the Reply All podcast did a really good article about that deal
the head councilman of the town that did this deal sounded like a spectacular douchebag
What's the population of that town, like, a few thousand? Local politics is a real shitshow in general but especially in small communities.
~26k
It's basically a suburb of Racine closer to I-94 and an annoyingly in between distance from Chicago or Milwaukee that isn't even nearby the Hiawatha or Kenosha for Metra access. Which is mostly fine for light industry, but not for an office park.
The development comes after the Taiwanese manufacturer fell short of its job creation quota in 2018 and failed to qualify for any tax incentives. The company in 2018 created 178 direct, full-time jobs, Woo wrote in a letter to Mark Hogan, CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, which helped craft the tax incentive deal.
The 2018 jobs figure is short of the 260 full-time jobs required under the state's contract with the company, meaning Foxconn will not receive any tax incentives it could have qualified for this year.
The contract with Foxconn set a goal of 1,040 jobs for 2018 to be eligible for $9.5 million in job creation tax credits. The company would be able to claim those tax credits in future years if it exceeds the jobs target for any verification period.
They did so bad that they don't even qualify for the incentives that had a hand in ending Walker's tenure.
The bad news though, they still get a good chunk of the "investment" tax incentives
Foxconn will still be eligible for nearly $1.5 billion in job creation credits through the year 2032. That doesn't include capital investment tax credits, which Foxconn will be eligible for at the end of 2019. The company could receive up to $1.35 billion in such credits by the end of 2025 under the contract. In total, state tax incentives for capital investment and job creation amount to about $2.85 billion.
So basically they get their more than a billion dollars in capital investment tax credits, but lose out on the job creation credits. It's not as bad as I first read it when I thought they were getting a couple billion dollars in credits regardless and losing out on like ten million dollars, but it's still a terrible deal for the state (as was predicted by tons of people).
So this is going to spur a new round of Republican talking points about how it's all the unions faults that manufacturing in the USA is so expensive, right? So they'll try to get unions even more and force people into lower paying jobs per usual Republican efforts.
Nothing here is the least bit surprising, except that the deal isn't quite as bad as it could have been.
I am pretty sure this is okay we will say we are doing this until people stop looking at us and we go back to not doing it. Pretty much just like the "carrier" deal Trump did.
I am pretty sure this is okay we will say we are doing this until people stop looking at us and we go back to not doing it. Pretty much just like the "carrier" deal Trump did.
That'd be my guess that this is just like that caravan of migrants that forms whenever he needs to talk about his wall.
If it's bullshit the company could easily release a statement.
I'm going to bet that the phone call was "Look, I'll illegally fund some shit your way and let you get through some loopholes. In return, you'll announce that you're going to build flatscreens here. Then we'll wait 6 months, you'll do what you were going to do anyways, and nobody will care because I'll yell about immigrants again and everyone will have moved on from this whole thing"
So they said they weren't going to make the large flat screens they had originally talked about in that factory. The alternate was to make smaller flat screens for other uses. I'm not seeing anything in the CNN article that clarifies what flat screens they're talking about today.
That also strikes me as a not really subtle word game that Trump would completely ignore and claim victory.
So they said they weren't going to make the large flat screens they had originally talked about in that factory. The alternate was to make smaller flat screens for other uses. I'm not seeing anything in the CNN article that clarifies what flat screens they're talking about today.
That also strikes me as a not really subtle word game that Trump would completely ignore and claim victory.
They had shifted twice: from making large flat screens to small ones, and then from being a manufacturing plant at all to an admin/r&d hub. This is just them reversing the second flip-flop but not the first.
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I ZimbraWorst song, played on ugliest guitarRegistered Userregular
Which the republicans will use to hang Democrats with because people are stupid about the economy. It's nearly impossible for many people to grasp that the economy they are feeling today was created by policy set at least the year before. I'm already seeing republicans blaming the Foxconn shift last week on Evers being elected.
