Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/08/ey-foxconn-trump-walker.html
…
6 Likes
On Wisconsin…
4 Likes
wouldn’t it be great if politicians who negotiate these grifty deals could be held responsible for criminal negligence? voting walker out was no punishment, and it certainly won’t prove to be a deterrent. grifters gonna grift. and they always have enablers.
18 Likes
God, that asshole came to my city recently for a fundraiser, got a photo op with all our local assholes. He is probably doing better for himself now than when he was governor. Now, he can spread his shit all around the country without any accountability!
5 Likes
it always seems to end up that way. no consequences. start a dumpster fire, get paid to put it out. move on, repeat.
8 Likes
Plus, with conservatives, they point to the mess and say “see, we always told you that dumpsters were evil.”
9 Likes
As far as I see it they should be personally held liable, they have cost constituents money and even their homes. You don’t get to say “Oopsy hindsight is 20/20” and have no consequences.
9 Likes
The fantastic Reply All podcast did a story about the town caught up in this. The town council declared the area blighted when residents resisted moving.
4 Likes
8 Likes
5 Likes
I seriously don’t understand why a state would give tax breaks to any corporation to lure them there. The companies looking for new real estate have college-educated economists who know exactly what they’re doing. Local politicians…not so much.
It’s like going into a poker game on a table full of sharks thinking “I know how to play poker! Maybe I’ll win and get jerbs!”.
Long story short; you won’t.
10 Likes
The answer is that in the short term, the politician gets to brag and preen about the glory of the job-producing deal, knowing full well that by the time the truth comes out, he/she can either be long gone (often to a lobbying job for more money), or can be confident that he can spin the future failure to be someone else’s fault because memories are short. Not to mention that scandals are flowing at such a rapid rate now that it’s impossible to keep up.
6 Likes
It is difficult (but necessary) to bear in mind that a governor, a mayor, or a city councilman is often making a calculation about what will look good and earn votes, rather than about what will actually work for the government, economically speaking.
6 Likes
Definitely. Somebody should go to prison and that someone should be as high up as possible.
1 Like
Dumpsters ARE not evil. In fact they seem delicious…to the smarter than average bear!
2 Likes
This this and this. Trump and Walker get to make a big show of the announcement. Foxconn curries favor with the administration. The appearance of activity is way more fun (and efficient) than, you know, actually doing them. I doubt anyone involved thought this was gonna happen. Pure spectacle. Paging monsieur debord.
1 Like
Especially since people were pointing out the problems at the time. “Sure, in hindsight, maybe ignoring all the evidence when I made this deal was a bad idea, but…”
Or, sometimes worse: you will. Only they’ll be mediocre or even bad jobs that come with a lot of costs for the community which can’t be paid for by taxing the business creating the problems. (I was reading about some community that lured in some shipping centers with tax breaks, only to end up with some low-paying warehouse jobs and a monstrous amount of traffic problems, accidents and increased infrastructure cost that left the area financially hurting.)
Well, they really spared no effort… in wildly over-promising benefits to the project. It was absurd - and obviously doomed - in the bare facts, but compared to the over-the-top hype, the whole thing is an even bigger disaster.
5 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
