Here & Now

Here & Now for Feb. 1, 2019

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” plans for the Foxconn manufacturing plant may be changing. And McCoshen and Ross will give us their take on it. Then, a UW-Madison professor thinks implicit bias trainings are flawed. And finally, we look at what this week’s extreme weather means for Wisconsin. It’s “Here & Now” for February 1.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided, in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

Frederica Freyberg:

This week, new reporting revealed that Foxconn may not have manufacturing in mind for its promised $10 billion Racine County campus. A flurry of denials, assurances and blame-casting ensued until finally, at week’s end, a statement today from the company that it will manufacture LCD screens in Racine, after all.

Reuters first broke the story, saying the Taiwanese tech giant is no longer planning to hire a blue color workforce but instead will mostly hire engineers and researchers. The company already missed the mark on its first pledge for jobs in 2018, thereby missing out on a round of tax incentives. Foxconn Technology Group said in a statement, We remain committed to the Wisconn Valley Science and Technology Park project, the creation of 13,000 jobs and to our long-term investment in Wisconsin. As our plans are driven by those of our customers, this has necessitated the adjustment of plans for all projects, including Wisconsin.” But Wisconsin Republicans aren’t blaming Foxconn for changing course. They’re blaming the new governor, Tony Evers. A joint statement released by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said “We don’t blame Foxconn for altering plans in an ever-changing technology business. It’s also not surprising Foxconn would rethink building a manufacturing plant in Wisconsin under the Evers’ administration. The company is reacting to the wave of economic uncertainty that the new governor has brought with his administration.” All of this unfolding throughout the week. And then by this afternoon, Foxconn was back on the books, pledging to move ahead with plans to manufacture LCD screens at the Racine County facility. In a statement saying, After a personal conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Terry Gou, Foxconn is moving forward with our planned construction of a Gen 6 fab facility. This campus will serve both as an advanced manufacturing facility as well as a hub of high-technology innovation for the region.”

We asked the CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation for an interview. WEDC referred us to Tim Sheehy. He’s President of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. He joins us now from Milwaukee and thanks very much for being here.

Tim Sheehy:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as for the reporting that said that Foxconn no longer had manufacturing in mind for its Racine County plant, you say you have spoken directly to the company and they dispute that. What did they tell you?

Tim Sheehy:

Well, this is an evolving story, and people are jumping to conclusions rather quickly. Clearly market forces have affected some of the decisions that they’re making. But what they’ve told us is they’re committed to manufacturing in Wisconsin. They’re determining what type of technology they’re going to make here. And that this is more than just a manufacturing campus. It’s going to include research, design, prototyping and other sorts of work. So I want people just to hold back a little bit and not treat this like a political football. This is a serious investment by a serious company and I think it’s going to play out.

Frederica Freyberg:

In fact, Foxconn says it remains committed to the 13,000 jobs promised. But as you’ve just discussed, the mix is more kind of engineering jobs and fewer plant floor jobs. Does the 13,000 number include spin-offs, to your knowledge?

Tim Sheehy:

The 13,000 jobs, according to the contract which Foxconn is complying with, are direct employees of Foxconn. It does not include any spin-off effect from the employment that would occur over the next 15 years with Foxconn.

Frederica Freyberg:

What does the contract say about whether the engineers and design jobs have to be filled with Wisconsin talent?

Tim Sheehy:

Well, what the contract says and what the Legislative Reference Bureau just confirmed is that the employees that Foxconn gets credit for need to be in Wisconsin. They need to be Wisconsin taxpayers. And I believe that is the process that Foxconn is following if they’re going to get credit under the contract.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, Foxconn has erected a 120,000 square foot building on the Racine County site. A Japanese news outlet, as you know, says the company is suspending work on that $10 billion plant. What do you know about that?

Tim Sheehy:

Well, this is the same Japanese news outlet that also said that Governor Walker had a number of side deals and that Governor Evers was reneging on those side deals. I know for a fact neither of those two pieces of information are true. So Im suspicious of the information that Foxconn is suspending the development of the plant.

Frederica Freyberg:

Foxconn did not tell you anything about suspending operations?

Tim Sheehy:

No. What Foxconn has said to me and what they’ve said publicly is that due to changes in market forces, they’re reviewing the kind of technology they’re going to manufacture, not whether they’re going to manufacture it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, Republican legislative leaders, as you know, have blamed Governor Tony Evers for whatever is happening now with Foxconn. What’s your response to that?

