"Residents were alarmed when they discovered that scores of homes and historic buildings near their Old North St. Louis neighborhood had been sold and left empty — their doors and windows removed, speeding decay. When they traced the purchases, the trail led to prominent developer Paul J. McKee Jr. But McKee, best known for the 1,100-acre WingHaven development in St. Charles County, wouldn't say why he was amassing hundreds of parcels in St. Louis for more than three years. A clearer picture emerged in Jefferson City this year, when the Legislature approved a $100 million tax credit for large-scale developments in impoverished areas. McKee spurred Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder to champion the bill, hired several lobbyists to push it and gave thousands of dollars — and use of a corporate plane — to politicians who helped pass it."
STLtoday - News - Missouri State News
OK, this is a good lesson for Dems and Repubs alike. "Community development" grants/tax cuts/loans are typical liberal causes. Libs feel like they are helping the poor. However, with all things, people with power are the ones that take advantage of government's power. They have the attorneys, accountants, and lobbyists to swing political decisions in their favor. So, in the end, the good-intentioned attempts you had made to shift some sort of power/wealth to the poor by creating a new use for government power is then ultimately used by the rich to benefit themselves, and no one else.
I bought a bumper sticker recently that says, "If we have more laws than any other country, are we really more free?" Dems seem to think that adding more laws and tax incentives to the books is somehow going to help the poor and underprivileged. But, with laws so numerous and complicated, the only ones that can take advantage of them are the one rich enough to hire vast numbers of lawyers to interpret them and find the loopholes. The rest of us are just paralyzed into inaction by the size, complexity, and confusion of them.
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