Dispatch:
Ohio officials took a significant step forward in their bid to bring 1,150 new JPMorgan Chase jobs to the Columbus area by approving a $14 million tax incentive yesterday.
City and state officials have been courting Chase in recent months as the company looks to consolidate operations following the purchases of Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns.....
.....In addition to the state deal, Columbus is "moving ahead" with its own $8.2 million tax-incentive package for Chase, said Michael Stevens, deputy director with the city Department of Development. Westerville City Council is considering a seven-year, income-tax offset incentive of $223,000."This is a very important step in this process, and we are hopeful that the final steps from the city of Columbus and Westerville are successful as well," Lyttle said of yesterday's vote by the state's tax authority....
We need to keep our fingers crossed that Chase delivers these jobs to Ohio.
* Rep. John Boehner, Republican leader, said some words last week that admitted Bush tortured. In a column in the Salem-News, columnist Dorsett Bennett penned a reaction to Boehner's words:
Republican House of representatives minority whip John Boehner inadvertently admitted to the Bush torture when he said, "Last week they released these memos outlining torture techniques. And that was clearly a political decision".....
...Nice try Boehner. What you think, that the rest of us are, all four years old? In the same news conference in which Boehner used the term torture (which the US does not do (?), to describe what the US did in fact do), Boehner did try to implicate the Democrats on to the torture hot seat by claiming that Democrats were told that water boarding was taking place, and that House Speaker Pelosi supposedly knew about it....
....When Bush's last Attorney General denied that his confirmation hearing that water boarding was torture, for high-ranking officers of the Army Navy and Marine Corps, wrote a letter to to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy. They condemned water boarding "The rule of law is fundamental to our existence as a civilized nation. The rule of law is not a goal which we merely aspire to achieve; it is the floor below which we must not sink water boarding detainees amounts to illegal torture in all circumstances". So said in a letter by Judge Advocate Generals Rear Adm. Donald Guter, Rear Adm. John Hutson, Maj. Gen. John Fugh, Brig. Gen. David Brahms....
Pelosi has stated that she was not told that water boarding was being used.
**** Did Republican Rep. Steve LaTourette (OH-14) help AmTrust Bank? Cleveland.com looks at the story:
Nearly four months after the deadline came and passed for AmTrust Bank to dig itself out of a financial mess or else, there's no indication the Cleveland bank is any healthier. Yet regulators have taken no additional action involving the area's fourth-largest bank.
A Wall Street Journal story Friday suggested that AmTrust has pulled some strings to catch a break and said that U.S. Rep. Steven LaTourette offered to help AmTrust stay alive.
But a spokeswoman for the Bainbridge Republican said that's not true.....
I'll keep an eye on this and see if something more develops.