From a September 16 Washington Times column by John Paul Cassil:

… Jobs story normally begins with him attending Reed College for a semester before dropping out and subsequently auditing art classes that would later help him create fonts for Apple products. He worked briefly for Hewlett Packard and Atari before founding Apple with two of his friends. A few years later, he was fired from Apple following a disagreement with the CEO. Over the years he founded NeXT Computer, and owned PIXAR working with Disney. NeXT was later acquired by Apple, which brought him back into the company. He then transformed Apple into its present state.

However, his story actually begins before Reed College. In a 2005 Stanford University commencement address Steve Jobs painted a brief picture of his beginnings: “It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife.

Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.”

Jobs’ biological parents were Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah John Jandali. Although the details of Simpson and Jandali’s relationship have not been made public, we do know a good deal about Mr. Jandali. A Syrian immigrant, he came to the United States to pursue his higher education in 1949. According to The Daily Mail, he is now vice president of a casino in Reno, Nevada. At the time, however, Joanne’s parents would not allow the two to get married.

For that reason, Jobs was given up for adoption to his parents Paul and Clara Jobs.

Eighteen years later saw the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which paved the way for hundreds of millions of legal abortions to take place in the United States over the following years. In 1955, abortion was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today. It was primarily rejected by society as the termination of innocent life.

Instead, adoptions were preferred. Adoptions ensure that children are given life. Jobs’ adoption was very beneficial, creating and shaping him into the leader that he would later become.

What would a world look like in which Steve Jobs had been aborted?

This is only somewhat positive, as seen in Cassil’s final question: “Out of the 52 million abortions in the US in the past 38 years, how many other Jobs’s have we extinguished?”

Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll tonight, winning the votes of 37% of those who participated. No other candidate came within 20 points of Cain.

As of 8:20 p.m., roughly two hours after the result was announced, the Associated Press’s Philip Elliott and Kasie Hunt had a blatantly obvious contradiction in their 6:51 p.m. story (“Perry works to show he’s strongest GOP contender”; saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes), as seen in this comparison of Paragraph 2 to Paragraphs 12-14 (bolds are mine throughout this post):

(Paragraph 2)

Perry lost a key test vote in Florida to businessman Herman Cain on Saturday after making a strong effort to win. Perry’s second-place finish in the straw poll came just days after he faltered in a debate in Orlando, Fla.

(Paragraphs 12-14)

Cain captured 37.1 percent of the vote at Saturday’s Presidency 5 straw poll in Orlando, with Perry coming in second with 15.4 percent. Mitt Romney came in third with14 percent and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania followed with 10.88 percent. (Complete standings are here — Ed.)

While all declared candidates were on the ballot, the first-tier candidates did not compete. Perry bought hundreds of activists’ breakfasts on the sidelines before heading to Michigan. Romney skipped and didn’t send representatives to the forum. Romney and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota both left Florida before the voting began and their campaigns discounted the straw poll’s role in the campaign. Bachmann finished eighth with 1.51 percent in the straw poll.

The results were unlikely to shuffle the campaign’s standings. Instead, they were mostly a popularity contest among the delegates selected by local party organizations.

What?

Geez guys, make up your minds:
(more…)

Take that, media rats and Republicrats.

Okay, it’s a straw poll. But what I’ve told fellow broadcasters Matt and Mark at Weapons of Mass Discussion in the past applies here, namely that straw polls mean nothing — unless the people I like do well. :–>

In all seriousness, the excerpted text and the margin of victory would seem to give Herman Cain’s runaway Florida straw poll win far more than minor significance:

Herman Cain wins GOP Florida straw poll; Rick Perry in second place

Former Godfather Pizza CEO Herman Cain won the Presidency 5 straw poll here Saturday, delivering a blow to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s frontrunner status and a victory for a candidate who has struggled to transform his grassroots popularity into strong showings in national polls.

“Tonight’s winner is Herman Cain,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced. “It shows you something, the road to the White House come through Florida, and it pays to spend time here.”

He received 37 percent of the more than 2,600 votes cast.

“Thank you to the Republican voters for this incredible honor of being named the winner of the Presidency 5 straw poll in Florida today,” Mr. Cain said. “This is a sign of our growing momentum and my candidacy that cannot be ignored. I will continue to share my message of ‘common-sense solutions’ across this country and look forward to spending more time in Florida, a critical state for both the nomination and the general election.”

