Ron Johnson, the Senate candidate who says government should butt out and quit trying to help businesses create jobs, because "Government doesn't create jobs -- the private sector creates jobs" -- hasn't minded a little government help for his own business now and then.


WKOW-TV in Madison, which seems to own the exclusive rights to any investigative stories about Johnson, has another one. While the GOP gov candidates rail against high speed rail, Johnson found one rail line he liked:



A railroad line to Senate candidate Ron Johnson's plastics factory was built with the assistance of a federal grant.


According to documents from the Oshkosh city clerk's office, an Urban Development Action Grant in the amount of $75,000 was used to build a rail spur to Pacur, a plastics manufacturing company owned by Johnson.


The city resolution approving the grant was passed on March 15, 1979, the year the Oshkosh factory was built.
The money for the line went to Wisconsin Industrial Shipping Supplies, owned by Johnson's brother-in-law, Pat Curler. Months later, WISS changed its name to Pacur and the plant opened.




Yesterday, it was a government-subsidized loan to his business.  Johnson said it was a loan and he paid it backl, as though they meant the taxpayers hadn't give his business a subsidy.
 
Today it's an outright grant to create jobs -- something government doesn't do, according to Johnson.
 
For the record, here is his original WKOW interview:

WKOW (Bob Schaper): Right. Well, you know, speaking of the President, he was here yesterday and he was talk- talking at, uh, the ZBB Energy hi-tech, did you hear anything in his speech that, that resonated with you as a businessman?  I mean about high tax credits for clean energy and that sort of thing, are those good ideas that he has?
 
Ron Johnson: Uh, first of all I didn’t hear his speech, I heard a little- I heard a little bit of a report on it on talk radio driving into the- into headquarters today.  I guess my comment on that would be, is I’m always skeptical when, when the government decides to subsidize something and it’s picking a winner or loser.  I mean, I don’t think the government is very good at picking winners and losers in an economic situation.  I mean I’m a business, I have never lobbied for some special treatment, or for a government, government payment.  Uh, I think the way the economy works, the way a free market enterprise works is individual consumers and businesses connecting with each other to produce a product that you can sell at a profit and that’s how the economy moves forward.  When you subsidize things, when the government subsidizes a product it doesn’t necessarily mean its going to be economically viable and the only thing, the only way things actually work out long-term is if a product is economically viable, if consumers actually want it and are willing to pay a high enough price to cover the costs.  When, when you subsidize things it’s just not, it’s not, ah…doesn’t work through the free market system very well and, and when we’re, when we are facing $1.5 trillion dollar year deficits, I mean I would argue and I don’t think we can afford to have government start passing out uh dollars to, questionable products quite honestly.

Is this guy beyond embarrassment?

UPDATE: Illusory Tenant has some analysis and slaps down Johnson's response.