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By Kevin Dietrich | The Nerve
COLUMBIA — The aerospace giant Boeing received somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion in tax breaks, bonds, and loans from South Carolina taxpayers to land in the Palmetto State.
Boeing donates liberally to the campaign coffers of the state's top politicians. The company's top executive runs a state agency. In short: Boeing does what it wants in South Carolina.
Say one thing for the Boeing Co.: The aerospace giant understands how to play the political game.
Chicago-based Boeing wasted little time ingratiating itself into South Carolina’s government power structure when it began considering the state for an aircraft assembly plant more than three years ago.
In fact, the company began doling out campaign contributions even before legislators met in a rare, special session in October 2009, when Boeing was approved for the first part of the biggest corporate-welfare package offered to a single company in more than two decades.