The two national frontrunners — Mr. Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — placed second and third. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, meanwhile, landed in fourth place; Rep. Ron Paul of Texas landed in fifth place; and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, sixth. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann finished last.

The specifics:
- Herman Cain, 37.1%
- Rick Perry, 15.4%
- Mitt Romney, 14.0%
- Rick Santorum, 10.9%
- Ron Paul, 10.4%
- Newt Gingrich, 8.4%
- Jon Huntsman, 2.3%
- Michele Bachmann, 1.5%

Tonight, Florida was plainly Cain’s domain. His victory margin is nothing short of a good old-fashioned butt-kicking, and throws the race to the nomination wide open, as it should be.

There’s also more than a little historical significance:

Previous straw polls have predicted the GOP nominee.

Ronald Reagan won in 1979, George H.W. Bush in 1987 and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole in 1995. The Republican Party of Florida, however, has not organized the test vote in recent years.

This proves the absolute truth of what Mark Levin and several others have properly been insisting for a few weeks, and what I’ve been meaning to say for some time: This is NOT a two-person race, no matter how aggressively the establishment press and establishment Republicans try to force-feed the rest of us that ridiculous notion.

In the final web page of Stephen F. Hayward’s “President Solyndra — and His Mean, Green, Wealth-Wasting Machine” article at the Weekly Standard (bolds are mine):

While there seems little doubt that the White House took an inordinate interest in Solyndra and bigfooted the loan through the DOE, the Solyndra story should be understood more broadly for what it highlights about the economic illiteracy of liberalism today, especially in its “green energy” guise.

… Quite aside from the issue of how many of the loans end up being squandered is the more fundamental question of why we’re doing this on such a scale in the first place. How far we’ve come since 1979, when there was a serious national debate about whether it was appropriate for the government to provide a mere $1.5 billion loan guarantee to Chrysler​—​a legacy company with more plausible prospects for profitability than Solyndra. Opponents argued then that once the government starts backstopping individual businesses, it will undermine the discipline of the marketplace and create a moral hazard. Now we’re bailing out auto companies directly and handing out billions in loan guarantees like Halloween candy to shaky startups, with scarcely any debate. Looks like the Chrysler loan critics had a point.

The rationale for the energy loan guarantee​—​that such “public-private partnerships” reduce risk and catalyze private capital where it otherwise wouldn’t go​—​is probably wrong, and is certainly a less than productive use of private capital.

… The “green tech” bubble is already bursting; even the New York Times has noticed, with a story in mid-August under the headline “Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises.” There are actually fewer “clean tech” jobs in Silicon Valley today than 10 years ago, according to a recent Brookings Institution study.

… The shame of it is that the Obama administration could point to more promising initiatives in energy if it had the wit, especially the ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, modeled after the Pentagon’s legendary Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) unit of the Department of Energy. ARPA-E is intended to conduct research into ways of overcoming the formidable technical barriers necessary to make alternative energy sources from batteries to biofuels scalable at a reasonable price. Like DARPA, ARPA-E is exempt from the usual civil service bureaucracy (and things like Davis-Bacon rules) to allow it to be nimble in ways that are exceedingly rare in the federal government. ARPA-E was set up by legislation passed in 2007, but wasn’t funded until 2009. ARPA-E’s total budget was only $400 million in its first year​—​less than the Solyndra loan. But the thing to note is that research efforts like ARPA-E aren’t about creating jobs, green or otherwise, which is why the agency has been of little interest to the White House. It is meant to expand our base of technical knowledge, leading to new and better options in the future.

But since that future is open-ended and unpredictable, it won’t arrive before the next election cycle, and it doesn’t offer rewards for political supporters.

… The Solyndra bankruptcy, alas, is not an outlier but a harbinger. This is the kind of economic calamity we will see more of unless the Obama administration sheds its ideological blinders​—​or until it leaves office. Meanwhile, capital will continue to be misallocated through perverse incentives and outright political favoritism, and large amounts of patiently acquired wealth will be wiped out.

Those who believe they can redistribute wealth and reallocate capital contrary to market forces end up destroying wealth and sending capital into hiding.

… but not because he’s a fan (30 seconds in):

The mystery is why someone like Ann (“Annie Get Your Gun“) Coulter would be a big Christie fan.

Christie’s done some good things in New Jersey, but I have a real problem with many of his positions having potentially negative national impact, some of which Levin identifies in the audio.

The last half of the audio concerns in-state tuition for illegals and Mitt Romney’s hit at Rick Perry on Social Security. Perry’s position on in-state tuition is problematic. Christie’s probably is too.

From St. John’s, Antigua — and Minneapolis, MN:

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

A young Antiguan boy is said to be recovering well in the US where he successfully underwent surgery for a life-threatening condition.

Sixteen-month-old Ezekiel Burrowes suffered from a very rare tumour in his mouth. Melanotic neuroectodermal tumour of infancy, as it is known, is a condition so uncommon that only 200 such cases are recorded in medical literature.

The first sign of something seriously wrong with Ezekiel’s came when he was only six months old.

His mother says local doctors had no idea what the growth in his mouth was, with some advising her to take the baby to a dentist.

But the intervention of an Antiguan resident of Minnesota resulted in Ezekiel making the 3,000-mile journey to the Amplatz Children’s Hospital at the University of Minneapolis.

The hideously disfiguring tumour – which had considerably impaired the lad’s ability to feed – was removed successfully by surgeon Dr David Hamla.

Since then, Ezekiel has reportedly made a remarkable recovery. He recently started to walk and talk for the first time.

Dr Hamla expects his young patient to have a normal life and no one is more grateful and relieved than his mother.
Stoyann Burrowes remembers the panic she felt upon being told that her son’s condition was so urgent that he should be taken to the US right away or else he would die.

“I think coming here saved his life,” she said speaking from Minneapolis. “If he was at home he would have died.”

Concerning her son’s newly blossomed abilities, she remarked, “Everything he’s doing now is new. He couldn’t turn, roll over or do anything. Now he’s doing everything; learning to eat, learning to walk, to talk, everything. It’s really amazing.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

It’s probably not much of a stretch to believe that Barack Obama and his speechwriters frequently peruse the New York Times in print or online.

Their likely affinity for the Times may explain why the President referred to the “intercontinental railroad” in his speech yesterday in Cincinnati near the Brent Spence Bridge:

Now, we used to have the best infrastructure in the world here in America. We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad, the Interstate Highway System.

Of course, “intercontinental” means “between or among continents; involving two or more continents.” The railroad to which the President referred was actually the “Transcontinental Railroad.”

It turns out that the President’s gaffe is one which New York Times writers have committed frequently enough that one can believe that Team Obama picked it up from them, as seen in the results of this Times search on “intercontinental railroad” (in quotes). Four of the five erroneous uses of the term have occurred since Barack Obama took office:

• In February 2009 at the Economix Blog (“Revenge of the Rust Belt”), Harvard professor Edward L. Glaser wrote: “As the Rust Belt declined, the Sun Belt grew. An intercontinental railroad, the Panama Canal and then the highway system made the West Coast accessible, and people flocked to warmer weather.”
• In June 2010 in an Artsbeat column, Allison Amend, who took pride in being an NPR listener, wrote of “the construction and subsequent development of the intercontinental railroad.”
• In November 2010 (“One Way to Trim Deficit: Cultivate Growth”), Times Economics writer David Leonhardt (who, as an aside, imagined that the manufacturing sector of the economy was in recession in February 2007 when it wasn’t) wrote that “Federal science dollars, meanwhile, led to the creation of the intercontinental railroad, the airline industry, the microchip, the personal computer, the Internet and numerous medical breakthroughs.” By the way, the “federal science dollars” which Leonhardt says led to the transcontinental railroad came from “high- caliber engineering training programs funded by the United States Army” — presumably provided by colleges. That’s like crediting the government for inventions developed by students benefiting from the GI Bill. Give me a break, David.
• Finally, in a role reversal, on January 26, 2011 (“After Detour, a Map of America’s Journey”), Matt Bai described the President’s State of the Union speech — “Mr. Obama delivered a narrative of American life that evoked images of Depression-era murals and cold-war newsreels, rather than hammering away at specific laws he had passed or planned to propose. He harked back to sputnik, the Apollo project and the intercontinental railroad.” Trouble is, in the actual SOTU speech (text; video), Obama correctly referred to the “transcontinental railroad.” In this case, the Times made a correction.

