Wisconsin, with a gerrymandered legislature and a crony capitalist, lame-duck governor, was never going to have an easy transition back to a tradition of democratically representative government and sound economic policy. The men who engineered years of the wrong approach were never going to go gently to the political outer darkness that, deservedly, awaits them.…
Bad Ideas
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A sensible person would never have listened to a Walker Administration operative in Whitewater tout Foxconn without laughing or looking about for a nearby tomato. No sensible person would have made that operative a guest speaker at an annual dinner or written about the event without criticism. (See, about that Greater Whitewater Committee dinner and that…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Before and after the recent election, solid assessments on Foxconn came to press, and they confirm how irrational and wasteful is that project. Earlier this year, the local business lobby (the Greater Whitewater Committee) invited the state capitalist stooge official overseeing the project to a dinner in Whitewater. I’ve no idea whether Matt Moroney will show…
Bad Ideas, Mendacity, New Media, Politics, That Which Paved the Way
A Site on Facebook: ‘Nothing on this page is real’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Standards have fallen so low that, whether of right or left, trolls take advantage of gullible and ignorant people on Facebook each day. Eli Saslow reports how a liberal troll tricks impressionable conservatives. The people tricking, and the people being tricked, are evidence of (respectively) ethical or educational decline. First the unethical tricksters: He [forty-something Christopher Blair] had…
Bad Ideas, Bigotry, City, History
Confederate Iconography is White Failure (Moral and Economic)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Frances Stead Sellers writes of Confederate pride and prejudice (“Some white Northerners see a flag rooted in racism as a symbol of patriotism”): Ashort walk from where President-elect Abraham Lincoln made the last train stop in his home state before leaving for Washington on the verge of the Civil War, a Confederate battle flag flies…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Government Spending, Mendacity, Newspapers
Predictable: From Boosterism to Bad Checks
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Anyone wanting to see how bad boosterism – the desire to push a local project regardless of sound arguments and actual experience to the contrary – can get should look to the 2018 ‘Warriors and Wizards’ festival in Jefferson, Wisconsin. Formerly a Harry Potter Festival, it was rebranded after Warner Bros. clamped down on obvious…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Foxconn: Failure & Fraud
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There are two national publications with recent updates on the Foxconn project, and each report highlights fundamental problems with the billions in public subsidies for that foreign corporation. Here’s a roundup of the latest on this dodgy corporate welfare: Bruce Murphy (writing online for national tech site The Verge) reports Wisconsin’s $4.1 Billion Foxconn Boondoggle (“Gov.…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Government Spending, Mendacity, Newspapers
New Developments About Jefferson, Wisconsin’s ‘Warriors & Wizards’ Festival
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There are new, troubling developments concerning Jefferson, Wisconsin’s ‘Warriors & Wizards’ festival, an event about which this website has been consistently critical (for many sound reasons). One can wait a day or so to see what this new reporting shows (and how accurate and honest the reporting is, considering how wobbly it’s been). In the…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Poverty, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
In Whitewater and Elsewhere, Employment’s Only Part of the Story
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In times of high unemployment, of course it makes sense to get people back to work. Jobs, jobs, jobs isn’t a bad mantra when people don’t have work. (Work isn’t simply about an income, but a place in society.) Today is not, however, the Great Depression. Listen to ‘development professionals’ go on about job-creation at…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Taiwanese-owned Foxconn is relying on eminent domain to seize Wisconsinites’ private homes for the sake of that foreign company’s project. Principles of eminent domain, sadly, have been vastly increased since a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision expanded government’s power to take from ordinary homeowners, among others. Those expanded governmental powers mean that residents who lose their…
Bad Ideas, China, Economy, Government Spending, Trade, Trump
‘Chinese-owned company qualifies for Trump’s anti-China farm bailout’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Listen closely, and one can almost hear the peals of laughter from a bureaucrat in the Chinese ministry of commerce… Jeff Stein reports Chinese-owned company qualifies for Trump’s anti-China farm bailout: A Chinese-owned pork producer is eligible for federal payments under President Trump’s $12 billion farm bailout, a program established to help U.S. farmers hurt…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Government Spending, Local Government, Newspapers
Sad Spectacle in Jefferson, WI (and How to Do Much Better)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
For four years, either Edgerton or Jefferson, Wisconsin has hosted a costume festival (originally a Harry Potter Festival, this year a Warriors and Wizards festival). Despite three years of disappointment, Jefferson held the festival again this year (after having – astonishingly – signed a five-year deal). I’ve followed the event over the years, and it…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Free Markets, Government Spending, Local Government, Mendacity, Open Government, Politics, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Tony Evers, WEDC, Wisconsin
The Walker Cabinet Officers’ Open Letter
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Four cabinet secretaries of the Walker Administration have come forward to criticize the governor, and three of them have co-written an open letter against Walker’s relentless emphasis on political gain over sound policies. One of the signatories of the letter is Paul Jadin, who was Walker’s first Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation leader. It says all…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Bad Ideas, City, Culture, Ethics, Local Government, Mendacity, Official Misconduct, Politics, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, University
Act Utilitarianism Isn’t Merely a National Scourge
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Trump justifies his treatment of Christine Blasey Ford by the outcome of the Kavanaugh hearings: “It doesn’t matter. We won.”
One wouldn’t have to go to Washington, or wait for Trump to speak, to find this sort of act utilitarianism. Long before Trump’s 2016 campaign, officials and self-described community leaders in small towns across America shared a similar calculus. For the sake of some imagined overall gain, individual injuries and injustices have been swept aside.
And so, and so — officials justify financial and personal injuries to individuals on behalf of the supposed greater good of being ‘community-minded,’ of defending the ‘university family,’ or some such collective claim.
Trump’s act utilitarianism did not begin with Trump: it grew in cities and towns in which factions decided they’d take what they want, and conveniently sweep aside others by use of nebulous ‘community’ principles. (In the video above, Trump betrays his amorality early on, as he shrugs his shoulders when part of Christine Blasey Ford’s injury is recounted to him.)
In most of these cases of supposed collective gain, of course, it turns out to be a particular politician, particular businessman, or particular university official who reaps the most at the expense of ordinary individuals, but these community leaders would prefer one didn’t look too closely into that selfish benefit, thank you kindly.
Whether a highly-placed person’s selfish gain, or community’s supposed overall gain, the disregard for individual rights reveals a dark, calculating amorality.