Saturday, December 21, 2019

Sorry Robbin' Vos - Foxconn changed their end of the deal, so we should change ours

As the Foxconn project flounders in Racine County and the Evers Administration tries to "rightsize" the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation's (WEDC) contract with the Asian company to match adjust to a very different plan than what was Scott Walker promised to Wisconsinites, Assembly Speaker Robbin' Vos jumped in with his take. And it was such a pathetic case of goalpost-moving that I had to share it with you.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he doesn't understand the dispute between the Evers administration and Foxconn. He said at issue is a "technical fix" that should take "about two seconds" to resolve.

"The idea of saying that we care if they make a Gen 10 or a Gen 6, when 99% of the people who are going to read the article you're writing don't know the difference, that seems like an argument over nothing," said Vos, a Republican from Rochester.
Actually Robbin', the Gen 10 part is explicitly mentioned on Page 4 of the state's contract with Foxconn, and was a major selling point that WisGOPs were throwing 2 years ago, when they were claiming the Foxconn project was going to be the "eighth wonder of the world."
. "This project is a once in a generation and maybe once in a century opportunity for our state. Before us is the opportunity to bring 13,000 new family-supporting jobs and a high-tech manufacturing ecosystem to Wisconn Valley," said Department of Administration Secretary Scott Neitzel, using the nickname Walker has given to the project.

Walker has argued bringing Foxconn to Wisconsin would "transform" the state, in a similar fashion to Silicon Valley, the tech industry in Northern California.
This "transformational" argument was why the Fox-con package had such a larger payback compared to the typical WEDC incentive package, both in wages (17% for Foxconn vs 10%) and capital investments (15% for Foxconn vs 5%).


So if Robbin' doesn't care about what Foxconn makes at its Racine County facility and just adds jobs, then he'd be glad to have the contract adjusted so that Foxconn gets the incentives that other companies might get for similar jobs programs (as sketchy as that might be), right? Of course not.
The plant is under construction in Vos' district and he helped shepherd the deal through the Legislature. He said he doesn't want to see Foxconn's per-job subsidy reduced, saying such a change could make it harder to bring other companies to Wisconsin.

"If another company wants to move to Wisconsin, and they are promised a contract, and they learned that, geez, the state's the one who reneged and now Foxconn canceled, that is going to chill economic development for every other part of Wisconsin," he said. "And that's bad no matter what your philosophy is."
No Robbin'. The state didn't renege, Foxconn did. They changed the product they were going to make and chose to downsize it (or were lying all along), and the Evers Administration is trying to react to that change and not give them special treatment that Foxconn does not deserve.

And besides, Robbin', your district has already gotten hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in highway upgrades and other infrastructure due to this Fox-con that clearly will not provide nearly enough to warrant that kind of investment. In fact, Racine County LOST MANUFACTURING JOBS LAST YEAR, so it clearly hasn't triggered other activity in the area, and studies are now indicating that Foxconn's favorable treatment has crowded out the growth of other homegrown Wisconsin companies.

Always scheming. Always BSing.

If Foxconn or Robbin' Vos or other WisGOPs don't want to admit that this thing isn't going to be what was signed up for in 2017, and they don't want to adjust to reality, then they are DISQUALIFIED from being part of its resolution. At that point, the best action for the Evers Administration to pull is to take a cue from this guy, and walk away from further shakedown attempts.

7 comments:

  1. Funny thing: Vos' "technical fix" deflection/apologism/excuse hides the fact that he himself doesn't want to wade into the details. Details are the meat and potatoes of a contract, and if Vos did wade into them, he'd confront the fact that he and the GOP, in their rush to posture as "job creators," got the shaft. They failed again!
    Vos is quite content to let ordinary Wisconsinites get the shaft, however. He will, of course, reflexively point the finger at the Evers' Administration, a laughable conceit, since it was the Walker Administration, a cabal of idiot-clowns, who pushed for hasty closure of the sloppily-worded mess-of-a-contract. And this from Foxcon, a company with a track record of reneging and balking on their end of a deal. GOP idiots didn't even do elementary vetting of this company!
    This fiasco is Kestrel Aviationall over again, only bigger and more wasteful of taxpayer dollars. Walker and the state GOP succeeded in failing even bigger the second time around! They doubled-down on the incompetence and empty, pie-in-the-sky promises, and the ordinary Wisconsinite now shells out taxpayer money to patch this leaky lifeboat of a deal. What a slow motion cluster fuck.
    The state GOP hopes this epic failure will quietly expire in the night and be buried without ceremony in a potter's field.

