Thursday, July 27, 2017

Lake Michigan water lifts Foxconn deal

No doubt having home district House Speaker Paul Ryan around to bird-dog Foxcomm's federal subsidy, tax and political needs was a consideration in where the company has decided to build a massive US plant.

And surely Trump's interest in expanding in 2020 his paper-thin ballot box margin in swing state Wisconsin played a role - - and we now better understand why  Ryan and Scott Walker have been willing to enable Trump's egomaniacal and dangerous personal and political excesses.

But don't overlook the availability of Great Lakes water as critical to Foxconn's location decision.

Experts like John Austin at the Brookings Institution have argued for years - - and he made his case in Wisconsin ten years ago which I noted in the early days of this blog - - that Great Lakes water is among the region's under-appreciated economic advantages.

So now I expect Ryan and other Great Lakes members of Congress to prevent Trump from zeroing out the Great Lakes restoration fund which is crucial to the health of the Great Lakes and the supply of clean water that manufacturers need.

And on which which Trump and his Wisconsin political allies will campaign on and soothe their Foxconn Fever. 

And it makes no sense for Walker and his do-nothing GOP Legislative allies to keep running the Pollution Party and tolerating the contamination of Lake Michigan with a large dead zone near Green Bay while promoting clean water just too the south.

Though it's probably too much to expect that these Republicans' new embrace of the Great Lakes means they will begin to pay closer attention to the impacts a warming planet and climate change are already having on the Great Lakeswhich Walker's DNR scrubbed off its website.

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