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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.2.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

The National Weather Service reports that Saturday in town will be a decreasingly cloudy day, but one could almost as well say an increasingly sunny one. We’ll have a high of about seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:46 and sunset is 7:56, for 14h 10m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Are all movie trailers really the same? The publisher of Red Letter Media thinks so:

On this day in 2011, bin Laden meets his fate:

Osama bin Laden, the founder and head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 am PKT[1][2] (20:00 UTC, May 1) by United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six). The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a Central Intelligence Agency-led operation. In addition to DEVGRU, participating units included the U.S. Army Special Operations Command‘s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and CIA operatives.[3][4] The raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was launched fromAfghanistan.[5] After the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden’s body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death, in accordance with Islamic tradition.[6] The United States had direct evidence that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, Pakistan.[7]

 

Business, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, WEDC

WEDC Develops Its Own Foreign Aid Program

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One reads that a big-business recipient of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s taxpayer-funded largesse is moving a plant and jobs…to Mexico:

WATERTOWN (WKOW) — A global power systems management corporation that has received nearly $370,000 in tax incentives from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) since 2012 is shipping jobs from Wisconsin to Mexico for the second time in three years.

Eaton Corp. announced last week it is permanently discontinuing the manufacture of printed circuit boards at its facility in Watertown, which will result in the elimination of 93 employees there.

“We first informed employees in April 2014, one year ago, that we would be moving the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) line from Watertown and consolidating it into another existing facility in Tijuana, Mexico,” Eaton Corp. Spokesperson Ann Marie Halal told 27 News. “These actions are in response to ongoing business and market conditions and a continued challenging business climate. They will allow the business to continue to compete globally and meet market demand.”

A 27 News investigation from July 2014 found that Eaton Corp. had received over $190,000 in WEDC tax credits despite laying off 163 employees at its Cooper Power Systems plant in Pewaukee in April 2013. The company moved those jobs to Mexico as well.

Those local officials who have so often crowed about the beneficence of the WEDC, as it bestows on white-collar enterprises and big businesses the tax receipts of blue-collar workers, have picked quite the winner in the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.

How wrong we’ve all been.

These gentlemen haven’t been boosters of an incompetent and slipshod tool of cronyism’s preferential treatment.

Oh, no: they have, instead, been boosters of a foreign aid program.

Astonishing, truly.

(An update, as someone asked: genuine and worthy foreign aid benefits struggling places so that they may overcome poverty, solidify their economies, and advance freedom politically and economically. It has nothing to do with giving money to big businesses that take from others repeatedly and undeservedly.)

WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and Sports

Previously, at FREE WHITEWATER on the WEDC:

Poll

Friday Poll: Vile Glutton or Valiant Competitor?

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Molly Schuyler recently won a food-eating competition by eating three steak dinners in less than twenty minutes. The three dinners included “the steaks, plus three baked potatoes, three shrimp cocktails, three salads and three rolls.”

Today’s poll: Is Ms. Schuyler a vile glutton for her conduct, or instead should we think of her as a valiant competitor for eating so much, so quickly?

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.1.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Whitewater’s Friday will be sunny with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 5:47 and sunset 7:45, for 14h 07m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

On 5.1.1931, Pres. Hoover dedicates the Empire State Building:

On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City’s Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building’s lights. Hoover’s gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York.

At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102 stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was the world’s tallest skyscraper. The Depression-era construction employed as many as 3,400 workers on any single day, most of whom received an excellent pay rate, especially given the economic conditions of the time. The new building imbued New York City with a deep sense of pride, desperately needed in the depths of the Great Depression, when many city residents were unemployed and prospects looked bleak. The grip of the Depression on New York’s economy was still evident a year later, however, when only 25 percent of the Empire State’s offices had been rented.

It’s the birthday of a noted Wisconsin academic:

On this date John Bascom was born in Genoa, New York. A noted educator, university president, and author, Bascom received his B.A. (1848) and M.A. (1852) from Williams College in Massachusetts. In 1855, he entered the Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. He was appointed president of the University of Wisconsin in 1874. A leader in college education, he devoted his career to improving university standards by encouraging improved high school instruction. Bascom also advocated co-educational instruction, a rarity in the 19th century. During his tenure as president, the first Agricultural Experimental Station and the School of Pharmacy were created, and new buildings such as the Washburn Observatory, Old Science Hall, the Library, and Assembly Hall were built. Bascom was a strong supporter of women’s rights, was a leader in the Prohibition party, and advocated the right of workers to join trade unions and strike for decent wages. He resigned from his university presidency in 1887 and returned to Williams College to lecture in sociology and political science. John Bascom died on October 2, 1911. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, pg. 29]