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  2. Spineless GOP weasels in the state legislature are too cowardly to cut the strings that make them dance like spastic puppets at the behest of their one percent and corporate masters.
    The work of real legislators, that is, actual public servants, is to allocate taxpayer monies among long-term investments in quality-of-life, prosperity and security of the ordinary citizen. That takes knowledge and information, these best found by consulting legitimate academics and experts, not fringe-element sociopaths, the latter being the go-to source for the Wisconsin GOP.
    Wisconsinites have endured a string of GOP-bungled "job creation" fiascos, the above-mentioned Kestrel Aviation, in Superior, Gogebic Taconite in the northern counties, FoxCon in Racine County. GOP legislators wasted, literally shoveled, millions in taxpayer monies at these big-idea, showcase lunacies, instead of doing the workaday, bread-and-butter research that lays the groundwork for sustainable, long-term economic growth. The failures cited above were all flash and dazzle, and no substance. The idiots went shopping for turn-key solutions, "easy fixes" that supposedly didn't require much investigation and vetting, and got taken by snake oil salesmen who are even more corrupt than they are(!). You can bet Wisconsin's GOP legislators chummed around with Kestrel, Gogebic and FoxCon execs and said to themselves, "These guys are all right. They speak our language. They 'get' us." All the while these execs were chortling, "Hah! There are suckers born every minute. These state-level legislators are such provincial rubes, easy marks!"
    Of course, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce helped "negotiate" between GOP rubes and these out-of-state hucksters, only to prove themselves every bit as naive as the GOP puppet-legislators were. What a Confederacy of Dunces...

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    1. This is very true. Although there's also the pay-for-play corruption and cronyism element, where campaign donations and tax-funded contracts are traded.

      Unlike the dimwits in the 262 who remain oddly invested into this boondoggle (to prove....what?) and still think Foxconn is going to add tons of jobs, many of the legislators and Walker probably never bought into that, but didn't care as long as they got headlines and got paid.

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    2. Those same dimwits are unlikely to wake up and point the finger at those who are actually responsible for this fiasco, or admit they were duped by their elected GOP reps and sens. No, the best we can hope for is that the collapse of the "deal" will eventually, after the frantic false finger pointing is refuted, foment a circular firing squad among the GOP dolts who promoted this idiocy, yet another preventable economic failure, another ideologically-instigated waste of taxpayer money.

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  3. In Mississippi the GOP delivers the "Beef Plant"and Kemper Clean Coal Power Plant".

    Kemper vs. the Beef Plant: boons then boondoggles
    https://mississippitoday.org/2017/07/05/kemper-vs-the-beef-plant/

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  4. "Clean Coal Power Plant" is this decade's signature boondoggle, and a conceit/oxymoron of epic proportions.
    "She's unsinkable!" they boasted of the RMS Titanic. And today she's unfloatable...

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  5. "The plant is under construction in Vos' district and he helped shepherd the deal through the Legislature. He said he doesn't want to see Foxconn's per-job subsidy reduced, saying such a change could make it harder to bring other companies to Wisconsin."

    (http://www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org/the-foxconn-contract-dispute-an-overview-of-whats-at-stake-and-why-the-deal-is-in-trouble?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WisconsinBudgetProject+%28Wisconsin+Budget+Project%29)

    Oh, the clueless irony of ideologically-constipated idiots. Vos and the other idiots in the GOP-dominated legislature haven't even managed to bring FoxCon to the state! And here spineless weasel Vos is telegraphing the need to continue offering these manic giveaways of taxpayer money for yet more empty promises made by yet more snake oil salesmen!?!? WTF!?!? Is his weasel head shoved so far up his weasel ass that his weasel brain is starved of oxygen?

    This FoxCon fiasco-of-a-"deal" is dying on the feeble GOP vine, and this moron Vos keeps insisting that any solution must entail yet more wing nut/corporate welfare!?!? The state should seriously entertain his conceit that it should do anything possible to "save" the "deal, whether or not any action by the state ever, EVER, proves sustainable and ever, EVER, pays for itself???? This creature, Vos, it cannot hear itself squeak!

    If only the stupid would burn a hole in his cranium and let the fetid ideological offal escape. Then the state could apply to have him declared a Superfund site. His remains would be carted off for remediation and burial, and sane citizens in his district could elect an actual public servant.

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