Which the republicans will use to hang Democrats with because people are stupid about the economy. It's nearly impossible for many people to grasp that the economy they are feeling today was created by policy set at least the year before. I'm already seeing republicans blaming the Foxconn shift last week on Evers being elected.
Eh, this is specific enough it should be way easier to fight off. Just relentlessly blame Walker for cutting the deal.
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I ZimbraWorst song, played on ugliest guitarRegistered Userregular
Republicans blame Democrats if their cornflakes are soggy in the morning, but that doesn't make it so.
I think the state Republicans own the Foxconn deal, for better or for worse.
Republicans blame Democrats if their cornflakes are soggy in the morning, but that doesn't make it so.
I think the state Republicans own the Foxconn deal, for better or for worse.
You and I may agree about this, but get outside of Madison and the running partisan theory is "It was going good until the Democrat came along". I hope you are right, but I just dont have that faith in the Wisconsin electorate anymore.
So today I had an interview with a contracting firm and they dished some info on Foxconn. They had a contracting framework in place and it all evaporated when Foxconn announced their change in plans. Even after Trump "made some calls" nothing is materializing and it's looking like they are being ghosted.
Fun times.
One thing that bothers me about this article and a bunch of the coverage of this is that they all seem to contain something about how 'the manufacturing jobs are being replaced by R&D and Engineering'; and treat that as a big negative.
AI is coming for all of us, but those jobs has a couple more decades of viability to them vs assembling LCD panels or other automatable assembly task.
One thing that bothers me about this article and a bunch of the coverage of this is that they all seem to contain something about how 'the manufacturing jobs are being replaced by R&D and Engineering'; and treat that as a big negative.
AI is coming for all of us, but those jobs has a couple more decades of viability to them vs assembling LCD panels or other automatable assembly task.
The entire plant was sold on "good old fashioned blue collar jobs" is why they talk about it that way. It was supposed to bring a bunch of employment to the area for it's residents rather then a small number of high education jobs.
One thing that bothers me about this article and a bunch of the coverage of this is that they all seem to contain something about how 'the manufacturing jobs are being replaced by R&D and Engineering'; and treat that as a big negative.
AI is coming for all of us, but those jobs has a couple more decades of viability to them vs assembling LCD panels or other automatable assembly task.
The entire plant was sold on "good old fashioned blue collar jobs" is why they talk about it that way. It was supposed to bring a bunch of employment to the area for it's residents rather then a small number of high education jobs.
Which, also, I'll believe those most recent version of promised jobs exist after the first paycheck goes out.
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
One thing that bothers me about this article and a bunch of the coverage of this is that they all seem to contain something about how 'the manufacturing jobs are being replaced by R&D and Engineering'; and treat that as a big negative.
AI is coming for all of us, but those jobs has a couple more decades of viability to them vs assembling LCD panels or other automatable assembly task.
The financial case for the subsidies could only ever make sense if the resulting Foxconn factory gave a boost to the state's broader manufacturing economy, with a whole supply chain of smaller parts suppliers popping up to provide the raw inputs to Foxconn.
If Foxconn only hires engineers and doesn't set up any assembly line, then none of those follow-on effects come about, and Wisconsin is stuck paying them $3 for every $1 that Foxconn pays those engineers.
One thing that bothers me about this article and a bunch of the coverage of this is that they all seem to contain something about how 'the manufacturing jobs are being replaced by R&D and Engineering'; and treat that as a big negative.
AI is coming for all of us, but those jobs has a couple more decades of viability to them vs assembling LCD panels or other automatable assembly task.
The financial case for the subsidies could only ever make sense if the resulting Foxconn factory gave a boost to the state's broader manufacturing economy, with a whole supply chain of smaller parts suppliers popping up to provide the raw inputs to Foxconn.
If Foxconn only hires engineers and doesn't set up any assembly line, then none of those follow-on effects come about, and Wisconsin is stuck paying them $3 for every $1 that Foxconn pays those engineers.
You know what'd shock me? If that was NOT the plan all along.
Get massive subsidies for a plant that is supposed to be a massive manufacturing boon, with flow on supply chain effects, revise what the plant does for some borderline reasonable reason, keep the subsidies.
