Monday, August 19, 2013

Can You Spot What's Missing?

The Appleton Post Crescent met with Reed Hall, the Secretary and CEO of the corrupt WEDC in order to give him a chance to do some damage control for the failing agency.  Here is their introductory passage to the Q & A session. See if you can spot what is missing:
In baseball terms, Reed Hall is a long reliever. Like a team that falls behind by a lot of runs very quickly, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation ran into trouble very quickly in its two-year existence.

Intended to replace the state Department of Commerce as a more nimble, more productive economic development generator, the public-private WEDC became a mess of untracked loans, insufficient accountability and, according to a scathing state audit, didn’t follow state law.

Though it inherited some of the problems from Commerce, it created plenty of its own, leading to numerous negative news reports and criticism from the Legislature and the public.

As the issues surfaced, Gov. Scott Walker appointed Hall, a 64-year-old retired Marshfield Clinic executive, to take over as the WEDC’s secretary and CEO on an interim basis. The job became permanent in January and, now, Hall is trying to put the agency on the right track.

In an interview Thursday on Newsmakers, Post-Crescent Media’s online issues show, Hall talked about the changes that have already been made and how he intends the WEDC to operate. Here’s an edited transcript of the interview.
Did you spot it?

If you answered that they ignored the fact that Scott Walker is the Chairman of this corrupt agency, you are correct.

And as I have pointed out before, the one thing that the corporate media, the Republicans and even the Democrats fail to acknowledge is that this scheme was designed to fail and the only way to correct the problems with WEDC is to end it.

5 comments:

  1. WEDC could have been either:
    - Good for the economic development of Wisconsin
    or
    - A piggy bank for Walker Administration corruption

    We know how this turned out.

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    Replies
    1. If you knew anything about its Indiana cousin, IEDC, you'd know how corrupt it was going to be ahead of time.

      Of course, WEDC's corruption and failure to create jobs is a feature, not a bug. It's a nice way to benefit corporate contributors, and the Friends of Scott Walker. Any job creation is coincidental

      Delete
  2. Holy Rod Blagojevich, Batman!

    This is interesting:
    http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/governor-defends-reed-hall-as-pick-to-lead-job-creation/article_4e2257f0-6a2b-11e2-9045-001a4bcf887a.html
    Governor defends Reed Hall as pick to lead job creation agency

    Walker pays an executive search firm $40,000 to find a new WEDC executive director, then throws out the recommendations and selects Reed Hall who did not even apply for the job. How does working in the administration of a hospital for 34 years qualify Hall to be head of state economic development?

    The article says, “Kurt Bauer, president and CEO of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, praised the selection of Hall, a former WMC board member, calling Hall ‘a proven innovator in business.’”

    How about this for innovation?
    http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=search&case=/data2/circs/7th/973219.html
    BLUE CROSS, ET AL. v MARSHFIELD CLINIC, ET AL.

    “The jury found on sufficient evidence that the Marshfield Clinic entered into agreements with competitors to stay out of each other's territories. The purpose was to enable each of the firms, prominently including the Clinic, to charge higher prices to its customers.”

    I can see why Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce would love Reed Hall. Economic development is not its objective. Maximizing profits through illegal monopolies is far more desirable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Reed Hall is a central wisconsin tea party member. He was pretty much forced out of the clinic a few years back, and was given this job as another one of walkers' favors.

      Delete
  3. I just post this here. Logisticare in the news again.


    Our View: MaineCare ride program takes a wrong turn
    The state should heed complaints and reinstate the system that allowed the poor access to care.



    The state official in charge of the MaineCare ride program has said that it's too soon to cancel the contracts for the service.

    TIME TO SET BOUNDARIES

    But several thousand complaints have come in already. DHHS employees have even been called on to help LogistiCare and Coordinated Transportation Services, the private contractors, by taking overflow calls and email or fax appointments to the ride brokers. (This hardly supports the belief that businesses are, by definition, more efficient than government.)

    ReplyDelete