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CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Gluttony, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Politics, WEDC, Wisconsin

The State’s WEDC and Whitewater’s Facsimiles

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Ongoing revelations about the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation are a double concern: they’re stories of statewide malfeasance, and those revelations beg the question of how local officials in Whitewater are managing their own pools of public money.

First, the latest stories (it’s a steady stream) of state-level error, waste, and negligence:

Madison— Failing to run adequate checks, Wisconsin’s flagship jobs agency gave two awards worth more than $1.2 million to a financially troubled De Pere businessman who had not disclosed his problems to the state, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review has found.

Despite those omissions in 2011 and 2012, Gov. Scott Walker’s administration kept working with Ron Van Den Heuvel and his clean energy company, Green Box, into 2014, state records show.

There is no record of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. notifying the city of De Pere about the company’s money troubles even though Green Box was working with the city in an unsuccessful attempt to get tax-exempt bonds — in part to repay the state’s soured loan.

It’s the second case disclosed in recent weeks in which WEDC failed to catch omissions by businesses about their troubled finances and then continued to work with them….

Via Jobs agencies loaned $1.2 million to businessman with troubled finances.

Yet make no mistake – even after being thrust into the spotlight WEDC is pressing on in issuing unmonitored awards. Just this past Monday [7.20.15] – four days ago – Walker took a break from his campaign to drop in on the agency’s quarterly board meeting. While that $500,000 loan [for William Minahan] was on the public agenda and one board member openly wondered why there hadn’t been “a giant red flag to cease and desist all activities,” the agency’s staff quietly presented a different proposal: to cut the number of tax credits [that] the agency audits from a required 100% (which it has never managed to comply with), to just 25%.

Via Brian Murphy @ Talking Points Memo. 

Second, inevitable concerns arise about local distributions after a stream of state-level reports: should a reasonable man or woman believe without careful inquiry & verification that state officials have managed these kinds of public funds poorly but that local officials (the CDA, Tech Park Board, etc.) have performed better? 

Put another way: Does anyone think that state officials are less competent and diligent than their local counterparts?

I don’t know.

At the very least, Whitewater – her city government, her Community Development Authority, all with pools of taxpayer money to dole to so-called startups, etc. – the officials responsible owe as much of an accounting of actual performance as any state official. 

In a well-ordered community, these local distributions would be periodically and independently audited. 

Libertarians (and others of different views) know well that any number of special interests – business, labor, political – will seek to ensconce themselves into government positions, directing government work to their own selfish ends. 

One would prefer a community requiring no political concerns.  A serene place like that would perhaps be a world only of cat videos and puzzles; we do not live in such a place. 

Grants and loans of public money to white-collar firms, an addiction to tax incremental financing, sketchy claims of job creation, expensive buildings at public expense, public men who present themselves as development gurus, the selling of public property to business interests too cheaply – this gutter economics infects the CDA and other public agencies in Whitewater. 

In a city with so many who are poor, these distributions to white-collar professionals have been utterly ineffectual for the many, and useful only to a few (for their immediate gain or in scrapbook headlines).

In any event, no one owes these few their claims on faith alone; they’ve wasted too much already in this city. 

Perhaps it is enough – Dieu aidant – that some are naturally inclined to review, first from curiosity and thereafter in root-and-branch scrutiny. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 7.28.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-nine. Sunrise is 5:42 and sunset 8:19, for 14h 37m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM today, and the city’s Police and Fire Commission at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment is adopted, with three-quarters of the states having ratified it:

Following its ratification by the necessary three-quarters of U.S. states, the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing to African Americans citizenship and all its privileges, is officially adopted into the U.S. Constitution.

Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, where new state governments, based on universal manhood suffrage, were to be established. Thus began the period known as Radical Reconstruction, which saw the 14th Amendment, which had been passed by Congress in 1866, ratified in July 1868. The amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.” The amendment then reaffirmed the privileges and rights of all citizens, and granted all these citizens the “equal protection of the laws.”

On this day in 1934, a planned community descended into violence:

1934 – Two killed, 40 hurt in Kohler riot; National Guard occupies town
On this day, the “model industrial village” of Kohler became an armed camp of National Guard cavalrymen after deadly strike-related rioting. The July 27th violence, which killed two Sheboygan men and injured 40 others, prompted the summoning of 250 Guardsmen to join the 200 special deputy village marshals already present. After striking workers became agitated and began to destroy company property, deputies turned to tear gas, rifles, and shotguns to quell the stone-throwing crowd, resulting in the deaths and injuries. Owner Walter Kohler blamed Communists and outside agitators for the violence, while union leaders blamed Kohler exclusively. Workers at the Kohler plant were demanding better hours, higher wages, and recognition of the American Federation of Labor as their collective bargaining agent. Not settled until 1941, the strike marked the beginning of what was to become a prolonged struggle between the Kohler Company and organized labor in Wisconsin; a second Kohler strike lasted from 1954 to 1965. [Source: Capital Times 7/28/1934, p.1]

