Monday, December 14, 2020

Yet again, Wisconsin has fewer COVID cases, and fewer tests. And deaths are still high

It's been a rare sight to have good news in this state and country. And I think this is certainly a good thing in the fight against COVID-19. Wisconsin seems to have at least made some progress in stopping the increase of new cases, although these are still levels that we hadn't seen until late October.
But we can't say things are getting better for sure, because the amount of testing is well below the level that was happening last month, and the proportion of people who see their tests end up positive is still above 30%.
While hospitals in Wisconsin are seeing fewer COVID patients, it is still well above what we were seeing in September, with 82% of state hospital beds filled as of Monday, and 88% filled in Southeast Wisconsin.
And deaths continue to happen in horrifying numbers. Not only did America exceed 300,000 COVID fatalities today, but Wisconsin had its 4,000th COVID death reported over the weekend, with nearly 50 Wisconsinites a day dying last week.
Now maybe Wisconsin's trajectory on COVID is going in the right direction in mid-December, although we'll see if people can stay on good behavior during the Holidays. But it's going to take several months before we have enough people vaccinated in order to get to a point that even resembles the existence we had 12 months ago, and we need to keep taking steps to push the numbers down in all COVID-related statistics.
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Sunday, December 13, 2020

A close statewide election in Wisconsin doesn't mean a closely divided Legislature

Wanted to riff off of a breakdown by the Journal-Sentinel's Craig Gilbert on how elections for the Wisconsin State Legislature continue to be non-competitive.
Republicans won 61 of 99 state Assembly seats and 10 of 16 state Senate seats on the ballot in 2020. Only four of 99 Assembly races and one of 16 state Senate races were decided by less than 3 percentage points. Only eight Assembly races and one state Senate race were decided by less than 5 points.

This occurred in a year when the contest for president was determined by six-tenths of a point. In other words, the state as whole could not be more competitive. Yet 84% of Assembly races were decided by double digits. That’s a testament to not just the power of incumbency but how one-sided in their makeup most districts are....

The other main consequence — the map’s GOP tilt — can be measured by looking at how each district votes at the top of the ticket. Despite narrowly losing the statewide vote, Republican Donald Trump carried 62 of 99 Assembly districts and 22 of 33 state Senate districts.

In other words, more than 60% of the state’s legislative districts are more Republican than the state as whole, based on presidential voting. In 2016, 63% of Assembly districts were more Republican than average. In 2012, it was 60%.

This means that in a 50/50 election year when equal numbers of Republican and Democratic voters turn out and independents are split right down the middle, Republicans can be expected to win 60 or more Assembly seats. Put another way, they go into every election cycle with an inherent 20- to 30-seat advantage in the chamber.
Gilbert notes that some of this disparity is due to cities like Milwaukee and Madison being so heavily Dem that it's not likely to have a 50-50 outcome at the state level even if the statewide vote totals are 50-50. But some of this is certainly due to the maps drawn by WisGOPs in 2011, which you can see here.
I don't have the data set that Gilbert has in front of him (hey Craig, send it over!), but 2021 offers a chance to limit this disparity, as new districts have to be drawn at both the state and Congressional level. While Republicans control the Legislature, Governor Evers can veto the maps if they are done through the typical bill-making process.

While GOPs will likely try some kind of shenangians to get around Evers (be ready for it folks), I do think it'll be harder for Republicans to create maps for the 2020s that are as rigged as the ones in the 2010s. A big reason why is that the Milwaukee suburbs have become bluer, as shown by these results from November. This blew up the GOP's scheme in the 2010s map, because the "GOP" districts that connected Wauwatosa to Brookfield and Mequon to Whitefish Bay ended up flipping to Dems in 2020. My guess is that GOPs will make up a couple of blue-leaning districts in western and northern Milwaukee County and try to shore up districts in Ozaukee and Waukesha, instead of risking more lost districts in the burbs in the 2020s.

The gains for Republicans in northern, central and western Wisconsin during the 2010s will make for some interesting choices as the maps take place, both at the state level and for Congress. The flip side is that the Trumpiest areas of the 715 are also the ones losing population, so will that prevent the ability of Republicans to get any more seats out of that in this go-round?

Conversely, the population growth in Dane County likely will result in more districts being sent to that blue-voting area, and growth around Green Bay and Appleton might make it tougher to keep the State Senate seats around those two communities to stay in their current gerrymandered form, while not being as able to limit each metro area in the Fox Cities to one Assembly seat each.

These choices will be brought more into focus as we get district-level stats on votes in 2020, and the Census figures are finalized at the end of this month (well, supposed to be, anyway). I messed around with the Dave's Redistricting app a while ago, and made this map for Wisconsin, which leans 57-42 GOP based on election results from 2012-2018, and the 2018 population totals.
But many more districts are close and flippable, especially compared to the uncompetitive maps we have been under. Which is the difference in Wisconsin between a fair map and the gerrymandered garbage we have today.

So let's keep an eye on both the data and the map-making shenangians for 2021, as it likely can't end up more rigged against Dems at the state level than it is today. But the real question is how much more fairer might it become in a state that is stubbornly near 50-50 in overall votes.
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Saturday, December 12, 2020

Dems must get angry, and talk straight and bold on a failing economy

Just because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won in Wisconsin and nationwide, it doesn't mean that Dems don't have a lot of work to do going forward. Former UW-Milwaukee econ professor William Holahan printed this piece recently, which goes into how Dems need to improve their messaging, especially on the economy.

Holahan says that Dems often cower in fear of being slurred as "socialists", and never respond by standing strong for what they believe in, and showing voters that they want to solve real problems, unlike Republicans.
"Socialism" is a term in economics that describes activity in which the means of production and distribution are owned and managed collectively through some level of government. Confusion arises because the term "socialism" can apply both to small sectors of the economy and to centralized control of the economy as a whole. Strictly speaking, the streets, roads and highway departments, the water and sanitation departments, the police and fire departments, the military, the courts, the weather service, and a host of other services fit the "socialist" definition. But instead of applying the toxic S-word to such small units of the economy, descriptive words are substituted, such as “public sector,” “government sector,” or an adjective is attached to individual government services, as in “public schools,” or "public health," or “public parks,” or “public safety.” Government responsibility in these sectors is a long-accepted necessary complement to the market economy.

In election season, Republicans affix "socialism" to Democratic proposals in order to conjure the image of economy-wide centralized governmental ownership of the means of production and distribution of the nation's goods and services. Republican campaign ads attach that image to Democrats with references to historical examples: Soviet Union and China; and contemporary ones: Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea. If such a centralized bureaucracy is to maintain control, it cannot allow competition from private firms, an extreme constraint on individual liberty and ingenuity. Exiles from such places tell of debilitating inefficiencies, shortages, and forced labor camps and gulags for dissidents. [Dem US Rep. Abby] Spanberger is right: Democrats must strongly disassociate from such imagery.

Of course, no one, not even AOC or Bernie Sanders, is suggesting centralized control of the United States economy. Still, serious policy proposals — from investing in public safety, or addressing climate, health insurance, pandemic, infrastructure, poverty, economic recovery — all require a complementary role for government to correct identifiable market failures.

Although false and misleading, Republicans will conflate government and socialism in their campaign messaging. It is a lazy, contemptuous gambit, and a distraction from the absence of their own policy approaches. To respond when their proposals are labeled "socialist," Democrats can use elementary economics to explain the necessary role of government in their proposals, sharpen their explanation in focus groups, and then pose a challenge: "Here's our plan to address serious national problems; where is yours?"
Right. When GOPs blabber about “socialist health care”, Dems need to respond “Do you think health care should be tied into someone’s job? We don’t.”

When GOPs try to hold up COVID aid by giving liability shields to corporations, Dems should ask “Why shouldn’t companies be responsible for making workplaces safer? Why should they be left off the hook?” This allows Dems to show voters they’re in the corner of workers over fatcats, while GOPs clearly only care about profits and giving more power to people that have a ton of it already.

I also wanted to forward these thoughts from Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, Inside Greenberg's article, he says that Dems blew a chance to make bigger gains in November because they were unwilling to forcefully engage Republicans on too many issues, and did not have a clear economic agenda. This allowed Trump/GOP to step into the gap, and drive up turnout among blue-collar whites while Dems did not benefit as much as predicted from turnout by voters of color.
BUT TRUMP’S RACIALIZING OF THE ELECTION was only part of the story on why Democrats underperformed. They were not pulled down by “fear of socialism,” my research showed. They were pulled down by the lack of any economic relief and any economic offer to counter Trump’s racist imagery and push to open the economy. Democrats were pulled down by their offering no competing narrative to Trump’s drumbeat on “law and order” on what was at stake in November. Democrats were not heard decrying the health care costs that are killing people, or battling for lower insurance and drug costs, or battling corporations and their big tax breaks—as they were in the midterms. Biden ended up with no advantage on who would be better for the middle class.

You may not have noticed that Trump cynically shifted from attacking Mexican Americans and Latinos to attacking Blacks. He actively courted Latinos, especially in Florida, and it worked. Fear of immigrants was far and away the top reason to vote for Trump in 2016 and 2018, but only one in five in 2020 said they voted for Trump because of the “border wall” and “being tough on immigration.” That gave many Latinos the space to consider Trump, because he was talking about their own experience, wanted to open up the economy, or based on his macho style, or opposition to Castro and Chávez. That hurt Democrats in Florida and Texas, and made Nevada closer.

And one has to ask: Why did Trump’s race war joined passionately by the Democrats not produce historic turnout in the Black communities where Democrats’ organizational efforts could not have been stronger? Trump might have won 20 percent of Black men, but that is unimportant compared to Blacks not increasing their turnout in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta and other cities. What went wrong?...

Blacks and Latinos were the voters “most frustrated and hurt by the political status quo that further enriches the top 1 percent and weakens unions.” Not disrupting the status quo where politics is rigged against working people means you have to live with a minimum wage that keeps you in poverty and a government that cuts education spending and investments in infrastructure and does nothing to make health care and prescription drugs affordable.

In short, while Democrats championed Black lives as a racial issue, they fell far short in addressing how much Black Americans wanted to shake up a rigged political system to do more for working people and bring changes that can help their families, that they can feel in their pocketbook. That, more than anything else, explains the disappointing level of Black turnout.
It seems telling to me that the non-racist ads Trump ran in Wisconsin tried to claim credit for an alegedly growing economy. This was shameless and galling, given the heightened levels of unemployment, and the disproportionate pain that has been laid on the lower half of the country over the last year.

But did we see Dems run strong on unlocking health care from someone's job, or remind voters of the GOP Tax Scam that did nothing to help the overwhelming majority of the country, but gave huge tax breaks to the rich while incentivizing even more inequality? No, we did not. Likely because the DNC/Biden-Harris crew decided on a message of "character and competence counts" (hey, it worked on people like my usually Republican-voting mother) and a general approval of a more inclusive country that respects and recognizes all its citizens.

But it didn't forcefully call out the racism of Trump and Trumpers, and it didn't forcefully attack the failing GOP economic policies that have left so many in desperate situations as 2020 ends.

If Dems continue to be the party that accepts a status quo that far too many are losing under, they can be outflanked by a "straight-talking" GOP whose policies are significantly worse for voters but successfully redirect anger against "elites" and a "broken system."

Frankly, Dems can't afford not to go bold and populist, if they want to win downticket in the coming years. And they need to realize that the election of Joe Biden doesn't mean that we can go back to the bland policies and messaging of the 2010s.
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Friday, December 11, 2020

GOP snowflakes aren't "fighting" the election. They're setting things up for more rigging

If this was what Friday's hearing about how things proceeded in Wisconsin during the 2020 election, I might have been OK with it. Hey, I'm all for discussing how we could have elections work better, because they're pretty poorly done in this state and country these days. And if you want to have all communities run absentee ballots at the election sites (like in Madison) instead of having one "Central Count" in a community (like in Milwaukee, Kenosha, Green Bay, and other places that ended up reporting later on Election Night), I think it's worth talking about.

But let's be real. That's NOT what this was about. Here's one of the members of the committee that held this charade today. A "rogue agency" that was set up by Brandtjen's fellow Republicans, carrying out election laws that were set up by the Republicans in the gerrymandered State Legislature over the last decade. Nice going Menomonee Falls. Way to go Richfield. You picked a real winner right here.

Adam Serwer of the Atlantic wrote an article in The Atlantic yesterday that summed up the GOP mentality perfectly. The piece was titled "If You Didn't Vote for Trump, Your Vote is Fraudulent."
Trump has claimed that the outcome reflects a “rigged election,” publicly indulging nonsense conspiracy theories. He has pressured officials in Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victories in those states. His attorneys have filed baseless, tendentious lawsuits in those three states as well as in Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin, only to be rebuffed in every case but one. From the beginning, the only acceptable or legitimate outcome for Trump and his hard-core supporters was a victory—with the description “landslide” appended no matter how narrow or wide it happened to be....

Yet the rubbish claims of fraud continue. Trumpism demands the profession of beliefs that are neither strictly literal nor exactly figurative, but instead statements of ideological values that don’t fit neatly in either category. These statements are not amenable to journalistic fact-checking, because they are not factual claims; they are assertions of identity and political legitimacy that are incontestable on their own terms. To announce loudly that you accept the proclamations of the Church of Trump, no matter how false, contradictory, or exaggerated, is to identify yourself as a member of that faith community; to deny them is to risk excommunication. As long as devotion to the Trumpian creed remains a central tenet of membership in the Republican Party, precious few elected officials will risk the brand of the heretic.
This is correct. GOPs are the political equivalent of meatball sports fans who always thinks their team will win regardless of circumstance, and that there is always an excuse for a loss - usually something about "the refs screwed us/They cheated!"

But Serwer notes it goes even further than that. Serwer says that Republicans think that they are the only group that should be in power, and the only group whose opinions should matter. Which isn't how a democracy or republic is supposed to work.
The conviction that the rival political constituency cannot, under any circumstances, legitimately hold power has not yet resulted in widespread violence. But it remains incompatible with democracy, which requires the assent of its losers and the peaceful transfer of power between factions. Enough local Republican officials in 2020 have recognized that their civic obligations outweigh their partisan identities. But if Republicans continue to believe, and assert as a matter of their partisan identity, that the rival party’s victories are fraudulent, their claim to power illegitimate, and their holding office an existential threat, at some point, the tension between partisan identity and democratic function will become irreconcilable. Next time a president seeks to stay in power after losing an election, there may not be enough Republicans who place duty above party to make a difference.

When they say the 2020 election was stolen, Trumpists are expressing their view that the votes of rival constituencies should not count, even though they understand, on some level, that they do. They are declaring that the nation belongs to them and them alone, whether or not they actually comprise a majority, because they are the only real Americans to begin with.
And they call liberals self-absorbed snowflakes. Riiight.

Even if some Republican politicians acknowledge that Trump lost and that a majority of voters chose Biden, they see an opportunity in trying to complain about the result. And that opportunity is in raising money for the next election, and in changing the rules when that next election comes around. The only difference between now and prior versions of the "illegitimate election" gambit is that instead of passing the script onto their AM radio spokespeople, the GOP politicians are saying this BS themselves. Then they plan to use these false claims and BS investigations as their "proof" to promote bills that will try to rig elections even more into their favor.

But what do you expect from a party that stopped trying to win on ideas at least a decade ago? This scene from today's sham hearing sums it up. As a soon-to-be State Rep from Madison rightly put it. If they live inside their own Bubble of BS, they would be an eye-rolling annoyance, and little more. But they continue to screw things up for us in the reality-based community, and I'm beyond done with it, and the type of lowlife that would vote for trash like them.

PS- Now WisGOP is trying to violate their own laws on paying for recounts, and stiffing people like me with the bill for Trump's racist PR stunt. This is from the Chair of the Dane County Board of Supervisors. There are no "good ones." There just aren't.

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Thursday, December 10, 2020

More layoffs in both US and Wisconsin, and GOPs want to make those people desperate

Remember when I said that we should be cautious about last week’s decline in new unemployment claims because it could be skewed by the Thanksgiving Holiday, and that we should wait to see what things looked like from the 1st week of December?

Well, we found out about that first week of December today, and it was not good at all.
Another 853,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It was the largest number of claims since mid-September.

Not adjusting for seasonality, initial claims stood at nearly 950,000….

On top of regular applications for jobless benefits, 427,609 workers filed claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which is designed to help people such as the self-employed. It was also an increase from the prior week. This number is not adjusted for seasonality.

Together, first-time claims totaled 1.4 million last week, not adjusted for seasonal changes, also the highest level since mid-September.
Some of this increase seems to be related to including the number of people on workshare to the number of people out of work entirely, as the Department of Labor’s report notes.
Note: Advance claims are not directly comparable to claims reported in prior weeks. Advance claims are reported by the state liable for paying the unemployment compensation, whereas previous weeks reported claims reflect claimants by state of residence. In addition, claims reported as "workshare equivalent" in the previous week are added to the advance claims as a proxy for the current week's "workshare equivalent" activity.
But that same report says just over 100,000 Americans were on workshare in late November, so it’s still the case that there was a significant rise in people getting laid off at the start of December.

You would think that jump in people losing their jobs would add to the urgency to get a new stimulus deal done, but given that Moscow Mitch seems fine with wrecking things for Biden and tens of millions of Americans, it is not guaranteed.

Remember, those 427,600 people that went back on PUA last week will be cut off in 2 ½ weeks if there is no stimulus deal struck by then, as would the 8.55 million that were already receiving PUA two weeks ago. Also set to be cut off are most of the 5.1 million Americans that have been out of work and on the “regular” unemployment program for more than 26 weeks. These two groups were the majority of the 19 million people on unemployment two weeks ago (the last date we have for this data).
Wisconsin was not immune, as over 21,000 Sconnies filed new unemployment claims last week, a rise of nearly 5,400 compared to the week before, and the number of continuing claims in Wisconsin jumped by more than 17,500, going above 100,000 for the first time since mid-October. In addition, Wisconsin’s level of long-term unemployed stayed elevated in late November, still exceeding 65,000, with another 27,000 being on PUA.

Along with these 92,000 Wisconsinites possibly being cut off in the next 16 days, they and the other 105,000 currently on “regular” unemployment are looking at another barrier to benefits in the near future, if the gerrymandered GOP State Legislature gets their way.
During a Wednesday meeting with the state’s largest business group, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and incoming Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said temporary waivers of Wisconsin’s one-week waiting period and work search requirements for unemployment benefits will be allowed to expire early next year.

Lawmakers approved waiving the one-week waiting period until Feb. 7 in their wide-ranging COVID-19 response legislation earlier this year.

The work search waiver was first instituted through an emergency order from Gov. Tony Evers in March. When that order expired, his administration worked with lawmakers to approve an emergency rule to extend it. Those extensions were approved by the GOP-controlled rulemaking committee in September and November, with the latest extension set to expire on Feb. 2.

During the virtual meeting with Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce members on Wednesday afternoon, Vos argued the waivers shouldn’t be extended again because "Wisconsin’s unemployment has come down to a much more manageable number."

"That one-week waiting period should probably remain and not be allowed to lapse again, so people are out looking for work as quick as they can," Vos said.
What's "work", Robbin'?

Senate GOP Leader Devin LeMahieu echoed Vos’s words to the WMC oligarchs, including the (now untrue) claim about unemployment trending lower in Wisconsin.

This underscores the goal of these barriers for Republicans – to make the unemployed as desperate as possible, so they will accept any menial work and wages they can, while lessening the amount of people on the unemployment rolls, keeping payroll taxes lower for the WMC crowd. In either health care or in employment prospects, the last thing GOPs and their puppetmasters want is for everyday people to have options.

I can’t understand how this GOP neglect and arrogance is allowed in 2020, but it won’t stop until there is an electoral, financial and/or physical price to be paid in mistreating the poor and unemployed. That goes both for the corporations that value profits over people, and the GOP-puppets that they prop up.
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Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Even without tax credits, Foxconn is still scarring the state

The Legislative Audit Bureau released their annual oversight report on the state’s Foxconn incentive package today. It credited the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation for tightening up some Walker-era procedures and improving its follow-up methods on whether Foxconn was eligible for certain tax write-offs. But LAB did ding WEDC for not allowing work done at Foxconn by out-of-state residents in Wisconsin, but also allowing some work that was done outside of Wisconsin.
We found that WEDC’s written procedures indicated that WEDC will not award program tax credits for the wages paid to certain employees who performed services in Wisconsin. These procedures indicated that if employees were not residents of Wisconsin or contiguous states, Foxconn would not receive program tax credits for the wages paid to these employees, even if these employees performed services in Wisconsin. For example, if a resident of Indiana traveled to Wisconsin to perform services in the zone, these procedures indicated that WEDC would not award Foxconn any tax credits for the wages paid to this employee. In this way, WEDC’s procedures did not comply with statutes.

We again recommend that WEDC comply with statutes by modifying its written procedures to explicitly require it to award program tax credits for only the wages paid to employees for services performed in Wisconsin. We also recommend that WEDC modify its written procedures to require it to award program tax credits for the wages paid to all employees for services performed in Wisconsin, regardless of the residency of these employees.
LAB still notes that WEDC and the Evers Administration were correct to deny Foxconn tax write-offs for 2019, as Foxconn had well under 520 employees working for it on December 31 of that year.

LAB adds that Foxconn could still get some of that money earmarked from 2018 and 2019, but they’d have to hire a whole lot of people by the end of this year.
As shown in Table 2, WEDC may award Foxconn up to $259.8 million in program tax credits for creating jobs and making capital investments through 2020. WEDC would award such tax credits in 2021. To be awarded any job creation tax credits, Foxconn must create at least 1,820 jobs filled by eligible employees as of December 31, 2020. To be awarded any of the $19.1 million in program tax credits that were carried forward and available to be earned in 2020, Foxconn must create at least 5,200 jobs filled by eligible employees as of December 31, 2020. A total of $28.6 million in job creation tax credits will carry forward and may be awarded in future years. None of the $192.9 million in capital investment tax credits that Foxconn could have been awarded in 2020 will carry forward to future years.
In last month’s budget projections, Governor Evers’ Administration made clear that it is not planning on paying Foxconn anything under the current contract.
…the projections are also affected by developments related to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation's (WEDC) 2017 contract with three Foxconn affiliates ("Foxconn") for a project in Mount Pleasant, located in Racine County. Under the 2017 contract, Foxconn may earn annual capital and job creation tax credits related to the construction of a Generation 10.5 Fabrication Facility in an Electronics Information and Technology Manufacturing Zone (EITMZ) in Southeastern Wisconsin. The State of Wisconsin and local partners have invested significant resources in real estate, site development, and infrastructure over the last three years in furtherance of the project. However, based on Foxconn's activities in calendar years 2018 and 2019, WEDC has determined that Foxconn has not been eligible for credits under the contract, with the 2019 eligibility determination currently subject to a good faith negotiation period with Foxconn that will lapse at the end of November 2020. WEDC's non-eligibility determinations will likely continue, as the company also does not appear to be on track for credit eligibility based on its calendar year 2020 activities. Based on these realities, the projections contained in this report assume no payment of EITMZ credits to Foxconn in fiscal years 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23.
But there are some WisGOP lawmakers still trying to convince voters that this scam will one day pay off. 1. Hey Mike, even you are calling it an assembly plant. That's not the manufacturing of large-screen panels that was sold to us 3 years ago.

2. It’s the Holiday season, so I’d hope an electronics company is hiring up to get products out for this time of the year. It’s also how Foxconn could game this system by hiring large numbers of people in December, resulting in a high workforce on 12/31, but then doing seasonal layoffs in January (as Josh Dzieza has noted in one of his many exposes on the Fox-con).

But even if Foxconn’s gambit doesn’t result in qualifying for tax credits now and in the future, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t already been a significant cost that has been sunk. We got a reminder of this in an article in The Guardian that came out this week, which centered on a former Mount Pleasant resident named Sean McFarlane, who was relocated by the village in order to make way for Foxconn’s huge project…that has never happened.
To make way for this “wonder”, village officials temporarily placed the McFarlanes in a dilapidated vacant house with no working toilets or heat, then allegedly failed to meet the promised relocation payment of $22,000.

Three years later, the factory for which the family went through hell hasn’t been built. Sitting in his wheelchair on an empty sidewalk in November, McFarlane sighed in disbelief as he scanned the vast patchwork of mud, open fields, ponds and a few underutilized buildings comprising the 3,000-acre Foxconn site.

“They demolished my house for this? A bunch of geese that sit on a hill?” McFarlane, 37, asked. “It’s upsetting. That’s where my old house was, and now it’s just nothing. You know? Nothing.”
The Guardian story goes on to note that Mount Pleasant (over?)paid McFarlane’s mother $500,000 for her property, and then said that money was for both McFarlane family properties. Wasteful and abusive, what a way to operate! In addition to the land purchases, the was the large amount of taxpayer dollars used to upgrade roads around Foxconn that were originally supposed to go to more-traveled roads in other parts of the state.
Lotta road, not a lot of traffic

The Guardian also notes other infrastructure was built up in Racine County well ahead of any kind of economic activity that might warrant such expense.
Pristine new four- and six-lane highways now border and bisect the site’s fields. Village leadership claimed autonomous vehicles would fill the roads, but green John Deere tractors were among the few vehicles in sight on a recent afternoon. Many view nearly $320m in water, sewage and electric upgrades that ratepayers must shoulder as unnecessary for the site’s four underused buildings. And earlier this year, Mount Pleasant began leasing farmland it purchased back to farmers.

In a statement to the Guardian, Claude Lois, a village consultant hired to manage the project, wrote that Mount Pleasant “worked diligently to secure voluntary agreements with property owners … and has succeeded in doing so in the vast majority of cases”. The Mount Pleasant village president, Dave DeGroot, did not respond to a request for comment, but in September told the Racine Journal Times he’s “thrilled” with the progress and called for patience on a project that will now take “decades” to complete.

But as he took pictures of the long, empty sidewalk and highway, McFarlane said he had none of that patience left. “The roads were supposed to be for 13,000 workers but no one is here,” he said. “What is this sidewalk for? I don’t understand it. It’s the sidewalk to nowhere.”
But you know what is here? The payments for the $1 billion in debt that Mount Pleasant and other local governments took on to build things up for Foxconn. The village still hasn’t released the final numbers of how much that’ll cost local taxpayers in the 2021 budget, but in 2020, the Foxconn-related debt payments totaled more than $95 million, and the total cost was over $146 million.
This is where I remind you that if Mount Pleasant is not able to continue to double down on debt, and if Foxconn pulls out and/or refuses to pay the village, then the state is on the hook for 40% to bail out the village for what they owe.

While I am glad we have an administration in Madison that isn’t doing the Walker-era routine of continuing to hand out tax dollars to these grifters because they don’t want to admit that Foxconn isn’t working, don’t tell me that the state doesn’t owe anything else if the jobs don’t come to Foxconn. This mess is still going to cause us headaches in the coming years, and the dollars we threw away on this PR scam vs more productive uses means we have a lot to dig ourselves out from.
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Monday, December 7, 2020

In Wisconsin, new COVID cases dropping as testing is dropping. And too many people are dropping

The good news in Wisconsin's COVID-19 numbers is that the decline in new cases that we saw in the week of Thanksgiving continued for the first week of December.
But I can't say that this means the massive levels of COVID outbreak is subsiding in Wisconsin, and not just because 2 weeks is too small a sample size to make for a trend. It's also because the number of Wisconsinites being tested has also dropped to multi-week lows, so the positivity rate is back at the levels we had in mid-November.
And the spike in cases in previous weeks led to the worst week yet for COVID deaths in Wisconsin, with an average of 60 people dying a day. Over 1,900 Wisconsinites have died in the last 6 weeks from this virus, compared to the less than 1,800 that were killed in the 7 months before then.
It does seem that Wisconsin Republicans now understand that we need to honor the dead, to act to make sure the carnage stops, and that it never happens again. They made a lot of tweets along those lines today. Oh wait, that's about something that happened 79 years ago. They still aren't saying much (if anything) about the Pearl Harbor-level of COVID casualties that is hitting our country every day. And so it goes on.
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