There’s a story over at Wisconsin Watch that reports on the broadband gap in rural Wisconsin communities. Peter Cameron reports Broadband gap leaves rural Wisconsin behind during coronavirus crisis (‘Wisconsin’s dearth of high-speed internet in rural areas makes virtual schooling, remote health care and working from home even more difficult’): Already, Wisconsin lags behind the…
179 search results for "great recession"
Conflicts of Interest, Local Government, Newspapers
APG Was Always Going to Play a Vulture’s Role
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
One reads that APG, the out-of-state newspaper chain that purchased two local family papers (Janesville Gazette, Daily Jefferson County Union) is slashing the salaries of those papers’ employees. A few remarks — I’m not a newspaperman, and have never aspired to be one. Bloggers are modern-day pamphleteers, reviving a tradition that was robust during our…
Babbittry, Boosterism, Coronavirus, Corporate Welfare, Disinformation, Economy, Mendacity, Newspapers, Opioids, Public Health
A Newspaper’s Boosterism During a Pandemic
by JOHN ADAMS • • 8 Comments
A worthy person – a man or woman committed to reason, honesty, and seriousness of purpose – would have little respect for the Janesville Gazette. This critical view is not a new one, truly: the paper’s work has been inferior during the Great Recession, during an opioid crisis, during cheerleading for countless state and local…
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 2.24.20
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 5:38 PM, for 11h 00m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater School Board at 6…
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 1.31.20
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:09 AM and sunset 5:06 PM, for 9h 57m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.5% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1865, Congress passes, and sends to the states, the Thirteenth Amendment…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Culture, Development, Economics, Economy, Local Government, Trump, WEDC
‘But Not in Conditions of Their Own Choosing’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It’s a truism to say that all people make history, but not in conditions of their own choosing: Admittedly and sadly, the local boosterism of the pre-Trump years is now in retrospect worse than one might have initially believed: across America boosters who peddled false descriptions & junk solutions during the economic hardship of the…
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 1.1.20
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
America, Authoritarianism, Babbittry, Bigotry, Boosterism, City, Law, Liberty, Local Government, Mendacity, Never Trump, Politics, Resistance, Trump
Forget the Tender Feelings of a Pernicious Faction
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
Over at the Journal Sentinel, Craig Gilbert writes about the political divide in For voters in this purple part of Wisconsin [Richland Center], the impeachment fight is a symbol of broken politics. The story establishes a false equivalence between those who support impeachment and those who oppose it, as though the conflict between these views…
America, City, Never Trump, Trump
Yet Again, All Eyes on Wisconsin
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
America, Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Boosterism, City, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Local Government, Mendacity, Newspapers, State Capitalism
What the New Dealers Got Right – What Whitewater’s Local Notables Got Wrong
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
There’s sound reason to doubt that the New Dealers’ economic solutions to the Great Depression were effective, but there’s no doubt that Roosevelt’s Brain Trust was hard-working, smart, and candid in its description of America’s economic problems. For a critical assessment of the New Deal, written accessibly, see The Forgotten Man: A New History of…
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…
Culture, Education, Local Government, School District
On Changes at the Whitewater Unified School District
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
One reads this morning that the Whitewater Unified School District’s administrator, Dr. Mark Elworthy, has taken a position with the St. Francis School District, and will be leaving shortly. One wishes him, and his family, truly the best in his new role. It would be tragic for this district – and a call to action…
CDA, City, Development, Economy, Local Government, Poverty, Taxes/Taxation
Trump Tax Bill is the Predictable Failure Sensible People Warned It Would Be
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In Whitewater, there’s a business lobby that amounts to a right-wing landlord or two, the dogsbodies who follow three paces behind, and the municipal officials who have been, variously, beguiled or browbeaten into asserting that government-directed capital spending means general prosperity. It doesn’t; it’s the great myth of municipal policy. A building here, a building…
Babbittry, Boosterism, Economy, Health, Wisconsin
The Rural Condition: Life expectancy for Wisconsin babies falls
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Boosters’ ceaseless distortions to ‘accentuate the positive’ – so common across the state and in Whitewater before, during, and after the Great Recession – meet their tragic refutation in life expectancy declines for Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Public Policy Forum reports on Troubling trends in Wisconsin: Life expectancy down; alcohol, drug and suicide deaths up: The…