FREE WHITEWATER

Monthly Archives: March 2018

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.18.18

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty-six. Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 7:05 PM, for 12h 05m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.2% of its visible disk illuminated . Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1963, the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, rules in Gideon v. Wainwright that the Constitution requires state courts to appoint attorneys for criminal defendants who cannot afford to retain counsel on their own.

On this day in 1953, the Boston Braves announce that they will move to Milwaukee. (They later moved to Atlanta to become the Atlanta Braves.)

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Chris Hayes explains What ‘Law and Order’ Means to Trump:

Time and again, the president denounces “illegals” and “criminals” and the “American carnage” they wreak on law-abiding Americans. He even advised an audience of police officers to rough up suspects they were arresting.

Yet this tough-guy stance disappears when the accused are in the president’s inner circle. In defending Rob Porter, the White House senior aide accused of abuse by both of his ex-wives, the president wondered whatever happened to due process while praising a man accused of giving his wife a black eye. (Mr. Porter denies the abuse.)

As tempting as it is to hammer Mr. Trump for his epic hypocrisy, it is a mistake. The president’s boundless benefit of the doubt for the Rob Porters and Roy Moores of the world, combined with off-with-their-heads capriciousness for immigrants accused of even minor crimes, is not a contradiction. It is the expression of a consistent worldview that he campaigned on and has pursued in office.

In this view, crime is not defined by a specific offense. Crime is defined by who commits it. If a young black man grabs a white woman by the crotch, he’s a thug and deserves to be roughed up by police officers. But if Donald Trump grabs a white woman by the crotch in a nightclub (as he’s accused of doing, and denies), it’s locker-room high jinks.

…

A political movement that rails against “immigrant crime” while defending alleged abusers and child molesters is one that has stopped pretending to have any universalist aspirations. The president’s moral framework springs from an American tradition of cultivating fear and contempt among its white citizens against immigrants, indigenous people and people of color, who are placed on the other side of “the law.” It’s a practice that has taken on new strength at a time when many white people fear they may be outnumbered, outvoted and out of time.

…

If all that matters when it comes to “law and order” is who is a friend and who is an enemy, and if friends are white and enemies are black or Latino or in the wrong party, then the rhetoric around crime and punishment stops being about justice and is merely about power and corruption.

➤ Matthew Rosenberg, Nicholas Confessore, and Carole Cadwalladr report How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions:

LONDON — As the upstart voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica prepared to wade into the 2014 American midterm elections, it had a problem.

The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work.

So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.

…

Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: “Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.”

…

But the full scale of the data leak involving Americans has not been previously disclosed — and Facebook, until now, has not acknowledged it. Interviews with a half-dozen former employees and contractors, and a review of the firm’s emails and documents, have revealed that Cambridge not only relied on the private Facebook data but still possesses most or all of the trove.

➤ Danny Hakim and Matthew Rosenberg report Data Firm Tied to Trump Campaign Talked Business With Russians:

When the Russia question came up during a hearing at the British Parliament last month, Alexander Nix did not hesitate.

“We’ve never worked in Russia,” said Mr. Nix, head of a data consulting firm that advised the Trump campaign on targeting voters.

“As far as I’m aware, we’ve never worked for a Russian company,” Mr. Nix added. “We’ve never worked with a Russian organization in Russia or any other country, and we don’t have any relationship with Russia or Russian individuals.”

But Mr. Nix’s business did have some dealings with Russian interests, according to company documents and interviews.

Mr. Nix is a director of SCL Group, a British political and defense contractor, and chief executive of its American offshoot, Cambridge Analytica, which advised the Trump campaign. The firms’ employees, who often overlap, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant.

…

Cambridge Analytica also included extensive questions about Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in surveys it was carrying out in American focus groups in 2014. It is not clear what — or which client — prompted the line of questioning, which asked for views on topics ranging from Mr. Putin’s popularity to Russian expansionism.

➤ Jason Stein and Patrick Marley report Eric Holder, Tammy Baldwin call for action on Russian Twitter trolls’ Wisconsin meddling:

State and federal leaders from former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to members of the Wisconsin Legislature called Friday for a federal response to news that Russian Twitter trolls sought to stoke racial division in the wake of the August 2016 unrest in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday that Russia-linked accounts got thousands of retweets for their racially charged posts made only hours after the chaos in the Sherman Park neighborhood and less than three months before the 2016 presidential election won by President Donald Trump.

After a Madison campaign visit Friday on behalf of state Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet, Holder said Congress should hold hearings on the Russian interference in Milwaukee and said the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office should investigate, as well.

“If you have the connection between that kind of effort and a foreign government, yeah, that’s the basis for a federal investigation,” Holder told reporters. “I think it’s incumbent upon people both at the state level and the federal level to hold hearings, to find exactly who was behind that and what was the impact of that effort.”

(Emphasis added.)

➤ Explore the Valley Protecting Hawaii’s Ancient Plants:

 

For the past 1,500 years, Limahuli Valley on Kauai has been a green haven, a wilderness preserved to exist just as the native Hawaiians experienced it. It is home to plant life unlike anything found in the rest of the world, with many endangered plants thriving in the valley. The Limahuli Garden and Preserve hopes to continue their conservation efforts so these plants can survive for generations to come. Join director Kawika Winter for a tour of this lush nature preserve.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.17.18

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Good morning.

St. Patrick’s Day in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 7:01 AM and sunset 7:04 PM, for 12h 02m 48s of daytime. The moon is a new today. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1776, the Siege of Boston ends as British forces evacuate the city:

The siege began on April 19 [1775] after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, when the militia from surrounding Massachusetts communities blocked land access to Boston. The Continental Congress formed the Continental Army from the militia, with George Washington as its Commander in Chief. In June 1775, the British seized Bunker and Breed’s Hills, from which the Continentals were preparing to bombard the city, but their casualties were heavy and their gains were insufficient to break the Continental Army’s hold on land access to Boston. The Americans laid siege to the British-occupied city. Military actions during the remainder of the siege were limited to occasional raids, minor skirmishes, and sniper fire.

In November 1775, Washington sent the 25-year-old bookseller-turned-soldier Henry Knox to bring to Boston the heavy artillery that had been captured at Fort Ticonderoga. In a technically complex and demanding operation, Knox brought many cannons to the Boston area by January 1776. In March 1776, these artillery fortified Dorchester Heights (which overlooked Boston and its harbor), thereby threatening the British supply lifeline. The British commander William Howe saw the British position as indefensible and withdrew the British forces in Boston to the British stronghold at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on March 17 (celebrated today [by Bostonians] as Evacuation Day).

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Deals, of whatever kind, should not be made outside the law:

➤ David J. Lynch and Michael Birnbaum report European Union releases 10-page list of potential targets for retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products:

The European Union Friday made public a 10-page list of American products that are potential targets for retaliation if President Trump refuses to exempt the allied bloc from his new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

The list offered the most detailed glimpse to date of the likely targets for E.U. action, including products selected for maximum political impact in the United States. Among them: Bourbon, a specialty of  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky; cranberries which grow in House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s native Wisconsin; orange juice from Florida and tobacco from North Carolina, two political swing states that are rich in electoral votes.

