Author: Syndicated

Foxconn’s vaunted Wisconsin facilities, backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, have so far amounted to “a bunch of empty buildings and a lot of questions,” an investigation indicates. A Milwaukee “innovation center,” intended to staff 500 workers and realize Foxconn’s “AI 8K+5G vision,” was found with unused conference rooms and minimal staff as recently as mid-March, according to The Verge. Some of the people refused to talk to the press, while others wouldn’t confirm or deny their employer. Permit applications have been made for about $60,000 in renovations, but mostly for three floors being temporarily occupied a financial services...

Some people have an exaggerated notion of their knowledge and intelligence, while others fear they are faking it. This happened in Pittsburg in 1995. A man walked into a bank and robbed it at gunpoint in broad daylight. He wasn’t wearing a mask or any other disguise. In fact, he was so confident that he even looked at the security camera and smiled. He then held up another bank at gunpoint. When arrested, he was very surprised. “But I wore the juice,” he told the police. The man, it seems, was under the impression that if he rubbed lemon...

There is new momentum around the National Popular Vote movement, where states will award Electoral College votes to elect the president based on which candidate has won the most votes nationwide, instead of today’s state-by-state winner-take-all system. The reform is based on states joining an interstate compact, a legally binding vehicle where states make agreements among themselves despite a national federal government. In this case, states, which the U.S. Constitution empowers to oversee its Electoral College process, agree to award their presidential votes to the national popular vote winner. As of early 2019, the project was two-thirds of the...

The economic disparities between residents of Milwaukee’s central city and other parts of the metropolitan area are well known. The suburbs, in particular, show lower rates of poverty and incarceration and higher income, education and home-ownership than many parts of the central city. That is especially true for one zip code. For many, 53206 has become a metaphor for the challenges facing inner-city residents, especially residents of color. The areas high incarceration rate and low employment rate have attracted national and international reporting. A recently released study spanning 17 years tries to quantify, what it terms, the “ecosystem of...

Editor’s Note: As a native of Milwaukee living in Japan, I lost everything on March 11, 2011. The disaster is why, as a refugee with an American passport, I eventually returned home. I have not spoken publicly about the experience in Japan after all these year. Originally, it was simply the lack of sensitivity and disinterest from people who I encountered, and eventually because I needed to move on with my life and put that chapter of aside. At some point, perhaps I will write about that journey, but until then there are others who continue to bless us...

Foxconn is feeling the pinch from the reduced sales of iPhones in Greater China, with reports of a culling of employee benefits and salaries, as well as mass resignations, coming out of the Apple assembly partner’s largest facility used for iPhone production. RiIn its first quarter results for 2019, Apple revealed it had seen a considerable drop in iPhone revenue in Greater China, accounting for “all of our revenue shortfall to our guidance and for much more than our entire year-over-year revenue decline.” For Greater China alone, revenue dropped 26.7 percent year-on-year from $18 billion for the quarter in...