In Troy, New York, where a quarter of the children live below the poverty level and the average household makes less than $30,000 a year, the 29th richest man in the world is being given more than 300,000 taxpayer dollars to open a restaurant.
They call it economic development.
What it is is a sin.
What it is is welfare for the wealthy, proof positive that raping the taxpayer is what the government does best.
Meet George Soros. He owns Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Specifically, his company – Soros Strategic Partners – owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. He also owns a lot of other things, enough to make him one of the wealthiest people on earth.
He also happens to be the largest individual donor to the Democratic Party. He has bankrolled a variety of grand liberal schemes.
But this isn’t about his politics, it is about his perqs. And about the audacity of businesses who browbeat local simpletons into signing blank checks on the taxpayers’ account.
Like the deal in Troy.
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is a very successful small chain of rib joints. It recently won some award for the quality of its food, and it has the buzz – mostly generated by its New York City outlet – that breeds stardom. It is a very cool place. It is also very profitable.
And it has decided to expand into Troy.
Troy is the place that put the rust in Rust Belt. One of America’s first successful steel cities, it was also one of America’s first failed steel cities. Part of the greater Albany area, it is a mid-sized city in one of the most financially troubled states in the country.
But Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has come calling. And it has found just the building it wants.
Which is where the give-aways begin.
The building has almost $220,000 in back taxes owed on it.
Now, typically, if you buy a property with any liens against, you pay those. In the real world, those are going to be tacked onto the purchase price.
Unless you’re Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
In this instance, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has pressured the local industrial development agency into paying the back taxes on the building it wants to buy. That’s $218,000.
Further, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is getting a five-year deferment on the property tax that improvements on its property would have otherwise obligated it to. That five-year lag will continue for 20 years.
Meaning that Dinosaur Bar-B-Que will spend the next two decades paying less than its fair share of property taxes – while the locally owned businesses against which it competes will have to pay their full obligation.
But wait, there’s more.
Read on if you can...
Lonsberry
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