Moon over Montgomery?

I lived in Montgomery, Alabama for 7 1/2 years. So I paid a little extra attention to what was happening three years ago when one of the poorest states in the nation gave a huge Korean company massive "incentives" (aka bribes) to locate a factory there. From my pre-Blogger blog, April 29, 2002:

This nonsense has got to stop! The state of Ohio has offered Ford an $83 million incentive package to build Mercury SUV's at its Avon Lake Assembly Plant near Cleveland. GM recently threatened to move assembly of its silly Chevrolet SSR (V8 powered two-seat roadster pickup mutant) unless Lansing, Michigan agreed to lower pollution standards. Politicians in Montgomery, Alabama were ecstatic that Hyundai agreed to build a 2000-job assembly plant there for only $133 million in state and local bribe money. That's $66,500 per job! Corporations have pitted city against city, state against state, and with NAFTA and WTO, country against country in a bidding war for jobs. Ralph Nader, in his book Crashing the Party, describes a recent case where Daimler-Chrysler squeezed millions out of Toledo and Ohio to locate a Jeep plant in Toledo. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed to build the plant, and an economic downturn resulted in far fewer jobs being created than were promised. I don't know all the answers, but it sure seems like corporations should be paying states substantial fees for the privilege of doing business within their borders, not the other way around. There is now more real competition between Michigan, Alabama and Mexico than there is between Ford, GM, and Daimler-Chrysler. This benefits the shareholders and executives of the corporations to the detriment of the citizens of the states and countries. We need to realize that we have more than enough stuff and that economic activity and jobs aren't the necessities--food, clothing and shelter are.

Well, I was watching "Desperate Housewives" last night, and a commercial comes on saying that Hyundai's new US manufacturing plant is now open. The grand opening was last Friday, featuring Hyundai Chairman Mong-Koo Chung and Alabama Governor Bob Riley. And there was, apparently, a surprise visitor--former president George H.W. Poppy Ready My Lips Bush 41:



Imagine. Bush Sr. showing up at the opening of a Korean auto plant. What does Poppy know about Korea? Oh yeah! He's friends with this guy:


Second from the right is renowned Korean multibillionaire and pervert the Rev. Sun Yung Moon, who has had far more control over the Presidents Bush than any 100 million Americans. I wrote about Moon last year:

Connect the dots: Nazi Klaus Barbie, Bolivia's Cocaine Coup, weird sex rituals, George H.W. Bush. Okay, a few more hints: The Washington Times, Korea, mass weddings, Capitol Hill coronations, the title of this post. Now, if you worked for the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, you'd come up with the same answer you always did: Saddam Hussein. Otherwise, you probably guessed, correctly, that the dots are connected by the extremely strange person named Sun Myung Moon.

That post was based on Robert Parry's book Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. That book has lots on Rev. Moon, including this delightful passage:

"History will make the position of Reverend Moon clear, and his enemies, the American population and government will bow down to him," Moon said, speaking of himself in the third person. "That is Father's tactic, the natural subjugation of the American government and population."

No wonder Poppy is such a pal of his--their families have the same goal.

Interestingly, however, this article suggests that Moon and Hyundai founder Chung Ju Yung are rivals in trying to open up North Korea, where both were born, to investment. Given the claws that Moon has always had into the Bushies, I'm guessing the rivalry can't be very bitter if Poppy is showing up at Hyundai grand openings. Beyond that, I can't begin to conjecture what this all means.

[Update] It was getting late when I was researching this last night. It turns out that Hyundai found Chung Ju Yung died in 2001 at the age of 85 or 86.