Tim Sheehy:

Its another kick at the political football. Through this process, the Democrats hung this on Governor Walker as a project that was going to fail and now in reverse when there’s a hiccup, we’ve got the Republican leadership blaming a Democratic governor. So again, I want to stay focused on the business of this prospect, not on the political nature of it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of the business of it, Foxconn has committed $100 million to UW-Madison. How firm is that commitment?

Tim Sheehy:

Well, that’s something between Foxconn and UW, but they’ve made the commitment there. They’ve also committed to a $100 million venture fund. They’ve bought buildings in downtown Milwaukee, Eau Claire and Green Bay. So those are all firm agreements from my perspective.

Frederica Freyberg:

So overall you are still bullish on Foxconn in Wisconsin?

Tim Sheehy:

Im bullish on Foxconn in Wisconsin, recognizing that market forces do impact business plans.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Tim Sheehy, thanks very much for joining us.

Tim Sheehy:

Youre welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:

We move from a believer of Foxconn to a critic. Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz joins us from Oshkosh. He’s also a new member of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. Thanks for being here.

Gordon Hintz:

Happy to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Foxconn persists in knocking down and disputing stories about dropping manufacturing in Racine or suspending work there on the plant. What do you make of those assurances and any others that might be forthcoming?

Gordon Hintz:

All I know is 18 months ago, we debated a plan with Foxconn where taxpayers were being asked to assume a lot of risk to construct LCD panels, large screen. It would be manufacturing jobs. A month later that changed. The types of jobs have changed. And the word of Foxconn hasn’t really been good in Wisconsin and their track record around the country hasn’t been good, either.

Frederica Freyberg:

Republican leaders blame Governor Tony Evers for whatever might be happening with Foxconn. What’s your reaction to that?

Gordon Hintz:

Well, Foxconn said that they simply can’t compete with labor costs in the United States, not just Wisconsin. But if I had spent 18 months cheerleading a project that was supposed to transform Wisconsin’s economy and bring 13,000 jobs, only to get an announcement that maybe nothing is happening, Id be pretty embarrassed, too. So I think they’re trying to deflect blame and spin rather than try to be held accountable for what was a reckless decision.

Frederica Freyberg:

You decry the risk Wisconsin took on this deal. For his part, former Governor Scott Walker tweeted this this week. “Foxconn earns state tax credits based on actual investment and job creation. No jobs/investment, no credits, period.” The message being we don’t lose money on the deal if original promises are not kept. What about that?

Gordon Hintz:

Well try telling that to the taxpayers of Mt. Pleasant and Racine County. Try telling that to the taxpayers around the state where we’ve diverted $135 million of transportation money away from statewide projects to build local roads for Foxconn. Not to mention the fact that the state spent two years as this as their economic development focus getting away from potential other things. So there’s opportunity costs there as well. I think anytime you over-promise and under-perform, the taxpayers start to lose trust in government.

Frederica Freyberg:

You recently appointed yourself to the board of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation which oversees the contract with Foxconn. What are you looking to do in that role?

Gordon Hintz:

Well, we’re here. We have a contract on Foxconn. To me, the biggest thing that’s hurt the entire project has been the lack of transparency and accountability. 18 months later, we have no idea what they’re talking about, what a technology hub even means, what an innovation center is. We don’t even know what the 178 people supposedly working here are doing. And so I think if we are going to have something smaller in scale, in research and development, we need some answers from the company that we can understand so we know that whatever investment we’re asked to put in this for our taxpayers as a worthwhile one is protected. I’m here to make sure we have accountability and transparency.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile some Republicans blame Democrats for rooting against Foxconn. Are you among them?

Gordon Hintz:

No. I mean, I certainly thought this was a bad deal from the start. I pretty much said everything, questioned the market viability. A lot of our predictions have come true. Again, this was a specific project. The 13,000 jobs were based on the manufacturing of large panel screens. That’s not happening anymore. That didn’t stop Republicans and Governor Walker and Foxconn from continuing to throw those numbers out there even though they weren’t tied to anything. So not rooting against anything, but trying to hold this project accountable. We have an obligation to protect taxpayers, but also to make sure that whatever investment we are making is meaningful over the long term so we get good value for our investment.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We leave it there. Representative Gordon Hintz, thanks very much for joining us.

Gordon Hintz:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the fur is flying over Foxconn in Wisconsin and border wall negotiations in Washington. Never a dull moment. In tonight’s capital insight, we are joined by Republican lobbyist Bill McCoshen and Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now. Thanks for being here you guys.

Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross:

Thanks.

Frederica Freyberg:

I should say today is your last day as executive director of One Wisconsin Now. Have you just had it up to here with politics and division or what?

