End of 2018 - Lot of Foxconn, and other corruption. But it's at least a Start to better things

As the crazed year of 2018 draws to an end, I wanted to go over our most-clicked posts, and give a little further review.

3 of these 5 came in August 2018, and 2 dealt with the same subject - the ongoing ripoff known as Foxconn.

1. "Foxconn jobs shrinking by the day, but the costs remain huge.">
August 23, 2018

3. "Fox-con water deal seems to soak Racine Co taxpayers even more."
August 19, 2018

As we found out throughout this year, not only is the Foxconn project going to be far too expensive for what the state might get back in economic activity, but the number of jobs that might appear at the Racine County plant continues to decline, and instead will be performed by robots who will work on smaller screens.

There seems to be a group of people that are clued into all news related to Foxconn (I see them re-post my work on Facebook), and they helped to lead to high levels of viewership for those posts and others that continue to talk about an albatross that will continue to be a mess for this state in the coming years. I want to give an extra shout out to you guys, and keep coming back here in 2019, as we are sure to see more crookedness and wastefulness from the Fox-con and WEDC next year.

Another one of the bad aspects of the Fox-con was the removal of environmental and wetland protections at the state level. And that deregulatory mentality came home to roost in another way in August when the state got hit with record flooding. Which led to this post.

2. "Walker and WisGOP chose ALEC and other donors over Wis local govts. Record flooding is a result."
August 27, 2018

That post also featured this great picture from Isthmus, which came during a Walker photo op that happened a few days after Scotty pointedly ignored the floods that hammered the Madison area.

Isn't it going to be nice to have a Governor with college degrees and a DNR that believes in science for 2019? And we need it, because Walker and the Koch/ALEC Crew really set us back when it came to being prepared to handle the effects of our more severe and changing climate.

Another ongoing topic in 2018 was the plummeting of dairy prices and the record number of dairy farm closings in Wisconsin in this year. And that manifested in this widely-read post.

4. "As dairy prices collapse and Wis farms go under, Big Ag and WisGOP make it worse."
September 18, 2018

Another Walker/WisGOP-encouraged problem that will be on Evers' desk in 7 days. For 8 years (and frankly, for years before that), the State of Wisconsin has maintained a "bigger is better" mentality that looked the other way at abuses by mega-farms, and led to overproduction that has made milk prices too low for many farmers to survive. Combined with Trump tariffs that limited exports, and you have a massive surplus of product.

There is little that seems likely to come to change that from DC and the commodity markets (and now the relatively small farm subsidies from the Trump Administration are being delayed due to the government shutdown), so the improvements are going to have to come from the state level. And that could prove difficult with a WisGOP Legislature that is bought by Big Ag.

Lastly, there was one post related to the scandal-plagued White House that made my our most-read list for this site. And it had a special Wisconsin connection.

5. "Why Ron Johnson may be a key part of #TrumpRussia, and how SCOTUS plays in."
July 10, 2018

The SCOTUS part dealt with the then-recent nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, and how he got that nod because he was likely to try to limit and/or compromise the Mueller probe against President Trump. But the Ron Johnson part is the one that many in the state still have not caught on to, and they should.

Why? Because Homeland Security Chair Johnson has tried to knock down and/or obstruct the Russia probe several times in the last year (although he has shut up in recent months as more indictments and details drop), and was one of 7 GOP Senators to travel to Russia for the 4th of July last year. And we know Johnson was in the room with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan when President Obama told them of Russian hacking efforts before the 2016 election, and Johnson did not let Wisconsinites know about it.

And why was that? Likely because we will find out more about how the Russia-NRA laundromat helped RoJo win his Senate race vs Russ Feingold that year, and how it helped Trump win Wisconsin in the process. Watch that space in 2019.

Lastly, thanks to all of you for continuing to read. This is just something I do to try to throw ideas up a flagpole and keep from having my brain implode, but it takes you that read these rantings that get it noticed by people I still can't believe read me. All I'm trying to do is demystify a lot of things that the everyday person with more interesting hobbies might not know about government, policy and the economy. Because frankly, the evildoers thrive on you not understanding these things, since you don't know how wrong it is, or why it is so messed up.

And there's no way I'm stopping in 2019. Not with a new direction possible in both Madison and Washington DC. It's not going to be a magic wand where everything changes just because Dems are in charge of a few more areas of government - the rot of bad faith and abuse of power and previous damage from Republican actions at all levels has put us in a major hole. And it will take more than a few actions to get us out of that hole, and the GOP will be more than willing to keep things down in that hole, so people get disgusted and take out their frustrations on the new Dems in power.

But as a public employee who gives a crap about the state and country that he lives in, I see a minor light in the distance, and the possibility of finding a way to a better place. And that's a nice improvement from what I was feeling 1-2 years ago. Let's stay on that improving path for 2019, shall we?

"It's not important for you to know my name
Nor I to know yours
If we communicate for two minutes only
It will be enough.
For knowing someone in this world feels as desperate as me
And what you give is what you get"