I'd said I might have more to say about Scott Walker's post-Sherman Park violence $4.5 grant and other aid to Milwaukee he spelled out in coincidentally (?) as police shooting victim Sylville Smith's funeral Friday morning was unfolding, and I did want to get a couple of more things on the record:
* $4.5 million is a real, beneficial sum of money, if leveraged and invested strategically, and I am confident that all the officials and groups involved will do just that.
But here's one way to look at the money: $4.5 million is a lot less than the millions and millions of dollars in expanded Amtrak operations statewide, in good-paying Milwaukee-based, long-term train set assembly and maintenance jobs,
in several years of rail and train bridge construction upgrades, and in future Midwest High-Speed Rail contracts and spinoff blue-and-white-collar work that were all lost to job-deprived Milwaukee neighborhoods when Walker intentionally cancelled the Talgo operation, and with it, a budding state train industry - - all for ideological, partisan and Walker's personal, political agendas.
For goodness sake, $4.5 million is less than half of what the state had to pay Talgo just for breaking an initial, two-train set assembly contract - - and Talgo got to keep the trains!
* And Walker would have looked more sincere today had he simply said, 'Milwaukee is part of the state, and the state is glad to be doing the right thing for the people in our largest city,' instead of setting up future political ads in which he could book-end tough-guy images of his National Guard activation of a couple of weeks ago with the condescending language right off his official Governor's webpage today that looks especially ironic in light of his Talgo/Amtrak factory and employment cancellation in Milwaukee:
* $4.5 million is a real, beneficial sum of money, if leveraged and invested strategically, and I am confident that all the officials and groups involved will do just that.
But here's one way to look at the money: $4.5 million is a lot less than the millions and millions of dollars in expanded Amtrak operations statewide, in good-paying Milwaukee-based, long-term train set assembly and maintenance jobs,
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| Assembled in Milwaukee's low-income, jobs-hungry 30th St. corridor, banned in Wisconsin, shipped to the Northwest, with future train business and expansion in Milwaukee and statewide barred by Scott Walker |
in several years of rail and train bridge construction upgrades, and in future Midwest High-Speed Rail contracts and spinoff blue-and-white-collar work that were all lost to job-deprived Milwaukee neighborhoods when Walker intentionally cancelled the Talgo operation, and with it, a budding state train industry - - all for ideological, partisan and Walker's personal, political agendas.
For goodness sake, $4.5 million is less than half of what the state had to pay Talgo just for breaking an initial, two-train set assembly contract - - and Talgo got to keep the trains!
* And Walker would have looked more sincere today had he simply said, 'Milwaukee is part of the state, and the state is glad to be doing the right thing for the people in our largest city,' instead of setting up future political ads in which he could book-end tough-guy images of his National Guard activation of a couple of weeks ago with the condescending language right off his official Governor's webpage today that looks especially ironic in light of his Talgo/Amtrak factory and employment cancellation in Milwaukee:
"This is all about helping people move from government dependence to true independence through the dignity that comes from work.”As if Talgo assembly, maintenance and Amtrak construction and operations workers - - and people across the city and state engaged in productive and useful work already - - needed that reminder.