Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 1.10.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with snow beginning in the evening, and a daytime high of thirty-eight. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:40 PM, for 9h 15m 04s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 49 BC, Caesar crosses the Rubicon (the frontier boundary of Italy) with only a single legion, the Legio XIII Gemina, and ignites a civil war.
Recommended for reading in full —
Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky report Justice Dept. winds down Clinton-related inquiry once championed by Trump. It found nothing of consequence:
A Justice Department inquiry launched more than two years ago to mollify conservatives clamoring for more investigations of Hillary Clinton has effectively ended with no tangible results, and current and former law enforcement officials said they never expected the effort to produce much of anything.
John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, was tapped in November 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to look into concerns raised by President Trump and his allies in Congress that the FBI had not fully pursued cases of possible corruption at the Clinton Foundation and during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, when the U.S. government decided not to block the sale of a company called Uranium One.
As a part of his review, Huber examined documents and conferred with federal law enforcement officials in Little Rock who were handling a meandering probe into the Clinton Foundation, people familiar with the matter said. Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing — though the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers, these people said.
The effective conclusion of his investigation, with no criminal charges or other known impacts, is likely to roil some in the GOP who had hoped the prosecutor would vindicate their long-held suspicions about a political rival.
Patrick Marley reports Three Lincoln Hills nurses reprimanded for giving inadequate care to 14-year-old inmate:
State officials have reprimanded three prison nurses for failing to provide adequate care to a 14-year-old boy who was given crackers and soda for days when his appendix was at risk of bursting.
A doctor who performed emergency surgery on the boy in 2016 called the actions by the nurses at Lincoln Hills School for Boys inexcusable. She told investigators at the time they should have known to get the boy to the doctor three days earlier.
Reacting to the 3-year-old incident, the state Board of Nursing in November formally reprimanded three nurses who treated the boy — Kurt Dieter Bartz, Corey Brandenburg and Kitty Hasse. In deals with the board, the three agreed to pay about $450 each and take courses on assessing patients.
The board acted only recently because the state Department of Corrections waited more than two years to tell regulators about what happened.
City, Education, School District
On the Dissolution of the Palmyra-Eagle School District, Reason Carries the Day
by JOHN ADAMS •
Earlier today, a School District Boundary Appeal Board (Wis. Stat. §15.375) voted by a margin of 6-1 against the dissolution of the Palmyra-Eagle School District. The possible dissolution of that school district loomed for many months. Dissolving that district would have led to a significant reallocation of students, faculty, resources, and obligations to Whitewater or other nearby communities.
Dissolution was always a bad idea – bad for many students of Palmyra-Eagle, bad for Whitewater and other districts, and bad as a Wisconsin precedent. I’ve written about dissolution before – including in opposition to a presumptuous, truly ill-conceived plan to split the Palmyra-Eagle District between the Whitewater and Mukwonago School Districts. (As the work of the School District Boundary Appeal Board progressed, Whitewater sensibly retreated from her earlier petition to the Wisconsin Legislature insisting on dividing the Palmyra-Eagle District between Whitewater and Mukwonago.)
See Educational (Among Other) Uncertainties in Rural Communities, School Board, 10.28.19: 3 Points, and Dissolving a School District.
There is much yet to write about the Whitewater Unified School District, as there are significant, debilitating challenges to be addressed.
For now, it is reassuring to know that on Thursday, 1.9.2020, in one small part of the world very near Whitewater, reason carried the day.
Trump
What Is Trump’s Problem With Dogs?
by JOHN ADAMS •
Speaking of dogs…
Advertising, Newspapers
Nothing Says Dog-Crap Publication Like Dog-Crap Ads
by JOHN ADAMS •
One can estimate a for-profit publication’s value in the marketplace by the ads it attracts. The leaves the Janesville Gazette, a rusty link in an out-of-state newspaper chain, in a weak position: it’s running dog-crap ads.
Consider this canine calling-card displayed on the Gazette’s main page today, 1.9.20 (‘Trump Is On A Roll…Ends Another Obama Era Program):
The ad makes no sense, of course: Trump supposedly ended an Obama era program, but now there’s a Congressional program one can use (executive branch, legislative branch, whatever…) If Trump’s on a roll, why isn’t the new program Trump’s program?
The ad is from LowerMyBills.com, an advertiser that has received an F rating from the Better Business Bureau®? (“Failure to respond to 8 complaints filed against business…Government action(s) against business”). The government action involves a multimillion-dollar settlement (“Texas Reaches $2 Million Settlement with Fraudulent Lead Generation Company”).
