The Jackson County Commissioners turned down an application for $1 million in public funding for an internet company. It isn’t that they don’t believe that wealth transfers spur the economy; they didn’t believe the proposal had the right job-creating mojo. Perhaps a less politically-persuasive option underlaid the decision:

The last time the county granted an economic development loan to an Internet service provider, the company defaulted. The county was handed the title to a network of fiber lines along with a wireless Internet tower that had been put up as collateral for the loan. The equipment was sold off for a fraction of its worth, meaning the county did not recoup what it had extended to the company.