Tuesday in Whitewater will see morning and evening showers with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:21 and sunset 8:36 for 15h 15m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 12.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Community Development Authority meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress adopts the Lee Resolution severing ties with the Kingdom of Great Britain, although the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence is not adopted until July 4.
Wisconsin will get $49 million in federal support to develop a tech hub for biohealth, the U.S. Commerce Department announced Tuesday.
The goal of the state’s tech hub project is to advance technology to improve diagnosis and treatment for illness and centers on personalized health care — tailoring medical care to the distinctive genetic differences among patients.
“Wisconsin’s biohealth tech hub will be an economic driver for the state,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said in a news conference she held Monday to preview the announcement. “It will help entrepreneurs scale up their operations and grow. It will help expand lab space and support new research. It will support people at all educational levels get the skills that they need to land a job in this emerging sector, and it will serve as a central hub for private and public partners in biotech to coordinate and collaborate so that our state can drive innovation that benefits people around the world.”
Wisconsin’s project was one of 12 tech hub proposals in the U.S. selected for full funding, Baldwin said, winnowed from nearly 200 applications initially. The tech hub program was established under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act.
Baldwin said the Wisconsin project has been projected to create more than 30,000 jobs and spark $9 billion in economic development over the next decade.
A project — public or private — should be judged by its promises measured against its results. And so, for this project: 30,000 jobs and $9 billion in economic development over a decade. If that result should come to pass, the project will be a notable success.
It’s a relatively small federal investment for these possible results. To come even part way to the stated goal would be a worthy accomplishment. It will take years, however, to see how far Wisconsin goes.
This federal biohealth project joins Microsoft’s recent private tech project in Wisconsin as a low-risk, high-reward effort. Both of those newer ventures seem as far from Wisconsin’s expenditure-heavy Foxconn project, for example, as one could get. (It would be impossible to go farther away from Foxconn, truly: to travel more would be to round the globe only to head in the direction one started.) SeeWisconsin Tries to Leave Foxconn (and Its Misguided Boosters) Behind.
As Foxconn recedes into our past, the more absurd its proponents seem, and the more ridiculous the times in which those proponents held sway. There were some like this in Whitewater in the last decade, at the ‘Greater Whitewater’ Committee and the old CDA. SeeA Sham News Story on Foxconn and Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…
NASA TV – Kennedy Space Center, Florida – 25 June 2024 1. Various of ‘GOES-U’ satellite launch from the Kennedy Space Center STORYLINE: A Falcon Heavy rocket launched a new weather satellite into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday. The ‘GOES-U’ satellite is the newest and final addition to NOAA’s GOES-R series of satellites. GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environment Satellite Series. This latest satellite will assist with weather-observing and environmental monitoring by tracking local weather events that affect public safety like thunderstorms, hurricanes, wildfires, and solar storms.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon clouds and evening thunderstorms with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:17 for 14h 52m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Special Committee meets at 9 AM and the Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1792, a lava dome collapses on Mount Unzen, near the city of Shimbara on the Japanese island of Kyushu, creating a deadly tsunami that kills nearly 15,000 people.
Witness conflicts of interest and hear self-serving claims long enough, and one risks becoming accustomed to them. The claims offered may be no better than a child’s connivances, yet repetition will cause hesitation even among reasonable and independent-minded people. FREE WHITEWATER published a few words on Monday about Whitewater’s new Common Council and Community Development Authority majorities. SeeOn a New Common Council & New Community Development Authority. Today, a few remarks will follow about specific contentions from holdovers of yesteryear’s CDA.
The video of the Whitewater CDA meeting from 5.16.24 is embedded above. In remarks below, I will refer to specific claims from that meeting, and from earlier public meetings.
A few points worth remembering:
1.Whitewater lacks adequate housing. This condition should be evident to everyone and anyone. See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24@33:02.
2.Whitewater’s new CDA majority has proposed a residential development on South Moraine View Drive.See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24@31:47 and professional reporting from WhitewaterWise, CDA recommends approval of 128-unit multifamily development on Moraine View Parkway. This proposal is well-located and would provide a needed boost to our housing supply.
3.Rents in Whitewater are high for many residents.
4. A former CDA chairman, a second-generation landlord, when arguing against these new opportunities for others, concedes his belief that the proposed developments will affect his financial condition:
He [a consultant] mentioned that it would have no effect on student housing. And he’s absolutely wrong.
