Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Move over, 'Dr. No,' because 'Dr. Never' has the floor

Tommy Thompson earned the nickname "Dr. No" when he was a GOP state legislator.

Now we have a less colorful but more negative GOP Assembly Speaker, 'Dr. Never' - -

- - whom we'd heard say "No way, never" on more Medicaid - - and today added, this:

Verified account @MollyBeck

.@SpeakerVos on @GovEvers' middle-class tax cut plan, which is funded in part by reducing tax credit for manufacturers and ag producers: "That is something we are never going to accept."

Also see this story for a heckuva a lot of 'never.'

And Vos' op-ed against sensationalized rhetoric.

Foxconn called 'state visit project' by planner of state project visits

To the history of what happens when bumpkins get together, spend your money and seize your property I will this fascinating Forbes piece by a one-time Chinese state planner who now teaches at the Harvard Business School:

Foxconn's Wisconsin Factory Is What The Chinese Call A 'State Visit Project'

This is a way of getting you to commit to projects. You work out the details later, and try to make sure you can make money doing it...

I think Mr. Gou’s visit to Wisconsin last June was the same thing. A state visit project - a high-profile way to earn some serious good will and political capital. But as Foxconn worked through the details, I suspect they were having trouble figuring out how to make economic sense of it all...

That means we probably haven’t heard the last words on the Wisconsin story.

And throw rubes like Vos and Fitzgerald into the mix and the game is basically a forfeit.

I will add this item to the Foxconn archive I have been keeping since the project was announced in June, 2017.

Trump calling for 'comity' could be SOTU comedy gold tonight

Sources perhaps just back from an overnight weed run to Colorado are saying Trump

will call for 'comity' in tonight's State of the Union speech.

I can't see it.

1. For one thing, everyone will hear it as "comedy," which will provide more material for late-night comedians to whom Trump has been comedy gold.

2. Worse, because Trump the dictator-hugging-baby-snatching-body-parts-grabbing-neo-nazi-enabler has no history with the word or its meaning - -

Courtesy and considerate behavior towards others

- - he's likely to stumble over it into a more familiar word.

Comey.

As in, 'To drain the swamp, we need more Comey,' or 'Tonight, we're not Democrats or Americans. We're just all patriotic Americans who need more Comey.'

3. Seriously. He has a real problem remembering the names of people, places and things. Even if they work for him, are right in front of him, or make up the ground on which he's standing. A video clip with the mash-up, here.

Or just remind yourself that when he was playing the official character of POTUS, and toured fire-ravaged Paradise, California, he thought he was in "Pleasure," California, which exists only in his 'big, best' brain, or maybe on a massage parlor sign he saw on a pleasure trip.

4. And there is precedent for a President under stress committing a Fabulous Freudian Faux Pas. In public.

It was provided by Trump's comity-killing doppelganger Richard Nixon, who, not long before his lies and guilt caught up with him in 1974 had flown to Spokane and introduced Washington's Governor Dan Evans as "Governor Evidence."

True story. We oldsters remember it well, and it's been memorialized by a key witness:

On May 4th, 1974 President Richard Nixon arrived in Spokane on Air Force One at Geiger Air Force Base and a small crowd of Air Force personnel and their families were gathered to welcome the President. As Governor my dad had the privilege of introducing the President at the opening ceremonies later that day as well as to the crowd gathered for his arrival. No matter what you think of the person or his politics, it is still a privilege and an honor to introduce the President of the United States. There was a small platform and he quieted the crowd and simply said, “The President of the United States”.

President Nixon came to the microphone and said, “Thank you Governor Evidence, uh, I mean Governor Evans.”

Monday, February 4, 2019

Foxconn turmoil, in Wisconsin? Not on WEDC's Foxconn info website.

You'd never know the Foxconn project has been a local, national and international public relations cauldron since last week if you open up the WEDC's informational website about Foxconn - - Wisconn Valley Foxconn in Wisconsin.

