Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Better headline: About Foxconn deal - - Walker, Vos & Co., pls. STFU

[Updated, 7:25 p.m.] This is the second time Republicans have pulled this crap on Evers over Foxconn, as PolitiFact noted on January 31: 
Pants on Fire: Robin Vos, Scott Fitzgerald blame Tony Evers for Foxconn changes
[Updated, 7:00 p.m. Scott Fitzgerald also claims his spot in this new Wisconsin version of The Three Stooges with Vos and Walker. 
Last week, Fitzgerald accused Evers of seeking "a one-sided attempt to reopen the contract." He did not say why he viewed the move as one-sided in light of Evers' claim that Foxconn is the one seeking changes.
 Lame ducks, or dead ducks?
Robin Vos speaks at Racine Tea Party event (8378614585).jpg
While Walker recently ranted in five parts on Twitter about bad old Evers being mean to Foxconn - - 

 Apr 18MoreThe contract is clear: Foxconn earns up to $2.85 billion in tax credits from the state based on actual investment and job creation. No jobs and investments. No tax credits. It’s pretty simple.   
 - - and Vos chimed in, with some partisan, 100%-fact-free idiocy on Twitter:
and had set his hair on fire in front of reporters over Evers ruining everythingthis:
Tony Evers says Foxconn, not his administration, first sought to revisit deal with state
Because as experts said two months ago
Foxconn has even more reason to renegotiate the contract than the state.
Both the state and Foxconn have strong reasons to want to renegotiate the contract, but Foxconn has the greater incentive to strike a new deal. First, it now appears very unlikely that Foxconn can hit the minimum job targets that it needs to reach to be eligible for the payroll tax credits. Second, the changes in the type of LCD factory seem to make Foxconn ineligible for most of the investment tax credits it was expecting over the next several years. If anyone is initiating an effort to strike a new deal, it should be Foxconn.
If Foxconn truly intends to go ahead with revised plans for the Mt. Pleasant facility, it will probably seek a new contract that helps it qualify for a larger portion of the nearly $3 billion of cash payments authorized by Governor Scott Walker and the legislature. Whether the state should agree to any changes of that nature is an open question because a better option might be to cut the state’s losses. On the other hand, renegotiating the contract could be an opportunity to close loopholes and change other contract terms to make it a less costly and less risky deal for state taxpayers.
But before we can have those deliberations, state policymakers need to acknowledge that some of the presumed economic benefits of the Foxconn project are now in doubt and that the current contract poses potential problems for both Foxconn and the state.  
Full, 23-month Foxconn archive, here.

1 comment:

  1. I so appreciate that you are keeping track of all the FoxConn shenanigans. Someday you can write a book called the FoxConn Con.

    ReplyDelete