That these subsidies aren't based on employment numbers and average wage of the employees (median, so you can't spike it with executive pay), so that this kind of crap doesn't happen, is just stupid.
I disagree. He made these plans knowing exactly how well they would work out for the state of Wisconsin. Because he's a cruel and calculating man whose concern is lining his own pockets.
I disagree. He made these plans knowing exactly how well they would work out for the state of Wisconsin. Because he's a cruel and calculating man whose concern is lining his own pockets.
I don't think he's cruel or calculating, personally. Were he a clever man, he'd have done a sneakier job of fucking over the state. I think he's just greedy. Easily bought and totally willing to obediently follow the directives of his masters.
I disagree. He made these plans knowing exactly how well they would work out for the state of Wisconsin. Because he's a cruel and calculating man whose concern is lining his own pockets.
I don't think he's cruel or calculating, personally. Were he a clever man, he'd have done a sneakier job of fucking over the state. I think he's just greedy. Easily bought and totally willing to obediently follow the directives of his masters.
Why would he have to be sneaky about it? There were tons of people calling out how terrible a deal it was from the moment he announced the deal. None of that stopped the deal from going through. What consequences has he faced for this, other than not getting re-elected?
I disagree. He made these plans knowing exactly how well they would work out for the state of Wisconsin. Because he's a cruel and calculating man whose concern is lining his own pockets.
I don't think he's cruel or calculating, personally. Were he a clever man, he'd have done a sneakier job of fucking over the state. I think he's just greedy. Easily bought and totally willing to obediently follow the directives of his masters.
I call this the Illuminati Fallacy and it's totally a condition of the modern world.
The Illuminati doesn't need to exist because people are fucking the world over in plain view and nobody seems to give a shit, so a back-door secret underground hush hush organization bent on world domination is pointless.
Evers released excerpts from his budget proposal speech tomorrow, and among other proposals the conservatives are going wild over how, according to them, Evers is enfranchising undocumented immigrants by proposing to allow them to get an ID or drivers license. Something about how an ID is the only thing required to vote, because the registration process is apparently no longer a thing? I don't, it's stupid.
Point is, no amount of reason is going to get through to them since they're lost to their racism, and since the legislature is entirely republican controlled this won't go anywhere anyway, but it might be fun to tune in if you don't live in state and/or can deal with outright willful stupidity.
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I ZimbraWorst song, played on ugliest guitarRegistered Userregular
I took away two big things from the article. First, we got rolled because our negotiators had no idea what they were doing:
The latest grand promise by Gou exemplifies how a cultural gap can lead to misassumptions. This problem goes back to initial negotiations with Foxconn in spring 2017. A Harvard Law School program in negotiations teaches this tenet in international dealings: “Enlist an advisor from your counterpart’s culture.” Wisconsin’s original negotiating team was Walker, who lacked relevant business experience, DOA Secretary Scott Neitzel, whose background was utility regulation, and WEDC’s secretary and CEO Mark Hogan, an experienced banker. None had business experience in Asia or LCD production knowledge.
How Chinese business negotiation practices might have tripped the inexperienced hands on Wisconsin’s team was detailed in a paper by Lieh-Ching Chang, associate professor of business at Hsuan Chuang University: “When negotiating, they (Chinese executives) are used to double-dealing or saying one thing while doing another.” Moreover, he wrote, “they will frequently go back on their word or set traps for their opponents.”
...
Chief negotiator Hogan told Bloomberg Businessweek that he and the team didn’t do a deep dive into Foxconn’s past practices or corporate history, let alone Chinese business culture, because, “in the end, we got to know these people so well.” Hogan did not respond to requests to elaborate on this point.
Second is that Mt Pleasant and Racine borrowed a shit-ton of money to do infrastructure improvements for a factory that will never be built and are now properly fucked.
