Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 12.13.19
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 03m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1864, the 3rd Wisconsin Light Artillery arrives at the front lines for the Battle of Savannah, Georgia.
Recommended for reading in full:
Rex Huppke writes Exhausted by Trump World’s lies? Hold fast to the truth. It’s the only path:
So I have two things to tell you, one good, one bad.
First, the good: Facts still matter, and truth still exists.
Second, the bad: You can’t feel exhausted. You have to cling to the truth, tighter than ever before, because an entire political party, a massive news network and the leader of the free world are trying to pull it away.
Consider how the president, his Republican cronies and the right-wing media reacted to the release this week of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Even a cursory review of the report reveals a thorough debunking of many of the president’s favorite conspiracy theories. It clearly states there is no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced” the decision to launch an investigation into contacts between Russians and Trump campaign members.
The report shows the FBI had an “authorized purpose” for starting the investigation, meaning it was not, as Trump claims ceaselessly, a “witch hunt.” The report even shows that while screams of bias have been leveled ad nauseam at certain investigators who were texting anti-Trump comments, there were also investigators texting pro-Trump comments. There was no evidence either form of bias had bearing on the investigation.
Kayla Epstien reports Defeated GOP governor pardoned violent criminals in a spree lawyers are calling an ‘atrocity of justice’:
Matt Bevin is no longer the governor of Kentucky, but his decisions continued to send shock waves through the state’s legal system this week after he issued pardons for hundreds of people, some of whom committed violent offenses.
Bevin issued 428 pardons since his defeat to Democrat Andy Beshear in a close election in November, the Louisville Courier Journal reported. His list includes a man convicted of reckless homicide, a convicted child rapist, a man who murdered his parents at age 16 and a woman who threw her newborn in the trash after giving birth in a flea market outhouse.
He also pardoned Dayton Jones, who was convicted in the sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy at a party, Kentucky New Era reported.
It is not unusual for governors to issue pardons as they leave office, but Bevin’s actions boggled some of the state’s attorneys, who questioned his judgment.
Drug War, Health, Law, Opioids
Treatment Should Always Be a First, Readily-Available Option
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
At the Asbury Park Press, Shannon Mullen, Lisa Robyn Kruse, Austin Bogues, and Andrew J. Goudsward report on the unfair disparity in the treatment of Crack v. Heroin use:
Dannis Billups’ addiction nightmare began with an actual nightmare when he was about 4 years old. His daddy sat him on his knee and gave him a half-can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer to soothe him.
In the 1980s, he joined the “family trade,” a young black man peddling crack cocaine on the streets of Newark, New Jersey, profiting from other people’s addiction and pain.
Within a few years, he became his best customer. His life became a never-ending ride on the criminal justice carousel: arrests, jail, probation and then back in the system for another spin, some two dozen times, on and off the ride he went.
“They would never offer you treatment,” said Billups, now 53. “They would just lock you away and forget about you.”
A generation after crack hit Newark, in the? idyllic? Jersey Shore suburb of Manasquan, a white hometown football hero named Richie? Lapinski took a seat on the same merry-go-round. Like Billups, Lapinski developed a substance abuse problem, although his drugs of choice were?prescription pills and heroin, the growing menace of whites.
But where Billups was punished with jail and probation, Lapinski snared the brass ring: addiction treatment paid for by taxpayers. He landed in Drug Court — not the true lock-em’-up criminal court Billups faced — where Lapinski’s record could be wiped clean. He was granted a new life outside of the system, if he kept his end of the bargain and stayed clean.
Diversionary treatment options should have been readily available then, and should be readily available today.
There are some such options now; there are not enough. The opioid crisis has cost too much, in lives, health, and money to approach it primarily though punishment. See The Washington Post’s Pain Pill Database, Society of Actuaries: Economic Cost of the Opioid Crisis, and ‘Don’t worry about them – the rest of us feel great!’
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 12.12.19
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 04m 25s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 2000, the United States Supreme Court hands down its decision in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000).
Recommended for reading in full:
Chris Rickert writes Lafayette County resolution that sought to prosecute reporters began at the top:
Lafayette County resolution that sought to dictate, under threat of prosecution, what media can report about a controversial water-quality study had its origins in the elected leaders of two of the three rural counties where the study is being conducted, records show.
According to emails released through a state public records request, Iowa County Board chairman John Meyers on Oct. 31 sent Grant and Lafayette county officials suggestions for the resolution, including to stress to the media that “under no circumstances are they to be allowed to glean information and selectively report it in order to twist results.”
