Retiring Guy's Digest: GET ME REWRITE: In an exercise in futility, UW-Madison College of Engineering hires former Foxconn Alan Yeung

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

GET ME REWRITE: In an exercise in futility, UW-Madison College of Engineering hires former Foxconn Alan Yeung

Announced 3 days too late.

Wisconsin Public Radio, 4/4/2022

Former Foxconn executive Alan Yeung has been hired by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to "jump-start technology entrepreneurship efforts" within its College of Engineering.

Yeung was heavily involved in Foxconn's failed pledges to invest $10 billion into a high-tech manufacturing hub in Racine County and donate $100 million to UW-Madison.

An announcement posted Thursday by UW-Madison's College of Engineering announcing Yeung's hire lists him as an author, college alum and technology executive — it has no mention of Foxconn. [emphasis added]

3/19/2022 update, "In an exercise in futility, former Foxconn exec blames Tony Evers for Scott Walker's barefaced political opportunism", starts here.

Dear Alan,

Try as you might, you can't erase history. (See collage below.)

Best,

Retiring Guy

Fox 6 News, 3/172022/

A former Foxconn executive says, while a $10 billion LCD plant with a promised 13,000 never materialized in Racine County, he does not believe the project is a failure. Alan Yeung, who helped negotiate the project in 2017 says the plant was never built because the environment changed.

"Truth be told, business conditions changed, but also the business environment changed in Wisconsin dramatically, too. I hoped it would be better, and I am optimistic it will be better," said Yeung.

The Wisconsin project was scaled back after Foxconn initially signed a contract with the state of Wisconsin under then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2017 to earn nearly $4 billion in state and local tax incentives for a $10 billion display screen manufacturing campus and plant that would employ up to 13,000 people.

But the Republican governor lost a reelection bid in 2018 to Democrat Tony Evers, who ran as a critic of the project.

It was all a scam from thet start.

3/11/2022 update, "Unintentionally, former Foxconn executive puts the blame where its belongs", stats here.

WTMJ, 3/9/2022

Charles Benson: "Why did Foxconn end up in Wisconsin?"
Alan Yeung: "Well, I think the primary reason was Governor Walker and his administration."

2/4/2022 update, "Foxconned: Scott Walker's Foxconn legacy", starts here,

Headline from Madison.com, 2/4/2022

The 156,000-square-foot Opus building, the first leased by Foxconn when it came to Wisconsin, is now to be occupied by Oterra, a Danish company that brands itself as "the world's largest provider of naturally sourced colors for food, beverages, dietary supplements and pet food.

[snip]

The move to Mount Pleasant is a relocation from West Allis. The company expects to employ 100 people in Mount Pleasant once fully operational, and it expects to be "operational in very, very early 2024," Sarah O'Neil, Oterra's vice president of commercial sales and marketing, said in a phone interview Friday."

12/17/2021 update starts here

Welcome to Scott Walker most stunningly awful legacy as governor

"And I helped!!" crows Rebecca Kleefisch.

WUWM, 12/15?2021

Tabak also says the fight over Foxconn could be an issue in the 2022 race for governor in Wisconsin, especially if former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch keeps campaigning in the '22 GOP gubernatorial primary.
The author says Kleefisch and other members of the administration of then-Gov. Scott Walker were "all-in" on Foxconn, while Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has since reduced the amount of state support Foxconn could receive.

12/7/2021 update starts here.

The book cover side by side with a sampling of Scott Walker many fabrications.

Isthmus, 12/7/2021

The new book Foxconned, by Madison’s own Lawrence Tabak, confirms that the factory was a sordid political charade from its inception. In a fit of negligence and malfeasance, political leaders abused the citizens of Wisconsin on behalf of a foreign corporation. The Foxconn affair was a scandal, and Wisconsinites should treat those responsible as political pariahs. [emphasis added]

11/30/2021 update starts here.

Wisconsin Public Radio, 11/29/2021

Foxconn isn't the only abandoned business venture in the Midwest

Lawrence Tabak: I became intrigued with the Foxconn story right from the beginning. Partly because it was a big national story, really in our backyard here. Secondly because, as a Wisconsin taxpayer, I was interested in and concerned about the amount of taxpayer money that was being devoted to this project. And I had previous background writing about somewhat related topics on economic development and the economic impact studies that help power them. I had done a story for The Atlantic, for instance, on a similar topic.

11/27/2021 update starts here

Chicago Sun-Times, 11/26/2021

A new book by journalist Lawrence Tabak, “Foxconned: Imaginary Jobs, Bulldozed Homes, and the Sacking of Local Government,” lays out how state and local governments in Wisconsin unnecessarily used eminent domain to take homes and farms for a plant that turned out not to need all that land. Taxpayers were hit up for unneeded new roads. Thousands of acres of land now sit empty. The total cost to government is estimated at close to $1 billion.

The book is yet another reminder of how poor decisions in the past cause environmental problems today. Public officials at every level must be vigilant to avoid repeating these mistakes.

"Foxconned": 32 holds on 28 copies in LINKcat.

Original 11/21/2021 post, "If Scott Walker is on your Christmas gift list, here's a great suggestion", starts here.

The Beachwood Reporter, 11/21/2021

Walker campaigned aggressively on a wide array of alleged Foxconn benefits to the state, all of which turned out to be ephemeral. (That's just a nice way of saying he fucking lied.)