For residents facing poverty, one would hope for, and understand, a combination of private and public relief. Churches and other private organizations do much in this effort; government expenditures for the genuinely needy amount to a small portion of all government spending. Support of this kind is a worthy effort.
Whitewater also has two large public educational institutions, both of which by their nature as public entities receive significant taxpayer support. Neither the Whitewater Unified School District nor UW-Whitewater could go on without public funding, and as they’re public institutions, that’s hardly surprising.
Look beyond that, though, and one finds a city that talks ceaseless about private development, but in saying so really seeks nothing so much as public money. What’s an economic development specialist for city government? It’s a publicly-paid man looking to use public money to manipulate the local economy in ways suited to other public officials.
What’s the Community Development Authority save mostly a collection of present or former public officials, using public money taxed from private citizens, to direct business development in ways those public men find suitable? (Some of those same men simultaneously hold positions as leaders of a local 501(c)(6) business lobby, looking to influence legislation and public affairs in ways suitable to their organization.)
Even the small downtown merchants’ organization, having been in operation for years, relies on city funding and state guidance (from WEDC, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation) to carry on. Both practically and ethically, it would be better to take nothing than to take anything from WEDC. They’ve wasted this state’s money, and disgraced Wisconsin before all America, in the embrace of cronyism and sham economics.
We’d be better off on our own, however hard that might initially seem.
The finest song from a WEDC official is as discordant as an ape’s screeching. Worse, really: the ape vocalizes in a way natural to it; the WEDC man stoops below ordinary human understanding, producing something beneath our society’s capabilities.
Whitewater is lousy with public officials who talk about business growth but use public funds, derived from private taxpayers less well off than the officials, so that those few can play the role of financiers and developers on the public’s tab.
That model has failed us, and will continue to do so. That model has never been broadly believed, and is less persuasive with each successive year.
In this, at least, there’s progress: these public men are almost out of ideas, having greatly depleted their inventory of shoddy proposals.
Hits the points that needed to be hit.