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Government Spending

City, Economy, Government Spending

The Proposed 2015 City of Whitewater Budget

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The challenge of government is not fundamentally its cost, but its complexity, intractability, and most concerning of all its use of authority not as representative of residents but as self-interested action contrary to representation. A small rural town of fifteen-thousand, and it’s 289 pages just to list the town’s annual budget. There’s an anecdote about…

Business, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Uncategorized, WEDC

WEDC Claims Success by Writing Off Bad Loans

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Wisconsin has had years of embarrassments from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, of economic manipulation, of picking supposed winners as though party hacks would know better than markets. It was a method bound to disappoint. These smarmy men at the WEDC have been trying to show progress on the millions of bad loans they’ve made.…

Corporate Welfare, Development, Government Spending, Marketing, Press

In a City of Sixty-Thousand, Fifteen People Aren’t a Sign of Community Enthusiasm

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Nearby Janesville is considering a downtown revitalization, and at the most-recent meeting for the large & expensive proposal, only fifteen-people attended.  The Gazette wrote about the plan with this headline: Last meeting for Janesville’s downtown plan doesn’t reflect ‘widespread championship’ (subscription req’d).  Well, no, it doesn’t.  (The online version of the Gazette had a more…

Beautiful Whitewater, City, Development, Government Spending, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government

Whitewater’s Independent Merchants: Supporting Small Bricks Over Bytes

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A quick summary of my views on business would be to say that (1) private markets are typically superior to government regulation, subsidies, or game-rigging, (2) government should be impartial to different kinds of businesses, (3) government ‘business’ or ‘development’ efforts are often self-promoting efforts of officials, bureaucrats, and hangers-on who are parasitic of public…

Business, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, WEDC

At WEDC-Sponsored Tech Festival, Local Company Announces a Move to Ohio

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The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation – it should more accurately be called the Wisconsin Economic Disaster Corporation – had yet another embarrassment this week. At the WEDC-sponsored ‘Forward Technology Festival‘ in Madison, a local company announced that it was moving…to Ohio. The Journal Sentinel reports that Aver Informatics Inc., a health information technology start-up, moved…

Business, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park

Innovation Center Offers a Seminar on How to Go Out of Business

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Nutty, but true: the Innovation Center – the Disappointment that Keeps on Disappointing™ – is apparently offering a program entitled, “What you Will Need to Know When You are Ready (or Not) to Sell Your Business.” It’s part of – wait for it – the Center’s ‘Elements of Success‘ series. Honest to goodness, for all…

Government Spending, Taxes/Taxation

On the Blackhawk Technical College Referendum

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Over at Rock Netroots, Lou Kaye’s published a post with observations about Rock County’s politics, entitled, Community Quotes #3.  (It’s in the syle of a similar Gazette feature, but thankfully without that newspaper’s ceaseless fronting of white-collar welfare.)   On the Blackhawk Technical College referendum (four-million more annually, forever…), Kaye has three comments that sum it…

Government Spending, Local Government, Press, Taxes/Taxation

What Steve Jobs Understood About People That Local ‘Movers and Shakers’ Don’t

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It’s an easy – and false – pose to assume that people can’t understand a supposedly complicated project.  There was some of this thinking in an editorial about which I commented yesterday, in the Gazette‘s contention that that “SWAG’s [Southern Wisconsin Agricultural Group’s] complex, though intriguing, always seemed grand and hard for average residents to…

Government Spending, Local Government, Press

In Policymaking, Passion’s a Weak Justification

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Alternative title: Passion’s Just Another Word for Nothing Substantive to Say. Only recently, small-town Evansville rejected a $5.5 million tax-incremental funding demand from the Southern Wisconsin Agricultural Group to locate in that community.  See, Demanding Millions from Small-town Evansville.  To accede to SWAG’s demands, Evansville would have had to abandon street repair, water-system upgrades, etc.,…

Government Spending, Local Government

Demanding Millions from Small-town Evansville

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One reads (subscription req’d) that the SWAG project won’t happen in Evansville. SWAG is the Southern Wisconsin Agricultural Group, and they wanted $5.5 million from tiny Evansville, Wisconsin before building an agricultural complex in that town. So Evansville, recognizing that the cost would inhibit other municipal projects, said no after SWAG demanded millions: More than…