Vos's district has Foxconn road-building bloat. Now the ingrate is not satisfied.

Robin Vos is continuing what will be a four-year attack on Gov. Evers by complaining that the state is now short-changing small-town and rural road construction through a completely rational gubernatorial distribution statewide of a relatively modest $75 million.

Given Vos's inclination to throw many more millions to the road-builders and gaudy state subsidies and tax breaks for big business in far greater amounts, it's surprising that he'd even notice the gubernatorial distribution, let alone weigh in about it and open himself to provable allegations of hypocrisy and partisan self-service.

Apparently the WI GOP Assembly caucus computers have word-processing programs that create text while simultaneously blocking Google searches or The Wayback Machine.

Did that GOP fact-killing computer delete this information which explains why state road programs were deliberately drained so Vos' precious Foxconn project could begin to suck up way more road-building cash than Evers is distributing without Vos's imaginary rubber-stamp of approval?

State shifts $90M in road funding to Foxconn projects

Does Vos think we will not remember that the state is spending $542 million on Foxconn-related roadwork that is in or connects to Vos's legislative district - -  road funding which Vos and other Republicans pushed through the legislature?

An updated calculation of the public assistance provided to Foxconn shows that the costs have risen as high as $4.5 billion when multiple forms of assistance from state government, local governments, and utilities are included. This letter from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau describes the various categories of Foxconn public assistance. 

• $542 million for roads, including $408 million in general state tax dollars for the I-94 North-South corridor. This improvement isn’t specific to the Foxconn development, but the Legislative Fiscal Bureau included it in the letter describing Foxconn costs because no money had been requested for the project prior to the Foxconn development. The state is also anticipated to pay for an additional $134 million of improvements to smaller roads associated with the Foxconn site.

In fact, an industry website pegged the Foxconn-related road work at 15% or so higher:

Foxconn drives more than $630M in Wisconsin road work

• The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) has taken on more than $630 million of infrastructure improvements spurred by construction of the $10 billion Foxconn Technology Group's flat-panel display factory in Mount Pleasant (Racine County), Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Business News reported. Approximately $500 million will go toward widening a portion of Interstate 94 and $134 million to upgrading local roads around the facility. 

...Major projects like the Foxconn factory often make it necessary for state transportation departments to beef up surrounding infrastructure, particularly if the project is one that will generate a considerable amount of additional traffic...the thousands of construction workers and employees who will travel to and from the factory site in the coming years will need adequate infrastructure in place to do so efficiently...

I'm sure Vos and the district's GOP State Senator remember they got millions in new road spending committed in a bill for the Foxconn project even before a shovel of dirt was turned on the company's Racine County site:

The bill allows for more than $250 million in borrowing for the I-94 north-south project, which extends from the Illinois state line through Racine County and up to General Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee....

“With how interested the president has been in getting this deal done, it makes perfect sense because it’s one of the things Foxconn needs,” said Vos, R-Rochester....

State Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, applauded the inclusion of I-94 funding in the bill.... “It is absolutely critical to restart this road project to ensure the success of not just Foxconn, but the many other economic development opportunities that are planning to come our area,” Wanggaard said in a statement.

And this road-spending dump for Foxconn taking place as Vos and the rest of the Walkerites were starving road repairs statewide so intentionally and and so destructively that at least one county's paved roads were allowed to disintegrate into gravel.

I've been writing for years about how Scott Walker's bloated, grandiose, under-funded excessive highway expansion has simultaneously starved road repairs and turned driving in Wisconsin into a game of pothole-and-front-end repair dodging.

This road to reaction and ruin has led to its ultimate consequence at the very local level in one Wisconsin small town where a lack of funding has led to an abandonment of road repairs and the acceptance of gravel roads where pavement had long been correctly the norm.

There's a road in the western Wisconsin town of Northfield that used to be completely covered in pavement, but in the last few years, a lot has changed.

"This is where we ran out of money two years ago," said Richard Erickson, standing on a line that divides paved road from gravel.

