FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Beautiful Whitewater, Charity, City, Culture, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.20.22: Something Transcendent, and in the Meantime

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 6:03 PM for 10h 48m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School District’s Policy Review Committee meets at 9 AM, and Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM. 

On this day in 1944, American general Douglas MacArthur fulfills his promise to return to the Philippines when he comes ashore during the Battle of Leyte.

There are many important roles within a community: most are private (countless jobs and pursuits), some are public (safety & emergency services most obviously). For libertarians, in particular, watching the role of government  — that it should be limited, responsible, and open — is an evergreen commitment.

Beyond a few defined and limited public tasks, beyond even the myriad of ordinary private tasks, some communities face a critical need for repair, reconciliation, and recovery. Most private communities are not in this condition, but others (as in the Midwest since the Great Recession) are afflicted in this way. 

Whitewater, beautiful but in difficulty, finds herself with a critical need for repair, reconciliation, and recovery. A small community, yet now divided in politics, troubled in socio-economics, and beset with tensions & controversies, needs a medicine effective for her maladies. 

Politicians, appointed officials, public employees, concerned private residents, journalists who occasionally notice the town, the libertarian blogger who writes here: all matter in their own ways, but neither one nor all is enough now.  

Whitewater needs someone else, someone who will pull this beautiful city together again in a unique way. That task will be neither easy nor quiet: occasionally breaking a few eggs, and egos, to make an omelette. (A role that would reunite the community would be both transcendent of others’ roles, yet responsive to individuals as individuals, residents as residents. One woman fulfilling a non-partisan, charitable role would be more helpful to our city than dozen silly men imagining themselves ‘Mr. Whitewater.’)

These are not new concerns at FREE WHITEWATER. See Waiting for Whitewater’s Dorothy Day and An Oasis Strategy. 

From that latter post:

This city’s not of one culture or one identity; we’re not a homogeneous place. We’re a diverse and multicultural community. Revanchism on behalf of some won’t make the city great for any. On the contrary, that path will prolong present difficulties, and delay significantly (although not prevent) this city’s more prosperous future.

In even the most difficult times, of economic and political trouble, Americans have still produced great works, committed to charitable undertakings, and carried on admirably (all the while addressing national issues separately).  This city can do the same, as well as others before us did in their challenging times.

A restorative cure for Whitewater would be the arrival of a transcendent, persistent, vocal, committed, private charitable worker. We may find ourselves with a long wait.

Until then, public policy, with whatever can be done after providing for basic public services, should be directed responsively to people in need. 

Humpback Whale Surprises Father-Son Fishing Duo: 

City, Daily Bread, Emergency Services

Daily Bread for 10.19.22: In Support of Whitewater’s Fire & EMS Referendum

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 47. Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 6:05 PM for 10h 51m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 33.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1781, Britain formally surrenders at the Battle of Yorktown:

Battle of Yorktown, the surrender at Yorktown, or the German battle (from the presence of Germans in all three armies), beginning on September 28, 1781, and ending on October 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, was a decisive victory by a combined force of the American Continental Army troops led by General George Washington and Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and French Army troops led by Comte de Rochambeau over British Army troops commanded by British peer and Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis. The culmination of the Yorktown campaign, the siege proved to be the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War in the North American region, as the surrender by Cornwallis, and the capture of both him and his army, prompted the British government to negotiate an end to the conflict.

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Cornwallis refused to attend the surrender ceremony, citing illness. Instead, Brigadier General Charles O’Hara led the British army onto the field. O’Hara first attempted to surrender to Rochambeau, who shook his head and pointed to Washington. O’Hara then offered his sword to Washington, who also refused and motioned to Benjamin Lincoln, his second-in-command. The surrender finally took place when Lincoln accepted the sword of Cornwallis’ deputy.

For many years, Whitewater had a volunteer, paid-on-call fire and emergency services department. For Whitewater and other communities, that model no longer provides enough volunteers or speedy response times. What once worked no longer does.

This libertarian blogger would have a preferred a private department, but preference does not decide good policy — response to human need decides good policy. While a private, libertarian perspective works best in most situations, it does not work exclusive of other, occasional options. Most of the time is not all of the time. 

A municipal department with a paid-on-premises model (where some fire and emergency workers are at the station and on the ready) is simply faster and more reliable for Whitewater.

Recognizing the importance of fire & emergency services, this libertarian supports the City of Whitewater’s Fire & EMS referendum.

We are a city of 14,889 people, with a distribution that skews both young and old. Emergency services are notably important for those age groups. 

One cannot emphasize enough: this Fire & EMS referendum is simply an effort to provide normal services to this town. It’s false and overwrought — if not mendacious — to contend that the Fire & EMS referendum represents something other supporting a Fire & EMS department. There is no sinister ideological motivation behind this effort; it represents only an effort at normal services for a normal town. That’s all.

