An idea for a new video game

According to the May edition of The Lane Report, Frogdice, a young video-game company, has been awarded an $80,000 loan from the state "to help purchase software and other equipment."

While it's great that the company, as the report indicated, plans to hire seven new employees by 2014 and pay them an average annual salary of nearly $50,000 each, I have to wonder why taxpayers are being forced to loan them money.

Why don't they have to take the same route to secure funding that other private-sector companies travel, including convincing private lenders that they have strong enough credit and won't be leaving town anytime soon?

Perhaps they tried that route and still couldn't get a loan -- which makes this government "loan" even worse. Why should taxpayers be on the hook for an operation that a private lender does not consider worth the risk?

Ironically, the online version of this month's The Lane Report has a story at the top of the page about a Louisville bank being "one of the nation's top financial institutions with assets of $3 billion or more."

...and we have start-ups getting loans from the worst-run state in the nation?

Maybe this whole experience has given Frogdice an idea for a new video game, that could be marketed something like this: "Let's all play 'What happened to all that federal stimulus money given to banks for loans?'"

Whaddya think?