“Governor Pritzker should answer the legitimate questions Illinois residents have about their taxpayer dollars going to CCP [Chinese Communist Party]-backed companies,” wrote Illinois Congressman Darin LaHood on Monday.”
Indeed Pritzker should. So far, however, Pritzker has refused to answer any questions whatsoever about the project to be funded with about $8 billion of taxpayer money to be given to a CCP-backed company in Manteno, Illinois for an electric vehicle battery plant.
“The U.S. House’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is actively looking into the leveraging of federal tax dollars by CCP-backed companies to expand their footprint in the US,” LaHood wrote further.
The central question is simply this: If taxpayers are to pay somebody $8 billion to build a $2 billion factory, can’t we find an American company instead a Chinese one linked to the CCP?
LaHood earlier gave us the following statement on the Gotion scandal:
I have serious concerns about Governor Pritzker and the Biden Administration’s active support for CCP-backed companies looking to expand their foothold in our economy. While I support incentives and improvements to our business climate in Illinois, I don’t believe taxpayers should be on the hook for billions in subsidies funneling to companies beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. One of the reasons I opposed the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ was the potential for foreign adversaries to exploit loopholes to gain generous incentives and dominate key technologies in the United States. Illinois taxpayers deserve to know why Governor Pritzker and the Biden Administration are allowing CCP-backed companies to leverage taxpayer-funded investments, potentially threatening our domestic supply chains and national security.
For further background on the Gotion scandal, we have collected relevant articles here.
-Mark Glennon
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Why is everything so secret? Why would anyone who represents a group of people sign a disclosure and stop conversation with those who they represent.
You can spread 8 billion around to a lot of political allies if nobody knows what’s going on.
Tesla would be a good alternative!
All Risk and No Reward. Period.
Yes, we need answers, BUT LaHood has to do more with his “serious concerns” than just “ask.” He has to demand, pressure, threaten, push, publicize, give speeches, dog him, find something in writing, have something put in writing, do radio, social media, get published in newspapers, infiltrate his circle of sychofants and find the weakest link. Do anything legal. Please just don’t “ask” and stop there. Go get him and stop this crisis, it is urgent! Don’t say you can’t. There is no excuse or reason good enough. YOU CAN IF YOU REALLY WANT TO.
Pritzker is a bully, so he must be bullied also. If LaHood isn’t upto being tough someone else needs to take the lead on this investigation – it’s very important.
It comes down to this:
Do the majority of Illinois voters, and relevant Illinois judges , agree that any Illinois governor has legal rights (at will) to extinguish all legal rights of any citizen in Illinois?
Do we agree to empower this and any future Governor, without stated legal justification, to invalidate local or State government rights of zoning, determination of local resources ownership and allocation , environmental impact, economic impact, or access to FOIA?
Yeah all this hoo haa should be about the money, land and why the hell our government is subsidizing it at all. I’ll tell you why, it’s because EV’s are the new religious icon of the left. Throwing around the acronym “CCP” is of little concern here. At my company engineers meet with Chinese engineers constantly, source and specify part designs, etc. The whole “CCP” mention is some kind of superfluous scare tactic or what? What is the beef here CCP or misspent money? If its about money then adding in the whole CCP aspect as a scare tactic weakens… Read more »
Always follow the money.
Why don’t we build build 3 factories with $6 billion and save $2 billion. Or maybe give a US company $2 billion to build and save $6billion then tell the Chinese to pound sand
why does the government have to give any company a subsidy? let capitalism prevail
Right. Economists of all stripes criticize these programs. It’s all beggar-thy-neighbor of one state trying to take from another state.
Best comment here!!! 🙂
Really needs to be a Congressional investigation – so many red flags around this ‘deal’. Pritzker will need to be subpoenaed.
My thoughts are that the situation is quite frustrating to Pritzker as it is chewing away from his dreams of a headline like “Brought an New Battery Plant and Jobs to Illinois” or other similar blather to parade about during the DNC National Convention. I do believe Pritzker has Presidential ambitions and he feels that making the right headlines is a must regardless of the effects on the Illinois people. Could he grab a nomination? Maybe. After all, as someone pointed out yesterday, many people voted to re-elect Jimmie Carter.