These men and women who defend Whitewater against fire, accident, and injury do not act from a partisan or ideological purpose. Claims (false and nutty, as it turns out) that some civilian officials have ideological motivations are both irrelevant and immaterial. What is relevant and material is that Whitewater should have a stable, speedy, reliable department. 

It is sensible — common sense, one might say — to rely on the experience and expertise of those who have served. Embedded immediately below are the testimonials of Fire Chief Kelly Freeman, Emergency Services Chief Ashley Vickers, and Advanced EMT Jason Dean. 

Reasonably, rationally, their experience and testimony should guide one’s judgment. There is no evident error or omission in their testimonies. If this libertarian blogger could discern even a word askew, I would say as much. There’s nothing whatever askew. Their ideological views (of whatever perspective), other city officials’ ideological views (real or imagined), or my own libertarian position changes nothing of the facts they’ve plainly described.  Freeman, Vickers, and Dean speak simply and honestly about Whitewater’s needs. A professional, on-premises fire and emergency services department will ably preserve life and property in Whitewater. 

RELIABLE. FASTER. SAFER.

My best wishes and appreciation to those who serve in these difficult roles. I would hope — and so I urge — my fellow residents to support Whitewater’s Fire & Emergency Services referendum.

 
 

Beautiful Whitewater, City, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Local Government

Daily Bread for 10.18.22: Hey Whitewater, That’s Not What a Big Bad Looks Like

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 6:06 PM for 10h 53m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 42.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM. 

On this day in 1851, Herman Melville‘s Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London.

Someone needs a new pair of eyeglasses.

Not long from now, we may find that our national and state politics have grown darker. Nevertheless, should that be so, our obligations will be the same: to work for better in nation, state, and city. All three will be as important to us in November as they are to us now in October. These nine square miles of Whitewater are precious, and deserving of our full effort. 

Many in Whitewater use Facebook. It has been a useful social medium for many, no matter how much a few of us may dislike it. Connecting family and neighbors is a social good. 

That platform, however, has also been a fertile ground for trolling, inflicting on communities baseless claims, outright lies, and catty comments. Most are written as poorly as they are laid out. See Identifying Types and Spotting Issues. These users should be dealt with in blunt, declaratory statements of refutation. See Trolls and the Exclamatory, Interrogatory, or Declaratory Response. 

Whitewater now has a few like this, loathsome trolls such as they are. 

In the years since FREE WHITEWATER began publication in 2007, Whitewater has had six district administrators, seven university chancellors, three city managers, and four chiefs of police (including among them interim leaders). Dozens of other officials have come and gone.

During this time, our city has had more than her share of struggling public officials, with a few who were simply unsuitable for public office. After seeing so many come and go, a reasonable person should be able to discern which, among this lot, have been truly bad for the city.  Although we’ve had too many who were inadequate, we’ve only had a few who were both wrong and reprehensible. 

It is a false and risible contribution to public policy that classifies Whitewater’s interim city manager, her last permanent city manager, or her last common council president in the category of Big Bads. They’re not what Big Bads look like. (To think that Whitewater’s interim city manager, in particular,  is ‘aggressive’ or ‘divisive’ is prima facie evidence of poor judgment.) 

It is a false and risible contribution to public policy that contends this city might have produced a defund-the-police policy. That was never going to happen in Whitewater. It was more likely that there would be a defund-the-policy policy on the Moon (where there are no people) than in Whitewater (where there are 14,889).

There are challenges in this city, but we’ve no need to fabricate or delude ourselves into believing there are more than, in fact, there truly are. 

And yet, and yet — here we are, in a condition shared by many communities, in which Facebook trolls litter the web with their crackpottery. 

 Waterspout swirls off Cyprus coast: 

Beautiful Whitewater, City, Culture

Daily Bread for 10.17.22: Always Time for Whitewater

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a passing shower and a high of 42. Sunrise is 7:11 AM and sunset 6:08 PM for 10h 56m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 51.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM. 

On this day in 1777, British General John Burgoyne surrenders his army at Saratoga, New York; on this day in 1781, British General Charles, Earl Cornwallis offers to surrender at the Battle of Yorktown (the articles of capitulation were signed two days later on 10.19.1781). 

Consider the following question, posed to me over the weekend: Is it too late for Whitewater? 

There is one plain answer: No, and no again. It is not ‘too late,’ and the question itself is pessimistically phrased. A few lyrics from today’s FREE WHITEWATER music selection reflect Whitewater’s true and hopeful condition:

Maybe we’ve made mistakesMaybe we’re not the only onesMaybe it’s not too lateTo start over
 
All the shapes and patterns you’ll see in your mindSomewhere in the worldSomeone’s thinking of you

Of course there is time to remedy challenges in the community; it is certainly not too late. To think otherwise would be an abject and unfounded pessimism. 

