Over the past few months several job creation announcements for working families of Rutherford County have given us a glimmer of hope in a recovering economic recession that began in the first part of 2008.
Thanks to a $1.6 billion federal government loan to Nissan, 1,000 workers will be hired and help position Tennessee as a leader in a green auto revolution. Thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, construction firms are bidding on three shovel-ready road projects, and millions more is being spent to retrain workers for these jobs of the future.
The latest is an announcement from Washington-based NCS Power that 2,000 green energy jobs will soon come to Rutherford County from their factories in China. It’s news worth celebrating, but some people aren’t happy.
Rutherford County’s Tea Party Republicans have taken to the streets 3 times in the last 3 months protesting the tax revenues spent creating these new jobs. They also protested the very incentives being provided companies to relocate manufacturing jobs here in the United States.
What’s worse are Republicans like Sen. Bill Ketron (R-13), Sen. Jim Tracy (R-16) and Rep. Joe Carr (R-48) gleefully taking credit for those jobs.
“We’re going to relight Middle Tennessee,” said Ketron, who was involved with some of the discussions involving the LED business partnerships. “Tennessee is poised to be the alternative energy capital of the world.”
Ketron attended the press conference along with state Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, state Rep. Joe Carr, R-Lascassas, and Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey.
Companies like NCS Power had strong economic incentives to ship jobs to China throughout President Bush’s 8 years in office. Now months into the Obama Administration those incentives are changing, and NCS Power now sees strong incentives to move 2,000 jobs back to Murfreesboro, TN.
The fact is county Republicans have gone out of their way to oppose changes that help working families. Rep. Carr authored a bill this year demanding Gov. Phil Bredesen reject stimulus funds that extended unemployment benefits for our county’s growing unemployed as well as funds to retrain workers for these new jobs of the future.
Senators Ketron, Tracy and other county Republicans wanted four more years of Bush’s failed economic policy and years more of the results from which we’re slowly recovering.
When Nissan begins hiring 1,000 Rutherford County residents due to the massive government backed auto loan they protested, expect Sen. Ketron, Sen. Tracy and Rep. Carr to pray to God that you’ve forgotten their vocal opposition to those jobs as they gleefully take credit for the hard work it took to bring them here.
