The ["Milwaukee's Future in the Chicago Mega City" conference] was prompted in part by a report issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a global economic think tank based in Paris. The 332-page report issued in March advocated closer ties within the Chicago-Milwaukee economy, and declared the region "is at a tipping point."...
The OECD found that the Chicago-Milwaukee region is politically splintered despite common industries, highways and shoreline. Among the most pernicious practices that split the region, the OECD found, is Wisconsin's practice of poaching companies....
In March, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch boasted that she got in the game early. "Right after I was elected I started making cold calls down to Illinois," Kleefisch said in a radio interview.
July 18, 2012
Should Wisconsin embrace the Chicago-Milwaukee megacity?
Or should it compete with Chicago, luring Chicago businesses to relocate here?
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Tell her to keep up the good work.
The OECD's recommendation is so preposterous that "insanity" is the term best fitting.
Will Barrett roll over for Emanuel? Stay tuned!!
" Among the most pernicious practices that split the region, the OECD found, is Wisconsin's practice of poaching companies...."
The one thing government bureaucrats hate most is competition between governments.
What "megacity"?
Chicago lost 200,000 people in the decade from 2000-2010, a 7% decline, bringing its population to that of the 1920s.
All Chicago will want from any "megacity" is taxing non-residents.
I want to be one of the new Street Judges in this MegaCity1.
Chicago 'Megacity'? Aren't Chicago and Milwaukee like 90 miles apart? If you can't compete with the competition, merge with the competition, I suppose. Good lord, liberals are nothing if not creative. Imagine if they put that creativity to work for good and not evil...
Is Wisconsin poaching companies, or is Illinois running them out of town?
Pogo's right. With civic leaders like Tippytoes, Chi-Town is the next Detroit.
rehajm said...
Chicago 'Megacity'? Aren't Chicago and Milwaukee like 90 miles apart?
Don't forget BosWash (or, more correctly, BosRich) that stretches halfway down the Eastern Seaboard.
is Wisconsin's practice of poaching companies....
Boo F-ing Hoo.
If it benefits Wisconsin, then yes. If not, then no.
Transportation between the two cities should be enhanced. There's rail now, and roads, but how much air? (are there a lot of Mitchell-O'Hare flights?) High-speed boat? More choices means more flexibility in an urban corridor.
Chicago needs to erect a Berlin Wall to stop defectors.
On Wisconsin!
Continue to poach Wisconsin! Please lead the way!
Chicago is staggering and the only thing that keeps working people inside the city boundaries is the residency requirement. It truly will look like Detroit in another 20 years because middle class people of all races will not settle there anymore.
Not a Chicago hater but the people continue to vote for the very same people that are ruining the city and state.
Former CPD that misses my old neighborhood.
Sacre bleu! Competition!
We must come together and dialogue. We must have some rules. Perhaps a common currency...?
Join with Chicago? Chicago is the next Detroit. Join with Chicago only if you have a zombie fetish.
Trey
People with OCD deserve our compassion not our ridicule. It is sad, indeed, to see how bureaucrats entangled in this disorder become increasingly deranged and at a remove from reality. To watch these eurocrats fantasizing about ever larger cobwebs of government while their civilization collapses is a chilling sight. It's just not feasible for the Milochic Entity to join the euro zone.
Assertion after assertion that something "must" be done before the "tipping point", without a scrap of evidence that positive results would accrue for anyone. Gotta read between the lines to deduce that "cooperation" means "do it my way" and "reducing government inefficiencies" means "we'll tell you what you can do and when you can do it." I'm not going to waste so much time reading the paper next Sunday...
If it benefits Milwaukee, yes. I know many people who shop and dine in Chicago, bring some of those boutiques and upscale restaurants here to Milwaukee, have fast transportation between the two cities.
Madison Man has it right, enhance the transportation.
since Milwk Polacks[hope this meets the speech code] are generally south, and Chicago Polacks live north, we could have another Warsaw. However, we'll need to clear the swamps in between.
We have fast transportation between, it's Interstate 94. It would be much faster if the fucking Cheeseheads got out of the left lane!
"Or should it compete with Chicago, luring Chicago businesses to relocate here?"
