> The LCD screens being made by Foxconn require benzene, chromium, cadmium, mercury, zinc, and copper ... The Walker administration had also exempted Foxconn from the state’s usual environmental rules, allowing it to discharge materials into wetlands...
WTF? Wisconsin is a beautiful state with rich wetlands and farmland. Letting a Taiwanese* company fuck that up for 13,000 jobs that will never pay back the incentives makes no sense, other than a small tick on Walker's re-election campaign resume which he is now shying away from anyway. This project needs to be cleaned up or killed before it starts to literally kill people in Wisconsin.
The article is painting a pretty misleading characterization of the wetlands issue. Foxconn isn't being permitted to "discharge" heavy metals into wetlands. Foxconn is being permitted to fill certain isolated wetlands (i.e. wetlands that are not connected to rivers or lakes that would put them under federal jurisdiction) with the requirement that they create 2 acres of additional wetlands elsewhere for every acre they fill in: https://journaltimes.com/business/local/dnr-foxconn-to-creat.... That's more than the usual state law requirement of 1.2 acres created per acre of wetland filled in.
There's no indication, moreover, that Foxconn has received waivers from ordinary state and federal rules that regulate dumping heavy metals into the soil. The article misleadingly tries to suggest that by juxtaposing the fact that the LCD panels "require benzene, chromium, etc." with the fact that Foxconn has been authorized to fill in certain wetlands.
> requirement that they create 2 acres of additional wetlands elsewhere for every acre they fill in
I did this type of work during high school. The new wetlands are inspected regularly and must meet quality standards to count. After a period of time (10 years in my state), the wetlands are certified and no longer need to be inspected nor maintained. I have visited old projects that the state signed off on. After maintenance stopped, nearly all of the "high quality" wetlands that I worked on rapidly deteriorated into cattail, or worse, reed canary grass monocultures. When I was planting, I believed I was creating valuable habitats, but I was actually just working to check a box on a form.
Yep. It seems Foxconn is being allowed to bypass certain environmental regulations covering construction around wetlands and waterways. To my understanding, the waivers apply to the construction of the plant, not the operation of it.
Regardless of whether or not they're going to discharge heavy metals, they're planning on drawing up to 7 million gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan outside of its basin on what amounts to a technicality in the Great Lakes Compact. Also the factory itself is going to be so large and built on a flood plain that it could cause flooding just over the border in Illinois because rainwater won't have anywhere to go.
FWIW, the allowance of 7 million gallons/day from Lake Michigan is apparently a "0.07 percent increase in the total surface water withdrawals from Lake Michigan", according to the state's Dept. of Natural Resources:
Sure, but it violates the compact. The compact only allows use of the water inside the basin. What's going on here is the factory is going to use water from Racine (which is on the lake) and therefore allowed to draw the water even though the factory itself is outside the basin.
Lake Michigan is vast on a scale that is hard to get your head around. 7 million gallons a day is not outside the scope of what other commercial entities draw from the lake; for instance, the NIPSCO plant near the IN/MI border draws 12 million gallons a day. If you're going to claim that drawing an amount of water from the lake is a problem, you're going to have to support the argument with evidence; people seem pretty innumerate about the water supply here (see also: the Nestle debate in Michigan).
I went and read the complaint letters from the WI (and MN) environmental groups, and the complaints broke down into two areas:
1. The diversion violates the interstate compact, which says that significant diversions are supposed to have some public or residential benefit. Foxconn's doesn't. It's not inherently problematic for the environment, but it sets a precedent they don't like.
2. Foxconn might pollute Lake Michigan.
That second concern is of course valid, but has nothing to do with the amount of water Foxconn consumes. I found one complaint that claimed consumptive use of water (that is, unlike NIPSCO, water that is diverted from the lake and not fed immediately back) could cause long-term problems because Michigan only replenishes 1% of its water annually. But Foxconn's draw is something like 0.0000002%.
If the lake was ringed with Foxconns from Gary to Mackinaw City, I'd see the problem. And: totally legit to be vigilant about precedent! But I don't see the intrinsic practical impact from Foxconn today (in terms of water usage).
Worth noting: Foxconn came back and cut their water demand in half with a recycling plant. Not that I want to sound like I'm defending Foxconn, because I think this is a really bad deal for Wisconsin.
Put me firmly in camp 1. It’s a significant diversion & it seems sketchy as hell. If we had 100 of them how would we feel? I think the answer is awful.
That’s enough to justify the scale part of the appeal.
A maximum of 13k jobs. They still get billions and carte blanc environmental waivers even if only a tenth of those materialize.
Also worth noting that the average salaries required to get those subsidies have dropped substantially since the beginning of this process; we've gone from "lots of skilled jobs" to "mostly $15/hr factory labor". Totally predictable to those of us who know the difference between "iPhone factory" and "Apple HQ", but this was a huge source of confusion among my non-tech blue collar Wisconsin friends. They [1] really did think there would be six figure tech jobs available to anyone with a CC degree.
