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John Mozena

@johnmoz.bsky.social
196 followers 194 following 81 posts

Working for economic development transparency & accountability at the Center for Economic Accountability - @accountableecon.bsky.social. Senior Fellow, Reason Foundation. Opinions=mine. #DCTID

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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
The "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.
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Forget the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix, I had the best motorsports experience this weekend.
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Figured it out: Stephen Miller is what would have happened if Pauly Shore had gotten sorted into Slytherin.
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
No, 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.
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
I 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.
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Caught strays in New Years Eve @cardsagainsthumanity.com
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Can probably get this one used somewhere
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
My car tire looks like a Mille Bornes card
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
There'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:
A chart listing the total economic development incentives handed out by each state between 2018 and 2023, with Michigan having handed out $2.663 billion, far ahead of second-place South Carolina at $1.617 billion.
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
While 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...)
Table titled "Estimated Tax Revenue Impacts: State Agencies vs Private Firms" from a 2024 Rhode Island Department of Revenue report on film tax credits, listing official audit results in 14 states between 2016 and 2022.
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
We 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.
Scene from the TV show Arrested Development:

Woman: "Well, did it work for those people?"
Man: "No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might but... But it might work for us."
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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.)
The "muscled black arm and white arm clasping hands" meme with one arm labeled "big business," one labeled "big government" and the joined hands labeled "economic development subsidies."
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Canada 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?
Photograph of busy truck traffic over Ambassador Bridge between Detroit, MI and Windsor, ON.
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Evidence 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-...
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 11/07/2023
Doctor today: Your blood pressure's a bit high. Me:
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 07/07/2023
TIL that movie studio execs tried to get Tim Burton to rename "Beetlejuice" to "House Ghost."
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 06/07/2023
This 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."
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 06/07/2023
h/t MGoBlog
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John Mozena @johnmoz.bsky.social · 05/07/2023
TFW when you vent your spleen for 1,500 words and an editor thinks your bile is worth sharing with their audience.
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