Gov. Walker's Donors Collect State Incentives After Shipping Jobs Out

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There's definitely a pecking order to the concept of outsourcing jobs.

Make no mistake, the outsourcing of jobs is an unfortunate but inevitable part of domestic free markets doing business in a global economy. It's no consolation when American businesses decide to outsource jobs based on market pressures or principles completely uncoerced and without government interference. It is what it is.

Next up and far worse than that is the outsourcing of American jobs by way of vulture capitalism.

Vulture capitalism is a "business model" where companies are taken over by "investment" companies, leverage them up with debt, and then sell them off for scrap, allowing investors to walk away with the borrowed money to re-animate the companies in places like China or Mexico. All the while domestic remnants of the remaining assets are further cannibalized in bankruptcy court, laying off American workers and reneging on benefits. Many right-wing hardliners, free market types and Wall Street boosters consider this a normal, honorable way to conduct business. See Mitt Romney.

Next up and possibly even worse than vulture capitalism is the extremely questionable if not twisted use of taxpayer dollars to reward political business donors under the guise of job creation, that instead result in moving jobs out-of-state. That's the current story on Gov. Scott Walker's latest misuse of WEDC tax dollars.

Now, maybe it's just the over-exuberance to reward political business cronies *eyeroll* with taxpayer funded kickbacks who also happened to outsource jobs after the fact. Some might even say it's all a mistake, that somehow the provisions and benchmarks of these agreements have been unknowingly circumvented by unforeseen circumstances or poor reporting requirements. Bullshit! I don't buy those excuses at all.

Not when we have local governments writing loosely constructed tax credit agreements that intentionally allow companies to shrink to meet benchmarks for job creation or worse yet, when a state legislature unanimously approves the transfer of tax credits to businesses that created zero jobs.

Yeah that's right, business lobbyists lobbied because unclaimed tax revenue remained in a dedicated slush fund for job creation. Well gee, somebody has got to get that free money. Why not it be us job creators? Are you kidding me? In fact, these folks celebrated the legislation as the greatest thing to happen since apple pie. They think it's a feather in their cap.

Clearly, the game is rigged.

We know free market capitalism can't seem to clean up its act. Don't look for it. It's not going to happen. Capitalizing through any means necessary is the mark of the beast. But this stuff is becoming embedded in our state's government and political culture when we expect our elected leaders to know better. It's called corruption. There's no excuse for it. See Scott Walker.

ADDITIONAL:

Prairie Badger - Scott Walker’s outsourcing problem: WEDC gives millions in tax breaks to companies that shipped jobs overseas

Democurmudgeon - Scott Walker helping companies Offshore Labor with WEDC taxpayer money

WKOW - Companies that outsourced jobs donated primarily to Walker campaign