News-Record.com

I was a little confused by this release from Gov. Mike Easley's office. The lead graph:

Gov. Mike Easley announced today that North Carolina has been named the South's State of the Year by Southern Business & Development magazine. North Carolina and Alabama are ranked in the No. 1 spot for the region's largest business deals in the magazine's 13th annual Top 100 (eds note: bold my own) issue, available on newsstands beginning today.

Um, is my flag missing some stars?

Turns out, this list is from Southern Business and Development magazine's "Top 10s" issue - not the Top 100 issue. (What's a factor of 10 among friends?)

Relieved that the U.S.A. hadn't picked up 50 extra states without sending me so much as a memo, I perused the magazine's online site. Let's just say, these folks make people who are relentlessly upbeat look like slackers. And boy do they like incentives. Here's what they wrote about North Carolina's Dell deal:

In unprecedented fashion, North Carolina won one of the South's most signature deals of 2004, the 1,500-employee Dell project. The recruitment of Dell was unprecedented considering the incentive package the state of North Carolina, Forsyth County and the city of Winston-Salem put together. In total, Dell garnered about $300 million in incentives from the three governments.

Historically, government officials in North Carolina have been the most vocal anti-incentive group of all in the South. Time after time North Carolina would take the "high road" after losing out on another big project, vigorously maintaining that they don't have to "buy" projects in order to compete. Well, with Dell, North Carolina joined other Southern states that have landed huge deals by offering up substantial incentives for a single project. It just goes to show that even the most stubborn of Southern states can realize that if you are going to lure the big buffalo, you're going to have to write a big check. We applaud North Carolina officials for checking their skepticism at the door when it came to landing Dell.

I'm thinking these guys have a point of view. If only I could tell what it was.