Via UPI.com.
Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS
Elections, Politics
On Vetting Candidates: Be Sure to Check “Social Media.” You Know, on the Inter-Webs
by JOHN ADAMS •
In Wisconsin’s 44th Assembly contest, nineteen-year-old GOP candidate Jacob Dorsey has withdrawn following discovery of his numerous racist and bigoted posts on social media. The episode is now a national story.
(Bashing blacks, gays, even Abraham Lincoln…Dorsey kept busy. One additional, much smaller matter: he even suggested in a tweet that Utah was his favorite state; a candidate for Wisconsin office should have a longstanding conviction that Wisconsin is his or her favorite state.)
Although it’s lawful to post what he did, needless to say his already long odds in a Democratic-leaning district grew vastly longer after the discovery. For principled and practical reasons, he had to withdraw.
Dorsey is heading back to school at Brigham Young University-Idaho; he’ll have ample time to consider these statements and the impact on his future plans.
The Rock County Republicans, however, aren’t heading to Idaho; they plan on staying in Rock County.
I’m a libertarian, not a Republican, but I am sympathetic to ordinary GOP voters in Rock County who were owed greater diligence from party leaders. Unlike their candidate, one can guess that the average age of GOP officials in the local party is somewhat over nineteen.
Those officials should have done a better job vetting this candidate before they gave him a donation (one that they now want back). People who believe in a political party – whichever one – deserve better candidates than this; it’s the task of party leaders to do more research than was done in this Assembly race.
Both the WISGOP and WisDems have professional websites and up-to-date communications, but no advanced operations were required to learn about these past statements.
All that was needed was a computer, keyboard, mouse, and Internet connection.
That’s not too much to ask of local party leaders, in Rock County, or anywhere else in America.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 9.18.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
Thursday in the city will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-seven. Sunrise today is 6:38 AM and sunset 6:59 PM. The moon is a waning crescent with twenty-six percent of its visible disk illuminated.
A little video editing, like that of Argentina’s Fernando Lipschitz, can make ordinary traffic at an intersection seem like a ballet of near-miss encounters:
RUSH HOUR from Black Sheep Films on Vimeo.
On this day in 1973, another – yet not just another – UFO report:
…future President Jimmy Carter files a report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), claiming he had seen an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in October 1969.
During the presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic challenger Carter was forthcoming about his belief that he had seen a UFO. He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called “the darndest thing I’ve ever seen” in the sky. Carter, as well as 10 to 12 other people who witnessed the same event, described the object as “very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon.” Carter reported that “the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the earth and away before disappearing into the distance.” He later told a reporter that, after the experience, he vowed never again to ridicule anyone who claimed to have seen a UFO.
During the presidential campaign of 1976, Carter promised that, if elected president, he would encourage the government release “every piece of information” about UFOs available to the public and to scientists. After winning the presidency, though, Carter backed away from this pledge, saying that the release of some information might have “defense implications” and pose a threat to national security.
Google-a-Day asks a question about finance:
Because the company increased shareholder dividends for 25 years in a row, what S&P designation was granted the world’s largest distributor of toys?
Military, Technology
The Rise of the Robo-Cheetahs
by JOHN ADAMS •
Well, we knew it had to happen someday. A DARPA-funded robotic cheetah has been released into the wild, so to speak. A new algorithm developed by MIT researchers now allows their quadruped to run and jump — while untethered — across a field of grass.
The Pentagon, in an effort to investigate technologies that allow machines to traverse terrain in unique ways well, at least thats what they tell us, has been funding via DARPA the development of a robotic cheetah. Back in 2012, Boston Dynamics version smashed the landspeed record for the fastest mechanical mammal of Earth, reaching a top speed of 28.3 miles 45.5 km per hour.
Researchers at MIT have their own version of robo-cheetah, and theyve taken the concept in a new direction by imbuing it with the ability to run and bound while completely untethered.
Via MITs Robotic Cheetah Can Now Run And Jump While Untethered @ io9.
Politics, Poll, School District
The 9.17.14 Marquette Law School Poll (and Our Schools Referendum)
by JOHN ADAMS •
Charles Franklin’s latest Marquette Law School Poll is out today, with polling on the governor’s race, attorney general’s race, and on several key political issues.
