FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Games/Puzzles, Legislature

On Card Games at Work – Simply Tell Them to Stop

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There’s a story in the State Journal about Sen. Nass’s concern that legislative pages (mostly part-time pages and part-time students) are playing card games during working hours:

A Republican state senator is complaining about legislative pages using work time to play a card game that pits fascists against liberals trying to root out a “secret Hitler” — a game in which some versions swap the Hitler character for President Donald Trump.

Sen. Steve Nass, of Whitewater, complained to his Senate GOP colleagues Wednesday that both part-time and full-time page staff have during paid work time been playing “Secret Hitler,” a politically themed hidden identity card game from the same game designer who created the raunchy party game “Cards Against Humanity.”

In “Secret Hitler,” between five and 10 players are divided into two uneven teams: a larger team of liberals and a smaller team of fascists. One player is chosen as Secret Hitler. The fascists are aware of their leader’s identity and work to install him by tricking the liberals, who aren’t aware of his identity.

Via GOP state senator wants legislative pages to stop playing ‘Secret Hitler’ at work.

Sen. Nass wrote to his colleagues to complain about this, and the game was confiscated. Fair enough – people shouldn’t play cards at work. The story says that the chief clerk confiscated the cards, and that Nass wants a legislative human resources investigation.

A legislative human resources investigation is a waste of time.  Nass is a longtime politician in the majority – he should ask to speak to those responsible, and make his point clear in a mentoring conversation. This is an opportunity for a leader to address matters directly without a lot of fuss. Nass is not a young man, and at his age he should be able to have a normal conversation with young men and women across a table.

(Realistically, he should also be able to speak more often on his own behalf without spokesman Mike Mikalsen.)

Now, I’m not a card-player, but for those so inclined, Amazon sells Secret Hitler and a Secret Trump card pack is hard-to-find but highly rated, as it even includes a “bonus Mike Pence card, suitable for use in case of impeachment or resignation.”

Blogging, Writing

Aggregation, Curation, and Commentary

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Here’s a quick post based on an email and reply from last night about the differences between aggregation, curation, and commentary (from my viewpoint).

An aggregation site receives stories or news releases to post, and publishes them based on an intentionally loose set of criteria to maximize the number of posts. Ideally – and it’s only an ideal – the aggregation site mirrors the publications from which it collects. (Even aggregation requires criteria for publishing, but those criteria are meant to be as permissive as possible to allow in as much as possible.)

A curated site may start with aggregation, but it has a more narrow set of criteria for selection, so fewer items are posted online. The curator looks over what he or she finds, and selects only a few items.

Although both methods rely on selection (of an algorithm for aggregation or personally-applied criteria for curation), there’s a far greater level of personal selection for each post in a curated site. Aggregation sites bear a responsibility, but a reduced responsibility, as against curated sites.

An aggregation site takes what it gets, mostly – a curated site selects and sometimes refashions or augments what it receives.

A change from aggregation to curation necessarily involves a greater degree of agency and responsibility.

A site of commentary, like FREE WHITEWATER, is a curated site. Indeed, it’s all curation. Each and every one of the posts published here is deliberately selected and crafted. Someone may like or dislike a post on Trump, or cats, or boosterism, but those choices – including all the words therein – are deliberate in both general and specific ways.  (This blog has one author, with one voice, and every choice here is from an emissary of one, so to speak.)

A traditional newspaper, by the way, is curated – which stories are editorially chosen, which words are editorially approved, how stories are editorially placed on the page – it’s all curation. A good paper is curated well; a weak paper is curated poorly.

These are imperfect distinctions, but they work well enough, I think, for ordinary use.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.7.20

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 7:01 AM and sunset 5:16 PM, for 10h 14m 24s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1867, Laura Ingalls Wilder is born this day near Pepin, Wisconsin.