Here’s the Tuesday game from Puzzability in this week’s Showstoppers series:

This Week’s Game — July 27-31
Showstoppers
It’s curtains for us this week. For each day, we started with the title of a Broadway musical’s Act I closing number and replaced all the letters in each word—except the last letter—with asterisks. The name of the musical is presented the same way in parentheses.
Example:
******G ******Y (*****D)
Answer:
“Defying Gravity” (Wicked)
What to Submit:
Submit the song title and the musical’s title (as “Defying Gravity (Wicked)” in the example) for your answer.
Tuesday, July 28
*******R ***A ****S, ***A ***S (***N ******S)

WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN

Troubled Water

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WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 22 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.

In the three previous posts, I considered the city-imposed focus of Donohue’s work, with its emphasis on selling water as a commodity (The Scope of Donohue’s Work, Part 1 and Part 2), and the nearby failure of a waste digester despite Consultants, Presentations, Politicians, Funding, and Construction.

It’s worth observing that in no published presentation have either City Manager Clapper or Wastewater Superintendent Reel mentioned the use of the wastewater facility for this principal purpose, despite Donohue’s admission that this was a key goal of city officials.

This admission would be, in fact, the second time that City Manager Clapper’s claim that the wastewater facility project is a mere upgrade is easily refuted: He earlier claimed the project was an upgrade, and involved no changes of kind, despite a by-design effort to turn Whitewater into an importer of other cities’ unwanted waste. (See, The City of Whitewater Digester Clarification That Could Use a Clarification.) A project that was said to be a mere upgrade is shown to be, once again, actually very different: a plan that would sell water to a power plant, for example.

That kind of expanded, different use brings with it new environmental and health risks.

There’s a large amount of ongoing research and investigatory journalism in Wisconsin about the use of water, and dangers to water, and I’ll address those reports later in this series. For today, though, I’ll walk briefly through the door that the actual strategic goals of this wastewater project have opened: by embedding a documentary film about water.

In the film below, Troubled Water, one sees generally the threats to a water supply through government or government-business schemes. (The specific problems Wisconsin faces, and an examination of the geology of our own area, will come later.)

For today, a mere prelude to all that: Troubled Water.

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 7.27.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-seven. Sunrise is 5:41 and sunset 8:20, for 14h 39m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1953, an armistice ends the fighting in the Korean War:

Tokyo, Monday, July 27–Communist and United Nations delegates in Panmunjom signed an armistice at 10:01 A.M. today [9:01 P.M., Sunday, Eastern daylight time]. Under the truce terms, hostilities in the three-year-old Korean war are to cease at 10 o’clock tonight [9 A.M., Monday, Eastern daylight time].

[President Syngman Rhee of South Korea promised in a statement at Seoul Monday to observe the armistice “for a limited time” while a political conference tried to unify Korea by peaceful means, The United Press said.]

The historic document was signed in a roadside hall the Communists built specially for the occasion. The ceremony, attended by representatives of sixteen members of the United Nations, took precisely eleven minutes. Then the respective delegations walked from the meeting place without a word or handshake between them.

The matter-of-fact procedure underlined what spokesmen of both sides emphasized: That though the shooting would cease within twelve hours after the signing, only an uneasy armed truce and political difficulties, perhaps even greater than those of the armistice negotiations, were ahead.

On this day in 1894, a fire strikes Phillips, Wisconsin:

1894 – Forest Fire Destroys Phillips
On the afternoon of this day, a forest fire swept over the Price Co. town of Phillips from the west, destroying nearly all the buildings and forcing 2,000 people to flee for their lives. When the sun came up the next morning, 13 people had been killed, the entire downtown was in ashes, and exhausted survivors were wandering through the ruins in a daze. The fire ultimately consumed more than 100,000 acres in Price County. Much of the town was rebuilt within a year.

Puzzability has a new series for the week, entitled Showstoppers.  Here’s Monday’s game:

This Week’s Game — July 27-31
Showstoppers
It’s curtains for us this week. For each day, we started with the title of a Broadway musical’s Act I closing number and replaced all the letters in each word—except the last letter—with asterisks. The name of the musical is presented the same way in parentheses.
Example:
******G ******Y (*****D)
Answer:
“Defying Gravity” (Wicked)
What to Submit:
Submit the song title and the musical’s title (as “Defying Gravity (Wicked)” in the example) for your answer.
Monday, July 27
**********’S *****G *P ****S (****Y)

 

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 7.26.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-seven. Sunrise is 5:40 and sunset 8:21, for 14h 41m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked whether readers thought that there might be a lion walking around Milwaukee, as some Milwaukeeans suspect they’ve a big cat prowling their neighborhoods. A plurality of respondents (45.16%) thought that there might be a lion, with lesser but roughly equal proportions of responders thinking that it might be a big dog, or nothing at all. (The smaller number thought that it might be a cougar, but not a lion-sized lion.)

