Oh barf:
It's pretty clear that Vice President Mike Pence stands with Gov. Scott Walker, who faces a potentially tough re-election fight in the fall.
"I think he's the best governor in America, which I can say with much greater confidence now that I don't have my old job back," said Pence, a former Indiana governor, during a fundraiser for Walker Wednesday night at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee.
An audio portion of Pence's remarks was obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Pence said that people across the nation "marvel at what Wisconsin has accomplished over the last eight years," under Walker, and said the governor "stood unintimidated" during the 2011 standoff with public-sector unions.
It was at that time that Pence, then in Congress, said he had his "first close encounter," with Walker.
Oh really? Does this sound like the best governor in America?
While Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker continues to hail the deal he struck last year with the Taiwanese electronics firm Foxconn to build a factory in the state—with the vocal support of President Donald Trump—reports out of southeastern Wisconsin show that the agreement, ostensibly meant to boost the economy and employment, is so far holding few benefits for Wisconsinites.
According to a recent report in Belt Magazine, efforts to push residents of Racine County, where the factory is slated to open in 2019, are well underway eight months after Walker finalized the deal amid much fanfare—and with little to no input from locals.
With the local officials trying to seize over 3,000 acres of agriculture and residential properties with eminent domain orders and by designating the area "blighted," some homeowners are mounting a legal challenge against the effort.
Here’s a little more from Belt Magazine:
We know from Foxconn-filed documents that they project three-fourths of their labor force to be hourly workers. We also know that the project was sold by Gov. Walker and his administration as a source of “13,000 family supporting” jobs. While this initial assembly plant can’t be projected across the entire future Foxconn complex, we know that $14/hour is a far cry from the promised average annual salary of $54,000, far enough that instead of family-supporting, it would likely qualify families for food stamps, housing assistance and state-supported health care.
When asked where you could apply for an assembler job a worker gave me the name of a staffing company. “I went through their Chicago office,” he said, an early indicator that contradicted the booster promises that the workforce would be almost entirely Wisconsinite, even though the factory site is just a nine-minute drive from the Illinois border. The premise of large numbers of Wisconsin residents making $54,000 a year is fundamental to the state of Wisconsin’s payback calendar for the $3 billion it gave Foxconn, which was originally, and highly optimistically, calculated to be about 25 years. In fact, all the workers I talked to were being employed by temporary agencies rather than Foxconn directly, a pattern we’d seen in their other U.S. locales.
Back in October, in Mt. Pleasant, I spoke with a Foxconn employee on hand at one of the first public introductions to the project. Like the supervisors at the TV assembly plant he was from the Indiana facility. I asked if they still used a lot of temp workers back in Plainfield.
“We do!” he exclaimed, as if pleasantly surprised by my interest and knowledge. “But we’re working on getting them integrated more quickly into Foxconn employment. It’s been taking around two years.”
In our previous stories about Foxconn in Wisconsin, we looked at the likely disappointments in the jobs Foxconn would create for Wisconsinites, the flawed investment case and negotiation process, and the environmental and social disasters impending for local residents. On all accounts, we found Wisconsin’s $3 billion investment in Foxconn destined to disappoint Wisconsinites. The manner in which Racine County residents are being evicted and the employment realities thus far of Foxconn’s new TV assembly plant in Mt. Pleasant give us no reason to revise our judgment.
Speaking of Foxxconn:
Moments before Vice President Mike Pence took the stage here Wednesday to tout President Donald Trump’s agenda, Foxconn executive Louis Woo credited Trump and Gov. Scott Walker with the company’s plan to build a massive new manufacturing campus in Wisconsin.
The exchange came at an event sponsored by the pro-Trump nonprofit America First Policies. Remarks by Pence and Walker, who introduced the vice president, focused on the recent GOP overhaul of the federal tax code and other Trump measures that the two Republicans said are fueling a booming U.S. economy.
Foxconn plans to build a $10 billion facility in Racine County to manufacture liquid crystal display screens, and which eventually could employ as many as 13,000. Woo, who appeared in a panel discussion before Pence took the stage, said 90 percent of the contractors that will build the facility will be from Wisconsin.
Woo said Taiwan-based Foxconn, a contract manufacturer of smartphones and other electronics, has been thinking for years about creating a manufacturing footprint in the U.S. He said the “pro-business policies” of the Trump administration and Walker’s efforts to lure the company were critical in its decision to build the facility now — and in Wisconsin.
By the way, even the conservative-leaning
Morning Consult doesn’t have Walker in the top ten list. In fact., Walker’s approval is at 43% with a disapproval rating at 50%. Look at the chart below: