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Chippewa Falls (WQOW) - More than 100 new jobs could come to Chippewa County if a proposal by Huffcut Concrete is approved. The Chippewa Falls company wants to build a new division in the Lake Wissota Business Park. Huffcut makes precast concrete products, but Chippewa Falls Mayor Greg Hoffman said the new business will focus on manufacturing buildings. Hoffman said the $20 million project would be completed in phases and could create 120 jobs. This comes weeks after the Mills Fleet Farm Distribution Center received approval to move into the same industrial park. Hoffman said the growing businesses benefit not...

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa., April 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IKEA US announced today that on Earth Day, Saturday, April 22nd from 9:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., as part of the 'IKEA Sustainable Living Your Way Event', IKEA US stores* (41 of 43 stores) and Goodwill Industries International will partner together to host their first national furniture take back activity. At this time, customers can come to the IKEA parking lot where a Goodwill® truck will be present to receive their donated used furniture. In exchange, IKEA is giving these customers a coupon for $20 off a $150 IKEA purchase (valid 4/22-5/21/2017). **...

Roll the dice, pay the price Uh oh. Michael Moore has a problem on his hands. The glorious utopia known as Venezuela - a country where socialism has wreaked such havoc that prisoners are literally eating each other - has illegally seized a General Motors factory. Will Moore run down there to fight for the workers, or will he stand up to support his favorite form of government? Only time will tell. For now, here’s the report from Reuters:

State and local officials gathered in Wise this afternoon to formally announce the anticipated creation of 40 jobs at DP Facilities Inc.’s Mineral Gap data center in the Lonesome Pine Business and Technology Park. A press conference beginning at 2 p.m. at The Inn at Wise highlighted details about the more than 65,000-square-foot facility, which was completed in October 2016. In a press release issued today, DP Facilities President Mark Gerard announced that Mineral Gap, a mission critical Tier III data center, represents a $65 million construction investment on 22 acres in the tech park. “Mineral Gap will provide continuous...

The Oakland City Council voted unanimously this week on a resolution that asks cities based there to create "sanctuary workplaces" for immigrant workers they may employ. The resolution asks businesses to abide by the resolution, which “calls upon employers to establish sanctuary workplaces, where workers are respected and not threatened or discriminated against based on their immigration status.” The issue is a particularly fraught one in industries long reliant on immigrant labor, such as the service industry, manufacturing and construction.. The resolution was written as a way to protect workers who may be worried about an increased crackdown on immigrant...

The Opelika City Council voted Tuesday to enter into a project agreement with Hanwha Advanced Materials America that will create 100 full-time jobs. The company’s project involves a 120,000 square foot expansion to its existing facility at 4400 Northpark Drive in the Northeast Industrial Park and will have a capital investment of $19.8 million. This will be the seventh expansion the company has done since it opened in 2005, according to Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller. He said the company’s capital investment and number of jobs created over the 12-year span is $80 million and 400 jobs. Council members also approved...

Following Republicans’ abysmal failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, the GOP announced that their next order of business would focus on tax reform. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady declared that he would schedule a hearing in which the House will review a drafted tax reform blueprint. On April 27, a formal meeting will be held in order to discuss the border adjustment tax, also known as the BAT. Weeks ago, Republicans decided to “move on” from healthcare reform, but they sadly fail to comprehend that employing the same strategies to tax reform as they did with healthcare...

The Cambodian government has abruptly told a United States Navy unit to leave the country, while accepting a new $157 million package from China. The moves indicate that Cambodia is on track to become the latest of several Asian nations to shift away from partnership with America and toward closer alignment with China. The U.S. embassy in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, announced the news on its Facebook page last Monday. “The U.S. Navy Mobile Construction Battalion—better known as the Seabees—is departing Cambodia after a nine-year humanitarian assistance mission,” the embassy wrote. The announcement said the Cambodian government was the force...

The Trump Administration has announced its formal inquisition into America’s trade deficit, with a particularly loaded day of testimony scheduled for May 18, in which the administration hopes to learn the various causes for America’s huge import volume. The administration conjures up an image of evil old foreign prime ministers and their assistants – grasping witches with candy-covered cottages in the forest, looking for sweet little American manufacturers – Hansel Inc. and Gretel LLC – tempting them with tasty morsels and sweet confections, luring them off the American path, moving them permanently into their distant foreign domains. While the single-minded...

With tax day upon us, I’d like to remind everyone who works hard, applies themselves, and becomes as resourceful as they can to make a living for their families that their tax dollars are being used as welfare payments to those who do not or will not work and to those who work only enough to game the system. And for that we can thank the politicians who continuously grow welfare benefits in order to keep the welfare recipients voting them in every couple of years, so they can create more and more dependency that we have to pay for....

