Georgia on ABC’s Mind
Network finds a sour note in the sweet song of 2,500 new jobs for the Peach State.

By Ken Shepherd
Business & Media Institute
March 16, 2006

     Asking if “states pay too much” to land job-generating foreign investments like auto plants, ABC’s “World News Tonight” found a critic to sing a sour note about a plant Kia Motors announced it will open in West Point, Ga.

     Correspondent Steve Osunsami began his story detailing the benefits. The Peach State, Osunsami noted, was giving Kia a plum “$400 million in tax breaks, road work, and cheap land. In return, the automaker will bring 2,500 jobs here, to a cow pasture in West Point, Georgia, where the textile mills are mostly closed, and thousands of residents remain unemployed.”

     But soon after that, Osunsami slammed on the brakes, introducing a liberal economist to complain about the state’s tax incentives. “They ought to be investing their money in things like education, health care,” complained Washington College professor Robert Lynch, whom Osunsami labeled a “public policy researcher” who “says states are wasting money” competing for auto plants like Kia’s.

     Osunsami failed to find an expert who would disagree with Lynch, such as Michael Daniels, a Columbus State University economist who told the Associated Press that “the [Fort] Benning expansion and the Kia plant” would improve the economy of Columbus, Ga., a city near the West Point Kia plant location that suffered economic decline with the closing of textile plants.

     The ABC correspondent also left out that Lynch is far from an apolitical academic – he’s a liberal critic of tax cuts and a generous donor to Democrats.

     Lynch was among more than 400 economists who joined the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI) lobbying against the 2003 Bush tax cuts. A review of the Federal Election Commission Web site reveals that Lynch, a resident of Silver Spring, Md., gave $2,000 to the John Kerry campaign and $800 to the Democratic National Committee in 2004, as well as $250 to then-State Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s congressional campaign in 2002. In that election, Van Hollen defeated Congresswoman Connie Morella (R-Md.).

     The Business & Media Institute has previously documented the media’s focus on layoffs from Detroit’s automakers while downplaying new job openings from foreign automakers or the role of labor unions in damaging the profitability of General Motors (NYSE: GM).