Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS
Birds, Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 11.24.22: Happy Thanksgiving 2022
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thanksgiving Day in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 6:58 AM and sunset 4:24 PM for 9h 25m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1863, near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city.
Sarah Lear reports Triumph of the turkeys (‘Wild birds flourish in Wisconsin cities and suburbs. After nearly being wiped out of Wisconsin, wild turkeys have repopulated their former habitats’):
More than a century after Wisconsin’s wild turkey population was nearly gobbled up, the birds are flourishing. Now, many are even flocking to urban and suburban areas.
“For the most part, they have been restored to all of their former range, and then some,” said John Kanter, a senior wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Federation.
Wild turkeys were nearly gobbled out of Wisconsin
Wild turkeys, once abundant in the region, had been wiped out of Wisconsin by late 1800s thanks to a combination of unregulated hunting and the decimation of their former habitats by the timber industry.
For much of the 20th century, attempts to restore the birds to their former habitats were unsuccessful, in part because officials were trying to send birds raised in captivity out into the wild.
“They were trying to pen-raise them with domestic turkeys, and then release them, and they were finding out that they just behaved like pen-raised birds and didn’t survive,” Kanter said.
In the 1970s, Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources negotiated a deal with Missouri’s Department of Conservation to exchange ruffled grouse from Wisconsin for wild Eastern Turkeys from Missouri. After the wild turkeys took hold in Wisconsin, the DNR began trapping some of the birds and relocating them to other areas of the state where the conditions were right for them to thrive, said David Drake, a professor of forest and wildlife ecology at UW-Madison.
“We’ve restored a lot of forest lands across the state,” Drake said. “So the Wisconsin Department Natural Resources took turkeys from parts of the state where they were relatively abundant and moved them into parts of the state where they were not quite as abundant.”
Indiana Pacers’ ‘Puppy Race’ Hilariously Fails:
Art, Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 11.23.22: Immersive Van Gogh
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:57 AM and sunset 4:25 PM for 9h 27m 37s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1644, John Milton publishes Areopagitica (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/608/pg608-images.html), a pamphlet decrying censorship.
An exhibit taking place in the Madison area displays the work of Vincent Van Gogh, an artist of the nineteenth century, in a twenty-first century medium. Immersive Van Gogh, having been exhibited in many other cities, now arrives in Middleton from 11.24 to 1.8. Gayle World reports ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ exhibit to make a splash in Madison area:
After making the rounds of 20 North American cities over the past two years, the “immersive” experience — with huge video projections animating the works of the 19th-century Dutch painter of “Sunflowers” and “Starry Night” fame — is set to open Thanksgiving Day in a built-out space in the Greenway Station shopping center.
….
“Immersive Van Gogh” was designed and conceived by the European video artist Massimiliano Siccardi, with a soundtrack by Luca Longobardi. Up to 200 visitors can be in the single gallery space that will be used for “Immersive Van Gogh Madison.” Related installations by Broadway’s “Hamilton” and “Dear Evan Hansen” designer David Korins also will be at the venue, along with additional scenic elements by scenic designer Randy Wong-Westbrooke.
With clouds blowing and sunflowers flexing in vast video projections on a 35-minute loop, visitors can sit or stand through the sensory-filled experience, though Ross said he prefers to be on his feet so he can easily “spin around” to take in the moving images.
This looks to be a captivating and memorable experience, especially suitable over the extended holiday between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.
See also https://www.vangoghmadison.com for information and tickets.
European Parliament votes to declare Russia a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’:
Budget, Daily Bread, Government Spending
Daily Bread for 11.22.22: Wisconsin’s $6,600,000,000 (and Counting) Opportunity
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 45. Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 4:25 PM for 9h 29m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald, who also kills Dallas Police officer J. D. Tippit after fleeing the scene. U.S Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as the 36th President of the United States afterwards.
Corrinne Hess reports Wisconsin now projects the state’s record-high budget surplus to hit $6.6 billion:
MADISON – Wisconsin has a record-high budget surplus projected to hit $6.6 billion for 2022-23, according to a report released Monday by the state Department of Administration.
