Good morning. Sunday in Whitewater will be intermittently cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 5:15 PM for 10h 13m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 30.9% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1967, nationally-known activist Stokely Carmichael speaks at UW-Whitewater as part of…
Bad Ideas
Bad Ideas, Confidence Schemes, Daily Bread, Government Spending, Local Government, School District
Daily Bread for 1.4.22: Theranos? Yeah, We Have a Few…
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Good morning. Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 30. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:35 PM for 9h 09m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.5% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1923, Milton College president A.E. Whitford bans dancing by students in off-campus, semi-public…
Bad Ideas, Books, Confidence Schemes, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Welfare, Daily Bread, Development, Foxconn, Mendacity, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, Trump, WEDC
Daily Bread for 12.11.21: A Christmas Gift For, and About, Scheming Development Men
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning. Saturday in Whitewater will see snow this morning, of little accumulation, on an otherwise cloudy day with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 04m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 55.4% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1901, Morris Pratt…
Bad Ideas, City, Daily Bread, Environment, Nature, Open Government, Press, Water
Daily Bread for 10.22.21: Reporting About Artificial Herbicides in Whitewater, Wisconsin
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Bad Ideas, Crime, Daily Bread, Law
Daily Bread for 10.11.21: Whitewater Schools Use Pandemic Funds for Artificial Turf
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will see afternoon thundershowers with a high of 77. Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 6:17 PM for 11h 12m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM. On this day in 1767, surveying for the Mason–Dixon…
Bad Ideas, Crime, Daily Bread, Law
Daily Bread for 10.10.21: Candidate for Wisconsin’s Worst Legal Argument of the Year
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with showers and a high of 78. Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 6:19 PM for 11h 15m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 21.8% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1973, U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged…
Bad Ideas, Daily Bread, Education, Health, Ignorance, Vaccines
Daily Bread for 9.20.21: Horse Owners Face an Ivermectin Shortage
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with scattered afternoon thundershowers and a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 6:54 PM for 12h 13m 07s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 5 PM, and her Library Board at 6:30…
Bad Ideas, Corporate Welfare, Foxconn, Government Spending, Scott Walker, WEDC, Wisconsin
Foxconn: Perhaps – Perhaps – a Few Lessons Learned
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Scott Cohn of CNBC reports After Wisconsin’s Foxconn debacle, states and companies rethink giant subsidies. Rethinking is a hopeful prospect, but there has been significant lasting damage, as Cohn reports: Economic development officials in Wisconsin say they are more than ready to move on to other matters now that they have renegotiated a massive subsidy deal…
Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Development, Foxconn, Government Spending, Politics, Scott Walker, Speaker Vos, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
Adding the Amounts Spent for Foxconn (So Far)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Wisconsin’s new deal with Foxconn will reduce the cost to state taxpayers, but local governments have already spent vast sums on a project that will not – by Foxconn’s own belated admission – come close to what was originally, and ludicrously, promised. Bruce Murphy writes of The True Costs of New Foxconn Deal: the true cost…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Development, Foxconn, Scott Walker, Trump
Foxconn: Seth Meyers on One of Trump’s (and Walker’s) Biggest Scams, the Foxconn Deal
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The Wisconsin Foxconn project that Trump, Walker, and local development men touted was a house of cards, with each card in the deck no better than a three of spades. Their supposedly serious effort now finds itself a national punchline. Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, Scott Walker, Trump, WEDC
Foxconn: New, More Realistic Deal Means 90% Reduction in Goals
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
After years of flamboyant lies about what Foxconn would be able to achieve in Wisconsin, there’s a new deal with that foreign corporation. That new arrangement reflects a reduction of 90% or more in what Wisconsin expects and what the state will offer. Local governments have already wasted millions on absurdly grandiose, false promises Not…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Blogging, Boosterism, City, Confidence Schemes, Coronavirus, Culture, Local Government, Mendacity, Politics, School District, Special Interests, Whitewater's Local Politics 2021
Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: Marketing
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
This is the ninth in a series on Whitewater’s local politics of 2021. Through all the difficult events of the last two decades (a Great Recession, an opioid epidemic, economic stagnation, creeping nativism, a pandemic, a pandemic recession), Old Whitewater has responded with the same question: how can we market the town to others? If…
Bad Ideas, Corporate Welfare, Development, Foxconn, Marketing, Mendacity, Public Relations, Scott Walker, Special Interests, State Capitalism, State Government, WEDC, WISGOP, YMBFKM
Foxconn’s Venture Capital Fund
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Bruce Murphy has a solid assessment of Foxconn’s much-touted (by Foxconn) venture capital fund in About That Foxconn Venture Capital Fund. It’s well worth reading in full. A few key points: Unfulfilled: Louis Woo of Foxconn had promised this venture fund for startup companies would naturally connect to Foxconn’s innovation centers in Eau Claire, Green Bay…
Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Budget, Education, University, UW System
Tommy Thompson @ UW-Whitewater: Day Late, Dollar Short
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Former governor and current UW System president Tommy Thompson spoke at a UW-Whitewater Faculty Senate meeting on Tuesday. Thompson addressed a campus that confronts statewide funding reductions, a tuition freeze, repeated administrative scandals and failures over the last decade, a decline in the conventional student-age demographic, and competitive pressures from other universities. For all these…