[1] edit: here "they" refers to 10-15 specific people, and isn't intended to generalize to "all Wisconsites", although I do believe there's a demographic that's being intentionally deceived and who would change their opinions on Foxconn if someone sat them down and explained that "working in an LCD factory" is not a "tech job" in the sense of six figure salary with good benefits, and that if those "tech jobs" do come to Wisconsin via Foxconn it's going to be a relatively small number of them and most certainly won't go to people who are straight out of high school after 6 months in a fast-tracked community college program.
Factory labor might be shit, but it typically comes with good health benefits and will put food on the table for your family.
I get the feeling that people who snub factory jobs live too high on the economic ladder to realize how much of a step up that sort of job can be for a person.
Used to. Pensions are gone and wages have stangated for decades. Most anything above $20/hour puts it squarely in "the capex to automate this makes sense now" territory. And everything else gets farmed out to rotating temps so that any benefits that do exist can be advertised but are only rarely paid out. I've seen that play out a few times just among relatives (consider this a tacit response to your second paragraph, BTW).
More importantly, Foxconn's agreement with WI states that up to 93% of workers can be paid $15/hour. That's barely enough to live on even in Wisconsin.
If Foxconn were legally required to pay 50k+ with benefits for factory work, I would happily agree with you. But that's not what the contracts say. The contracts say basically everyone except management and engineering can be paid $15/hr.
Also, the Amazon fulfillment center just a few miles from the site of Foxconn's new plant pays $15/hour and is constantly hiring. So we're basically paying 4.1 billion for... a bunch of jobs that are roughly equivalent to openings that already go unfilled just down the street.
Finally, remember that we're talking about 4.1 billion dollars. That's a lot of healthcare/education/infra/small business development/etc. opportunity cost.
I don't know much about the Foxconn plant, so you may be right about the particulars there.
I also agree with you that the working conditions for factory workers have been degrading significantly for the past 20 years or so.
$15/hr might be barely enough to live on, but it's still better than minimum wage. Also the nature of working on an assembly line is different from working in a fulfillment center. Being able to tell people "I help build those" has more pride behind it than telling people you run around shoving stuff into boxes for people.
I'm in Iowa, which I imagine is similar cost of living to Wisconsin. My dad worked in factories almost his entire working life. I stand by my statement that if you are lucky enough to land a full time factory job, it can be a viable way to raise a family.
>this was a huge source of confusion among my non-tech blue collar Wisconsin friends. They really did think there would be six figure tech jobs available to anyone with a CC degree....
That's unfair. Wisconsinites are not stupid. We knew what this deal meant for the most part. The issue is corruption. We have few effective methods of fighting it here in Wisconsin. I'm not trying to wuss out or anything, but there is a reality to life in a place like Wisconsin.
Think of it this way, there is probably some percentage above which corruption becomes too ingrained, and you can't do anything about it anymore. Maybe that percentage is 10%? Maybe it's 20%? Whatever. But if a place reaches that tipping point, that's it.
And I don't think that's unique to Wisconsin by the way. I think MOST states and municipalities would present the same issues if their tipping point number was reached. It just becomes very hard to do anything about what's going on around you.
I'm not painting with a broad stroke here. I'm referring to specific people I have had specific conversations with.
Of course, Milwaukee, Madison, and also many of the smaller cities in Wisconsin have great engineering cultures with extremely smart people who understand this distinction. And also many Wisconsites with non-Engineering backgrounds obviously understand the distinction.
All I'm saying is that, based on my first-hand experience, there were many in Wisconsin who did not/do not understand this distinction. Which is good news, because that means that explaining simple and easily demonstrable facts can change people's minds.
Perhaps sustained canvassing on this issue would be a good way to change things in WI. I've been able to win a few people over by explaining over a year ago where this whole thing was going to go and then reminding them any time there's a development.
When Walker's recall campaign failed, I stopped being sad about leaving the state, because at that moment I knew that it was now majority gullible idiot.
Walker is as much of a track mark on Wisconsin's dirty drawers as Blagojevich was on local and state government back when I lived in Chicago--perhaps a bit less obvious about it, and with an (R) instead of a (D) pinned to his dark money drop box.
From my perspective, it looks like the corruption is growing, the normal measures to fight it are not effective, and it may be necessary to take up arms to bring it back under control, or just leave and not look back. It seems like almost everywhere is at least near its tipping point, if not already well past it. The Citizens United decision might have made it a runaway.
I agree it's not unique to Wisconsin. Maybe it's more prevalent in places that don't have that much industry in that area, so it's easier to fool people. When a new amazon fulfillment warehouse comes to a city, hopefully people know it's not going to be filled with programmer level salaries. But if you had no expose to software design and only had warehouses then you might not know the difference.
I realize the current administration is not likely to push hard for compliance, but aren't there federal laws with allowed water pollution levels enforced by the EPA? Maybe Wisconsin has stricter rules that are being waived (and can a governor just waive laws passed by the state's assembly?) but in an article this long some actual information on that would have been nice. Something like "The Wisconson state regulation of only 50ppb of chromium in discharge water will be waived and the federal rule of 60ppb will be used instead."
The tourism areas are Door County and, to a lesser extent, the Kettle Moraine. Both are well north of where Foxconn is going to be --- it's much closer to Illinois than people are realizing. Racine and Kenosha are not tourist areas.
I grew up around Milwaukee. There are plenty of hot summer days where you'd love to go to Bradford Beach on Lake Michigan, and often it's out of the question because E. Coli levels are too high. We dump raw sewage into the lake. Nobody is concerned about Foxconn pollution.
edit: For the record, I was against this deal as soon as it was announced and still am, but not because of pollution.
I was thinking there of how the area around Racine is starting to attract people from northeastern Illinois who don't want to drive all the way to Door County. Not as big a destination, no, and probably never will be, but it's something.
I think that's fair, if you're coming from Chicago it might be nice to go around that area to get away on a Saturday or something.
That being said, it's definitely a developing area and becoming more urban. Oak Creek especially is becoming very nice. In 30 years or so, it would not surprise me if that whole stretch of 94 between Milwaukee and Chicago became urbanized.
Yeah, this thread is a bit out of date. Those southern counties bring in hundreds of millions through a combination of bedroom households (people who commute into the northern suburbs or into Milwaukee) and tourism.
Go take a look in the marinas in the counties between Milwaukee and Chicago. A lot of Big City money floating in those communities (and in condos/houses along the lakeside).
> In both cities, the company said it wanted to attract top talent from area universities. But Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Eau Claire are homes to some of the state’s lesser universities, and it was unclear why these graduates couldn’t simply drive down to the Racine plant to apply for jobs.
What? Eau Claire is 260 miles away from Racine. Green Bay is 150 miles. An Eau Clare location can attract people who want to stay near Minneapolis. And the Downtown Milwaukee location is a more desirable place to work to Milwaukee metro residents than out in Sturtevant, home of that one Amtrak stop.
You can't put a 4 square mile factory downtown, but I'm not sure why all your engineers have to work at the factory.
Also, lesser universities? They mean not Madison. But if you're ruling out Madison (maybe they figure a Madison to Milwaukee commute is reasonable), they seem like good choices. Maybe La Crosse lost out to Eau Claire because of proximity to Minneapolis?
Agreed; Milwaukee has many good schools. No top-tier research universities but MSOE, Marquette, and UW-Milwaukee all have strong STEM departments. Plus, Foxconn isn't hiring a bunch of PhDs, they're hiring engineers (and not nearly as many engineers as people seem to think), so it's unclear why access to a research university would matter. Other than some of the more asinine claims Foxconn/Walker have made (e.g., self-driving trucks... does Foxconn even have a self-driving research group let alone a real self-driving project?)
Also, Racine really is driving distance from Milwaukee. The southern suburbs literally border Racine.
The factory is a dumb idea, but this is not the reason why.
There is a confluence of political and economic factors at play, I suspect. Yes there are siting logistics, water supply, electric, labor pool, etc. But also: You don't go to Madison or to downtown Milwaukee to find potential Republican voters.
The vast majority of Republican voters in WI live in a ring of suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee. Yes, some rural counties are also red, but the absolute numbers of voters there is tiny. Go to suburban MKE, you hit a sweet spot of attractive economics for FC and possible political impact for state Repubs.
It's not like everything outside of Madison/Milwaukee is deep red. The only deep red counties in Wisconsin are extremely sparse. Kenosha County, for example, is mostly rural but was split almost exactly down the middle on Clinton/Trump (fewer than 300 votes between the two), and that was a rather extraordinary swing to the right for that county
Parent's observation that the WOW counties determine the statewide offices and electoral college vote allocation is absolutely accurate.
WOW meaning Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington? Those counties make up a little over 10% of the state's population. I agree that they're important, and I agree that it makes sense to campaign there because they have higher population densities, higher voter turnouts, and more swing voters than the deep red exurban counties. But it's misleading to claim that they include the vast majority of Wisconsin's Republicans, as the GP comment did, or that they're the main factor in election outcomes. In 2016, for example, the 8 percentage point decrease in Milwaukee's turnout rate compared to 2012 was probably a bigger factor.
> But it's misleading to claim that they include the vast majority of Wisconsin's Republicans, as the GP comment did
Oh, I misinterpreted the parent post's comment. Yeah, that's not true.
2016 was strange across the ballot in Wisconsin. Clinton was not a Wisconsin-friendly Democrat. The 2018 and 2020 elections will be interesting to watch. In general, it's a good rule of of thumb that getting things just right in WOW is one path to victory. There are other paths, of course, depressed turnouts being one of them.
I'm kinda confused. The author was wondering why they were having satellite engineering offices at all, when people could just drive to Racine (Driving from Eau Claire to Racine and back is 500 miles, I think the author didn't look up where these places are.)
You seem to be suggesting these locations are a political favor. But one is downtown (not suburban) Milwaukee, and the others are 150+ miles from Milwaukee. Not in that Charlie Sykes listening suburban ring of Milwaukee.
And anyway, the factory itself is near suburban Milwaukee so why would a downtown engineering (sales/business?) be a favor? And I'm not sure, but Racine is probably the least conservative county that touches Milwaukee.
Eau Claire is a nice place to raise a family, but that's not a selling point to recent college grads. Engineers in Wisconsin live in the Chippewa Valley, the Fox River Valley, Milwaukee, and Madison. That's about it.