It would be a human rights violation to do anything less.
If Wisconsin adopted the Chicago approach to business, it would just drive the businesses to Iowa or Indiana. NYC has the same problem -- CT, NJ and even PA are the beneficiaries here.
Other than retail operations, very few big businesses today have to be in any particular location. And even retailers are quite adept at building the latest shopping center just over the line to be out of reach from the more egregious kleptocratic politicos in the neighborhood.
If some shithead in Sheboygan thinks her tax money should go to things other than hot air balloons, NuTrains (newer than the existing lines), bike trails, submarines, camels/horses/large K-9's, or zepplenins between Milwaukee and Chicago then that proves her rural hickdom precludes civility.
It is only civil for rural proles to pay for the transportation of their betters between bona fided urban centers of diversity.
Considering you take your life into your hands walking around in the Loop the real question is how long before Chicago experiences Detroit's fate
ricpic, The Teenie Tiny Mayor is taking the great city of Chicago toward Detroit full steam ahead.
I've been down to Chicago a couple times in the past month. There's a different vibe, people are wary. There was a shootout @ Michigan and Ontario[mag mile] between 2 gang bangers one night I wass there. But, the Chief[idiot sycophant hired by Teenie Tiny] said we shouldn't jump to conclusions that it was "gang related" while acknowledging both were gang members. Baghdad Bob and Orwell were chuckling.
Should be easy to compete against corrupt Illinois. So compete!
If we're to believe reports, their respective ghettos are already connected, no?
Chicago's outsourcing is Wisconsin's insourcing. I say go for it.
Leslyn, the only thing you harbor against Kleefisch makes you sound like a stopped clock or a table leg.
Chicago's outsourcing is Wisconsin's insourcing. I say go for it.
We have everything all setup here, and they still won't relocate to Wisconsin :(
Does this mean we can no longer call people from Illinois FIBs?
Fucking Illinois Bastards.
FedkaTheConvict said...
Does this mean we can no longer call people from Illinois FIBs?
Fucking Illinois Bastards.
Does this mean you no longer want me to spend my disposable income in Wisconsin?
Michigan beckons.
And frankly, their pizza is WAY overrated...
I call it the Greater Chi-Waukee metroplex. It's not a megacity.
I do love living about midway between the two cities. I have choices on museums, zoos, theater, restaurants, sports (if I were a sports fan) and more.
FedkaTheConvict said...
Be careful where you say that, even sotto voce...because they "understand" Italian.
Does this mean you no longer want me to spend my disposable income in Wisconsin?
Michigan beckons.
By all means.
If you've never heard that expression before then you need to get out more. Even the Urban Dictionary has an entire page devoted to it. Urban Dictionary - FIB
Leslyn wrote OTOH, traffic in Chicago is like quicksand or a tarpit. You have to skim over it as fast as you can or you'll get sucked in and it's no use struggling.
Agreed. I recently flew in and out of Chicago. Road constriction going on everywhere. I'll pick M'waukee next time.
Be careful where you say that, even sotto voce...because they "understand" Italian.
Thanks to Scott Walker for concealed carry.
Chicago is staggering and the only thing that keeps working people inside the city boundaries is the residency requirement.
Speaking as a Chicago resident, that's not really approaching true. But the trajectory we are on is not good.
4 of the top 5 employers in Chicago is the government. Want to lure them?
I honestly don't know what keeps Chicago afloat. All the great industries ,steel making ,stockyards, catalogue merchandising,food and candy manufacturing,consumer electronics are gone,Railroading is still here,but greatly diminished. Even Marshall Fields is gone.
A lot of those 200000 gone were public housing residents sectioned 8 to the suburbs in anticipation of the Olympics coming here.
Daley the Lesser sold public property to private cronies to the detriment and increased cost of the citizens.
The new police chief blamed black crime on the pilgrims.
You want to merge with that?
Wisconsin should erect a border fence. It would serve 2 purposes:
1. Eliminate fleebagging
2. Keep out 'folks' from Chicago and Illinois in general
Wisconsin/Milwaukee should run, not walk, away from this 'idea', especially because its from a French 'think tank', no less.
Poaching businesses??? Harumpf.
