Good morning. Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with high of 76. Sunrise is 6:25 AM and sunset 7:19 PM for 12h 53m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.9% of its visible disk illuminated. The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM. On this day in 1803, British scientist John…
That Which Paved the Way
Authoritarianism, Daily Bread, Economy, Politics, Poverty, Recession, That Which Paved the Way
Daily Bread for 12.2.21: Kasparov on How Foreign Dissidents Can Help Renew U.S. Democracy
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 13m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater Fire Department, Inc. holds a business meeting at 5:30 PM and the Landmarks Commission meets…
Boosterism, CDA, City, Culture, Economics, Economy, Local Government, Politics, School District, That Which Paved the Way, University
Local Politics Hasn’t Been Merely ‘Local’ for Years
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Over at the Wisconsin Examiner, Henry Redman writes (with concern) that All politics is national (‘Candidates for local office are ignoring community issues, instead highlighting national culture wars’). First, Redman’s case, then a few remarks. Woodman [Kyle Woodman, a Republican running for Eau Claire’s city council] is part of a mostly conservative group of candidates…
Babbittry, Boosterism, Conflicts of Interest, Culture, Disinformation, Local Government, Mendacity, Negligence, Politics, Public Relations, Reasoning, School District, Self-Dealing, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, Trumpism, University
Consequences, Accountability, Repentance, Redemption
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
David Frum, writing of Trump & Trumpism in The Conservative Cult of Victimhood, observes that There is no redemption without repentance. There is no repentance without accountability. There is no accountability without consequences. He rightly concludes that for the Trumpists, the absence of a moral order of accountability and repentance has meant that Even as Trump commits…
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Conflicts of Interest, Culture, Ethics, Local Government, Never Trump, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, Trumpism
Before Man & Movement, That Which Paved the Way
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Trump did not spring from the ground; he did not fall from the stars. Neither horticulture nor astrophysics played any role in his rise. Before Trump and Trumpism, there were towns and cities into which he and his movement found receptive audiences. Patients already ill are often susceptible of worse maladies. So it has been…
CDA, City, Economy, Local Government, Poverty, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Walworth County, WEDC, Wisconsin
Whitewater & Walworth County’s Working Poor, 2020 ALICE® Report
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The 2020 ALICE® report, on those who are “asset limited, income constrained [yet] employed” is now available. These latest data were collected before the recent recession – one can be sadly confident that hardship reaches farther now. For Wisconsin, 11% of households were below the poverty level, and 34% (including those below the poverty level) were…
Alt-Right, America, Authoritarianism, Babbittry, Bigotry, Boosterism, Economy, Herrenvolk, Impeachment, Mendacity, Television, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, Trump-Russia, Unfit
Fox News Won’t Be Enough
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It’s a sound position to focus criticism of Trumpism on Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders. This sometimes includes Trumpism Down to the Local Level. (Those local officials across America who have this past decade spread sugary lies of boosterism during the Great Recession, during its aftermath, and during the opioid crisis are contemptibly…
CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Foxconn, Government Spending, State Capitalism, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
One reads that in the course of a single day, Foxconn changed its plans for a major building at its Wisconsin site. Corrine Hess reports In A Day, Foxconn Changes Course, Plans To Build Different Mount Pleasant Building: This flashy building? Sorry, Wisconsin, you’re not getting this. Illustration via Mount Pleasant Development Dept. Foxconn’s plans to build a…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, That Which Paved the Way, UW Madison, WEDC
Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!
by JOHN ADAMS • • 5 Comments
If a group invited a guest speaker who said the world was flat, then that group would be rightly discarded as a credible policy advocate. In Whitewater and other towns, crony-capitalist groups of different sizes proudly declared the Foxconn project a boon for Wisconsin. (Trump, himself, declared it a boon for the whole planet: “the…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC, Wisconsin
Foxconn: Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
In Whitewater, there’s a top-notch think tank right-wing landlord’s business group that flacked Foxconn both privately and through that group’s sway over the Whitewater Community Development Authority. The group invited a state operative to spin Foxconn as a tech city of gold, and at the Whitewater CDA one could hear fantastic tales of high-tech wonders…
CDA, City, Congress, Corporate Welfare, Free Markets, Gerrymandering, Government Spending, Local Government, Never Trump, Politics, Republicans, State Capitalism, That Which Paved the Way
F. James Sensenbrenner Heads for the Exit
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
One reads that F. James Sensenbrenner, the pro-Trump septuagenarian multimillionaire congressman from a gerrymandered district that stretches all the way down to Whitewater, is retiring when his current term ends. Consigned to the minority forever must look unappealing. How time flies! It was not long ago that then-chairman of the Whitewater Community Development Authority was scampering…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, Water, WEDC, WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN, Wisconsin
It Shouldn’t
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Anna Clark (author of The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy) asks Why should Wisconsin drain Lake Michigan for Foxconn?: The Great Lakes — five inland seas holding one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth — are vast, but they are not limitless. So it is alarming that Wisconsin intends to send…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Costs-and-Benefits-of-a-Revised-Foxconn-Project.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”] Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition…
Babbittry, Boosterism, CDA, Foxconn, Mendacity, Reasoning, Science/Nature, That Which Paved the Way, Waste Digesters, WEDC
Junk Reasoning Isn’t Simply a Problem at the Top
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Helena Bottemiller Evich reports ‘It feels like something out of a bad sci-fi movie’ (‘A top climate scientist quit USDA, following others who say Trump has politicized science’): One of the nation’s leading climate change scientists is quitting the Agriculture Department in protest over the Trump administration’s efforts to bury his groundbreaking study about how…