“It’s pretty clear they’re trying to wake up American legislators, who are the only ones in government who can influence the president on this issue,” said Chad Bown, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

(Trump’s economically counter-productive tariffs will lead to retaliation that will hit Wisconsin particularly. They have maps, and copies of the U.S. Congresisonal directory, in Europe.)

➤ Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Gets Mnuchin Travel Documents:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has billed taxpayers for the most expensive flight options available at every turn, appearing to never even consider flying commercial as his predecessors did, according to previously unreleased documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Mnuchin’s flight records following a military jet trip to Fort Knox, KY with his wife, Louise Linton, which coincided with the eclipse. The Treasury Department failed to turn over any records, leading CREW to sue. Months later, CREW received records which, though heavily redacted, showed that Mnuchin apparently abused his access to military and non-commercial aircraft for both business travel and occasional personal travel.

“From the documents we obtained, it appears Secretary Mnuchin considers first and foremost his own comfort and ease, leaving the protection of taxpayer money at the bottom of his list of priorities,” CREW Chief FOIA Counsel Anne Weismann said.

The documents CREW obtained show that between the spring and fall of 2017, Mnuchin took eight separate trips on military aircraft at a total of nearly $1 million. None of the requests for White House Mission designation — needed to use the government aircraft — explicitly state or otherwise suggest how they are at the explicit direction of the president.

“The public still has no reasonable explanation for why Secretary Mnuchin apparently has never used commercial aircraft while his predecessors did, or why he needs military aircraft that can accommodate 120 passengers when his travel manifests contain far fewer names,” Weismann said.

(Read CREW’s report here.)

➤ Dan Friedman writes Trump White House Worked with Newt Gingrich on Political Purge at State Department, Lawmakers Say (“Trump officials called civil servants “turncoat” and ‘Obama/Clinton loyalists’ “):

White House and State Department officials conspired with prominent conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to purge the State Department of staffers they viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump, two top House Democrats allege in a letter released Thursday.

The letter states that an unidentified whistleblower shared documents with Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees showing that a group of White House officials pressed political appointees at the State Department to oust career civil service employees they described with terms like “Turncoat,” “leaker and a troublemaker,” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists not at all supportive of President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.”

As described in the letter, those actions would likely violate federal laws protecting federal civil servants from undue political influence.

➤ An impressive American fighter plane deserves an impressive coat of paint:

City, Local Government, Open Government, Public Meetings, Public Records, School District

Sunshine Week 2018 (A Methodical Approach)

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Writing about a topic is a deliberate, often slow, process. Something happens – perhaps of concern – but one may not address it immediately. A bit of waiting can be a sound response. Along the way, an original perspective may change, and a project grow larger (or smaller). See Steps for Blogging on a Policy or Proposal.

In November, I began thinking about the absence of some school board meetings on the City of Whitewater’s Vimeo page (https://vimeo.com/cityofwhitewater), a page that hosts both municipal public meetings, community events, and sporadically Whitewater Unified School District meeting videos. (Indeed, the WUSD website directs visitors via a link on http://www.wwusd.org/page/2459 to the city’s Vimeo page.)

Now readers may have heard, as I have, that in nearby Milton there are school board members who think other kinds of videos should take precedence over board-meeting videos. It’s a false choice: there’s room for all kinds of recordings. 

In any event: open government recourse under Wisconsin law is an individual right; it does not matter if two, or twenty, or twenty-thousand think otherwise. One need not take a poll, hire POLCO, or even accept the opinion of office-holding polecats from Milton.

If a response depended only on recordings of school board meetings, one could request them through the Wisconsin’s Public Records Law Wis. Stats. §§ 19.31 – 19.39. If the district proved unwilling to make available regularly the video records of its school board, one could under Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Law Wis. Stats. §§ 19.81 – 19.98 see that those videos were privately recorded and then made available at FREE WHITEWATER.

Hannibal’s determination to cross the Alps during the Second Punic War is the subject of a famous, attributed remark. A more inclusive paraphrase in the plural, applying equally to any person’s recourse, is even better: ‘we will find a way or we shall make one’ (inveniemus viam aut faciemus).

While discussing this with others inside and outside Whitewater, someone kindly gave me a suggestion: why not compare the contents of existing videos with local accounts of the meetings? Perhaps one could develop a series of criteria to compare what happens at a meeting as recorded with how a others report it, item by item, meeting by meeting.

That’s a larger project, and larger still if, as someone else also suggested, one included both a good sample of school board and common council meetings.

My aim was low; others’ better suggestions raised that aim higher.

A project to obtain records (or record them if a public body retreats from its longstanding practice) is not the same as comparing video records with existing efforts. Not the same, but related.  One can do both.

That will take a bit more time, and the working out of the right order of it all, but that doesn’t matter. I’m happily in Whitewater forever.

Cats

Friday Catblogging: Being Kind to a Cat

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In the video below, a cat owner describes ways to show affection that a cat will understand. They’re good ideas, but some cats will like some of these ways more than others – your cat’s mileage may vary.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.16.18

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 7:03 PM, for 11h 59m 52s of daytime. The moon is a new today with 1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1926, Dr. Robert H. Goddard tests the first liquid-fueled rocket:

Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled (gasoline and liquid oxygen) rocket on March 16, 1926, in Auburn, Massachusetts. Present at the launch were his crew chief, Henry Sachs, Esther Goddard, and Percy Roope, who was Clark’s assistant professor in the physics department. Goddard’s diary entry of the event was notable for its understatement:

March 16. Went to Auburn with S[achs] in am. E[sther] and Mr. Roope came out at 1 p.m. Tried rocket at 2.30. It rose 41 feet & went 184 feet, in 2.5 secs., after the lower half of the nozzle burned off. Brought materials to lab….[15]:143

His diary entry the next day elaborated:

March 17, 1926. The first flight with a rocket using liquid propellants was made yesterday at Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn…. Even though the release was pulled, the rocket did not rise at first, but the flame came out, and there was a steady roar. After a number of seconds it rose, slowly until it cleared the frame, and then at express train speed, curving over to the left, and striking the ice and snow, still going at a rapid rate.[15]:143

The rocket, which was later dubbed “Nell”, rose just 41 feet during a 2.5-second flight that ended 184 feet away in a cabbage field,[56] but it was an important demonstration that liquid propellants were possible. The launch site is now a National Historic Landmark, the Goddard Rocket Launching Site.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger report Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says:

United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict.

They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at the same time the Russian interference in the American election was underway. The attackers had successfully compromised some operators in North America and Europe by spring 2017, after President Trump was inaugurated.

In the following months, according to a Department of Homeland Security report issued on Thursday, Russian hackers made their way to machines with access to critical control systems at power plants that were not identified. The hackers never went so far as to sabotage or shut down the computer systems that guide the operations of the plants.

Still, new computer screenshots released by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday made clear that Russian state hackers had the foothold they would have needed to manipulate or shut down power plants.

“We now have evidence they’re sitting on the machines, connected to industrial control infrastructure, that allow them to effectively turn the power off or effect sabotage,” said Eric Chien, a security technology director at Symantec, a digital security firm.

“From what we can see, they were there. They have the ability to shut the power off. All that’s missing is some political motivation,” Mr. Chien said.

(Again and again, one sees that Putin’s regime is adversarial to America. See Department of Homeland Security, Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors.)

➤ David Frum considers The Words Trump Refuses to Speak (“For the most verbally belligerent president in history, Trump’s comments about Russia’s nerve-agent attack have been conspicuously weak”):

The most verbally belligerent president in history—who has abusive things to say about allies like Japan, South Korea, and Canada—cannot summon up any harsher adjective for a nerve attack on NATO soil than “sad.” Today’s tentative words and belated actions are already being hailed by Trump partisans as proof that at last the president has gotten tough. The Republican National Committee released a statement today hailing Trump’s “TOUGH ON RUSSIA RECORD.”

The balance of forces within the Trump administration apparently does not forbid all criticism of Russia or Vladimir Putin. Nor does the president veto all actions against Russia. While the president still refuses to implement the sanctions voted on to punish Russia from intervening in the 2016 election, he has allowed other sanctions to go forward and has sold lethal weapons to Ukraine.

But if it’s not nothing, it’s also true that it has taken extraordinary pressure to move Trump even the small interval he has moved. It’s progress, and it’s welcome. But it does not begin to dispel the haunting doubts about why Trump so hesitates to condemn Russia and Putin—not nearly.

➤ Misha Glenny calls for Hitting Putin Where It Hurts:

It is now high time for Britain to make a concerted effort to ascertain where all of this fabulous wealth comes from. Russian oligarchs have made an indelible mark on London. Some own newspapers, others our most successful soccer clubs, while many more own huge chunks of high-end property in the most fashionable parts of the capital.

And some of those characters are close collaborators and friends of President Putin. Thanks to some tenacious journalists, it has come to light that the children of Vladimir Yakunin, the former head of Russia’s railway network and a Putin pal, have been purchasing luxury houses in the capital through anonymous companies. This is now an ever more popular trick — squirreling away corrupt money by passing it on to relatives in the hope that it will evade scrutiny.

If Mrs. May is convinced that Russia is behind this attack, then she needs to devise a way of getting to President Putin’s friends and collaborators. And that means great transparency. She should reintroduce the stalled proposal to force anonymous companies to reveal the sources of their cash. If any members of Parliament or the cabinet tried to oppose a move now, their motives would immediately look suspicious. Now is the moment to confound her critics by acting decisively.

(An oligarchy cares for nothing so much as its oligarchs.)

➤ It’s PutinCon today – 3.16.18 in New York City:

Live streaming is available via YouTube at PutinCon 2018.

The Putin regime is the gravest threat to democracy and Western values that exists in the world today. Putin’s power as Russia’s leader is based in fear, mystery, and propaganda. Putin has wielded violence as the key tool in shaping a system that gives him unrivaled power and wealth, both within Russia and worldwide.

PutinCon will show how thin the façade of his control truly is. This gathering of Russian democracy activists, Kremlin experts, Putin biographers, law enforcement professionals, historians, foreign policy leaders, and intelligence analysts will tell the story of how Russia is crippled by totalitarian rule.

➤ One can learn a bit about The ‘Most Elusive’ Man in North America:

Somewhere in the mountains of Vernon, British Columbia lives a 76-year-old man by the name of Dag Aabye. He has no cell phone or email address. Revered by locals for having escaped from the shackles of modern society, he is the champion of the 80-mile ultramarathon aptly named the “death race.” Aabye is the oldest person to have ever finished the race.

Determined to locate and interview Aabye, filmmakers Adam Maruniak and Justin Pelletier spent weeks canvassing the nearby town, leaving postcards with their contact information. They visited the bar that the reclusive septuagenarian is said to frequent and even summited a mountain in search of him—to no avail. Then, the day before the co-directors had planned to scrap what they thought was a futile project, Dag called them from a payphone. Their resulting documentary, Never Die Easy, is named after Aabye’s motto.

“Never die easy,” Aabye says in the film. “To me, there is no age. Age is something other people put on you. You put a person in an old folk’s home, and this person’s gonna die pretty quick because you tell them, ‘You’re old now—you’re ready to go.’”

True to local lore, the filmmakers were taken by Aabye’s ardent self-reliance and motivation. “In our final moments with Dag,” Maruniak said, “he embraced us both and told us, ‘Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping, and always have a mountain in life to climb.’ Those words will resonate with us forever.”

City, Local Government, Open Government, Public Meetings, Public Records

Sunshine Week 2018 (City, District, and State)

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Local readers may have heard, as I have heard, that area officials know that there are ways around municipal ordinances and school district policies on open government. There’s no surprise in hearing this: there is no human construct that cannot be circumvented; there are few professing a public interest who do not simultaneously feel the pull of self-interest.

Imagine how unfortunate it must be, for some, to see open government as a burden, obstacle, or threat. On the contrary, like a church or library, an environment of open government should, properly, comfort and inspire.

For today, it’s useful to list in full the City of Whitewater’s Municipal Code, Chapter 2.62 (Whitewater Transparency Enhancement Ordinance) & Municipal Code, Chapter 2.66 (Public Records), the Whitewater Unified School District’s policies on open government, and state statutes on open meetings and public records.

Policies, ordinances, and statues are different, of course. That’s a subject for another day. In any event, digital publishing affords nearly unlimited space, so one can, easily, be methodical and thorough.

More tomorrow.

➤ City of Whitewater’s Municipal Code, Chapter 2.62 (Whitewater Transparency Enhancement Ordinance):

2.62.010 – Purpose.
The purpose of this chapter is to maximize public awareness and participation in City of Whitewater Government. (Ord. No. 1804A, § 1, 10-5-2010)

2.62.020 – Posting requirements.
(a) Agenda notices for all council, committee, commission and board meetings, requiring legal notice, shall be posted seventy-two hours in advance. If an agenda item is added between twenty-four and seventy-two hours prior to the meeting, it shall require an affirmative vote of a majority of the members voting to take up the matter. (b) All council, committee, commission and board agendas shall be posted online on the city website seventy-two hours in advance of the meeting. (c) All council, committee, commission and board packet materials, that can be reasonably scanned, shall be posted online twenty-four hours in advance of the meeting. The city shall provide an electronic notification feed alert, indicating that new information is available regarding an upcoming council, committee, commission or board meeting, to any party that has subscribed to the feed (requested notice from the city of the updated information). (d) All requests for proposals and requests for bids shall be posted online as soon as is practicable. (e) The council and all committee, commission and board meeting minutes shall be posted online within thirty days of the meeting. If the body does not meet within thirty days of the meeting, the minutes shall be posted within fourteen days of the next meeting. (Ord. No. 1804A, § 1, 10-5-2010)

2.62.030 – Information technology requirements.
Beginning December 1, 2010, city council, community development authority, plan commission and police commission meetings shall be videotaped, and the video shall be posted online. (Ord. No. 1804A, § 1, 10-5-2010)

