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…
Bad Ideas
Bad Ideas, Gerrymandering, Legislation, Legislature, WISGOP
WISGOP Legislation Would Gerrymander Wisconsin’s Electoral Votes
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A WISGOP legislator, Rep. Gary Tauchen, has drafted a bill to award Wisconsin’s electoral votes by congressional district, thereby maximizing the importance of gerrymandering. Melanie Conklin writes that GOP has bill to reallocate Wisconsin’s electoral votes by congressional district: And that is what a new bill authored by Rep. Gary Tauchen (R-Bonduel) would do. It…
Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, Speaker Vos, State Capitalism, Taxes/Taxation, Technology, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin, WISGOP
Highlight’s from The Verge’s Foxconn Assessment
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
No failure better reveals the bankruptcy of corporate welfare in the Walker and Trump years than the Foxconn project in Wisconsin: exaggeration upon exaggeration, but nothing productive. This was a failure of judgment so obvious and significant that everyone involved should retire from policymaking. Walker Administration, Trump Administration, the WISGOP, the WEDC, down to Whitewater’s Community…
Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, Speaker Vos, State Capitalism, State Government, Technology, WEDC, WISGOP
Accountability Comes Calling at Foxconn
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
After years of grandiose – ludicrous, truly – claims about Foxconn from Trump to Vos to boosters in Whitewater, Accountability has made her way to Foxconn. If not Accountability personified, then at least Missy Hughes (the new, Evers-appointed leader) of a slightly-reformed WEDC. Josh Dzieza of the national publication The Verge reports Wisconsin denies Foxconn tax…
Bad Ideas, Corporate Welfare, Foxconn, UW Madison
Foxconn & UW-Madison: Two Years and Less Than One Percent Later…
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Kelly Meyerhofer reports UW-Madison still waiting on Foxconn’s $100 million pledge 2 years later: Foxconn Technology Group gave no money to UW-Madison over the past year, renewing questions about the company’s commitment to its $100 million pledge to the university nearly two years ago. UW-Madison received $700,000 in the first of a five-year agreement — less than…
Bad Ideas, Coronavirus, Covidiocy, Public Health, Walworth County
How ‘bout a New Slogan for the Walworth County Fair?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
One reads that not only are organizers planning to hold the Walworth County Fair during a pandemic, but that they hope to entice patrons with beer sales. Candidly, aside from the pig races (always suspenseful), one can be hit-or-miss about the fair. Holding it this year is problematic; looking for ways to attract more people…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, City, Culture, Local Government, Politics, School District, University
The Lingering Problem of Local Exceptionalism
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
A common error in small rural communities is the persistent, false claim that local officials are examples of a local exceptionalism that makes them implicitly immune from the flaws and mistakes that beset the rest of humanity. Under this thinking, while there may be problems in the wider world, there are no local examples of…
Advertising, Bad Ideas, Business, Marketing, Newspapers
The Janesville Gazette‘s Time-Share Stage of Decline
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A nearby newspaper, the Janesville Gazette, part of an out-of-state chain (APG) owned by a family that made billions in billboard advertising, recently tried to position half-off advertising as a ‘community grant‘ program. See That’s Not a ‘Community Grant’ – It’s Half-Off Advertising. It’s an old – often true – adage that bad goes to…
Advertising, Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Culture, Economics, Economy, History, Poverty
Boosterism, ’30s Style
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Although the Roosevelt Administration was (whatever its other mistakes) candid about the economic conditions it faced, there was in the ’30s, as there has been over the 2010s in Wisconsin, a delusional impulse to happy talk – regardless of economic conditions – among some politicians and some business groups. Margaret Bourke-White‘s Kentucky Flood depicts the…
Bad Ideas, Coronavirus, Medicine, Public Health, Trump
More Deaths, No Benefit from Anti-Malaria Drug That Trump Pushed
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A malaria drug widely touted by President Donald Trump for treating the new coronavirus showed no benefit in a large analysis of its use in U.S. veterans hospitals. There were more deaths among those given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, researchers reported. The nationwide study was not a rigorous experiment. But with 368 patients, it’s the…
Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, WEDC, Wisconsin
Foxconn’s ‘Innovation’ Centers: Still Empty a Year Later
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Over at the national tech website The Verge, Nilay Patel reminds that a year later, Foxconn has still done nothing with the ‘innovation’ centers that foreign corporation promised it would open around the state. They’re still empty: See FOXCONN’S BUILDINGS IN WISCONSIN ARE STILL EMPTY, ONE YEAR LATER. In Whitewater, the ‘Greater Whitewater’ Committee…
Bad Ideas, Coronavirus, Politics, Public Health, Religion, Scott Fitzgerald, Speaker Vos
If Vos & Fitzgerald Read More, and Spoke Less
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
So Speaker Vos and Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald want Gov. Evers to allow an exception to the Safer at Home order for Easter Sunday services. (They’ve also included Passover in their request, but they’re either too ignorant or too dishonest to concede that Passover is commemorated traditionally in a home setting. It’s obviously a certain…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Conflicts of Interest, Kakistocracy, Kushner, Nepotism, Public Relations, WEDC, Wisconsin
An Empty-Headed Man’s Next Gig
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Updated with a longer – and so more revealing – video of Kushner’s vapidity. When Jared Kushner is finished impairing America’s response to a pandemic, he’ll need something else to do. Wisconsin still has the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, and in small Wisconsin towns like Whitewater one finds development hucksters, business leagues of landlords &…
Bad Ideas, Boosterism, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Planning, Poverty, WEDC
Declines, Recessions, and Rhetoric
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
While yesterday was a bad day for the financial markets, it’s the underlying – and troubling – fundamental condition of the economy that matters far more. Places like Whitewater, that adopted business special interests’ “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” approach despite increasing poverty and stagnation in household and individual incomes, are especially vulnerable to a downturn. Market Declines. Steven…