And now Vos is complaining? 

Because Gov. Evers has allocated modest sums to transportation projects that are not part of the Vos-Walker-Foxconn Road Complex to Nowhere?

Here is an archive of Foxconn-related blog items now nearly three-years old.

We all know there is no merit to his posturing. It's just Vos playing another version of his relentless partisan game.

Trump shoveled extra federal funding for Foxconn-related road-building on top of state dollars that made Vos a happy camper. Now he's griping that rural districts aren't getting enough road-building money from the state. Perhaps this was on Vos' mind when Trump came to town a little while ago.

Vos touts GOP-led Assembly's bipartisanship. The spin makes me ill.

GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has retweeted a self-serving item about his chamber's recent bi-partisan record. Speaker Robin Vos Retweeted

Wisconsin Assembly GOP

@WIAssemblyGOP

·

Mar 6

According to the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau, the Assembly once again worked in a largely bipartisan fashion this legislative session. The Assembly passed 371 bills, with 94.1% of those bills receiving bipartisan support. See the entire memo: https://bit.ly/38wTR5y

Bi-Partisan?

These tweets are efforts to establish a self-serving and misleading narrative, as we know that a) Vos has publicly misrepresented Evers' gun safety bills, and B) Vos and his Senate ally Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald refused to hold hearings or votes on those issues - - all to extend their post-Walker-defeat lame-duck power grabs 


designed to diminish the incoming Democratic Governor and Attorney General's authority and standing.

Sound like the actions of a legislative leader interested in bi-partisanship?

And I'd add that headlines like this one tell the real story about Vos' commitment to bi-partisanship, and truth-telling:

GOP leader Robin Vos falsely claims Gov. Tony Evers made troops wait for greeting

Not to mention the GOP-led Assembly's recent, last-minute, closed-door and partisan sellout on crucial legislation to stem dangerous water contamination.

Democratic members tried unsuccessfully to replace the proposal with two bills...that would have spent about $7.7 million on efforts to slow PFAS contamination, research ways of destroying the contaminants and offer free blood tests to anyone living in PFAS-contaminated sites around Marinette, Peshtigo and Porterfield.

The bills, which faced considerable pushback from industry groups, did not make it to the Assembly floor.

Rep. Katrina Shankland, D-Stevens Point, said she was “disappointed, surprised and frustrated” by the measure put forth by Republicans, which came after a more than one-hour closed-door caucus session.

And if you click through the list in the highlighted link which Vos retweeted to make his case, and sample the full record of the votes, you will find items like the one below which gets a "bipartisan" ranking, though it appears that in the Vos-led-and-heavilg-gerrymandered Assembly currently divided 64 Republican to 35 Democratic, a single Democrat voted with Republicans, so thatmakes the 65-34 vote bipartisan [Sic]. 

C'mon.

Assembly Bill 895

An Act to amend 20.866 (1) (u); and to create 13.48 (20e), 20.866 (2) (zcv) and 20.867 (3) (cv) of the statutes; Relating to: construction of or improvements to indoor, athletic or aquatic athletic facilities, granting bonding authority, and making an appropriation. (FE)

Status: S - Health and Human Services

Important Actions (newest first)

Date / House	Action	Journal
2/28/2020 Sen.	Read first time and referred to committee on Health and Human Services	751
2/20/2020 Asm.	Read a third time and passed, Ayes 65, Noes 34

A roasting of Ron Johnson. More persistence pays off.

The more ironies, the merrier.

One reason current Democratic US Rep. Gwen Moore is around to call out Trump apologist Ron Johnson - 

Congresswoman Moore calls Sen. Johnson a 'conspiracy theorist' and 'embarrassment'

- is that Johnson pal Scott Walker tried and failed to defeat Moore 


when she was in the WI State Assembly - - and in a 2015 interview with The Guardian didn't hold back about Walker, either:

Moore told the Guardian her disdain for Walker was born during his 1990 campaign against her. The African American congresswoman was then running for a second term in the state legislature, representing a majority white district in the racially polarized city of Milwaukee. 

