Here’s the Friday open comments post, following reader responses to a recent poll.
The use of pseudonyms and anonymous postings will be fine.
Although the template has a space for a name, email address, and website, those who want to leave a field blank can do so. Comments will be moderated, against profanity or trolls. Otherwise, have at it.
I’ll keep the post open through Sunday afternoon.
For this week, a suggestion for a topic — What does it mean to “buy local,” as a policy and practice for Whitewater and her residents? I’ll post on this topic over the weekend.
Thank you for the picture of the cougar. I liked your catblogging. I’m glad that these cats are back again. (I just hope I don’t get eaten by one.)
I was just looking at the Think Whitewater Buy Local release on The Banner…hmm…I notice one of the members on the committee is from the Whitewater Culvers…I didn’t know that Culvers is a ‘local’ business…hmmm…that must make our Walmart #1274 ‘local,’ as well…I’ll have to ponder that over a cone at our Really Local Frosty’s…hmmm….
Hello, John Adams What do you think of the Whitewater Buy Local campaign? They have a website about the campaign http://www.whitewaterbuylocal.com. Do you think it’s a good idea to slam Walmart? I can’t image Whitewater now without a Walmart and a bigger one would reduce trips to Janesville. I think we’d save money on food AND gas with a Walmart grocery in Whitewater.
Auto dealers for government motors or chrysler should not count as local either unless local in Whitewater means washington, d.c.
I really don’t know what to say about people who advocate competition when that competition will ruin every small business owner in Whitewater. We can’t afford to let people from a national chain sink small business people in the name of imiginary concepts like “free market” or “competition.”
We’re wasting time, Whitewater. Whitewater should take part of all the taxes that businesses pay and set up a fund to protect local businesses with ads and commercials. It’s just alot of lame crap now, but it could be more. When a big box wants to come to town, some of the fund should go to countering their ads. Residents are paying taxes and business people are residents just as much as any body else. Why do they have to pay taxes so that their businesses will be destroted by a greedy corporation? What they pay should stay here as a part of their defense unfair advantages.
Whitewater will be one big store and empty shops all over before you know it.
Anonymous says that with Super Walmart “Whitewater will be one big store and empty shops all over before you know it.” Hmm…aren’t we already there, with just Daniels Sentry and already empty stores..? Dooh!
Cougars are impressive animals, and I’m especially happy to bring back catblogging to showcase a Wisconsin cougar. I don’t know how many cougars there now are in Wisconsin, but the chance that any given resident would be eaten seem low.
(I would note that being eaten is only one risk from cougars, as being killed but not eaten, maimed but not killed, bitten but not truly maimed, and chased by cougars are possibilities, also.)
For some information on fatal cougar attacks, please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_cougar_attacks_in_North_America
On taking some taxes to defend local businesses — the City of Whitewater does that now and poorly, doesn’t it?
Better by far to cut city government significantly, and return the taxes saved to businesses and residents to spend based on their obviously superior knowledge of their own needs.
Ask yourself this question: if you needed someone to manage your own investments, would you turn to the bureaucrats who run Whitewater? I think you’d be more likely to turn and run the other way.
(That’s why, to me, the idea of most local conservatives as defenders of private transactions is silly — Whitewater’s officials and politicians have the bad habit of trying to use government to engineer results, including selecting what they consider to be the right businesses, the right development, and the right limits of private residents’ ability to buy and sell. )
Look around, and one sees the wreck of local officials’ intervention, matched only by their laughable insistence in their supposed expertise. We have a tax incremental district likely to be declared distressed. We can expect to hear that Whitewater’s problems are the unexpected result of a great national recession, afflicting all Wisconsin and all America.
That’s nonsense — our problems are worse and are unique to local, municipal mismanagement. Only a small fraction of communities in Wisconsin have made the mistakes in tax incremental financing, for example, that Whitewater has made. Our problems are only made worse by an administration that covers failure with claims of expertise, vision, etc.
Outside of a few hundred in town, these claims would be received with scorn and laughter; we’re doing worse than our neighbors, and worse than other towns in Wisconsin.
The less these bureaucrats take from productive, private citizens, the better Whitewater will do.