For Racine County, the situation is more pressing. It continues to build the infrastructure for a $10-billion industrial complex that seems destined to be smaller. The total county cost was recently projected at $911 million, a liability of more than $10,000 per county household. Attempts to interview Claude Lois, Mount Pleasant's Foxconn project director, members of the Mount Pleasant Board of Supervisors, and other municipal officials and Foxconn officials were either unanswered or referred to Foxconn’s public relations firm.
For sense of scale, how does Mount Pleasant’s project compare to other TIF projects nationally? Greg LeRoy, of Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that tracks corporate subsidies, the Foxconn TIF is in a virtual tie for the second largest TIF project in U.S. history. So a village of 26,000 has a TIF with a total cost of about 90 times the village's recent annual budget. The result is massive bond issuance — a level of debt for Mount Pleasant and Racine County that far exceeds Wisconsin’s so-called “statutory prudence” level. The 2017 Foxconn agreement was given an exemption from that standard, and the state was obligated to back 40 percent of the bond valuations plus the remaining interest payments. The credit rating for Mount Pleasant and Racine County has been dropped once already.
How will Mount Pleasant and Racine County pay this debt? The plan, like all TIF projects, expects public reimbursement through higher property taxes on improvements within the TIF district. If Racine and Mount Pleasant have to pay 4 percent a year to bond holders of $900 million, that would suggest a $36 million a year liability. The Foxconn property would need to be valued at $1.89 billion to produce matching property tax revenue. If Foxconn were to actually invest $10 billion, that would create a windfall, at least in the early years of the TIF. Ignored in all of this is the steep depreciation in values of tech facilities. In 2016, Gou upped his stake in Sharp’s 10.0 LCD factory in Osaka, Japan, at a value of less than $1 billion, seven years after it cost at least $4 billion to build. That’s a 75-percent depreciation.
Despite the state spending $37,500 for a private jet to take Walker, WEDC’s chief operating officer, Neitzel and Walker’s security detail to visit the plant in Osaka that Gou had acquired, WEDC reports that “WEDC did not receive financial statements specific to the operations of the Osaka plant.” Such statements might have detailed its history of losses and steep drop in value.
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.
Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.
If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
Is it? The obvious counter-play is "You made the deal, you fucked us". Walker put his face on this shit, just push on the back of his head and rub that face in the mess he made.
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
Is it? The obvious counter-play is "You made the deal, you fucked us". Walker put his face on this shit, just push on the back of his head and rub that face in the mess he made.
The counter to that is "The deal was great and was in perfect order when I left office. It's not my fault you fucked it up".
And yes, this does work. How long and hard and futile was the "the recession is NOT Obama's fault" fight?
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
Is it? The obvious counter-play is "You made the deal, you fucked us". Walker put his face on this shit, just push on the back of his head and rub that face in the mess he made.
The counter to that is "The deal was great and was in perfect order when I left office. It's not my fault you fucked it up".
And yes, this does work. How long and hard and futile was the "the recession is NOT Obama's fault" fight?
I mean, they were gonna say shit like that no matter what. The difference between that and, say, the general economy is Walker literally cut this deal. The argument that this shit is on Walker is much more straightforward and effective.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
Is it? The obvious counter-play is "You made the deal, you fucked us". Walker put his face on this shit, just push on the back of his head and rub that face in the mess he made.
The counter to that is "The deal was great and was in perfect order when I left office. It's not my fault you fucked it up".
And yes, this does work. How long and hard and futile was the "the recession is NOT Obama's fault" fight?
I mean, they were gonna say shit like that no matter what. The difference between that and, say, the general economy is Walker literally cut this deal. The argument that this shit is on Walker is much more straightforward and effective.
I mean yes
But the people who will actually give a shit about the facts of the matter aren't the ones who keep putting Scott Walkers and such in office.
Yes, to US and other people who like to see what actually happened this matters, but value voters won't give a flying fuck no matter how much you show them how bad a deal this was.
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I ZimbraWorst song, played on ugliest guitarRegistered Userregular
I guess I might take the "people will never abandon the GOP" more seriously if we weren't like 3 months out from an election where the GOP got shithoused in all the statewide races.
