I was trying to ignore this insane UNC-Rocky Mount crap — you know, by slamming my head in a car door, something less painful — and it was working. For awhile.
Thankfully fellow Lockean George Leef sums up all that is wrong with the latest brainstorm from the Down East kleptocracy:
A few people in Rocky Mount will profit nicely if this academic marriage goes through, but the notion that it would be a tonic for eastern North Carolina is fanciful. Drive just a few miles from Greenville, the site of the huge East Carolina campus, and you find poor people living in poor towns. If ECU hasn’t cured poverty in the region, why think that a much smaller UNC-Rocky Mount would?
Note also that this project is evidently driven by its supposed economic benefits with hardly any thought given to the educational merits or demerits. Is there any educational need for an expansion of college capacity in the area? If so, why wouldn’t NC Wesleyan and ECU take advantage of it and expand?
The Global Transpark was expected to be a great boost for eastern NC, but it’s a flop. There have been plenty of other government projects that were supposed to revitalize areas and have flopped. Here’s the root of the problem — when people get to play around with taxpayer money, they don’t bear the cost of being wrong. Big dreams just sail through without hard scrutiny when the taxpayers will eat the loss.
Here’s my grand economic development plan for Down East: Move. Pick your stuff up, get your couch off your front porch, and frickin’ move. Go to someplace that already has an economy. People do it everyday. Do not waste another minute waiting for a handout from Raleigh.
Sure, the local political power bosses won’t like that idea, but screw them. North Carolina needs more ghost towns and more unemployed politicians. The alternative is the perpetual, pointless, and corrupt search for an “economic development” silver bullet.
Now, back to the car door.