It’s a candid admission: an acknowledgment that his view is particular, specific, and biased, impacting his interests.
These are not the views of an independent, unbiased analyst. It’s as though someone asked a Volkswagen salesman on commission which car to buy. (Be careful: someone may try to slip in some TruCoat.)
It is an implicit concession that rents will decline in conditions of steady demand and increased supply. With holdings in incumbent properties, this gentleman has a financial interest in preventing an increase in supply that might affect his bottom line.
5. He follows with a disingenuous assertion that he knows of no instance in which the city has provided financial assistance to a project like this.See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24 @36:37.
The claim that there hasn’t been an effort to subsidize is disingenuous because policymakers (and self-interested men) can influence policy not merely through spending but through zoning. They can pay to make something happen, or they can argue against zoning regulations to limit competitors.
Later, when, as incumbents, they decided that they’d rather not have competition, they began to argue against others’ new properties. From 2014 seeDaily Union, Whitewater council eyes zoning for Campus Edge development, where the CDA chairman produced a parade of horribles against more development.
See alsoFREE WHITEWATER @ Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2014 (“So a new apartment building at Main & Prince is ‘too extreme’ in design for Whitewater? Well, I would guess that existing landlords must think so. [Update: For consumers, it’s a good thing, and a bad joke that anyone from the CDA would shill against it.]”)
Years later (they’re tenacious!) they similarly fought in 2018 against a project on Tratt Street. See Daily Union, Common council rezones annexed land.
That project has been quite helpful and attractive.
As with the 2014 effort, they argued up and down against more supply to meet demand.
6. Perhaps, as someone now contends, he’s simply an advocate of affordable single-family homes. No, he’s not. These gentlemen have argued against affordable homes in Whitewater. In 2022, they argued against smaller homes, insisting on larger ones instead.
Whitewater’s Common Council, by a vote of 5-2 at its 9.20.22 session, sensibly approved on first reading the creation of an R1-S zoning district for detached, single-family homes on smaller lots. A zoning change that offers some builders and buyers, even in limited areas, more options is, prima facie, the right decision.
So what a this lights on for us, lights off for you public policy? It’s this:
A tiny clique of landlords has for years addressed this issue opportunistically. These few wanted to liberalize Whitewater’s ordinances to permit more student housing. And so, and so, there were more student apartments in the center of town. Ah, but when competitors sought approval to build on Prince or Tratt Streets, an incumbent landlord (and sometime public official) used one claim after another under the city’s ordinances to prevent or restrict those competitive projects.
These are proud, private businessmen right up until the time they hold public offices and entreat public bodies to bend to their special-interest desires.
The larger homes these men advocated would have been out of reach for many residents.
It’s as though you told a struggling person that he should hold off buying tuna until he could afford caviar. A person taking that advice would go hungry waiting.
They opportunistically shift from one position to another while leaving residents without genuine, real options. Wait a bit is easier for men who already have than men and women who would like something affordable.
These gentlemen want the law liberalized when it liberalization suits their bottom line, but want the law restricted when restriction suits their bottom line. They could not be more obvious if they tried. (In my own case, the best policy would be fewer restrictions all the way down, but that’s not the point here. The point is that their views have shifted with their interests rather than the common good, and their interests are not the same as the city’s interests
7. Tax incremental funding comes up as an objection to this project. One should remember that the new CDA’s program here is to meet an existing need for affordable housing. A reminder: food, clothing, shelter. Any tax incremental fiancing now would meet a fundamental need. (I write this, by the way, as a long-standing critic of tax incremental financing; yet, this critic can see that some cases are more important than others, are more understandable than others.)
For years, these older men were involved in tax increment financing for Whitewater. They weren’t critics then; they’re raising doubts now they see competition. (These are not free-market men; they’re a few self-helping businessmen.)
Expressing optimism with perceived economic improvements, members of the Whitewater CDA recently discussed a number of the areas of the city designated as tax incremental financing (TIF) districts.
Officials briefly went over TIF districts 5 to 8 during a meeting Oct. 23. TIFS 5 and 7 are designated for mixed-use, a term denoting a blend of commercial and residential uses. TIFs 6 and 8, meanwhile, are earmarked for industrial use.
