Just checked the competition's Web site before hitting the sack, and what do you know!?? It's going to have an interview with the guvner about his refusal to give out STIFs for retail.

Hmmph.

Oh, no, that's perfectly cool -- especially when the story they use to introduce it was a story I did several months ago on how sporting goods chain Gander Mountain has been actively campaigning to keep states from giving STIFs when it never asked for nor received that incentive. Even funnier, SO DID THE COMPETITION. So now, it's repeating itself to catch up. And sure, the editors over there may have had the interview planned all along. It still doesn't excuse repeating a story as if it's a first-run.

Man, I would've hated to be the reporter who biffed it originally. Ooof. And I like her, too.

Incidentally, I was talking to a source of mine about STIFs today, and he brought up an interesting point: Daniels and the IEDC don't want to give STIF for retail because it's not bringing in new money to the state, just shifting it around. And that's cool. There's only one problem: STIFs are good only when there's sales tax to be had, and retail is the only industry that generates it (at least to the degree it needs to make it work, anyway; I'm not sure how much sales tax is generated by manufacturing, for example).

Now, I didn't necessarily have a problem with granting STIFs for retail, because (after the way it works was explained to me for the fifth or sixth time before I understood it) it's a good economic development vehicle, and one that Lake County could use. The problem I have with it is that now that there's a Cabela's planned for Hoffman Estates, Ill., which is no more than two hours from NWI on a good day, and other sporting behemoth Bass Pro Shop planned for Portage -- not to mention a Cabela's in Milwaukee already, which is about three hours from here -- you've just saturated the market, and one of them is going to choke, taking with it at least some of the 300 to 400 jobs they promised to bring. One only has to look at Krispy Kreme to see that; when we got the one in Schererville, everyone was all apeshit over it (with good reason, of course, because mmmmm ... Krispy Kreme ...). But then Krispy Kreme went into uber expansion mode, and now, I can get one at the gas station up the street. True, I'm not getting my free hot doughnut when I run to Speedway, but the ones I buy from the Krispy Kreme to take home aren't warm and gooey, either, so what's my impetus to drive 15 minutes anymore?

Damn. Now I want a doughnut.