Foxconn Boondoggle Is Electoral Ammo Wisconsin Dems Seeking

Update: "If Dems are smart, they’ll come out strong against this scam as it goes through the Legislature in the coming weeks, and tie it around the necks of any Republican who dares to sign off on this pre-election corporate welfare," (Jake's Econ).
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Madison, Wisconsin — The Republican scheme to donate $3 billion in public monies to corporate shareholders is a hard sell in Wisconsin, (Foxconn or Fox Con, Say No to the Fox Con, and Fox Con and Water).

For Wisconsin Republicans the public will and welfare of the state have never been considerations for public policy.

The Foxconn scheme is about Republicans transferring from tax-payers' some $3 billion to private Taiwanese interests, and no matter the fiscal and economic damage in the state then declaring rectitude and job creation is the 2018 elections.

The question is: Is the moribund Democratic Party in Wisconsin savvy enough to clobber the Republicans?

Will Republicans holding office in Wisconsin state senate, (20 (R) - 13 (D)), be vulnerable to a message of, 'if they think have $3 billion to burn, don't give our money away to Taiwan.'

Twenty-three of Wisconsin's 72 counties are swing, or pivot, counties, (Ballotpedia). Notes Ballotpedia, "Nineteen Senate districts in Wisconsin intersect with Pivot Counties. As of June 2017, Republicans controlled 14 of them, (Ballotpedia).

Of those 14 senate seats, (though gerrymandered), the Democratic Party should have begun looking at which Republicans can be recalled.

As a life-long Wisconsinite, I guarantee you Obama-to-Trump votes do not believe giving away the store to Taiwan and Illinois is a compelling message.

Ask former Sen. George Petak how working families like subsidizing private corporate interests.

Petak was recalled in 1995 after voting for a .1 percent sales tax increase for a new Brewers stadium.

Wonder how the $3 billion for a Taiwanese corporation will play.

Wisconsin Rips Foxconn $3 Billion Boondoggle

Madison, Wisconsin — Ask folks in the northern two-thirds of this state what they could do with $3 billion to stimulate the economy and few would say, 'give it all to one Taiwanese corporation whose CEO calls Foxconn workers, "animals,'" (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Yet, this is precisely what Gov. Scott Walker is proposing as the national business press shakes its collective head and wonders how credulous are the Wisconsin people. Not so much, polling shows.

As Walker tries to ram through the largest public subsidy in Wisconsin history for the benefit of corporate bad guy, Foxconn, each day reveals another outrage.

From Jud Lounsbury in Uppity Wisconsin:

It's very simple math.

Approximately one-third of Foxconn jobs will be filled by people living in Illinois, which means that one-third of the whopping three billion that Wisconsin taxpayers will be spending will be going toward Illinois residents:  One billion.

It also means that every dime Illinois Foxconn workers earn will be spent and taxed in Illinois -- not Wisconsin.

The Fox Con is the most audacious scam in Wisconsin history and the word is spreading, (Foxconn or Fox Con, Say No to the Fox Con, Fox Con and Water).

Scott Walker is avoiding the public and retreating to rightwing radio, hoping desperation of workers under the Walker administration translates to don't ask questions about the $3 billion in public funds.

Said Allen Ruff, historian and social justice activist living in Madison:

"We understand, of course, that this proposed swindle is but the logical extension, the result of the effort to smash unions at the heart of 'Act 10' and the successful push to turn Wisconsin into a 'right to work' open shop state. Setting aside the tax subsidies and state's natural resources -- the availability of water needed for the production process and the plentiful sand needed for the operation's glass, Foxconn would not consider coming here if there wasn't a vulnerable and unprotected work force. Especially in light of the labor unrest that has swept through the company's Chinese factories in recent years,' (Facebook).

Wisconsin Is Saying 'No' to the Fox Con

Wisconsin delivers a hostile response to Chinese scheme to foist
colony onto the Badger state.
Scholar, Allen Ruff, created the Facebook news group site,
Say No to the Fox Con over weekend, quickly gathering
100-plus members as state mobilizes opposition to Foxconn.

Imposing a colony in Wisconsin land of sand and water

Madison, Wisconsin — In July Donald Trump, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville, Wisconsin) and Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) extolled the virtues of tax payers coughing up $ 3 billion to Fox Conn, (aka Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd), in an unprecedented bid to induce the controversial electronics company to site a plant in Wisconsin—a "win" sounding too good to be true, (Washington Post).

Hon Hai Precision-Foxconn is too good to be true; it's a lie.

Wisconsin people smell a rat; an anti-human, polluting rat that infamously induced Chinese workers to commit suicide rather than be forced to work another day in Chinese work camp-'dormitory' complexes, (CBS News), (Jenny Chan, New Technology, Work and Employment), (CNN Technology). [Foxconn communications director Liu Kun, argued in defense of worker suicides that "with more than a million employees in China alone, the rate of 'self-killing' wasn't far from China's relatively high average," after the company installed anti-suicide nets to catch workers jumping to their deaths in prison dormitories, (CBS News).]

Led by social media such as Facebook, Wisconsin's political culture supports a ready resistance to Foxconn.

On August 4, scholar-activist Allen Ruff created the Facebook group site, Say No to the Fox Con, quickly gathering 150-plus members, expected to balloon to 1,000s by the end of next week as  a "clearing house for critical news and views, primarily articles to inform and educate opposition to the construction of a Foxconn factory in Wisconsin. Pieces regarding the impact on the environment, accounts of the firm's operations elsewhere, and analyses of other effects and 'externalities' not offered up by backers."