Scot Ross:

I figured, you know, we’ve got a Democratic governor, a Democratic attorney general and we just beat Robin Vos in federal court twice on two successive days. So I’m George Costanza. Im going out on a high note.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Let’s move along to Foxconn. The latest is that Foxconn got with or heard from President Trump and now they’re back in business in Wisconsin. Donald Trump even tweeting this afternoon, “Great news on Foxconn in Wisconsin after my conversation with Terry Gou!” So what is going on?

Bill McCoshen:

Thats a great question. How did we get to this point? I mean if you look at the public relations effort by Foxconn over the course of the last four days, what they were saying in Asia versus what they were saying here were totally different. And those two things couldn’t coexist. So I don’t know if it was a cultural issue or they didn’t quite understand the nuances of public relations here in the U.S. but I would say Foxconn got an F for public relations this week. Having said that, I would say Donald Trump resurrected this thing. And I know Scot agrees with me on this… all this guy does is win, right?

Frederica Freyberg:

But what did he do? Are these threats or promises?

Scot Ross:

I find it not surprising that a $4.5 billion deal written on a cocktail napkin by a 25-year career politician in the midst of the most — of the campaign that would end up with him losing would be a deal that’s just utterly and completely ridiculous. I think the really — the thing that’s not being talked about with this deal is the fact that we cannot forget Robin Vos, the Speaker of the Assembly, who this project is in his backyard, rewrote the law so that Foxconn would have even more of an open window controlled by Robin Vos. And I want to know if Robin Vos knew that this was going down before it went down. If he didn’t know, that’s even worse.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald are blaming Tony Evers for whatever has happened this week with Foxconn. What do you think of that?

Bill McCoshen:

I think the Asian story was that Foxconn themselves were blaming the change of administrations, that they had some conversations with the Evers administration, which may or may not have happened. That’s unclear whether or not it did.

Frederica Freyberg:

WEDC said that did not happen.

Scot Ross:

I mean it’s ridiculous. Listen, Robin Vos and the Republicans voted for this deal. Robin Vos and the Republicans around the state need to be answering questions about this. I don’t care where you’re at in Wisconsin. You’ve got a Republican rep nearby who voted for this or a Republican senator who voted this. You need to ask them what is the deal here because we’re not talking about like — Scott Walker said no credits, no — no jobs, no taxes. We’ve already spent $1.3 billion in tax money on this. They didn’t meet their first requirement. It’s an environmental disaster. They get to go right to the Supreme Court. They’ve done everything, rigged everything. What concerns me is that now that the door is open to this, the Republicans are going to try to give them everything they want so desperately that something will happen out of Foxconn.

Bill McCoshen:

Id be careful about being too quick to place blame here. This was a bipartisan deal. Tony Evers’ revenue secretary, Peter Barca was one that voted for this. Corey Mason, the new mayor of Racine voted for this. He’s a Democrat. This was a bipartisan deal. May not have been a lot of Democrats but it was bipartisan. Oh, by the way, if this fails, it’s failing on Tony Evers’ watch. This is critically important…

Scot Ross:

Thats the thing, right?

Bill McCoshen:

…that this succeeds.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how do you see it playing out?

Scot Ross:

I mean I think that — I think that Governor Evers has a lot of cards at his disposal. We’ve got the state budget coming up. Hopefully there’ll be some additional accountability measures put in this. But you know, the fact is that right now, if it goes as it, this is a disaster because we’re not getting what we wanted. I mean, you know, LCD vs OLED technology, when it comes to what the screens they were going to produce, everybody knew that OLED is the next, the next, the next phase.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’re back to LCDs.

Scot Ross:

Yeah, and I’ll tell you, Ill just tell you. If a fat guy tells you where to eat and what TV to get, you listen to him. I’m telling you that OLED was the technology we were going to depend on.

Frederica Freyberg:

You are on fire on your last day.

Bill McCoshen:

Donald Trump has put himself at the center of this. He’s decided I’m going to take ownership of this thing. It’s critical to my re-election in the state of Wisconsin. Remember he’s the first guy — Republican to win Wisconsin since 1984. He’s now fully vested in this thing. I feel pretty good about where we’re heading in the future.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of fully vested and Donald Trump, it looks like we are hurdling headlong into another shutdown because he says build the wall and Nancy Pelosi says no money for the wall. I guess we should have expected this?

Bill McCoshen:

Its sad. It’s what people hate about Washington. I mean there’s an easy agreement to be had here that includes more immigration reform. Neither side is willing to find that middle ground. They’re both on the polar extremes. And it’s really sad. And I think he will call a national emergency and go ahead and build the wall.