Right, I know. You are saying Eau Claire is a nice place to raise a family, but that's not important to NCGs. Then you're saying most engineers are there (in addition to Fox River valley and the cities). Mostly a little older folks then I guess?
As a sidenote, what kind of firms are up there? I'm familiar with madison and milwaukee, and know some companies in the Fox River Valley, but am not real familiar with Eau Claire and the surrounding area.
>“If, six months ago, you asked me, what would be the mix of labor? I would pull out the experience that we have in China and say, ‘Well, 75 percent assembly line workers, 25 percent engineers and managers,’” Woo said. But “now it looks like about 10 percent assembly line workers, 90 percent knowledge workers.”
At ~6500 fewer assembly line workers. It's not helping Milwaukee nearly as much as promised
1. the percentages changed because the total numbers dropped. I.e., it's not like there's going to be a ton of white collar jobs. It's more like there aren't going to be a ton of jobs, period.
2. And even then, this is a Foxconn representative who has every incentive to mis-characterize. They're basically just saying whatever they think is best to say at the moment. Not even 3 months ago they were pushing hard on an ad campaign about manufacturing jobs. Then the projected manu salaries dropped and now they're saying that the avg salary will be higher because we'll hire so many tech people. All while hoping (1) gets lost in the exchange.
Any qualified person who's willing to move to the Milwaukee area. If you're not from Wisconsin and you're willing to move out of state after graduating, of all the places you could move to, why on earth would you choose Milwaukee? I like Milwaukee, I went to UWM for undergrad, and I might have stuck around after graduating if the job market were better. But if I weren't from Wisconsin (and especially if I were from somewhere with a warmer climate), I don't think I'd even consider it.
1. That would destroy the whole point of the plant, which was to create jobs for down-on-their-luck Wisconsites.
2. If you're not from Wisconsin, why would you move to Wisconsin? There's nothing wrong with Milwaukee, BTW. Nice city. But there are dozens of other nice low-CoL cities in the USA, many with nicer weather and many still in the Midwest.
The “AI 8K+5G” buzzword bonanza is marvelous. I'm surprised they haven't thrown cryptocurrencies and IoT in there for good measure. I'm also surprised to read that:
>The Walker administration had also exempted Foxconn from the state’s usual environmental rules, allowing it to discharge materials into wetlands and reroute streams during construction and operation. The state also exempted the company from doing an Environmental Impact Statement.
How is that even a legal possibility? The state's administration can just decide to suspend these rules on a case-by-case basis without any kind of supervision or accountability?
Walker didn't do it unilaterally; the legislature passed a law to exempt Foxconn specifically. They are considering giving Kimberly-Clark a similar deal:
What I find funny is that Wisconsin already makes a large number of the components needed for LCD monitors, TVs etc.
3M in Menomene makes the difusers that spred the light in back of the screen. There is TTM in Chippewa Falls that makes pcb boards that are needed for the electronics. There are IC design houses and computer makers (Cray Computer and HP) that can design the electronics. Foxconn buys the equipment to make the LCDs from the Japanese (Nikon) and they hire the workers to run them. Why not just eliminate the middle man (Foxconn) and make our own? I'm not sure the cost would have been much more.
I'll just say that while I realize that Wisconsin is extremely corrupt, in looking around the nation I've started to get the feeling that most of the other states are likely as corrupt as ourselves. The difference is that in Wisconsin we, at least, still have people that get mad about it, and occasionally we even have mass protests.
The main problem here, (and it's frustrating), but the main problem is that due to the way the system is structured, we can do nothing about all the corruption. I don't like always being on the national news because of the latest governmental thuggery, neither does anyone among my family and friends. (And I was born and raised in small town Wisconsin.) There's just so little the average person can do, so you just sit in Markesan, or Racine, or Independence, or LaCrosse or wherever and you just stew in your anger.
Then it even gets thrown in your face on Hacker News.
> I'll just say that while I realize that Wisconsin is extremely corrupt
Can you be more specific about what you mean by "corruption" in this instance? Repeatedly pointing to a faceless "corruption" de-focuses the conversation from the specific issues with this deal, including the magnitude of the subsidy, and what might be the lack of recourse for WI residents against Foxconn.
Is it to suggest that Gov. Walker had expected, or at least decided it was acceptable if Foxconn significantly altered their plan in a way that undermined the deal, in return for a short term political "win".
If not, then what is the "corruption" you are referring to in this situation? Weren't the terms of the deal, including the latitude it offered the parties, fully public?
> The difference is that in Wisconsin we ... have mass protests.
Wisconsin is not the only place that has protests over corruption and mismanagement. It's a common occurrence, especially at the local level, in many places.
Fight back by calling the governor a sucker as frequently as possible. Republicans are supposed to be good at business. When a governor gets taken to the cleaners like that, it means they're too gullible for the job.
If he was a sucker in this deal, then can he have been corrupt?
Or if he is corrupt (as in he knew that it was a raw deal for WI but carries forward for personal benefit), can he be a sucker?
In this instance, is it possible he was both corrupt and a sucker? Maybe so if he was playing WI residents while getting played by Foxconn? Not drawing conclusions here but trying to play out the implications of what others have stated here.