Although the Wisconsin gubernatorial election is a huge topic within the state, there’s not much polling on it beyond the Marquette Poll.
The poll has its critics, too. Democrat Ed Garvey has for years said it’s biased. More recently, there’s been surprise that prior results in 2014 surveys have gone the way they have (with Walker ahead among registered voters, but Burke ahead among likely voters – a counter-intuitive result for some analysts).
Still, this poll is the biggest game in town, so to speak.
(One of my predictions for 2014, made in January, is that Gov. Walker will win statewide but that, locally, Mary Burke will carry the City of Whitewater solidly.)
The 9.17.14 poll has Walker 49, Burke 46 among likelies, tied at 46 among registered voters, and within the statistical margin of error. In the end, that’s really, as Franklin writes, a ‘statistical dead heat.’
Franklin sees a greater percentage of Republicans as likely voters than Democrats (80% over 73%), and in this latest poll sees a greater enthusiasm among GOP voters (67% to 60% for Democrats).
It’s early, and Franklin’s polling (with what little public polling there is from others) will begin to emphasize likely voters as the election gets closer.
Statewide results like those in today’s poll, if distributed as one would expect across the state, would give Burke Whitewater and Walker the towns around the city. There’s nothing surprising about today’s survey.
On our school referendum, I still think that the most important influence will be the governor’s race, by such a measure that local issues will get far less attention. Local issues elsewhere will be mostly the same: it’s the gubernatorial race that will drive voting.
There are two exceptions to the gubernatorial race as a driver of local voting in Whitewater: if someone says something utterly nutty, or if no one makes any detailed case for the referendum.
First, it’s highly improbable that there will be any truly nutty policy statements. On the contrary, this is likely to be an undramatic discussion.
Second, there will have to be some policy discussion: it would be oddly lazy to coast only on an expected blue wave in the city. Even someone who thinks that the gubernatorial race will be paramount (as I do) wouldn’t be inclined to think that for proponents providing no discussion would be a sensible plan.
The example in this, recently, is the failed Blackhawk Technical College referendum. That measure had the strong support of labor, conservative business-development advocates, the Gazette‘s conservative editorial board, and politicians on both sides of the aisle. Conservative and liberal voters turned it aside, however, as there was little explanation of why the request was important.
In my own case, I’m genuinely interested in the details behind the referendum, and more generally the curriculum in our schools.
Those looking at this only as a matter of winning and losing will not find their man in me – serious topics deserve serious discussion. The vote has significance for our high school (and other places), but it’s more than a high school election, so to speak.
A dumbed-down political discussion is the last thing this town needs; Whitewater should have better than the recent use of a few numbers or slogans carelessly thrown about.
For today, though, we’ve more polling suggesting that the gubernatorial election before us is likely to be close, and so will be the key political topic for weeks to come.
Anderson, Cartoons & Comics
Week
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 9.17.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
Midweek in town will be sunny with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset is 7:01 PM. The moon is a waning crescent with thirty-four percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1787, delegates at the the Constitutional Convention sign their finished product:
Once the final modifications had been made, the Committee of Style and Arrangement was appointed “to revise the style of and arrange the articles which had been agreed to by the house.” Unlike other committees, whose members were named so the committees included members from different regions, this final committee included no champions of the small states. Its members were mostly in favor of a strong national government and unsympathetic to calls for states’ rights.[12]:229–230 They were William Samuel Johnson (Connecticut), Alexander Hamilton (New York), Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania), James Madison (Virginia), and Rufus King (Massachusetts). On Wednesday, September 12, the report of the “committee of style” was ordered printed for the convenience of the delegates. For three days, the Convention compared this final version with the proceedings of the Convention. The Constitution was then ordered engrossed on Saturday, September 15 by Jacob Shallus, and was submitted for signing on September 17. It made at least one important change to what the Convention had agreed to; King wanted to prevent states from interfering in contracts. Although the Convention never took up the matter his language was now inserted, creating the contract clause.[12]:243
Gouverneur Morris is credited, both now and then, as the chief draftsman of the final document, including the stirring preamble. Not all the delegates were pleased with the results; thirteen left before the ceremony, and three of those remaining refused to sign: Edmund Randolph of Virginia, George Mason of Virginia, and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. George Mason demanded a Bill of Rights if he was to support the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was not included in the Constitution submitted to the states for ratification, but many states ratified the Constitution with the understanding that a bill of rights would soon follow.[14] Shortly before the document was to be signed, Gorham proposed to lower the size of congressional districts from 40,000 to 30,000 citizens. A similar measure had been proposed earlier, and failed by one vote. George Washington spoke up here, making his only substantive contribution to the text of the Constitution in supporting this move. The Convention adopted it without further debate. Gorham would sign the document, although he had openly doubted whether the United States would remain a single, unified nation for more than 150 years.[12]:112 Ultimately, 39 of the original 55 delegates ended up signing, but it is likely that none were completely satisfied. Their views were summed up by Benjamin Franklin, who said,
“I confess that There are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. … I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. … It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies…[15]”
Google-a-Day asks a geography question:
What famous Alexandrian was responsible for the most popular map printed from movable type in the fifteenth century?