Remember these examples the next time liberal elites at the Times, in academia, or in the Obama administration try to pretend that they are presumptively better than their readers, students, and the governed, respectively.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here for listening, here for viewing the Live Blog. We’ll be on until 9 p.m., possibly later.

_______________________________________________

Some discussed links:

• Mark at WoMD — “ObamaCare: White House Emails Reveal Accounting Fraud” (relating to the CLASS Act)
• AP — “Obama administration shelves long-term care plan”
• Washington Examiner, via Congressman Tim Huelskamp — “Obamacare HHS rule would give government everybody’s health records”
• Washington Examiner, via ConnCarroll — “Ryan to put ‘replace’ back in ‘repeal and replace”
• Sherrod Brown press release — “Brown Joins Unemployed Worker in Cleveland to Call for Swift Passage of Legislation Outlawing Discriminatory Hiring Practices”

From Tony Lee at Human Events, reacting to last night’s debate:

Can Herman Cain start gaining momentum?

If Perry keeps faltering and voters do not warm to Romney, could Herman Cain become a viable contender? His positive intensity score, as measured by Gallup, remains at the head of the field despite his name recognition registering below those of the front-runners. His “9-9-9″ economic plan is catching on, as is his inspirational life story. Cain survived cancer, pulled himself up from his humble roots, and turned around franchises many thought would fail. Further, Cain combines substance with flair while mixing in a host of anecdotes that illustrate broader points he tries to make. For instance, he will tell the story of speaking to children at a lemonade stand and teasing them if they had the proper permits to make the broader point about excessive government regulation in the private sector, of which he was a part–unlike President Obama. Or he will electrify audiences by telling the story of his grandfather who took bumpy roads to bring potatoes from the farm to the market so that the big potatoes would rise to the top to illustrate the point that changing the culture in Washington will not be easy, but could be done with his practical experience in the private sector.

If given time to tell his story and offer his solutions, Cain has all the ingredients to catch fire, and that is why he is perhaps the most undervalued out of all the candidates at this time. It will be interesting to see if voters who intensely like him view him as “presidential” enough to flock to his side.

Rick Perry shows signs of implosion on immigration. Mitt Romney has long since proven that he is objectively unfit. The rest of the field is not meaningfully distinguishing themselves (yes, that includes Ron Paul). That would appear to leave the main refrain in the hands of Cain.

__________________________________________

UPDATE: Glenn Beck observes –

Perry vs. Romney = 2012 depression

Watching Perry and Romney bicker over who said what in their books was not exactly the inspiring talk conservatives want to hear. It’s petty but worse yet – it reveals that each have far too much in common with Barack Obama, leaving many conservatives feeling like it’s prom and they don’t have a date.

UPDATE 2: Erick Ericksen –

Herman Cain Won the Debate

Rick Perry was a train wreck in this debate. He flubbed his response on Romney flip-flopping. He got the first question tonight and stumbled. Good grief.

Romney did so much better than Perry. So much better. But I still cannot believe these candidates have pulled their punches on Romneycare. He’s getting a free pass on it. But his answers on so many questions, while smoothly delivered, were Democrat like.

The winner is Herman Cain. The audience loved him. Other than his question on Israel, Cain’s answers really were out of the park awesome. He provided the most uplifting moments and the most memorable lines, with substance included.

The headline should replace “super” with “fever-swamp.” Ms. Charen’s analysis is, hopefully, quite accurate (bolds are mine):

Ohio, where first-term Sen. Sherrod Brown is seeking re-election, is considered a “lean Democratic” race.

Brown has won one contest already: the race to the left. When the National Journal rated U.S. senators, Brown was ranked as “most liberal,” beating out even Socialist Bernie Sanders for the honor.

As in 2000, 2004 and 2008, Ohio is likely to be a key swing state in the presidential contest, so the Senate race assumes even more importance. And that race is shaping up to be a classic liberal/conservative clash.

Brown’s likely opponent, Josh Mandel, has served two tours in Iraq as a Marine intelligence specialist, one while a sitting member of the Ohio legislature. For Mandel, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, the blessings of liberty are not just an abstraction.

Mandel has been a lawyer, a councilman, a member of the Ohio legislature, a U.S. Marine, and Ohio’s state treasurer. He boasts that when he first ran for the Ohio legislature (in a 2-1 Democratic district), he knocked on 19,679 doors, wearing out three pairs of shoes. When he swears that no one will outwork him, you believe.

He speaks with energy and philosophical clarity, and Ohio’s Republicans are smitten. As a young councilman, he helped push through a property tax reduction for Lyndhurst, Ohio, the first in history.

He believes in free-market capitalism, exploitation of Ohio’s (and the nation’s) supplies of coal, gas and oil, and limited government. He is pro-life, pro-traditional marriage and pro-Israel.

In an election where the economy will be the predominant issue, Sherrod Brown’s Club for Growth ratings during his first four years in the Senate are: 2007 – 0%; 2008 – 13%; 2009 – 0%; 2010 – 0%. His lifetime percentage, which presumably includes his congressional terms, is 4%.

Anyone raising the issue of Mandel’s promise to serve out his term as Ohio Treasurer deserves a two-word, end-of-discussion response: “Barack Obama” –

Mandel is more qualified in political and real-world experience to be President right now than Barack Obama was at the time he made his statement.

Sherrod Brown cast the the final vote in support of the now-demonstrably failed stimulus. He believes that unemployment benefits represent “the best stimulus.” He’s clueless, and in November 2012, he needs to be driven from the Senate.

I’m going to try an experiment here.

If you have something to say about the content of a post or have something that extends its points, by all means comment at that post. I’ll generally be lenient about whether a comment is really on-topic, but if it’s obviously not, I retain the perogative to nuke it without notification.

If your comment doesn’t relate to any post, please post it here. But do NOT (repeat, NOT) post full articles as “comments.” For copyright- and readability-related reasons, limit excerpts to usually up to six but occasionally up to nine paragraphs. Any comment violating this guideline will get nuked before it appears without notification (unless I have time and feel extraordinarily polite).

As usual, I retain the discretion to allow comments to get posted or prevent them from being posted, and my allowing a comment to be posted doesn’s mean I agree with or endorse it.

At his Daily Bellwether blog, retired Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter and Cincinnati-area resident Bill Sloat has scooped the Ohio media on a story which could have tremendous impact in Southwest Ohio, but which comes with a number of troubling questions and issues (some paragraph breaks added by me):

‘China Hub’ Airpark With 10,000 Jobs May Be Headed To SW Ohio: Cincinnati Gains From Missouri’s Turmoil?

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican conservative who once said he was “tea party before there was a tea party,” might be looking at landing the largest economic development project in recent state history. And it all seems to be happening because of fellow conservatives in Missouri.

They are balking at approving about $400 million in state tax credits for the “China Hub,” a Chinese-St. Louis air cargo corridor that is supposed to terminate at Lambert Airport. It is envisioned as opening a massive new international trade gateway with the giant Asian economy. St. Louis business interests and economic development officials were predicting up to 10,000 new jobs, along with warehouses and other spinoffs. In effect, it would be a port, and it has a grand name: “Aerotropolis.” Not quite the Panama Canal, but a huge trade deal..

Suddenly, the fallout in Missouri has given Ohio an opening to grab it. Economic development officials in Cincinnati are trying to offer the project a home in Ohio, and they are pointing to Wilmington, where DHL abandoned its giant air cargo airport two years ago. It is sitting there waiting. State officials are also in on the action. The word in Jefferson City, Missouri’s capital, is that SW Ohio and Denver have emerged as potential sites for the China Hub.

When The Daily Bellwether called a well-placed Cincinnati City Hall source Thursday, the source said:

“We’re going after this. The Kasich people, the Chamber, we’re all moving. Is anything going to happen? I think some doors are open to us that weren’t until a few days ago. We can give it a home in Wilmington at a place where people want jobs and an airport is empty and waiting. Will it happen? It seems to be up to the people in Missouri. All of a sudden, they seem to hate tax incentives. …”

It looks like the best recent work relating to Ohio’s competitive status is being done by a local television station — in Missouri.

On Wednesday, KPLR reported that “Projects in both Ohio and Colorado have been launched to land the cargo hub in those locations if work in the Missouri legislature stalls out.”

Before that, on September 14 (“China-Hub Could Bolt For Better Deals In Ohio And Colorado”), the station reported in print that “The cities of Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus have completed a study on using an airport in Wilmington, Ohio as an China cargo hub.” In the accompanying video at the link, a Missouri development representative told the station:

Last week saw a coalition of Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus announced the completion of a master plan which they began I believe after the legislation failed here in May.

