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Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

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Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#211

Post by pyronik19 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #185
apexalpha wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but updating the constitution and election laws are congress' job, not the courts.

That would assume that there is a working Congress (for the laws) and working intra-state coordination (for constitutional amendments). The reality is that Congress has been locked up ever since the third year of Obama, and since 1971 (26th) there only got one constitutional amendment passed (27th, in 1992). That is the reason why the courts have gotten so important, and why the Supreme Court and other federal justic…

The fact you can't move your agenda forward in the legislature because its "locked up" is a feature not a bug. To then think its appropriate to use the judicial branch to bludgeon your agenda through is an abuse of its intended purpose in our system of checks and balances.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#212

Post by matwood »

credit_guy wrote: post #208

I see a lot of popular outrage here, and I love me some popular outrage against the big bad boy just like everyone else, but still, what was Foxconn's gain here? The billions in subsidies were in the form of tax relief, they will not see a dime if they don't build the factory. The bulldozed houses in Wisconsin, while a loss for the state, don't make Foxconn any richer. In the end, the only thing Foxconn achieved was…

At the risk of getting too political, the gain was getting Trump off their back. Apple did something similar in TX [1]. Give Trump a photo op (which everyone knows he loves), and then don't actually do anything. Trump moves on, and the business can continue as before.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/20/20974999/trump-is-lying-...

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#213

Post by bryanrasmussen »

freeone3000 wrote: post #122
Accujack wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I fundamentally disagree with this, but on different grounds. I absolutely believe that groups of people have fewer rights than individual people. A corporation should have no right against self-incrimination, for instance. An LLC should have no right for freedom of religion. Groups are, by definition, not a monolith, and defending the rights of the group often infringes on the rights of the individual. Extending ind…

the commas in the first amendment make it confusing but

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I think the reading 'Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech' makes more sense linguistically than 'Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or the right of the people to peacefully assemble', that is to say the freedom of speech is not limited to people by the first amendment.

Although I am in agreement that groups of people must inherently have less rights than the aggregate I believe the commas in the first amendment make it difficult to argue that it limits free speech in this manner.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#214

Post by danaris »

pg_bot wrote: post #56
gruez wrote: post #51

Earlier 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…

The cases that were really decided incorrectly were (and I'm afraid I don't know the actual case names offhand) establishing corporate personhood, and most especially making money equivalent to speech.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#215

Post by LatteLazy »

leto_ii wrote: post #187
pg_bot wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can blame the worst supreme court decision in the 21st century for that. (Kelo v City of New London) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

If I'm reading this correctly (I'm not familiar with US jurisprudence etc.), the decision allows the state to expropriate private entities for the benefit of other private entities. How is it that the liberal judges were not able to foresee this decision's consequences?

No, the ruling allows the state to expropriate from one private entity to another IF there is a compelling public benefit. The benefit to other private entities (if any) is purely coincidental and not relevant to the legality.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#216

Post by jonstewart »

pg_bot wrote: post #56
gruez wrote: post #51

Earlier 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…

The essential problem, which Justice Kennedy seemed not to understand, is that money is not speech. The easy test to show this as nonsense is quantification, i.e., it’s clearly the case that some citizens have more money than others, but it’s nonsense to think that some citizens have more free speech than others.

One of Justice Kennedy’s clerks in 2009-2010 was Misha Tseytlin, a Federalist Society member who undoubtedly helped write Kennedy’s opinion on the Bilski case, which widened the potential for business process patents and considered by many software developers to be a terrible decision regarding the patentability of software. Despite no connection to Wisconsin whatsoever, Tseytlin was later appointed Wisconsin Solicitor General by Scott Walker and worked on many of the voter suppression initiatives in Wisconsin. He’s been party to litigation on behalf of the Wisconsin Tavern League seeking to overturn Governor Evers’s executive order on masks and public gatherings. I’m a part-time resident of the state and grew up there, and it’s distressing to me that a fringe ideologue with no connection to the state continues to do it harm.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#217

Post by danaris »

rayiner wrote: post #205
tyre wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would still put Citizens up there. We have rules around elections in the same way that we have some limits on individual speech (yelling fire, and all that) to effect the fundamental right that the First Amendment is meant to protect. Similarly, PACs were an unforeseen (and in some ways unforeseeable to eighteenth century framers) exploit of a well functioning democracy as it relates to people . Kucho vs. Common Ca…

Citizens United doesn’t have anything to do with PACs. I’m amenable to the idea there is a core of campaign finance law that’s non-objectionable. But prosecuting a 501(c)(4) non-profit corporation for making a political movie about a candidate isn’t in the scope of that. That’s what the government chose to prosecute in that case. The “slippery slope” outcome—using a law ostensibly meant to keep Exxon from speaking to…

While your statement is strictly true, Citizens United is one of the two (very close together) decisions that enabled the creation of SuperPACs.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#218

Post by mschuster91 »

pyronik19 wrote: post #211
mschuster91 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would assume that there is a working Congress (for the laws) and working intra-state coordination (for constitutional amendments). The reality is that Congress has been locked up ever since the third year of Obama, and since 1971 (26th) there only got one constitutional amendment passed (27th, in 1992). That is the reason why the courts have gotten so important, and why the Supreme Court and other federal justic…

The fact you can't move your agenda forward in the legislature because its "locked up" is a feature not a bug. To then think its appropriate to use the judicial branch to bludgeon your agenda through is an abuse of its intended purpose in our system of checks and balances.

So ten years of standstill, even a government shutdown (which is a word only heard in third world countries), because of one political party being utterly unwilling to participate in normal democratic process, that is a feature to you?

> an abuse of its intended purpose in our system of checks and balances

The intention was to stop a dictator from rising, not that the country would be essentially governed by executive degree for a decade.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#219

Post by hengheng »

pg_bot wrote: post #45
kenned3 wrote: post #19

This 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…

You can blame the worst supreme court decision in the 21st century for that. (Kelo v City of New London) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

This is a good example of how the craving for superlatives does not only generate a lot of empty hyperbole, but also how it can derail an entire thread.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#220

Post by cabotmoose »

jonstewart wrote: post #216
pg_bot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The essential problem, which Justice Kennedy seemed not to understand, is that money is not speech. The easy test to show this as nonsense is quantification, i.e., it’s clearly the case that some citizens have more money than others, but it’s nonsense to think that some citizens have more free speech than others. One of Justice Kennedy’s clerks in 2009-2010 was Misha Tseytlin, a Federalist Society member who undoubte…

Does this quantification argument hold for citizens that are considered public figures? While they might not have more free speech than other citizens, they certainly have a more visible platform to communicate their opinions
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