The Wisconsin Foxconn project was, is, and will continue to be a huckster’s con and a sucker’s idea. Across America – a place of over 325 million – Foxconn is an example of an obviously bad, unworkable idea. In Whitewater and other Wisconsin communities, the men who push this project were either objectionably conniving or…
Development
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Government Spending, Local Government, Poverty, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
Three Fundamental Failures: Employment, Income, and Poverty
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
An earlier post addressed Walker’s Fundamental Failure to meet his jobs pledge even after eight years. The record is much worse: years of corporate subsidies and meddling in the marketplace for preferred businesses & political cronies have produced failures of employment, income, and poverty. (Small town officials who copied this approach on the local level, as…
Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Government Spending, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC, Wisconsin
Walker’s Fundamental Failure
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Walker’s fundamental claim was that he would be a jobs creator, with a horde of operatives, development men, business insiders, and political cronies insisting that billions in state funds would somehow trickle down to create jobs. In his fundamental promise, Walker was a failure. Shawn Johnson reports Walker Never Reached 250,000 Jobs Created (‘Finalized statistics…
Babbittry, CDA, City, Demographics, Development, Diversity, Economy, Local Government, That Which Paved the Way
Rural Population Drain
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Thirteen years ago, local notables in small-town Whitewater, Wisconsin insisted that Whitewater was the very center of the universe. When that claim didn’t entice newcomers, these same men began to claim the very opposite, that Whitewater wasn’t doing better because no one knew where the city was. (Both of these claims are silly: billions of…
Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economics, Economy, Environment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, Speaker Vos, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC, Wisconsin
Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There is, about Foxconn in Wisconsin, a fair amount of ignorant insistence that there will be supply chain opportunities, etc. Public employees talking about the Foxconn project’s supposed benefit is the practical equivalent letting them recite limericks or play sheepshead: it’s not productive. For those near Foxconn, however, that project is more than wasteful talk:…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, Local Government, State Capitalism, State Government, Trump, WEDC
Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Trump declared that Foxconn in Wisconsin would be the eighth wonder of the world, but one of the world’s true wonders would not depend on empty buildings and it wouldn’t have a leader who needs a nap, but here we are. Following his earlier examination on Foxconn’s habit of using empty buildings to dupe the…
City, Development, Economy, Parodies, Poverty, That Which Paved the Way
Really, Really Urgent CDA Announcement!
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
Shortly after booting my computer this April 1st morning, I found staring back at me the following Really Really Urgent Message from the “Whitewater Community Development Authority.” Perhaps it has something to do with a recent excuse-making press release story at the Gazette. News Release: April 1, 2019 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (this means now!) Really…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Development, Economics, Economy, Government Spending, WEDC
The WEDC Republicans
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Writing yesterday at the New York Times, liberal economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman addressed economic challenges of rural communities in Getting Real About Rural America. It is a blog post about which reasonable observers of any ideology – left, center, right, or libertarian – could agree. Krugman writes There’s nothing wrong with discussing these…
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
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
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…
Business, CDA, Development, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, State Capitalism, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
Crops in a Business Park
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It’s right to make bids for government services, just as it’s right to mitigate losses or vacancies. Yet, for it all, it’s telling that Whitewater’s Community Development Authority has so much vacant business space that it leases the empty lots out for cropland. The Community Development Authority of the City of Whitewater, Wisconsin (“CDA”) is…
Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Local Government, Mendacity, Politics, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC, Wisconsin
Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
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, 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…
Bad Ideas, City, Congress, Culture, Demographics, Development, Diversity, Economics, Economy, Federal Government, Immigration, Trump
‘Our Guy’ Isn’t Our Guy
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Some months ago, in a radio interview to tout part of the Trump tax bill, the Whitewater Community Development Authority’s executive director Dave Carlson referred to Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner as ‘our guy.’ Sensenbrenner, a pro-Trump septuagenarian multimillionaire from a gerrymandered district, is – literally – Whitewater’s federal representative. Sensenbrenner has never been – and…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
The Outrage of Corporate Welfare (Amazon, Foxconn, and others)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
You may have heard by now that Amazon’s new headquarters will soon call the New York and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas home. This decision has engendered much criticism. But the Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson doesn’t think the vitriol is enough. “We should all be screaming mad about the state of corporate handouts in this country,” Thompson…