We are giving Honda what!

Kudos to Honda for extorting 141.5 million dollars (okay, only about $40,000,000 directly in their pockets) from the taxpayers of Indiana.  Honda Motor is listed 27^th on the Global 500 by Fortune, with revenues of $80,486,600,000 and profits of $4,523,900,000. Those revenues would place them 17^th on the Fortune 500 list of American Companies, if they were an American Company and 32^nd on the list of most profitable companies (And I do not mean to pick on Honda, the previous incentives for Toyota, with more than twice the revenue and profits of Honda, are beyond ridiculous).  Honda is just the latest recipient of government’s largesse in the name of economic development. 

 

My first reaction to the request for incentive packages by Honda is that the location analysts for Honda should be fired for picking a site that can not meet their needs, without major infrastructure and other financial incentives being paid by someone else.  So, why aren’t they picking a site that does not need massive infrastructure improvements, so that no one, including the taxpayers, has to spend millions of dollars beyond the cost of the plant?  Either Honda really needs the incentives to make the project work, or they do not need it and just decided to steal some money from us.  Of course, we were happy to give it, as “My Man Mitch” was grinning ear-to-ear, as were the Honda executives.  Mitch, when you can get a company to locate in Indiana, without providing incentives other than advancing scheduled infrastructure improvements, I will be impressed.  Until then, you have not done anything that any other yahoo, with millions of dollars of other people’s money at their disposal, couldn’t have done.  So, stop grinning and get to work.