How did this “announcement” not get into Ohio media news reports? Did the dog eat their press releases? Or is the “coalition” being secretive and pretending not to be?

A September 10 Associated Press story (“States rethinking tax credits as job creation tool”) laid out the nature of the Missouri situation:

Perhaps nowhere is the tax credit tension more evident than in Missouri, where lawmakers have convened a special session to consider scaling back several existing tax credits in order to finance new tax incentives targeting a variety of business interests – from Chinese cargo planes to computer data centers, high-tech companies and even the organizers of major sporting events.

Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon and Republican legislative leaders tout it as one of the most far-reaching job-creation packages being considered among states. But it faces opposition from some lawmakers who see it as the latest give-away of taxpayer dollars to big businesses at the expense of school children, the disabled and elderly.

“There is a tension between just about everybody,” said Sen. Chuck Purgason, a Republican who has wavered on whether to back the Missouri plan. “You’ve got core Republican principles that government doesn’t create jobs – the private sector creates meaningful jobs – and what you need is broad-based tax reform.”

One contributor to the “tension” would seem to be the air of mystery concerning China and others involved.

As is the case with virtually all major businesses in the Mainland, China Eastern Airlines is majority-owned by the Chinese government. Even if you ignore its communist nature, this control potentially allows political considerations to trump economic ones. The firm’s cargo subsidiary already ships to Chicago, which would seem to beg questions as to how much it really needs St. Louis, and how vulnerable St. Louis would be if China’s economy stumbles.

Yesterday, local TV station KMOV (“China Hub consultant reimbursed for $192,000 in expenses”) reported on the excessive spending habits of Stephen Perry, a representative of London Export Corporation (LEC). LEC’s web site describes itself as having “offices in London, Hong Kong and Beijing, and has a presence in St Louis, Missouri, USA.” The web site doesn’t identify members of the firm’s “Team,” and its “News and Information” page is moribund. Geez, who are these guys?

Additionally, a St. Louis station reported on September 13 that “Members of the citizens’ group K & N Patriots are opposed to the plan. They said they will be in Jefferson City to protest.” The station describes K & N as a “Tea Party group,” but K & N’s web site cautions that it “is not affiliated with any political Party or organization though some may view its policies to be in sympathy with ‘Tea Party’ views. … To assume that K & N Patriots as an organization has a formal affiliation of any kind with any political party or any other organization is incorrect.”

Nonetheless, the objection of involved citizen activists in Missouri is duly noted. Additionally, the state’s free market-oriented Show-Me Institute (here concerning job addition estimates ranging from 3,000 to 32,000; and here concerning the lack of an objective feasibility study) has serious problems with the deal.

Clearly, the retired Sloat has his ear closer to the ground than Ohio media reporters who are supposed to be earning their pay by surfacing news for a living. Yesterday, I searched for any indication of a story on the China hub at the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Columbus Dispatch, or for an Ohio-based story in Google News, and found nothing.

I’m certainly sympathetic to the plight of Clinton County and its economy since DHL left. But even before getting into possibly relevant additional issues like fair trade and national security, should Ohio really be so willing to cough up $360 million (that’s the amount, as of Wednesday, that Missouri’s proponents were pushing for) or more? Is this really worth it? How do they know?

_______________________________________

UPDATE: Speaking of Wilmington and predictions of success, I came across a revealing 2004 item on what Ohio did when DHL took over the old Airborne Express (“DHL Spending $1.2B to Bulk Up U.S. Presence”) –

This time around, Ohio offered DHL an incentive package that was valued at more than $422 million.

State subsidies include $300 million in tax-exempt bonds. Those state-backed bonds allow DHL to secure lower-than-normal interest rates. DHL’s assistance includes another $122 million in tax incentives and roadwork. One of those roads is a bypass around Wilmington that Clinton County was already planning. The Ohio Department of Transportation will now take over bypass design and construction. In exchange for the state’s aid, DHL committed to create 600 full-time and 300 part-time jobs while investing at least $295 million in the Wilmington hub.

Five years later, the Wilmington facility closed. Can anyone really say that the $422 mil was economically worth it? Was there any kind of monetary clawback from DHL?

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UPDATE, Sept. 24, 12:45 a.m.: The latest from the St. Louis business paper — “Lambert welcomes first Chinese cargo flight as Aerotropolis sputters”