Gov. Scott Walker has called a for a special legislative session to push the tax-water-sand give-away through in August before citizens begin focusing on the scam, (Fortune), intended in part to reelect Gov. Jobs Failure who counts on Wisconsinites too discouraged to effectively oppose his regime.

Notes John Nichols in The Capital Times:

Walker, who has claimed over the years that the state is too impoverished to adequately fund public education, public services and roads, has suddenly determined that Wisconsin has an extra $3 billion to hand off to a controversial multinational corporation that is famous for making big promises to nations and states and then failing to deliver.

How is this possible?

Easy. Walker is running for re-election and, as a career politician, he is perfectly happy to sacrifice fiscal responsibility on the altar of his own ambition.

Blowing up the Fox Con is the win working families are counting on before the state is mobilized against Walker in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign.

War Infects Unthinking Minds

"If Memorial Day is to have any meaning and content whatsoever, it should not simply and solely be burgers on the grill, or even worse some stars-and-stripes patriotic praise for the empire. …We should be honoring those who fought for freedom, for democracy, and against fascism. Consider the ‘premature’ anti-fascists (those fighting for the Spanish Republic) who gathered from all over the world to fight the beast at that time. The continuities today all over the world are stark once you cut through the fog and the globaloney," said Allen Ruff, a member of Jews for Equal Justice, (CounterPunch, (2002)).

It's Memorial Day, 2017 and for too many this means: No thinking and if you must think please do it quietly, (Isthmus).

Love the Holiday, good to see grunts now-gone get some recognition and public service and sacrifice hailed.

Yet, our collective display of no-think this weekend shows allegiance not to the memory of the fallen, rather to ritual reenactment of myth that in itself becomes the object of Memorial Day.

Is this really what service and sacrifice are about? The "increasingly parochial culture that celebrates the virtues of ignorance, promotes a cult of stupidity, and extols the present as a process without an alternative," as Tariq Ali poses heretical thoughts in his The Clash of Fundamentalisms, (Verso Books, 2002).

Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

Questions should be asked before Trump decides invading and bombing someone, somewhere need to escalate.

From 15 years ago, Memorial Day 2002 in Madison, Wisconsin at James Madison Park, (CounterPunch), the year after 911. History matters.
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Madison, Wisconsin, (2002) — Clarence Kailin, age 87, is a surviving member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and still tirelessly works for peace and justice. "Our fight for economic and social justice, for peace and freedom is a struggle that is just as important today as it was in 1937 and 1938," said Kailin describing what the Memorial Day event represents. "This will be more than memories of the past. Our immediate fight must be against our own militarism and for the struggle for peace and equality."

Asked why he wasn’t out attending a conventional parade or waving an American flag, Kailin answered, "We’re waving our own flag today. The destruction of the World Trade towers was the best opportunity that could happen to Bush. So he could use it as a scare tactic–‘the world is full of terrorism and we have to go after it. And we will lose a few civil liberties along the way, but we have to do this and have a bigger military budget.’ Our whole foreign policy is based on solving things by force and violence."

We’re very wealthy here. But at least one half of the world is living on a dollar or two a day; it’s a terrible situation. In Iraq, we have undermined the whole structure there. A half a million children there have died–all absolutely unnecessary. We won’t give up the fight. This is simply a military government (in Washington) and we are going to pay a hell of a price if we don’t find a way to put a stop to it."

Following is the text from which Mr. Kailin read as the opening speaker at the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade event:

***
One month ago, on April 28, I was in New York with my daughter, Julie. We attended the annual affair of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade held at New York University. This was in celebration of the 66th anniversary of the Volunteers for Liberty. There were 900 people there, and among others, we heard the San Francisco Mime Troupe who sang many songs from the Spanish Civil War. That was the emotional high point of the day.

However, we were there for more than memories. At this time of international crisis, we find an urgent need to carry on the spirit of struggle in which we, along with the Spanish people, were involved sixty some years ago when fascism was threatening the world, when Spain was the only country to stand up to Hitler, and when the democracies betrayed the Spanish Republic, giving Hitler and Mussolini everything they wanted. This was when the International Brigades were formed. Spain and the Volunteers made that period one of the most unusual and unique in history.

Today, with the United States having become the dominant world power and seeking to extend its empire to every part of the globe, the danger is much greater than at any other time. Almost total control of information by the monopolized news media has made our work that much more difficult.

I want to quote from the latest edition of The Progressive magazine. This is in Matt Rothschild’s column. He quotes from Tariq Ali, an editor of the New Left Review. In the prologue of his latest book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, he (Ali) criticizes our ‘increasingly parochial culture that celebrates the virtues of ignorance, promotes a cult of stupidity, and extols the present as a process without an alternative.’

‘The virtual outlawing of history by the dominant culture has reduced the process of democracy to farce. The result is a mishmash of cynicism, despair and escapism. This is precisely an environment designed to nurture irrationalisms of every sort. Over the last fifty years, religious revivalism with a political edge has flourished in many different cultures. Nor is the process finished. A major cause is the fact that all other exit routes have been sealed off by the mother of all fundamentalism: American imperialism.’

American capitalism is the common denominator, the main reason why we want to encourage the many single-issue organizations in this area to come together in common cause–but without asking them to giving up their own important work. … This is the work of lifetime. But I always see the fact that we outnumber them by a thousand to one. So one should never despair. So, again, seeing you here tells me that in the long run the people can win.

(clinched fist in the air) Salud, everyone!