The fact that Rich Miller is still trolling and downvoting all negative comments in the earlier Wirepoints article seems to be proof of how desperate JB is to please his Chinese overlords. Pritzker/IL Democrat’s paid mouthpiece is frantically defending his master.
I’ll say this again: How does ANYONE justify a 4-to-1 subsidy, irrespective of the recipient being a Chinese CCP front? It can only be blatant corruption: Biden’s years of being paid by China for influence peddling and Pritzker desperately seeking an EV plant at any cost. Were they both so blind and arrogant that neither thought this would be exposed?
I wonder what the pushback would be if this plant were instead going into Chicago’s heavily Hispanic southeast side where the residents already complain about pollution? Would the media (you know who) paint this as a “conspiracy theory” so quickly? I bet not. I bet there would be a more thoughtful analysis of the situation that was far more sympathetic to its critics.
Absolutely, if it was pushed on the southeast side it would be called environmental racism.
Funny how JB the Bridge Builder finally found a toxic (both politically and environmentally) factory willing to build in Illinois then threw it square in Republican country as if he was doing them a favor. Isn’t this what he would call a race to the bottom? What’s next, a nuclear waste facility?
can’t we find an American company instead a Chinese one linked to the CCP? – American companies understand which states have a business friendly environment. If it fails it’s not easy for an American company to walk away, Gotion would be gone with no repercussions.
Thank you! I’ve said it before. Who in their right mind would set up here with some of the highest taxes in the nation and a corrupt system that disregards sound precedent? I can guarantee you that business managers / risk managers have all read law journal summaries about the disastrous biometric privacy lawsuit. The whole nation watched Lightfoot and Pritzker sinisterly pick off individual CPD officers and throw out the CPD contract. The whole world is watching Chicago try to shake down the CBOE. I lost money and some good opportunities when a contract related to one of my… Read more »
Circular logic has made Illinois a sinkhole of value. 1. We need jobs creation. 2. No rational businesses want to locate (create jobs) in a region which requires outlier- high tax rates, along with no reliable protection from politically-connected competitors’ illegal behaviour. 3. Illinois solutions: TIF, patronage, baksheesh=public funding subsidies, disregard of public- protection laws (zoning, OMA, EPA, County Board water use regs, etcetera) at whim of regime in power. 4. Number 3. solutions always make tax rates higher, because they add non-productive expense to the transaction-dollar-cost of every single aspect of Illinois businesses and the human household-expenditure -lives necessary-to… Read more »
When there is no plant and you are unemployed, you will wish it was there. Some other state will get the plant and the jobs and all the economic activity it brings.
They’ve gotten along pretty good without this CCP backed taxpayer funded back room deal. Veterans home employs a lot of townies and many more work down Route 50 in Kankakee and Bourbonnais.
Does not matter to me. Let them go elsewhere and they will. No big deal, Illinois has chased away bigger fish than this. Wait to see what happens when the CME leaves. Ken Griffin took billions of dollars to Maimi.
I think the entire point of this sordid affair was that every EV company rejected Illinois, except Gotion. JB had a few too many drinks, and when closing time came, he saw the homely looking HSV-1 infected female at the end of the bar and said, “I’ll take this one home tonight” but wakes up the next morning with an STD. That homely female is Gotion.
Unfortunately giving a bunch of money to subsidize a business is a bad plan. You’re too dim to see that. Illinois needs to change the business environment so more businesses can open. What Pritzker is doing is playing favorites for his progressive dream. Tell me there’s not going to be political insiders that profit off this. It’s also bad for a city to be dependent on one big employer.
There are no guarantees that many people from Manteno were going to be employed there in the first place. One thing is certain though, the residents would have to deal with the blowback were an industrial accident to happen and see thousands of gallons of water being used daily. I’d wager that there were going to be a lot of new faces driving electric cars sporting Pritzger bumper stickers, home values ( and taxes) were going to skyrocket and the quiet little town would be only a fond memory .