* A small point - - there is no Wisconn Valley; the site is on flat, bulldozed rural fields and yards - - and the webpage still leads with flat, generic text:

Wisconsin Wins $10 Billion Foxconn Investment

In 2017 Wisconsin's workforce and business climate went toe to toe with other states to compete for 13,000 new jobs and $10 billion of capital investment from Foxconn's new state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing campus. Wisconsin won!

It's estimated that this project will add $51 billion to Wisconsin's gross domestic product over 15 years, an economic impact of $18 returned for every $1 invested by the state.

(I'll add this posting to my Foxconn archive which has been updated continuously since June, 2017).

* If you click on the News/Events tab, you find that the last installment of a "Wisconn Valley Newsletter" is dated January 4th, though the page also says:

The Wisconn Valley News is published every other week and [sic] designed to keep interested individuals up to date on Foxconn construction plans, infrastructure improvements, traffic pattern updates, and more. Local elected officials, suppliers, contractors and members of the public are encouraged to turn to the Wisconn Valley News for the latest project status, road updates, next steps, and interesting facts. When appropriate, special bulletins will also be distributed to ensure the most timely information possible.

* This section leads with a BizTimes piece from December 10, 2018:

Recent News & Announcements

Foxconn completes purchases of Green Bay, Eau Claire buildings

Foxconn Technology Group affiliates spent nearly $12 million to purchase buildings in Eau Claire and Green Bay for to innovation centers. FE Watermark LLC purchased 10 condo units of the Watermark building at 301 N. Washington St. in Green Bay for $9.25 million. FE Haymarket LLC purchased three condo units in the Haymarket Landing building at 200 Eau Claire St. in Eau Claire for $2.7 million. Foxconn previously announced plans for innovation centers at both locations and said it planned to close on the purchases by the end of the year. The centers are intended to allow the company to engage with companies and entrepreneurs around the state.

Read full story from the Biz Times

* Good news: plenty of Scott Walker photos remain for your archives.

JS had already answered "did we overpay?" for Foxconn

What a strange headline after a deal was signed in 2017:

Wisconsin gave Foxconn a rich subsidy package. Did we overpay? Some experts say we did.

The paper interviewed an expert who said Wisconsin was paying a hefty premium.

Timothy Bartik would answer the question this way:"It's unclear if the benefits would ever be as great as the incentive costs," said Bartik, senior economist at the Michigan-based Upjohn Institute for Employment Research who studies subsidies. "It was a very unusual deal."

And while Foxconn is adjusting the proposed mix of jobs, it doesn't seem as if that has changed the bottom line conclusion:

Counting all state and local subsidies, Wisconsin will pay Foxconn many times more than the average incentive offered in the U.S., according to Bartik's analysis.

I think the Journal Sentinel had basically answered the question a year ago, tomorrow - - with the same economist's assistance:

Tim Bartik, an independent economist who studies economic development, said Wisconsin is paying many times more per job than he typically sees in other projects nationally and is even shelling out more than some states were willing to pay per job for the much-hyped Amazon headquarters.

And in November I had collected enough published data to write this:

So NY, for Amazon HQ, gets 2X the Foxconn jobs for half the cost

Updated. You make the call:

New York State:

Amazon Is Getting $1.5 Billion to Come to Queens. Now Begins the Fight Over if It’s Worth It.

“Amazon will receive performance-based direct incentives of $1.525 billion based on the company creating 25,000 jobs in Long Island City,” the company wrote in a blog post formally announcing the deal, most of which come from a state tax credit. “Amazon will receive these incentives over the next decade based on the incremental jobs it creates each year.”

The state also offered a capital grant to the company that could total as much as $500 million that Amazon can use to build new offices.

Wisconsin:

'It's a huge subsidy': the $4.8bn gamble to lure Foxconn to America

Foxconn itself has been more circumspect on the number of jobs it will create, saying in a press release it will “create 3,000 jobs with the potential to grow to 13,000 new jobs”. Even if 13,000 new jobs are created, Wisconsin would be paying $346,153 per job at a subsidy of $4.5bn. An astronomical sum, but nothing compared to the $1.5m per job cost if the deal ends up creating just 3,000 new positions.

