Good morning. Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:28 AM and sunset 8:32 PM for 15h 04m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.5% of its visible disk illuminated. The Whitewater Common Council meets at 4 PM and the city’s Public Works Committee meets at 6…
Taxes/Taxation
City, Local Government, Taxes/Taxation
Whitewater Common Council Meeting, 2.18.21: 6 Points
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
?? The Whitewater Common Council met on Thursday, 2.18.21. It will meet again tonight, 3.2.21. The recording of the meeting is embedded above. The amended agenda for the meeting is available. A few remarks, on selected items of the agenda — 1. Amended Agendas. A good rule of thumb for amendments within 72 hours of a meeting…
Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, Speaker Vos, State Capitalism, Taxes/Taxation, Technology, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin, WISGOP
Highlight’s from The Verge’s Foxconn Assessment
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
No failure better reveals the bankruptcy of corporate welfare in the Walker and Trump years than the Foxconn project in Wisconsin: exaggeration upon exaggeration, but nothing productive. This was a failure of judgment so obvious and significant that everyone involved should retire from policymaking. Walker Administration, Trump Administration, the WISGOP, the WEDC, down to Whitewater’s Community…
Bad Ideas, Business, Government Spending, Newspapers, Taxes/Taxation
Government Breaks for Local Newspapers are a Bad, Bad Idea
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There’s understandable worry that communities across America are losing their local newspapers, and so one hears that something simply must be done to save them. Clara Hendrickson, in Local journalism in crisis: Why America must revive its local newsrooms, proposes that we (1) “provide public funding for local journalism” (via tax incentives, mainly), (2) “address…
Boosterism, Business, CDA, City, Congress, Local Government, Taxes/Taxation
Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner Thinks (or Hopes) You’re Ignorant or Stupid
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner, the gerrymandered, septuagenarian multimillionaire whose district (the Fifth) stretches all the way down to Whitewater, must think (or hope) people are ignorant. One can conclude as much because Sensenbrenner contends the reason he’s not attending impeachment hearings is because those hearings are not open to the public. Honest to goodness, Sensenbrenner must…
CDA, City, Development, Economy, Local Government, Poverty, Taxes/Taxation
Trump Tax Bill is the Predictable Failure Sensible People Warned It Would Be
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In Whitewater, there’s a business lobby that amounts to a right-wing landlord or two, the dogsbodies who follow three paces behind, and the municipal officials who have been, variously, beguiled or browbeaten into asserting that government-directed capital spending means general prosperity. It doesn’t; it’s the great myth of municipal policy. A building here, a building…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, CDA, Local Government, Politics, School District, Taxes/Taxation
School Board, 8.26.19: Insatiable
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
School Board Meeting 08/26/19 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo. Update, evening of 9.9.19: Although this discussion of tax incremental financing (TIF) took place at a school board meeting, a program like this is (obviously) very much an initiative of city government and special interests. School districts like Whitewater’s have a role on a joint…
Economics, Economy, Poll, Taxes/Taxation, Trade, Trump
Americans’ Support for Free Trade Reaches New High
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A strong majority supports free trade and rejects Trump’s anti-market trade wars and tariffs. Mark Murray reports that Amid President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they support free trade with foreign countries, according to the latest national poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. That represents a…
Economics, Economy, Taxes/Taxation, Trade, Trump
Trump’s Trade War, Explained
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
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…
Agriculture, Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, Economics, Economy, Local Government, Poverty, State Capitalism, State Government, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way, Trade, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
‘Stung by Trump’s Trade Wars, Wisconsin’s Milk Farmers Face Extinction’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
After years of the ignorant scheming of tax incremental financing, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, capital catalyst grants, the Trump tax bill, and now Trump’s trade war, Alan Rappeport reports Stung by Trump’s Trade Wars, Wisconsin’s Milk Farmers Face Extinction (“The flagship industry in a pivotal swing state faces an economic crisis”): KENDALL, Wis. —…
CDA, City, Conflicts of Interest, Federal Government, Local Government, Taxes/Taxation, Trump
Trump’s Tax Returns
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
If Trump wanted his tax returns to remain private, then he should not have run for public office. So many men want to be private figures and public officials at the same time, opportunistically claiming one role or another as it suits them. Small-town Whitewater has had a problem like this for years: tiny notables…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Babbittry, Bad Ideas, City, Development, Economy, Local Government, Public Relations, State Government, Taxes/Taxation, University
On New Market Tax Credits for a Fairfield Inn and ‘Community Engagement’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The use of government-issued New Market Tax Credits will bring Whitewater a Fairfield Inn and a building for the existing local campus to lease. Proponents of an ordinary hotel and a lease agreement for the university cannot offer any evidence that these projects will boost local individual or household incomes. What one can show –…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economics, Economy, Government Spending, Local Government, State Capitalism, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way
A Tax Incremental Financing Review
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Today at four o’clock, the Joint Review Board is scheduled to review Whitewater’s tax incremental districts. Views of tax incremental financing – especially in a place like Whitewater – are a good test of someone’s basic understanding of economic development. Indeed, the test reduces to a simple relationship: the more one contends that tax incremental…