Fellow Wisconsinite here, what do you see as examples of corruption? All I see is Republican's dug in and using tactics such as voter suppression and corporate handouts. Is that what you mean?
But really there's so much out and out criminal behavior that goes on here that I really don't think something like a really bad Foxconn deal should be entirely unexpected.
If there's an opportunity to spend, 1 billion, 2 billion, 4 billion whatever in state tax dollars...
I mean, yeah, in a place like Wisconsin, you have to pretty much expect that there are going to be some irregularities. It's just how things are done here.
Could you expound on this structural corruption? I'm totally unaware of it. As an outsider but near neighbor, (MN/IL-based), I have to say the narrative I've heard about WI in recent years is not that of a corrupt government, but of a state that had the poor sense to start voting for Republicans.
Money to corporations for lies about the jobs in order to win an election. I've seen this template too many times, this just might be the biggest one ever, however.
This approach is fundamentally one of doctrine and ignoring what actually attracts companies and it isn't even what companies say it is - those are usually bonuses they want on top of what they actually need. It isn't taxes but resources that can be used successfully which itself varies by businesses. If low tax environments were really what they lusted for above all else they would start buying up vast swathes of unincorporated land. Basically nobody except maybe corporate farmers and real estate developers are doing that.
The good news is that desired resources vary. It could be mineral resources. It could be location. It could be the labor pool. Infrastructure is a large part of it along with the local labor pool or ability to host one satisfactorily.
It totally makes sense to provide more direct incentives to the other end of the spectrum. What if Wisconsin could tell Foxconn that it's offering to forgive a portion of all student debt for engineering degrees in the colleges around the area? Or that it would reimburse citizens for technical learning courses or training programs for likely positions in the area? Or if Wisconsin was willing to forgive state income tax for Foxconn employees for a certain number of years (which seems to amount to between 5-6% of income)?
All strategies that increase the attractiveness of the area by actually making the area a better resource pool over time, and in a way that helps citizens.
Why not? It's not like voters hold politicians accountable, nor do they even remember these incidents in the long term. We blindly vote along party lines regardless of performance.
It seems like the state could have expected a much higher ROI by just picking 12,000 random Wisconsinites and writing each of them a check for $230,000.
The subsidy ratio here is incredible. Alabama has used subsidies to lure automakers and other factories, but our incentives are peanuts compared to this.
For example, we are getting a $1.7 billion Toyota-Mazda plant for $350 million in incentives, creating about 4k jobs. The state has a 4-5% income tax and 9-10% sales taxes, so I'd bet that, even if the 4k number is exaggerated, then the state and local govts will earn much of that money back within a few years (provided it doesn't create some pollution disaster).
So frustrating to see politicians on the "conservative" side of things in the US who should be opposed to this on a fundamental level, jump into handing over taxpayer money, the environment, and such for what appears to be less and less.
Also what is with Foxcon's constantly changing plans with all this? It doesn't seem like they have a coherent plan on what they wanted to do / want other than gather up taxpayer dollars...
If Foxcon has no coherent plan, the deal should be off.
When you see "conservative" you're making the mistake of looking at what they say, not what they do. In the US at least, "conservative" and "business" got lumped together (or merged) while "progressive/liberal" and "labor" got lumped together as the other end.
There's also the question of corruption in both areas, where on the business end you get people perfectly willing to have the government spend billions of dollars of other people's money as long as it's possible to skim a few million of profits off it. On the labor side you (used to?) end up with the historical corruption of union politics (e.g. Jimmy Hoffa and organized crime), though I'm pretty sure the backlash against that has resulted in things being a lot cleaner. The corresponding backlash against the business side's issues (e.g. Dodd-Frank after the financial crisis) has been less successful and many measures have been rolled back.
Social Security privatization has kind of been a holy grail for the business side, with the concept of all.that.money being invested in stocks (and the fees! think of all the fees! skimmed right off the top!) rather than remaining as US Government bonds.
Edit: I'm not sure how a different lumping would work out - there's obviously huge ground for combining of "conservative" and "labor", but I'm not as sure about "progressive/liberal" combined with "business."
> So frustrating to see politicians on the "conservative" side of things in the US who should be opposed to this on a fundamental level, jump into handing over taxpayer money, the environment, and such for what appears to be less and less.
I'd imagine Walker and his colleagues would want to get rid of state taxes and environmental reviews for all corporations, not just Foxconn, if they could get that past the Democrats. I fail to see what isn't "conservative" about that.
>I fail to see what isn't "conservative" about that.
I believe the "not conservative" part is that they're giving massive amounts of public money, both directly and via free infrastructure, to a private business. That's basically the opposite of any sort of free-market capitalism. According to standard conservative thought & rhetoric that should've been applied to gov't debt paydown, legitimate gov't functions (roads, schools) or rebated to taxpayers.
Why would you be surprised or expect them to be opposed?
I'll be honest, I think you misread what "conservatism" is really about... and I say this as someone that thought he knew it and considered himself to be a "conservative" for a long time.
Their pitch is smaller government, but you shouldn't construe that to mean a non-interventionist government. They see a very active role for government in 1) foreign affairs; 2) economic activity; 3) social policy... in other words, quite a lot of intervention. The only real difference between the conservatives and the progressives are the goals of those interventions (somewhat) and the how up-front they are about their positions.