Over the next several months, Governor Tony Evers and the Republican-run state legislature will have to figure out how to spend the money.
….
The $6.6 billion surplus does not include the roughly $1.734 billion currently in the state’s budget stabilization, or “rainy day,” fund. State general fund balances for 2023-24 are estimated to be $8.4 billion and growing to $9.7 billion at the end of the 2024-25 fiscal year.
….
While politicians weigh how to spend the money, outside interest groups also have ideas. The Wisconsin Association of School Boards said, “There should be plenty of money available in state coffers to both increase public school funding and cut state taxes, which could satisfy both Governor Evers’ goals and the goals of some legislative leaders, particularly leaders in the state Senate.”
The Institute for Reforming Government, which introduced a plan to eliminate Wisconsin’s personal income tax last year, is again calling for a similar measure.
Two obvious questions: how will officials allocate the surplus (not including the rainy day fund), and will those allocations lead to structural (rather than one-time) budgetary changes? Rather than simply allocate some of all of this money for a single biennium, Wisconsin can us this opportunity (where there there is more to meet needs) to make lasting changes to how taxes are imposed or schools are funded. Multiple changes may not be possible, but a single structural change would be within reach.
Merely allocating the money is only half the work.
NASA’s Artemis 1 spacecraft sees Earth from 229,000 miles away:
City, Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Politics, School District
Daily Bread for 11.21.22: Wisconsin’s Next ‘Non-Partisan’ Partisan Battle
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 4:26 PM for 9h 31m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 7.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1877, Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.
A traditional view holds that Wisconsin court races should be non-partisan. That traditional view hasn’t be an accurate assessment for decades. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has for years been a subject of partisan conflict internally and externally. That’s not about to change: there is an election this spring for the seat currently held by retiring Justice Patience Roggensack. Henry Redman reports ‘Electoral ground zero’: majority at stake in Wisconsin Supreme Court race:
Just weeks after the 2022 midterm elections, Wisconsin is already moving on to this spring’s state supreme court race in which the ideological tilt of the court is up for grabs.
Justice Patience Roggensack is retiring at the end of her term, leaving an open seat on the body that conservatives currently control with a 4-3 majority. The current makeup of the court, with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn serving as a crucial swing vote, has led to more 4-3 decisions than any supreme court term in 70 years.
The conservative majority on the court has upheld a law that effectively ended collective bargaining power for public workers, approved Republican-drawn legislative maps that tilt the state Legislature heavily toward the Republican party and overturned Gov. Tony Evers’ COVID-19 stay-at-home order. The court has also allowed the previous administration’s appointees to remain in their seats well past the expiration of their terms, allowing the Legislature to effectively block Evers’ appointments, and disallowed a number of methods meant to make voting more accessible.
The issues at stake in the April 4 election include abortion rights, democracy and public safety
It’s an understatement to say that the election for the court will focus more on politics than jurisprudence.
There are also local political implications for places like Whitewater. If the election generates significant interest in Whitewater proper, elections in the city and school district will have a different electorate from a local election without an intense, top-of-the-ballot statewide race.
A DIY tiny home you can build in weeks:
Music
Monday Music: Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Home
by JOHN ADAMS •
Business, Daily Bread, Social Media, Twitter
Daily Bread for 11.20.22: On Musk’s Multiple Misunderstandings and Mistakes
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 26. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 4:27 PM for 9h 33m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1820, an 80-ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. (Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this incident.)
An associate professor of physics (specializing in optical science) at UNC Charlotte, writing on Twitter with the username @drskyskull, summarizes nicely Elon Musk’s mistakes & misunderstanding about Twitter. Although Musk may have purchased Twitter (with considerable debt, basically OPM), buying something does assure the understanding of a thing. (If it were otherwise, there would be no concept of buyer’s remorse, for example.)
Here’s his thread assessing Musk’s multiple misunderstandings and mistakes:
So here’s my hypothesis on the whole Musk twitter deal. 1/
Dude LOVES Twitter. As a narcissist, he can’t get enough of the adulation of the right-wing mouth-breathers. But Twitter keeps banning the people he loves, so he becomes convinced that Twitter is a liberal SJW organization. 2/
He decides to teach them a lesson, and make an offer to buy the company. Absolutely convinced that it is a left-wing political site, he’s sure they’ll refuse his offer, even a ridiculously good offer. Then he can say “aha! they’re so woke!” and his fans will cheer. 3/
But Twitter is actually governed by businesspeople who see his offer as absurdly high, and they jump at it. Musk freaks out, tries to get out of the deal, but he’s already locked in solidly. 4/
Now his Dunning-Kruger kicks in to protect him from his panic, and he says, “heck, it’s not that hard to run this site; I’ll turn it around right quick!” He’s not completely stupid, so he cons investors into going in with him. 5/
Dude has fundamentally never understood how Twitter works, and what it takes to make Twitter work. To him, it’s a company filled with a bunch of lefties who just sit around censoring everyone. He can dump that dead weight and everything will run fine. 6/
He goes into it with the same bluster that he used to boost his car and space companies: act like the genius “disruptor” that can fix anything. But those companies are not ad-based, and advertisers immediately become spooked by his approach. 7/
He is utterly baffled; don’t they see how he’s going to make Twitter better than ever before? He fundamentally doesn’t understand how much effort Twitter put into protecting brands. He’s high on his own supply of “free speech,” which he also doesn’t understand. 8/
He clearly thinks that the value of twitter is entirely in the number of users. That is important, but the *quality* of users matters, too, which he doesn’t get. He starts his ill-advised (stupid) change to the blue check system. 9/
With the blue checks, again he’s high on his own supply. He see the check as a status symbol (which it is), but thinks that he can sell that status, which he can’t. People are verified because users need to be able to separate real people from scams. 10/
Elon also thinks that everyone is just as addicted to Twitter as he is. He’s a narcissist; he NEEDS Twitter just like Trump needed it. But relatively few people are that addicted to the site, and the real blue checks know that they *bring* value to the site. 11/
So more advisors leave. Elon is desperate to turn things around quickly, so he just throws shit at the wall to see what sticks. Nothing does, because he has no concept of how actual human beings experience reality. 12/
I think he’s in a panic state, because he *knows* that his mystique is evaporating quickly. He’s the golden boy who had “made 3 companies worth a billion dollars.” He can’t afford, mentally, to be seen as the guy holding the company losing a billion a year. 13/
He probably can’t financially, either, which has got to be intense pressure on his psyche. He keeps trying to turn things around by doing things exactly like he does at Tesla and SpaceX: he’s got a hammer, Twitter is the nail. 14/
But Twitter’s corporate culture is very different from those other companies, so most people aren’t interested in his appeals to going “hardcore.” And his immediate layoffs trigger company-wide resentment, which means almost everyone is ready to bail. 15/
He assumes that he can make things so shitty for workers that only the best, “hardcore” workers will remain. But pretty much the opposite is true: the best workers can jump somewhere else instantly. So his plan backfires 100%. 16/
Now, he’s left with a company with no advertisers, massive debt, and a toxic work environment that will struggle to find new employees. Institutional knowledge has walked out the door. 17/
Overall? I think he is a victim of being a legend in his own mind. He felt he understood twitter well enough that they would never sell. They did. Then he thought he understood it well enough to slash it in half to improve efficiency. He didn’t. 18/
He thought he could appeal to some sort of macho tough guy work ethic that he probably has never experienced himself. He probably sleeps in his office, but he probably has a very comfy bed in it. 19/
To summarize: he thought that Twitter was run by a bunch of left-wingers, who were therefore inferior to him. He was wrong on both counts, and now he’s stuck with a company that may not function at all within days. END
None of this means that Twitter will go under (outages notwithstanding); best guess is that it will remain dysfunctional as long as Musk owns it. If something else compelling comes along, then Twitter will decline as MySpace did. MySpace is still around, but no one cares. The local analog in Whitewater would be the Whitewater Register: living but irretrievably comatose.
Not many people in Whitewater use Twitter, but all people in all places are vulnerable to hubris. In this way, Twitter’s troubles are cautionary for anyone, anywhere.
Meanwhile, the stock price of Tesla year-to-date:
(Of the post title, “On Musk’s Multiple Misunderstandings and Mistakes” and mention of “Twitter’s troubles”: apologies to my high school English teacher, Mrs. Pearlberger, for the overuse of alliteration.)
Why coral reefs are so important: underwater in Egypt:
Animals, Daily Bread, Science/Nature
Daily Bread for 11.19.22: About Those 18,000 Marine Bones in a Smithsonian Warehouse
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 4:27 PM for 9h 35m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 21.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1863, President Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The Smithsonian Has 18,000 Marine Bones Hidden In A Warehouse. But What Do They Do With Them?:
The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has over 18,000 specimens in its marine mammal bone collection, notably featuring a rare 8.5-foot adult Rice’s whale skull. This collection is so large — in both size and scale — that it has outgrown the museum. Most of the collection is located in an airplane hangar in the Museum Support Center in Maryland.
See how bits of Mars could get back to Earth in new NASA/ESA animation:
The NASA and ESA Mars Sample Return mission will send bits of the Red Planet collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth. See how it could be done in this new animation.
Daily Bread, Education, Freedom of Speech, UW System
Daily Bread for 11.18.22: UW System Releases Free Speech Survey
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 25. Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 4:28 PM for 9h 37m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 29.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1928, the animated short Steamboat Willie premieres as the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse.
Rich Kremer reports on the UW System’s relaunch of a student free speech survey:
The University of Wisconsin System will relaunch a student free speech survey that spurred the resignation of a chancellor six months earlier. The survey is aimed at gauging attitudes toward free speech, viewpoint diversity and self-censorship at the state’s 13 universities.
The 29-page survey will be sent to random samples of students on each UW campus with researchers hoping for a minimum of 500 responses, according to a UW System press release issued Friday [11.11.22].
The questions are multiple choice and ask students things such as how likely they are to consider viewpoints they disagree with on topics like abortion, immigration, racial inequality and gender identity.
It also asks students whether they’ve felt pressured by an instructor to agree with political or ideological views expressed in class and if they’ve been reprimanded for disagreeing with an instructor.
Toward the end of the survey, students are asked to provide their enrollment status, race, sexual orientation, religious affiliation and what political party they most identify with. Those who complete the survey will receive a $10 gift card.
During a call with reporters Friday, UW System President Jay Rothman said the research project is aimed at ensuring the UW System is “committed to being a marketplace of ideas, a place where nuanced and complicated issues can be discussed openly, freely and civilly.”
“We want passionate debate on tough issues in a way that people can learn and ask questions without being labeled or tainted,” Rothman said. “We’re not going to solve the issues that we have as a society, which are challenging and complicated, by soundbites and tweets.”
Rothman said the survey has been vetted by outside experts and UW System shared governance groups.
Funding for the survey was provided by the Menard Center for the Study of Institutions and Innovation at UW-Stout, with private donations from billionaire John Menard.
The research team behind the effort includes Tim Shiell, UW-Stout philosophy professor and director of that campus’ Menard Center; Eric Kasper, UW-Eau Claire political science professor and director of the Menard Center for Constitutional Studies; UW-Eau Claire political science professor Geoffrey Peterson; and UW-Eau Claire psychology professor April Bleske-Rechek.
The survey and its implementation is overseen by the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service at UW-Stevens Point at Wausau.
The UW System’s initial plan was to send the free speech survey to students at the end of the spring semester in May but was delayed after UW-Whitewater’s interim Chancellor Jim Henderson resigned in protest.