The chain of which the Gazette is a link looks more each day like an advertising delivery network. The ads look like more each day like something one would handle only with a pooper scooper.
America, Bad Ideas, CDA, Economics, Economy, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, Local Government, State Government, WEDC, Wisconsin
But, but, but…we were promised growth, growth, growth!
by JOHN ADAMS •
Locally, statewide, and nationally, Trump & those who flacked his tax bill, and those who also pushed corporate welfare schemes (Foxconn, WEDC, Whitewater CDA), promised growth, growth, growth!
How odd that these men — politicians, movers-and-shakers, developers, landlords, and public relations types — seem to have missed the mark:
The World Bank sees U.S. growth stumbling from the unspectacular 2.3 percent growth it notched in 2019 to 1.8 percent this year — on its way down to 1.7 percent in both 2021 and 2022. That would amount to a significant underperformance measured against President Trump’s promise to deliver at least 3 percent growth.
And the World Bank’s forecasters aren’t alone. Economists gathered at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting last week shared a “dark” mood, according to the New York Times’s Jim Tankersley and Jeanna Smialek.
(Emphasis in original.)
New Media, Newspapers, Politics, Wisconsin
If Not 2020, When?
by JOHN ADAMS •
In August, the Journal Sentinel published a story, Liberal ‘news’ websites launching in Wisconsin, where conservative versions have thrived. (From the viewpoint of the JS, these are ‘news’ sites not news sites, as the paper is suspicious of non-traditional reporting. Without seeing some of the online publications, however, the scare quotes seem presumptuous.)
These months later, only one of the publications described in the story is now online. (The Wisconsin Examiner has been up from months.)
Of the others, For What It’s Worth Media is still hiring, and American Ledger does not have (and perhaps never intended to have) a dedicated Wisconsin site.
If a publication’s not online by now, it’s already late to the game. Wisconsin will see local elections, a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, a presidential primary, a presidential convention, and state and federal elections this year.
The Wisconsin Examiner was online last summer, and any publication jumping into the fray now will have a hard time getting traction. Being noticed is only part of what’s needed; it’s most important to know they lay of the land.
This will be a challenging year for Wisconsin and America, requiring industry and tenacity.
Those who aren’t here yet have probably waited too long.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 1.9.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:39 PM, for 9h 15m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2007, Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone to the public at the Macworld 2007 convention.
Recommended for reading in full —
Todd Richmond reports Air Force confirms Wisconsin National Guard’s former commander Donald Dunbar under investigation:
Gov. Tony Evers’ office has said the National Guard Bureau’s Office of Complex Investigations discovered that Adj. Gen. Donald Dunbar improperly launched the probe sometime last year while the OCI was conducting a top-to-bottom review of the Wisconsin Guard’s sexual assault complaint protocols.
Evers and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin requested the review in March after Master Sgt. Jay Ellis complained to Baldwin in 2018 that commanders in his 115th Fighter Wing security squadron had brushed off at least six sexual misconduct complaints dating back to 2002.
The National Guard Bureau produced a report in December that found multiple shortcomings with how Dunbar’s command handled sexual assault complaints, including launching internal investigations in 22 of 35 cases reported between 2009 and 2019. Federal law and Department of Defense regulations require commanders to refer sexual assault complaints to their respective branches’ criminal investigators and prohibit internal investigations.
Lawrence Lessig writes Don’t allow McConnell to swear a false oath:
To swear a false oath is perjury — the crime President Bill Clinton was charged with in his impeachment. Yet given the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, a senator likely could not be charged with perjury for swearing falsely on the Senate floor. Instead, it is the Senate itself that must police members’ oaths — as it has in the past. Beginning in 1864, and continuing for 20 years, members had to swear an oath affirming their commitment to the Union. Often when it was clear that a member could not swear that oath honestly, he was not permitted to take it. As Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner said, “A false oath, taken with our knowledge, would compromise the Senate. We who consent will become parties to the falsehood.”
….
Among the senators who will have to take an oath in the trial of President Trump is the majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Yet McConnell has openly declared that he is “not impartial about this at all.” “Impeachment,” the senator has opined, is a “political process. This [sic] is not anything judicial about it.”
….
Any senator is privileged to object to any other senator taking an oath. The chief justice would then have to decide whether the oath can be sworn honestly. As there seems no way that McConnell’s oath could be honest, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. should forbid McConnell from taking it. Whether he so rules or not, the decision could be appealed to the Senate as a whole. Should the Senate openly accept a false oath — perjury — in a proceeding to determine the president’s guilt?
Boosterism, Newspapers
Cancel Your Local Newspaper?
by JOHN ADAMS •
Over at Politico, press critic Jack Shafer writes – provocatively – Care About Journalism? Maybe You Should Cancel Your Newspaper:
It’s heresy for a journalist to ask readers to consider dropping their newspaper. Beyond the obvious self-interest, reporters and editors consider a subscription to your local newspaper as a paramount civic duty, a view shared by academics, politicians, and activists. Local reporters hold government and corporations accountable, the refrain goes. They keep an eye on school boards and polluters and their stories boost voter turnout. They uncover corruption. They knit the weave in the social fabric. They foster democracy!
But when you pay for a newspaper, you’re also making a decision to send money to whoever owns it. And if you really care about local news, you might want to think twice about continuing your subscription to one of the 50-plus dailies operated by Alden Global Capital under the Digital First Media nameplate in Denver, Detroit, Long Beach, San Jose, Boston, St. Paul, and other smaller cities. Good journalism still gets done at these newspapers because reporters care. But less and less of it gets printed, because Alden owner Randall Smith and his right-hand man, Heath Freeman, don’t care about the new. As newspaper industry analyst Ken Doctor has amply documented, Alden is cannibalizing its papers for profit in a way that should repel subscribers.
Shafer is proposing cancellations of local newspapers that are part of a chain. Alden Global Capital owns one such chain, but then another out-of-state chain – APG – owns some of the papers in the Whitewater area (Janesville Gazette and Daily Jefferson County Union).
Cancel? Although one sees Shafer’s point about local-that’s-not-really-local, I’ll not offer advice for subscribers to these (generally struggling) local newspapers. I’ve been a critic of these papers, as I grew up in a newspaper-reading family at a time with much better journalism. Although there’s ample doubt about whether the Gazette and Daily Union will survive, my critique is about reporting and editorial outlook alone. One makes this critique because these papers could do better, and look each day more like advertising-delivery networks that are doing worse
If these newspapers fail, they will fail because they abandoned independence for the boosterism of sugary feature stories and sloppy editorials.
When someone like Trump complains about national newspapers, he calls their reporting fake only because it is rightly embarrassing to his administration. On the contrary, national – and local – newspapers fail not because they are too critical of official misconduct, but because they are too timid in the face of it. Trump (self-interestedly) gets the problem backward.
Local newspapers have slipped far, and the older editors employed there show no ability to teach another generation properly. Mentoring should be more than confidence-building platitudes and atta-boy compliments. Those approaches are sometimes helpful, but it was, is, and always will be true that the substance of one’s work speaks most powerfully.
CDA, City, Culture, Politics
Local Candidacies in Whitewater, 2020
by JOHN ADAMS •
There are six public seats up for election in Whitewater this spring (three on the Whitewater Common Council and three on the Whitewater Unified School District’s board.) It seems there are six candidates for these six offices (five incumbents and one former officeholder). This is what one would expect of government in Whitewater over these recent years: one year looking similar to the last one.
Some nearby towns have seen greater interest in officeholding; Whitewater has seen less.
Six candidates or sixty, the principal challenge for government in Whitewater is that a public body with individually talented people often produces collectively less than one might expect (or even hope). It’s the opposite of a synergy; collectives here often achieve less than what one might expect considering their strongest members’ abilities. See Whitewater’s Major Public Institutions Produce a Net Loss (And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way).
At the local school district, this is especially evident: a school board that does not review that night’s administrative presentations before the meeting – that, in fact, hasn’t even seen these presentations – can set neither a good example nor expect accountability from others.
Neither school board members, nor centralized administrators, nor principals are drafted into service — these are positions freely chosen from among a marketplace of occupations. When others see that less is exerted in oversight, they will offer less in effort. Over time, they will come to think that whatever they offer, however inadequate, is as though a gift to students and parents, and that the community should be grateful.
Professional services should meet a professional standard; no one owes professionals their sloth. Patients shouldn’t accept a doctor like that, clients shouldn’t accept a lawyer like that, and students and parents shouldn’t accept a lesser standard, either.
The district’s significant challenges will require significant energy and commitment.
For city government, business as usual runs the longstanding problem of ignorant-but-entitled development men (helped by a catspaw or two on the Whitewater Common Council) insisting that they should have pride of place, after years of self-promotion during of years of stagnation.
(They are likely, however, to prowl about even now for more subsidized deals, and special tax districts, at public expense. It’s what they are, and it’s what they’ll do.)
There are, surely, creative and vigorous pursuits in Whitewater. Most of these involve independent merchants or private charitable efforts that realistically address the city’s needs.
Slowly, Whitewater’s diverse communities (and the city is now evidently and undeniably heterogeneous) have begun to look beyond government for expression and meaning. This has been a gradual process for Whitewater, but the city has been moving in that direction (with some pauses and retrograde motion along the way).
Social evolution like this should be allowed to continue, although a disappointed few may do what they can to stop this natural transformation.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 1.8.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-one. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:38 PM, for 9h 13m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1790, George Washington delivers the first regular annual message before a joint session of Congress, in New York City (then the provisional U.S. capital).
Recommended for reading in full —
Scott Bauer reports Democrats focus on Wisconsin for 2020 convention, election:
MILWAUKEE — The head of the Democratic National Convention promised Tuesday that the event in Milwaukee this summer to choose the party’s presidential nominee will be focused more on substance than spectacle as part of a strategy to be more successful in key states such as Wisconsin.
Democrats failed in 2016 to communicate as effectively as they could have in key states, said Joe Solmonese, a longtime Democratic strategist and executive officer for the convention. He spoke to reporters at a media walk-through event Tuesday at the Fiserv Forum, six months before the July convention.
The event and more than 1,000 related events will bring an estimated 50,000 people to Milwaukee, bringing added emphasis to the importance of Wisconsin in the presidential race.
Miranda Suarez reports These Are The Rare Species Discovered Or Rediscovered In Wisconsin In Last Decade:
State conservationists confirmed the return of Blanchard’s cricket frog to Trempealeau County in 2017. Before that, the frog — which is listed as endangered in Wisconsin — hadn’t been documented there in more than 50 years.
A volunteer identified the frog by its distinctive call, a clicking sound the Wisconsin Citizen-based Monitoring Network describes as two ball bearings being smacked together.
Blanchard’s cricket frog is one of several species the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said were discovered or rediscovered in parts of Wisconsin in the last decade.
One newcomer is the evening bat, the state’s first new bat species in more than 60 years, according to the DNR.
Evening bats are “an interesting sort of orange-colored, and some say sort of orange-peel-smelling” creature, said Owen Boyle, a DNR conservationist.
Bruce Murphy writes Journal Sentinel Promotes Long-Gone Writer:
On Sunday the Journal Sentinel, whose display ads have been shrinking for more than a decade, had an ad spot to fill and so it added a promotion for USA Today, whose parent company (Gatehouse-Gannett) also owns the Milwaukee daily.
The ad was certainly punchy. It featured a photo of writer Michael Wolff, with this come-on:
READ HIS COLUMN,
AND THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS
HE’S NOT WRITING ABOUT YOU
No none gives you sharp, brutally honest insights into the world of business quite like USA TODAY’S Michael Wolff.
Except, to be brutally honest, Wolff hasn’t written a column for USA Today since January 2017. Which, by process of elimination, would mean no one now offers such brutally honest insights in the newspaper.
Culture, Newspapers, Politics
‘Bothsiderism’
by JOHN ADAMS •
Gina Overholser, a writing about a liberal paper, remarks of the New York Times that
Its investigative and enterprise work rises to today’s unprecedented challenges. But in day-to-day political reporting, the Times is hopelessly stuck in the past. Its proud allegiance to presenting “both sides” in a time of political breakdown renders it a handmaiden to the degradation of truth.
Here’s a recent example: One politician makes an appeal to hold a president accountable. Another responds by telling the first to put aside partisan politics. One statement will stand as historic; the other is nonsense. But the reporter solemnly adds: “But the appeals to rise above the tribalism of the moment from the two veteran lawmakers fell on deaf ears.” The distortions in the name of balance grow more painful as the article continues.
….
Wikipedia calls it “bothsidesism.” Its Twitter hashtag does lively trade. But the Times (and The Washington Post) have girded their loins against the frequent outcries over their commitment to it.
The damage this journalism is doing is awful enough. But think too of the promise of what could happen if we were freed from this contortion. Along with the courts, the press has the capacity to bring the nation together when norms are changing. The Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage is one example. So is press coverage of sexual harassment. (Here’s an interesting piece of research on this topic.)
See also The two big flaws of the media’s impeachment coverage — and what went right and The Lazy, False Equivalance in Craig Gilbert’s Analysis.
The only worse view, perhaps, would be to think there’s only one perspective (although those deciding between the lesser of a false moral equivalence and a monochromatic viewpoint have a melancholy choice).
An aside about the New York Times: the paper has a fair number of critics from the right, but it’s criticism from the center-left, in circumstances like ours today, that represents a bigger challenge to the publication’s future. Conservative complaints about the Times have been present for years; center-left critiques like Overholser’s are newer, and grow more common each day. Conservatives may love to hate the NYT, but the center-left, if sufficiently aggrieved, will simply turn elsewhere.
No one in our time will acquit himself or herself well through insistence on false similarities or indiscernible differences. Not everyone’s a liar, not everyone’s a bigot, and not everyone’s a tyrant – society has some, but only some, who are like this.
It’s right and necessary to see as much.
America, City, Never Trump, Politics, Trump
One Year
by JOHN ADAMS •
For all the discussion of politics over these last three years, America now comes to a critical year ahead. In these next twelve months, we’ll see primaries, conventions, a general election, and thereafter possible challenges to, and necessary defenses of, the constitutional order.
When was there another year so important to America as 2020 looks to be? Perhaps 1864, or before that 1776.
There have been significant losses these last three years, but graciously some gains that offer hope for the future.
These losses – and they have been grievous – have reached all parts of America, affecting millions, and threatening countless more, at home and abroad. A loss to Trumpism would leave nothing unsoiled. Even the smallest and most beautiful places, like Whitewater, would be stained.
Those scheming political men in Whitewater who have for years encouraged the antecedents of Trumpism deserve now only opposition; those other political men who have carried on with heads down and eyes averted deserve no deference. People choose freely — sometimes well and sometimes poorly. Those in Trump’s thrall, and those who have claimed a futile neutrality, have chosen poorly.
There is something profoundly ridiculous about men who hungrily strive for small things while ignoring large things.
Other years will follow this one; the conditions in those years will depend greatly on our commitment in this year.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 1.7.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:37 PM, for 9h 12m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1901, Robert Marion La Follette is inaugurated as governor of Wisconsin. (Fighting Bob was the first Wisconsin-born person to serve as governor.)
Recommended for reading in full —
Hope Kirwan reports Wisconsin Loses 10 Percent Of State’s Dairy Herds As Fallout From Low Milk Prices Continues:
Wisconsin lost 10 percent of the state’s dairy farms in 2019, breaking last year’s record high.
The latest data from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection shows there were 7,292 registered dairy herds in the state as of Jan. 1.
That’s 818 fewer than at the start of 2019 and the largest decline since state records started in 2004. Wisconsin lost just over 7 percent of its herds in 2018.
Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Wisconsin usually sees a 4 percent decline in herd numbers each year. But the prolonged period of low milk prices from 2014 to 2019 have forced many farms to sell their herds.
And Stephenson warns the decline will likely continue, even though milk prices have started to improve.
“I think we’re going to find that this has a long tail. Our milk prices are recovering right now and it’s a much better time for milk prices than it was say at the beginning of 2019,” Stephenson said. “But there are a lot of farms that just have such damaged balance sheets that I don’t think they’re going to recover from this. It’s a matter of when they decide they need to exit the industry.”
Todd Richmond reports GOP resurrects bill to make English official language:
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican lawmakers have resurrected a bill that would make English the official language in Wisconsin, renewing their argument that the measure will push immigrants to learn the language and make them more attractive to employers.
Sens. Andre Jacque, Dave Craig and Steve Nass began circulating the bill for co-sponsors Monday. The trio is among the most conservative members of the Republican majority.
The proposal would declare English as Wisconsin’s official language and require all state and local government officials to write all their documents in English. The bill would allow for the use of other languages in certain situations, including to protect a citizen’s health or safety, to teach another language, to facilitate census counts and to protect criminal defendants’ rights. The measure wouldn’t restrict the use of other languages for non-governmental purposes.
….
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ spokeswoman, Kit Beyer, didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiring about the bill’s chances. Alec Zimmerman, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, had no immediate comment.
The clock is already ticking for Jacque, Craig and Nass; with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers poised to veto any major GOP initiatives, Vos and Fitzgerald are expected to convene only a handful of floor periods before the 2019-20 session ends this spring.