He got a tax break. Where's he hiding the jobs?

...received a tax abatement in 2005 from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation for his non-union company, Orbitforms. The abatement was part of the creation of a Tool and Die Recovery Zone under the state’s Renaissance Zone program. According to the MEDC Dec. 22, 2005 announcement the abatement would “allow companies to operate free of virtually all state and local taxes for up to 15 years, thus boosting their efforts to compete in the face of global competition.” City of Jackson Office of the Assessor records show the property on which Orbitforms is located — 1600 Executive Drive — has a state taxable value of $655,400. As part of the deal, Shirkey told MEDC officials he believed the abatements would allow him to create as many as 12 jobs. Instead, Shirkey’s factory, which manufacturers various industrial fasteners, laid off nine workers, reports the Jackson Citizen Patriot.

As we know, the Republicans who scream the loudest about socialism and government bailouts are all the time taking government money. So yet another story of a Republican elected official—in this case, Michigan state Rep. Mike Shirkey—screaming socialism about President Obama and then taking stimulus money is not all that newsworthy. Another maneuver by Shirkey, though, is a little more special. Shirkey:

There's your jobs-creating tax breaks for job creators—Shirkey gets to pay basically no state or local taxes in order to cut nine jobs. This pretty much gives the lie to Shirkey's claims of concern for workers (and he is planning to sponsor so-called right to work legislation soon), and it shows just how ineffective a job creation tool more and more tax breaks to businesses are. If that was a form of policy that worked in any real way, the U.S. would have come out of the Bush presidency with 100 percent employment. Instead we have corporations paying almost no taxes, sitting on giant piles of cash, and cutting jobs, and Mike Shirkey doing the same damn thing writ small.