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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

City, Council Leadership, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.7.23: The First Council Meeting in November

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 Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:37 and sunset 4:39 for 10h 02m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 30.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM. 

  On this day in 1994, WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, launches the world’s first internet radio broadcast.

 Linked above is the Whitewater Common Council agenda for tonight’s council session. Embedded below is the full agenda packet for the session. Although I have begun embedding the council or CDA agendas on the day of the respective meetings, this post offers both the full council packet and mention of items of notable interest to this libertarian blogger. Ordinarily, I make no particular notice before a meeting agenda; the importance of tonight’s meeting requires an exception.  

All this city knows that since April the Whitewater Common Council has embarked on a course contrary to limited and responsible government, on which no one ran before taking office, and which if continued will take this struggling-yet-hopeful city into a years-long decline. See The Shape of Decline to Come (and How to Carry On) and ‘Gradually and Then Suddenly.’ This council risks turning what has been for many residents an economic Long Twilight and turn it into a Long Dark.  

Here Whitewater arrives tonight, at a session of the Common Council that will decide much about the city’s near future. A few items from that agenda draw especially this libertarian blogger’s interest. (Each resident watching will have his or her own list of notable items; these are mine.) 

Item 7. Memo on Conflict of Interest Inquiry — City Manager.

Item 8. Update on R0 Zoning District — Neighborhood Services.

Item 14. Discussion and possible action regarding motion to reconsider RFP for legal services to retain an outside law firm to advise the Common Council on employee discipline and personnel matters not to exceed $10,000 — Hicks/Dawsey Smith.

Item 15. Discussion and possible action regarding approval of the amended agreement for legal services from von Briesen and Roper SC — Hicks/HR.

Item 18. Discussion and possible action regarding MOU/MSP with the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater for the Innovation Center to extend the contract date to June 30, 2024 — City Manager.

Item 19. Discussion and possible action regarding the Whitewater Aquatic Fitness Center lease agreement between the City of Whitewater and the Whitewater Unified School District — City Manager/Park and Rec.

Item 25. Presentation of the 2024-2025 Budget — Finance. 

Item 42. Discussion and possible action regarding matters addressed in closed session involving complaints received by the Human Resources Department. – HR/Employment Attorney.

Item 43. Discussion and possible action regarding the Whitewater Aquatic Fitness Center lease agreement between the City of Whitewater and the Whitewater Unified School District – City Manager/Park and Rec.

Councilmembers are government men and women, responsible for their words and actions. The government isn’t simply the city administration; it’s every councilmember and CDA boardmember. Everyone acting in these latter roles acts in a public capacity, bound by law and reason. 

How would a starfish wear trousers? Science has an answer: 

Starfishes are weirdly shaped animals. Scientists have long puzzled over how a starfish body equates to the more typical animal arrangement of a head on one end and trunk or tail on the other. Humans wear trousers on the bottom of their trunks, so you could extrapolate out from that to suggest solutions to the ‘trouser question’ for dogs, horses, spiders and even slugs. But what about a starfish? Now there’s a new possible answer based on the expression of their genes.

Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.6.23: Wisconsin Life | Naturalist

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 Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 65. Sunrise is 6:36 and sunset 4:40 for 10h 04m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 39% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1947, Meet the Press, the longest-running television program in history, makes its debut on NBC Television.

Wisconsin Life | Naturalist: 

M. Afi Lake is an avid gardener and naturalist who forages for food and medicine from unlikely plants. She can turn a nasty weed into a delicious dish.

A New Podcast From Serial: The Kids of Rutherford County: 

For over a decade, one Tennessee county arrested and illegally jailed hundreds, maybe thousands, of children. A four-part narrative series reveals how this came to be, the adults responsible for it, and the two lawyers, former juvenile delinquents themselves, who try to do something about it.

Music

Monday Music: Jazz Drummer Billy Hart

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Jazz drummer Billy Hart, now in his 80s, was named a 2022 NEA Jazz Master. The Montclair, NJ resident performs with his own quartet and with the Cookers, long-time colleagues seen here at the legendary jazz club, Birdland. According to pianist Ethan Inverson, Hart is the most recorded jazz drummer of all time, included on albums by the likes of Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, and Shirley Horn.

Daily Bread, Education

Daily Bread for 11.5.23: The Cambridge Professor Who Learned to Read at 18

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 Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 56. Sunrise is 6:34 and sunset 4:41 for 10h 06m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt is the first and only President of the United States to be elected to a third term (and four years later, a fourth). 