Kevin wrote
"The one thing government bureaucrats hate most is competition between governments."
True, dat!
You need only one reason to think this is a very bad idea: the comparison of current budgets for each state.
Besides Milwaukee and Chicago are barely functional as cities and cooperation between two hackish Democrat mayors will create a massive vortex of 'suck'.
And this: 'N 19 assyng' for a code?
I honestly don't know what keeps Chicago afloat.
Two words ampersand: Government largesse
How about American megacities like Chicago and New York become their own states? Then the rest of Illinois and Wisconsin can become true battleground States, if not leaning or safe Republican!
chickelit said...
I honestly don't know what keeps Chicago afloat.
Corruption on a scale that would boggle the mind.
example; Some friends of the mayor, aldermen,state senator, whatever own a fencing company.
Ward healer; There are no fences around our city parks and recreatin areas! Some kid could wander in the street and get killed!
Somebody ought to do something!
Politician; I'm introducing a bill today in the city council to require the city to fence in our public parks. For the children. This is urgent children are dying.
(article appears in the paper about parks and dead kids.)
Motion passes vote in the city council. Every city park will now have a fence around it. Money i budgeted. Oops project goes over budget. City officials buy new SUVs. renovate thier out of state country homes. Property taxes rise.
next time you dive to O'hare take a good look at the fence that surrounds it. That fence bought an awful lot of blow and hookers for a lot of pols.
53% of the voting public put a man with intimatr knowledge of how this all works in the White House.
Suckahs!
@Rusty: I own a copy of a now out-of-print book called "I, Pig: Or How the World's Most Famous Cop, Me, Is Fighting City Hall" by Jack Muller. He worked as a street cop and then as a detective in Chicago from 1946 to the sometime in the 80s. Some of his stories are beyond the pale.
If you watch Chicago local news that buffoon Governor Pat "Not So Mighty" Quinn signs some fucking pandering bill EVERY DAY.
Considering that competition was one of the 6 "killer apps of the West" that Niall Ferguson identified in his book Civilization: The West and the Rest, I should think the answer is obvious.
I know about the corruption, but a parasite needs a host to thrive on. There's 9 million in the metro area and no visible industry to
speak of. Are we all mowing each others lawns?
babysitting each others kids? We can't all be bribing each other.
BTW when Lying Butcher Johnson was president he showered all kinds of federal goodies on Texas.
Likewise Atlanta exploded from Carters largess.
Arkansas grew with Wal-Mart,Axxiom and Tyson under Clinton,even building them the Arkansas Poultryport.
The only thing Obama seems to have done for Chicago is bring in the useless Nato summit,costing the city more than it was worth.
I very much doubt the Obamas will be retiring here.
From here it looks like the big Chicago export is people looking for a handout. I don't know where Milwaukee stands on that but Madison embraces them with open arms.
Regarding the group that wrote the original report: while the OECD does perform research and undertake various studies, calling it a "think tank" might be a little misleading. It is a treaty-based international organization whose members are national governments, including the United States. It was originally known as the OEEC, founded to administer the Marshall Plan, until it was reconstituted as the OECD in 1960. It has far, far more in common with organizations like the UN, NATO, ASEAN, etc. than it has in common with organizations like the Brookings Institute or the Cato Institute.
Sorry to be pedantic, but I think it's important to understand that the OECD is not just a run-of-the-mill "think tank," but it's an organization with enormous influence in government and economic policy circles, and an orientation towards large bureaucratic/governmental initiatives is part of its DNA. Among other things, the OECD has been a very powerful advocate for European tax harmonization, i.e. the idea that different countries should not use lower taxes for competitive advantage, and that those nations that do so should be subject sanctions and enhanced scrutiny as tax havens. (In practice, tax harmonization almost never means harmonizing on lower or simpler taxes or regulatory regimes.)
I really don't mean to demonize the OECD. It has issued many recommendations with merit over the years, and, on balance, it is probably more objective than most similar organizations. Nonetheless, it is a safe prediction that they would recommend that Milwaukee should "cooperate" or integrate with Chicago, including adopting more Chicago-like laws and regulations, rather than compete against it.
Gack. I meant "Brookings Institution," not "Institute." It's past my bedtime, I guess.
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