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Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Foxconn, Government Spending, Mendacity, WEDC, Wisconsin

Foxconn’s ‘Innovation’ Centers: Still Empty a Year Later

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 Over at the national tech website The Verge, Nilay Patel reminds that a year later, Foxconn has still done nothing with the ‘innovation’ centers that foreign corporation promised it would open around the state. They’re still empty:    See FOXCONN’S BUILDINGS IN WISCONSIN ARE STILL EMPTY, ONE YEAR LATER. In Whitewater, the ‘Greater Whitewater’ Committee…

Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Conflicts of Interest, Kakistocracy, Kushner, Nepotism, Public Relations, WEDC, Wisconsin

An Empty-Headed Man’s Next Gig

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Updated with a longer – and so more revealing – video of Kushner’s vapidity. When Jared Kushner is finished impairing America’s response to a pandemic, he’ll need something else to do. Wisconsin still has the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, and in small Wisconsin towns like Whitewater one finds development hucksters, business leagues of landlords &…

Babbittry, Boosterism, CDA, City, Development, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Local Government, Poverty, School District, WEDC, Wisconsin

Local Public Policy as if Charitable Assistance

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Whitewater’s policymakers, and those of other small, rural cities, should – in these times of economic stagnation, a lingering opioid crisis, failed business welfare, and an approaching recession – view their principal obligation as if it were charitable outreach. (It’s not charity, of course, but that’s how policymakers should view it: as both palliative and…

City, Courts, Elections, Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Supreme Court Race

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Yesterday’s spring primary included a statewide contest for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with incumbent Justice Dan Kelly and challengers Judge Jill Karofsky and Professor Ed Fallone. (It was the only race on Whitewater’s ballot, as there were no contested local races). A few remarks — Statewide. Kelly and Karofsky will move on to the spring…

Elections, Presidential race 2020, Trump, Wisconsin

Battleground Wisconsin 2020

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Although Trump carried Wisconsin in ‘16, and although 2020 is likely to see a hard fight against him in Wisconsin, Trump has significant obstacles he did not have in the last election. On Twitter, Joe Handrick (@joeminocqua) offers a sound analysis of Trump’s electoral position in the Badger State. Embedded below is the first of…

America, Bad Ideas, CDA, Economics, Economy, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, Local Government, State Government, WEDC, Wisconsin

But, but, but…we were promised growth, growth, growth!

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Locally, statewide, and nationally, Trump & those who flacked his tax bill, and those who also pushed corporate welfare schemes (Foxconn, WEDC, Whitewater CDA), promised growth, growth, growth! How odd that these men — politicians, movers-and-shakers, developers, landlords, and public relations types — seem to have missed the mark: The World Bank sees U.S. growth stumbling from…

New Media, Newspapers, Politics, Wisconsin

If Not 2020, When?

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In August, the Journal Sentinel published a story, Liberal ‘news’ websites launching in Wisconsin, where conservative versions have thrived. (From the viewpoint of the JS, these are ‘news’ sites not news sites, as the paper is suspicious of non-traditional reporting. Without seeing some of the online publications, however, the scare quotes seem presumptuous.) These months later, only…

America, History, Television, Wisconsin

On the American Experience: McCarthy

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Tonight, on the American Experience on PBS, an episode on Sen. Joe McCarthy: McCarthy chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who came to power after a stunning victory in an election no one thought he could win. Once in office, he declared that there was a vast conspiracy threatening America…

CDA, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, WEDC, Wisconsin

Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls

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There’s a significant new development in the Foxconn project: the state has told the Taiwanese corporation it’s presently no longer eligible for tax credits. Over at The Verge, a national technology publication, there’s an excellent, detailed story about Foxconn’s serial excuses to receive the public money or credits it wants regardless of performance. In an…

CDA, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, WEDC, Wisconsin

Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing

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Below are the abstract and full study from George Mason University on The Economics of a Targeted Economic Development Subsidy (examining the Foxconn deal in Wisconsin).  There’s much to consider in this work, for the Foxconn project, and by reasonable extension to other government-targeted business subsidies. Abstract: In an effort to spur economic growth and…

Bad Ideas, Politics, Wisconsin, WISGOP

In Wisconsin, Gerrymandering Has Brought Out the Crackpots

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One reads – and it’s true – that in Wisconsin gerrymandering has disproportionately favored WISGOP candidates. It’s done more, it seems: gerrymandering has produced a decade’s worth of crackpot Republicans: Walker’s crony economics, Ryan’s trickle-down tax bill, Priebus’s sycophancy to Trump, Fitzgerald’s literal serenades for Trump, etc. Occasionally, these men spoke in libertarian language, but…

Education, School District, Wisconsin

Dissolving a School District

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In an advisory referendum held yesterday, a majority of residents in the Palmyra-Eagle School District voted in favor of dissolving their school system: Of the 2,298 votes cast in the Nov. 5 advisory referendum, 1,218 (53%) voted in favor of dissolution; 1,080 voted against it, according to unofficial results released Tuesday night by the school…