Another Hostage. Another Ransom

Really, is there anyway else to describe what just went down?

Another large credit card bank is lining up for a large incentive handout from Delaware taxpayers.

This one — a $7.4 million grant to Discover Bank — doesn’t appear to be leveraging any new job creation; it’s motivated by the apparent need to help the credit card bank modernize existing quarters near New Castle and keep 900 employees in the state.

“This is a very competitive industry,” Alan Levin, director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, said from Chile, where he met with the country’s president during a trade trip with Gov. Jack Markell. “This was our opportunity to secure these jobs.”

This is not a tax break or a tax credit. It is actually a grant of our tax money, being handed over in what really should a cartoonish bag of money with a dollar sign on it, and the public gets what? 900 jobs that are already here?

Really, what Discover is doing here is a small scale repeat of what the Republicans did during the debt ceiling crisis of their own making. Discover took a hostage, and demanded money or else it would shoot that hostage. And the hostage was 900 Delaware jobs. I guess I should be angry at Levin and Markell for agreeing to the ransom, but at some point, when do we rise up with pitch forks and slay the evil corporations? Yeah, yeah, some Democrats, like Sen. Karen Peterson are criticizing this deal because of the lack of transparency, because I guess she wants to criticize the deal but doesn’t want to criticize Markell or Discover. Well, I’ll criticize the real culprit in all this: the evil corporation.