FREE WHITEWATER

City

CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Free Markets, State Capitalism, WEDC

Fruitless Embrace

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Free-market economist Veronique de Rugy asks Why Are Republicans Embracing Economic State Planning?: China’s post-Mao economic boom has occurred only to the extent that the country became capitalist. With “Made in China 2025,” Beijing’s 2015 anticapitalist plan for an industrial policy under which the state would pick “winners,” China has taken a step back from capitalism. (It recently dropped the “Made…

Assault Awareness & Prevention, City, Harassment, University

A Community Listening Session for a New Chancellor

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UW-Whitewater, a public university in Whitewater, Wisconsin, now seeks a new chancellor, and the selection committee recently held a community listening session to request suggestions about a new campus administrator. (However useful an invitation to a community listening session might be, it’s worth noting that observation, reflection, and commentary answer to a different – and…

City, Culture, Demographics, Ethnicity, Police

Accreditation in Context

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There is a liturgical tradition in which parishioners reflect on what they have done and what they have left undone.  A secular equivalent for Whitewater would ask a policymaker to consider not merely what has been done so many times before, but what might – and should have been – done, years ago and now.…

Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Development, Economics, Economy, Government Spending, Local Government, Poverty, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Transportation

Private Businesses Craving Public Money

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A private group may invite whom it wishes, but the guests invited tell much about the organization doing the inviting. Long years ago, straining even the finest recollection, private businesses relied on their own efforts for success (or so one has heard).  Look about now, even in small and struggling places, and one finds well-fed…

City, Local Government, Open Government

The Disorder Nearby

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All the communities in our area are struggling economically, but yet Whitewater has fared better than neighboring places. The commitment of a community to transparency inoculates against an inferior, disordered politics of the sort one sees in the nearby cities of Jefferson and Milton. Look at Jefferson (where city officials dissemble about relationships with fraudulent vendors)…

City, Local Government, Open Government, Television

Whitewater’s Channel 990

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Update 1, Tuesday morning: Channel 990 is televising properly again. Here’s my original email, and a reply from Whitewater’s city manager, Cameron Clapper.  (See also a message below from Kristin Mickelson, Whitewater’s PR & Communications Manager.) Original email: Good morning, City Manager Clapper. I hope this note finds you well, and enjoying a snow day in Whitewater.…

Books, City, Culture

The Pictures on the Wall

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During a recent visit to the public library here in Whitewater, I stopped to look at a display of photographs, of framed pictures each showing a resident of the city posing with a book. The residents were easy to see, but the book titles harder to identify, so I drew closer to the exhibit.  As…

Charity, City, Culture, Local Government, Poverty, School District, University

The Recent Cold

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It’s been unseasonably cold in southeastern Wisconsin this week, and in Whitewater that presents a challenge for the disproportionately large number of impoverished residents (some of whom occasionally lack utilities, even at the most unfavorable times). The three large public institutions in the city – municipal government, school district, and public university – have collectively dozens…

Babbittry, Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC, Wisconsin

Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy

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Wisconsin State Senator Jon Erpenbach reminds that people lost homes and land over the Foxconn proposal, and communities spent far over one-hundred millions on an idea that was – to any reasonable, discerning person – doomed to fail. Doomed to fail: dozens of analyses and warnings from across America, of which merely one is Tim Culpan’s Wisconsin…

Babbittry, Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Tony Evers, WEDC, Wisconsin

WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid

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With the news that Foxconn plans to drop manufacturing at a plant that was supposed to hire thousands of workers, for which people lost their homes, and that was the centerpiece of Scott Walker’s corporate welfare and crony capitalism, Speaker Robin Vos blames…newly-elected Gov. Tony Evers. Oh, brother: Vos must hope that Wisconsinites are stupid enough to believe…