Once realized that the pitch and the actual goals were saying contradictory things... I can tell you that I'm no conservative.
It's really hard to have legitimate political debate when you can't even find out what people's real political positions are. My gut feeling is that the blue team is more honest about telling you what they actually believe and want, but I might just be naive.
[edited: I didn't like pretty much my entire text; updated to be more clear about the same ideas]
Team Red lies about what principles they hold; there are exceptions, like abortion, but on the whole they say they're for one thing when in fact they are largely about another.
Team Blue is pretty up-front about their principles. For Team Blue rules much more by the ends justifying means. So they'll tell you what they're after generally, but will lie about/hide the details of what it takes to achieve the ends or the broader consequences of their goals that might not be readily apparent.
Both of them want you to have an emotional response to their proposals or opposition than to try to have you respond rationally to facts. Lying or not, an emotional response is stronger, harder to dislodge, and avoids pesky details that complicate an otherwise perfectly painted, if not fully real, picture.
"Conservatives" should reject such deals on principle. Or at minimum they should have strict preconditions. This is exactly the same stupidity as buying sports stadiums for billionaire owners.
No matter what the content, I now find it hard to read articles where it feels like the author has a personal point to make. This is somewhere between news and opinion. Perhaps the author's explanation of the facts is correct-- or perhaps he is interpreting facts for his own personal views. It's hard to tell so I just end up not really putting much weight into the article.
That seems ill-advised to me. Yeah, he has a bias. So does literally everyone else. The notion of unbiased news is 1) fiction, and 2) fiction that exists to support a status quo that may or may not be to the readers' liking or their best interests.
An honest accounting of where one stands allows you to calibrate for it. Dishonest impartiality--and, for reals, it's all dishonest--robs you of that ability.
Vox (which owns The Verge) was explicitly created as a left/progressive news organization. The founders come from The Howard Dean campaign, Daily Kos, The American Prospect, etc.
I'm not saying this disparingley, just to point out that they've always had an explicitly left point of view.
I'm not exactly shocked that they dislike Scott Walker.
The article is fairly well-sourced. I am not saying this makes it unbiased; but if you are not-satisfied with the conclusion, you can verify the quotes and make up your own.
In an article this long and $4.1 Billion in the title, it would be nice to see a simple listing of the subsidies. It is hard to know what is really being given to Foxconn. Seems like a combination of tax breaks and public infrastructure projects. Spending $300 million to expand an interstate near the factory a bit quicker that was slated for expansion anyway, should maybe not really be considered a public subsidy to Foxconn.
My recollection from earlier stories covering this deal is that "subsidy" actually means "tax break". If that's correct, then the tone of this story is very misleading.
The term "subsidy" implies that the state is actively paying out cash to Foxconn. If I'm correct that these are actually tax breaks, then the state is merely claiming less tax revenue from Foxconn than state law would otherwise dictate. That's tax revenue that the state wouldn't see at all in the absence of Foxconn. And if Foxconn's locally-generated revenue ends up being smaller than originally anticipated, then it would stand to reason that the effective reduction in tax revenue is reduced as well.
The article goes on and on about wasted subsidy funds (there are other valid criticisms of the deal, but this is the big one). The Foxconn deal may not be working out, but if everything is structured in terms of tax then the state finances are not really getting impacted.
Not to mention the shovels are golden and they are all wearing suits. It could just as well be a political cartoon about a new Gilded Age if it wasn't real life.
Is there any way for Wisconsin to walk back the deal? If Foxconn isn't building the plant they said they would, and aren't creating as many jobs as they said they would, surely there's some way to prevent the disbursement of the subsidy?
On another note, I wonder what it will take for middle America to let go of the dream of well-paid manufacturing jobs. I understand the hope and allure, but it's plain that this ship has sailed long ago. Watching these snakeoil salesmen literally and financially strip-mine the country is just sad. I don't know that there is a good solution to the problem, as these states aren't really set up to sustain knowledge-based industries. How will they pivot into the 21st century? I can't help but think that 20 years from now, we will still just see more of the same.
>On another note, I wonder what it will take for middle America to let go of the dream of well-paid manufacturing jobs. I understand the hope and allure, but it's plain that this ship has sailed long ago.
Liberalization of global markets has not had that long of a time to run its course. You speak so confidently that the status quo will run eternal. What is happening in middle America should be seen as pragmatism, the people of Wisconsin are beginning to accept their current predicament. They are accepting a leveling of environmental standards to foster competition with East Asia rather than choosing to go the way of the Dodo. Is this not what classical liberals dream of, a leveling of competition across boarders? So quickly the west is ready to externalize the cost of environmental pollution in the name of liberalization of markets but hypocritically don't appreciate the same leveling of standards domestically out of necessity. Perhaps the coasts should subsidize the cost of living in the mid-west to maintain the cost of keeping environmental standards well above those in developing countries.
Please don't turn your nose up at people that are desperate to make a living and are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to do so.
