Order 17," issued by Gov. Beverly Perdue in 2009 after her son took a high-profile lobbying job. Perdue was bending over backward to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. John Frank, in Under the Dome:

The order, which remains in effect, said the governor shall "take appropriate steps, considering the nature of the project and the level of involvement of the consultant, to limit her or his involvement in the project to the extent necessary to protect the public interest." That was especially important "when the impartiality of the governor ... might reasonably be questioned due to a financial, personal, or familial relationship with a consultant or that consultant's employees or agents." 

McCrory and his aides did not consult the State Ethics Commission about whether he faced any conflict of interest because his ex-employer helped negotiate MetLife's incentives offer, spokeswoman Kim Genardo said. The governor's involvement in those incentives "was limited, extremely limited," Genardo said.

(And incidentally, O my brethren, did McCrory even mention, while he was bragging about bringing a mega-corp insurance company to our state, that the MetLife negotiation got started under Gov. Perdue's administration, and at least part of the credit, if any credit whatsoever is due, belongs to her?)

We have a corporate shill for governor who went back on his "no corporate welfare" stance in precisely a New York minute.

Pay-to-Play, Republican Style

The parent company of Lowe's Foods, Alex Lee Inc., had received $2 million in tax incentives from the General Assembly and pledged to create 200 jobs for that dole.

Instead, the company recently laid off about 50 workers due NOT to the economy but to ... wait for it ... increased automation at its plant.

Under the terms of its sweetheart tax break, the company was supposed to pay back that $2 million if it didn't create the 200 jobs.

But not to worry. Alex Lee Inc. covered its wide butt by contributing $15,000 to the NC Republican Party's Senate Caucus.

And, lo, the heavens opened and the blessed sun shown down upon Alex Foods Inc. Slipped into House Bill 751 in the waning hours of the NC General Assembly's recent feeding frenzy was a provision exempting Alex Foods Inc. from paying back the tax incentives.

Some Democrats in the NC House voted for this pay-off. Some Republicans voted against it. "The bill sailed through the Republican-controlled Senate 42-0." Far as we can tell, the Dems got no cash for their vote; the Republican senators got a pile. So it goes.

The Foxx Files: How the Congresswoman Tries to Have It Both Ways

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's indignant letter in yesterday's Watauga Democrat newspaper is classic Foxx: ignore what I've always said and listen only to my election-year pandering. Everyone who has followed Madam Foxx for a nano-second knows she's hostile to Social Security, and I should hope that someone will dig out those past statements. (I would, but I'm trying to skin a different skunk today and just don't have the time.)

Suddenly (if we're to believe her letter in the Watauga Democrat, which we don't), she's the great champion of Social Security. Buffalo dust!

Which reminds us of how she's pulled this kind of stunt in the past. For example, the great Dell computer corporate welfare gambit of 2004-2005. Foxx was serving in the NC Senate when it voted in November 2004 to grant millions of $$ in tax breaks, etc. to the corporation to set up a plant in Forsyth County. But Foxx, who has always publicly said she opposes corporate raids on the taxpayer and who never misses a vote, managed to miss the vote on the Dell giveaway.

Scott Sexton, the Winston-Salem Journal columnist, couldn't dodge the irony of then encountering Foxx's broadly smiling face sitting on the stage when Dell subsequently hosted a tour of the new Forsyth plant. Foxx posed for pictures of herself with Dell's founder, Michael Dell (the picture above).

Sexton made a point of asking her if she'd changed her position on corporate welfare, and you can read how she dodged and bobbed and weaved, trying to get out of the trap she'd laid for herself.

She's doing the same exact thing in yesterday's Watauga Democrat.

Oh yeah, and how did that Dell deal work out for the taxpayers of North Carolina?

Dell to Forsyth County: "See ya, suckahs!"

Don't we love us that corporate welfare!

HoneyBaked Ain't So Sweet

The HoneyBaked Ham Co. is a large national corporation and, as such, exemplifies corporate values to a tee. Case in point:

Richard Huether, an employee at the HoneyBaked Ham Co. store in Cary, N.C., was closing the store in Crossroads Plaza last April when a gunman approached him, attempted to rob him, and then shot him in the stomach.

Huether has been on worker's compensation since April. When those benefits expired, HoneyBaked Ham terminated his employment, canceled health benefits for him and his family, and helpfully suggested he would be better off on the government dole. Or as Laura Leslie put it, "why should the company cover the medical bills [Huether] incurred defending its store when it can stick taxpayers with the bill instead?"

That's just one reality of health insurance in America today.

The Winston-Salem Baseball Stadium Boondoggle

Shades of the Tweetsie bailout.

What Dopes We Were Department

Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines, who'll be seeking his third term in this fall's elections, is beginning to ask rude questions of Dell Inc., which graciously accepted public subsidies a few years back from the taxpayers of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County for their plant down there ... to the tune of over $20 million. Dell stipulated that it would be employing 1,700 full-time people by October 2010.

Current problem is that Dell has been laying people off, not employing more people, and the corporate honchos apparently refuse to tell the local governments just how many people are currently working at the plant.

Joines is pissed. Or at least he's acting pissed (see upcoming reelection bid referenced above). Apparently, he's never heard of the gimme-gimme arrogance of big corporations.

Goo-Goo-Google, Goodbye?

North Carolina, rooked again?

Google on Thursday formally withdrew its application to get incentives under the [North Carolina] state’s Job Development Investment Grant program. The company in 2007 won a JDIG award, which gives companies tax withholdings in return for creating jobs and making investments, but it never signed the documents to cement the deal.

According to the state, Google was to get $4.7 million for creating 210 jobs and spending $600 million over four years.

But that’s not how it’s turned out so far. Google has built one data center building where it employs about 50 people – fewer than the 100 it expected to hire initially. And construction has stalled on a second building now that workers have finished its shell.

Sources tell Triangle Business Journal that the company has informed all construction workers, from engineers to laborers, that there won’t be any more work on the site for a while.