Defying Liberal Predictions, This State Outperforms All Others In Economic Development And Appeal

Here I go with another North Carolina update, so bear with me.

Remember all the heart-felt wailing from North Carolina Democrats, led by that lumpy rat, Roy Cooper, about how the bathroom bill, HB2, was ruining North Carolina’s reputation and driving businesses away?

If you listened to more than one or two of those leftist drones and their spiel during the run up to the 2016 election, you’d be pretty well convinced that North Carolina was in a death spiral because of a commonsense bathroom bill that kept private places private.

About that…

Site Selection magazine is an international publication that deals in corporate real estate and economic development.

It’s probably not the kind of magazine you read while sipping a cold Pepsi and catching a little sun on the white sands of Sunset Beach, but if you’re an investor and/or an entrepreneur looking to move your business to a profitable, agreeable U.S. location, Site Selection has the inside scoop on that.

Each year, Site Selection awards the Prosperity Cup to the top state for business competitiveness and appeal.

This year’s top award, based on 2016’s performance was awarded to North Carolina.

Yes, the same North Carolina that, in 2016, led by Governor Pat McCrory, told men that they couldn’t stroll into a bathroom behind your wife, or that teenaged boys couldn’t say they felt feminine that day and shower next to your daughter at school.

Such an injustice, I know.

At least it is, if you spent any time listening to Roy Cooper and his merry band of liberal reprobates.

I do enjoy that the Raleigh News & Observer is reporting on this.

North Carolina’s No. 1 rating for 2017 – a ranking that is based on 2016 data – didn’t come out of the blue. Last year the state tied with Texas for the No. 1 spot in the magazine’s Prosperity Cup ranking, which it previously called Top Competitive States.

But in the latest rankings North Carolina has no peer. Texas fell to No. 4, behind Tennessee and Georgia.

The ranking “may confound those who had written off the Tar Heel State as a business-climate backwater” after House Bill 2 became law in March 2016, the magazine noted.

Yes. Confounded, they are. Liberals are always so sure they’re right, even when they’re proven wrong, over and over again.

It could be that they’re so woefully out of touch with what real people are thinking.

The bathroom bill did result in a few businesses that backed out of planned expansions into the state. A few musical acts boycotted, and the NCAA resorted to economic blackmail to force a repeal of HB2.

In March of this year, a repeal agreement was reached that basically put everything on reset. It was a move that Governor McCrory had offered last year, but Roy Cooper and North Carolina Democrats convinced the Charlotte City Council – the social justice warriors whose city ordinance forced the hand of McCrory and the state General Assembly in the first place – not to accept a reset deal, in order to use HB2 as a campaign tool.

Leaked communications between Cooper and state Democrats revealed a group that was cheering for economic damage to the state, proving my oft-repeated assertion: Democrats would see the state burned to the ground, as long as they get to be the ones standing on the ashes, in the end.

Social justice is more important than the well-being of all of North Carolina’s citizens, and sadly, North Carolina voters turned the governorship of the state over to a man who was cheering for the state to be economically ruined.

Not smart, guys.

But even when HB2 was the law of the land, Site Selection found that North Carolina had plenty to offer.

It noted that the state had “one of the most educated workforces in the U.S.; a temperate climate; two international airports, including a major hub for American Airlines at Charlotte, which is also a top financial center; … coastal ports; a desirable mid-Atlantic location; top research universities and community colleges and a 3 percent corporate income tax rate – the lowest such rate east of the Mississippi other than Ohio, which imposes a gross receipts tax in lieu of corporate income tax.”

Yeah, that 3 percent corporate income tax rate was one of Governor McCrory’s campaign promises kept, as he slashed both corporate and individual income taxes.

The Prosperity Cup is different from the magazine’s Business Climate rankings, but even in that, the Tar Heel state ranked #2 (behind Georgia).

Among the factors that go into the Prosperity Cup: new and expanded facilities and the capital investment that goes along with them; new jobs created; Business Climate ranking; state tax climate as ranked by the Tax Foundation; and performance in the Beacon Hill Institute’s State Competitiveness Index. For factors such as number of facilities and new jobs, both total numbers and per-capita numbers were considered.

And North Carolina came out on top.

To watch Roy Cooper and his new Commerce Secretary Anthony M. Copeland take credit for the conditions that secured North Carolina’s number one ranking in this area is nauseating.

They’re doing a victory lap on Governor McCrory’s accomplishments – the very accomplishments that Cooper and state Democrats hoped to stop, in order to gain power.

These are the kinds of things North Carolina citizens need to remember in 2018, and in 2020, when Cooper is up for reelection.

I have a suspicion, as do others, that we haven’t heard the last from Pat McCrory and he may very well make a reappearance in 2020.

If that happens, my hope is that a wiser constituency will make it to the polls.

In the meantime, folks should reach out to Pat McCrory and thank him for the hard work he and the Republican-led General Assembly put into assuring North Carolina was open for business.

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