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.
Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.
If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.
Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.
Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.
If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.
Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?
No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.
Wisconsin Republicans are already blaming the Foxconn disaster on Governor Evers, because of course they are.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.
Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.
If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.
Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?
No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.
This is true, but I was thinking about how Wisconsin might lose a representative from the 2020 census, and the state legislature creates those district lines with the governor having the opportunity to veto.
What happens if there are no agreed upon district lines for 2022? We can't resort to the previous districts since that had 8 districts. Does Wisconsin just not get representation in the House until it can figure it's shit out?
Edit: Note that for the Wisconsin legislature to go Democratic it needs to trend that way statewide a minimum of 10 points more than it went for Evers. Realistically, the Wisconsin legislature can only be controlled by the GOP because of the lines they set in 2010, but it is possible that it is kept that way only because of the gerrymandering. They will not give up the gerrymandering for anything, because without it they could be completely out of power in Wisconsin.
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It's basically a suburb of Racine closer to I-94 and an annoyingly in between distance from Chicago or Milwaukee that isn't even nearby the Hiawatha or Kenosha for Metra access. Which is mostly fine for light industry, but not for an office park.
So basically they get their more than a billion dollars in capital investment tax credits, but lose out on the job creation credits. It's not as bad as I first read it when I thought they were getting a couple billion dollars in credits regardless and losing out on like ten million dollars, but it's still a terrible deal for the state (as was predicted by tons of people).
So this is going to spur a new round of Republican talking points about how it's all the unions faults that manufacturing in the USA is so expensive, right? So they'll try to get unions even more and force people into lower paying jobs per usual Republican efforts.
Nothing here is the least bit surprising, except that the deal isn't quite as bad as it could have been.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/tech/foxconn-wisconsin-plant-trump/index.html
I am pretty sure this is okay we will say we are doing this until people stop looking at us and we go back to not doing it. Pretty much just like the "carrier" deal Trump did.
That'd be my guess that this is just like that caravan of migrants that forms whenever he needs to talk about his wall.
If it's bullshit the company could easily release a statement.
That also strikes me as a not really subtle word game that Trump would completely ignore and claim victory.
They had shifted twice: from making large flat screens to small ones, and then from being a manufacturing plant at all to an admin/r&d hub. This is just them reversing the second flip-flop but not the first.
Which the republicans will use to hang Democrats with because people are stupid about the economy. It's nearly impossible for many people to grasp that the economy they are feeling today was created by policy set at least the year before. I'm already seeing republicans blaming the Foxconn shift last week on Evers being elected.
Eh, this is specific enough it should be way easier to fight off. Just relentlessly blame Walker for cutting the deal.
I think the state Republicans own the Foxconn deal, for better or for worse.
You and I may agree about this, but get outside of Madison and the running partisan theory is "It was going good until the Democrat came along". I hope you are right, but I just dont have that faith in the Wisconsin electorate anymore.
There are how many photo-ops to beat them over the head with on it?
Just plaster that before a picture of a vacant field and headline vignette. Done.
Fun times.
One thing that bothers me about this article and a bunch of the coverage of this is that they all seem to contain something about how 'the manufacturing jobs are being replaced by R&D and Engineering'; and treat that as a big negative.
AI is coming for all of us, but those jobs has a couple more decades of viability to them vs assembling LCD panels or other automatable assembly task.
The entire plant was sold on "good old fashioned blue collar jobs" is why they talk about it that way. It was supposed to bring a bunch of employment to the area for it's residents rather then a small number of high education jobs.
Which, also, I'll believe those most recent version of promised jobs exist after the first paycheck goes out.
The financial case for the subsidies could only ever make sense if the resulting Foxconn factory gave a boost to the state's broader manufacturing economy, with a whole supply chain of smaller parts suppliers popping up to provide the raw inputs to Foxconn.
If Foxconn only hires engineers and doesn't set up any assembly line, then none of those follow-on effects come about, and Wisconsin is stuck paying them $3 for every $1 that Foxconn pays those engineers.