Scot Ross:

Months ago there was a deal basically. They got some wall funding and we got DACA. And Stephen Miller went to Trump in his, you know, Klansman Dobby way and said, “No, can’t have this.” So now we’re in a shutdown. The thing about it is Trump’s had what? Three failed casinos. He should realize, the House always wins.

Bill McCoshen:

Thats tough to top. It’s his last day. He came on fire.

Frederica Freyberg:

Who does that hurt politically, though more, do you think, a shutdown, another shutdown? I mean, you know, in Wisconsin apparently the Marquette poll respondents say it was all Trump’s fault the last time.

[intelligible – talking over each other]

Bill McCoshen:

For sure.

Frederica Freyberg:

And what do you make of those poll numbers from Charles Franklin that say that 53% of those polled say that Scott Walker should not run for governor again?

Scot Ross:

Why are they only 53%? I think that what it is it shows that people are tired of Scott Walker. They wanted a change. That’s why they voted for Tony Evers. The fact that Scott Walker continues to tweet and tweet and tweet like he’s hanging out in the parking lot waiting for the rest of the kids that he went to high school with to come out and hang out with him. It’s just — it’s sad. He needs to — he needs to walk away. At some point in time, you need to walk away from things.

Bill McCoshen:

Its a good indication to Governor Walker that a he should go dark for a while. His legacy will grow over time with darkness, not with constant visibility. That would be my advice.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross, thanks very much.

Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Good luck.

Bill McCoshen:

Good to see you man.

Frederica Freyberg:

Many private and public employers mandate training programs designed to encourage inclusivity and discourage racial bias in the workplace. But how well do they work? In tonight’s look ahead, our next guest, UW-Madison Professor of Psychology, Markus Brauer, says they may not work very well. He joins us now. Thanks very much for being here.

Markus Brauer:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

In particular, you say that implicit bias training doesn’t work. What is implicit bias?

Markus Brauer:

Implicit bias refers to the fact that we have automatic associations between certain social groups and positive or negative concepts. And the idea is that we have these associations created in our head and then they influence our behavior. The problem is recent studies show that there is no link between somebody’s automatic associations, usually measured by a test on a computer screen, and their discriminatory behavior. So right now, there’s really no evidence suggesting that effecting, trying to change somebody’s automatic associations, has any effect on their behavior towards other people.

Frederica Freyberg:

And that’s what this training does? It basically tries to change people’s behavior by telling them about implicit bias?

Markus Brauer:

Yes. It’s usually framed as if the problem of discrimination is one of implicit bias and then in order to change that problem, to address that problem, we have to change people’s implicit associations. And the evidence just shows that that does not work.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what would work better in terms of this kind of training?

Markus Brauer:

There is a question of whether diversity training, the format itself, is even the best training. So having people come in a room and then discuss issues with a facilitator may not be the best format. We don’t use that format in other domains such as, I don’t know, sustainability, public health, other risky behaviors. That’s not how we try to influence other people — behaviors, people’s behaviors in other domains. So what would work is approaches that are based on changing social norms, for instance. If we can somehow communicate to people that that is a setting where it is counter normative to behave in a discriminatory way, where it is very normal and common to have positive attitudes towards other people, to endorse the diversity initiatives, then we can actually change people’s behaviors. Other approaches are based on the idea that prejudice or discriminating against others or hurting their feelings is sort of a habit that we have taken on and we have to break that prejudice habit. So the recent literature on changing habits is very relevant and there are workshops that address specifically that.

Frederica Freyberg:

You also talk about entertainment, kind of embedding messages of antidiscrimination or equity in TV shows.

Markus Brauer:

Yes. That’s something we’ve done a lot of research on and it turns out that that’s highly effective. It’s used a lot in public health. And we have shown that it works equally well in the diversity domain. So the idea is that when people consume entertainment media, they’re not on guard. They’re less resistant to attitude change. And when you have embedded pro-diversity messages in these entertainment media, you really get to people. They see social role models. They see people get rewarded for the desirable behavior and it really has an effect, including a long-term effect.

Frederica Freyberg:

One of the things you want to make sure people know thought is that you’re not saying that there isn’t an issue with discrimination.

Markus Brauer:

Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. The fact that the literature shows that implicit bias training is ineffective means by no means that I think that discrimination is no longer a problem in our society. Quite to the contrary. I think it’s an important problem. And this is why we should use techniques and interventions that have been rigorously evaluated and that have been shown to be effective.

