As the RNC comes to SE Wis, never forget Foxconn

Excellent segment by Ronny Chieng on The Daily Show reminding us of the epic scam and failure that Republicans pushed on this state 7 years ago. And how I bet no one else in national media will mention this debacle when Donald Trump gets renominated on Thursday, and talks about "making things in America."

Props to The Daily Show for keeping the part where local anti-Foxconn activist Kelly Gallaher mentions that the land and highways and related infrastructure was given to Foxconn, at a cost of significant debt for the local yokels in Mount Pleasant along with the relocation of homes to clear the way for this white elephant. And how the segment goes into how Foxconn kept changing their plans as to what they were going to allegedly build in Racine County.

Which tells you that both Foxconn and the WisGOPs that allowed this deal to go through had nothing to begin with, and that Scott Walker and Paul Ryan and Robbin' Vos and Donald Trump didn't care about that reality, as long as they got a headline and media event out of it.

There's another great part where Chieng is interviewing former Foxconn exec/grifter Alan Yeung, where Yeung basically says there was no real plan for Foxconn in SE Wisconsin (well, beyond "get the money, the land, and the PR"), but wants credit for....trying?

YEUNG: It really is trailblazing and making pioneering decisions, even though it might not make sense...

CHIENG: Even though it makes absolutely no sense.

YEUNG: Well, OK, absolutely no sense. But right now, I think we're in chapter two or chapter three of the whole thing.

CHIENG: Chapter 11 of the thing, right?

Yeung also follows with a line where he says "you really shouldn't care if you build potato chips or microchips." Ummmm, I think it does matter, Alan. I don't think we'd have given billions and golden shovels to process potato chips and claim it was the "eighth wonder of the world", like Trump did.

Gallaher later brings up the new multi-billion dollar development in Mount Pleasant, a massive Microsoft data center, which doesn't have as much in subsidies as the Fox-con did. And let's just say Chieng is skeptical about the long-term benefit of that.

GALLAHER: It's going to be an AI data center.

CHIENG: Wait, an AI Center is going to take jobs. They're going to replace workers. You're going to end up with less jobs than before.

GALLAHER: Well, it's better than nothing.

CHIENG: Actually, no. Because no jobs would be zero. This will be negative jobs because it'll be taking other people's jobs. GALLAHER: All I know is that these are 2,000 real jobs.

CHIENG: Oh these goddam villagers and their "jobs", man! You guys talk about anything else here? (theatrically walks away).

Given that I am fast going into the "AI is just another scam by grifting tech bros intended to grab profit and add nothing useful" camp, I hear ya Ronnie.

The giveaways and look even worse in the 2020s, now that there has been a real industrial policy put in place for modern manufacturing under President Biden, with a boom in construction of new factories.

And hey, it's a strategy that doesn't rely on giving away entire townships to companies in exchange for empty promises to desperate communities and doesn't give massive tax cuts (beyond some investment incentives) to corporations! Seems like a better plan that what Repiublicans cooked up 7 years ago, isn't it?