Foxconn’s boosters each day inch closer to a corporate welfare version of Scientology: it doesn’t make any sense, but adherents keep to themselves and repeat a shared list of crackpot claims. The latest news to pierce the cultists’ bubble: Molly Beck and Rick Romell report Wisconsin taxpayers could pay Foxconn for work done outside of Wisconsin,…
That Which Paved the Way
Assault Awareness & Prevention, City, Litigation, Nepotism, Sexual Harassment, That Which Paved the Way, University, UW System
The Limits of an Institutional Deal
by JOHN ADAMS • • 7 Comments
Yesterday, UW-Whitewater Chancellor Beverly Kopper announced that she was resigning her position as of 12.31.18. Later in the day, the UW System publicly announced that Kopper would be on leave at her former salary for eight months, and then in the fall have the option of returning to UW-Whitewater’s Psychology Department as a professor. See…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, City, Culture, Misconduct, Nepotism, Public Relations, Sexual Harassment, That Which Paved the Way, University, UW System
Kopper Resigns, Whitewater Remains
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
One reads that Beverly Kopper, UW-Whitewater chancellor, has resigned her position effective 12.31.18. Her resignation was generally expected for at least the last few weeks, and was, more importantly, necessary. This was a public matter involving a spouse appointed to a public position accused of sexual harassment by at least five women while the appointing chancellor kept…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A sensible person would never have listened to a Walker Administration operative in Whitewater tout Foxconn without laughing or looking about for a nearby tomato. No sensible person would have made that operative a guest speaker at an annual dinner or written about the event without criticism. (See, about that Greater Whitewater Committee dinner and that…
City, Economy, Government Spending, Local Government, That Which Paved the Way
The 2019 Municipal Budget
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The City of Whitewater will hold a public hearing this evening on its 2019 municipal budget. It’s the budget for the city, at a time when a budget for the municipal government will have little chance of positively affecting the city’s economy, let alone that of even small rural townships ringing Whitewater. The broader economic…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Before and after the recent election, solid assessments on Foxconn came to press, and they confirm how irrational and wasteful is that project. Earlier this year, the local business lobby (the Greater Whitewater Committee) invited the state capitalist stooge official overseeing the project to a dinner in Whitewater. I’ve no idea whether Matt Moroney will show…
Bad Ideas, Mendacity, New Media, Politics, That Which Paved the Way
A Site on Facebook: ‘Nothing on this page is real’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Standards have fallen so low that, whether of right or left, trolls take advantage of gullible and ignorant people on Facebook each day. Eli Saslow reports how a liberal troll tricks impressionable conservatives. The people tricking, and the people being tricked, are evidence of (respectively) ethical or educational decline. First the unethical tricksters: He [forty-something Christopher Blair] had…
Bigotry, Culture, Misconduct, Race, That Which Paved the Way
But Such a Pretty Logo…
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
On Monday, I wrote about students from Baraboo High School who were photographed making a Nazi salute, a story that’s really about the many failures of acculturation before that photograph was taken. See The Unacculturated. A parent is now claiming – ludicrously – that the students were waving, but the social media accounts of the…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Foxconn: Failure & Fraud
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There are two national publications with recent updates on the Foxconn project, and each report highlights fundamental problems with the billions in public subsidies for that foreign corporation. Here’s a roundup of the latest on this dodgy corporate welfare: Bruce Murphy (writing online for national tech site The Verge) reports Wisconsin’s $4.1 Billion Foxconn Boondoggle (“Gov.…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, City, Culture, Misconduct, Nepotism, Public Relations, Sexual Harassment, That Which Paved the Way, University, UW System
0, 448, 476, 84
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
0 Number of published words from Chancellor Beverly Kopper in support of five complainants alleging sexual assault or harassment from her publicly appointed assistant-to-the-chancellor spouse. 448 Number of published words from Chancellor Beverly Kopper in reply to one remark from a single sportscaster during a single Packers preseason game. (It’s not that one shouldn’t reply…
Babbittry, Mendacity, Newspapers, That Which Paved the Way
Iceberg Aside, Titanic‘s Executive Pleased with Ship’s Voyage
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Despite ridicule from countless people, the Daily Union continues to deceive about the performance of Jefferson, Wisconsin’s the latest ‘Wizards and Warriors’ festival. Readers have this awaiting them: Weather aside, Cramer pleased by fest outcome. This is something like shipping magnate J. Bruce Ismay insisting that the Titanic‘s maiden voyage wasn’t too bad, except for…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Poverty, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
In Whitewater and Elsewhere, Employment’s Only Part of the Story
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In times of high unemployment, of course it makes sense to get people back to work. Jobs, jobs, jobs isn’t a bad mantra when people don’t have work. (Work isn’t simply about an income, but a place in society.) Today is not, however, the Great Depression. Listen to ‘development professionals’ go on about job-creation at…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Taiwanese-owned Foxconn is relying on eminent domain to seize Wisconsinites’ private homes for the sake of that foreign company’s project. Principles of eminent domain, sadly, have been vastly increased since a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision expanded government’s power to take from ordinary homeowners, among others. Those expanded governmental powers mean that residents who lose their…
Assault Awareness & Prevention, City, Culture, Misconduct, Nepotism, Sexual Harassment, That Which Paved the Way, University, UW System
A Defense That’s Worse Than Nothing
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Retired UW-Whitewater professor Brian Kevin Beck contends that Kopper shouldn’t leave [the] Chancellor post. (Candidly, there’s a chance that his defense is so bad that it’s an intentional parody of a defense. It’s hard to believe anyone who served on a worthy faculty could reason so poorly.) Beck argues that (1) misconduct involving Kopper’s public…