“We’re kind of getting out of the doldrums of this economy,” said CDA Chair Jeff Knight, expressing optimism of future development within the city.
Our current housing needs are, by far, greater than those of any tax incremental plan or other plan that a former CDA has ever advocated in this city.
If these few holdovers from another time would like to lecture others about tax incremental financing, they should first look to their past roles in tax incremental financing in this community.
Most important of all: it’s a city of 15,000 equal people, many of whom have good ideas for our future. A few older men who keep insisting ‘we’ve never done it that way’ or ‘that’s not our history’ only bolster the case for encouraging new officials, new voices, to advance a different way. We’ve not benefited from the public policy advice of the last generation. SeeA Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA and Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.
It’s time — well past time — to blaze a new trail.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with rain and a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:17 for 14h 51m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 91.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1863, after the unsuccessful assault on Vicksburg the previous day, Union forces regroup in front of the city. The 1st Wisconsin Light Artillery and the 8th, 11th, 18th, and 23rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments joined the 14th and 17th Infantries to prepare for the next attack. While these arrangements took place at Vicksburg, the 4th Wisconsin Infantry fought in a skirmish in Cheneyville, Louisiana.
Whitewater now has a new Common Council majority and a new Community Development Authority majority. A few remarks today about these new majorities; remarks will follow tomorrow about specific contentions from a few holdovers from yesteryear’s CDA.
First, the obvious: this libertarian blogger is not, and has never claimed to be, a development man. And yet, and yet, a person need not be a development man to see the difference in quality between the self-serving claims of a conniving clique and the genuine accomplishments of residents and development employees. (One doesn’t have to be a watchmaker to see the difference between a fine timepiece and a cheap knockoff that’s scarcely right twice a day.)
Whitewater is a town of many talented people, of many sharp people, of many capable people. Thousands upon thousands, truly. This isn’t true because I believe it; I believe it because it’s true. Our advanced American civilization is far more than the product of a few — we are the work of millions across centuries. Whitewater, in the same way, is far more than the product of a few — we are the work of thousands across generations.
Whitewater, after all, has a Common Council (lit., ‘belonging to, open to, or affecting the whole of a community’) and Community Development Authority (lit., ‘the people of a district or country considered collectively; society’).
Whitewater does not have a Special Interests’ Council, or a Few Businessmen’s Development Authority. These are public bodies of — and for — the whole community, not simply platitudinous men, self-dealers, self-promoters, and their operatives, catspaws, scoundrels, or sycophants.
Whitewater now has sincere, independent majorities on her Common Council and Community Development Authority. They and I will not always agree, but I and others owe these officials the acknowledgment that whatever disagreements we may have, they are disagreements with capable and independent men and women.
Left, center, right, whatever: first, one must have men and women who exercise their independent judgment on behalf of not fifteen, but all fifteen thousand in this beautiful city.
For tomorrow, particular remarks on the CDA meetings of 4.18.24 and 5.16.24.
For today and always, best wishes and support to those sincere and principled officials acting on behalf of all of our city.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:30 and sunset 8:11 for 14h 41m 31s of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 50.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board meets in closed session shortly after 5 PM, to return to open session thereafter this evening. Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1911, in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.
Inflationshowed some signs of improvementin April, as policymakers grapple with whether their fight against abnormally high price growth is losing ground.
Data released Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed prices rose 3.4 percent in April, compared with the year before. That’s down a bit from the 3.5 percent notched in March, and follows months of hotter-than-expected reports. Prices rose 0.3 percent compared with the month before.
In a particularly encouraging note, a key reading of inflation known as “core” — which strips out more volatile categories like food and energy — rose 0.3 percent. That measure was up 3.6 percent on an annual basis, the lowest year-over-year increase since 2021. Policymakers pay close attention to that gauge because it helps them tease out stickier sources of inflation from the kinds of rising prices that typically bounce around month to month.
If conditions improve nationally, and if that national improvement reaches Whitewater, then what will local policymakers make of that improvement? If conditions do not improve nationally, and that lack of improvement besets Whitewater, then how will local policymakers carry on?