See UW System Student Perceptions Survey
‘Moonwalkers’: These strap-on shoes can make you walk three times faster:
City, Film
Film: Tuesday, November 22nd, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Top Gun: Maverick
by JOHN ADAMS •
Tuesday, November 22nd at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Top Gun: Maverick @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
After thirty years, Maverick is still pushing the envelope as a top naval aviator, but must confront ghosts of his past when he leads TOP GUN’s elite graduates on a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those chosen to fly it.
One can find more information about Top Gun: Maverick at the Internet Movie Database.
Cats, Science/Nature
Friday Catblogging: The Slow Blink
by JOHN ADAMS •
Michelle Starr writes Scientists Confirm You Can Communicate With Your Cat by Blinking Very Slowly:
In a study published in 2020, scientists observed cat-human interactions, and were able to confirm that this act of blinking slowly makes cats – both familiar and unfamiliar animals – approach and be receptive to humans.
….
If you’ve spent any time around cats, you’ve probably seen their ‘partially closed eyes’ facial expression, accompanied by slow blinking. It’s similar to how human eyes narrow when smiling, and usually occurs when puss is relaxed and content. The expression is interpreted as a kind of cat smile.
Anecdotal evidence from cat owners has hinted that humans can copy this expression to communicate to cats that we are friendly and open to interaction. So, in the study, a team of psychologists designed two experiments to determine whether cats behaved differently towards slow-blinking humans.
In the first experiment, owners slow-blinked at 21 cats from 14 different households. Once the cat was settled and comfy in one spot in their home environment, the owners were instructed to sit about a meter away and slow-blink when the cat was looking at them.
Cameras recorded both the owner’s face and the cat’s face, and the results were compared to how cats blink with no human interaction.
The results showed that cats are more likely to slow-blink at their humans after their humans have slow-blinked at them, compared to the no-interaction condition.
Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 11.17.22: A Bit of Fallout from the Wisconsin Elections
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 30. Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 4:29 PM for 9h 39m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 41% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1820, Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica. (The Palmer Peninsula is later named after him.)
Rob Mentzer reports Wisconsin Assembly Republicans bar Rep. Janel Brandtjen from caucus meetings (‘Lawmaker supported primary challenge to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’):
One of Wisconsin’s highest-profile deniers of the 2020 election outcome has been barred from attending private meetings of Republican Assembly members.
State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menominee Falls, is the chair of the Assembly’s elections committee. She has repeatedly attacked Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on election issues and supported a primary challenge to the Republican leader. Those efforts gained the support of former President Donald Trump, who has said Vos should have supported the legally impossible step of decertifying Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election results.
The website WisPolitics first reported that Assembly Republicans had voted to bar Brandtjenfrom their closed caucus meetings. In a terse letter, Rep. Rob Summerfield, who is the majority caucus chair, wrote that its members had lost trust in her due to “continual issues from the past.”
Parties use closed caucus meetings to set political strategy. Vos has not said whether he plans to reappoint Brandtjen to lead the elections committee.
Brandtjen was one of the speakers at Trump’s Wisconsin rally ahead of the GOP gubernatorial primary, which doubled as a rally for Vos’s right-wing primary challenger, Adam Steen. Steen came within 300 votes of defeating Vos.
Brandtjen should have been barred long ago, and shouldn’t have been re-elected to the 22nd Assembly District. (Instead, she won easily in her latest race.)
Temporary shelters, generators sent to Ukraine ahead of winter but ‘much more needed’, EU says:
City, Daily Bread, Law, Local Government, Open Government
Daily Bread for 11.16.22: That’s an Ailment in Whitewater, Right There
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 36. Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 4:30 PM for 9h 41m 12s of daytime. The moon is in its third quarter with 50.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM, and the Police & Fire Commission at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1990, pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It’s True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.
Turns out it wasn’t true.
Only two days ago, FREE WHITEWATER published a post entitled What Ails, What Heals. Under what ails this libertarian blogger listed closed government, and under what heals the medicine of open government. For those who doubted there were any ailments lingering in government, doubt no longer. The Whitewater Common Council met in open session last night, for forty-six minutes. A video of the session appears below. Every minute of that session was open to the public — and every minute of it should have been. Unfortunately, some in the government don’t seem to understand the importance of open government.