Updated, 12:00 p.m. Not to mention Virginia, which gets 25,000 Amazon jobs at the company's other new HQ locale for $819 million!

And all the Amazon jobs are supposed to average $150,000 annually, while Foxconn's have to hit about $54,000.

So which state got a better bang for its public bucks?

Final observation: At some point the number of jobs projected will fall from 13,000, the estimated total subsidy will shrink and the Walker-Vos-Fitzgerald-spin for Foxconn Light will be 'look at the money we saved you.'

These links and 275 more are in this Foxconn blog archive.

Sunday, February 3, 2019

Grist for Vos' next press availability

Does Robin Vos

really know the meaning of the Foxconn jargon he retweeted, beginning with "ICYMI."

OK, so we "MI."

As I add this item to my Foxconn archive now into its 20th month, can he enlighten us, beyond a mere click on "retweet?" LOL.

Seriously: "A liquid crystal module backend packaging plant..a high precision molding factory...a system integration assembly facility...a rapid prototyping center to help startups to test out their hardware ideas and contents which go in line with building the AI 8K+5G ecosystem..."

Speaker Robin Vos Retweeted

ICYMI: Foxconn details construction plans for next 18 months. https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/foxconn-moving-forward-with-manufacturing-facility … via @tmj4

A liquid crystal module backend packaging plant
A high precision molding factory
A system integration assembly facility
A rapid prototyping center to help startups to test out their hardware ideas and concepts which will go in line with building the AI 8K+5G ecosystem
A research and development center
A high-performance data center inside the park or in the vicinity
A town center to support the people working in the Wisconn Valley Park

Foxconn says WI op will hire 10,000 engineers, a big, new number.

Foxconn is engineering a different projected workforce at its Racine County facility. Time will tell if the projects are credible or if 'Foxconn Light' is on tap.

It wasn't that long ago that Foxconn was saying its focus was on blue-collar employment:

Foxconn will need thousands of workers with entry-level skills and a high school diploma

A WEDC staff report prepared [in October, 2017] roughly supports...[that] about 27 percent of the 13,000 employees are expected to be engineers and 28 percent technicians, with just under 7 percent in business-support roles such as finance, human resources and information technology.

The remaining 4,995 employees — 38 percent — would be hourly “operators,” the report said.

Now Foxconn's chairmen Terry Gou is saying after discussing the project with Donald Trump that it's projected Wisconsin workforce of 13,000 employees will hire far more engineers than blue collar workers:

"Foxconn plans to hire more than 10,000 engineers to do research and development," he said.

I can't help but conclude that Trump's insertion into the issue at this point is more about his presenting himself as a job creator in Wisconsin prior to a re-election he won't win without carrying Wisconsin again - - and polling suggests that isn't in the cards for him here - - just as Walker having pegged his failed 2018 re-election to the Foxconn project was a loosing strategy.

I note that a 2017 Wisconsin employment analysis lists about 23,000 computer, industrial, electrical, mechanical and other engineers employed in the state along with others in categories which I am assuming are not as relevant to what Foxconn will hire

Even if I am underestimating the categories, Foxconn is looking hire engineers equal to a large fraction of the current engineering sector in Wisconsin, raising questions like: where are these people going to come from; do state facilities have the capacity to help recruit and train them; and is an unintended consequence of Foxconn's potential presence here a brain drain from other businesses, and faculty staffs?

I've added this development to my Foxconn archive.

At Foxconn's Mount Pleasant building site: Out with the cabbage, in with the engineers?

What's worse that Walker's Foxconn assurances? Trump's.

File under 'Fool me twice.' Or 'Two fools walked into a bar...'

The only thing less reassuring about Foxconn - - full archive, here - - right now than support from the defeated Governor who steered there billions in public funds to distract from failing to keep his signature 250,000 new jobs pledge by four years is a promise about the Foxconn project's viability from a President who had already made a documented 6,420 false or misleading statements as of three months ago - - or about seven a day.

Saturday, February 2, 2019

About this blog, 12 years in, and moving forward

This is the 12th anniversary of my first blog post here. It raised questions about whether a proposed water park in New Berlin was the kind of public purpose envisioned by the parties which had created the Great Lakes Compact.

The diversion went through, the water park never happened. And there have been other diversions approved for Waukesha, Racine/Foxconn, Menomonee Falls and Pleasant Prairie, so the issues remain.

I want to thank people for their readership, comments, suggestions, emails, documents and other support over the years.

Google Analytics tells me you live for the most part in Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago and across Wisconsin, but last week, for example, there were also readers in 789 other locations from New Berlin to New York City to Los Angeles to Australia, Slovakia and Vietnam.

I've put up 18,993 items on this blog - - some short, some voluminous - - and drafted another 1,100 I never finished.

Yet when people ask me if I have a favorite, I can say, "yes, I do," because it told me everything in early 2011 I'd need to know for the next eight years about Walker's punitive paternalism towards the poor, and the GOP's special-interest servitude to the already-privileged, right up to the day he was driven from office but managed to hang the Republicans' power grab bill around the state's neck.

And everything about what has to replace his policies.

This very grove of trees inside Kohler Andrae State Park has been awarded by the state for private, upscale golf course development. The coordination by several taxpayer-supported state and local agencies at the expense of the environment to serve a Walker donor is emblematic of what went wrong the last eight years and what has to be repaired and turned around in the public interest now.

I've reposted this Walkerite-self-defining item: here one's example from 2015:

The $20 Scott Walker primer

...let's review one telling Walker action which never got the broad attention it deserved, though it spoke volumes about his hard-edged Tea Party modus operandi and willingness to tilt the playing field through Big Government power and hammer people who are generally without the means to fight back.

I am referring to an item buried in his first budget - - an across-the-board $20 per month cut from W-2 recipients.

I'd written about it here, with language taken directly from the budget's text, on page 65, in the "Health and Human Services" section:

"To further encourage W-2 recipients to recognize that the goal of W-2 is for participants to secure unsubsidized employment, reduce the monthly benefit check by $20."

And the negative impact was multiplied by other Walker budget changes that reduced the value of two tax credits that helped low-income families stay in their homes and on a payroll.

There's a straight line from that kind of thinking and arbitrary punishment by government action - - the loss of a few boxes of disposable diapers, or maybe seven or eight gallons or milk, or bus fares to a job, a day care or the pediatrician - - to Walker's more recent slams at the poor - - a refusal to increase the minimum wage of $7.25/hr., and his stated plan to mandate urine testing for food stamp recipients.

Another key item for me was my discovery that Walker's anti-science DNR had scrubbed climate change information from a public website. I also put it into context - - and, again, it points the way to what the Evers administration can repair:

Documenting WI Gov. Walker's attacks on science, climate change

Here are a few other Issue and personality summaries I think are useful both as records made and blueprints suggested:

In case Walker runs again, or just keeps...

In case Vos runs for Governor, or just keeps talking...

When Trump returns to Wisconsin...

Insiders, experts, tally Walker's damage to the WI DNR, land, water and air

SE WI segregation fueled by governments which need to address it

Along with some more relatively-structured archival posts:

Foxconn Fever: A primer

Walker's eight-year war on the WI environment. 21 parts, in one post

For you [iron] mining archivists - - some 2012 posts

And - - don't forget where to send your checks and help our allies:

"Sue the bast*rds!" Agreed. Now pitch in, Bucky

Walker discovers smugglers drive through legal border entry points

Eureka moment alert!

Just the other day, I noted that Scott Walker incorrectly claimed on Twitter that the US did not control access to the country "by land."

Are those who don’t want a secure border also calling for an end to airport security? If not, why do we control entry to America by air and water, but not by land?

