Today, the Dayton Daily News editorial board finally agreed with a position I’ve staked out as one of the primary threats to our society: Corporate welfare.

It’s a stunning turnabout for a company that has never met a tax break they didn’t wholeheartedly endorse. The ones for Reynolds & Reynolds, Relizon, Workflow One etc- were all great by their reporting. Bill Pardue and his QBase reality distortion field- where governments should not only fund his startup, but then hire his firm- hailed as innovative. And, then the NCR debacle, where our Ohio politicians hadn’t talked enough about how we should drop our drawers to the almighty Bill Nuti and his extortion machine.

If you look at todays paper, their hypocrisy is evident, where they rail against the tax break, but fail to hang Congressman Turner for his willingness to sell out to NCR as long as they are a Dayton business.

They take the tax break system apart gently, as a ruse to give money to big companies for promises written on paper as useless as yesterdays news-

One way of looking at the NCR deal is that the employees who have to move will actually be the ones financing the cost of wooing the company. That’s because almost $80 million of the $100 milllion-plus incentive package that Georgia put up represents state income taxes that will be deducted from employees’ checks over five years, but that NCR will get to keep.

Like most states today, Georgia isn’t just sitting on $80 million that it’s aching to give away. Yet, it didn’t have to put up much cold cash to get NCR. Rather, it’s temporarily foregoing income tax money it would have been due.

One can argue that any time a state gives a tax break, all state residents end up footing the bill in one way or another. But when a tax break is so precisely tied to what a company’s employees owe the state, it easy to see how they might think they’re the ones really putting up the cash…

The national trend of tying tax breaks to what workers owe the state is a tidy way for states to make sure that companies receiving incentives really are producing the jobs they’ve promised to create. It’s hard to cheat if a business tax credit is linked directly to the state taxes a company is withholding from its employees.

via Editorial: Employees to pay taxes to NCR | A Matter of Opinion.

So the real question is, if this is such a good idea, why not allow every business that is on the brink of tossing in the towel, just keep their State income taxes too? What? Only if you are a corporation, who pays your CEO $2000 an hour?

That’s the way our politicians have rolled… our country straight into the shitter.

It’s time for a complete and total end to all tax breaks, except those granted by the Federal Government to support initiatives to make our country more competitive or healthier. Tax credits for clean renewable energy, for job training, for preventive health care, walk-to-work programs, true research and development, child care, I’m sure I’m missing a few…

It’s time to level the playing field for all and end this insanity.

Thank you Dayton Daily News editorial board for finally seeing the light.

And, does this mean I can ask to keep my employees State income taxes too? Or don’t I pay enough politicians off to play that game?