Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Utility customers to further subsidize Walker's self-serving Foxconn sprawl

We Energies customers will chip in somewhere north of $180 million for a new gas pipeline to Foxconn's doorstep, as the company jumps on "investment opportunities" which Walker's Public Service Commission will approve.

Transmission company ratepayers statewide will be donating another $117+ million for electrical power delivery.

And Walker's DNR has greenlit for Foxconn multiple air pollution permissions and a substantial daily Lake Michigan water diversion of which only two-thirds will be returned, while he and and the Legislature's GOP majority, and local officials who fell into line quickly stuck taxpayers with than $4 billion worth of commitments to supply Foxconn with new roads, tax waivers, years of direct payments and other perks.

Here is a link to a full archive of posts about Foxconn.

If you live in SE Wisconsin, and especially if you live close to the Foxconn site in Racine County, you will be paying many, many times into the Foxconn subsidy piggybank through taxes and various utility bills.

In other words, your $100 back-to-school tax rebate or state property tax erasure endlessly touted by Walker in social media and campaign-style braggadocio will be zeroed out, and then some.

Plus, state laws governing everything from wetland-filling to stream re-routing to lake-bed building to Foxconn-site private property seizing are being bent in the Foxconn's favor - - and note that eminent domain will be similarly used along the new gas line routing of just under 50 miles if property owners try and block the excavation and save their land.

Everything being handed over and literally shoved Foxconn's way is to affix the always-campaigning Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' stamp paid for with other people's money on the state's largest-ever, most-heavily subsidized sprawl development.

On flat farmland in a flood-prone area which Walker is determined to rename "Foxconn Valley."

Subsidytown would be more appropriate, and would avoid adding a distortion of language and geography to what had been routine Wisconsin public budgeting and environmental integrity.

  


2 comments:

Jake formerly of the LP said...

Had the same reaction when I read about that gas pipeline. Here's another subsidy to Foxconn that everyone else has to pay for.

And it won't be the last surprise addition to the price tag, you can be sure.

James Rowen said...

Right you are, sir. https://thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com/2018/05/foxconn-wobble.html