Creative Financing Must Be Rewarded!

From Daily Kos, Cheers & Jeers, by Bill in Portland Maine:

The Cliff's Notes version: Louisiana free-market capitalists push a Trojan horse into Maine in the form of a new law that "provides tax credits to investors who back businesses in low-income communities." The Trojan horse is greeted in the Maine legislature to thunderous applause. A struggling paper mill is targeted for "backing." In the dead of night, the free-market capitalists leap out of the Trojan horse, push the paper mill into bankruptcy, strand 200 now-unemployed employees in the low-income town of East Millinocket, and then feast on the spoils:

Sometime this year, the state of Maine will cut two checks worth a total of $2.8 million and mail them to out-of-state investors. Next year, it will send two more checks, worth $3.2 million, to the same recipients. It will repeat that process for the next three years until roughly $16 million of taxpayer money has been withdrawn from Maine’s General Fund.

…and given on a silver platter to the Louisiana carpetbaggers, who, of course, have no comment.