“Maybe make the press sign a cooperation agreement,” Meyers wrote to Lafayette County economic development director Abby Haas and Grant County Board Chairman Bob Keeney. “Threaten to prosecute them for slander.”
His suggestions also included censuring board members “caught distorting information intentionally.”
The resolution, which surfaced in early November, drew widespread condemnation from open government and First Amendment advocates for likely being illegal, unenforceable and unconstitutional. The Lafayette County Land Conservation Committee approved a modified version of the resolution on Nov. 12 and it was stripped of other controversial provisions and tabled by the full County Board later that night.
(Government restricting a lawful discussion of environmental quality – these officials are as ignorant as they are autocratic. See public records requested by the State Journal, below. A publication that receives public records should publish them. The links in the low-quality newspaper chain in the Whitewater area – Janesville Gazette, Daily Jefferson County Union – don’t do so.)
[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Lafayette.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”]Bruce Vielmetti reports DMV made a woman walk without her cane before it would renew her license. She fell and broke her wrist:
A Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles worker told a 78-year-old woman she had to walk across the room without her cane before she could renew her license. Under protest, the woman complied, and in the process fell, broke her wrist and was denied renewal.
Was it illegal discrimination or careful screening of a potentially dangerous driver? A federal court may decide after the woman’s estate filed a civil rights lawsuit over the incident.
Before she went to renew her driver’s license in West Bend last year, Mary Wobschall visited an optometrist to make sure her 78-year-old vision was still fine. Diagnosis: No corrective lenses required for driving.
But she hadn’t expected a DMV worker to make her walk across the lobby without her cane, which she used since double knee replacement years earlier.
Her husband, Ronald Wobschall, objected and asked the examiner how walking without her cane related to his wife’s license renewal. The examiner insisted, and Mary got up, without her cane, and tried to follow orders.
She fell and broke her wrist.
America, Authoritarianism, Education, Law, Trump
More Dangerous Than More Dangerous
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
At the Washington Post’s Plum Line, Greg Sargent writes that William Barr’s deceptions are more dangerous than you think.
It’s an excellent post about Barr’s attempt to validate Trump’s lies (about Russia, Ukraine, election interference). Sargent’s assessment is even less favorable for the future – and so more ominous – than he writes.
Sargent is right that “anything that obscures that eagerness helps Trump dodge accountability for his use of his office to extort another foreign power into helping rig the next election, for which he’s being impeached.”
There’s something worse, however, in Barr’s efforts to twist clear legal conclusions: this may portend Trump’s unwillingness to accept *any* democratic election under law in which he is not the winner.
Barr’s disrespect for the law may be a harbinger of Trump’s rejection of democratic elections, and a signal that he will advance any claim whatever to set aside an unfavorable 2020 result.
If that should be so, then Barr is setting the scene for something worse than inviting or rationalizing future foreign interference – he’s laying the foundation for a wholesale rejection of a lawful democratic process Trump doesn’t like.
If solid and truthful legal arguments don’t constrain to Barr, perhaps it’s because he knows that even a constitutional electoral process won’t constrain Trump.
Sarah Kendzior’s concern in this regard looks increasingly sound.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 12.11.19
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s University Technology Park Board meets at 8 AM.
On this day in 1901, Morris Pratt incorporates his institute for spiritualism (Pratt had built the institute in Whitewater thirteen years earlier, in 1888).
Recommended for reading in full:
David Corn writes William Barr’s War on Reality, Truth, and the Law:
This is how it works. The big lie. The endless spin. The outright denial of facts. Again and again and again. The complete destruction and devaluation of truth for political gain. Overwhelm reality with fiction, concoctions, and false narratives. Embrace deceit and duplicity.
For rogues, scoundrels, tyrants, princes and princesses of corruption—and their henchmen—the truth is a threat. It must be crushed. It must be vanquished. Abuse of power cannot exist alongside accountability. Malefactors cannot survive within an atmosphere of truth. It is a suffocating poison for them. So they must deceive, and they must dissemble. That is what the United States’ top law enforcement officer demonstrated this week.
