What does a small tech company that seeks private support look like? Often, we’ll not know, because those private companies seek the support of private venture capital, in thousands of encounters and presentations across America each day. Sometimes, though, one sees more because a private tech startup looks to something like Kickstarter to win backing…
Corporate Welfare
Business, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Local Government
Rand Paul on Chamber of Commerce Republicans
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, often moves (sometimes quixotically) between libertarian and conventionally conservative, Republican positions. Still, there’s unquestionably some libertarian in him, and in his libertarianism he shares a dynamic philosophy (if not party label) with a huge number of other Americans (about 22%, or just under one-in-four people). Here’s what Paul, speaking…
Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Misconduct, State Government
The Truth About the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There are those times when small-government conservatives, Democrats, and libertarians agree. Acknowledging the misconduct, failures, and cronyism of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation would be one of those occasions. It is, among other things, the state’s biggest white-collar welfare scheme, both mismanaged and mendacious. Here’s the effectual motto of the WEDC: Corruption, Cronyism, and Incompetence…
Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Local Government, Taxes/Taxation
Creating Taxpayers as Government’s Goal
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
When seeking to persuade Milton, Wisconsin’s councilmembers to regulate food trucks, an incumbent merchant recently said that more competition might put him out of business, after which he would no longer be a taxpayer. That’s telling: the incumbent’s appeal to government – to a room full of politicians and municipal bureaucrats – is that they…
Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government
Would They Run On It?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
When local government’s politicians and bureaucrats propose big projects, they should ask themselves: would we run on it? That is, would they run on a standalone vote for (or against) their proposal? The open secret of local politics is that I’d guess many – if not most – of the big projects proposed would fail…
Business, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government
What’s an Entrepreneur?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
I would think, and perhaps you would think, too, that an entrepreneur is a man or woman who runs a private business, bearing the risks and demands of his or her enterprise. For this reason, Americans are sympathetic to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial efforts – we admire the creativity and effort of business men and women…
Corporate Welfare, Press
The Foul Air in Which Chicanery Breathes Easily
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In nearby Janesville, they’ve a state senatorial candidate hinting that he’ll bring General Motors back, and a big talkin’ developer (with whom the candidate is associated) now saying the same thing. These economic promises are no sounder than the hooting and screeching of apes. (Less sound, actually, as even foul quadrupeds in the rain forest…
Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Government Spending, Press
The Gazette’s Ideological Albatross
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It was Carl Denham who once declared, famously, that “It was beauty killed the beast.” In the same way, nothing matters more for a publication of news and opinion than its ideology, its intellectual outlook. A misguided outlook will prove debilitating, if not fatal. A strong set of principles helps a publication steer true in…
Corporate Welfare, Gluttony, Innovation Center/Tech Park
Innovation as a Fad
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Innovation is both a genuine development and a fad. In a free society, with unrestricted flows of information, capital, labor, and goods, it’s nearly inevitable that people will improve products and services in powerful, clever ways. Innovation – the word, the idea, etc. – is also a contemporary fad, the jargon of our…
City, Corporate Welfare, Culture, Economy, Local Government
Is this the city that you had in mind?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Consider this working definition of crony capitalism: Crony capitalism is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, or other forms of state interventionism. Crony capitalism…
City, Corporate Welfare, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government, New Whitewater
The Middle Time
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Local Government, Poverty
Three Motivations for Local Government Intervention (and One That’s Sadly Missing)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In Whitewater, we’ve had any number of local projects, some involving millions, in a town of only thousands. Broadly, one may assume three motivations for local intervention: (1) genuine if mistaken efforts at community betterment, (2) the vanity or economic interest of parties to a project, or (3) a desire to prevent demographic and…
City, Corporate Welfare, Local Government, Open Government, Politics
It’s Not a Communications Problem
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A few months ago, during a public meeting, a commissioner mentioned that an applicant and the applicant’s neighbors might have done more to communicate with each other. (I thought that was true, too; as it turned out, there was a great deal of communication in the weeks afterward, all to the good.) It’s not…