Recommended for reading in full —

Gerry Shih reports Chinese doctor who tried to raise alarm on coronavirus in Wuhan dies on ‘front line’ of medical fight:

HANGZHOU, China — A Chinese doctor who was silenced by police for trying to share news about the new coronavirus long before Chinese health authorities disclosed its full threat died after coming down with the illness, a hospital statement said, triggering an outpouring of anger online toward the ruling Communist Party.

Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, became a national hero and symbol of the Chinese government’s systemic failings last month. Li had tried to warn his medical school classmates Dec. 30 about the existence of a contagious new virus that resembled the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).Word began to spread in China thanks to Li, but his posts were censored, and he was detained Jan. 1 for “rumor-mongering.”

The full outlines of his story, which came to light in recent weeks as the Wuhan outbreak exploded into an international emergency, set off a swell of outrage in China, where citizens have long chafed at the government’s penchant for relentlessly snuffing out any speech deemed threatening to social stability.

Many, including China’s judicial authorities in a rare rebuke of the police, have wondered whether the epidemic would have unfolded differently had Li not been silenced at the critical juncture around Jan. 1.

Will Sommer, Maxwell Tani, and Andrew Kirell report Fox News Internal Document Bashes Pro-Trump Fox Regulars for Spreading ‘Disinformation’:

Fox News’ own research team has warned colleagues not to trust some of the network’s top commentators’ claims about Ukraine.

An internal Fox News research briefing book obtained by The Daily Beast openly questions Fox News contributor John Solomon’s credibility, accusing him of playing an “indispensable role” in a Ukrainian “disinformation campaign.”

The document also accuses frequent Fox News guest Rudy Giuliani of amplifying disinformation, as part of an effort to oust former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, and blasts Fox News guests Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova—both ardent Trump boosters—for “spreading disinformation.”

The 162-page document, entitled “Ukraine, Disinformation, & the Trump Administration,” was created by Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy, who produces research from what is known as the network’s Brain Room—a newsroom division of researchers who provide information, data, and topic guides for the network’s programming.

The research brief is especially critical of Solomon, a former opinion columnist at The Hill whose opinion pieces about Ukraine made unsubstantiated claims about its government interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Solomon’s pieces for The Hill fueled Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine, which eventually helped lead to President Donald Trump’s impeachment. Trump has also frequently cited Solomon’s questionable reporting on Twitter in his own defense.

NASA’s Christina Koch Shatters Spaceflight Record:

Blogging, Law, Newspapers, Public Records, University, UW System

Five Months

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In a local newspaper’s story about a former chancellor’s leave of absence, one learns that information about her leave came five months after a public records request:

Tuesday marked five months since The Gazette filed an open records request with UW-W for information on Kopper’s leave during the fall semester, when she previously had plans to teach.

After The Gazette notified the university this week about a pending story on the unfulfilled request and sought comment, the UW-W’s public records custodian, Alexandra Stokes, sent the records.

Honest to goodness.  The story doesn’t say what efforts the paper made during that time to obtain the information. It seems that it did nothing until – nearly half a year later – the paper told a UW-Whitewater official that a follow-up story was about to land.

Public records requests are not mere entreaties – they are requests under Wisconsin law.

The university defiantly withheld too long, and the newspaper diffidently waited too long.

See 4 Points About Public Records Requests (‘Residents, bloggers, and community groups that seek information under a public records law should be prepared to defend that request at law.  One hopes that won’t be necessary, but rights are more than hopes, and so one should think ahead, even before a request is submitted: what’s next at law if officials obstruct this request?  See, along these lines, Steps for Blogging on a Policy or Proposal‘). 

Five months’ time was far too long to wait.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.6.20

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-two.  Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 5:14 PM, for 10h 11m 52s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 89.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1967, Stokely Carmichael speaks at UW-Whitewater as part of a forum series entitled Black Power and the Civil Rights Movement.

Recommended for reading in full —

The House Impeachment Managers write Trump won’t be vindicated. The Senate won’t be, either:

Over the past two weeks, we have argued the impeachment case against President Trump, presenting overwhelming evidence that he solicited foreign interference to cheat in the next election and jeopardized our national security by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to pressure Ukraine to do his political bidding. When the president got caught and his scheme was exposed, he tried to cover it up and obstruct Congress’s investigation in an unprecedented fashion. As the trial progressed, a growing number of Republican senators acknowledged that the House had proved the president’s serious misconduct.

