Walker touts Foxconn construction jobs, but threw away Amtrak's

Wherein we learn that in Walker's Wisconsin, some construction jobs are more important than others.

And have more political value than others, too.

Walker is throwing out big Foxconn round-number construction job estimates:

Foxconn wants to break ground on a 20 million square foot facility in 2018 and begin operations in 2020, Walker said. Building it will require 10,000 construction workers – so many that the company will need to recruit workers from northern Wisconsin and elsewhere, he said.

But Walker, right after his 2011 swearing-in, had no problem discarding very specific job estimates by the thousands for fully-federally funded Amtrak rail construction and related employment
 
which the Journal Sentinel at the time had published, and which I copied out, here: 
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Former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel transportation reporter Larry Sandler in early 2012 had laid out the train-assembling, rail construction and spin-off jobs lost when GOP gubernatorial-candidate-and-later-Governor Scott Walker effectively scuttled the Milwaukee-Madison Amtrak extension that was also projected as a link in a multi-state, higher-speed passenger service upgrade:

Talgo, a Spanish train manufacturer, is seeking a Wisconsin plant to assemble trains that could run on this route. The Talgo business could create 50 to 60 jobs building two trains that the state already has ordered for the existing Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha service, plus another 20 to 30 more building two more trains for high-speed service, says Jim Schmelzer, president of Super Steel Products Corp., which is seeking the work. 

Counting "indirect" jobs at suppliers would add another 152 jobs this year, 479 next year, 647 in 2012, 202 in 2013, 54 in 2014 and 11 in 2015. State and local government jobs, including planners, engineers and project managers, would total 67 this year, 212 next year, 291 in 2012, 109 in 2013, 47 in 2014 and 26 in 2015. Klein said personnel hired by the state Department of Transportation for this project would hold their jobs no more than four years. 

Therefore, total employment specifically linked to the train line would be 1,100 this year, 3,483 next year, 4,732 in 2012, 1,542 in 2013, 483 in 2014 and 167 in 2015.

So in the 2010 election, Walker tossed away jobs to curry favor with anti-urban red counties, and now touts jobs to those same counties to set himself up for '18.

Divide, conquer, regroup, reconquer.