Except by now, even Foxconn has openly admitted that there aren't going to be tens of thousands of $60k+ manufacturing jobs. WI spent 4B+ on the "deregulated manufacturing hub" idea and it's still going to fail to materialize well-paying jobs for non-college-educated folks. This by Foxconn's own public admission.
Furthermore, the attitude that "either you're a coastal elite or you believe in the future of well-paid manufacturing jobs" is extraordinarily presumptive.
Has it occurred to you that some of us want "middle America to let go of the dream of well-paid manufacturing jobs" precisely because we are from/currently live in middle America, desperately want what's best for it, and believe manufacturing isn't going to provide that?
By the way, why on earth do you believe the Midwest needs manufacturing for a robust economy? That assertion -- that the Midwest can't build a thriving information/services-based economy -- seems far more like "turning your nose up" at the Midwest than your parent's post!
Frankly, whenever I encounter this mentality, I read it as: "oh yes, those [small-town] midwesterners, what could they ever do for society if they don't have assembly lines to work on."
I don't think you understand what the environmental concessions actually were. The article tries to make it sound like they were related to the dumping of heavy metals, but in reality they are just for the construction of the site and water usage, (e.g. For every of acre they fill to build, they have to create 1.2 acres of new wetlands). The company will still be held to the same pollution standards as every other company in the state.
>The Walker administration had also exempted Foxconn from the state’s usual environmental rules, allowing it to discharge materials into wetlands and reroute streams during construction and operation. The state also exempted the company from doing an Environmental Impact Statement. At stake was a huge swath of land: the plan calls for Foxconn to eventually own 4.5 square miles of what had been mostly farmland. Adriaens says these exemptions and the fact that Wisconsin is allowing Foxconn to operate unusually close to Lake Michigan are “red flags.”
I am only going off what the article purports as truth.
With comments like ”There’s a whole lot of people out there scrambling to try and come up with a reason not to like this, They can go suck lemons. The rest of us are going to cheer and figure out how we are going to get this thing going forward.” It's pretty clear what happened. Walker isn't a fan of thing like 'reason' and 'numbers' and 'facts' and instead likes to commit billions of others peoples money based on his faith that things will work out if he just wants it enough.
But what confuses me is Foxconn changing what they said they would do. When they announced that instead of building the 10.5 plant they had committed to building, they were going to build a Gen 6 plant, why didn't the state of Wisconsin say "OK, that's great, give back every last penny of money you have ever received from us immediately, and then we will begin discussions on a different deal since you have broken the contract on the first one?" Instead they just keep giving money to Foxconn no matter what they do? Just how many shares of Foxconn did Walker and his family and friends get for this?
If you read the article it explains that Foxconn changed their plans after Wisconsin refused to subsidize a necessary Corning factory.
I think that people are forgetting that this a subsidy to build. The state is not "giving" Foxconn money, it's just choosing not to collect taxes/permit fees/construction costs, for them to put in the factory. Once the factory is built, there is nothing stopping the state from modifying their corporate tax laws to recoup this investment much faster.
Also your last statement is just preposterous notion. Governor Walker is not personally gaining anything financial from this deal. It was a desperate bid to push his re-election campaign. Personally I think that the deal has soured so much that it should be cancelled, but the original $3 billion for jobs sounded very sound. Especially for a very economically repressed location like Racine.
At ~200k/job, why not just have the state give universal basic income to everybody in Racine? Don't like handouts? Have them dig a giant hole and fill it in afterwards.
I really wish the Rust belt would give up their dream of recapturing a large manufacturing base and focus on educating their populace for the 21st century. Imagine if that subsidy money was used in education. It's pretty clear that mass manufacturing is a race to the bottom (China is now facing competition from Vietnam), and high tech manufacturing (Germany) will not provide the amount of jobs needed to offset the ones lost over the past 40 years. While manufacturing should always be a component of any mixed economy, many of those jobs are not coming back and we need to retool our workforce.
For that matter most of the rust belt states have very fertile soils and plenty of fresh water and historically were great temperate agriculture power houses before much of that agriculture moved to the year-round-climate cheap-labor zone of California.
Now picture the world 20 years from now when drought and depleted aquifers make California not as viable for intense food production as it is now.
Suddenly the east/northeast/midwest around the great lakes look pretty damn attractive.
> Imagine if that subsidy money was used in education
It is not the money that is lying around with government, ready to be spent. It is something that government could have collected if factories were built and they paid all the taxes. And I am not sure, they are getting built without squeezing governments on taxes.
Reminds me of GreenTech Automotive which used a similarly subsidized factory in Mississippi to build street legal electric golf carts nobody would ever buy.
I've tried to explain this to people from outside Wisconsin before. Why don't I just repost a sort of run down of just a few of the kinds of things you can expect to see from our "extraordinarily well run" government here in Wisconsin:
>"We've had our share of bent DA's here in Wisconsin. Probably the best story I can tell you about is a DA that would allow drug dealers and other criminals to "contribute to charity" in lieu of going to jail for their crimes. Of course, all of the "charities" they could contribute to were controlled by he and his buddies. (This way they could make sure all the "contributions" went for the benefit of the local community you see.) It got so bad that drug dealers were routing their shipments through that municipality because if you get caught, you just paid the bribe. I mean, "charity". You didn't have to go to jail.
