Editor's Note: This article was created by aggregating news articles from Missouri Watchdog.
State’s tax incentives a bit too sweet, auditor says
Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s Department of Economic Development and its lucrative tax incentives have led, in part, to a failed industry and a CEO facing criminal charges, state Auditor Thomas Schweich says.
Schweich, in a report released Wednesday, says the DED’s division of Business and Community Services“failed to perform due diligence” on various projects, including the recruitment of Mamtek USA to Moberly.
The company planned to build a sucralose manufacturing plant in the southeast Missouri city, and was promised $17.6 million in tax breaks. Nearly $70 million in bonds were issued for the plant’s construction, but it never opened and Mamtek filed for bankruptcy in January. Sucralose is an artificial sweetener.
The company’s CEO, Bruce Cole, is in an Orange County, Calif., jail awaiting extradition to Missouri to face four felony fraud charges. plus another felony charging him with taking $700,000 from Moberly’s bond funds.
In a written response, the DED said that no tax incentives were awarded to Mamtek because the company failed to create jobs.
Schweich said Missouri allows developers to stack tax credits without generating additional economic activity to benefit the state.
Missouri Watchdog reported this practice in June, noting that a Ford supplier would benefit from $5 million in tax incentives through four separate state programs to build a plant in Liberty.
Taxpayers will shell out $55 million more for state pensions in 2013
Missouri taxpayers will foot $55 million more next year for state worker pensions.
The governing board of the Missouri State Employment Retirement System, known as MOSERS, has approved a 20 percent increase for the pension program, which funds the retirement benefits for more than 51,000 state workers and 37,000 retirees.
The increase, which takes effect in July, means state residents will pay most of the $330 million for those pensions next year.
The board said the increase was needed because of poor investment returns and longer life expectancies for state workers. Many workers are also delaying retirement, and thus get bigger pensions after working a few extra years.
State Budget Director Linda Luebbering said this increase has been “on our radar screen.”
“That board has been discussing this for a while, and we were aware that the rate would be increasing,” she said.
"Say listen, after work a bunch of us are going down to Mexico for margaritas and to have our funberries hacked off by a drug lord’s plastic surgeon, then we’re going to dress up in purple capes and white sneakers and drink the strychnine Kool-Aid and put plastic bags over our faces. We’re doing this because Zombie-Jesus-who-lives-in-my-head says the Earth is about to be destroyed by aliens but we’re going to abandon our bodies and go live on the comet with the comet people. We’ve got an extra seat, you interested?"
The last time I checked the President will stil be the President in MIssouri as well as California and New York.. It is interesting that you would think otherwise. Btw, I consider myself an independent conservative, not a "lib".
"RD? Can you show the class how it's done?"
I say, start with the waste. Have some accountability. Stop betting everyone's homes, losing the bet, selling the worthless loans back to the public, then blaming them for going out of business, using the people's money again to "save" the companies who you were dealing under the table with in order to cover their bets & drive their competition out of business. I'm for anyone who profited from that bet, or insider-traded on, or received money through earmarks in the resulting bailouts being voted out. I'm for those in love with regulations, be regulated & held responsible themselves. I'm for voting out anyone who criminally refuses to pass a budget in over 1200 days. Speaking of which, how could you know what those cuts would do, when it's been 1200 days since you've even had a budget to look at?
2) When a government spends too much, it needs to slow it's spending, not spend more, anyone that's not an idiot understands that. That's how "playing the outraged patriot" DOES pay it down. Make them accountable. 4) Stop "investing" in technology that we knew didn't work in the 1970's 3) The government continues to control more & more, and things keep getting worse. You insist it's making everything better, yet you can't give 1 single example in history, or here, where it's ever worked for the people. 4) I didn't take money from Universities, I'm not even in favor of it. Again, it was YOUR beloved that spent the money that should have gone to State U's, not mine. 5) People on government-aide, as you pointed-out, don't have much to spend, they can't pay into the system without a job, and can't purchase most products. How exactly, in your genius, have you been able to explain how the job-creator who can no longer employ those people or sell his products to them, is going to be able to be able to support them... Or how that way is better than the employer being able to sell his products to a person he can now afford to hire, who can now afford to buy their own products, and is now not only a contributor to the economy, but no longer a drain on it. The difference is how a worker votes, compared to how a recipient votes. PS - Keep listing the areas that suffer due to their unaccountability, you might start getting my point.
