City Council approves of corporate welfare

For background on this story see the previous post.

Sadly the City of Wichita has approved of the idea of giving a corporate welfare handout to multi-millionaire Bill Warren. A $6 million interest free loan to reward Bill for poorly running his business. In an article in the Wichita Eagle John Rayburn repeated what I mentioned in the previous post which should be common sense to anyone on the City Council,

"The move shocked John Rayburn, a security company owner who attended today's meeting to talk on a different issue.

Rayburn said that if the city will loan the theater $6 million, they should also loan him $6 million. He said he'd put the money in a CD, pocket the interest and repay the loan within 10 years.

He said the theater's owners are obviously wealthy and should go to a bank if their plan can turn the ailing theater around.

"I just don't understand why you're discussing this," he told council members."

It makes you wonder how much money is flowing into the pockets of the City Council to approve of the fleecing of the Wichita taxpayer. This decision follows on the heels of previous decisions to hand out taxpayer money to corporations including:

1) Corporate welfare to Gander Mountain which has a history of losing money without taxpayer support

2) Corporate weflare to Airtran despite a history of airline companies losing money

3) Corporate weflare to construction companies, etc to build an unnecessary arena in the middle of the city exactly where a new arena would be a bad idea and drive business away from other businesses in the area.

4) Corporate welfare for Lowe's and other companies by destroying the wetlands in Western Wichita and putting Wichita at higher risk for flooding, then using taxpayer dollars to create an artificial, and therefore worthless, wetlands elsewhere.

Remember this the next time the city complains about budget shortfalls and a need to increase taxes. I'm sure they'll create some claim for needing to raise taxes for the common good when the end result is sending the money into the hands of the wealthy.