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Monthly Archives: June 2011

Comment Forum

Weekend Poll and Comment Forum: State Budget

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The Wisconsin Biennial budget is on its way to the governor.  So what do you think: do you favor or oppose?

See, Senate sends budget to Walker for signature, but effects already being felt and Senate OK’d budget goes to Walker:

Aside from changes to the school voucher program, the state budget approved Thursday by the Legislature also includes provisions that would:

  • Put tight limits on property taxes.
  • Cut school funding by almost $800 million.
  • Require local governments to make employer contributions to match the new pension contributions being required of public workers, which in the case of state workers are equal to 5.8% of their salaries.
  • Loosen restrictions on payday loans.
  • Let bail bondsmen set up shop in Wisconsin.

Previous proposals that were removed from the bill include:

  • A plan that would have made it harder for owners of land sitting in the way of a highway or power line project to challenge a government takeover of their property.
  • A proposal for $2 million in state borrowing for improvements at Milwaukee’s National Soldiers Home.

I’ve a poll and comments forum open for your opinions.

The use of pseudonyms and anonymous postings is, of course, fine. Although the comments 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.

The forum will be open until Sunday morning, and this post will stay at the top of the website during that time. Other posts will be up during that time; they’ll just appear below this one until Sunday.

Liberty

The FBI wants your garbage (and a lot more)

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Yes, they do.

Here’s a message from the ACLU, describing another of the federal government’s ceaseless quests for more power over the lives of law-abiding citizens:

You probably wouldn’t expect that FBI agents would want to dig through your trash unless they had a real good reason. And you surely wouldn’t want them following you and gathering information about you from commercial databases and local police files unless they had some suspicion you were doing something wrong.

But, according to The New York Times, the FBI — despite a stunning record of abuses — will soon be giving its roughly 14,000 agents significant new surveillance powers.1

The loosened surveillance standards reportedly include giving agents more leeway to search commercial and police databases, to go through household trash, and to use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people the FBI doesn’t even suspect of wrongdoing.

In the waning days of the Bush administration, Attorney General Michael Mukasey updated the guidelines governing FBI powers and essentially gave the FBI a blank check to open investigations of innocent Americans based on no meaningful suspicion of wrongdoing. Unbelievably, the FBI is now demanding even more power to investigate you, while refusing to provide information about how it is using its new powers.

 

As it is, the current guidelines set a dangerously low threshold for beginning an investigation or conducting surveillance about individuals or groups who are not suspected of any criminal activity.

The guidelines in place now also allow the FBI to collect, analyze and map racial and ethnic data about local communities, opening up the possibility that the FBI is engaging in unconstitutional racial profiling.

Please help us put the Obama administration on notice that we don’t want the FBI to have even more authority to engage in abuses. We need stronger safeguards against the FBI using race and religion as grounds for suspicion, not an expansion of unchecked surveillance powers.

 

The FBI could issue these dangerous new guidelines at any moment. Please act now to protect privacy and rein in abuses of the government’s far-reaching surveillance powers.

1. “F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds,” The New York Times, June 12, 2011.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/us/13fbi.html

School District

Whitewater Schools’ Coin Flip

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There’s really no surprise that with a bad state economy, practical limits on academic compensation, and uncertain school finances throughout Wisconsin, that an internal search would seem like a good idea.  The Whitewater Schools haven’t done something bold, they’ve done something cautious, in looking for an internal replacement for Dr. Suzanne Zentner.  Zentner was a fine leader, and she served with the added burden of following a half-decade of mediocrity and drift.

It’s not that the district lacks administrators who might serve well as superintendent (there are several, actually).  It’s that the district has at least one who’s a poor choice (that’s poor choice as a euphemism for return to mediocrity). More than one insider in this town hopes for someone conventional, and supposedly safe.  That’s a mistake. Whitewater may choose poorly, but will find that there’s nothing safe in a choice that inspires no one.

Yet, if the district should choose poorly, and follow a good leader (Zentner) with a bad one, they will have done so without the luxury of squandering time and money as they did with Dr. Zentner’s predecessor.  There’s no margin for error, although I’d guess that for a few the only error would be choosing someone creative and clever.   An empty suit will seem easier, safer, and more comfortable.

There will be no going back, though — a return to mediocrity will come at a higher price than previously.  There’s an old saying that every dog gets one free bite.  This district had that undeservedly free bite with Steinhaus; it won’t deserve another.

There are good candidates to be had, internally, but the odds of choosing the good candidates from the poor one are no better than even.  So, flip a coin: head’s you’ve found a hero, tails you’ve picked a goat.

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.17.11

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Good morning.

It’s a partly cloudy day ahead, with a high temperature of seventy-six.

On this day in 1673 — a great accomplishment of exploration —

Marquette & Joliet Reach the Mississippi

“Here we are, then, on this so renowned river, all of whose peculiar features I have endeavored to note carefully.” It’s important to recall that Marquette and Joliet did not discover the Mississippi: Indians had been using it for 10,000 years, Spanish conquistador Hernan De Soto had crossed it in 1541, and fur traders Groseilliers and Radisson may have reached it in the 1650s. But Marquette and Joliet left the first detailed reports and proved that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, which opened the heart of the continent to French traders, missionaries, and soldiers. View a Map of Marquette & Joliet’s route. Read Marquette’s journal on our Historic Diaries pages.

 

Crime, Government Spending, Law, Liberty

On 40th Anniversary Of War On Drugs, Cops Decry Obama’s Drug Policy

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The least one can say is that these last decades have failed to assure Americans’ health or safety. There’s irony, too, as even the regulation-favoring Richard Nixon would not have imagined nor supported the course the war on drugs has taken.

We’ve wasted money, enriching only agencies and vendors quick to slop at a trough filled with over a trillion we didn’t have.

The war has made us poorer, no healthier, and has led to a civilian militarization that’s killed thousands of innocent people, and threatened far more. I’ll write at greater length on these topics next week.

WASHINGTON — Forty years after President Richard Nixon first declared a war on drugs, the officers who fought in it are calling for a truce.

Former law enforcement officials gathered in the District of Columbia on Tuesday to announce their new report. It details the failures of the government’s long battle against illegal drugs and denounces the Obama administration’s current drug policies.

“Since President Nixon declared ‘war on drugs’ four decades ago, this failed policy has led to millions of arrests, a trillion dollars spent and countless lives lost, yet drugs today are more available than ever,” said Norm Stamper, former chief of police in Seattle and a speaker for legalization-advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Via Huffington Post.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.16.11

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Good morning.

It’s a high of seventy-two with a chance of rain ahead for Whitewater.

Today is an anniversary of a battle in the Black Hawk War — 1832’s Battle of the Pecatonica —

On this date the Battle of Pecatonica took place between a band of Kickapoo Indians and troops led by Henry Dodge. Dodge, along with two others were on their way to Fort Hamilton in Wiota, WI when they passed a white settler named Henry Appel. As the men reached the fort, rifle shots rang; the settler had been ambushed and killed by a group of Indians. Dodge and 29 men went in pursuit of the Kickapoo Indians who concealed themselves under the river bank of the Pecatonica. As Dodge and his men approached, the Indians opened fire, injuring four and killing three. Dodge ordered his men to attack. The Indians, unable to reload quickly enough, were fired at point-blank. Nine died immediately and two others were shot as they tried to escape. This battle was the military’s first victory in the Black Hawk War. [Source: The Black Hawk War by Frank E. Stevens and Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark]

Source: Wisconsin Historical Society.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.15.11

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Good morning.

It’s a day of heavy thunderstorms ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of sixty-two degrees.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets today at 10 a.m. The meeting agenda is available online.

Today, in 1832, brought new developments in the Black Hawk War:

On this date General Winfield Scott was ordered by President Andrew Jackson to take command at the frontier of the Black Hawk War.

Scott was to succeed General Henry Atkinson, thought to be unable to end the war quickly. General Scott moved rapidly to recruit troops and obtain equipment for his army. However, while in New York, the troops were exposed to an Asiatic cholera. Just outside of Buffalo, the first cases on the ships were reported and death often followed infection. By the time the ships reached Chicago, the number of soldiers had dropped dramatically from 800 to 150, due to disease and desertion. Rather than going on to the front, Scott remained with his troops in Chicago, giving Atkinson a brief reprieve. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail, by William F. Stark, p. 90-91]

Source: Wisconsin Historical Society.

Liberty, Wisconsin

Wisconsin 25th of 50 for Freedom

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The Mercatus Center of George Mason University released its annual report on liberty, ranking freedom in each of the states. Wisconsin comes in a disappointing 25th, no better than middling.

See, Freedom in the Fifty States 2011.

Wisconsin’s freedoms have been under siege in 2011 — our new administration and legislative majority regulate from the center in the name of local control, and are as burdensome as any majority in memory.

Less freedom of association and bargaining power for workers, more burdens on exercise of voting rights, proposals to expand eminent domain against property owners, and an excessive bill to expand state immigration restrictions are all steps toward a more centralized, restrictive society.

There’s very little that’s libertarian about this GOP majority – it’s more Nixon than Goldwater or Reagan. Where Wisconsin would rank nationally next year is yet unknown, but in daily life we’re already less free than a year ago.



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Uncategorized

Who’s on First?

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Whitewater, even more than other places, frets over people more than ideas. So when a vacancy opens in a public office, some ask: Who’ll get that job? So much better, all around, to ask: What do you want to do?

We have our share of problems, but it’s from the response to a vacancy as a game of musical chairs that one sees why we have the problems that we do.



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