Background on SR2O, Prometheus

I've been wondering for the last week how it is that these two companies were brought to Somervell County/Glen Rose. Both companies did have patents, but had not been running successful businesses. More than that, what they wanted was for Somervell County, in both cases, to get them free land, and to pony up money. Definitely in the case of SR2O they didn't get private funding and I'm assuming since they asked the City of Glen Rose to co-sign on a loan, that Prometheus also didn't get any. 

So this story actually starts with the federal government and Wes Jurey of Arlington (Techcomm) 

From D Magazine

The idea for TechComm came from discussions at a local, somewhat obscure event. In 2004, the Arlington Chamber of Commerce secured the right to annually host a trade fair called the World’s Best Technologies Innovation Marketplace. The show had an American Idol-type component to it­: Fledgling entrepreneurs would present their technologies to venture investors and federal agencies in the hope of getting funding, research agreements, or licensing deals that would get their products out of garages and onto store shelves.

In March 2009, Jurey met with Cynthia Gonsalves, the Defense Department’s director of technology transition at the WBT Innovation Marketplace show in Arlington. Gonsalves was looking to find a way for federal agencies to get their technologies licensed and discover sources for research that they need. Jurey says he and his team went to work talking to corporations, universities, and other potential stakeholders about a network that could speed up federal technology transfer, while helping corporations get their patented technologies into federal agencies and universities.

The government then went for a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) with Wes Jurey, who formed TechComm

TechComm aims to develop partnerships in an eight-state region among universities, venture capitalists, corporations, and federal labs. That may mean helping a company in Kansas City, for example, quickly find and license the technology it needs, whether it was discovered in the UTA’s nanotech labs or at the Army’s telemedicine research center in Denver....

That degree of difficulty is also why TechComm is charging corporate members a flat fee of $25,000 a year to join its network. By supporting TechComm, companies can avail themselves of a patent pipeline, while Jurey’s team looks for possible licensees for their technologies.

Okay. So. Darrell Best's private organization for economic development that he created here went and paid $25,000 to Wes Jurey. The local Somervell County *Industrial Commission* could  then look at the patent pipeline, etc. I assume that Best was not working as a consultant in any way directly with Wes Jurey and getting paid as well BY Wes Jurey to bring SR2O and Prometheus to Glen Rose. For whatever reason, the 2 businesses picked were ones that weren't even working companies but apparently only had patents. AND were looking to get funding from you and me, the taxpayers, rather than going to, say a BANK. In the case of Prometheus, they had not gotten a grant from Texas, nor any local grants, apparently, had not gotten a bank loan, but were told they could have county land, and THEN attempted to get a loan from the City of Glen Rose, which would have been co-signed by the city. (Meaning, of course, that the City would have been on the hook in case of failure and also there was a pesky problem of the land being county land with a city-financed building on it). In the case of SR2O, they ALSO wanted free land, free financing, etc. 

SR20, amazingly, said in the meeting this last monday, (full audio at that link)  when asked why they didn't get private financing instead of coming on the dole from a county, said that were they to get private financing, they would be coming here asking for tax abatements AND FOR LAND TO BE DONATED TO THEM (I had to stop the audio at that point , lean my head back and laugh right after SR20 asked if Somervell had land they wanted donated). What a crazy world, where business believe that a community is obligated to bribe them to come in return for not having to pay taxes, or getting donated land, or in this case, going into a huge bond deal for a company with no credit.

The populace in general did NOT WANT SR2O, who only had their plan on paper and had not even tested their so-called processing plant. Apparently, once the city voted NOT to cosign a loan with Prometheus, that was it for them, although the contract the county has with them does not apparently expire until in the summer. YOu'll remember that Mike Ford whined at the commissioners after the fact because they didn't vote his way. 

I have written about this before as I object to how former judge Mike Ford conducted this with a private group. If that private group wanted to go raise money to help out some companies that had difficulties getting funding, that's their business. But Ford didn't do any type of *vetting* of the business to see if they were even viable. In other words, the principles for SR2O and Prometheus were brought to town with possibly only a patent IN ORDER to get public taxpayer money. 

To take this farther. Is it terribly common for entrepreneurs with just an idea to be able to get taxpayer funding? Why should that be? There are plenty of successful businesses here locally that could probably use a hand, THAT HAVE BEEN IN BUSINESS AND PROVEN THEMSELVES, instead of bringing in complete unknowns that even a bank would not finance. Don't MOST people starting a business have to either have a nest egg or get financing? I was appalled when I heard on the audio of the Commissioners meeting in Jan 2014 where Mike Ford said that, although he had made time to have private meetings with the private economic group, he not only had not bothered to look into the *street creds* of the companies nor even brought in all the commissioners to hear about it before springing an RFP on them. 

It's simply welfare through government. People that don't like the poor being on the public dole should be LOOKING closely at this unproven form of corporate welfare as well. From Forbes about corporate welfare

Back when I was young, people went into a frenzy at the thought of some unemployed person using food stamps to buy liquor or cigarettes. Ronald Reagan famously campaigned against welfare queens. The right has always been obsessed with moochers. But Boeing receives $13 billion in government handouts and everyone yawns, when conservatives should be grabbing their pitchforks.

According to Good Jobs First, there are 514 economic development programs in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 245,000 awards have been granted under those programs. I ask again, where is the outrage? The system is antithetical to the idea of free markets. A quarter of a million times, state governments decided what is best for producers and consumers. That should make us cringe. First, the government is inefficient at providing public goods, and it is terrible at manipulating the markets for private goods. But more importantly, those 514 economic development programs are almost all the result of insidious cronyism. Narrow business interests manipulate government policymakers, and those interests prosper to the detriment of everyone else. Free markets be damned.

However, I don't even know you can call Prometheus and SR2O corporate welfare IF you assume that that type of welfare goes to established, profitable industries. In these cases, the welfare is to go to a company that has not proven it can even make a dime, has only an idea. What makes that significantly different than a human being who takes advantage of the welfare system while able to get his or her own job? In other words, if an entrepreneur has a good idea, LET HIM/HER/THEM go to PRIVATE ENTERPRISE and get financial backing. If the idea is good enough, surely a bank will go to town for them. If not, then why should WE as taxpayers be the ones on the hook?