You know what'd shock me? If that was NOT the plan all along.
Get massive subsidies for a plant that is supposed to be a massive manufacturing boon, with flow on supply chain effects, revise what the plant does for some borderline reasonable reason, keep the subsidies.
That these subsidies aren't based on employment numbers and average wage of the employees (median, so you can't spike it with executive pay), so that this kind of crap doesn't happen, is just stupid.
I disagree. He made these plans knowing exactly how well they would work out for the state of Wisconsin. Because he's a cruel and calculating man whose concern is lining his own pockets.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I don't think he's cruel or calculating, personally. Were he a clever man, he'd have done a sneakier job of fucking over the state. I think he's just greedy. Easily bought and totally willing to obediently follow the directives of his masters.
Why would he have to be sneaky about it? There were tons of people calling out how terrible a deal it was from the moment he announced the deal. None of that stopped the deal from going through. What consequences has he faced for this, other than not getting re-elected?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I call this the Illuminati Fallacy and it's totally a condition of the modern world.
The Illuminati doesn't need to exist because people are fucking the world over in plain view and nobody seems to give a shit, so a back-door secret underground hush hush organization bent on world domination is pointless.
Point is, no amount of reason is going to get through to them since they're lost to their racism, and since the legislature is entirely republican controlled this won't go anywhere anyway, but it might be fun to tune in if you don't live in state and/or can deal with outright willful stupidity.
I took away two big things from the article. First, we got rolled because our negotiators had no idea what they were doing:
Second is that Mt Pleasant and Racine borrowed a shit-ton of money to do infrastructure improvements for a factory that will never be built and are now properly fucked.
Yup not surprising. Basically saying if walker was still gov then foxxcon would have kept the original plans. Heads we win tails you lose is the wisconsin GOP way.
Its infuriating how effective this play is, too. Only real counter is a basic economics lesson, and no voter is ever going to sit through that.
In the end it probably does not matter much. Wisconsin is a post democracy state and probably will continue to be so going forward until something actually changes how redistricting works.
Evers is in office until 2022 and in Wisconsin the Governor can veto a redistricting plan. Either we have better districts for the 2022 elections and beyond, or we are even further into our slowburn constitutional crisis because we dont have district boundaries.
If I had to bet, I'd put all my money on the crisis growing.
Is it? The obvious counter-play is "You made the deal, you fucked us". Walker put his face on this shit, just push on the back of his head and rub that face in the mess he made.
The counter to that is "The deal was great and was in perfect order when I left office. It's not my fault you fucked it up".
And yes, this does work. How long and hard and futile was the "the recession is NOT Obama's fault" fight?
I mean, they were gonna say shit like that no matter what. The difference between that and, say, the general economy is Walker literally cut this deal. The argument that this shit is on Walker is much more straightforward and effective.
I mean yes
But the people who will actually give a shit about the facts of the matter aren't the ones who keep putting Scott Walkers and such in office.
Yes, to US and other people who like to see what actually happened this matters, but value voters won't give a flying fuck no matter how much you show them how bad a deal this was.
Wait, do district boundaries just go poof if the governor doesn't approve new ones in time?
No, but you need to continuously reshape your district boundaries to keep ahead of the growth of urban areas and the increase in the numbers of non white people. So, if you can't redo them to be even more corrupt in 2020, then they will tend back towards less corrupt.
This is true, but I was thinking about how Wisconsin might lose a representative from the 2020 census, and the state legislature creates those district lines with the governor having the opportunity to veto.
What happens if there are no agreed upon district lines for 2022? We can't resort to the previous districts since that had 8 districts. Does Wisconsin just not get representation in the House until it can figure it's shit out?
Edit: Note that for the Wisconsin legislature to go Democratic it needs to trend that way statewide a minimum of 10 points more than it went for Evers. Realistically, the Wisconsin legislature can only be controlled by the GOP because of the lines they set in 2010, but it is possible that it is kept that way only because of the gerrymandering. They will not give up the gerrymandering for anything, because without it they could be completely out of power in Wisconsin.