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Taxes/Taxation

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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…

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

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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’

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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. —…

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’

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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

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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…