Frederica Freyberg:

Very briefly, with about 30 seconds left, is doing nothing, though, better than implicit bias training?

Markus Brauer:

The evidence is mixed. There are some studies show that implicit bias training is counterproductive, actually has negative effect. It decreases the number of women and minorities in leadership positions. People who attend this training are angry and frustrated when they get out of this training. So it could be doing nothing is the same. But at least the positive aspect of implicit bias training is that the management shows that it cares about diversity and that it wants to do something about it. So that’s the positive effect.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Marcus Brauer, thanks very much.

Markus Brauer:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

We have just come through some amazingly and dangerously cold weather in Wisconsin. Wind chill readings hitting 60 below zero in some locations. Temperatures are on the uptick now, but what gives scientifically? In tonight’s Wisconsin look, we check in with Jon Martin, Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UW-Madison. Thanks very much for being here.

Jon Martin:

It’s my pleasure, Frederica.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what does give scientifically?

Jon Martin:

Well, every once in a while you get a little piece of the arctic that makes its way all the way down to the Great Lakes states. It’s not unprecedented, but it is not frequent. I think the last time we had anything quite to this extreme was in February, 1996, almost — or now 23 years ago. So people have been calling it once in a generation. That’s a relatively fair assessment although there’s nothing at all that we could say today that says we won’t get another such cold snap even six weeks from now.

Frederica Freyberg:

In terms of how cold it was with this polar vortex, how does that stack up historically?

Jon Martin:

Historically, we made — I thought we would make a closer run at the all-time record low temperature in Madison which was set on January 30, 1951 at minus 37. The coldest we got in this snap was minus 28. So we missed by a pretty good margin. But there were some minus 30s in the vicinity of the city yesterday. So we did get to temperatures that we haven’t seen since probably since the 1980s.

Frederica Freyberg:

It sounds kind of counterintuitive, but what role does climate change play in this polar vortex and these kind of conditions?

Jon Martin:

It does seem really counterintuitive. And I think perhaps the connection’s been over emphasized. There’s likely to be some connection in the sense that we have a bunch of players involved in getting this kind of cold to make its way this far south. Some of those players are always standard issue things that are occurring every single winter at very high latitudes, in polar latitudes. But what’s happening with the changing climate is there’s been a tendency for the jet stream to migrate slightly more towards the pole. And the jet stream has waves in it, so excursions north and south of the flow. And if that whole structure moves a little bit further north, it can actually dig out some of these exceptionally cold little disturbances. This is what this thing was. It was relatively small scale, but it was dug out of the arctic by the jet stream. So it stands to reason that if a pole-ward migration of the jet is a consequence of a warming planet, we may see more of these events occur and this wouldn’t be just over Wisconsin. This would be hemispherically. But they may become ever so slightly more frequent.

Frederica Freyberg:

How hard is it for people to reconcile extreme, bitter cold with climate change?

Jon Martin:

I think it’s very hard. I think people conflate all the time the difference between weather and climate. It’s rather like there’s a number of analogies a person could use. One that occurred to me the other day is sometimes people complain about traffic in their general metro area. Here in Madison, maybe in the city of Austin, where I grew up. And to conflate weather and climate would be as foolish as to look out your window and see that there’s nobody on your street in your neighborhood and conclude from that that there’s no traffic anywhere in the metro area. So they’re different scales. They occur on different time scales and length scales. And so it’s easy to make that mistake. The weather has got so much variety in it. And the climate system contains all of the weather. So there’s plenty of actual variability that leads to these cold events, whether or not the planet is warming gradually or not.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of variability, this weekend in Wisconsin we’re supposed to get rain, 40 degrees. That’s a 70 degree fluctuation. What does that have to do with climate change, if anything?

Jon Martin:

That is probably — if it’s connected at all to a changing climate, it’s a small factor because we’ve had plenty of examples in the past where you’ll go from minus 20 or so and then suddenly within a few days you’re into the mid 30s. So something analogous to what we’re about to see. This is a relatively unusually rapid warmup. I’ll grant anybody that. That’s true. But again it’s not unprecedented. Things like this have happened. In fact, we had in Boston in December of ’83, we had a low temperature of minus ten on morning. Less than a week later, the high temperature was 79 under clouds. So weird things happen. This was in the early 1980s.

Frederica Freyberg:

Weird things happen.

Jon Martin:

They just happen. They’re in the weather.

Frederica Freyberg:

Jon Martin, thanks very much.

Jon Martin:

You bet, thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

That is our program for tonight on. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided, in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.