Yesterday, he Trump-shill-tweeted about the seizure of a huge shipment of fentanyl without mentioning that it had been seized from a truck crossing through a land-based Port of Entry in Arizona:

TTMTHIS AMOUNT OF FENTANYL COULD KILL MILLIONS OF PEOPLE! This is scary, and it's why @realdonaldtrump is pushing for stronger border security. It’s a safety issue. 21h

Of course, Walker does not reference his earlier goof because he's busy promoting Trump, not facts.

Which are here:

NOGALES – Customs officers stationed at the commercial border crossing in Nogales made the largest fentanyl seizure ever recorded at any port of entry in the United States the day after President Donald Trump signed a bill putting an end to the longest government shutdown in history.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a canine officer alerted other officers to the presence of 254 pounds of fentanyl hidden inside an 18-wheeler carrying cucumbers, during a secondary inspection at the Mariposa port of entry just past noon on Saturday.

So, just to be clear, the truck did not sail or fly into the country. It was driven on a road on the land, where officers in an official entry facility on land inspected and made the seizure.

21 hours ago

Friday, February 1, 2019

Foxconn fiasco shows WI leader class arrogance. Again.

[4: 15 p.m. update]:

Trump and Foxconn say the factory plan is still a go, but I'm betting that the footprint will shrink and the blue-collar workforce will move far off that promised 13,000 number. Remember Walker's 250,000 mew jobs' pledge. The numbers suit the leaders' convenience.
----------------
Wisconsin pols keep getting away with over-promising and under-performing at public expense. In plain sight. And abetted by the same big business special interests.

* As Foxconn's p.r. and GOP assurances continue wobbling, we tend to forget that when the project was unveiled, the number of jobs projected was pegged at 3,000, as The New York Times reported on July 26, 2017:

Foxconn Says It Plans to Build Factory in Wisconsin, Adding 3,000 Jobs

But Scott Walker led the jobs and descriptive inflation on Twitter, the same day, at 4:50 p.n.

Foxconn is bringing 13,000 high-tech jobs to Wisconsin -- the biggest jobs announcement in our state’s history!

13,000 high-tech jobs? Said who?

And the next day, CNBC went out of its way to remind its audience that Foxconn had a history of backing out of deals, paying low, not living wages, and planned to replace tens of thousands of workers with robots:

...Foxconn has a spotty track record of delivering on its promises

And this isn't the first time there has been a big gap between promises and performance in these here parts:

* I remember when the estimated cost of a Lake Michigan water diversion project for the City of Waukesha that by court order had to be in place by June, 2018, was $78 million.

I cited the number in 2013, when the plans and numbers had already morphed:

Roaming around on The Google yesterday, I stumbled on something I wrote in 2009 about Waukesha's probable (and still pending Great Lakes water diversion plan):

Waukesha estimated Monday that its water pipe from Milwaukee, and return flow pipe to Wauwatosa, will cost $78 million.

Put that up on your refrigerator and see [whether] that number grows.

Fast forward to last October:

The water pipeline project to and from Oak Creek will cost Waukesha $183 million to build, according to the Waukesha Water Utility.

The last figure I saw reported was $282 million, and the estimated water delivery date is now pushed to 2012 or 2022.

* Or take Miller (soon to be AmFam, or something) Park. Bruce Murphy has tracked the cost expansion from $250 million to more than $1 billion.

* Then there was that double-payment for some work on the $1.5 billion Zoo Interchange - - the same project that Walker, in campaign mode, declared completed - - when it wasn't:

Scott Walker declares Zoo Interchange is done, even as years of work remain

In 2011, Walker promised to complete the entire Zoo Interchange project by 2019. He's meeting that deadline for the core of the project, but not its north leg.

That work now isn't expected to be done until 2023 at a cost of $232.6 million — 16 percent more than last year's estimate of $202.6 million, according to the Daily Reporter.

I know that big projects change. But I wonder if the planners and the pols and the financiers know they can play a gullibility or citizen fatigue card in Wisconsin and get away with murder.

Foxconn fib gives WI GOP leaders lie of the year edge

The Burlington, WI, Liars Club gives out an annual Lie of the Year Award.

Robin Vos lives just a few minutes away in Rochester, so the club may not have to look very far for its 2019 winner: