The local daily has an article interviewing Ben Teague, executive director of the Asheville-Buncombe County Economic Development Coalition, on what economic development is. Having read it, I remain clueless. I was thinking it was going to say something like wining and dining and pretending you’re friends and making offers they can’t refuse. Instead, it sort of rambled about nothing. The only thing I could put my finger on was the claim that it took 55 pounds of research paper to accomplish strategic growth. Personally, I don’t consider going through that much of a rain forest strategic. But whatever. I still think the dip in the economy with the rise in corporate welfare is not a spurious correlation.