Part of the meeting’s agenda, at Item C1, was a discussion of a “[r]equest for approval of one additional day of vacation for Police Department Officers completing Spanish course. (Police Chief Request).” See Video beginning @ 30:40 and agenda and Item C1 related documents.
Fair enough — the head of the Whitewater Police Department would like to discuss ways to make language learning more effective for his department (and possibly other departments). Some might support that idea, some might be uncertain, and others opposed. That’s to be expected — unanimity is rare.
What should not be rare — but instead should be unanimous — is the understanding that under our law this discussion should be an open-session discussion.
Instead, a long-tenured councilman wondered why this was not a closed-session item (video @ 43:08):
Why wasn’t this put on as a closed session agenda item and vetted before we brought it public? It should have been.
When Whitewater’s city manager requested the opinion of Whitewater’s city attorney, here’s what the city attorney said (video @ 43:22):
I think it technically could [be a closed-session item]. It’s discretionary as to whether or not that type of thing would go on and but because it theoretically would be something that could be negotiable or maybe increased or decreased in certain ways. And some strategic negotiating aspect. I think it technically could. It’d be maybe not a slam dunk but if if I was asked to give a thumbs up or thumbs down I’d say technically it could go on as a as a closed session.
Under our law, Wisconsin makes plain that the Open Meetings Law (Wis. Stat. §19.81) presumes in favor of open meetings:
19.81. Declaration of policy.
(1) In recognition of the fact that a representative government of the American type is dependent upon an informed electorate, it is declared to be the policy of this state that the public is entitled to the fullest and most complete information regarding the affairs of government as is compatible with the conduct of governmental business.
There are eleven specific and enumerated exceptions to open meetings. Each exception, even if applicable, is discretionary only:
19.85. Exemptions.
19.85(1). Any meeting of a governmental body, upon motion duly made and carried, may be convened in closed session under one or more of the exemptions provided in this section. The motion shall be carried by a majority vote in such manner that the vote of each member is ascertained and recorded in the minutes. No motion to convene in closed session may be adopted unless the chief presiding officer announces to those present at the meeting at which such motion is made, the nature of the business to be considered at such closed session, and the specific exemption or exemptions under this subsection by which such closed session is claimed to be authorized. Such announcement shall become part of the record of the meeting. No business may be taken up at any closed session except that which relates to matters contained in the chief presiding officer’s announcement of the closed session. A closed session may be held for any of the following purposes…..
The law is plain that “a governmental body, upon motion duly made and carried, may” (not shall) meet in closed session. Note the obvious difference between these two results: no closed-session exception is required, as each and every exception is merely a possibility.
One of those discretionary exceptions, at 19.85(1)(c), is when “Considering employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility.”
The councilman thinks that this topic should be a closed-session topic. The city attorney thinks that this should technically or theoretically (!) be a closed-session topic.
They are both wrong, on law and policy.
One starts with the law. What does the city attorney think a technical or theoretical possibility means? Perhaps he thinks that ‘technical’ makes a closed-session a requirement. If he thinks as much, over Item C1, then he’s simply wrong on the law. Wisconsin law does not require that this discussion be held in closed session.
Perhaps, as he says, instead, technical or theoretical means it’s discretionary with the city council. If so, (and he’d be right that’s it’s discretionary) then he might have answered plainly in line with Wisconsin’s Declaration of Policy: “it is declared to be the policy of this state that the public is entitled to the fullest and most complete information regarding the affairs of government as is compatible with the conduct of governmental business.” The law presumes and favors open government. Nothing about this discussion has, or could, interfere with ‘government business.’ Discretion in this case goes only one reasonable way.
His use of technical and theoretical do not describe a probable state of law. Instead, they describe an improbable, less likely, disfavored application.