Bringing back policymakers from the failed past will only ensure a failed future. Again, a reminder:
The only reason to return to the policies and leaders of the past would be if someone had no hope of either any possible growth or no hope for ameliorating any possible decline. That is, yesterday’s self-promoting mediocrities would be of value to Whitewater only if nothing anyone did would matter. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom and Now is Whitewater’s Time to Seize an Improving National and State Economy. Only hopelessness among many or the selfishness of a few would lead Whitewater to return to her economic past.
People choose freely, sometimes well, sometimes poorly.
Thursday in Whitewater will see morning showers with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:36 and sunset 8:05 for 14h 28m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1662, the figure who later became Mr. Punch makes his first recorded appearance in England.
FREE WHITEWATER has chronicled and critiqued the failed corporate welfare scheme that was the Wisconsin Foxconn project (links to many of those posts at the bottom of this post). Now, with Foxconn nothing more than a shell project vanished into the fog, there’s a genuine, private, multi-billion dollar Microsoft investment on that Wisconsin site:Microsoft AI center on site of Trump’s failed Foxconn deal? (‘The multibillion-dollar [private!] investment is expected to create 2,000 permanent jobs and 2,300 temporary union construction jobs’).
In Whitewater, an old guard of bankers, landlords, lobbyists, public relations men, etc., pushed Foxconn more than once. Any ordinary person of normal reasoning and sound basic knowledge would have seen Foxconn was a political scheme masquerading as a legitimate project. And yet, somehow, these same Whitewater types hold themselves out as experts on development policy. They backed a joke plan because they were — and are — unsuited to serious policy. SeeA Sham News Story on Foxconn. (The local business group was the ‘Greater’ Whitewater Committee.)
Trickle-down sloganeering is the best these local types have ever produced. It’s not a free market they want; small-town boosterism and cronyism haven’t uplifted household and individual incomes in this city. SeeA Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA.
Some of these men, when at the Community Development Authority, let this city languish while promoting themselves. Even at the tail end of an economic boom, these gentlemen were walking around trying to figure out which end was up. SeeWhitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.
Whitewater deserves better than this ilk. These men deserve an ongoing critique, and detailed review of their record, if they capture that institution again.
Here is the Foxconn scheme, that these local, old-guard Whitewater men touted, as succinctly described in a national story:
In 2018, when Foxconn, at Trump’s urging, announced plans to create 13,000 good-paying jobs in Mount Pleasant, Wis., he celebrated the company’s $10 billion venture as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Wielding a golden shovel, Trump touted the Foxconn flat-panel display factory as evidence of a broad manufacturing revival stirred by his 2017 tax cuts and tariffs on imported steel. “You know, 18 months ago, this was a field, and now it’s one of the most advanced places of any kind you’ll see anywhere in the world. It’s incredible,” Trump crowed.
The Foxconn facility was to have included dozens of buildings dotting a giant plot of land three times the size of New York’s Central Park. But the project accomplished little more than the destruction of 100 local homes and farms before the company drastically scaled back its ambitions.
In 2020, Wisconsin state officials denied the Taiwanese company special tax credits, saying it had abandoned its original commitment, employed fewer than 520 people and spent just $300 million. Local taxpayers were left with a tab of more than $500 million for site preparation.
By last summer, Foxconn had built four structures on one corner of the site, which were in sporadic use, according to locals. One large building that was originally billed as a manufacturing facility was being used as a warehouse, one former employee said. Foxconn at the time said it employed 1,000 people in Mount Pleasant building computer servers. The flat-panel display factory never materialized.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:44 and sunset 7:58 for 14h 14m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 26.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1957, Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
National job creation slowed last month, with 175,000 additional jobs created. Additional jobs were created, but fewer than the month before. Is there a silver lining in this? Yes, quite possibly. Jeanna Smialek writes The Fed Is Looking for a Job Market Cool-Down. It Just Got One (‘Wage growth and hiring slowed in April, evidence of the job market slowdown that Federal Reserve officials have been waiting on’):
While inflation is the main thing determining when and how much borrowing costs can come down, Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, made it clear this week that central bankers are also watching what happens with hiring and pay.
Mr. Powell emphasized repeatedly this week that the Fed did not specifically target wage growth when setting policy, but he also suggested that pay gains might need to slow further for inflation to come down sufficiently and in a lasting way — which means that Friday’s numbers could be a welcome development.
“We don’t target wages; we target price inflation,” he said. When it comes to cooling the economy, he said, “part of that will probably be having wage increases move down incrementally toward levels that are more sustainable.”