Following the release of the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the origins and management of the Trump-Russia investigation, Attorney General William Barr went into full Oceania war-is-peace mode to erase truth in order to protect and soothe his dear leader, Donald Trump. Moments after the report appeared—it concludes the FBI had been right to open an investigation of interactions between Trump associates and Russia in 2016, as Moscow was attacking the US election to help Trump win the White House—Barr challenged the findings. He declared that he knew better than the IG and that the FBI had launched the probe “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” Barr noted that his own hand-picked federal prosecutor, John Durham, would be conducting a separate review and have the final word. And the next day, Barr continued his brazen campaign of disinformation. In an interview with NBC News, he called the FBI investigation “completely baseless.” Barr depicted the probe as a “danger” to civil liberties and the American political system. He was twisting up into down.
Jared Bernstein writes Trump’s China Trade War Is Failing. Democrats Should Campaign Against It:
The trade deficit has remained essentially constant as a share of GDP at minus 3 percent over Trump’s presidency.
The trade war is slowing overall growth and clearly hurting the workers and communities it should be helping, particularly in manufacturing, where both real production and the pace of job gains are down this year (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan have lost manufacturing jobs in recent months). For an example of the futility of Trump’s approach, consider that Alcoa, an American aluminum manufacturer, sought an exemption from tariffs designed to protect it because it imports aluminum from Canada.
Congress, Impeachment, Law, Trump
Articles of Impeachment of Donald Trump for High Crimes and Misdemeanors
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Articles-of-Impeachment.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”]
Foreign Affairs, Putin, Russia, Trump, Trump-Russia
Debunking Trump’s Defenses: It Was Russia, not Ukraine, That Interfered in the 2016 Election
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Embedded below is a concise, three-page pdf debunking the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in America’s 2016 election. It’s from the Moscow Project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It’s a solid starting point for combatting lies on the matter.
[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Debunking-Defenses-Russia-Not-Ukraine.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”]Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 12.10.19
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of twenty-one. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 05m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Schools’ Policy Review Committee meets at 8 AM, Whitewater’s Finance Committee at 5:30 PM, and the Whitewater Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1884, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is first published.
Recommended for reading in full:
Katelyn Ferral, Molly Beck, and Patrick Marley report Wisconsin National Guard chief resigns after report shows sexual assault investigations violated state and federal laws:
The chief of Wisconsin’s National Guard resigned Monday following the release of an explosive report that showed the Guard for years botched investigations of sexual assault and harassment, violating state and federal law.
Gov. Tony Evers called for Adjutant General Donald Dunbar’s resignation after learning the Wisconsin National Guard intentionally created its own internal system of investigating sexual assault complaints to shield the Guard from state law enforcement and federal regulators.
“These internal investigations were deficient in a number of ways that adversely impacted commands’ efforts to properly support victims of sexual assault and hold offenders accountable,” said an 88-page report by the federal National Guard Bureau that Evers released Monday.
That system operated with no formal oversight, staffed with state investigators who, in many cases, were not properly trained and portrayed themselves as federal officials to victims.
“In some cases, these investigators identified themselves as ‘National Guard Bureau Investigators’ — even though they conducted their investigations exclusively under the auspices of the Wisconsin National Guard,” according to the report.
“The (reviewers) found numerous, significant deficiencies that compromised the accuracy and legality of the Wisconsin National Guard sexual assault investigations,” the report says.
The Guard had just 15% of the number of certified staff federal policies require to handle such allegations. In some cases, commanders had no idea who these staff were within their own units, Evers’ aides said.
Ann E. Marimow and Jonathan O’Connell report Trump’s private business interests are back at appeals courts in emoluments cases:
They also cite the administration’s decision to host next year’s G-7 summit at Trump’s Doral golf course — a choice abandoned after pointed criticism — as evidence of the president’s conflicts and disregard for boundaries laid out by the Constitution’s emoluments clauses.
Other recent reports could aid plaintiffs as well, including that the Secret Service spent more than $250,000 at Trump properties early in his administration and Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) booked a room with state funds at the Trump D.C. hotel, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Assault Awareness & Prevention, Hunger, Language, Public Relations, University, UW System, Writing
At UW-Whitewater, For All That Value, Too Little Administrative Respect for Values
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
There’s a press release (screenshot here) contending that UW-Whitewater contributes a large sum – hundreds of millions – to the Wisconsin economy. The release is written by Assistant Vice Chancellor Sara Kuhl.
Kuhl begins the release touting the power and influence of the university by misspelling a common English word (emphasis added):
UW-Whitewater, one of the UW System’s premiere universities…
The release should read premier (among the first rank) not premiere (the first showing of a movie or play). This is not the first time UW-Whitewater’s leadership has made this mistake.
The claim of vast wealth produced should, if even partly true, allow Kuhl’s office to buy a dictionary, and offer her and others the chance to open its pages now and again.
Truly, however, Kuhl’s deficiencies of ordinary usage are the least of concerns.
This recent study touting value doesn’t address the many of the highest values.
Instead, this beautiful campus faces problems more costly than any value supposedly generated: basic values of learning and safety are under stress at this institution – a self-promoting administration, flacking sham studies, while faculty are shunted aside, hunger is present on campus, and a longstanding, ongoing problem of sexual assault on and off campus continues.
What these recent administrations have brought cannot compensate adequately for what what they’ve taken.
Health
The Hidden Crisis in Rural America
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It’s prohibitively difficult to access mental-health services in rural America. That’s because, relative to urban areas, rural counties have so few mental-health professionals. The majority of nonmetropolitan counties in the U.S. don’t have a psychiatrist, and almost half lack a psychologist. The paucity has resulted in a public-health crisis—rural Americans suffering from a psychiatric condition are more likely to encounter police than receive treatment. Each year, 2 million mentally ill Americans, most of whom aren’t violent criminals, end up in jail.
This is the case in Cochise County, Arizona, a sprawling area nearly the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined, but with 3.8 million fewer residents. Many 911 calls in the area involve people with mental-health issues, and according to Mark Dannels, a local sheriff, 67 percent of the people in Cochise County Jail were diagnosed with a mental-health condition.
In the short documentary Out of Sight, Out of Mind, directed by James Burns for PBS Independent Lens, Dannels and other residents of Cochise speak to the alarming implications of the area’s lack of psychiatric resources.
“There’s an increasing demand for mental-health services across the board, and we can’t keep up,” Dr. James Reed says in the film. Reed is one of just two mental-health professionals serving the entirety of Cochise County.
“With the lack of resources in a county like Cochise, it is a revolving door [to prison],” Dannels says. “The options are limited … one option that remains constant is the arrest. I’ll be the first tell you, that’s not the answer.”
Music
Monday Music: Devendra Banhart, Carmensita
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 12.9.19
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will see scattered morning showers a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 4:20 PM, for 9h 06m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM, and the Whitewater Fire Department also meets this evening at 6 PM (later canceled).
On this day in 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas debuts on CBS.
Recommended for reading in full:
David E. Sanger writes For Trump, Instinct After Florida Killings Is Simple: Protect Saudis:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — When a Saudi Air Force officer opened fire on his classmates at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday, he killed three, wounded eight and exposed anew the strange dynamic between President Trump and the Saudi leadership: The president’s first instinct was to tamp down any suggestion that the Saudi government needed to be held to account.
Hours later, Mr. Trump announced on Twitter that he had received a condolence call from King Salman of Saudi Arabia, who clearly sought to ensure that the episode did not further fracture their relationship. On Saturday, leaving the White House for a trip here for a Republican fund-raiser and a speech on Israeli-American relations, Mr. Trump told reporters that “they are devastated in Saudi Arabia,” noting that “the king will be involved in taking care of families and loved ones.” He never used the word “terrorism.”
What was missing was any assurance that the Saudis would aid in the investigation, help identify the suspect’s motives, or answer the many questions about the vetting process for a coveted slot at one of the country’s premier schools for training allied officers. Or, more broadly, why the United States continues to train members of the Saudi military even as that same military faces credible accusations of repeated human rights abuses in Yemen, including the dropping of munitions that maximize civilian casualties.
AJ Vicens writes Trump Headlines a Fundraiser Alongside Accused War Criminals:
President Donald Trump’s took part in a Saturday night rally in South Florida, bringing two accused war criminals on to the stage as honored guests.
According to the Miami Herald, during his speech at Florida Republicans’ annual Statesman’s Dinner, Trump brought Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Matt Golsteyn in front of the crowd. Trump controversially pardoned the two—along with former Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher—last month against the recommendations of senior military leaders. Lorance was serving a 19-year prison sentence for murder after ordering soldiers to open fire on three unarmed Afghan men in 2012, killing two. Golsteyn had been charged with premeditated murder after admitting to shooting a detained, unarmed Afghan man in 2010. Golsteyn killed the prisoner off-base and buried his body, only to dig it up later, bring it back to the base, and burn it in a pit used to dispose of trash, according to theWashington Post.
How America’s Love Of Cats And Dogs Became A $72 Billion Business: