➤ 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…
Development
City, Culture, Demographics, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Good Ideas, Local Government, Planning, Politics, Poverty
Dane, Not the WOW Counties
by JOHN ADAMS •
For many years, Republicans have railed against Madison, and against Dane County, as bastions of dysfunctional liberalism. Indeed, this impulse has been strong even after the GOP gained control of both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office. Funny, though, that it’s Dane County – not the WOW counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee, or Washington – that’s…
Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Infrastructure, Laws/Regulations, Local Government
Foxconn Deal Even Worse Than Most State Capitalism
by JOHN ADAMS •
Over at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jason Stein reports Foxconn package cost Wisconsin eight times as much per job as similar 2017 state jobs deals: To land the massive Foxconn factory, Gov. Scott Walker has committed the state to paying more than eight times as much per job as Wisconsin will provide under similar job creation deals struck…
City, Development, Economy, Laws/Regulations, Local Government, Planning
What a Print Advertiser Means (and Doesn’t Mean)
by JOHN ADAMS •
So, if one lives in Whitewater, he or she may find a shopper-advertiser in the mailbox, with ads from (mostly) out-of-city advertisers. Even if one omits the publisher’s own ads, and public service announcements, the ratio of out-of-city to Whitewater ads is something like 3 to 1. Indeed, the largest ad, on the front page,…
Babbittry, Development, Economy, Local Government, Newspapers, Poverty
Care at the Point of Injury
by JOHN ADAMS •
A post from early December – ‘Don’t worry about them – the rest of us feel great!’ – outlined the problem of boosterism & babbittry: it urges people to look away from real injuries and to gaze instead on delightful distractions. First the problem summarized, then the better, ethical response – The problem: A doctor…
Babbittry, Culture, Development, Economy, Janesville, Local Government, Newspapers, Poverty, Press
‘Don’t worry about them – the rest of us feel great!‘
by JOHN ADAMS •
A doctor walks into a town of one-hundred people, and finds that half of them are pale, feverish, and vomiting blood. The physician calls out to a community leader, “Send for help, you have an epidemic on your hands.” The community leader replies, “Oh no, don’t worry about them – the rest of us feel…
City, Development, Local Government, Planning
Hotel Preliminaries
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater’s full-service grocery closed in 2015, and then the UW-Whitewater Foundation bought the property. (Premier Bank, successor to Commercial Bank, has a 5% interest in the property.) A developer from Minnesota, having been unsuccessful in a project near the center of town, now proposes purchasing the former grocery building & lot, and constructing a Fairfield…
Development, Environment, Local Government, WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN
Waste Hauling Into Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
Post 75 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green. A few years (and seventy-five posts) ago, I began consideration of a local proposal to haul waste into Whitewater.…
City, Development
The Parts of A Multi-Part Project
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s been talk in Whitewater about an out-of-town developer’s plan for a hotel, library, and a local clinic. The easiest way to consider the project is to ask a simple question: Is there any part of the project without which the entire effort would not go forward? Identifying an indispensable part, if any, reveals…
America, Charity, City, Development, Economics, Economy, Holiday, Local Government, Planning, Politics
Reading and Reviewing
by JOHN ADAMS •
There are two books I’m eager to review here at FW: Katherine Cramer’s Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (2016) and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story (4.18.17). Like many others, I’ve been awaiting Goldstein’s book for some time, knowing that significant works take time. For both books,…
Charity, City, Culture, Development, Economy, Local Government
Gentrification Requires the Right Social Conditions
by JOHN ADAMS •
I’ve written that Whitewater faces a choice between decisive action now (to lessen government’s role) or years of stagnation and relative decline before eventual gentrification (at which point longtime residents will have almost no say in redevelopment). See, How Big Averts Bad. As I doubt Whitewater’s local political class has the will for near-term changes, the best…
Animals, Development, Film, Nature
Saturday Film: The Super Salmon
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Government Spending, Local Government
The Local Economic Context of It All
by JOHN ADAMS •
Over a generation, Whitewater’s big-ticket public spending (where big ticket means a million or more per project in a city of about fifteen-thousand) has come with two, often-contradictory justifications: (1) that residents needed to spend so much because Whitewater was the very center of things, or (2) that residents needed to spend so much to assure that…
America, City, Development, Economy, Free Markets
Small Towns in America Can Thrive
by JOHN ADAMS •
I posted recently about James Fallows’s Eleven Signs That a City Will Succeed. (See, from FW, James Fallows on ‘Eleven Signs a City Will Succeed’ (Part 1) and an assessment of those signs for Whitewater, James Fallows on ‘Eleven Signs a City Will Succeed’ (Part 2).) In the video below, James & Deborah Fallows talk…