The Cambridge Professor Who Learned to Read at 18:

Meet Jason Arday, Cambridge University’s youngest-ever Black professor who defied all odds in pursuit of his academic ambitions. Jason’s remarkable journey begins with a diagnosis of Global Developmental Delay and Autism during his early years. He didn’t start speaking until the age of 11 and didn’t learn to read and write until he turned 18. Yet, at the age of just 37, he achieved the esteemed title of Professor of Sociology of Education at the prestigious University of Cambridge. Jason’s story is not just one of academic triumph but a testament to his unwavering determination and spirit. It serves as a powerful reminder that potential knows no bounds and we can achieve the seemingly impossible.

What’s in the Night Sky November 2023:

Art, Daily Bread, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.4.23: Wisconsin Life | Garden Art

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 Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 7:33 and sunset 5:43 for 10h 09m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 57.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1956, Soviet troops enter Budapest to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.

Wisconsin Life | Garden Art:

80-something-year-old Gene Frey of Columbus has no formal training and yet his one-of-a-kind metal garden art is garnering a lot of attention.

This camel farm milks 1300 camels twice a day:

Daily Bread, Economy, Employment

Daily Bread for 11.3.23: National Hiring Slows but Remains Solid

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 Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 7:32 and sunset 5:44 for 10h 12m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 66.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 2014, One World Trade Center officially opens in New York City, replacing the Twin Towers after they were destroyed during the September 11 attacks.

By King of Hearts – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61981409

Lauren Kaori Gurley and Abha Bhattarai report U.S. economy adds 150,000 jobs in October, slower but solid growth (‘The unemployment rate rose to 3.9 percent. Tempered job growth reflected the UAW strikes against the Big Three auto companies’):

This year, the labor market has been undergoing a notable cool-down, across many sectors, from its red hot peak after the pandemic when employers rapidly created millions of jobs to keep up with pent-up consumer demand.

October’s job gains mark the second lowest increase since 2020, and jobs figures for August and September were revised down by 101,000. Wage growth moderated slightly in October, rising by 4.1 percent over the previous 12 months to $34.00 an hour.

“This is still one of the best labor markets for workers that we’ve seen relative to the last 30 years,” said Justin Bloesch, a professor of economics at Cornell University. “But it is definitely less hot than it was last year.”

Teen solves Rubik’s Cube while skydiving, nabs Guinness World Record: 

City, Council Leadership, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.2.23: Whitewater’s Residents Have a Front Row Seat to the Special Interest Method

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 Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:31 and sunset 5:49 for 10h 14m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1917, the Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people:

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. 

For many years, Whitewater has been a town beset by special interests. What’s new is that they’re now working in daylight to cement control over the town for another generation. Whitewater’s an open-air theater of small-town cronyism in action. 

A few quick points. 

1. Special Interests Would Rather Not Be Seen. Ideally, they will put their operatives and catspaws on boards and commissions without much attention. For elected positions, they’ll look for districts with no one else running. Districts like that are a golden opportunity to run candidates wholly devoted to them but so objectionable to ordinary residents that those types of candidates could never win otherwise.

2. If Seen, Special Interests Will Never Acknowledge Their True Purpose. No one will stand up and say, for example, “I’m Landlord Number 1, this is my Dogsbody Operative, and we’re here to make sure you pass an ordinance that favors rental properties of mine or disadvantages my competition.”  They’ll never say that! Instead, they’ll argue for those very changes and dare others to call them out for having a conflict of interest. 

3. Special Interests Never Defend, They Accuse Others. Every so often, something goes awry, and someone calls a special interest man out. Special interests count on others to stay quiet from ignorance, other obligations, poverty, or malaise. Damn it, people were supposed to stay quiet and let others walk all over them, but ordinary residents will tire of being doormats, and they’ll speak out. 

When they meet opposition, special interests will accuse others of the wrongful conduct they have, themselves, have committed. 

There are two reasons that they prefer to attack. First, it draws attention away from the special interests’ conduct. It’s critical to accuse others so that they “flood the zone with sh-t” and leave everyone confused about who did what to whom.

Second, few people will have sympathy for well-positioned special interest men. When they try to play on others’ sympathies, they learn quickly that deep down others resent their overbearing influence. The sharper among them suspect this, and so don’t even look for others’ sympathy. 

When normal and decent people hold office, the special interests conspire for their ruin with bad faith accusation after bad faith accusation. 

City, Council Leadership, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.1.23: A Corruption in Real-Time Right Before Our Eyes

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 Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:29 and sunset 5:46 for 10h 17m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1790, Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he predicts that the French Revolution will end in a disaster. (He was right.) 

When we think of corruption, we think of bribery. The Ancients, however, saw corruption in a second way: as a falling away, a degeneration, from the proper form of an object or practice. It’s this second way in which this post considers corruption: as a degeneration from a proper form. The relationship would be something like the relationship between healthy cells and cancerous cells, where the latter is a deformed and degenerate version of the former. 

Look now at Whitewater, and one sees that on 10.17.23, the Whitewater Common Council rejected a request-for-proposal process to select a third attorney through public funds, and decided instead to allow one councilman to propose on his own three firms from which the council could choose. 

In its essence, to its very marrow, this is a corruption — a degeneracy — of a proper and responsible process. Councilman James Allen should not have been given this power and should not exercise this power.

Any firm that offers representation as one of Allen’s selections would be suspect: this is an abnormal process, ill-defined and contradictorily explained. No responsible attorney would take this work except through an RPF process regulated under law. See Allen’s Childish Pretexts.

Why this way and not an RFP? I believe that Allen’s in a hurry to get rid of this municipal administration before the April elections. Even the selection of a firm in December would be too far away for him.  See Councilman Allen’s Nebulous and Rushed Plan (“Yeah, going out to, uh [cross talk] with, uh, would extend things out to December”).

The four of the council majority did not run on overturning the municipal administration (not a peep!), but that’s what this libertarian blogger believes will happen if Allen gets his way. Allen would then become a de facto mayor, control the selection of the next city manager, and turn the Whitewater CDA over to a lobbyist and P.R. man. Those two would run affairs in a way favorable to landlords and bankers. That’s what would happen. 

Whitewater’s two leading public institutions, her council and her community development authority, would cease to be legitimate public institutions. See The Shape of Decline to Come (and How to Carry On) and ‘Gradually and Then Suddenly.’

Whitewater would become a small, foul southern town, under the control of a few. 

Needless to say, I’d rather not be right about this.

Yet look, yet look — this is a few working toward a corruption — the decline into an inferior form of government and policy in Whitewater — in real-time, right before our eyes.

City, Holiday

Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2023

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Here’s the seventeenth annual FREE WHITEWATER list of the scariest things in Whitewater.

 (The 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 editions are available for comparison.)

The list runs in reverse order, from mildly scary to truly frightening.

10. Bears. Look, I’ve warned the city — out of love— about a coming coyotepocalypse.  See In Whitewater, People Won’t Feed Coyotes — Coyotes Will Feed on People. And yet, somehow, people are now worried about bears. Keep food away from them, and bears will stay away. Still, there are timid people in every community, and for them, this libertarian blogger offers with love a series of documentaries on ursine behavior. (Consider it exposure therapy for the nervous among us. You’re welcome.)

9. Plain Language. Why is it so hard to speak plainly? Some of these aged men in the city should simply say that they want what they want because they think they deserve more, and should have a greater say, despite a generation-long record of failure. Say it — it’s what they plainly mean, so they should plainly say it. 

8. The Advisory Committee. One member of the CDA would have liked to have had an advisory committee of aged men as an extra-legal body to advise a legally appointed consultant. His preference, of course, was the set of serial failures who have run this town into the ground while running their mouths in self-praise.

7. ‘Our Traditions.’ So another man on the CDA wanted to preserve ‘our traditions’ rather than adopt modern practices for community development. Let’s be clear: his traditions are stagnation and relative decline.

This ‘tradition’ is vacuity and vanity. It’s a city of 14,889, not a cabal of bankers and landlords. It would have been better for the whole community if these few had taken their leave of public office and spent their later years reading scrapbooks filled with fawning but false headlines. They’ve inflicted themselves on others long enough.

6. Government Men. Some of these men on the Whitewater Common Council or Whitewater Community Development Authority speak as though they were merely private citizens. They’re not. Those on the council or CDA are government men as much as anyone in the city administration (more so than many, as the CDA and council types took an oath). See Who’s a Government Man? A critique of local government does not exclude these men; on the contrary, a critique of government should begin with these long-in-the-tooth council and CDA men. 

5. Tenure. It’s ignorance to believe that tenure in office is an advantage; it’s more often a burden. The longer an official has been around, the more responsibility he bears for mistakes on his watch. If you’re touting that you’ve been on “two different CDA’s” [sic], then you don’t know what it means to tout something to your advantage. Being on two community development associations, when at least one of them is Whitewater’s, isn’t an advantage; it’s a confession. 

4. Someone Else, It’s Gotta Be Someone Else!  One sits and listens to this common council president, on council or the community development authority for decades, as he blames others for the lakes project, why certain types of stores are in town, and ignores why so many other businesses have over the years gone under or left for other communities.

Where does he think he was all these years? Did longtime politician James Allen not know that there was a lake or a downtown over the decades he has been in office? (Presumably, he did know there was a lake because he spent an inordinate amount of time during the lakes project focusing on whether there would be carp in the lake, rather than the actual dredging, for example.)

When the lakes project went south, there began a quick attempt to blame others: the weather, a pause during the pandemic, DNR trickery, etc. Wait, what? If Allen and others have been around for years, why couldn’t they manage better? All those years, and still the DNR (supposedly) outsmarted these men!

There was no DNR trickery; these local officials were simply too slow or too lazy to monitor the project properly. 

In their excuse-making, Allen and others are like the meme about the Hot Dog Guy:

The original image used in the meme comes from the TV show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, which premiered on April 23rd, 2019, on Netflix. The “Hot Dog Car” sketch was featured in episode five of the first season, and the catchphrase appears around the 1:26 mark in the clip.

In the sketch, a hot dog-shaped car crashes into a store and a man dressed in a hot dog costume attempts to pretend he is one of the customers wondering who was driving the car. The full quote from the man in the hot dog costume, played by creator, writer and star Tim Robinson, is,

“We’re all trying to find the guy who did this and give him a spanking!”

Who did this? The longtime blame-shifters in government.

3. The Common Council Majority. Whitewater now has the worst common council majority in the seventeen years that I have kept this Halloween list. There have always been one or two councilmembers who have been, well, not quite up to snuff, but this majority is below the standard of the community. Not average; below average. A good and sensible standard for our community is what one would expect from a graduate of our high school. A student of average ability from Whitewater High School would reason and speak more clearly than this council majority. Whitewater has not had this problem before; she has it now. 

No one in this city should feel bad about himself or herself because the council majority conducts itself poorly. Residents here perform better than many of their elected representatives. 

Whitewater’s residents should be proud of their city, as we are a beautiful community beset only by a few. 

2. The Long Twilight. Whitewater has been in a long twilight of economic underperformance. See A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA. There’s a way out; no one should accept that what we’ve had since the Great Recession is normal. It’s not normal. Residents don’t have to settle; old and vainglorious men want residents to settle for less while they take more. No, and no again. 

1. The Long Dark. This is the dark future that awaits, worse than the Long Twilight the city has experienced, if a few bankers, landlords, and the career local politicians who scrape and simp for them get their way. See The Shape of Decline to Come (and How to Carry On) and ‘Gradually and Then Suddenly.’

(The Long Dark is also the name of a survival video game, but unlike the digital version, Whitewater’s experience would be real and heart-wrenching.)

A few men plot to remove this city administration and replace it with an older and broken model they prefer.

They have placed themselves not in conflict with this city administration but with residents themselves.

Whatever comes to pass, there is no place that this libertarian blogger would rather be. As is true with a traditional wedding vow, so it is true for one’s love of this city: “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

Although I am a tragic optimist, it’s optimism that forms my fundamental outlook. We’ll come through.

As always, best wishes for a Happy Halloween.

Daily Bread, Radio

Daily Bread for 10.30.23: War of the Worlds 1938 Radio Broadcast

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 Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:27 and sunset 5:49 for 10h 22m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1938, Orson Welles broadcasts a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing a panic in some of the audience in the United States.

Mercury Theatre’s War of the Worlds broadcast: 

Mars Perseverance rover watches Ingenuity helicopter zoom above Red Planet in real time: 

Agriculture, Daily Bread, Dairy, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.29.23: | Dairy Farm Life

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 Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 42. Sunrise is 7:26 and sunset 5:50 for 10h 24m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1969, the first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

 Wisconsin Life | Dairy Farm Life:

When Rosario Ibarra arrived from Mexico for her internship, she had never seen a Holstein cow. Ibarra now runs one of Manitowoc County’s largest dairy farms. It’s a tireless job that has become a lifestyle.

365 Marathons In 365 Days:

Would you run a marathon? Maybe you’ve run a few? What about running a marathon every single day? If that sounds completely crazy, well — we would agree. But Gary McKee did just that – every day of 2022. Gary ran a marathon each day for an entire year, but his steps were driven by more than just personal drive. Every mile was to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support. As days turned into weeks, his ambition transformed into a town-wide movement. With New Year’s Eve as the grand finale, the community came together like never before with hundreds of supporters rallying to celebrate with him at the finish line. The result? A united community, countless inspired morning runners, and a staggering £1 million raised.

Daily Bread, Photography, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.28.23: Wisconsin Life | Holga Photography

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 Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 5:52 for 10h 27m 27s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis ends and Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.

 Wisconsin Life | Holga Photography:

Cameron Gillie creates artistic photos using a Holga, a cheap plastic camera.

This Man Drives a Burger To Work:

Our latest contributor has driven the wackiest looking vehicles. Literally. We’re talking burgers, pencils and even…a snooker table. In Hyderabad, India you can find the world’s first and only handmade wacky car museum called Sudha Cars Museum. Meet Sudhakar Kanyaboyina, the mastermind who from the age of 14, turned his imaginative designs into bicycles and wacky cars. With hundreds of ambitious and creative designs, including the worlds largest tricycle, he eventually had enough to open his own museum with his daughter. His drive for creating the world’s wackiest cars isn’t exhausted yet and we know you’ll be revved up for this Great Big Story.