Really Good Lobbying: W2 Requires More Results

Some of us who are NOT lefties use the term "Corporate Welfare" to describe Gummint handouts to corporate entities. What the Hell ELSE would you call them?

OK. Another term would be "Return on Lobbying Investment."

But in comparing welfare programs, it's clear: W2 recipients are MORE accountable than a lot of Corporate Welfare recipients:

The state's 152 economic development programs are not adequately tracked, often overlap one another and have included situations in which businesses awarded grants later laid off employees, according to a sweeping legislative audit released Tuesday.

In all, the state spent $152.8 million from mid-2003 to mid-2005 on the programs, but auditors were unable to determine how much they may have boosted the economy because the efforts are not adequately tracked, the report by the Legislative Audit Bureau said.

...

Doyle has proposed consolidating some of the state's economic development programs in the past, but he said Tuesday that he did not want to overregulate the state's economic development programs.

"To really hamstring the economic development with a whole lot of government bureaucracy in many ways can defeat the purpose of what you're trying to get done," he said.

That was evidently in response to Sue Jeskewitz' equally stupid remark:

"We need to look at centralization so the right hand knows what the left hand is doing," said Rep. Sue Jeskewitz (R-Menomonee Falls), co-chairwoman of the Joint Audit Committee.

Doyle actually spoke the truth:

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has stressed economic development, but he acknowledged Tuesday that targeting money to the right areas can be difficult.

"What you really have to do is make sure that the grants that are going out are going to companies that have good plans. . . . (But) you can never predict exactly what the future is," he said.

In the Good Old Days, capitalists took risks. Now a lot of them take State handouts, instead.