Saturday, June 20, 2015

The half-million-dollar tip-of-the-WEDC-iceberg is now a $125 million iceberg

Call it what it is:

Scott Walker's growing, multi-million taxpayer dollar WEDC scandal.

A half-million dollars of taxpayer dollars lost in a single, review-free loan made by the jobs-agency political artifice chaired to promote the career by its founder Scott Walker has now exploded to $125 million handed out willy-nilly/paperwork-free by the WEDC on Walker's watch, The Wisconsin State Journal is reporting.

The Journal Sentinel story about the large number of loans without serious vetting has three bylines and rich detail:
The records also confirmed for the first time that the political muscle working for Building Committee included Gary George, a former Democratic state senator who was convicted in 2004 of one felony count of conspiring to defraud the government... 
The awards included incentives given to major Wisconsin companies such as Spectrum Brands, Kestrel Aircraft Co., Plexus Corp., and Kohl's — a department store that Walker has woven into his campaign talks by saying the company's business approach would be a good economic model for the country.
The next real review of this matter has got to be by a serious prosecutor, and letting Walker resign as WEDC board chair only looks like part of a coverup.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I want to know the names of the companies that got a handout without a proper vetting. I would like to know the size of the "loan", is the loan current, if the President/CEO made contributions to Walker, and did the company fulfill its loan obligation (create the promised jobs).

Anonymous said...

The loans are one thing but if one adds up all the tax credits that have been awarded to companies and businesses since WEDC was created and couple this with reducing the Manufacturing and Ag- Corporation tax rate to 0.4% this totals at least $1 billion in lost revenue and financial benefits to many of Walker's donors. The feds need to come in and add it all up!