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Monthly Archives: February 2016

WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN

September to December 2015

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WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 63 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.

On 9.17.15, Whitewater’s City Manager, Cameron Clapper, gave brief remarks in support of waste hauling into Whitewater. See, Text of the 9.17.15 Remarks on Waste Importation.

About three months later, on 12.15.15, the city’s Wastewater Superintendent, Tim Reel, spoke along similar lines. I’ve some of Reel’s remarks, and a transcript of them, immediately below.

September to December 2015 from John Adams on Vimeo.

“I’ll, I’ll start, jump in anywhere.  So, the, the, one of the misconceptions that we dealt with when we started talking about high-strength waste is that, uh, and I think everyone here heard it is that we were adding digesters, you know, and that, so again to make sure everyone is aware of that we are adding no capacity, you know, to our digesters, we’re not adding a digester at our location.  Um, what that high-strength waste facility or receiving, receiving station gives us is the ability to safely receive some materials which could be, um, food waste, perhaps a grease trap from a local business, um, it could be a, um, you know, we have already uh tried, for example, some spoiled salad dressing, that’s an example of something we’ve taken.  What we’re not taking about is hazardous waste, you know, coming in to the city of Whitewater, and going out there.”

There are two things to say about this for now.

First, like Clapper in September, Reel apparently thinks he’s making a strong case. He doesn’t show the slightest awareness that he might sound repetitive, and repetitive of absurdities.  He’s confident.

(Goodness knows how many times Reel and Clapper have repeated the false claim that there’s a misconception that ‘everyone here heard’ this project is about adding digesters. I debunked that straw man on 3.26.15, 264 days before Reel repeats it in December 2015.  See, The City of Whitewater Digester Clarification that Could Use a Clarification.

But he says it yet again on 12.15.15 as though he’s defending an eternal verity.  By the way,  he gets the capacity argument wrong in any event, for reasons that have to do with additional capacity that a second mixer permits.  A second digester has never been in contention, but expanding present capacity is.  Reel doesn’t seem to know the difference between a thing and its capacity.)

The bigger issue isn’t there, of course. It’s in Clapper’s contention on 9.17.15 and again on 12.15.15 ( at 27:50) that there’s nothing harmful in this, that in fact there cannot be anything harmful in this. Reel makes this distinction, too: that this isn’t about the hazardous, as they define it. I’ve yet to address Clapper’s point from 12.15, but it’s an on-camera claim that really stands in a class of its own.

That, of course, is a longer conversation for the months after the project begins.

But there’s a second issue, as important as the first. There’s a reason that some of these theories are repeated between 9.17.15 and 12.15.15: Clapper and Reel are operating in a closed circle where no one questions their claims, and so they assume they must be onto something true and right. That’s a problem, of course, but it’s one of an environment that has cosseted them and nurtured them to believe their own statements.

Over these months, I’ve come to see this project less like the Innovation Express bus (a wasteful policy) and more like a say-anything-to get-what-I-want scheme. That was the point, really, of a post from two weeks ago about Bill Ackman and his battle against Herbalife.  See, Ackman’s Right About Herbalife.

He’s convinced – rightly, I think – that Herbalife is wrong for deeper reasons than a choice between business options.

Believing this, Ackman sees that as they’re still going, he’ll keep going. But he also sees that the effort against Herbalife will not be won in Herbalife’s boardroom.

Instead, Ackman has gone outside, and is making his case there. He’s built his own website, and has videos describing Herbalife’s many false claims. I’m working on my own site, too.  (A lot still has to be done, but I like my format.) He has the patience to make his case over years.  Some conflicts are over a single event or moment; some take far longer.

I looked over some notes I had from June 2015, written on a glass board where (from that time) I tried to sketch how the months ahead might go. (It wasn’t a smart board, so I had to take a picture of my ideas.) At the time, I expected that this project would be approved by September 2015, and that I would complete questions on it by three months’ time afterward (December 2015). That would leave December 2015 to begin to submit public records requests to fill in gaps, and consideration for how records requests had been fulfilled by about March 2016 (that is, by about now, actually).

Well, I’m still in the asking questions, reviewing presentations phase. There hasn’t been much of my own work, along the lines of fiscal, economic, environmental, human health, and about a city’s political and business culture.

And yet, along the way, I have acquired a confidence like Ackman’s. His work against Herbalife is inspirational.  Months of posts (since my first on 3.26.15) only seem like a few days’ worth.

I’ll try to complete the question phase soon.