Whitewater’s city attorney might have cited some portion of the law suitable to this discussion to show that this discussion must or even should be closed to the public, if he could find one. He can’t, because there isn’t one. A lawful presumption favors open meetings in Wisconsin. Wisconsin law applied to these circumstances calls for an open session. If Whitewater’s city attorney can find a provision of law (statutes or judicial decisions applying those statutes) that holds this innocuous discussion should have been held in closed session, he’s free to send me an opinion letter @ adams@freewhitewater.com. (If he’d like a proper opinion letter in reply from me, rather than merely a blog post, I’d be happy to oblige him.)
As policy, the open discussion of this topic advances the public interest without detriment to local government. How, when, and why the city should compensate public employees is a general discussion every community should have openly. This isn’t a discussion for six or seven people to the exclusion of a community of 14,889. There’s no need to vet this privately.
How very predictable that a councilman who has spent years on a public Community Development Authority that for a generation has run as though a private clubhouse should wonder why this discussion should wasn’t closed to the public. If anything, over many years, Whitewater’s public bodies (council, CDA, and school district) have had too many closed sessions with too few explanations.
A reminder: the best place for private discussions is private life. Those in government who don’t understand as much should return to private life.
It was a right — and legally sound — decision to bring this topic to an open session of the Whitewater Common Council.
Artemis Rocket Launches Toward Moon on Mighty Columns of Flame:
Conspiracy Theories, Daily Bread, Elections, Populists
Daily Bread for 11.15.22: Populist Election Deniers Wreck Their Own Chances
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 35. Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 4:31 PM for 9h 43m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 59% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins his March to the Sea.
Those of us who advocate for individual rights understandably oppose populists’ herd-and-horde perspective. Sometimes, however, that perspective of the populists does more harm to their cause than any outside criticism could. Conspiracy theories spread far and fast among their group-thinking ranks, often to their movement’s detriment. Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti write Republicans’ 2022 Lesson: Voters Who Trust Elections Are More Likely to Vote (Election deniers’ doubts about voting made for compelling conspiracy theories, but proved to be a bad get-out-the-vote strategy):
PHOENIX — It was early on Election Day when polling places in Maricopa County started experiencing a glitch. Tabulation machines were rejecting thousands of ballots, a result of a printer error, and the confusion was causing lines and frustration at the polls.
There was a simple fix: Voters could place their ballots in a secure box — called Box 3 — kept at every polling station for just such situations. Their votes would be counted later, at the county’s central tabulation center.
But for the state’s most conservative voters, a group primed by two years of former President Donald J. Trump’s stolen-election lies to see conspiracy in every step of the voting process, Box 3 smelled of trouble. Election deniers in the state’s Republican Party soon began warning voters away from the boxes, as suspicions flew across Twitter and right-wing media. “Do not trust them,” Charlie Kirk, the conservative leader, warned his followers.
That message reinforced Republicans’ skepticism about elections, but it didn’t do much to help their candidates win. Later that morning, the Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, held a news conference to deliver the opposite message. Box 3 was safe, her campaign lawyer said.
“Vote, vote, vote,’’ Ms. Lake added. “We’ve got to vote today.”
Whether the suspicion and mixed messages around Box 3 made a difference in a race that Ms. Lake lost by a hair to her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, might never be known. (Her campaign maintains the fault lies with the county.)
But the moment crystallized one of the main lessons of the 2022 midterms: Casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections might be an effective tool for galvanizing true believers to participate in a primary — or, at its origins, to storm the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn a losing result. But it can be a lousy strategy when it comes to the paramount mission of any political campaign: to get the most votes.
“If you tell people that voting is hard, or voter fraud is rampant, or elections are rigged, it doesn’t make people more likely to participate,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works with election officials to bolster trust and efficiency in voting. “Why would you want to play a game you thought was rigged?”
Our elections are not rigged. Those who think so are wrong, either ignorantly or dishonestly so.
As it turns out, those who deny the integrity of our elections are also, sometimes, self-defeating.
Zelenskiy visits newly liberated city of Kherson: