Two years ago, I wrote about the troubles that Janesville’s publicly-subsidized SHINE project (to produce the molybdenum-99 isotope for nuclear medicine) was having in marketplace. See, SHINE Fades. Amy Goldstein also devotes a chapter to SHINE in her recent book, Janesville: An American Story. (I wrote about that chapter of her book, among others, in…
Government Spending
Demographics, Economy, Government Spending, Poverty
Three Demographic Findings on the White Working Class
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
So much has been made about white working class voters since the last election, but some of the common notions about that group are wrong. Three quick points are worth making: 1. Most members of the white working class live in cities & suburbs, not rural areas. Max Ehrenfreund and Jeff Guo explain that While…
City, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, WEDC
Far Less Than 10.7%
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Whitewater’s residents may have recently read (3.7.17) another City of Whitewater press release from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) – this time concerning more public spending on selected businesses. (For remarks on a prior release, please see The Simplest Condition for a ‘Shovel-Ready’ Site is an Empty Lot.) There are few better ways to argue against…
City, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, WEDC
The Simplest Condition for a ‘Shovel-Ready’ Site is an Empty Lot
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Whitewater’s residents may have recently read (just yesterday) a City of Whitewater press release about a Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) designation for the city’s thirty-five empty acres of tech park land. I’ve reproduced the release in full at the bottom of this post. A few key points: 1. The simplest condition for a “shovel ready” site is…
City, Government Spending, Local Government
At Whitewater’s Planning Commission: Millions But Still a Politician’s Unsatisfied
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Last night, Whitewater’s local government conducted its (mostly) monthly Planning Commission meeting. It’s mostly because there aren’t always enough new projects each month to justify holding a meeting. At Item 4 on the agenda, the commission held a public hearing “for consideration of a conditional use permit for an automotive shop at 113 E. Main…
Federal Government, Foreign Affairs, Government Spending, Military
How Much, and What Kind, of Military Spending?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Analysts from five Washington policy institutes[1] have published a joint report asking (1) what should American defense strategy be? (2) what capabilities, investments, and force structure might that strategy require? and (3) what would such a military cost? (The five institutes are not of the same views, with the Cato Institute’s Benjamin H. Friedman notable…
Economy, Government Spending, Poverty
Ineffectual, Wasteful Infrastructure Ambitions
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Randal O’Toole takes a look at a key part of the incoming administration’s economic policy, and sees the Trouble with Trump’s Infrastructure Ambitions. There are, simply expressed, four problems: Not all spending of this kind is equally valuable: “Many advocates of infrastructure spending assume that all infrastructure contributes equally to economic vitality, but this is far…
City, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Government Spending, Local Government
The Local Economic Context of It All
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
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…
City, Government Spending, Local Government
Local Government’s Not a Profession of Faith
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Local government, in its existence, is not a profession of faith, the way a credal religion is. It’s a limited delegation of popular sovereignty to produce definite, specific results. Words alone are insufficient. (Needless to say, that’s true of religious belief, too: the Church rightly expects that faith leads to care for the poor and…
Business, City, Development, Economy, Government Spending, Open Government, University
Grocery Preliminaries (Part 2)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
I wrote yesterday about a grocery in town, in a post entitled, Grocery Preliminaries. The post’s subject line used the word ‘preliminaries’ because it seems likely that Whitewater will get a new grocery, whatever one thinks of a public subsidy to entice one. In this way, that post presumed a deal, and so was meant…
Business, Government Spending
Grocery Preliminaries
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
I’ve written about the possibility of a government-subsidized grocery before, but only from an open-government perspective concerning Council’s last meeting in joint session with the Community Development Authority. There have been a few press accounts of previous public meetings about a grocery, but not one of the accounts shows the challenges involved in maintaining a subsidized…
CDA, City, Development, Government Spending, Open Government
Informed Residents
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
One week ago, at a Common Council meeting, one heard that Whitewater’s municipal government would use a software application to increase opportunities for residents’ input on local issues. See, Common Council meeting of 6.21.16, https://vimeo.com/171809282, beginning at 1:28:17. Assuming that the means are reliable and accessible, more opportunities for collecting opinion are better than fewer.…
Business, City, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Government Spending, Politics
The Growth That Uplifts
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In a recent interview, Ana Revenga, senior director of the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Group, talks about ending extreme poverty. See, Ending Extreme Poverty: World Bank Economist Ana Revenga @ The Christian Century. (The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.90 per person per day, and the article describes how…
Education, Government Spending, School District
Assumptions on Referenda
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Post 11 in a weekly series. There’s a theory – in Whitewater and other places – that good policy comes from having as many ‘adults in the room’ (that is, as many established & mature people) as possible. I’d say that’s necessary, but insufficient. Relying only on the established & mature, without specific consideration of discernment and…