On this day in 1931, the Midwest is beset with grasshoppers:

…a swarm of grasshoppers descends on crops throughout the American heartland, devastating millions of acres. Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, already in the midst of a bad drought, suffered tremendously from this disaster.

Since the very beginning of agriculture, people have struggled to prevent insects from eating their crops. Locusts and grasshoppers, insect cousins, are among the most feared pests. A plague of these insects can occur when conditions cause their populations to suddenly explode. Usually this happens under drought or very dry conditions, since their egg pods are vulnerable to fungus in wet soil. When the soil is very dry, swarms can develop.

Professor Jeff Lockwood of Wyoming describes being in a swarm as follows, They explode from beneath your feet. There’s sort of a rolling wave that forms out it front of you. They hit up against your body and cling against your clothes. It’s almost like being immersed in a gigantic living being. Locusts and grasshoppers undergo a significant transformation when they become part of a swarm. Their wings and jaws grow, enabling them to travel greater distances and increasing their appetite.

The July 1931 swarm was said to be so thick that it blocked out the sun and one could shovel the grasshoppers with a scoop. Cornstalks were eaten to the ground and fields left completely bare. Since the early 1930s, swarms have not been seen in the United States. However, North Africa and parts of the Middle East continue to experience problems with insect swarms, which sometimes includes as many as 1 billion bugs.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 7.25.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in the Whippet City will be warm, with partly cloudy skies and a high of eighty-eight. Sunrise is 5:39 and sunset 8:22, for 14h 43m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 63.4% of ts visible disk illuminated.

Buddy the Chihuahua went blind, but (thanks to his owner’s ingenuity) the canine can walk around the house comfortably without bumping into furniture:

On this day in 1898, American troops begin the liberation of Puerto from Spanish rule:

During the Spanish-American War, U.S. forces launch their invasion of Puerto Rico, the 108-mile-long, 40-mile-wide island that was one of Spain’s two principal possessions in the Caribbean. With little resistance and only seven deaths, U.S. troops under General Nelson A. Miles were able to secure the island by mid-August. After the signing of an armistice with Spain, American troops raised the U.S. flag over the island, formalizing U.S. authority over its one million inhabitants. In December, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Spanish-American War and officially approving the cession of Puerto Rico to the United States.

On this day in 1999, the Brewers get their first Hall of Famer:

1999 – First Brewer Inducted into Hall of Fame

On this date Robin Yount became the first player inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in a Brewer’s jersey. Yount entered the major leagues at the age of 18 and spent his entire career with the Milwaukee Brewers as number 19 at short stop and center field. His awards are numerous, including being selected as an all-star three times as well as American league MVP twice. [Source: Milwaukee Brewers]

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 7.24.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Our Friday will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:38 and sunset 8:23, for 14h 45m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 53.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1911, archeologist Hiram Bingham finds Machu Picchu:

American archeologist Hiram Bingham gets his first look at Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca settlement in Peru that is now one of the world’s top tourist destinations.

Tucked away in the rocky countryside northwest of Cuzco, Machu Picchu is believed to have been a summer retreat for Inca leaders, whose civilization was virtually wiped out by Spanish invaders in the 16th century. For hundreds of years afterwards, its existence was a secret known only to the peasants living in the region. That all changed in the summer of 1911, when Bingham arrived with a small team of explorers to search for the famous “lost” cities of the Incas.

Traveling on foot and by mule, Bingham and his team made their way from Cuzco into the Urubamba Valley, where a local farmer told them of some ruins located at the top of a nearby mountain. The farmer called the mountain Machu Picchu, which meant “Old Peak” in the native Quechua language. The next day–July 24–after a tough climb to the mountain’s ridge in cold and drizzly weather, Bingham met a small group of peasants who showed him the rest of the way. Led by an 11-year-old boy, Bingham got his first glimpse of the intricate network of stone terraces marking the entrance to Machu Picchu.

The excited Bingham spread the word about his discovery in a best-selling book, sending hordes of eager tourists flocking to Peru to follow in his footsteps up the Inca trail. The site itself stretches an impressive five miles, with over 3,000 stone steps linking its many different levels. Today, more than 300,000 people tramp through Machu Picchu every year, braving crowds and landslides to see the sun set over the towering stone monuments of the “Sacred City” and marvel at the mysterious splendor of one of the world’s most famous man-made wonders.

A Google a Day asks a question about literature:

Which mourning character does the second narrator visit in Europe at the end of Conrad’s 1902 novella?