The Rivian Jobs Scam, Part 1: The Corporate/Georgia Government Scheme to Destroy a Quiet Community and Support Kemp's Reelection

Free Republic Vanity ^ | March 24, 2022 | poconopundit

[poconopundit]

Rivian, a recently gone public electric vehicle company supported by the Biden administration and in which Leftist Billionaire George Soros recently invested a huge sum of money is trying to drop a massive car manufacturing plant in the middle of a retired community east of Atlanta.  Citizens are angry at Governor Kemp and other politicians who are attempting to fast-track this project in total disregard of the rights of local citizens.

To fully explain all that’s wrong with this Rivian auto plant "deal" — and the likely motives of Kemp and his cronies for supporting it — will require 2 or 3 Free Republic vanity stories.  This is the first of those stories where the key focus is on the terrible impact this plan is having on the people in the quiet community of Morgan County, Georgia. 

Click the image below to read its contents full screen.

 

Imagine you and your spouse have retired to a quiet Georgia county 40 miles east of Atlanta.  Indeed it was precisely that big city’s metro area traffic, noise, and suburban sprawl you aimed to escape by settling in the county.

A few years back, the community leaders sat down and approved a 20-year plan for your county that emphasized lots of green space, conservation, rural living, and modest development.

Then a few months ago, along comes a California firm from Silicon Valley named Rivian, a startup electric vehicle company who aims to drop a massive car manufacturing plant in the middle of your retirement paradise.  And to your outrage, the Georgia state governor Brian Kemp thinks this car factory is his ticket to boasting “I created 7,500 new jobs in this state” for his upcoming reelection.

Further: Kemp and other local government conspirators are fast tracking the approvals for this plant like it’s already a done deal — with very little transparency over the deal’s specifics and too short a citizen review time.  In fact, the 2,200-acre development is scheduled to start building in the summer of 2022. 

This is the “Jobs Scam from Hell” that citizens of the small city of Rutledge in Morgan County, Georgia are facing right now.  And the citizens are fighting hard — through lawsuits and loud voices — to keep this new auto plant from coming in. 

Why Rutledge Citizens are Up in Arms

Rutledge residents are generally not opposed to electric vehicles.  The issue they have is the radical change a large manufacturing plant would bring to their community. 

Georgia Broadcasting Organization (GPO) published a fine story a few weeks ago detailing the Rutledge fight fromn a citizens perspective. Here's a summary of their analysis in a story entitled Rutledge vs. Rivian: Morgan County residents fight development of massive manufacturing plant.

Big influx of jobs not desired – Rutledge is a rural community and people moved there to avoid the commercial sprawl a Rivian factory would create. A Massive Influx of People — Since Rutledge is a heavily retired population of 20,000 people, if 7,500 people come in it’s like bringing another third of the current population. Factory would Lower Quality of Life creating more noise, pollution, traffic, and litter. Environmental damage — The plant could affect drinking water quality, harm adjacent wetlands, and damage historic areas on the site, including a cemetery. Car manufacturers have bolted Georgia before — Rivian would not be the first auto manufacturer to come to Georgia.  Ford and General Motors both had plants near Atlanta that closed in 2006 and 2008.  Korean automaker Kia also built a plant in West Point, Ga., in 2010 which is still open.  Zero Transparency — Residents are angry that they’ve received scant information about the Rivian deal and feel pressured by a 45-day deadline.  The community has not been adequately consulted about the deal.  In short they feel they are being railroaded.

What is Suburban Sprawl?

If you live near Atlanta, Georgia, you know exactly what "suburban sprawl" means because it envelopes your life.  Even if you live inside Atlanta's city limits, it impacts you immensely as people take flight to the suburbs, lowering the inner-city taxpayer's ability to pay for infrastructure maintenance, police, and other essential services.

In fact, Greg LeRoy, a foremost watchdog in city and state economic development says, “Atlanta is arguably the worst-sprawling metro area” in America. Suburban sprawl refers to a business development area with a low density population, lack of public transportation options, low mixed use (jobs/stores are not near homes), and job growth in newer suburbs concurrent with job decline in older areas. I got that definition reading LeRoy’s beautifully written and researched book, The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation (2005). The book goes a long way to explaining the highly complex corporate-relocation and siting-a-new-factory scams that pit American cities and states against each other – and cause serious harm to taxpayers and their quality of life.  Click the image at right to learn more about the book.

The Long Range Damage of Suburban Sprawl

Beyond the specific objections Rutledge citizens have over the Rivian car plant, LeRoy documents many other problems that Suburban Sprawl causes:

• People become more dependent on cars – Commuting times get longer, air quality goes down, and natural spaces are lost.

• Central city infrastructure crumbles as older areas lose jobs and their tax base.  Services declines even as people who need help congregate there.

• Newly developing bedroom suburbs lack money, yet they require new roads, schools, and teachers.  The also lack the commercial or industrial property to balance their tax rate.

• Suburban jobs are cut off from public transit – This effectively cuts off central city residents from regional job markets.

• Sprawl chews up land very fast – Between 1982 and 1997, the U.S.  population grew 17%, yet urbanized land area increased 47 percent.

• Older areas must pay higher tax rates because they lost their corporate property tax base.

• Taxpayers across the region pay more taxes since there are per capita greater needs for roads, sewers, and water mains. 

• Police, fire, sanitation, and other public services costs grow since it costs more to serve a population that’s thinly distributed.

* * * *

In a few weeks we'll publish a second vanity story on the Rivian issue, and it's there we'll analyze Rivian's shaky business model and explain the corrupt reasons Governor Kemp and other politicians favor this deal.

Finally, in tribute to the good citizens of Rutledge, we offer the following poem as a rallying cry.

Good-bye, Suburban Sprawl.  I'm Going Home!
(adapted from Ralph W.  Emerson)

Good-bye, Suburban Sprawl! I'm going home: Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. Long through thy weary traffic I drive; A river-ark on the ocean brine, Long I've been tossed like the driven foam; But now, Suburban Sprawl! I'm going home.  Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, Suburban Sprawl! I'm going home.

I am going to my own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green Rutledge hills alone, A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird's roundelay, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought and God.  O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools, and the learned clan; For what are they all, in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?

[GOPJ]

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