Oh... no you didn't, they're all in there.
Yeah I knew already about the budget -the GOP congress and Paul Ryan and their childish games etc etc. I was just curious what prompted Devon to mark the "1200 day" milestone. Was Devon sitting in the basement marking X's on the calandar? Or was he just checking into the dailycaller, twitter@ Freedomworks, and Hale-BoppComet.com http://tinyurl.com/8o4u2q7
Sometimes I wish I could call myself a liberal, but I'm not nice and christian enough to be one.
-I'm conservative because I think we should conserve life and money - which is why I support single payer univeral coverage -I'm conservative also because think we should conserve the climate for our children - which is why I blog about climate change and organize a meetup.com group on climate change -I'm Liberal in that I appreciate individual liberties. I could care less if gays get married. I'm a socialist in that I consider the society to be more important than the individual. I also think society should pay infrastructure, education and scientific advancement. Call me a "ConservaLiberialist" or something like that
http://eureka-wildwood.patch.com/blog_posts/socialized-medicine-1974-version
"a great deal is being made that this countries test scores in math and science are well behind other Western countries and are actually falling. The reason given is our country is more diverse. That's the PC way of saying that this country has a much larger minority population than in the past. Frankly hispanics and blacks are not as smart as whites and asians. Sure there are exceptions like Obama who we must remember is half white but overall as the United States becomes more brown we will be viewed as dumber and dumber, but on the plus side really good in soccer and basketball." You see, mike doesn't have to answer to the inferior races. If you're not being jaw-droppingly racist, you're just being one of those jokers who falls all over himself to be "PC". Thank God Obama is half white so he can be half smart.
Wow, that sure explains mike's worldview! Thanks for calling it to my attention. Btw, one of the great things about Stonekettle is that there is a blog post for just about every situation. This one helps explain mike k. http://www.stonekettle.com/2011/03/america-you-keeping-using-that-word.html
(Just kidding, mike. I'm terrible at basketball so I don't have any brown friends.) I don't know, I think we should have to look this stuff in the eye and mike should have to defend his remarks, though something tells me he's not unwilling to try. Great stonekettle piece, btw. That about sums it up.
That is really creepy, mike. Stop looking for high school sophomore girls on Facebook.
Actually no, Super Sleuth, but you are correct in assuming that a 16 year old could see you for the bigot you are. By the way, I have no idea who you are or where you live (a bad joke), but if you're feeling uncomfortable you should probably think twice and post once.
go to iq-v-races.png average IQ by race Asians - 106 Whites - 101 Hispanic - 90 Blacks -86 Now we need to work to level the playing field by allowing through vouchers for students to transfer out of failing schools to better schools and weed out the poor teachers that are protected by the unions. Whites - 1010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
"While the existence of racial IQ gaps is well documented and not subject to much dispute, there is no consensus among researchers as to their cause" That is not racist, in spite of what you said. Your original post, which has been removed, said "smarter". That isn't the same as IQ. Did you remove your original post?
Thank you, Missourian and Sensible. mike, you're a racist because you're willing to draw simplistic conclusions about two highly complex constructs--race and intelligence--and use them to justify your belief that our differences can determine individual achievement. But oh well, you're not some sort of groundbreaker. People have been using this sort of thinking for ages to rationalize some pretty horrific behavior. At least you're just the harmless racist in the suburbs.
So, now you're calling me out for being too accurate? Thanks for cleaning up my mess.
I fully believe Akin is entitled to his pension. Why would he not want to report it? If he's opposed to state pension systems - he could return the money he received. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/akin-failed-to-report-years-of-missouri-state-pension-payments/article_fa34a66a-0e32-11e2-9c66-0019bb30f31a.html