I won't go into too much detail on this one, because it's disgusting. That said, we have a juvenile detention facility where the guards were discovered to have using the boys for... Well, I think you can figure it out. If not just Google "Lincoln Hills". (but I'd recommend just ... yeah... just not googling it.)
Moving on, we have something called the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. Basically everyone chips in to a fund, via taxes, and that fund gives money to entrepreneurs and businesses to stimulate economic growth. That's the idea. In practice, whatever politician is in power funnels the money to his/her cronies. They're pretty open about it too. So small businesses in the state end up having to make do with whatever they get out of the federal SBA. Because the big political guys take all the money from WEDC.
And that's just scratching the surface with the criminal related stuff. There's all kinds of political and public spending related stuff that happens here all the time. There's the typical police corruption that you need to look out for. Man don't even get me started on Wisconsin's part in the VA nursing home scandal. Wisconsin is so bad that at one point there were 100's of thousands of protesters outside our Capitol building in Madison. We're just a really bent state, and there's not much that can be done about it because of how we're set up. There's a lot going on up here. Despite what you may have heard on Netflix, the corruption up here is not ALL about Steven Avery.
Illustrative factoid, there is a restaurant in Madison right on the Capitol Square. It's pretty conveniently located for the state senators and assemblypeople. Kind of a nice place too.
What's it's name?
"Graft", I kid you not.
Located on the ground floor of a building full of lobbyists. I mean, "lawyers". Right across from the Capitol.
I know that sounds just WAY too brazen, but it's a true story..."
PS - People generally REALLY find the part about the Graft restaurant difficult to believe. I understand. So I encourage you, don't take my word for it. Go ahead, Google it.
Fellow Wisconsinite here. I went to UW Madison when the protests you mentioned were happening. The 100's of thousands of protestors you mentioned were bussed in from all over the country. Many of which were bought and paid for by all sorts of Political motivators. I literally would ask people why they were here and they would say "because I'm getting paid $10/hr to hold this sign".
If you are going to site examples of a states corruption, at least use concrete evidence rather than vague allusions. The only real corruption you listed was an on individual/(small group) basis. This is not an indicator of a corrupt system, but rather anecdotal evidence of a the most noteworthy bad apples.
Overall in my very humble opinion I have found that the Wisconsin government is fairly well run.
Finally I don't see how the name of a restaurant has anything to do with government corruption. The name is purely based on its location, (within 400 ft from the capitol), and has nothing to do with politics. Also they have great food, I would highly recommend trying it out!
I guess it just depends on what you mean by "very recent," to me that would mean at most 5 years ago (and really I'd think more recently than that because all I can think about when I hear Wisconsin is the 'Making a Murderer' clusterfuck).
I measure governments in terms of "politician generations", so 5-10 years is still "the present" in the sense that anything less than 10 years can very easily encapsulate just a single set of people in leadership.
They bring up a lot of the missing evidence in the second season. You're allowed to draw your own conclusion from the case, but it's obvious to me the whole thing wasn't just bullshit but that the police department coordinated a coverup for a murder. Even if that wasn't the case, they violated so many laws by illegally ignoring proper procedure that the sheriff, district attorney, and interrogating officers should all lose their jobs and potentially face criminal charges.
You still haven't addressed the most troubling part of your claims here, that "there's not much that can be done about it because of how we're set up.". What does that mean?
I agree it will take some drastic measures. The article states that the plant needed to be located in the great lakes region since it requires so much water to clean the glass used in the plant, and if they're being allowed to dump toxic chemicals into that water that likely violates international water treaties that exist with Canada, not to mention the other states that depend on the great lakes and the waterways that they feed, for tourism, drinking water, etc. Any, and maybe all, of these parties should sue Wisconsin to stop this deal, or at least stop the environmental impact that is being allowed to go unchecked.
> At the risk of sounding pedantic, it says they "filed legal action". They may have just filed for an injunction.
Which is a suit for equitable relief (now, your pedantry might be accurate if excessively pedantic if the claim was that they had filed a lawsuit, since a suit in equity is not a suit at law, but since it was just “suing”, which applies equally to a suit in equity, the pedantry is misplaced even with the possibility you point to.)
> With other small costs added, the total Foxconn subsidy hit $4.1 billion — a stunning $1,774 per household in Wisconsin.
Wow. You sometimes hear of things like roadworks project taxes costing a household $100 per year. But this kind of sum to create a handful of new jobs and a pittance of additional tax revenue?
Yes, because "focusing on education" means everyone gets a STEM degree?
Education takes a variety of forms including high tech manufacturing, healthcare, business and entrepreneurial enterprises, higher education and teaching, green energy and technologies, etc.
Having a highly educated workforce will allow the midwest to better compete on the global markets.
As someone who grew up in the Midwest, you sound like everyone I ever talked to who discouraged me from going to college.
WTF? Wisconsin is a beautiful state with rich wetlands and farmland. Letting a Taiwanese* company fuck that up for 13,000 jobs that will never pay back the incentives makes no sense, other than a small tick on Walker's re-election campaign resume which he is now shying away from anyway. This project needs to be cleaned up or killed before it starts to literally kill people in Wisconsin.