Alabama's Senator Shelby, in his performance today before the Senate Banking Committee, and his appearance Sunday on Meet the Press, has emerged as the Bush Administration's Revenge Weapon on American business and workers.
Today, in a letter to Shelby, Detroit's Peter Karmanos, the Chairman and CEO of Compuware, responded to the ravings and hypocrisy of Shelby's attack on Detroit. It seems that Shelby, who argues that government has no business subsidizing business, has forgotten that his own Alabama opened the state treasure chest for several hundreds of millions of dollars to win the cherished Alabama Mercedes-Benz plant in the 1990s.
Karmanos argued, ..."Alabama offered a stunning $253 million incentive package to Mercedes. Additionally, the State also offered to train the workers, clear and improve the site, upgrade utilities, and buy 2,500 Mercedes Benz vehicles. All told, it is estimated that the incentive package totaled anywhere from $153,000 to $220,000 per created job. On top of all this, the State gave the foreign automaker a large parcel of land worth between $250 and $300 million, which was coincidentally how much the company expected to invest in building the plant.
With all due respect, Senator, where was your outrage when all this was going on? "
Printed in full in the Detroit Free Press, here is the link:
http://www.freep.com/article/20081119/OPINION05/81119080