Alternative Title: Oh, no baby, of course I still love you… Josh Dzieza reports After a ‘personal conversation’ with Trump, Foxconn says it will build a factory in Wisconsin after all (At some point…): Days after Foxconn’s Louis Woo told Reuters that the company is no longer planning to build a factory in Wisconsin, Foxconn says the factory plan…
Business
Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Government Spending, Hunger, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Planning, Poverty, State Capitalism, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
The Fight Against Gravity
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The Trump Administration wants to bolster industries that are market failures, with coal as an example. Catherine Rampell writes of that effort in The Trump administration learns that fighting gravity is hard: The Trump administration is learning that, as new data show that the industries it has worked hardest to prop up — through bailouts, tariffs…
Business, Congress, Economics, Economy, Federal Government, Free Markets
Elizabeth Warren & Capitalism
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A reader wrote in to ask me whether I thought that Elizabeth Warren was a capitalist. The question stems from an article in The Atlantic by Franklin Foer (‘Elizabeth Warren’s Theory of Capitalism.’) Frequent readers know that I link to The Atlantic often. (I’m a subscriber.) I’m also a free-market guy, so here’s a quick…
Business, CDA, City, Local Government, Open Government, Public Records 2
Public Records Request of 6.26.18 (Grocery)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 6 Comments
Yesterday’s post addressed open government aspects of an unrecorded council meeting. See Public Records Request of 6.26.18 (Open Government). This post will consider a slide presentation from the unrecorded Whitewater Community Development Authority presentation of 6.19.18 on grocery store recruitment. Embedded immediately below is that slide presentation, and a link to the 5.19.16 Perkins supermarket…
Business, CDA, Development, Government Spending, Local Government
Groceries & Co-ops
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Whitewater has more than one food-shopping option in town, but only Walmart is of significant size. Many residents would like something beyond what we now have here in Whitewater: a dedicated grocery or a co-op. Over these last few months, I’ve received emails from readers favoring one option, the other, both, or neither. (My thanks…
Business, Ethics, Politics
Why, Yes, It Was
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Cecilia Kang reports AT&T Chief Says Hiring Michael Cohen Was a ‘Big Mistake’: WASHINGTON — Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, said on Friday that the company had made a “big mistake” by hiring President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to advise on the telecommunications giant’s deal to buy Time Warner. “Our company has been…
Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The Foxconn plant isn’t even built yet, but the Walker Admin and its allies (including a few local apologists for corporate welfare in Whitewater) now resort to fantastic, magical claims about how much economic development will come from nearly four billion in taxpayer subsidies. So magical, so fantastic, that they now claim an 18-1 multiplier…
Business, CDA, City, Development, Economy, Local Government, Poverty
A National Study on Big-City Economic Development
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
What’s the relationship, if any, between economic development and inclusion? A study from the Brookings Institution (Metro Monitor 2018) suggests that for large metropolitan areas, there may be one. (I’ll not try to fit these data into a local container. That’s why there’s no ‘The Scene from Whitewater Wisconsin’ logo attached to this post.) Here’s…
Business, Economy, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, State Capitalism, Trump
The Man Behind the Foxconn Project
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Embed from Getty Images You may have read, recently, of a public official who came to Whitewater to talk about the Foxconn project. Why settle for the tired claims of a mid-level state-government operative when one can hear about Foxconn from the one man behind the entire project? Matthew DeFour reports on the real force…
Business, Development, Economy, Employment, Environment, Foxconn, Government Spending, State Capitalism, That Which Paved the Way, Water, WEDC, Wisconsin
10 Key Articles About Foxconn
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
➤ Foxconned (“How much is Wisconsin paying for a Taiwanese manufacturer’s jobs?”): Already, it is hazy just how much of a boost to the local economy Foxconn is expected to make. The company said it planned to hire 3,000 workers over four years, whereas the state said the new facility would create 13,000 jobs with an average…
Business, City, Culture, Economy
The Market
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There’s an editorial at Royal Purple that contends a future Grocery store should accommodate students. The editorial makes sound points for pricing outreach to students, but my focus here isn’t merely a supermarket or co-op, but the general economic market of Whitewater and nearby, smaller towns (some of which are part of the local school…
Business, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Janesville
SHINE Fades (Updated May 2017)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Two years ago, I wrote about the troubles that Janesville’s publicly-subsidized SHINE project (to produce the molybdenum-99 isotope for nuclear medicine) was having in marketplace. See, SHINE Fades. Amy Goldstein also devotes a chapter to SHINE in her recent book, Janesville: An American Story. (I wrote about that chapter of her book, among others, in…
Business, Free Markets
Canadian Milk Producers Seek Regulatory Help to Defeat American Competition
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The video below, from the Journal Sentinel, describes how Canadian dairy farmers, unable to compete in the market with Wisconsin & New York dairies, have sought regulatory help from the Canadian government because they cannot manage the volume of American milk production. (Rather than concede their own competitive inferiority, they’ve predictably blamed American dairies for producing…