By Steven L. Taylor
Via WTVY in Dothan, AL/the AP: Alabama Courting Kia Plant
A story in this week’s Automotive News said the city of Decatur is one of four sites under consideration for the factory.
Other sites reportedly include Chattanooga, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and Aiken, South Carolina.
[...]
Kia is owned by Hyundai, which has an assembly plant near Montgomery. Mercedez-Benz and Honda also build vehicles in Alabama,
and Toyota has an engine plant in Huntsville.
Alabama will produce about 760-thousand vehicles in 2024, and the industry employs about 50-thousand people in the state.
Hopefully the plant will come to Decatur–the economic impact of the Montgomery area of the Hyundai plant is evidence. And certainly, the state needs more industry.
Indeed, I am often struck how the structure of Alabama’s political economy has certain developing world flavors, not the least of which being the political dominance of land owners and agricultural interested (think: ALFA) despite the fact that they are not the dominant contributor to gross state product.
Nonetheless, many communities around the state would greatly benefit from a major manufacturing plant and the spin-off industries that come along with it. Not only does this infuse jobs, and therefore dollars, into areas that could use them, they also bring change and the chance for exposure to new ways of thinking.
I am also struck by the degree to which companies from what was not that long ago considered a Third World country (South Korea) is the source for economic largesse.
FYI: Decatur is in northern Alabama near Huntsville.
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By Steven L. Taylor
Substitute the word “Walkman” (which are mentioned) for “iPod” in the following story and one can feel a warm and fuzzy nostaglia for the early 1980s: Protect your ears: limit iPod use.
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By Steven L. Taylor
Via the The Seattle Times (the second story, scroll down):
President-elect Evo Morales will reject U.S. economic and military aid if the United States requires continued coca-eradication efforts to get the money, a close aide to the former coca growers’ leader said Tuesday.
Morales also plans to withdraw Bolivia’s military from anti-drug efforts and leave the job to police, said Juan Ramon Quintana, a member of the Morales’ transition team.
[...]
Coca eradication is a condition for aid from the United States, which gave Bolivia $91 million in 2024.
Morales’ decision was made “mainly for reasons of sovereignty,” said Quintana, who described Bolivia’s Special Force to Fight Drug Trafficking as “an appendix” of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Interesting. The linkage of aid to cooperation in the drug war has been Washington’s main tool in leveraging foreign governments in this area of policy. Also, the shifting of the execution of drug policy to he police from the military will have substantial implicatons for US policy in Bolivia.
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