Stock indexes picked up after the report, as investors welcomed the more moderate data as a sign that interest rates may not stay high for as long. Investors in assets like stocks tend to prefer low rates.
These are national job numbers (with implications for the national inflation rate). Overall, these favorable national figures (job creation, relatively low unemployment, and conditions that may cool inflation).
Locally, however, there is a stark truth about municipal economic & development policy: The only reason to return to the policies and leaders of the past would be if someone had no hope of either any possible growth or no hope for ameliorating any possible decline. That is, yesterday’s self-promoting mediocrities would be of value to Whitewater only if nothing anyone did would matter. SeeWhitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom and Now is Whitewater’s Time to Seize an Improving National and State Economy.
Only hopelessness among many or the selfishness of a few would lead Whitewater to return to her economic past.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 56. Sunrise is 6:01 and sunset 7:45 for 13h 44m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 94.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1946, the U.S. Weather Bureau published a paper stating that the width of a tornado that struck the city of Timber Lake, South Dakota, was 4 miles (6.4 km), making it the widest tornado ever documented in history.
Special LP releases, live performances and at least one giant block party are scheduled around the U.S. Saturday as hundreds of shops celebrate Record Store Day [4.20, of course] during a surge of interest in vinyl and the day after the release of Taylor Swift’s latest album.
There were no announced Record Store Day specials for the arrival of Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” on Friday, but her fans always anxiously look forward to the new albums and accompanying collectible LPs.
In suburban strip malls and big city downtowns, indie record stores are often the first to recognize and promote emerging artists. Years before Swift was setting Grammy records and selling out concerts in Japan, Bull Moose Music in Portland, Maine, was giving away one of her autographed guitars in an enter-to-win contest.
There are, however, worse possible revivals than vinyl. Imagine someone reckless enough or corrupt enough, for example, to revive a dinosaur (a slow, stupid, destructive animal that nature long ago discarded):
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 6:27 and sunset 7:26 for 12h 59m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 14.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1792, President Washington exercises his authority to veto a bill, the first time this power is used in the United States.
Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered morning snow showers with a high of 41. Sunrise is 6:29 and sunset 7:25 for 12h 56m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 23.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
Consider the claim, in a comment at FREE WHITEWATER from two days ago, that some in the retail and service sector in the city (and other area communities) would find lack of confidence akin to low confidence “not in the height of the 2008 recession but certainly in its lingering aftermath.”
What to make of the claim?
It’s accurate, that’s what.
The Great Recession (2007-2009), more even than the pandemic, was and remains the most important economic event of our time. (The pandemic had immediate and tragic consequences for many lives, but it was the failure to address the Great Recession’s effects that set Whitewater and other places on their economic and socio-economic course.)
Whitewater, in particular, could not have had worse leaders than the ones from that time in grasping and responding to the Great Recession. A few are still around, as feckless and ineffectual as they were then.
How to think of that time: like a man with a disease untreated, or a broken bone left unset: other maladies or deformities have sprung from the failure to treat effectively the original condition.
Some of us have, of course, done well even in hard times for others, as an earlier generation did even during the Great Depression.
Can we who have done well not see that, in our very community, there are longtime residents who through necessity now barter for diapers, baby food, and small appliances?
That’s hardship for them and policy failure for us. (For advocates of free markets, like this libertarian blogger, these questions arise: did markets reach everyone, if they did not why not, and if they did why were they ineffective in specific cases?)
Greatly simplified (as these are not wholly separate forces): Economic loss leads to socio-economic dysfunction and socio-economic dysfunction leads to community fragmentation, strife, and chronic hardship.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset 7:09 for 12h 16m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 47. Sunrise is 7:08 and sunset 5:08 for 9h 59m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1942, Voice of America, the official external radio and television service of the United States government, begins broadcasting with programs aimed at areas controlled by the Axis powers.
There’s a difference between a private company, a public company, and a public agency. Ordinary people understand this difference, but special interests conflate these three different arrangements to maximize their influence over wholly public agencies.
