Southern Auto Whores

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, for one. Alabama gave incentives to Mercedes of roughly $200,000 for each job the new plant brought to the state, and that was over ten years ago. That was cheap; Georgia gave Kia a billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives in 2006 for a plant that was estimated to bring 2,000 jobs, which means that Georgia gave Kia $500,000 for each freaking job. If you run a broom in the Kia plant, Georgia coughed up half-a-million bucks so you could mop the floors. If you took the time to look at all of the other "incentives" offered to foreign-badged automakers to locate their plants in the South, you'd find similar numbers.

Rachel Maddow mentioned this last night, but she's too classy to call the Southern senators "whores."

I am not so inhibited.

The Southern senators who are opposing the assistance to the Big 3 bailout are whores. They are willing to hand out "incentives" but not "bailout," which means that the Southern "conservative" senators are only willing to shovel money at the automakers provided the plant has not been constructed.

GM has 300,000 employees. Which means that if GM were to completely relocate to the South, they would get $150 billion in incentives to do so.

Chrysler has maybe 60,000 employees (I found it hard to pin down a good number, they have gotten rid of a lot of people over the last few years). So if Chrysler were to move to a Southern state, they could get $30 billion in incentives.

So between Chrysler and GM, the domestic automakers could expect $180 billion to move to the South, no questions asked. But $14 billion or maybe $35 billion to stay in business where they are- fugghedaboudit.

What it comes down to is this: The Southern senators hate the domestic auto plants because they offer better-paying union jobs. They hate the domestic auto plants because they are not located in the South. But if the domestic automakers had plants in Alabama, Richard Shelby and the rest of those whores would be tripping over their own feet to throw money at them. You can bet your ass that, in future years, if Kia or BMW or Mercedes rumbles about closing their plants, you will see the Southerners throwing money at them to get them to stay open.

For the reasons given above, Richard Shelby of Alabama is this blog's Douchebag of the Month.