Business
How to Pronounce 15 Difficult-to-Say Brand Names
by JOHN ADAMS •
It shouldn’t matter whether a patron or partygoer pronounces a brand name just right. Still, for some people it’s a worry – who knows when the next snooty waiter or host might appear?
Business Insider‘s here to help, with a guide for pronouncing fifteen brand names that sometimes cause trouble:
Police, Politics, Press, University
The Politics of Informants at UW-Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
In a well-ordered community, there should be an accord between good policy and good politics. That’s not yet Whitewater, and this post will address the political implications of using confidential informants.
(For a review of policy, please see yesterday’s How Rural Wisconsin Campuses Coerce Students into Becoming Drug Informants.)
1. Police Leadership. There’s almost no chance that middle-aged police leaders (Chief Kiederlen at UW-Whitewater, Chief Otterbacher in Whitewater) will change their policies on the use of young confidential informants. They were trained this way, brought up through the ranks this way, and are supported this way from like-minded police leaders nearby.
They’re sure that they’re right, and the risks don’t mean much to them. (Kiederlen: “To me, it’s a positive all the way around.”)
It doesn’t matter that it’s shallow thinking; they’ve the support from law-enforcement leaders of the same ilk. There are also those in town who are concerned about a solution to drug use, and will latch onto any proposal (even one like this).
Needless to say, it’s not community policing that Chief Kiedelen’s pushing.
2. University Leadership. Chancellor Telfer may have introduced Chief Kiederlen to a Common Council meeting, but that’s all Chancellor Telfer did – provide an introduction. Chief Kiederlen did all the substantive talking. (From the video, Telfer introduces Kiederlen from 7:10 to 8:00, and Kiederlen speaks from 8:00 to 13:00.)
This isn’t a chancellor who’ll take a strong stand; he’s available for happy news. For more severe policies or bad news, it’s either the public-relations official or a subordinate.
(Funny that – in the video above, Chancellor Telfer introduces Chief Kiederlen as a ‘colleague,’ not a subordinate, a highly-detailed UW-Whitewater organizational chart notwithstanding.)
3. The Difference of Four Years’ Time. Four years ago, when I criticized then-Chief Coan’s use of confidential informants through the city police force, the Gazette published an editorial urging readers to ignore the criticism that so many leveled against confidential informants in the comments section of that paper.
Just four years later, the Gazette has published this story by Sean Kirkby online at its mainpage, from the highly-regarded Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, that detailed the risks of the very practice that many criticized and that the Gazette once asked readers to ignore.
4. Where This Story About Informants at UW-Whitewater is Playing. It’s receiving coverage statewide, including in newspapers from the Gannett chain in Wisconsin. This is not a Whitewater story, it’s a statewide story that’s chiefly about Whitewater’s campus.
To readers outside Whitewater, the story shows the university in a Draconian light, as an outlier even among UW System schools.
That’s a mess: coverage in so many papers – politically moderate ones – is a fortune in (sadly adverse) publicity. Chancellor Telfer could announce dozens of supposed accomplishments locally (many of which are hollow), but that positive press would be nothing compared with the critical coverage UW-Whitewater is getting statewide.
Worse, it’s coverage in places where UW-Whitewater should be competing for successful, talented applicants. What will parents of competitive students see? They’ll see either a school with too much drug use or a school that handles drug use in an overly severe way.
There’s now an incentive to encourage their children (strong applicants who could go elsewhere) actually to look and to go elsewhere.
5. Getting the Wider World Wrong. It’s funny to refer to the rest of Wisconsin as the wider world, but that’s how it must seem from some local insiders’ perspectives.
Did no one at UW-Whitewater see – especially after Chief Kiederlen’s too-rigid presentation to Council – that someone would at least have to offer him media training? Chancellor Telfer holds a doctorate, but somehow he didn’t see or didn’t want to state the obvious: Kiederlen was unready for an interview on this topic.
(Internally, employees at UW-Whitewater may even offer reassurance that the interview went well, but a good number of them undoubtedly know that’s not true. They’re probably relieved, if anything, that they weren’t interviewed, themselves.)
All the talk about how sophisticated these administrators at the university are, how successful and trend-setting they are, but the truth comes as critical news and a downmarket image.
These few seem to want a positive image even over actual achievement, but they just can’t see what that truly requires. People beyond the city just won’t accept at face value declarations of stupendous successes and gargantuan greatness.
Chief Matt Kiederlen probably wouldn’t believe it (least of all from me), but his employer allowed him to go into an interview ill-prepared. The policy’s misshapen, but he wasn’t properly prepped to present it, whatever its dimensions.
These policies will linger, and so the politics of them will continue to bring outside criticism, under a university administration that fails at marketing even as it holds marketing in such very high esteem.
Film
Film: Boats
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 9.16.14
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning, Whitewater.
Tuesday will be sunny with a high of sixty-five.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 5:45 PM, and Common Council meets thereafter at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1620, a ship leaves from England:
The Mayflower sails from Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists–half religious dissenters and half entrepreneurs–had been authorized to settle by the British crown. However, stormy weather and navigational errors forced the Mayflower off course, and on November 21 the “Pilgrims” reached Massachusetts, where they founded the first permanent European settlement in New England in late December.
Thirty-five of the Pilgrims were members of the radical English Separatist Church, who traveled to America to escape the jurisdiction of the Church of England, which they found corrupt. Ten years earlier, English persecution had led a group of Separatists to flee to Holland in search of religious freedom. However, many were dissatisfied with economic opportunities in the Netherlands, and under the direction of William Bradford they decided to immigrate to Virginia, where an English colony had been founded at Jamestown in 1607.
Google-a-Day asks a question about art:
What panel painting, with inscriptions from Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, did Durer present to Nuremberg town officials?
Animals, Humor
Talking Dog Answers Science Questions
by JOHN ADAMS •
Wow, that’s one smart dog —
Police, University
How Rural Wisconsin Campuses Coerce Students into Becoming Drug Informants
by JOHN ADAMS •
Update: Here’s a post that I originally published this morning at a sister site, Daily Adams.
The first paragraph is a description of the city for readers who may not be familiar with Whitewater (so it will sound a bit awkward to those who live in town).
Thanks much to a sharp reader who pointed out that the post’s description of Whitewater needed an explanation for readers already familiar with our city – this post was intended for an audience both inside and outside the city (but I didn’t make that clear enough, initially).
Tomorrow, I will have a follow-up post on this topic, at FREE WHITEWATER, with some local political implications of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s stories about student drug informants.
Here’s the original post —
I live and blog from Whitewater, Wisconsin, a small rural town with a UW System campus. The city proper has a population of just under fifteen-thousand, and the campus is easily the largest institution in Whitewater (with about twelve-thousand students). At sister site FREE WHITEWATER, I write about my town’s politics, economy, and culture.
Over the years, I’ve criticized the Whitewater Police Department’s use of confidential informants: young people bear the risks of middle-aged drug warriors’ ambitions. See, from 2010, about the City of Whitewater’s former police chief, Jim Coan, The Utter Foolishness of Jim Coan’s Prohibition.
It’s with interest that I’ve awaited a story about the use of confidential college-student informants at UW-Whitewater. There’s been talk about the story, and it’s now out, from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.
Sean Kirkby’s detailed story, Undercover students used in drug busts at some University of Wisconsin campuses, is thorough in its coverage, revealing in its reporting, and all of it well-written.
I’d urge readers to review the entire story, as well as a companion story, Drug crime penalties are ‘huge’ for students.
A few highlights, below:
Use of informants is favored in Whitewater:
A member of the Walworth County Drug Unit, which arrested Butler, declined comment on whether the unit still uses students as informants. But UW-Whitewater Police Chief Matt Kiederlen says his department has used about 20 students as confidential informants during the past two years….
In all, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism communicated with 10 current and former UW-Whitewater students who were arrested by either the UW-Whitewater police or the Walworth County Drug Unit for selling drugs to confidential informants or possessing marijuana.
Nine were asked to become an informant. All but the unnamed student described earlier refused either because of safety concerns, not knowing other dealers or not wanting to turn in their friends.
A contradictory standard on students’ decision-making. UW-Whitewater Police Chief Matt Kiederlen holds out a standard of decision-making that his own campus’s policies refute. Here’s Kiederlen on students as adults:
“They’re no different from anyone else,” Kiederlen says. “Mom and dad tend to feel like they’re still in school, but the reality is that they’re adults and they’re making adult decisions. And there are adult consequences.”
Of course, they are still in school; someone should ask Kiederlen to look out his window.
It’s obvious – from Kirkby’s story – that UW-Whitewater does treat students differently from older adults making adult decisions, as it uses game-like playing cards to explain policies to students:
Needless to say, that’s not a common way for middle-aged adults to receive information.
Let’s be clear: Part of Kiederlen’s career rests on a middle-aged man intimidating much younger people into compliance with his drug-enforcement plans. He’s not a middle-aged man among middle-aged men, working in an environment of equals.
Kiederlen’s enforcement involves pressuring much younger and less experienced people.
There’s risk in middle-aged men coercing much younger people into drug snares:
While becoming a confidential informant may help students avoid consequences, undercover operations can turn deadly.
Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old Florida State University graduate, was pressured in 2008 to be an informant after Tallahassee, Florida, police searched her apartment and found a small amount of marijuana and ecstasy. But the buy turned out to be an armed robbery, and the robbers killed Hoffman after discovering her recording device, says Lance Block, a Florida attorney.
Block, who represented Hoffman’s parents in a lawsuit following their daughter’s murder, authored a 2009 Florida law that regulates informant use, a practice he says contradicts law enforcement’s purpose.
“The police are supposed to protect us from harm, not subject us to harm,” Block says. “And when law enforcement intentionally expose untrained civilians into these highly dangerous operations, they’re not protecting them from harm … It’s one thing to get information from people secretly and confidentially. It’s another thing to throw them to the wolves, like they did with Rachel.”
If, after all, Kiederlen thinks he’s in the same adult position as, for example, a twenty-three-year-old woman, then he’s either obtuse or confused.
‘Unknowns’. Here’s Kiederlen on the risks:
“They [informants] are set up in such a way that if something is bad, they know what they can do to make themselves as safe as possible,” Kiederlen says. “We’re dealing with the drug world. It is unpredictable. We try with everything we have to predict putting them in the safest position we can, but there are always those unknowns.”
These ‘drug world’ risks are, after all, risks that Kiederlen and his force recreate. It’s ‘safe as possible’ with the self-exculpatory, almost blithe observation that ‘there are always those unknowns.’
If Kiederlen wanted to sound shallow and indifferent, he’s succeeded.
Kiederlen’s Presentation. To get a sense of how Chief Kiederlen presents himself, embedded below is a clip from a City of Whitewater Council meeting where he spoke about his ‘personal philosophy.’
Readers will find this portion of the meeting from 7:10 to 13:00 on the video below. (UW-Whitewater Chancellor Richard Telfer introduces Kiederlen from 7:10 to 8:00, and Chief Kiederlen speaks from 8:00 to 13:00.)
Common Council Meeting 05/21/2013
from Whitewater Community TV
on Vimeo
Watching the segment yet again, I’m struck by how tense Chief Kiederlen’s presentation is; his manner appears about as tightly wound as anyone who’s spoken at a town meeting in years.
And here we are, in rural America, where the drug war slowly, but too slowly, sputters out for lack of sense and reflection.
Posted earlier @ Daily Adams.