Throughout the trial, new and incriminating evidence against the president came to light almost daily, and there can be no doubt that it will continue to emerge in books, in newspapers or in congressional hearings. Most important, reports of former national security adviser John Bolton’s forthcoming book only further confirm that the president illegally withheld military aid to Ukraine until Kyiv announced the sham investigations that the president sought for his political benefit.

The Washington Post editorial board writes History will remember Mitt Romney:

ON WEDNESDAY, as Senate Republicans prepared to acquit President Trump of abuse of power, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) offered a profile in courage. He announced he would vote to convict the president, becoming the only Republican to do so. Mr. Romney, alone, defied the partisanship and political incentives of the moment — and was willing to endure the punishment that is surely on its way — simply because he judged conviction to be the right call.

Mr. Romney’s reasoning was simple: The president is obviously guilty. “There’s no question that the president asked a foreign power to investigate his political foe,” he said Wednesday. “There’s not much I can think of that would be a more egregious assault on our Constitution than trying to corrupt an election to maintain power. And that’s what the president did.”

Unlike many of his GOP colleagues, Mr. Romney refused to ignore the facts. “I don’t see how in good conscience I can reach a conclusion and not be true to what my heart and mind tells me is true,” he told the Deseret News shortly before his announcement.

Mr. Romney rejected on Wednesday the cynicism that has driven so many of his colleagues to avert their gaze from the roiling disaster of the Trump presidency. “He’s the president of the United States. I voted with him 80 percent of the time,” he said. “I agree with his economic policies and a lot of other policies. And yet he did something which was grievously wrong. And to say, well, you know, because I’m on his team and I agree with him most of the time, that I should then assent to a political motive, would be a real stain on our constitutional democracy.”

(One can be a critic of Romney and yet see that he has acted rightly, commendably, and enduringly on principle.)

The Future of Food Is Zero Waste:

Education, Open Government, Press Release, School District

Whitewater Schools: Paltry “Community Input”

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Update, 2.10.20 – Since this post, the location has now been changed to Whitewater High School’s more spacious and inviting library.

There’s a story in a local newspaper about a public forum for community input on the search for a permanent Whitewater school district administrator. Here’s the beginning of the newspaper’s account of the district’s efforts:

The Whitewater School Board and a consulting firm will host an open forum Feb. 18 to hear what the community wants in its next district administrator.

The forum will start at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18, at the school district’s central office, 419 S. Elizabeth St.

Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates is helping the school board with its search, according to a news release.

A few remarks:

That’s It? One session, in a small and cramped building with limited and poor seating, cannot possibly be what this school board considers a suitable forum for public input, can it?

The district’s central office can accommodate so few people that, at a series of student awards held there last year, groups had rotate in and out so that all students could appear before the board. The building is too small to accommodate large numbers.

It’s possible – if not probable – that this location is an admission that, despite being a district serving tens of thousands of residents, this board has lost the interest of even modest numbers of ordinary residents.

Where Are Employees, Building Leaders, and Elected Officials Having Their Meeting? There’s sure to be a separate employees’ forum, and there is simply no chance that meeting will be in a small, cramped space with cheap & uncomfortable chairs.

If the district expects more attendees among employees than from a community of tens of thousands, then one sees starkly the failure of community outreach.

The answer to that failure is not acceptance (of what should be unacceptable). The answer is to hold a community meeting in a better location with far more outreach than a news release here or there.

A Website Survey.  One reads that there will also be a website survey. No matter how much one appreciates the web (as I do, truly), it’s an imperfect means of outreach in a community with significant numbers of impoverished or alienated  people.

