When conditions are dry, sugar cubes are fairly sturdy. When placed in coffee, they don’t last long.
Cronyism is like this – it does well in the dry jar of municipal officials, insiders, press-toads, big-business lobbyists, and their lightheaded cheerleaders. In the bracing coffee of careful analysis, sound economics, and impartial observation it dissolves quickly enough.
What’s happened to the WEDC statewide – it’s a disgrace that no insiders’ flickering hopes can overcome – should be a warning for local cronyism in Whitewater. It’s true that some men have devoted their political careers to these kinds of projects. No matter: their work has been profligate and selfish, their hopes for a positive legacy are hopes in vain. Whitewater’s tiny versions of statewide failures have no political future except the ashcan.
It’s unlikely that men devoted to these projects will change their tune; they’re more likely to play the same off-key score with even greater intensity. Associating with their own kind, they can’t or won’t imagine alternatives to their way.
(Even as recently as three years ago, their ideas must have seemed, to them, winning ones. That was never true, of course. They should have read more of history, and less of their own grandiose press releases.)
Still, nothing of their efforts will be sufficient.
The future will write the history of the present; that history will be favorable to many, but dismissive or contemptuous of these projects.
There are years yet ahead, but the outcome for cronyism in Whitewater is no better than a sugar cube’s chances in a mug of Kona.
There’s a group of people who live for thsi junk expecting the rest of us to believe it. It’s tough to get over how much gets wasted on big buildings for example.
There is over more than a million per year for construction with no return.The city wasted two million on the east gate construction that added what exactly to our city? How many budget cuts could have been saved if society didn’t waste on things like that? Thanks, but I don’t feel like paying so that someone can put a few pictures up to say “how cool is that”? Not cool at all.