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Appearing at whengreenturnsbrown.com and re-posted Mondays @ 10 AM here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.29.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Leap Day in Whitewater will be partly cloudy and windy, with a high of forty-seven. Sunrise is 6:29 and sunset 5:44, for 11h 14m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2004, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King wins big:

Perhaps the most attention-grabbing, trailblazing performer in film in 2003 did not receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor–but he was honored nonetheless. The eerily lifelike quality of Gollum, the computer-generated (CG) creature who simpered and schemed his way through The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, remained one of the most awe-inspiring aspects of the trilogy’s final installment, The Return of the King. At the 76th Academy Awards ceremony, held on this day in 2004, the film won a record-tying 11 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director (Peter Jackson) and Best Visual Effects.

On this day in 1956, a prominent Wisconsin Republican passes away, after taking the party in a different direction:

1956 – Father of Modern Wisconsin Republican Party dies
On this day William J. Campbell, a major contributor the Wisconsin Republican Party, died at his home in Oshkosh. A lumber broker and former University of Wisconsin regent, Campbell never held public office, but was generally given credit for the founding of the Republican Voluntary Committee, the working party organization in the state. State Attorney General Vernon W. Thomson hailed Campbell as a “true political pioneer” for steering the selection of GOP candidates away from the “domination of Robert M. LaFollette, Sr.” An ardent opponent of the “nomination paper” method of endorsing candidates for office, Campbell founded the Republican Voluntary Committee in 1925, in large part as a means of circumventing state limitations on spending by the statutory Republican Party. [Source: Milwaukee Journal 2/29/1956, Section 2 p. 12]

It’s a tape measure puzzle today from JigZone:

Assault Awareness & Prevention, University

‘A Trust Betrayed’: The Update on the Title IX Claims Against UW-Whitewater

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Over at the Gazette, above the fold, there’s a frontpage story about Ms. Raechel Liska, an honors graduate of UW-Whitewater, and her Title IX claim against UW-Whitewater for failing to  address properly her sexual assault complaint. The story refers also to an earlier Title IX complaint against the school (the two complaints are now joined administratively), and the account of a
third student that corroborates the experiences of the two Title IX complainants.

See, from Andrea Anderson, A Trust Betrayed, http://www.gazettextra.com/20160227/former_uw_w_student_stands_up_for_more_awareness_around_sexual_assault (subscription req’d).

Ms. Anderson’s story publishes significant new information about the claims, and more detail about what’s already been published.

The story reveals that there are at least three, not two, women who allege the same administrative misconduct and concealment. Two of those women have filed Title IX complaints, and a third submitted a supporting statement:

20160228“Liska has encouraged at least one other student to come forward and submit supplemental testimony to be attached to Liska’s Title IX claim.

Sarah, a senior at UW-W who agreed to let The Gazette use her first name, learned about Liska through the media. In her testimony, Sarah wrote she experienced a similar response as Liska from UW-W after reporting she was sexually assaulted by another student.

Sarah claims Mackin did not inform her of her Title IX rights and felt as if Mackin “talked down” to her and “never addressed the actual problem that I was having: I was abused by another UW-Whitewater student and I was terrified,” according to the testimony.

UW-W police talked to the accused, but Sarah still felt the university was minimizing her fears of retaliation from the man, Sarah wrote.

Sarah could not file her own Title IX complaint because the deadline had passed, Held said. Sarah was given the option to add testimony to Liska’s claim and did so to help push for improvement in UW-W’s response to sexual assault victims.

It was “distressing to realize that, after talking to Raechel about her interactions with the school, I wasn’t alone in this treatment. It made me want to change the way the University deals with cases like mine and Raechel’s,” Sarah said in her testimony.”

Most of these cases are resolved administratively, and that’s the goal of the claimants here. How this will be resolved, of course, I do not know; successful resolutions need good terms and a sincere effort to carry them out.

I’ve no connection whatever to these claimants or their lawyers. That’s both by nature and design – having seen more than one tragedy in this small & beautiful, but sometimes troubled city, I simply don’t believe, for politics or policy, in close.  On the contrary, it’s distance that makes one’s work, as an ongoing chronicle, possible.

I would hope that these claimants, as people with unique hopes and aspirations, find whatever measure of remedy they are seeking, so fully and completely as possible.

See, also, other posts that are part of a category on Assault Awareness and Prevention dedicated to this topic.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.28.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a mild Sunday with afternoon showers and a high of fifty-seven. Sunrise is 6:41 and sunset 5:43, for 11h 11m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 72.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked readers which movie they favored in the Best Picture category at the Academy Awards ceremony tonight. Of the eight nominees, 29.27% of respondents chose The Revenant, 26.83% chose The Martian, 14.63% chose Bridge of Spies, with remaining contenders each receiving fewer than ten percent of responses.

