John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 30/05/2025The "Rick Snyder poisoned Flint" narrative was a political hit job aimed at a then-popular swing state Midwestern governor, diverting attention from the fact that Flint's own water plant poisoned its citizens because the city's elected officials had been illegally raiding water maintenance funds. 200
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 25/05/2025Forget the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix, I had the best motorsports experience this weekend. 010
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 05/05/2025Figured it out: Stephen Miller is what would have happened if Pauly Shore had gotten sorted into Slytherin. 010
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 24/04/2025No, free(r) trade, especially NAFTA, did not kill American manufacturing employment. Manufacturing as a share of the U.S. workforce had been falling steadily for decades when NAFTA was signed in 1992, and it kept falling steadily afterward. 010
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 17/04/2025I was briefly, for my sins, the PR guy for the Not Very Nice Person who bought the Silverdome for $583,000. It was a miserable experience except for two things: I got to go up on the roof (terrible photo below), and I can say I had the key to the Silverdome on my keychain. 020
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 01/01/2025Caught strays in New Years Eve @cardsagainsthumanity.com 140
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 12/12/2024There's bad economic development policy, really bad economic development policy, REALLY REALLY bad economic development policy, and then there's my home state of Michigan: 100
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 11/12/2024While industry consultants make wild claims, there hasn't been an official state audit anywhere across the country over the past decade that found a net positive ROI for film subsidies. At BEST they lose 34 cents on the dollar, at worst they lose 94. (Chart from documents.ncsl.org/wwwncsl/Fisc...) 100
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 11/12/2024We have decades' worth of real-world evidence that film tax credits are a terrible idea that inevitably end up costing taxpayers money. In fact, the last time Michigan had a major film subsidy program, we ended up with fewer film industry jobs than we started with. 100
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 11/12/2024(To be fair, as with just about all terrible corporate welfare programs in Michigan, this is a bipartisan bad idea. The House versions of these bills were from Republican sponsor Rep. John Roth and @mihousedems.bsky.social Rep. Jason M. Hoskins.) 100
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 26/11/2024Canada is America's biggest trading partner. Roughly 25% of that trade comes through Detroit, where I live. That includes ~$10B in parts & materials for U.S. automakers, who in turn sell ~$18B of cars & trucks in Canada. What happens when everything traveling over this bridge is 25% more expensive? 120
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 20/11/2024Evidence about Mao? I mean, he was a murderous dictator so there wasn't really a lot of incentive for people to contemporaneously document his phlandering but it's well accepted by historians that he had what amounted to concubines in the Chinese tradition. Example: www.latimes.com/archives/la-... 100
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 07/07/2023TIL that movie studio execs tried to get Tim Burton to rename "Beetlejuice" to "House Ghost." 010
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 06/07/2023This is the zoning map for Ruston, La., pop. 22,000. The city's zoning code is 262 pages long and divides the city's 21 square miles into 26 different zoning classifications. This same city just gave Buc-ee's 20 years of sales & property tax abatements to build a store there to "promote growth." 100
John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 05/07/2023TFW when you vent your spleen for 1,500 words and an editor thinks your bile is worth sharing with their audience. 000