2.62.040 – Meeting procedures.
(a) All council, committee, commission and board meetings shall have a public input agenda item to allow citizens to make statements on matters that are not on the agenda. (b) All council, committee, commission and boards shall allow the public an opportunity to comment on substantive items on the meeting agenda. The council, committee, commission or board shall have the discretion to impose time limits and other reasonable procedural rules concerning the public comment. (c) If the agenda for a council, committee, commission or board meeting includes staff reports or other reports, a specific description of the item to be reported on shall be listed on the agenda and said report(s) shall be limited to the specific items listed in the agenda. (Ord. No. 1804A, § 1, 10-5-2010)

2.62.050 – Failure to abide by chapter provisions does not cause actions to be invalid.
The failure by any council, committee, commission or board to adhere to the provisions of this chapter shall not cause any action by said council, committee, commission or board to be invalid. (Ord. No. 1804A, § 1, 10-5-2010)

➤ City of Whitewater’s Municipal Code, Chapter 2.66 (Public Records):

Chapter 2.66 – Public Records
Sections:

2.66.010 – Definitions.
[The following words, terms and phrases, when used in this chapter, shall have the meanings ascribed to them in this section, except where the context clearly indicates a different meaning:]

“Authority” means any of the following city entities having custody of a city record: an office, elected official, agency, board, commission, committee, council, department or public body corporate and politic created by constitution, law, ordinance, rule or order, or a formally constituted subunit of the foregoing.

“Custodian” means that officer, department head, division head, or employee of the city designated under Section 2.66.030 or otherwise responsible by law to keep and preserve any city records or file, deposit or keep such records in his or her office, or who is lawfully in possession or entitled to possession of such public records and who is required by this section to respond to requests for access to such records.

“Record” means any material on which written, drawn, printed, spoken, visual or electromagnetic information is recorded or preserved, regardless of physical form or characteristics, which has been created or is being kept by an authority. Record includes, but is not limited to, handwritten, typed or printed pages, maps, charts, photographs, films, recordings, tapes (including computer tapes), and computer printouts. Record does not include drafts, notes, preliminary computations and like materials prepared for the originator’s personal use or prepared by the originator in the name of a person for whom the originator is working; materials which are purely the personal property of the custodian and have no relation to his or her office; materials to which access is limited by copyright, patent or bequest; and published materials in the possession of an authority other than a public library which are available for sale, or which are available for inspection at a public library. (Ord. No. 1782A, 5-4-2010)

(a) Except as provided under Section 2.66.070, each officer and employee of the city shall safely keep and preserve all records received from his or her predecessor or other persons and required by law to be filed, deposited or kept in his or her office or which are in the lawful possession or control of the officer or employee or his or her deputies, or to the possession or control of which he or she or they may be lawfully entitled as such officers or employees. (b) Upon the expiration of an officer’s term of office or an employee’s term of employment, or whenever the office or position of employment becomes vacant, each such officer or employee shall deliver to his or her successor all records then in his or her custody and the successor shall receipt therefore to the officer or employee, who shall file the receipt with the city clerk. If a vacancy occurs before a successor is selected or qualifies, such records shall be delivered to and receipted for by the clerk, on behalf of the successor, to be delivered to such successor upon the latter’s receipt.
(Ord. No. 1782A, 5-4-2010)

2.66.030 – Legal custodian(s).
(a) Each elected official is the legal custodian of his or her records and the records of his or her office, but the official may designate an employee of his or her staff to act as the legal custodian. (b) Unless otherwise prohibited by law, the city clerk or the clerk’s designee shall act as legal custodian for the common council and for any committees, commissions, boards, or other authorities created by ordinance or resolution of the common council. (c) For every authority not specified in subsections (a) or (b) of this section, the authority’s chief administrative officer is the legal custodian for the authority, but the officer may designate an employee of his or her staff to act as the legal custodian. (d) Each legal custodian shall name a person to act as legal custodian in his or her absence or the absence of his or her designee. (e) The legal custodian shall have full legal power to render decisions and to carry out the duties of an authority under Subchapter 11 of Chapter 19 of the Wisconsin Statutes and this section. The designation of a legal custodian does not affect the powers and duties of an authority under this section.
(Ord. No. 1782A, 5-4-2010)

2.66.040 – Public access to records.
(a) Except as provided in Section 2.66.060, any person has a right to inspect a record and to make or receive a copy of any record as provided in Wis. Stats. § 19.35(1). (b) Records will be available for inspection and copying during all regular office hours. (c) A requester shall be permitted to use facilities comparable to those available to city employees to inspect, copy or abstract a record. (d) The legal custodian may require supervision during inspection or may impose other reasonable restrictions on the manner of access to an original record if the record is irreplaceable or easily damaged. (e) A requester shall be charged a fee to defray the cost of locating and copying records as follows: (1) The cost of photocopying each page shall be set by the city clerk and set forth on a schedule which shall be kept in the clerk’s office. Any increase as determined by the clerk shall be subject to the approval of the common council. The cost will be calculated not to exceed the actual, necessary and direct cost of reproduction. (2) If the form of a written record does not permit copying, the actual and necessary cost of photographing and photographic processing shall be charged. (3) The actual full cost of providing a copy of other records not in printed form on paper, such as films, computer printouts and audiotapes or videotapes, shall be charged. (4) If mailing or shipping is necessary, the actual cost thereof shall also be charged. (5) There shall be no charge for locating a record unless the actual cost therefor exceeds fifty dollars, in which case the actual cost shall be determined by the legal custodian and billed to the requester. (6) The legal custodian shall estimate the cost of all applicable fees and may require a cash deposit adequate to assure payment, if such estimate exceeds five dollars. (7) Elected and appointed officials of the city shall not be required to pay for public records they may reasonably require for the proper performance of their official duties. (8) The legal custodian may provide copies of a record without charge or at a reduced charge where he or she determines that waiver or reduction of the fee is in the public interest. (f) Pursuant to Wis. Stats. § 19.34, and the guidelines therein listed, each authority shall adopt, prominently display and make available for inspection and copying at its offices, for the guidance of the public, a notice containing a description of its organization and the established times and places at which, the legal custodian from whom, and the methods whereby, the public may obtain information and access to records in its custody, make requests for records, or obtain copies of records, and costs thereof.
(Ord. No. 1782A, 5-4-2010)

2.66.050 – Access procedures.
(a) A request to inspect or copy a record shall be made to the legal custodian. A request shall be deemed sufficient if it reasonably describes the requested record or the information requested. However, a request for a record without a reasonable limitation as to subject matter or length of time represented by the record does not constitute a sufficient request. A request may be made orally, but a request must be in writing before an action to enforce the request is commenced under Wis. Stats § 19.37. Except as provided below, no request may be refused because the person making the request is unwilling to be identified or to state the purpose of the request. No request may be refused because the request is received by mail, unless prepayment of a fee is required under Subsection 2.66.040(e)(6). A requester may be required to show acceptable identification whenever the requested record is kept at a private residence or whenever security reasons or federal law or regulations so require.