Here’s schedule of posts for the week ahead, with other posts possible (if there are changes to these scheduled posts I’ll explain why):

  • Today: DB, a post about UW-Whitewater and Title IX, evening post
  • Monday: DB, weekly music post, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN post, evening post
  • Tuesday: DB, weekly education post, evening post
  • Wednesday: DB, weekly film post, a post on relative sizes among demographic groups, evening post
  • Thursday: DB, a food post, a post on Whitewater’s economy, evening post
  • Friday: DB, weekly poll, weekly cataloging, a post on Whitewater’s economy
  • Saturday: DB, weekly Animation post, evening post

On this day in 1844, Pres. Tyler survives a shipboard explosion:

On February 28, she departed Alexandria, Virginia on a pleasure and demonstration cruise down the Potomac with President John Tyler, his Cabinet, former first lady Dolley Madison, and approximately four hundred guests on board. The guests viewed the firing of the ship’s guns and then retired below decks for lunch and refreshments. When they were summoned once more to view another test firing, the firing of Stockton’s Peacemaker caused the gun to burst, sending shrapnel into the crowd. Instantly killed were Secretary Upshur, Secretary Gilmer, Capt. Beverly Kennon, who was Chief of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repairs, Virgil Maxcy of Maryland, who had served as Chargé d’Affaires to Belgium from 1837 to 1842, Colonel David Gardiner of New York, the father of Julia Gardiner (who afterwards became the President’s fiancée), the President’s valet, a black slave named Armistead, and two sailors. It also injured about 20 people, including Capt. Stockton. The President was unharmed, having been below decks when the gun exploded.[1] When Julia Gardiner, who was aboard, found out her father had died in the explosion she fainted, not waking up until Tyler was carrying her off the ship.[2]

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.27.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a mild Saturday with mostly sunny skies and a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:32 and sunset 5:41 for 11h 09m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 80.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1782, the British House of Commons votes against further war in America. Esmond Wright, in Franklin of Philadelphia, describes Britain’s position:

The surrender at Yorktown on October 17, 1781, and the loss of Cornwallis’s army, ended any remaining British hopes of victory on the American mainland. Defeats at the hands of the French in the West Indies in 1781 and early 1782 drove home to Britain the need for an end to hostilities. On February 27, 1782, the House of Commons voted against continuing the American war and authorized the government to make peace with the former colonies. The king threatened to abdicate. On March 20, North resigned and was succeeded by Rockingham, with Shelburne as the secretary of state responsible for colonial affairs, charged to open negotiations with the American peace commissioners.

On this day in 1904, Wisconsin loses her second state capitol building:

1904 – Second State Capitol Burns
On this date fire destroyed the second State Capitol building in Madison. On the evening of the 26th, the generator was turned off for the night. The only lights visible were two gas jets serving the night watchman. At approximately 2 a.m., night watchman Nat Crampton smelled smoke and followed the odor to a recently varnished ceiling, already in flames. A second watchman arrived to assist, but there was no water pressure with which to operate a hose. The fire department encountered a similar situation upon arrival. Governor Robert M. La Follette telegraphed fire departments in Janesville and Milwaukee for assistance. La Follette was at the capitol, directing efforts to douse the fire and entering the burning building to retrieve valuable papers. The fire was completely extinguished by 10 p.m. the next day. Losses were estimated to be close to $1 million.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.26.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in town will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 6:34 and sunset 5:40, for 11h 06m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 87.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1917, Pres. Wilson learns of the Zimmermann Telegram:

In a crucial step toward U.S. entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson learns of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the event of a war between the U.S. and Germany.

On February 24, 1917, British authorities gave Walter Hines Page, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, a copy of the Zimmermann Telegram, a coded message from Zimmermann to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico. In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in late January, Zimmermann instructed his ambassador, in the event of a German war with the United States, to offer significant financial aid to Mexico if it agreed to enter the conflict as a German ally. Germany also promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

The State Department promptly sent a copy of the Zimmermann Telegram to President Wilson, who was shocked by the note’s content and the next day proposed to Congress that the U.S. should start arming its ships against possible German attacks. Wilson also authorized the State Department to publish the telegram; it appeared on the front pages of American newspapers on March 1. Many Americans were horrified and declared the note a forgery; two days later, however, Zimmermann himself announced that it was genuine.

It’s a spiral ginger plant today from JigZone: