Vos's words could jam Foxconn's future

Talking point pomposity could land Robin Vos & Friends in a Foxconn irony vice.

Because, a) WI GOP Assembly Speaker Vos helped foment a massive forfeiture of  taxpayer dollars over what he called 'a sweetheart deal' and 'bad contract' for expanded Amtrak service, but b) later led a charge to route even larger taxpayer sums to Foxconn which others have said looks to them like a record-setting sweetheart deal for a bad contract. 

Read on. 

There has been a spate of reporting about the expanding costs to taxpayers caused by then-GOP Gov. Scott Walker's ideological, campaign-boosting, anti-Milwaukee intentional damage to Amtrak transit service, jobs and development in Wisconsin.

Please take note of the recent excellent work on these matters by Wisconsin Public Radio, here and here,.

I have written extensively about these matters over the years, including a summary post, here, and later, big-picture reviews, here and here,

Two Amtrak passenger rail trains assembled years ago in Milwaukee remain in an Indiana storage yard. Their use for federally-funded rail service to Madison and beyond was blocked for political purposes by then-GOP Gov. Walker. His legislative allies helped make the blockade and other barriers to rail transit permanent.

Which brings me to the Monday story on the subject which is still behind the Journal Sentinel's pay wall, and while I will praise the paper for memorializing a quote with which the story ends, let me first add these comments:

* Though Walker is everywhere these days as a radio talk show host, conservative columnist, self-serving interview subject and daily Twitter commentator on everything from 'socialism' to cheese curds, Walker does not appear with a fresh quote in the Journal Sentinel's story - - a story which would never have been written had he not politicized and derailed the Amtrak expansion.

Walker had posted his boastful, 2010 throw-down to President Obama over the funding on a now-defunct campaign 'NoTrain' website, though I'd copied and posted its smarmy, key document, here.

And when it has served his purposes, Walker was only too glad to promote his campaign against what he called, ha-ha, the Obama administration's "obsession with creating a much slower version of European rail."

I campaigned for 18 months on stopping this train line and earlier this month was able to deliver on the promise I made to taxpayers.

So it's regrettable that Walker did not opine in the Journal Sentinel story day on the now-more-than $80 million mess he created, and about the jobs, business spinoffs and interstate connections he erased on his way to gubernatorial win at the expense of development, jobs, cleaner air and transit options in Wisconsin.

* But the Journal Sentinel story does end with words worth referencing the next time that Republicans like Robin Vos get giddy about underwriting Foxconn's subsidized hiring-and-planning-fade.

At the time, Republicans defended the 2012 decision not to fund the [Amtrak] maintenance facility, which triggered the lawsuit. 

"I do not believe that it is my responsibility to just turn the blind eye and say because someone before me signed a sweetheart deal for whatever political reason they chose to do it, it’s not my job to fulfill a bad contract to do something that is a bad decision for the state," said Republican Rep. Robin Vos of Rochester, who at the time was co-chairman of the budget committee and now is Assembly speaker. 

"Sweetheart deal...political reason...fulfill a bad contract...bad decision." 

Stop it, Stand-Up Robin. You're killing, and it's killing me.

Because Vos helped Walker put state and local taxpayers on a $4.5 billion hook for Foxconn's foibles, flops and fantasies, including more than $1 billion in public costs that have nothing to do with job creation, a study showed.

So maybe post the ending of the Journal Sentinel story on Facebook, Twitter and your refrigerator in case Vos and Co. continue to laud that even bigger 'sweetheart deal' he ramrodded.

Here are Vos' words again, should he and they hit the fan:

"I do not believe that it is my responsibility to just turn the blind eye and say because someone before me signed a sweetheart deal for whatever political reason they chose to do it, it’s not my job to fulfill a bad contract to do something that is a bad decision for the state," said Republican Rep. Robin Vos of Rochester, who at the time was co-chairman of the budget committee and now is Assembly speaker.