If you live in Wisconsin you might have noticed something rather curious, the state administration’s campaign ads and the administration itself aren’t talking very much about the most high profile financial fiasco scam deal the state has ever been involved with, the $4 billion plus the state promised to shell out in tax breaks, cash payments and other payouts in order to have FoxConn build it’s factory here. This deal was supposed to bring 13,000 high paying jobs to the state, add still more jobs in various support industries, and help to turn the state into the “Silicon Valley” of the midwest.
And the whole thing has turned into a stinking, reeking mess that smells worse than the local manure lagoon.
Exactly what FC is going to be building on that big hole it’s digging down in southern Wisconsin is anybody’s guess right now, but one thing we can be sure of is that it is definitely not going to be the $10 billion “Generation 10.5” facility the company originally promised. Back in May a news service out of Asia claimed that FC was going to be drastically scaling back the whole plan. FC denied this vehemently. But within about two months it finally admitted that the Gen 10 plant was not going to be built. Instead it was going to be putting in a so-called Generation 6 plant, which was about a quarter of the size of the original facility. But it would be building a Gen-10 plant there sometime in the future. Maybe. It would definitely fulfill its promises about the $10 billion investment and 13,000 jobs. Maybe. It would be done in “phases”, though, not all at once. Maybe.
Well, no.
By the end of summer that story had fallen apart as well. An FC spokesperson told a local paper that it was never going to build a Gen-10 plant here because by the time they had it up and running the market would be glutted with product from other makers. And when you consider the fact that FC apparently never even looked into buying the equipment that would have been necessary to build the Gen-10 plant according to industry analysts, and didn’t make arrangements with Corning to build the required glass manufacturing facility on the site (Corning, BTW, refused to build the facility unless the state coughed up hundreds of millions more in tax breaks and cash), and other things that have come to light since this all started, even someone a lot less cynical than I am would suspect FC never intended to build a Gen-10 plant here in the first place.
And then to make things even more interesting, the spokesperson, said that the Gen-6 plant quite probably wouldn’t be in operation for very long, and all those “good paying” assembly line jobs that they were claiming they were bringing to the state, well, there pretty much weren’t going to be any. Eventually what the facility will really do, they said, was to work on the development of FC’s technologies in displays, cellular and computers. The facility will eventually employ 90% “knowledge workers” and only 10% assembly line work, and most of the assembly line work is going to be done by robots, and, well, that pretty much flushes the hope that the company would employ the lower skilled minority workers from south east Wisconsin right down the drain.
The whole plan has simply evaporated in a puff of smoke. The facility they promised isn’t going to be built. The facility they now claim they will build probably isn’t going to actually operate for very long. The 13,000 jobs has now become maybe 2,000 – 3,000, and 90% of them are going to be “knowledge workers” engaging in research and development. And while R&D is enormously important, well, that’s not the 13,000 allegedly good paying blue collar jobs the company promised in order to sell this boondoggle in the first place.
Now there are a few safeguards in place. FC isn’t going to get $4+ billion out of us. But they are still going to get at least $1 billion from the state out of this deal and the state and local governments are still on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements. While we, the people of the state are going to get, well, we aren’t sure what we’re going to get yet, but it sure as hell isn’t going to be the deal the administration and FC promised when this all started.
The administration should have known better. Seriously, it should have. About 15 minutes worth of research on Google would have told them that if you’re dealing with FC, well, leave your wallet and credit cards at home, count all your fingers when you get your hand back after you shake hands with them, because they’ve done this before. High profile, high dollar projects have been reneged on in India, Vietnam, Pennsylvania, China … And remember that this is the company that had to install nets around the roofs of buildings on its factories in China because it allegedly treated its employees so badly they were committing suicide by jumping off the roofs.
Yes, this is that company.
Now I’m not saying that the politicians down there in Madison deliberately lied to us about this deal. But, well, let’s face it, this current crop of people inhabiting the state capital aren’t really all that bright, now are they? That’s glaringly obvious from the things they’ve said and done over the last eight or ten years. Their primary focus down there isn’t doing good things for the people of the state, it’s getting their asses re-elected so they can hang onto their little bit of power, cling to their fancy offices, go to “fund raising” events where they can guzzle cheap champagne and get their pictures taken with the rich and powerful, and pad their expense accounts. So when FC came along and dangled all those bright, shiny promises, they bit like a starving fish at a worm, and never noticed the hook. They totally ignored all of the warning signs, totally failed to properly research this, totally failed, well, totally failed at just about everything on this deal. And now they’re off soliciting bribes attending fund raising events, and we’re stuck with paying the bills.
Hopefully no, I’m not going to break it. But I’ve been doing this blog for a long time now and I’m tired of looking at the same style all the time. I haven’t changed the layout or design of this thing since I started it, so it’s high time for a refresh.
Ooo, coffee — that delightful, delicious beverage that both pleasures the taste buds and enlivens the brain, oh I feel so sorry for those of you who drink tea. (Come on, you tea drinkers know what you’re drinking is lawn sweepings soaked in tepid water, right?)
There is a lot of fighting these days over the definition of the term “milk” when it comes to products being sold to consumers, specifically over the use of the term in describing drinks made with various nuts and beans. I.e. “soy milk” and “almond milk” and that kind of thing. 
touchscreen but in a slightly different configuration, and I stuck it in a nice tilt case I picked up off Amazon. The RPi itself fits into the case along with the screen making it a neat, tidy package. The case give full access to the I/O ports and the GPIL header. I added a Microsoft wireless keyboard and a mouse. The RPi 3 has WiFi on board so you don’t need a hard wired network connection any longer. You can see a small breadboard immediately to the left of the display. That’s attached to the RPi GPIO header by a ribbon cable. There’s a larger breadboard to the left of that. To give you an idea of the size of the RPi 3 I put one on the keyboard.
and everything is completely saturated around here. The gauge indicated we had about 2 inches. And the temperatures plunged as well. High temp yesterday was around 45 degrees, a good 20 degrees colder than the day before. If anyone thought winter was over, this will disprove that. Up in the Bayfield area they actually had to cancel schools the other day because of ice and snow.
I don’t think we had more than 50 – 60 people showed up for it, even though it’s a free concert. Most of the parents showed up, but that was about it. I suppose the scheduling was part of the problem. Because of scheduling conflicts they could only do it at 4 in the afternoon which is a fairly awkward time for a lot of people.
grouchyfarmer 