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Free enterprise should be free of government handouts

Re: Keeping Motorola Inc. at all costs, July 5.

Kudos to Sydney P. Freedberg and associates for another fine St. Petersburg Times investigative report.

How many Motorola and Scripps cases must there be to convince Florida officials that offering multimillions of taxpayer dollars to companies as incentive to locate in Florida is a very mixed bag?

Granted, there is reckless competition among the states to attract new, high-wage business, but does Florida really need to sacrifice needed programs in order to throw money at companies that may renege on incentive agreements or on companies that might well locate here even if not offered any incentives at all? Remember, we're the fourth-most-populous state and growing, an attractive market for many major corporations.

Another thing our lawmakers should keep in mind: If an incentives-benefited company, for whatever reasons, cannot any longer compete in the marketplace for its goods or services and begins the slippery slide downward, no amount of taxpayer handouts can or should prevent it. For example, Lee Iacocca's Chrysler Corp., for which the federal treasury was raided in an effort to save it, was saved only temporarily. The best thing that can be said for the Chrysler bailout is that the company is now in an uneasy relationship with its foreign owners.

Our free enterprise system, which ensures survival of the fittest companies, works best without well-intentioned bureaucratic handouts.

Incentives aren't needed

Re: Business incentives.

I fail to understand why we offer incentives to businesses to locate in Florida. We came to Florida 25 years ago feeling lucky to be able to live in a state with all of its advantages: beautiful beaches, mild climate, wonderful attractions, reasonable living expenses, etc.

Now I see where Motorola was given lots of monetary incentives to establish a facility here. And I read where the governor traveled to California and offered a business some $300-million to open a facility here in Florida.

Businesses should be knocking on our door to be able to come here and enjoy our beautiful state. They should be offering us incentives. As it is, we have so many people now that housing costs have skyrocketed, and our roads are so crowded that it is difficult to get around.

And all of these incentives that our state is offering are at taxpayer expense. I think we have the cart before the horse and it should be stopped.

Another government taking

Re: Irresponsible incentives, editorial, July 7.

A quixotic idealist might suggest that it is not fair to confiscate some poor person's hard-earned cash to be redistributed to a rich company like Motorola. Just what defense of American freedom requires Florida lawmakers to spend tax dollars haphazardly?

Motorola is not the main culprit here by accepting these government gifts, but their government-funded cash cow will surely begin to dry up as soon as someone starts naming the lawmakers responsible for this pathetic oversight. It is not hard to imagine Motorola's lobbyists in turn showing up at lawmaker fundraisers with a nice fat check to support the good cause.

Everyone is up in arms over the possibility that the government might snatch their yard to build a new shopping plaza, but where are those up in arms in defense of the individual taxpayer's wallet? Don't we own our money as much as we own our property? Motorola's incentives should end now.

Right wing voted correctly

Re: A person's home is the government's parcel, July 3.

Martin Dyckman could not bring himself to say it was the conservatives on the high court who were right (you should pardon the expression) regarding the Kelo vs. New London case. He even used the case to again accuse Justice Clarence Thomas of "extremism," although Thomas voted the way Dyckman would have voted. Dyckman just doesn't want anyone to know that.

Arrogance of the affluent

Re: A person's home is the government's parcel.

Everything is personal. Martin Dyckman clearly made the connection between Kelo vs. New London and people's lives by injecting his personal experience with "Ms. Rolls-Royce." The arrogance of the affluent deserves no respect from the less affluent.

If Kelo vs. New London represents the mentality of today's liberal hierarchy, low- to middle-class Americans need to form a viable third party to represent our interests.

Dyckman really stepped up to the plate on this important national issue. I'm hoping to read more "big-picture" op-eds by him.

Jules Verne revisited

Re: Worlds apart, July 3.

John J. Miller's article about H.G. Wells touches us in Tampa by his unfair comparison of Wells with Jules Verne. One fact to correct: Tampa and "Stone's Hill" near the Alafia River were the site of Verne's cannon blast toward the moon, not quite "not far from Cape Canaveral." But that slight error is forgivable.

Where Miller is wrong is in characterizing Verne as merely a "hardware" sci-fi author, vs. Wells' supposed social agenda. In fact, Wells was a fantasy author, with little science to his fiction; and Verne was and is quite well regarded in Europe for his social commentary. His works are filled with comments on capitalism, socialism, fascism and colonialism, as well as warnings about the moral limits of science.

The trouble is that we readers of English have suffered for the quick and dirty popular translations available for the last century in our language; a lack being thankfully addressed by better more recent translations.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the death of Jules Verne, and an important international commemorative meeting has been held in Amiens, France. The North American Jules Verne Society held its annual meeting in Tampa in 2003, and celebrated Tampa's Vernian connections.

A novel moon journey

Re: Worlds apart, July 3.

In this story in last Sunday's Perspective, a reference is made to Hugo Gernsback coining the term "science fiction" in the 1920s. Long before then, in 1835, Richard Adams Locke wrote the greatest of all journalistic hoaxes, known today as the "Moon Hoax."

That year, James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, heard Locke was planning another novel dealing with astronomy, and he wrote:

"Locke may be said to be the inventor of an entire new species of literature which we may call the "scientific novel.' "

[Last modified July 8, 2005, 23:22:02]