Not sure either approach is the best way to recruit business and industry to Knoxville, Knox County, or Blount County, but at least these are jobs that are currently not here and a business and a payroll that isn't already in the economic pipeline.

Why am I not surprised there's already a bait and switch?

Also...

The agreement says that the industrial development board will convey the land to AMI for $1, then reacquire the property and lease it and the facility to the company “with a nominal $1 purchase option.

Huh?

I must comment that I am not pleased with an ammunitions company coming to town. We have enough arms and guns and bullets all over this world and they cause lots of deaths, intended and unintended. As much as nuclear weapons are protested, I wish we would protest these Lords of War.

Should health insurance at Tennessee rates be included, it looks like a bunch of 9.00 dollar an hour jobs to me. Can the project.

At least we're not giving them downtown waterfront property. I'm guessing Bill Baxter is laughing his ass off at the Regal deal. In addition to other waterfront property owners, the beneficiary of the Regal deal is a Denver private equity billionaire.

their industrial park was doing just fine where it was and the cost per job, relocated to Blount County from Arizona is just under $44,000 a head.

On the other hand, City of Knoxville's waterfront development bailout, also known as Regal Cinemas Downtown, The Sequal, will spend approximately 5 times that amount for 75 bogus clerical and administrative positions (but they are downtown).

Any way you cut it, the munitions factory is still a better spend per dollar, particularly since none of those jobs are actually in Blount County already. Perhaps the remoteness and isolation of East Tennessee is very hard to attract the attention of major business and industry, however, I think it has more to do, particularly in Knoxville's situation, of putting the wrong people in charge of important functions and putting pinheads like Mike Edwards in charge of recruiting business and industry to Knoxville and Knox County. In my opinion,he has to call a Haslam proxy just to decide where he's going to eat lunch, which position to take on an issue he knows nothing about, well ahhh, or whether or not he can crack a pharrt in the office overlooking beautiful Market Square Mall.

Anybody seen any of those little jets manufactured by the Communist Chinese Government polished, shined, or delivered at the Knoxville airport yet?

$900,000 of taxpayer money per job created?

Incentives Agreement

A strongly "socialistic" element of the modern American economy, one not mentioned by Bernie Sanders today, is the extent to which firms in the private sector rely upon public financing in the form of site preparation, infrastructure, tax reductions, specialized training programs, and etc. Unfortunately the public whose money is used are not treated as shareholders whose returns and share value should be considered in corporate decision making. We pretend that the private sector and private investors take the risks and deserve the rewards and the rights but this is not the case. A worthwhile reform would be to require both greater transparency and representation of the public interest on the boards of companies that receive the kinds of incentives that Volkswagen, Regal, AMI (to name a few) have received. It is probably impossible to reverse the pattern of competition among states and cities for jobs, but we should recognize what we have created and reform the system to make it better serve all citizens of the "winners" in the competition for jobs.

A munitions plant at the end of TYS runway is a bad idea. Several planes have crashed in that area, damaging corn or hay fields.