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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.15.18

by  • 

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-four. Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 7:01 PM, for 11h 56m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninetieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 7 AM, her Police & Fire Commission at 5:15 PM, and the Whitewater Fire Department will hold a business meeting in closed session at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 44 B.C., Julius Caesar is assassinated. On this day in 1862, the 17th and 18th Wisconsin Infantry Regiments muster in: “The 17th and 18th Wisconsin Infantry regiments mustered in at Madison and Milwaukee, respectively. Both regiments would move from the lower Mississippi Valley into Tennessee and Georgia, participate in Sherman’s March to the Sea, and converge on Virginia at the end of the war. Before they mustered out, the 17th would lose 269 men and the 18th, 225.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis report  Trump Cabinet members accused of living large at taxpayer expense:

At least a half-dozen current or former Trump Cabinet officials have been mired in federal investigations over everything from high-end travel and spending on items such as a soundproof phone booth to the role of family members weighing in on official business. On Wednesday alone, newly disclosed documents revealed fresh details about spending scandals at both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

…

The controversies surrounding members of Trump’s Cabinet have caused upheaval within the administration, prompting White House officials to scramble in an effort to avert any further political fallout and to summon agency leaders for face-to-face ethics meetings.

Revelations about repeated use of chartered airplanes forced the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in September. More recently, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has continued to wrestle with the fallout of news that taxpayers covered the expenses for his wife during a 10-day trip to Europe last year — and more recently that his chief of staff doctored an email and made false statements to justify the payments.

(Birds of a feather…)

➤ Josh Dawsey, Damian Paletta, and Erica Werner report In fundraising speech, Trump says he made up facts in meeting with Justin Trudeau:

President Trump boasted in a fundraising speech Wednesday that he made up facts in a meeting with the leader of a top U.S ally, saying he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States runs a trade deficit with its neighbor to the north without knowing whether or not that was the case.

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in – ‘Donald we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed. …

“So he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. … I had no idea. I just said ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong Justin.’ He said, ‘Nope we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well in that case I feel differently,’ I said ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my  guy, they went out,  I said ‘check because I can’t  believe it.’

(Trump isn’t merely a bluffer, he’s a bluffer so vain he tells people that’s what he is.)

➤ Peter Baker reports Trump, Pressured to Criticize Russia for Poisoning, Leaves Comment to Aides:

“Where Prime Minister May has taken bold and decisive initial action to combat Russian aggression, our own president has waffled and demurred,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader. “Prime Minister May’s decision to expel the Russian diplomats is the level of response that many Americans have been craving from our own administration.”

Other critics noted that, under the NATO charter, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.

“Judgment day for Donald Trump,” R. Nicholas Burns, a former ambassador to NATO and an under secretary of state under President George W. Bush, wrote on Twitter. Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, he added: “Will he support Britain unequivocally on the nerve agent attack? Back #NATO sanctions? Finally criticize Putin? Act like a leader of the West?”

(Whether figuratively or almost literally, Putin owns Trump. It’s leaves irradicable stain to live one’s life as the Russian dictator’s dancing monkey.)

➤ Eliot A. Cohen describes a Team of Sycophants (“Tillerson’s dismissal leaves the White House more than ever the conniving and dishonest court of an erratic, ill-informed, and willful monarch”):

The replacement of Tillerson by CIA Director Mike Pompeo has obvious consequences: a more hawkish disposition on Iran and probably North Korea; a possible diminution of the influence of the lone pillar of integrity in the administration, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. But it also means something much more important, which is that if you hope to influence Trump or gain access to his inner circle, you have to go full Mnuchin. The Secretary of the Treasury is shameless in his flattery of the president. One suspects that his sycophancy is matched by his cynicism. Pompeo may be more subtle, but the bonding between the president and his secretary-designate seems much more a result of his careful cultivation of Trump during his regular intelligence briefings than any record of managerial or diplomatic accomplishment. The president may like his subordinates to fight with each other—but they had better show unflagging harmony with his instincts, including his worst instincts. That is the price of admission, and these ambitious officials know and accept it.

The upshot of such an environment in the White House is that—again, with the honorable and quite possibly heroic exception of Mattis—it will become more than ever the conniving and dishonest court of an unpredictable, ill-informed, and willful monarch. The president will hear no forceful disagreements; he will not be contradicted; he will believe that his instincts and whims are invariably correct. Those around him may not be quite as honest in admitting their lack of integrity as Peter Navarro, the economic adviser who recently described his job as finding the data to support Trump’s instincts. To stay in favor, however, they will have to do as he does—and hope that the president will forget his really stupid or dangerous decisions while they undo the damage. The dangers of an executive branch run this way, with public groveling and private deceit the order of the day, are evident.

➤ Jesse Garza reports Ridiculously adorable baby red fox dubbed Clover admitted to Wisconsin Humane Society:

A baby red fox, otherwise called a “kit,” is the newest addition to the Wisconsin Humane Society.

The ridiculously adorable creature — a male — was found in the middle of a busy road and faces an uphill battle to fight sarcoptic mange and an upper respiratory infection, according to a post on the Humane Society’s Facebook page.

“The cuteness factor is off the charts,” Humane Society spokeswoman Angela Speed said.

Staff are calling the fox Clover, as a St. Patrick’s Day nod to the lucky four-leaf variety.

The organization suspects his maladies may have led to his abandonment, and the pint-sized pup is currently on quarantine as staff watch for signs of canine distemper virus, officials said.

City, Local Government, Open Government, School District

Sunshine Week 2018 (Some Years Ago, in Whitewater)

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In 2010, the City of Whitewater considered an ordinance to publish video recordings of principal public meetings. The first reading of the proposal was in August, and a second reading led to its approval in September. One may find the ordinance at Whitewater, Wisconsin, Municipal Code, Chapter 2.62 (Whitewater Transparency Enhancement Ordinance).

This ordinance did not (and could not) supersede Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Law Wis. Stats. §§ 19.81 – 19.98. Instead, it advanced Whitewater farther in the direction of open government. The ordinance’s adoption was a good, in and of itself. (The ordinance applied to the city, not to our school district, but it set the right example for all the area.)

Adoption of the ordinance was not without opposition, sadly. Indeed, some local notables came forward with any number of weak excuses why televised meetings were a bad idea. See Municipal Openness and Transparency, and Their Alternatives and Municipal Openness and Transparency, and Their Alternatives (Update).

Now, you’ll excuse me if I’ll not adopt the self-serving, typically false practice of claiming to speak for the community as some others in Whitewater do. On the contrary, I’ve been clear from the beginning: I am an emissary of one, so to speak.

Why would I speak this way? Because rights, whether natural or under positive law, work this way: they are rights of people as persons, as individuals.

Each person, as an individual, can benefit from open government, and the benefit comes in awareness of the conduct of those who serve in public roles that are merely instrumental, merely contingent, merely provisional in the authority conferred upon them.

Whether few or many take advantage of the provisions of open government neither expands nor restricts the right of access: it is a right for any and all, of whatever number.

It was good – truly – for Whitewater to expand upon Wisconsin’s open government provisions, but had she not done so, one might have alone relied on the provisions of Wisconsin law – in full – no matter what others in Whitewater thought on the subject. Had our city not done the right thing, one might have exercised one’s rights, albeit with more effort, through state law.

For these years since 2010, we have enjoyed (mostly) good practices in the city and from the public school district in this area.

When a public institution, having long done the right thing, retreats from doing so, it presents to each person, as resident and citizen, both a provocation and a dare. The provocation is the retreat to a lesser standard. The dare seeing what, if anything, someone will do about the imposition of the lesser standard.

Officials must think much of themselves, or little of others, to believe that there will be no reply to significant provocations and dares. Retreat from open government is a significant matter.

Some readers have mentioned this to me, in disappointment. (Thank you for your concerns, sincerely expressed and, one may be sure, attentively heard.)  These concerns prompted a November 2017 inquiry, and three-part FW series from December:  Twilight, Midnight, and Daylight.

One may be concerned yet confident in reply: in all circumstances, it’s best to proceed deliberately, with sangfroid, and in a particular sequence. See Steps for Blogging on a Policy or Proposal.

More tomorrow.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.14.18

by  • 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 7:00 PM, for 11h 54m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred eighty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Birge Fountain Committee meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1794, Eli Whitney receives a patent for the cotton gin. On this day in 1854, the Baraboo River floods: “On the night of March 14, 1859, the Baraboo River, greatly swollen by spring rains and melting snow, went on a rampage, taking out a dam that supplied power for the flour mill of Bassett and Pratt. The flour mill was then the ‘largest institution of its kind for many miles around and about it centered the interest of the entire community’. Nearly 500 men responded to the catastrophe. The progress of the water was checked by the felling of trees. The flour in the mill was hauled to safety with team and wagons. The flood caused damage to the lower Maxwell Dam.” To see what life was like then in Baraboo — and throughout much of southern Wisconsin at the time — read this letter by settler Charles Abbott to his family in New Hampshire.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Heather Hurlburt describes The Mess Rex Tillerson Is Leaving Behind:

Tillerson will leave a legacy, for sure. First, in the diminishment of his office — something which was not entirely his fault. Trump wasn’t the first president who couldn’t resist the temptation to be his own secretary of State, or to undercut his secretary to prevent him from gaining international stature that could rival his own. And as the National Security Council has grown in size and influence, and modern communications have allowed anyone to connect across national lines, State’s influence has been declining over the decades. But, with Trump’s gratuitous cruelty added to Tillerson’s missteps, Pompeo will get to Foggy Bottom with the prestige and clout of his office at its lowest ever. (It’s a long way down from Thomas Jefferson.) He may find that he misses the CIA.

Second, the State Department itself is — there’s no kind word for it — a mess.  Tillerson achieved something that diplomatic geeks had tried and failed for 20 years — getting reporters, members of Congress, and even voters to care about State Department personnel policy. Not because he succeeded in reforming the Department to his vision, but because his ideas went so publicly awry. His plan to reform and restructure the State Department produced a steady leak of embarrassing PowerPoint slides and memos. Just last week a Politico reporter tweeted his deputy’s “Strategic Hiring Initiative” line by line, with commentary pointing out how much it seemed to presage further staff cuts. His ideas on personnel reforms — prevent spouses from working in embassies overseas, shut the pipeline of super-talented fellows entering the State Department out of graduate school, run every decision through a tiny team — produced headlines and outrage among people who had never cared much about State before.

More than 100 senior diplomats have resigned since Tillerson took office, leaving top ranks understaffed. At the same time, Tillerson canceled, delayed, or shrunk entire classes of new junior diplomats. As of last month, more than 100 ambassadorial positions were unfilled, as were many higher-level positions back in Washington. Not only is the department smaller, but most of its senior women, and officers of color, are gone — meaning that the service looks less like our country and less like the rest of the world with which it must interact. Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, one of the senior ambassadors who chose to leave during Tillerson’s tenure, said: “No doubt we are as disappointed as he.”

➤ Michael Tomasky contends Why Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State Should Scare You More Than Rex Tillerson reports (“A bumbler who disagrees with Trump from time to time is better than a yes man as America’s chief diplomat”):

Pompeo? By all accounts he admires Trump; and is for the most part on the same page. He’s been briefing the president daily. They have, as Trump said himself Tuesday morning, “chemistry.” When I think about what kind of man it takes to develop “chemistry” with Donald Trump, and realize that that man is about to be the United States’ top diplomat, it somehow leaves me less than reassured.

Pompeo will be, in all likelihood, a better manager of the department than Tillerson. He’s been a congressman and he’s been running the CIA. Of course, Tillerson hailed from one of the biggest private companies in the world, but Pompeo also knows his way around Washington better than Tillerson did. He’ll fill posts. I’d bet we’ll have an ambassador in Seoul now—one of the more glaring empty diplomatic seats—fairly soon. This is where the positive stories will come in two months from now.

But he’ll be filling those posts with hard-liners and Trump loyalists. So now we are likely to see, in a way we did not see for these first 14 months, the president being able to execute his foreign-policy, well, vision.

So look for the administration to cancel the Iran deal. Pompeo has been a big critic of it. Look for a harder line, if such is possible, on Israel and the Palestinians. On Russia, Pompeo has taken a far more anti-Putin line than Trump; after all, he heads an agency that is part of the consensus view that Russia meddled in the election to help Trump. Just this past weekend, Pompeo challenged Putin’s dismissal of meddling claims as “false.” Will Pompeo try to: persuade the president of this view, or spend the next few months trying to make his boss forget he ever held it? Count me among those skeptical that the potentially new secretary of State won’t learn the lessons from the just axed secretary of State—that fealty to Trump is the key currency.

➤ Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear report Strong Performance by Democrat Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania Shakes Trump and G.O.P.:

While the president hobnobbed with wealthy donors in the exclusive enclave of Beverly Park, the voters in the suburbs south of Pittsburgh were in revolt, giving the Democratic candidate a narrow lead in a special election in Pennsylvania that was taking on outsize proportions.

Just as they did outside Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala., in December, and Richmond, Va., and Washington, D.C., in November, energized and angry suburban voters were swamping the Trump stalwarts in the more rural parts of those regions, sending a clear message to Republicans around the country.

While Republican turnout in a district that Mr. Trump won by 20 percentage points was healthy, Democrats showed once again that they could tap unions and other traditionally friendly groups to get their voters out in droves. The N.A.A.C.P. helped win Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Alabama Senate seat for Doug Jones in December. Organized labor, once seen as fractured and feckless in the Trump era, gave the Democrat Conor Lamb his lead in Pennsylvania overnight.

Rick Saccone, the Republican candidate who wrapped himself in Mr. Trump’s cloak and drew the president to his district last weekend in a bid to rescue a faltering campaign, trailed Mr. Lamb, a former Marine seeking to show his party can compete even in red territory. Mr. Lamb held a lead of just 641 votes early Wednesday, with some absentee ballots still to be counted, but Democrats went ahead and claimed victory.

➤ Karoun Demirjian reports Intel panel Republicans seem to back away from finding that Russia was not trying to help Trump:

The leader of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation seemed to back off Tuesday from the most surprising finding in the GOP’s report that Russia was not trying to help President Trump, as the panel’s top Democrat trashed the product as a political gift to the White House.

Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.) told reporters Tuesday that “it’s clear [Russian officials] were trying to hurt Hillary [Clinton]” by interfering in the 2016 election and that “everybody gets to make up their own mind whether they were trying to hurt Hillary, help Trump, it’s kind of glass half full, glass half empty.”

That equivalence stands in sharp contrast to the conclusions of a 150-page GOP-drafted report Conaway announced to the news media on Monday that concludes that the intelligence community “didn’t meet the standards” of proof necessary to determine that Russia meddled in the 2016 election with the aim of helping Trump.

…

His comments came after other panel Republicans, including Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.) gave interviews in which they stressed that there was evidence that Russia had tried to damage Clinton’s candidacy.

➤ Meet the Man Protecting Venezuela’s Eagles:

Alexander Blanco Márquez is a veterinary doctor going to great heights to save the harpy eagles of Venezuela. As victims of poaching and deforestation, these beautiful birds have been diminishing in numbers over the years. Watching their species destroyed in the wild, Márquez decided to take matters into his own hands. Now, he’s going to extremes to protect these eagles, oftentimes putting his own life on the line.

Law, Open Government, Public Meetings

Sunshine Week 2018 (The Bad Example Nearby)

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Just as one would prefer a beautiful neighborhood, so too would a sensible person prefer that nearby towns were well-ordered and successful. And yet, and yet, one cannot choose for those other towns: they will choose for themselves, sometimes well, sometimes poorly. When they do choose poorly, the best one can do is to guard against similar mistakes in one’s own town. Others’ mistakes need not become ours.

The Milton School District offers, sad to say, plenty of open government mistakes and transgressions. They’re an example to avoid:

➤ A Poorly Distributed District Survey:

Not all residents got the survey after Superintendent Tim Schigur suggested everyone’s voice was critical. Worse, the district and its survey company used postal ZIP codes for distribution. That meant some nonresidents got the survey, further offending residents who didn’t get it.

➤ Inferior Selection Method for a Community Committee:

The board then asked residents to volunteer for a facilities advisory community team dubbed FACT. An unwieldy number of 48 lined up. Rather than choose a balance from among those who favor facility improvements or even a new school and those most concerned about taxes, the board asked the volunteers to anonymously nominate others among the 48. On Monday, the board approved the 22 getting the most nominations.

But wait: Couldn’t volunteers desiring a new high school stack the FACT deck by voting for each other?

➤ Refusing to Allow Lawful Recording of a Public Meeting:

Before the meeting, Milton School District resident Lance Fena set up a large video camera on a table pointed at where the school board would be sitting.

Fena is a vocal and active member of the community, often attending school board and Milton City Council meetings. He’s expressed disapproval of how board meetings are conducted.

Before the meeting, Superintendent Tim Schigur told Fena, who was seated in the front row, he couldn’t tape the meeting.

Fena asked why and invoked state statute 19.90, which states, “Whenever a governmental body holds a meeting in open session, the body shall make a reasonable effort to accommodate any person desiring to record, film or photograph the meeting. This section does not permit recording, filming or photographing such a meeting in a manner that interferes with the conduct of the meeting or the rights of the participants.”

“We don’t video tape our meetings,” Schigur said.”

(Schigur’s views, or those of the Milton School Board, cannot trump state law. Milton relented, yet Schigur’s not, after all, young. Years of serving as superintendent, and still he didn’t know even a clear provision of Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Law.)

➤ One finds the Milton School Board arriving late on issue of recording meetings:

Superintendent Tim Schigur told Fena he couldn’t tape the meeting.

Wrong.

[Resident Lance] Fena rightly cited a statute that says a government body should “make a reasonable effort to accommodate” anyone wanting to film, as long as it doesn’t interfere “with the conduct of the meeting or the rights of the participants.”

…

An hour into the meeting, board member Rob Roy announced he was uncomfortable with the video recording, that he didn’t trust Fena and that, because the recording might change board behavior, he thought it wasn’t permitted under statute.

Wrong again.

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, told reporter Jake Magee in Thursday’s Gazette that recordings might actually improve behavior.

Roy also suggested someone could twist or clip parts of the recording, post them on social media and make the board or district look bad.

Strike three.

“The law requires citizens be able to make a tape,” Lueders says. “It doesn’t matter what they want to use it for. It doesn’t matter if the public officials like them. They need to get with the program.”

➤ Although Milton promised to record meetings, they’ve moved backwards on live-streaming, and Milton’s live-streaming solution helps nobody:

Imagine if the Milton School Board were to close all meetings to the public on grounds that some people for whatever reason couldn’t attend or understand the proceedings. It’s an absurd proposition, of course. Such a policy would violate open meeting laws, for one thing. So why is ending live streaming under the same rationale any less absurd?

Yes, a school district should be aware of ADA issues and take steps to improve access to its facilities, whether physical or virtual. The disabilities crusader in Michigan filing dozens of complaints is doing good by holding government accountable.”

➤ Even this month, one reads that the winner of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (WFIC)’s Citizens Openness Award found himself losing out due to an improperly noticed meeting:

Earlier that evening, as has been his practice for nearly three years, Fena checked the district’s website looking for meeting agendas. He found two: one for a training session at 4:30 p.m., and a second for an executive session at 5:30 p.m. He chose not to attend either, saying of the second: “I can’t attend an executive session meeting. I didn’t see a need to sit in the hallway.”

Phone calls, describing a process by which the meeting had gone from closed session to open, came through friends about an hour after the meeting was over, Fena said in a recent telephone interview.

Would he have gone if he knew the meeting had changed from closed to open? “Yes …. I guess if I’m being talked about I’d like to be there,” he added.”

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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.13.18

by  • 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny and thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 6:59 PM, for 11h 51m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 14.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred eighty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM, her Police and Fire Commission at 6:30 PM, and there is a scheduled special Common Council meeting at 7 PM.

On this day in 1781, William Herschel discovers the planet Uranus, which he names ‘Georgium Sidus,’ in honor of King George III. On this day in 1862, the Battle of New Madrid, Missouri, ends: “After 10 days of shelling, Confederate troops evacuated New Madrid, Missouri. They retreated to Island No. 10 in the Mississippi River and fortifications on the eastern bank at Tiptonville, Tennessee. The 8th and 15th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries fought in this battle.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Jeremy Stahl contends The White House Is Already Walking Back the North Korea Summit. Because It Was a PR Stunt:

By Friday afternoon, the press quietly learned that “for now” should be considered a major caveat for this White House. Press secretary Sarah Sanders repeatedly told reporters that the meeting would not take place without “concrete actions” from North Korea. When pressed on what that would look like, Sanders said they would have to denuclearize.

Sanders: The understanding, the message from the South Korean delegation is that they would denuclearize. And that is what our ultimate goal has always been, and that will have to be part of the actions that we see them take.

Reporter: Is that before or after the meeting?

 Sanders: We’d have to see concrete and verifiable actions take place.

Reporter: Before the meeting?

Sanders: Yes. Yeah.

So the meeting—agreed to by Trump to take place by May—won’t take place until North Korea shows verifiable and concrete proof that it is doing the thing that it has promised to do on repeated occasions and never done.

Sanders was pressed further on what those concrete steps might look like. “That’s something that is going to be determined by the intelligence community, the national security team, and not something that I would relay from the podium to all of you,” she said. Of course, there is a system in place in Iran for determining that a rogue regime is not building a nuclear arsenal—a system the current president has repeatedly rebuked and threatened to undo—so it’s entirely possible to publicly outline such concrete steps.

➤ Meagan Flynn reports ICE spokesman resigns, citing fabrications by agency chief, Sessions, about Calif. immigrant arrests:

The now-former spokesman, James Schwab, told news outlets late Monday that his resignation stemmed from statements by Homan and Sessions that potentially hundreds of “criminal aliens” evaded ICE during a Northern California raid in February because Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warned the immigrant community in advance.

Schwab said he pushed back on that characterization  — but said ICE instructed him to “deflect” questions from the press.

“I quit because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle, which broke the story. “I asked them to change the information. I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit.”

ICE officials and Sessions — and at one point President Trump — criticized Schaaf for tipping off immigrants about the raid, which netted 232 suspected undocumented immigrants.

Homan said in a statement that “864 criminal aliens and public safety threats remain at large in the community, and I have to believe that some of them were able to elude us thanks to the mayor’s irresponsible decision. Unlike the politicians who attempt to undermine ICE’s critical mission, our officers will continue to fulfill their sworn duty to protect public safety.”

➤ Keith Humphreys reports The government has been undercounting opioid overdose deaths up to 35 percent, study says:

Federal government estimates of opioid overdose deaths have been rising year after horrifying year. But the crisis is even worse than it looks: A new study reveals that the government has been undercounting opioid overdose deaths by 20 percent to 35 percent.

To estimate national trends in opioid overdose, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aggregates data from more than 3,000 coroner’s offices around the country. Coroners function independently and vary widely in their available resources and reporting practices. University of Virginia professor Christopher Ruhm noticed that many coroners did not record a specific drug when documenting a fatal overdose, implying that many opioid overdose deaths were not being counted in official figures.

By studying the records of coroners who did record specific drugs for overdose deaths, Ruhm was able to impute a corrected count of opioid overdoses. According to Ruhm’s research, if all coroners accurately reported opioid overdose deaths, official counts would be substantially higher. For example, the CDC figure for 2016 was 42,249 opioid overdose deaths nationwide, but with accurate data the count would have been 49,562, Ruhm said.

➤ Alex Smith reports Opioids Don’t Beat Other Medications For Chronic Pain:

For many people who live with chronic pain, opioids can seem like the difference between a full life or one lived in agony. Over the past few decades, they have become go-to drugs for acute pain, but Dr. Erin Krebs, with the Minneapolis Veteran’s Administration Health Care System and the University of Minnesota, says the science about the effectiveness of opioids for chronic, or long-term, pain has been lacking.

“The studies that we had out there were short-term studies and mostly compared opioids to placebo medications,” she says. “From those studies, we knew that opioids can improve pain a little bit more than a placebo, or sugar pill, in the short term, but that’s all we knew.”

But Krebs is changing that. She is the author of a new study that looks at the effectiveness of opioids for treating chronic pain over 12 months, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study involved 240 veterans with chronic back pain or pain from osteoarthritis of the knee or hip. They also all had pain that was ongoing and intense. Half were treated with opioids and half with nonopioid medications — either common over-the-counter drugs like acetaminophen or naproxen, or prescription drugs like topical lidocaine or meloxicam.

➤ So what are Cosmic Bow Shocks?

Freedom of Speech, Open Government

Sunshine Week 2018 (Introduction)

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March 11 to 17 is Sunshine Week in America, an ‘annual nationwide celebration of access to public information and what it means for you and your community.’ If the country, then the state, if the state, then the city, if the city, then Whitewater.

So here we are. Although Sunshine Week is seven days, open government is – and should be – equally important throughout the year. That’s true not only for the professional press, but just as much Americans across country (including bloggers).

For today, one begins with Lata Nott’s article on a report card for First Amendment freedom of the press:

Awarding a grade to a concept like press freedom might seem like an impossible task, but here at the First Amendment Center we give it our best shot.

In April of last year, we began compiling quarterly First Amendment report cards, relying on a panel of 15 experts from across the political spectrum — academics, activists, journalists and lawyers — to evaluate the state of each of our core freedoms.

In our latest report card , which came out in January, freedom of the press earned a C grade, making it the most delinquent of the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment (speech, press, religion, assembly and petition).

This grade reflects the contentious relationship that the press has with the current presidential administration. In the past few months, President Trump has called for the firing of specific journalists, threatened to revoke NBC’s FCC license and taken legal action against Buzzfeed, Fusion GPS, and Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff.

“President Trump’s attacks on the press took on a new level of toxicity,” said Stephen Solomon, one of the panelists and a professor of First Amendment law at NYU. “The move from rhetoric to specific threats and lawsuits is a dangerous escalation.”

But the outlook for freedom of the press isn’t entirely gloomy. Many of our panelists pointed out that despite these challenges, the press continues to fulfill its watchdog role and is engaged in more vigorous and effective reporting than ever before.

Other panelists, like Brett Scharffs, professor of law at BYU, took an altogether different view of the conflict.

“The Trump administration has presented an unprecedented challenge to the press, and the press has done a remarkable job of discrediting itself,” he said.

He said it’s difficult to read a story from any press source without taking into account the outlet’s perceived biases.

“The problem is not that the press is not free,” Scharffs said. “The press is free, but it has become much more difficult to trust.”

Whether or not the press has discredited itself, it’s undeniable that the issue of trust in the media has loomed large this past year.

The 2017 State of the First Amendment survey revealed that less than half of Americans believe the news media try to report the news without bias. (Interestingly, more than half of respondents expressed a preference for news that aligns with their own views, demonstrating that many Americans may not view “biased” news in a negative light).

The specter of fake news also has affected the public’s ability to believe what they read. About one-third reported a decrease in trust in news obtained from social media.

If there’s a silver lining to be found here, it might be that a recent follow-up survey revealed that Americans have been coping with this uncertain atmosphere by becoming savvier news consumers.

About 30 percent of Americans engage with news every day of the week, and almost three out of four do something to verify the news they receive — 72 percent of Americans said they check what they read by looking for additional information in other news sources. Virtually the same number said they also test the validity of what they have read or seen by talking with others.

This is indeed good news for the news business, since the power of the press largely depends on the good judgment of the audience.

Via Perceived biases, attacks erode trust in the press @ SunshineWeek.org.

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City, Film

Film: Tuesday, March 13th, 12:30 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

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This Tuesday, March 13th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building.

Martin McDonagh directs the one-hour, fifty-five minute film. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a crime drama about a mother who personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter’s murder when they fail to catch the culprit.

Frances McDormand won Best Leading Actress at the 2018 Academy Awards for her role as Mildred, and Sam Rockwell won as Best Supporting Actor for his role as a sheriff’s deputy. The movie carries a rating of R from the MPAA.

One can find more information about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri at the Internet Movie Database.

Enjoy.