The Proper Priority at a Community Meeting. In the comments section to a post yesterday (see Ready-Made is Poorly Made), I offered a sound plan for community meetings (including – unlike these sessions, meetings where residents and officials are together). I’ll reproduce those remarks below:

Here’s a sound approach for any meeting (including other meetings where leaders should be present): those who have never been to a meeting – who are unaffiliated and unconnected – get pride of place. They get to sit where they want, and have refreshments first. Ordinary residents come before employees. Employees lower in the organizational hierarchy take precedence over those placed higher in the school system. Elected officials go last, and spend time ushering, or assisting other attendees.

No one – but no one – from the school board or paid leadership should ever take a better seat than ordinary residents. Those at the top go last (if it’s the sort of meeting where leaders should be present). In meetings with leaders, no leader should be on his or her phone, whispering distractingly, walking around disinterestedly, or sitting off to the side away from the meeting.

If this is too hard for paid or elected leaders, they should consider other areas of employment or public service.

Assault Awareness & Prevention, City, Ethics, Misconduct, Sexual Harassment, University, UW System

At UW-Whitewater, Beverly Kopper’s Tenure Was about More than Beverly Kopper

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Former UW-Whitewater chancellor Beverly Kopper was on leave – apparently for part of that time under federal or state medical leave act provisions – before her resignation from UW-Whitewater.

I’ll not speculate about the circumstances under which she claimed leave under the law.

There’s another matter that requires attention.

There’s talk at UW-Whitewater these days about speaking one’s truth. In that spirit, a bit of truth – not mine alone, but an objective truth: Kopper’s time as chancellor involved more than Kopper, herself – it involved an entire campus, and particularly and notably those who were injured in repeated instances of sexual harassment or assault.

See a collection posts on Kopper’s time at UW-Whitewater. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.5.20

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of thirty.  Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 5:13 PM, for 10h 09m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 82% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1849, the University of Wisconsin opens with 20 students led by Professor John W. Sterling.

Recommended for reading in full —

Samantha Michaels writes Trump Just Bragged About Criminal Justice Reform. Look Closer at How His Administration Is Undoing It:

Yes, it’s true that Trump—the same man who recommended heavier enforcement of stop and frisk policing, and whose administration brought back the federal death penalty and fueled the expansion of private prisons—signed a much-heralded bill in 2018 to reform the federal criminal justice system, with broad bipartisan support. The First Step Act made changes that have reduced the federal prison population, and it was the first criminal justice reform bill to pass Congress in a generation. So far, the law has shortened the prison stays of about 2,500 people who were serving disproportionately long sentences for crack cocaine offenses, most of them African American. It has also let more than 3,000 people go home early because of their good behavior during incarceration. And it could lead to improvements in prison conditions.

But as Trump claims credit for freeing people from prison, there’s one very big problem that he’s not mentioning: His Justice Department is actively pushing to send some of these same people back behind bars, and to prevent others from reducing their sentences—which greatly limits who can benefit from the law that Trump has touted as one of his signature achievements.

While the First Step Act has allies in the White House—including Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner—the officials tasked with implementing it are in the Justice Department. Attorney General Bill Barr, who leads the department, has reportedly raised concerns in private that the legislation’s reforms will drive up crime. And under his watch, the department’s prosecutors have argued that hundreds of incarcerated people applying for relief under the law’s cocaine sentencing reforms are not eligible, according to an investigation by the Washington Post. In some cases, Trump has even stood onstage hugging and congratulating people who were recently released under the law—even as the Justice Department was arguing in court to lock those same people up again.

Jeramey Jannene reports Milwaukee DNC Leaders Fired by Board:

The top two employees of Milwaukee’s Democratic National Convention host committee were fired Tuesday as part of an investigation into a toxic work environment at the organization.

The board terminated president Liz Gilbert and chief of staff Adam Alonso less than 48 hours after opening an investigation into a “toxic” and “unstable” work environment.

“Adam Alonso has consistently bullied and intimidated staff members, but of note is that this is primarily directed at the women on staff. Resulting in a culture that coddles male senior advisors and consultants who have no clear role or clear lines of management,” wrote an anonymous group of “senior women from the host committee” to the committee’s five-member board. The letter, dated Thursday, January 30th, said the concerns were brought to Gilbert’s attention in November, but she defended Alfonso and dismissed the issue.

