There are few more useful ways of looking at expenditures made and expenditures contemplated than as retrospective (sunk) or prospective (future) costs. Consider the example of a man building a boat to catch one-hundred pounds of fish per day. The fisherman spends seventy-five thousand building his own boat, and is partly done. If he spends…
Government Spending
CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Gluttony, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Politics, WEDC, Wisconsin
The State’s WEDC and Whitewater’s Facsimiles
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Ongoing revelations about the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation are a double concern: they’re stories of statewide malfeasance, and those revelations beg the question of how local officials in Whitewater are managing their own pools of public money. First, the latest stories (it’s a steady stream) of state-level error, waste, and negligence: Madison— Failing to run…
CDA, City, Development, Government Spending, Local Government, Planning
Demand
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Here’s a follow-on to yesterday’s post, Business Dependency in Whitewater. There’s a huge effort locally, from the Community Development Authority in particular, to spur growth through large, publicly-funded incentives. These addled few are like men who’ve heard the expression, ‘if you build it, he will come,’ but don’t understand when it applies and when it…
Business, CDA, City, Development, Economy, Government Spending, Local Government, WEDC
Business Dependency in Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
For residents facing poverty, one would hope for, and understand, a combination of private and public relief. Churches and other private organizations do much in this effort; government expenditures for the genuinely needy amount to a small portion of all government spending. Support of this kind is a worthy effort. Whitewater also has two large…
Corporate Welfare, Gluttony, Government Spending, WEDC
WEDC Backed Use of Public Funds to Pay Off Luxury Cars
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There is more than one person in this town who has insisted, more than once, that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation has been good for Wisconsin, and good for Whitewater. It’s been, instead, a failure and a disgrace. At a time when many communities did not have enough money for vital needs, WEDC was trying…
Corporate Welfare, Gluttony, Government Spending, WEDC
$124,000,000 Without Underwriters’ Review
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
In its first 15 months, a jobs agency created by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker gave businesses 26 awards worth $124.3 million in all without a formal review of the deals by underwriters. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. is reporting to its board on the awards made between July 2011 and June 2013 after reports that…
CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Gluttony, Government Spending, Local Government, Public Relations, University, WEDC
Another Six-Figure WEDC Loan to an Unworthy Applicant
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
View image | gettyimages.com Across the state, revelation after revelation shows that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation has been a mistake, a wasteful political endeavor contrary to sound economics. Locally, support for the WEDC, from Whitewater’s Community Development Authority, Chancellor Richard Telfer, City Manager Cameron Clapper, etc., shows not only that they’re ignorant of sound…
Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Free Markets, Gluttony, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park
Conservatives Against WEDC
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Only a generation ago (not long, really), most conservatives would have rejected something like the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s ineffectual, wasteful attempts to manipulate the economy for the benefit of a few insiders’ friends. Today, communities across our state are beset with any number of unctuous men hawking a kind of big-government conservatism, with false…
Business, Corporate Welfare, Gluttony, Government Spending
SHINE Fades
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Over at the Gazette, there’s a story that, ever so tentatively, lets readers know that the public-money-sucking SHINE project (to produce the molybdenum-99 isotope for nuclear medicine) isn’t faring so well in the marketplace. SHINE is, after all, the centerpiece of big-government conservatism in Rock County, having received millions in public money to fund a…
City, Government Spending, Health, Open Government, WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN
Whitewater’s Common Council Votes to Fund a Vendor Study
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
Post 9 in a series. Whitewater’s Common Council Votes to Fund a Vendor Study from John Adams on Vimeo. In this post, I’ll look at the Council’s decision to pay Trane at least $70,000, and up to approximately $150,000, so that Trane could fund its own feasibility study of a digester energy project for Whitewater.…
Business, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, State Government, WEDC
12 Points on the WEDC’s $500,000 Loan for Campaign Contributor’s Failing (and Lying) Company
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Seemingly, all Wisconsin is discussing a $500,000 Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation loan to a failing company of a Walker political contributor. Here’s a summary of what’s known so far. 1. The loan was to Building Committee Inc. (BCI), a business owned by William Minahan, a Walker political contributor (and Minahan made contributions to other campaigns,…
Business, City, Government Spending, Health, Local Government, Marketing, Planning, WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN
First Vendor Presentation of 1.21.14 to Whitewater’s Common Council
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
Post 8 in a series. First Vendor Presentation of 1.21.14 to Whitewater Common Council from John Adams on Vimeo. In this post, I’ll look at the first vendor presentation on the digester proposal to Whitewater’s Common Council. (Every question in this series has a unique number, assigned chronologically based on when it was asked. All…
Business, Corporate Welfare, Gluttony, Government Spending, Marketing, WEDC
WEDC Slowly Crumbles
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
WEDC ‘CEO’ Reed Hall Looks Downcast. You Would, Too, If You’d Disgraced All Wisconsin Yet Again. AP Photo. On a Friday afternoon, there’s breaking news across Wisconsin. Having rejected free markets in capital, labor, and goods for cronyism and ineffectual manipulation of the economy, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation now slowly crumbles: Scott Walker calls…
Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Misconduct, WEDC
Reed Hall’s Inauspicious Choices
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Reed Hall, who ‘boldly,’ ‘innovatively’ uses the private title of CEO for an organization that runs on public money, has written two defenses to his agency’s latest audit fiasco. The first of those appears as a few platitudinous paragraphs online (‘WEDC takes bold, innovative approach to economic development,’ subscription req’d, and the second as a…