Moore said Walker accused her of “supporting urban decay” and repeatedly used racial dog whistles. She described this cynicism as continuing in future campaigns and said Walker was willing to “use any kind of wedge issue he can” in order to win.

In this aspect, Moore said she saw Walker as similar to another Republican candidate: Donald Trump.

With key Trump enablers here, voter turnout in WI has added significance

We hear upcoming elections are all about turnout.

I'd add survival, whether that be your own, or the Republic's, and/or both.

When we become aware of new proofs during a true crisis of Trump's dangerous deficits and incompetencies, or fresh revelations about the breadth of depth of his pursuit and embrace of anti-democratic methods and goals - - 

Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate Liberal Groups 

Mr. Prince, a contractor close to the Trump administration, contacted veteran spies for operations by Project Veritas, the conservative group known for conducting stings on news organizations and other groups.

- - it's important along with distributing the information, and voting accordingly, to continuously remind Wisconsin voters that former GOP Gov. Scott Walker is Trump's 2020 state re-election chair.

And Wisconsin US Sen. Ron Johnson continues to be a lead Trump cudgel with real power in hand 


to apply in Trump's relentless smear against Joe Biden that is also being aided by a corrupted US Justice Department.

So every Wisconsin election beginning with the April primary that includes a significant State Supreme Court race against a rightwing Walker appointee, and many other candidacies on the same ballot, gains importance through the message that we want no part of a second Trump term and team - - except denying it to them in November.

Scott Walker's One Man Joe McCarthy Revival Show

Only the most malignantly ignorant politician in the state that produced the worst Senator in its history - - 

“McCarthyism,” as the hunt for communists in the United States came to be known during the 1950s, did untold damage to many people’s lives and careers, had a muzzling effect on domestic debate on Cold War issues, and managed to scare millions of Americans.

- - if not in the entire history of the country and the US Senate - - 

- - would actually say this: 

"Bernie (Sanders) is a communist."

No wonder Walker lost to Tony Evers, a candidate with a brain, a soul and an education.

WI faces epidemic with new leaders who respect science

Granted there are many unknowns, but we can say with certainty that Wisconsin will be led through the challenges of the dangerous coronavirus outbreak by Democratic Governor Tony Evers - - 

 - - a former high school science teacher and holder of a Ph.D - - and not an anti-science career politician who left his Marquette University studies a few credits short of junior status and never missed a chance as governor to disregard science in favor of favors for his allies.

And every time I read about the shortage of coronavirus testing kits our intentionally-underfunded-and-staffed Centers for Disease Control had on hand after Trump had decimated the agency, the phrase "testing kits" conjures the scandalous unwillingness of the previous Wisconsin administration and GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel to work through a huge backlog of untested rape kit evidence on behalf of numerous victims and societal justice.

Which Walker shrugged off by rewarding Schimel with a judgeship in Waukesha County a couple of days after they both lost their 2018 elections - - a judgeship for which Schimel had himself recommended others - - another commentary on Walker and Schimel's preferences for self-dealing and partisanship over endorsing expertise.

The blunt truth is that eight years of GOP reign which Evers and AG Josh Kaul finally closed out was an era of the dismissal of science and expertise, creating shortfalls, gaps and missed opportunities in policy-making and the production of good information for residents, taxpayers and their children - - from providing cleaner air to addressing climate change to fighting deer wasting disease.

Many experts inside and outside of the DNR - - but who interacted with it - - repeatedly offered details about the damage being done by Team Walker and for special interests - - which I twice published as their submissions accumulated, here and also here: 

*  A third former staffer said: 

The most alarming issue to me is the great waste of decades of sound science, compiled overtime in on-going studies and data collection. WI had more information about our natural landscape than most states. Abolishing science services put an end to decades long studies vital to maintaining and recovering rare and endangered plants and animals as well as understanding natural communities as information on resilience for climate change. 

* A current employe on personal time echoed many of the lobbyists and former staffers'  observations:

Under Walker and Stepp, science is not a priority. Scientific knowledge is ever-changing but in Wisconsin our staff are being left behind. We no longer have a statistician to help interpret data, a library to provide journals or books, or researchers that monitor fish counts, wildlife health, air quality, water quality and etc….employee scientific knowledge and data specific to WI is stagnant...we cannot do the best job possible for our state. 

The DNR is currently run by people who understand public relations spin but not the complexity of the natural resources they are responsible for...Communications staff, generally not trained specifically in resource communication, answer questions with talking points..usually developed by upper management - political appointees - and legal staff. The information provided is biased and superficial.

Republicans even slowed actions to keep toxic phosphorous discharges out of state rivers and streams, and made it easier for manure and nitrates to contaminate rural wells near animal feedlots.

Walker's 'legacy' further stained by more brown in the drinking water

Set aside the b.s. that Walker is pushing as his 'legacy' and focus on the actual b.s. people in Wisconsin are drinking:

Hazardous drinking water found in 42% of southwest Wisconsin wells

This is on Walker, and for that matter, his devoted water carriers - - whether those already polluted or at risk - - named Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald - - who were given their marching orders and aligned the Legislature with corporate water hogs statewide.

And people with open contempt for science like former, long-term DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp were put into positions of authority where expertise, institutional memory and public health were not allowed to drive public spending and workforce decisions.

You can read her own words here in a post which contained the full text of a nasty, anti-DNR rant she'd written before Walker handed her the reins at the DNR - - a partisan and petty rant she has since taken down:

Those of you that haven't had the pleasure of peeking behind the scenes of our state agencies like DNR, Health and Family Services, etc...need to know how some of the most far-reaching policies come down on our heads.

The most crushing/controversial rules that businesses have to follow in our state are--most times--done through the "rule making process" of our state agencies. Without bogging everyone down with some really boring procedure talk, suffice it to say that many of these great ideas (sarcasm) come from deep inside the agencies and tend to be reflections of that agency's culture.

For example, people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.

Stepp's contempt - - which she took for several years to top EPA posits handed her by Walker's ally Donald trump - - was blatant, ideological and unapologetic:

DNR Secretary Stepp unaware of clean air, water value

Someone better pass the word to Cathy Stepp, our DNR Secretary:

DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp, a former homebuilder, recalled at one agency listening session how an employee told her that “clean air and clean water, that those were our customers. 

And [she] said, ‘Well, the last time I checked, they don’t pay taxes and they don’t sign our paychecks.’ “

Towards the end of 2018, I put together a 21-part blog series on Walker's attack on clean air, fresh water, good science and the only environment we have.

Of the 21 installments, this one focusing on science continues to be the most-downloaded. 

Walker's 8-year attack on Wisconsin's environment. Part 18. The 33 times science was dissed, dismissed.

So I feel better knowing that a person with Evers mindset and background is now in charge of state government, as this Oct. 8, 2018 tweet of his makes clear:

As a former science teacher I can tell you this: I believe in science. It’s time to stop the partisan nonsense and take commonsense action — because work on climate change simply cannot wait. 

Can you imagine if that same Walker/Stepp/Schimel crew were still in charge of preparing the state for a pandemic, let alone guiding us through it?

About City of Milwaukee finances, non-city GOP legislators say 'go pound sand'

In the GOP's grotesquely-gerrymandered Wisconsin Assembly, legislators from communities like Waupaca and Ledgeville and Campbellsport with relatively minuscule populations who live from the state's biggest urban area get to control how Milwaukee could raise revenue which Republicans have already squeezed off.

Timothy Ramthun, a first-term GOP Assembly Representative from Campbellsport, is among the legislators who is not supporting allowing Milwaukee to raise sales tax revenues to fund basic big-city needs. Campbellsport's municipal profile shows that it has 1,970 people - - 97.4% of whom are white - -  and is 100% rural. Imagine a Milwaukee Common Council or state legislative member similarly taking control of Campbellsport's budget.

And control Milwaukee they do, as these out-of-town, out-of touch strangers to big city residents' needs have a budget message for Milwaukee: Go pound sand, and we won't even let Milwaukee residents vote on it.

Milwaukee leaders make case for higher sales tax, but effort is doomed in Capitol

And, yes, Campbellsport is where Glenn Grothman moved so he could run for the Congressional seat he will probably hold for life. 

Public campaign financing is alive and well in Wisconsin

Along with tight spending controls, fiscal conservatism and other GOP 'values.'

State, local costs for VP Mike Pence's Wisconsin Capitol visit exceeded $40,000

Pence used the trip to Madison, a stop that came as Wisconsin stands as a focal point in the 2020 presidential race, to tout President Donald Trump’s support of school vouchers and applaud the state’s three decades-long history with school choice.  

A steward of public dollars had himself a free spending spree in Wisconsin during a peculiar anti-socialism national tour.  

Let's play 'Robin Vos Falls Short Trivia.'

PolitiFact says Robin Vos' prison claim 'falls short.'

'Falls short' could be the generic Robin Vos headline and achievement.

Has there been a gate change?

Remember the Wisconsin economy which which Vos said would 'take off like a rocket' if Walker were to win the recall election.

Submit your entries in comment.

A competitive WI Dem. primary in April can weaken right-wing St. Sup. Ct. control

It's not clear at this point on Super Tuesday evening who is the Democratic Party's presidential front-runner or if that leader can hold it through the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee this July.

But this much is clear:

A competitive Biden vs. Sanders contest moving forward means that Democrats in Wisconsin will vote in droves in the April 7th Wisconsin presidential primary.

And that should mean a heavy turnout for Jill Karofsky, 

the more progressive candidate running against Daniel Kelly, the Scott Walker-appointed incumbent in the non-partisan general election for a seat on the State Supreme Court which is also on the April 7th ballot.

Walker & Co. tried unsuccessfully to manipulate that schedule: 

Despite winning the largest share of votes Tuesday, Kelly faces an uphill climb to victory in April because the Wisconsin Supreme Court election falls on the same day as the state’s presidential preference primary. Turnout in that election is expected to be greater for Democrats, who currently have a contested presidential contest, which may drive more votes to liberal-backed Karofsky. 

Republicans recognized the challenge early on and unsuccessfully tried to move the date of the state’s presidential primary in December 2018.

We all know that a Karofsky win would narrow to 4-3 the high court's special interest chokehold,

And it just might play an even larger role nationally: which I wrote about recently:

Bottom line - - a Karofsky win could bode well for Democrats retaking the state from Republicans, and Trump, in November. That context is not of her making; it's a matter of calendars and history.

Bottom line, Bucky. On April 7th, vote like your life depended on it.

Plenty of reasons to make it a protest vote, as well as a positive vote for good candidates up and down the ballot.

And Ron Johnson's fresh Rudi Guiliani impersonation gives Biden voters in Wisconsin a fresh incentive to send a message:

RoJo vaults to 1st-place in 'Who Wants To Be Trump's Biggest Brown Noser?'

Ron Johnson threatens subpoena over Hunter Biden's Ukraine work

The subpoena seeks records from a Democratic public affairs firm.

Oh, so now we need witnesses and subpoenas?

Foxconn hiring shortfall would be OK with 1 clear-eyed business. In Illinois.

Hey, what are neighbors for?

A Foxconn failure to keep the workforce promises it made to win pledges of more than $4 billion in Wisconsin state and local subsidies doesn't break one Illinois employer's heart:

Foxconn’s Wisconsin factory isn’t what it initially promised. Can it still create a high-tech hub?

The prospect of a scaled-down Foxconn is something of a relief to Mundelein-based MacLean-Fogg, which manufactures components for the auto industry. 

“We were nervous about it as to how it was going to impact our ability to be able to fill positions, because it was hard enough as it was,” said Kristin Malbasa, executive vice president of human resources. “At the same time, because it’s hard, we didn’t know where they were going to find 13,000 people.” 

I'll be adding this post to my Foxconn blog archive now in its 33rd month:

A Foxconn Fever primer

 NBC Nightly News, 7/21/19 

The Justice, and Machine Gun Kelly: Bad timing, aim and optics.

Bice's scoop about Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly's high-caliber/big donor gun-range fundraiser held a day after the Miller Brewing (MolsonCoors) mass murders brings to mind the more infamous Machine Gun Kelly, (no relation).

RoJo vaults to 1st-place in 'Who Wants To Be Trump's Biggest Brown Noser?'

Wisconsin's GOP Senator and man who needs a Tums - Ron Johnson - 


is jumping ahead of Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell in the ongoing US Senate drama, 'Who Can Be Trump's Biggest Brown-Noser?'

Ron Johnson threatens subpoena over Hunter Biden's Ukraine work
The subpoena seeks records from a Democratic public affairs firm.

Oh, so now we need witnesses and subpoenas?

What makes Johnson's quest for Trump's favor so cravenly insidious is that, unlike Senators McConnell and Graham, both of whom are fighting for their political lives and future pension uppers, Johnson isn't on a 2020 ballot and faces no political challenge unless or until he runs for Wisconsin Governor in in the next statewide election cycle.

Ron Johnson not ruling out 2022 run for governor

Johnson's loyalty to Trump is rooted in the big business belief that the privately-owned corporations which they still have a hand in require that the public sector and regulations which help everyday people must be killed off, so to serve themselves, Johnson will follow Trump to the ends of the earth.

And by Trump's firing the government's top pandemic response manager and  700 Centers for Disease Control personel -

Several positions are in the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, which regulates some of the world's most dangerous bacteria and viruses and manages the nation's stockpile of emergency medical countermeasures. 

Others include positions in the director's office, infectious disease offices and the office for noncommunicable diseases, injury and environmental health.

 - and hundreds of additional scientists across the government - 

Dan Costa, who worked at the EPA for 34 years before stepping down as director of its air, climate and energy research program in January 2018, said the tipping point for his retirement came when an EPA spokesman undercut a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that the agency had funded.

The study found that long-term exposure to levels of soot and smog lower than current national standards can cause premature death among older Americans. Such a finding suggests that current standards don’t adequately protect public health, which would have implications for industries that pollute. An unidentified EPA spokesman attacked the study in an interview with the Washington Times, an act Costa called “scientifically unethical.”

- when climate emergencies and a disease pandemic are our new realities, Johnson just may get his wish.

Court win in Ohio for Big Ag. Also for Lake Erie toxic algae.

Color code your contamination:

In Wisconsin, corporate ag and its GOP enablers serve up brown water.

Lake Erie gets a green light for more toxic green algae:

Markie Miller, who led the pro-LEBOR campaign on behalf of Toledoans for Safe Water, said the group has been frustrated by the lack of progress for western Lake Erie since an algal toxin from the lake poisoned Toledo’s tap water for nearly three days the first weekend of August, 2014. That event made worldwide news and led to relief efforts by the Ohio National Guard. Nearly 500,000 people on the city’s water system were told they should not drink or even touch their tap water that weekend.

I'd written about this issue a year ago. 

Here's a photo from Alliance for the Great Lakes of Lake Erie with an algae bloom:

Despite recent losses, career GOP pol eyes 2028 presidential run

When habitual behavior cancels out normal protections against self-parody, this:

Former GOP Gov. Scott Walker floats future presidential bid at CPAC

When asked whether he would run for president again, he said: “Never say never—I don’t know about 2024, but 2028—yeah, at some point. I’ve got plenty of time.”

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