Does anyone in the bay area have experience working with Foxconn?
Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
61–70 of 265 posts
Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
worst ? what about citizens united? how often is eminent domain abused for economic development, compared to how much favorable legislation was passed for corporations?
I knew someone would bring up Citizens United v FEC when I said worst. I know this will be an unpopular opinion on this forum, but I believe that case was decided correctly. I agree wholeheartedly with Justice Kennedy's opinion that "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech" Read the opinions and d…
Yes. People blame the court for doing the correct (if not right, because courts don't really do "right") thing.
The problem is that there's no constitutional amendment making an exception to the first amendment to limit or forbid contributions to campaigns. It should never have been an ordinary law in the first place.
Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
worst ? what about citizens united? how often is eminent domain abused for economic development, compared to how much favorable legislation was passed for corporations?
I knew someone would bring up Citizens United v FEC when I said worst. I know this will be an unpopular opinion on this forum, but I believe that case was decided correctly. I agree wholeheartedly with Justice Kennedy's opinion that "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech" Read the opinions and d…
Let’s say it loud and clear for everyone to hear.
MONEY. IS. NOT. SPEECH
Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in WI and I don’t think anyone is fooled at this point. If there is a minimum amount needed to keep a lie going until an election, they didn’t hit the target.
I'd love to agree with you but the Wisconsin election results are going to prove otherwise.
Wisconsin has been gerrymandered into a Republican run state with a minority of the vote. Add in efforts to disenfranchise Democratic leaning voters and Republicans can now get a 60% supermajority of state legislature seats with 48% of the votes in the state.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/gerr...
Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
#65This is very good information, but the wrong narrative.
This was not some 'fake deal' by a Chinese firm to get subsidies, it looks like they probably barely broke even on this one - if that - and no company wants to have big ugly stain failures like this.
It looks like Foxconn just bit off more than they could chew, maybe saw an opportunity, but then realized they couldn't make use of the plant. They knew what the thresholds were, could barely meet them, it had no business objective there.
Foxconn didn't win from this and so the narrative should be about states making more careful deals for payouts with companies.
Even good companies make stupid ventures here and there - the bigger the company, the more inane it looks. The huge problem here of course is the public dime. The Governor should be destroyed over this.
Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
#66This is a great article around why "corporate welfare" rarely works out. Also, semes like a textbook example of "eminent domain" abuse? We call this "expropriation" in Canada and it is rarely abused like this. Taking peoples property to give it to a private corporation? I can understand the need to take property for public use (roads, infra) but the US needs to end eminent domain abuse. If Foxconn needed the property…
It's not just eminent domain abuse, either... part of the Foxconn deal was set to bypass the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact and use water from Lake Michigan for LCD manufacturing.
The City of Racine basically argued that they could take the water for "public use" because they were allowed to do so (cities source drinking water from the lakes) and give up to 7 million gallons a day to Foxconn via a pipe.
Wisconsin environmental oversight signed off on this, but the plant hasn't happened so it hasn't been tested in court. Hopefully the Compact will be strengthened to prevent potential abuses like this in the future.
Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
#67> The other initiative, called Foxconn Future Leaders, targeted recent college graduates > Employees ..., no matter what role they had been hired for, were told to figure out what Foxconn should do in Wisconsin themselves. > The new management seemed increasingly open in its disdain for the local workforce. “Why are Americans paid so much and do so little? I can’t tell you how many times we heard that,” said one empl…
This is not what happened clearly.
Foxconn didn't know what to do with the facility at all and had no material plans, it was like expansion without a cause. The hiring had no purpose other than to probably break even on the subsidies, which I don't think they met profits from, so it was a big debacle from start to end.
The 'problem' was Foxconn didn't have a business plan for the facility.
The 'subsidies' meant that it took way too long to fail.
Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You need to measure and factor in the methane generated by the decaying biome behind the dam. how much are we talking about? does it work out to about the same as other fossil fuels, or order(s) of magnitude less? Also, is it possible to mitigate this by burning the vegetation prior to flooding the area?
Oxidizing the biocarbon to mitigate CO2 release? I think I see a bit of a flaw in that strategy.
I don't see why not? We flare natural gas at oil wells for this exact reason.