I got an e-mail message yesterday from Herb Kohl, Wisconsin's lone remaining Democratic Senator, with the subject line "A Major Win for Wisconsin."
He was celebrating the announcement that the U.S. Navy is accelerating plans to buy more Littoral Combat Ships than they had initially proposed. According to the Wisconsin State Journal,
The Navy had planned to award a single contract for 10 ships to either Marinette Marine Corp. in Marinette [Wisconsin] or Austal USA in Mobile, Ala. The Democratic senator from Wisconsin said the Navy has told him it now wants to order 10 ships from each company.
Apparently the contractors knocked down the prices, in conjunction with a $49 million tax incentive package put together by the state of Wisconsin. (That would be our state tax dollars -- plus the fact that the contract is of course funded by federal tax dollars.) At least, the price came down in comparison to the first of the ships that was built, which was "only" going to cost $220 million but cost overruns took it closer to $550 million.
The Navy is going to have to go back to Congress to get this new plan approved. (Note that they're not going back to say -- the ships we originally wanted will cost us "less" now, so we can give money back to lower the deficit!) I fully expect them to succeed. If there's one thing there's always more money for, it's military expenditure.
Why is it a "major win" when Wisconsin spends state tax dollars to drag in federal tax dollars to create machines of war and destruction...
and a major outrage that Wisconsin had won $810 million in federal stimulus money to create a high-speed passenger rail line between Madison and Milwaukee?
The destruction of thousands of jobs associated with the demise of Ohio's high-speed rail project, so well outlined in Zwoof's recommended diary, has happened in Wisconsin too. Governor-elect Scott Walker ran openly against Wisconsin's high-speed passenger rail project, promising to kill it as a socialist-government-handout boondoggle.
It took all of one day after the election for Wisconsin to do what Ohio did, and order all work on the high-speed rail to stop. They're still figuring out what the economic impact / job-casualty numbers will be. But it will be in the thousands of jobs.
Weapons of war, killing machines to be used overseas = A MAJOR WIN FOR WISCONSIN.
Public transportation infrastructure, for the benefit of the people of the great state of Wisconsin = SUCKING AT THE GOVERNMENT TEAT.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery.
And some publicly-funded jobs are WAY more equal than others.