Wednesday, July 25, 2018

How many subsidies can profitable Kimberly-Clark absorb? Plenty, apparently.

There is something fundamentally distorted on the winners-and-losers scale with Wisconsin under 'win re-election-at-any cost' Walker being open to shoveling new tax breaks for the profitable Kimberly-Clark Corp. because workers have agreed to make concessions.

Same story with the slams at middle-class wages Walker enacted statewide when he launched Act 10, followed it with 'right-to-work' legislation and a separate bill rolling back the 'prevailing wage' rates on publicly-financed projects.

The K-C subsidy potential - - and you know, Republicans show contempt for anything that smacks of socialism - - comes on the heels of the profitable company already getting major Trump tax breaks and using the windfall to close up those Wisconsin facilities, as I'd noted in February: 
Desperate Walker offers another company Foxconn-level subsidies
WI GOP Gov. Scott Walker is behaving like he just saw some fatal polling data.

I'd said a couple of days ago that Walker loves to give away your money to hang on to power, and right on schedule that same wild spender of your tax dollars wants to do it again...at the unprecedented Foxconn level...for yet another company. 
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called Monday for giving paper maker Kimberly-Clark a Foxconn-style deal to avoid the closure of plants in Neenah and Fox Crossing.
Foxconn's deal comes out to $200,000 per job, so to save K-C's 600 threatened jobs Walker wants the WEDC to print another $120 million. 

Trying to save those jobs would be good for the state - - though Walker didn't lift a finger when 1,000 Oscar Mayer in Madison left for Chicago and Iowa, and for that matter, many other communities statewide - - data, details about a dozen high-profile examples, here - - when employers large and small shut down and or went elsewhere.

And don't forget that K-C said it would fund the plant closings with savings under the Trump-Ryan tax cut plan, so, first the federal treasury is drained for the company's benefit, and then Walker wants to step in with state money and give the company more and more millions.

Is there no end to the corporate welfare being larded on to the private sector by these phony fiscal conservatives?
 





1 comment:

RogerDBybee said...

Kimberly-Clark has been squeezing Wisconsin for decades, going back to the early 1980's when it castigated Democratic Gov. Tony Earl for a "business climate" that was supposedly hostile to corporations. At a time of huge economic insecurity following the Reagan Recession, it triggered a new wave of corporate tax breaks and set the stage for the reign of Tommy Thompson, who began the wave of attacks on teacher unions.

Also, K-C pulled its ads from the Ed Asner TV show because it was upset with Asner's vocal opposition to the US war of terror in Central America.