(Emphasis in original.)

Trump’s 2020 State of the Union, fact checked:

Culture, Education, School District

Ready-Made is Poorly Made

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The Whitewater Schools now have an interim district administrator, and the district is looking to hire a permanent replacement. At the most recent school board meeting of 1.27.20, there was a brief discussion of community involvement in the selection process (see meeting video).  The school board president and vice president (having each been on the board for several years)  discussed focus groups for community opinion (43:50 on the linked video):

Board Vice President: I suspect we [referring to board members] can have input into who wants to be invited to those [referring to focus groups] or who we think…

Board President: They’ll be asking us, Matt and I talked, Jim was there, we have some ready-made groups, the Citizens Financial Advisory Committee, Whitewater Yes, the Whitewater Unites Lives, but we also want staff, BLT [building leadership team], parents groups, ultimately, I think, as many people as as we can get them to talk to is what our goal is.

Whitewater has struggled for years with a same-ten-person problem of low participation. Relying on ‘ready-made’ groups of the same ten people won’t solve that problem. Referring people the board members already known to focus groups won’t solve that problem. Listing parents after staff and building leaders won’t solve that problem. Saying all this in a desultory way won’t solve that problem.

Even those few groups that are newer, and so commendably bring in fresh perspectives, are only part of what Whitewater needs.

A consultant might prefer small groups, but Whitewater needs large groups of people able to speak without board members, administrators, staff, and the same local notables (who have presided of years of stagnation  and relative decline) over-watching.

Saying what one ultimately wants isn’t the same as doing what one ultimately should.

Meetings should be well-publicized, in a large auditorium, with refreshments. If an open meeting fails to attract unaffiliated parents and residents, then another should be held. It will take years for Whitewater to re-engage with its public institutions, but one has to start somewhere.

Perhaps some men and women don’t realize how listless they seem. The worthy people of our past faced challenges by rolling up their sleeves and getting to work; they did not roll up the covers and take a nap.

Worse, by far: when ‘building leaders’ see somnambulism in their school board, they will mistakenly think that all the community is as undemanding.

Lack of energy at the top inspires only sloth and carelessness in others, and condescension toward the community.

For Whitewater, ready-made is poorly made.

Bigotry, Culture, Trump

Acculturation – or its Absence – Begins at the Top

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There’s a story in the Washington Post about a school meeting in Saline, Michigan entitled ‘Then why didn’t you stay in Mexico?’: A Latino dad was interrupted by a white man at meeting about racism in schools. The meeting was meant to address racism in schools, but it did not go smoothly:

On Monday, he [Adrian Iraola] was was telling a crowd of parents in Saline, Mich., about the harm these kinds of remarks had inflicted on his son yet again — how classmates’ taunts of “taco,” “enchilada” and “dirty Mexican” had left the high schooler in tears.

“I went to his bedroom to say good night,” Iraola said, turning to an audience that had been discussing diversity and inclusion in schools. “He was crying because of the abuse that he was enduring in this school system.”

Suddenly, the man behind him interjected.

“Then why didn’t you stay in Mexico?” he asked.

The story reports that some in the audience were shocked. They should have been repulsed, but not shocked: the most powerful person in all the world is a vulgar man, an unreconstructed bigot, who carries on as a daily (unworthy) example to hordes of others.

Our ancestors did not speak hesitantly of Know Nothings, Confederates, Copperheads, the Klan, and the Bund; they saw them – and described them – for what they were.

One could take the hands of that ilk and say now, now, it’s all right, but it’s not all right – and never will be.

We haven’t advanced a proper acculturation of those who have been born here. The typical concern about acculturation (of newcomers) is a slight matter as against the obvious failure to set the proper – that is, ethical, moral – expectations for those who are native born.

Those in the Michigan crowd who gave that nativist what-for are admirable for having defended the better norm that he so plainly failed to meet.