Here’s the final game in this week’s Puzzability series, Giving Away the Ending:

This Week’s Game — April 27-May 1
Giving Away the Ending
You’ll need to do a little detective work this week. For each day, we started with the title of a well-known mystery book and replaced all the letters in each word—except the last letter—with asterisks.
Example:
A  ****Y  *N  ******T
Answer:
A Study in Scarlet
What to Submit:
Submit the book title (as “A Study in Scarlet” in the example) for your answer.
Friday, May 1
A  *S  **R  ****I

Business, Science/Nature, Technology

Test Flight of Blue Origin Spaceship

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Blue Origin, a private spaceflight company, tested its New Shepard spaceship yesterday.  The capsule tested properly, but the engineers were unable to recover the rocket booster (as they had hoped they would be able to do).

Still, the launch alone demonstrates progress, and certainly impresses.

See, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Launches Private Spaceship Test Flight (Photos, Video) @ Space.com.

Drink, Food, Restaurant, Review

Restaurant Review: 841 Brew House

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I’m beginning a new, spring and summer series of restaurant reviews.

I’ll begin with something that, itself, is new: the restaurant at 841 Milwaukee Street, having opened at the beginning of the year.  The 841 Brew House is a sports bar and restaurant, and differs notably and favorably from the predecessor establishment at that location. 

I visited twice for this review (once for lunch, once for supper) and was impressed on both occasions.  The food was good, the staff friendly, and the atmosphere congenial, almost festive. 

The Brew House is an easy recommendation.  

Walking into the restaurant, you’ll find a long bar directly in front of you, with five (by my count) large monitors displaying sports programming.  To the right, there’s a traditional dining room (and separate rooms along the dining room that could accommodate banquets).  Beyond the dining room one finds outdoor seating. 

I had lunch at the bar, a burger (the Black and Tan) and beer (their Wheat), with a soda chaser.  It was properly prepared, just as I had requested (your server will ask, as one would expect).  Portions are ample, and well-arranged on the plate. 

They’ve four of their own brews (Amber, Wheat, IPA, Stout) and a traditional selection of domestics and imported. 

On both visits, a discerning (almost finicky) companion joined me and praised the quality of the salads offered. 

That’s what one finds at the Brew House: it’s a sports bar, but close by it’s a full-dining American-cuisine restaurant, too.  There’s only a slim chance that a sports bar would prepare a salad worth praising, but this sports bar (and restaurant) did. 

Looking around, even on a midweek evening, one could see fellow patrons in the restaurant having a happy time.  Many were seated at tables in the center of the room, laughing and talking.  Others were nearby in booths either along one of the walls or near large windows facing Milwaukee Street.  (Still others were dining outside.)

I didn’t visit for a Friday fish fry, but the restaurant had that kind of welcome, animated fish-fry atmosphere.  It’s hard to overestimate how full the room seemed, all with visibly satisfied patrons. 

This is a friendly, easy-going wait staff, well-informed and conversational.  Everyone I met on my visits, from host to servers to bartender, was pleasant, and lively.  One senses that they enjoy their work. 

I can say that I enjoyed the Brew House, and will be back again.

Easily recommended.

LOCATION: 841 E Milwaukee St  Whitewater, WI 53190.  (262) 473-8000.

OPEN: Dining hours are daily from 10:30 AM to 9:00 PM.  Bar is open until midnight.

PRICES: Sandwich & beer for about $10-12; Supper and drink for about $20.

RESERVATIONS: Unnecessary.

DRINKS: Beers, sodas, full bar.

SOUND: Moderate to high, with no background music in the dining room, but the sound of pleasant conversation all around.  (There’s no trouble being heard across the table, and the sound of other contented diners is infectious.)

SERVICE: Friendly, conversational, very enjoyable.

VISITS: Two (lunch and supper).

RATING: 3.5 of 4.

GoldStarGoldStarGoldStarGoldStar1

RATING SCALE: From one to four stars, representing the full experience of food, atmosphere, service, and pricing.

INDEPENDENCE: This review is delivered without financial or other connection to the establishment or its owner.  The dining experience was that of an ordinary patron, without notice to the staff or requests for special consideration.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.30.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 5:59 and sunset 7:54, for 14h 05m 19s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

So why can’t we see more of our moon’s surface from Earth? MinuteEarth has the answer:

On this day in 1864, a Wisconsin lumberjack’s quick thinking saves Union gunboats from capture:

1864 – Joseph Bailey Saves Union Fleet

On this date Joseph Bailey began to direct the men of six regiments, including the 23rd Wisconsin, in a dramatic attempt to save the heart of the Union fleet during the Civil War. Bailey, who was from Wisconsin Dells and an experienced lumberjack, served as an engineer in the 4th Wisconsin Cavalry. In a doomed campaign against the Confederates on the Red River in Louisiana, Union warships found themselves trapped by low water and the rocky river bed. As Confederate soldiers approached, Bailey employed water control techniques used by loggers to construct a series of dams that successfully narrowed the river, raised the water level by six feet, and provided enough surge to free the trapped fleet of gunboats. For his role in this rescue, Bailey was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He also received a Tiffany punch bowl from his fellow officers. [Wisconsin Lore and Legend, pg. 18.]

Here’s Thursday’s game in Puzzability‘s Giving Away in Ending series:

This Week’s Game — April 27-May 1
Giving Away the Ending
You’ll need to do a little detective work this week. For each day, we started with the title of a well-known mystery book and replaced all the letters in each word—except the last letter—with asterisks.
Example:
A  ****Y  *N  ******T
Answer:
A Study in Scarlet
What to Submit:
Submit the book title (as “A Study in Scarlet” in the example) for your answer.
Thursday, April 30
****Y  ***K

City, Culture, Local Government, School District, University

The Last Inside Accounts

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America has a continent, Wisconsin a vast expanse, and Whitewater nine beautiful square miles.  For Whitewater’s waning top-tier notables, however, there’s no more area than an arm’s length among a few dozen men and women.

When even one of them steps aside for the bathroom, the remaining universe for the others shrinks by a percent or two.

Over nearly eight years that I’ve been writing, local print news has declined, and its online versions have not been able to stem erosion in revenue and quality.

Although the quality’s poor – and it is – these local papers still offer a lingering value.

Now and again, they print the views of Whitewater’s town squires: paragraph after paragraph, all spilling out onto the page.

That’s invaluable, because if these papers did not publish how Whitewater’s few insiders saw themselves and their world, it would be hard for others to grasp how some of them actually think about things.

The Daily Union‘s Whitewater correspondents – there are now two of them – give others insight into the heaping self-congratulation, boosterism, and sycophancy of town figures.  If these correspondents didn’t write about insiders’ views of Chancellor Telfer, for example, reasonable people would have no idea how a few men and women fawn over mediocre leadership, and fall over each other to utter absurd encomiums.

(There’s a nutty, cult-like quality in these meetings, each person striving to praise the Dear Leader more than the one before.)

These stories are also useful in the way a lexicographer’s recording of a rare and dying language is useful – one has to hurry before it’s gone forever.

For the future of the city, however, shaped as it is from market forces of thousands locally, and far greater numbers beyond, there’s a new language emerging, a language that’s destined to last far longer than the one now irreversibly fading. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.29.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in town will be partly sunny, with a high of sixty-three, and a one-third chance of afternoon showers.  Sunrise is 5:50 and sunset 7:53, for 14h 02m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

About twenty years ago, on this day in 1992, America saw riots in Los Angeles even more destructive than the recent one in Baltimore. Here’s how the New York Times covered the news of acquittals in the beating of Rodney King, and its aftermath:

Los Angeles Policemen Acquitted In Taped Beating

By Seth Mydans

Special to The New York Times

RELATED HEADLINES
Storm of Anger Erupts — National Guard is Called Into City

Simi Valley, Calif., April 29 — Four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of assault today in the videotaped beating of a black motorist that stunned the nation. The verdicts immediately touched off a storm of anger and scattered violence in the city.

As residents set scores of fires, looted stores and beat passing motorists in the downtown area and pockets of predominantly black south-central Los Angeles, Mayor Tom Bradley declared a state of emergency, and Gov. Pete Wilson said he would send in the National Guard.

After hearing seven weeks of detailed testimony and studying the 81-second amateur videotape of the beating, the jury concluded that the policemen, all of whom are white, had not broken any laws when they clubbed and kicked the mostly prone motorist, Rodney G. King.

It was deadlocked on one of the 11 charges, and the prosecution said it might seek a new trial on that charge, which affected only one defendant.

The beating last spring, with its kicks and its 56 baton swings, was shown over and over on television. It immediately became one of the most visible uses of force by police in this country’s history and put the issue of police brutality on the national agenda.

Immediately after the verdicts, an unusually impassioned Mayor Bradley appeared on television to appeal for calm in a city where the videotape has come to symbolize complaints about police brutality, racism and street violence.

‘Today the system failed us,’ the Mayor said.

Here’s Wednesday’s game from Puzzability, in its Giving Away the Ending series:

This Week’s Game — April 27-May 1
Giving Away the Ending
You’ll need to do a little detective work this week. For each day, we started with the title of a well-known mystery book and replaced all the letters in each word—except the last letter—with asterisks.
Example:
A  ****Y  *N  ******T
Answer:
A Study in Scarlet
What to Submit:
Submit the book title (as “A Study in Scarlet” in the example) for your answer.
Wednesday, April 29
**E  ***L  ***H  **E  *****N  *****O

Education, School District

The Whitewater Schools’ Near Future

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Look out a few years (the next three to five, let’s say), and the Whitewater Unified School District has difficult prospects.  Beyond that conditions may get better, but getting better may simply mean recapturing lost ground rather than net gains from today’s circumstances.

The district faces perpetual, structural deficits, made somewhat less difficult only through perpetual revenue-cap-exceeding referenda. 

Immediate solutions involve preserving programming (but at the cost of hollowing the district’s labor force).  If the WUSD isn’t yet an uncompetitive option for talented new employees, it soon will be. 

As state and national policy favors testing and measurement at almost every turn, district achievement will be measured against nearby districts and the state.  A dispirited workforce and uncompetitive employment offerings will assure that scores will fall below peer districts.  See, Kidney-Selling as a Threat to the City’s Future and Whitewater YES is Right, for Now.

Attempting to spin poor scores as good ones will persuade no one.  It’s a mug’s game.   (I’m not a supporter of frequent testing – I think it’s a mediocre person’s idea of what it looks like to be exceptional – but at least people can see the difference between reliable data and sketchy presentations.)

The same insiders who have flacked scores will find that Whitewater will seem behind nearby districts. 

There are few in Central Office – that is, among the full-time administrative staff –  who show significant evidence of having the political skills to move to long-term solutions.  The last few years will prove easy compared with the next few. There are very sharp politicians in this town; I don’t know if anyone at Central Office seems suited this way. 

What to do?

1.  Forget touting scores. 

2. Prepare for programming and capital cuts on a meaningful scale.

3. Promote labor over capital. 

4. Forget leading with the budget; lead with the curriculum.  Presenting the district’s budget manager (described with Whitewater’s customary title inflation as the budget director) as though he were an Asst. District Administrator will prove politically disadvantageous in the years ahead. 

The over-reliance on a budget director, citizens’ budget team, etc., will only exacerbate tensions when deeper cuts, and comparisons with other districts’ scores, take their political toll. 

Outside of a few people, no one in the city will focus on team this, or team that – the buck will rest with the board and district administrator, no one else.  It would be easier to hide behind someone’s apron than to use a citizens’ team or budget director as a shield.  

That the district has skated by this way does not mean that the ice isn’t getting thinner, and will be unable to support the weight of these efforts. 

5. The district needs to take, into its own hands, promotion of its accomplishments.

6. The district needs to present errors and limitations honestly.  This administrative team has about as much of Old Whitewater’s penchant for small-town puffery as any team in town. 

If I were cynical – and I’m not – I’d say that exaggerations are easily pilloried and are advantageous for blogging. 

Because I see Whitewater through clear eyes, and have confidence in her long-term prospects, I know that the only consequence of pretending all is well is that these administrators will find themselves unable to succeed in the more difficult times ahead.  That’s a huge loss for Whitewater, and so a loss for all of us in the city. 

The sooner these administrators make a break, the better off Whitewater will be.  If they don’t, they’ll find that although Whitewater’s long-term outlook will still be positive, that eventual success will belong to another team.  

Needless to say, the district’s success or failure isn’t about administrators; it’s about a generation of students.  It’s merely the case that administrative corrections now will help both students and officials.  Failure to correct will hurt both groups.  

What these administrators and board members choose to do, in the near future, I cannot say. 

The consequences of their actions, whichever course they choose, are much easier to predict.