Even Racine County residents are recognizing the scam of the Fox-con

We are just over a week away from a potential vote by the WEDC Board to sign off on the state's agreement with Foxconn, and the longer the deliberations go on, the more it becomes obvious that there are a lot of problems with this massive handout. And that's even becoming obvious in the corner of SE Wisconsin where the massive plant is supposed to be built.

Madison-based writer Lawrence Tabak went down to Racine County to see what the locals were saying about the Foxconn development, and his first stop was at the Apple Holler orchard in Sturtevant. There he met Gail Knapp, who works at the orchard and has lived in the area for several years, and she says that the Fox-con isn’t going over as well as Milwaukee corporate media wants us to believe.

“We all hate it, the neighbors around here especially. All the local two-lane roads are going to be expanded to four lanes. Taxes are going to go up and there’ll be no benefits for us for at least 20 years,” says Knapp. “And in 20 years the technology could be so different. In 20 years they could be gone. In the meantime, they’re not going to be hiring locals. They can’t even get enough people to staff Amazon.”

The mention of Amazon points to another Wisconsin issue, in which employers are finding it challenging to fill low-wage jobs. The nearby Amazon distribution center, opened in 2015, is currently advertising multiple positions paying $12.25 to 13.25 an hour. For many struggling Wisconsinites, a low-wage job would mean the loss of government benefits, leaving them in a worse financial situation, not a better one.

But Knapp also believes that, even if they could, Foxconn doesn’t intend to hire locals. With an expression of the proud possessor of inside information she lowers her voice and says that her two sons work construction and that their company is currently bidding on an excavation project. “They’re putting in a housing complex, an entire village, for the Chinese.” Meanwhile, she says, a neighbor down the road just a short distance outside of the Foxconn industrial quadrant has been approached to sell land for a condo project. If Foxconn’s past behavior is any indication, the additional housing is presumably for mid-career engineers from Asia who demand less than the average starting salary available to a fresh University of Wisconsin engineering graduate.

Yeah, this isn't going to turn things around.

Tabak also observes and speaks to many local people who have received eminent domain letters allowing the state to take over their land as long as they receive “fair market value.” In addition to the obvious disruption of having to move before they wanted to, there’s a legitimate question about how much these homeowners are going to get, and who is deciding that amount.

So if the wages suck and there is going to be a large amount of displacement, then just who IS going to be helped by the Fox-con? Tabak’s answer should not be a shock- a handful of corporations and the GOP political machine that they pay off. And they’re being backed up by millions in taxpayer-funded write-offs and infrastructure. One of Tabak’s examples comes from Pitts and Brothers real estate, whose owners gave sizable donations to Assembly Republicans in 2016.

Gov. Scott Walker has promised that the Foxconn development will benefit all Wisconsinites. What is certainly true is how the benefits are already reaching north, deep into Milwaukee, where most of the first round of contractors are based. For instance, should Pitts & Brothers get contracts on most of the farmland, they will be seeing a windfall of some $5,000,000 in commissions. Keep in mind that the basic source of the money to purchase land and pay contractors is the village and county’s bond issuance, which will raise money now on the promise of payback in future property tax levies on the Foxconn complex. It’s public funding. For the 30-year life of the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) deal, all property tax revenue in excess of current collections will flow not to the municipalities, but to the TIF, producing a multi-million-dollar discretionary fund under the direction of Mt. Pleasant and Racine County. In order to float such a massive fund, the Foxconn TIF had to receive special legislative authorization, since state law had previously limited TIF funding to 12% of the assessed value of the municipality, a figure which would have limited the Foxconn TIF to about half of its announced value.

Mt. Pleasant, population 26,000, has already committed $20,000 a month for a project manager from the Milwaukee construction outfit, Kapur & Associates. The firm’s founder, Ramesh Kapur, gave the maximum personal contribution of $10,000 to Gov. Walker in 2010; other Kapur associates kicked in at least $6,000.

Kapur’s project manager will present a list of contractors for approval to the Mt. Pleasant Board of Supervisors, which is headed by Village President Dave DeGroot, self-identified with the Tea Party and politically aligned with the Walker camp. Despite DeGroot’s campaign slogan of transparency, he has become known for announcing or changing public meeting times at the last minute, conducting major business such as the Foxconn deal and the hiring of the project manager behind closed doors, and championing one of the largest local government-sponsored business initiatives in American history, the $764 million Foxconn TIF deal. It’s certainly the largest on a per capita basis, with a debt of $3,800 for each person in Racine County, with the 26,000 residents of Mt. Pleasant at particular risk.

And some people are shameless lucky enough to be hooked up with both the business and political side of Foxconn’s development, as One Wisconsin Now reminded us as the Fox-con was being debated in the Legislature.

Any doubt campaign politics is the driving force behind Gov. Scott Walker gambling $3 billion on a subsidy for Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn has been dispelled by the creation of a single job. According to a report from Wispolitics.com, the lobbying firm hired by Foxconn has brought on Keith Gilkes, Walker’s longtime campaign manager and the head of the Unintimidated PAC that supported his presidential ambitions, to do “public affairs and communications.”…

Campaign finance reports for Walker’s gubernatorial campaign show he has paid the consulting firm run by Gilkes nearly $90,000 in just the first six months of 2017. Between Walker’s campaigns and the Republican Party of Wisconsin, Gilkes has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for his work on Walker’s 2010, 2012 and 2014 gubernatorial elections and as the head of the PAC supporting Walker’s failed run for President.

And hey, look at who was just announced as a key member of Scott Walker’s 2018 re-election campaign, along with the typical group of old-money Milwaukee oligarchs!

Keith Gilkes, who has managed or overseen all of the governor’s successful races – including his historic 2012 recall victory – will again serve as General Consultant. Gilkes is founder of political consulting firm The Champion Group and president and CEO of Platform Communications.

Good for them. Not for you.

The grift and the revolving door never stops with these guys, does it?

I also noted real estate mogul Jon Hammes is back on the Walker crew, you don’t think that guy and some fellow asset-flipping slime are looking to get a nice payoff with the Fox-con, are they? After all, it looks like Hammes anticipated a nice kickback from the taxpayer-funded Bucks arena, so why wouldn’t he want the same from the Fox-con?

The more you know about the Fox-con, the more of an obvious scam it appears to be. This is true whether you look at it in terms of Wisconsin taxpayers improving their job prospects, or in getting their tax dollars back from the WEDC slush fund that will hand them out. We deserve a voice in this, and an ability to read the fine print before we sign it all away.

But that’s not what Fitzwalkerstanis or their corporate cronies believe in, and all we can do is remove these crooks ASAP, before they mess things up beyond the point of repair or recovery.