First the distinctions, with help from Matt Levine’s description of Elon Musk’s influence on private companies as against public companies. A private company is held individually or by shareholders with shares that do not trade on a public exchange. A public company is a private enterprise with shares that do trade on a public exchange (e.g., the New York Stock Exchange). Levine writes of Musk’s considerable leeway with a purely private company like SpaceX:
At all but one of his companies, he could stroll into the boardroom, throw a big bag of ketamine down onto the table, and say “I need the company to spend $50 million to build a giant golden statue of me riding a rocket,”1 and
the board would be like “yes definitely let’s do it,”
the board members themselves probably are, or represent, big shareholders of the company, and as shareholders they would happily go along with the statue plan to keep Musk happy and dedicated to their company,
the other shareholders, the ones without board seats, are probably even bigger Musk fans, and are probably working on their own Musk statues in their garages anyway, so they’ll be fine with the company spending their money on a corporate gold statue, and
nobody else really has any standing to complain.
And so in fact when Musk went to SpaceX and asked to borrow $1 billion until payday so that he could buy Twitter Inc., the board was like “here’s the check, we’ve left the amount blank, take whatever you need.” And, look, was there a Wall Street Journal article saying “hey that’s weird”? There was; it was weird. Did anything come of that? No. SpaceX could just do that: Musk controls SpaceX, the board loves him, the shareholders love him, nobody in a position to complain has any complaints, and everybody else is in no position to
SpaceX is a bigger version of many private companies: these companies may have one or more owners, and those owners may be shareholders, but those shares are not available for ready trading by the general public. These owners have considerable leeway.
By contrast, a public company is also a private enterprise, but it offers shares on a public market to which the general public has access during trading hours. Trading on public markets comes with public — governmental — rules & regulations. (There’s a Securities and Exchange Commission, after all.) Levine explains how rules for a public company like Tesla limit Musk:
Tesla is a public company, which means that, even if 99% of shareholders love him, if 1% of shareholders don’t, they can sue.3 They can say: “Look, the board has a fiduciary duty to manage the company on behalf of all shareholders. Giving Musk a giant golden statue of himself is not necessary, or a good business decision, or fair to the shareholders; it’s just the controlling shareholder fulfilling his own whims with corporate money, and an ineffective board of directors giving him whatever he wants. He should have to give it back.” And they will go to court, and the shareholders will make those arguments, and the board will say — accurately! — “no you see giving him this giant golden statue is necessary for us to get more of his incredibly valuable time and attention,” and that will sound bad in court. And then a judge will get to decide whether the deal was fair to shareholders or not, and if it was not, the judge can make Musk pay the company back. Even if the board, and 99% of the shareholders, want him to keep it!
Levine’s description of Musk ends here, understandably, because Levine is writing about Musk’s role in private and public companies. An analysis of these companies is distinct — as Levine knows intuitively — from public agencies and governmental bodies.
Special interests, however, don’t see it that way: they look at public bodies (a town council, a school board, or a community development agency) and expect that they can manipulate and control that public institution like a private company. They see a public body as another of their private possessions.
No, and no again: formed only by statutes and ordinances, maintained only under statutes, ordinances, and publicly-adopted policies, these councils, boards, and agencies are public from alpha to omega.
Special interest men in Whitewater take public bodies and illegitimately and wrongfully refashion them through catspaws into versions of private companies. In this way, they place their hands around a public agency and squeeze until it does their private bidding.
Which appointed officials come along matters less to the health of this community than that special interests meet their match from among residents until attrition and exhaustion take their toll on that scheming faction.
Friday in Whitewater will see light rain with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:14 and sunset 5:00 for 9h 45m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
For the next few years, at least, to be successful Whitewater will have to adjust from plugging leaks to surfing the waves.
At first, wave upon wave will seem unpredictable, as though the water, itself were awry, askew. And awry comes at you fast: “Foresight allows the avoidance of many problems, yet not all. For the unavoidable remainder, it’s “what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.” Whitewater, historically, has never been adept at either foresight or alternative missions.”
The tired refrain that this is how we do business around here won’t be good enough. Not even close to good enough.
Over time, the skillful and adroit will manage the waves and enjoy the ride.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 23. Sunrise is 7:03 and sunset 4:22 for 9h 19m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1895, the first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago’s Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.
A 11.21.23 essay from Brookings by author Homi Kharas describes what fuels middle-class optimism. (Kharas has a new book, The Rise of the Global Middle Class, that I have not yet read. For today, this post confines itself to Kharas’s 11.21 essay.)
Kharas notes the rise of a global middle class:
Joining the middle class has been a ticket to the good life for two centuries now, a history I trace in a new book “The Rise of the Global Middle Class.” The American Dream, the glorious years of European reconstruction after World War II, miracle economic growth in Japan and other East Asian countries, Xi Jinping’s great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and India’s software revolution each brought hundreds of millions of people into the ranks of the global middle class. Today, thanks to this progress, most of the world, upwards of 4 billion people, enjoy a middle-class or better lifestyle for the first time ever.
Here’s how Kharas describes middle-class optimism:
Middle-class life satisfaction rests on two pillars. The first is the idea that hard work and self-initiative will lead to prosperity. The second is that thanks to this prosperity, the children of middle-class families will enjoy even more opportunities for the good life.
There’s a local aspect to this. To be successful, a community needs to have middle-class success.
In Whitewater, CDA types in the decade from 2010-2020 failed to capitalize on state and national economic gains. SeeWhitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom. (“While Wisconsin and America advanced, these gentlemen were left admitting reluctantly their own poor performance. (There was a national boom, uplifting many cities, but it passed by Whitewater. What did Whitewater get after the Great Recession, years into a national boom? Whitewater received a designation as a low-income community. The gentlemen speaking, these ‘Greater Whitewater’ development men, were by their own accounts at the center of local CDA policy during most of the years that the state and national boom ignored Whitewater.) See also A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA (“This new EOZ program allows for private investments to be made, with significant tax benefits, in lower income communities like ours that need a boost to their economy,” said Larry Kachel, Chair of the Whitewater Community Development Authority (CDA).” Emphasis added.)
We have a chance for better. See A Development Director for Whitewater (“Whitewater’s development policy is meant to be a community development policy, not one captured against the public interest by a few. Who owns Whitewater? The proper answer — the answer suitable for a beautiful, well-ordered American town — is everyone and no one.”)
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 30. Sunrise is 6:58 and sunset 4:24 for 9h 26m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1971, during a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.
Like most people, this libertarian blogger likes to listen to music. Much of my favorite music is jazz, and some of that jazz music is played on a piano. I, however, do not play the piano. (A cat walking across the keys would produce a more pleasing sound than any effort of mine.)
And yet, and yet, like so many others who don’t play the piano, I can tell the difference between competent playing and… something less.
Now, I’m not a ‘development’ person (and have never claimed to be one). Instead, any critique of Whitewater’s traditional development approach offered at FREE WHITEWATER has rested on simple, fundamental analyses of economics, evidence of performance, logical reasoning, and good government.
On this last point: Whitewater’s development policy is meant to be a community development policy, not one captured against the public interest by a few. Who owns Whitewater? The proper answer — the answer suitable for a beautiful, well-ordered American town — is everyone and no one.
The Whitewater Common Council Tuesday learned from City Manager John Weidl that Calli Berg has been hired as the city’s new economic development director.
According to her resume, Berg brings 25 years of experience in “all aspects of economic development, including business retention, attraction, and expansion,” along with other skill sets, including financial analysis and packaging, grant writing, administration, fund management, and tax increment and credit programs.
She is currently employed as the director of economic development, Milwaukee County, serving in that position since January of 2022. Prior to that, she worked as the director of economic development in the city of Franklin, between 2018 and 2022, and was the president and owner of BDM Services, a company, according to her resume, which provided consulting services to municipalities regarding economic development activities. The business began its operations in 2008.
Berg has additionally held such positions as business development manager with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and director of the Coloma-Watervliet Area Economic Development Corporation, in Berrien County, Mich.
She holds an undergraduate degree in business administration-marketing, and is certified by the International Economic Development Council as an economic developer. She is recognized by the National Development Council as an economic development finance professional and has been named by West Michigan Business Direct Weekly as a Business Leader Under 40, and has earned the President’s Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Michigan Economic Developers Association, according to her resume.
Ms. Berg has an impressive background in development policy.
This libertarian blogger is a tragic optimist, but the fundamental outlook of tragic optimism is, happily, optimism.
While so very many in the city will be rooting for Calli Berg’s success, no one in Whitewater will be more hopeful than I’ll be.
One wishes the very best for Ms. Berg in applying her experience and her insight to advance Whitewater’s community development on behalf of all our community.