Haiyin Capital, a leading Chinese venture capital firm, and the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2), an association of entrepreneurial students and university startup officers, have agreed to form a joint venture called "The American-Chinese University Growth Fund" to provide Chinese venture funding to startups formed at American universities. The expectation is that the Fund will provide at least $1 billion of funding from Chinese investors to American university startups over the next decade. NCET2 produces the "University Startups Demo Day" (TM) where American universities submit the very best startups they create based on the $37 billion of university...

Failure to pass, or failure to craft a decent law? Last month’s healthcare fiasco was, without question, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s baby. He fought for it, promoted it, inexplicably rushed it to the floor, did everything he could to corral reluctant legislators. Heck, there are reports that he was down on his knees begging congressmen to vote for it. It didn’t work. In the end, all he could do was looked on as it collapsed. Now, according to Gallup, his favorability numbers have done the same.

The battle between Louisiana and Texas for ExxonMobil Chemical Co. and Saudi Basic Industries Corp.'s "world-scale" petrochemical complex is over, and Texas won. The partners have chosen a site in San Patricio County, Texas, for the proposed petrochemical plant, which will provide the building blocks for polyester, anti-freeze, plastic bottles and food packaging. Ascension and St. James parishes were among the four sites considered for the plant. The fourth also was in Texas. The proposed multibillion-dollar investment would include an ethane steam cracker capable of producing nearly 2 million tons of ethylene a year. If built, the project would create...

Automotive supplier Continental plans to invest more than $40 million and create 160 new jobs over the next five years at its brake systems manufacturing facility in the western North Carolina town of Morganton. Continental, a German company whose North American headquarters is in Auburn Hills, Mich., is eligible to receive up to $1.6 million in state Job Development Investment Grant incentives if it meets its job and investment targets, according to the office of Gov. Roy Cooper. “Thanks to the generous support of the state and local officials, we are pleased to make an investment that plans to expand...

An idea so great . . . we've heard it many times before. Now will someone please make it happen? Not remarkable: A Republican officeholder says the tax code should be simplified to the point where you could file your taxes on a postcard. We’ve been hearing this since the days of Ronald Reagan at least (maybe people were saying it before that but I would have been too young to remember), and it’s one of the few policy ideas that Republicans of all stripes can agree on, at least in theory. That said, no one has ever advanced a...

One of the various smokescreens that were erected by the European Commission and the bevy of economists that it either paid or were ideologically aligned to justify the design of the monetary union around the time of the Maastricht process was the concept of subsidiarity. In 1993, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (a European-based research confederation) published its Annual Report – Making Sense of Subsidiarity: How Much Centralization for Europe? – which attempted to justify (ex post) the decisions imported from the 1989 Delors Report into the Maastricht Treaty that eschewed the creation of a federal fiscal capacity. It...

Conservatives want fewer chains. Leftists insist that the problem with the chains is that not everyone is chained down hard enough A conservative tax protest is a protest that taxes are too high, too onerous or illegal. A left-wing tax protest is a demand for more taxes on someone else. Or, in this case, a baseless accusation that someone else isn’t paying enough taxes. It’s hard to think of a better way to summarize the fundamental differences between conservatives and the left when it comes to big government.

On Wednesday, April 12, the Williston Police Department of Williston, North Dakota, auctioned off 149 firearms that had been collected over the last couple of decades. From myndnow.com: Hundreds of people attended the Williston Police Department's first gun auction.   In total, 149 guns forfeited to the department through criminal investigations were up for bid. "I used to have a federal firearms license and I used to have a side gun business. If I do stay here, I'm going to do it again and that's why I came here. To get an education," says Gary Silva, an auction attendee....

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — The Buncombe County commissioners unanimously approved an $881,960 economic incentive for Avadim Technologies, which promises to create more than 550 full-time jobs and invest $20 million. Avadim is a medical company that works to make people immune from infection. "Today's health care system is sick care. We wait until you get to sick versus what we really envision, and what's really coming is health care, preventing things before you ever get to that place," Avadim Technologies CEO Stephen Woody said. Of the new jobs, 100 would pay $89,440, 162 would pay $64,480 and 290 would pay...

Facebook officials said they will not punish any employees who choose to take off work May 1 to protest President Donald Trump. Pro-immigration groups, socialist organizations, labor unions, and hundreds of thousands of workers are planning to walk out on their jobs on International Workers Day. “At Facebook, we’re committed to fostering an inclusive workplace where employees feel comfortable expressing their opinions and speaking up,” a representative told Bloomberg. “We support our people in recognizing International Workers’ Day and other efforts to raise awareness for safe and equitable employment conditions.” Facebook told staff about its policy April 14, specifically clarifying...