The tragic optimist, as I am, is grounded in optimism modified with an awareness of the occasionally tragic. Optimism is the foundational outlook. (Difficult moments unsettle or paralyze those under the sway of boosterism or toxic positivity, as they assume that all presentations should shine positive or all conditions should be positive. The tragic optimist by inclination pushes past obstacles or losses with fortitude.) 

It was a generation ago, by invitation, that I first arrived in Whitewater, and several years thereafter passed before I became this city’s blogger. No one would have expected this of me. As the ninth generation from another American city, raised to be one link in a chain extending generations thereafter in that same place, Whitewater was unknown to me.

I did not discover Whitewater, find Whitewater, or even choose Whitewater (in the typical understanding of the term). It was offered to me, unexpectedly. My own choosing among alternatives could not, as it turns out, have found anything so beautiful and congenial to me as Whitewater. The city is, understandably, as beautiful and congenial to many others as it is to me.

Our social commitment, as individuals in this community, is first to do no harm, and then to do much good. We each have different talents and roles through which we may advance this commitment. 

Our best days are ahead, and there has never been a day, however melancholy it may have seemed at the time, when anyone should have thought otherwise. 

 The shape-shifting robo-turtle: 

 

Agriculture, Conservative Populism, Daily Bread, Dairy, Economics, Economy, Employment, Free Markets, Immigration, Labor

Daily Bread for 10.16.22: Our Dairyland Needs Dairy Workers

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 51. Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 6:09 PM for 10h 59m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1923, The Walt Disney Company is founded.

Leah Treidler reports Wisconsin dairy leaders call on US Senate to fix labor shortages by changing immigration policy (‘Officials say the Farm Workforce Modernization Act would also curb inflation by letting dairy farmers hire workers on H-2A visas’):

Wisconsin and national dairy leaders are pushing the U.S. Senate to cut food prices and fix the agricultural labor shortage by reforming immigrant labor policies.

In a press conference Thursday, leaders said the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a bill already passed by the U.S. House and pending in the Senate, would fix labor shortages by letting them hire H-2A visa workers.

The H-2A program allows employers to bring in immigrants for temporary or seasonal agricultural jobs. As of now, the dairy industry is excluded from the program. 

That fuels labor shortages because there aren’t enough U.S. citizens to staff the nation’s dairy farms, said Brody Stapel, the board president of Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative and a Wisconsin dairy farmer.

“There are not either enough local workers or enough willing workers to fill these labor-heavy jobs. Farmers have tried everything, and these are typically living wage jobs,” Stapel said. “Wisconsin alone has a lot to lose if we don’t solve this serious problem.” 

There are over 6,000 dairy farms in the state, he said. According to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study, dairy generates nearly half of Wisconsin’s agricultural revenue each year. Over 150,000 people work in the industry, making up 4.2 percent of the state’s total workforce.

With Wisconsin’s working population dropping, Stapel said the labor shortage is on track to get worse. Because of that, he said the Senate needs to change immigration policies.

The WISGOP, now nativist to its core, complains about illegal immigration while dairy farms go without workers. Nativism imposes the fixed and stagnant (a bias based on the accident of birthplace) and rejects the dynamic and productive (all peoples in productive free labor).

Nativism operates on the disordered principle of negative equality: better that all should have less than most should have more. 

Our dairyland depends on dairy workers. 

Conservative populism, now vocal in cities and towns across America, brays for labor restrictions that impoverish those very communities. 

By contrast both moral and productive, there is no better economic arrangement for daily living than free markets in capital, labor, and goods. 

Why Olympic Curling Stones Are So Expensive:

 

Daily Bread, Herrenvolk, Never Trump, Politics, Press, Trumpism

Daily Bread for 10.15.22: For the Press, a Duty of Conduct as Though a Free Society Still Matters

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 7:09 AM and sunset 6:11 PM for 11h 02m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70% of its visible disk illuminated.

There will be a Lakes Project Community Meeting at 10 AM. 

On this day in 1956, FORTRAN, the first modern computer language, is first shared with the coding community.

 An armed insurrection in a representative democracy is the violent effort of a horde claiming falsely to represent a majority to overthrow a constitutional order that does, in fact, represent the majority. That’s January 6th: a violent minority committed to preventing a constitutional process representing the majority. That’s Trump: the leader of a self-declared herrenvolk, inciting violence against the peaceful majority who rejected Trump at the polls.

This malevolent ilk would transform a free and prosperous continental republic into a stifling and stagnant European autocracy. 

The press in this free country will have to decide how to cover a third Trump campaign should there be one. (Those of us in other walks of life already know how to describe Trump: he aims to destroy this Republic and replace it with a herrenvolk state.) For her fellow journalists, Margaret Sullivan writes about how to cover Trump in If Trump Runs Again, Do Not Cover Him the Same Way [as Before]: A Journalist’s Manifesto: 

Now, six years later, we journalists know a lot more about covering Trump and his supporters. We’ve come a long way, but certainly made plenty of mistakes. Too many times, we acted as his stenographers or megaphones. Too often, we failed to refer to his many falsehoods as lies. It took too long to stop believing that, whenever he calmed down for a moment, he was becoming “presidential.” And it took too long to moderate our instinct to give equal weight to both sides, even when one side was using misinformation for political gain.

It’s been an education for all of us — a gradual realization that the instincts and conventions of traditional journalism weren’t good enough for this moment in our country’s history. As Trump prepares to run again in 2024, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the lessons we’ve learned — and committing to the principle that, when covering politicians who are essentially running against democracy, old-style journalism will no longer suffice.

….

From this new vantage point, it seemed self-evident that the mainstream press was too often going easy on Trump. Well into his presidency, journalists didn’t want to use the word “lie” for Trump’s constant barrage of falsehoods. To lie, editors reasoned, means to intend to be untruthful. Since journalists couldn’t be inside politicians’ heads, how were we supposed to know if — by this definition — they were really lying? The logic eventually became strained, given that Trump blithely repeated the same rank mistruths over and over.

Too many reporters and their editors didn’t seem to want to figure out how to cover Trump properly. From the moment he descended the golden escalator at Manhattan’s Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his candidacy, the news media was in his thrall. Journalists couldn’t stop writing about him, showing him on TV and even broadcasting images of the empty stage waiting for him to arrive at a rally. Trump had described himself as “the ratings machine,” and for once he wasn’t exaggerating.

….

Those who deny the outcome of the 2020 election certainly don’t deserve a media megaphone for that enduring lie, one that is likely to reemerge in the presidential campaign ahead. But the media should go one step further: When covering such a politician in other contexts — for example, about abortion rights or gun control — journalists should remind audiences that this public figure is an election denier.

That’s exactly the model pursued by WITF, a public radio station in Harrisburg, Pa., which decided to remind its audience on a regular basis that some Republican state legislators and members of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation had opposed the transfer of power to Joe Biden, despite the lack of evidence to support their claims of election fraud. A story on the station’s website about a state legislator’s efforts to get Pennsylvanians vaccinated was accompanied by a sidebar of text about his behavior after the election. On-air stories have used a tagline to accomplish the same purpose. The decision wasn’t easy, one editor told me, “because this is not the normal thing.”

These are not normal times, and Trumpism is not a normal movement.

We who are rightly Never Trump, who have seen our much in own traditions of libertarianism (as mine) or principled conservatism infected by the lies and depredations of Trumpism, know how we are to write, speak, and conduct ourselves.

It would serve the press in this beleaguered free society to write and speak as though a free society still matters to them as much as it does to us.

Watch Martian moon Deimos pass in front of Jupiter & its moons:

Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Politics, Sen. Ron Johnson, U.S. Senate

Daily Bread for 10.14.22: Ron Johnson, Conspiracy Theorist, Leads in U.S. Senate Race

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 6:13 PM for 11h 05m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 77.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt is shot in Milwaukee:

Roosevelt was in Wisconsin stumping as the presidential candidate of the new, independent Progressive Party, which had split from the Republican Party earlier that year. Roosevelt already had served two terms as chief executive (1901-1909), but was seeking the office again as the champion of progressive reform. Unbeknownst to Roosevelt, a New York bartender named John Schrank had been stalking him for three weeks through eight states. As Roosevelt left Milwaukee’s Hotel Gilpatrick for a speaking engagement at the Milwaukee Auditorium and stood waving to the gathered crowd, Schrank fired a .38-caliber revolver that he had hidden in his coat.

Roosevelt was hit in the right side of the chest and the bullet lodged in his chest wall. Seeing the blood on his shirt, vest, and coat, his aides pleaded with him to seek medical help, but Roosevelt trivialized the wound and insisted on keeping his commitment. His life was probably saved by the speech, since the contents of his coat pocket — his metal spectacle case and the thick, folded manuscript of his talk — had absorbed much of the force of the bullet. Throughout the evening he made light of the wound, declaring at one point, “It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose,” but the candidate spent the next week in the hospital and carried the bullet inside him the rest of his life.

 FREE WHITEWATER has a category dedicated to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, as someone so conspiracy-driven merits vigilance. Below is Johnson from his debate with Lt. Gov., Barnes, when the audience laughs at Johnson’s nutty claim that he was the victim of an FBI conspiracy. (Johnson, by the way, leads in the FiveThirtyEight‘s projection.)

Melting Swiss glacier reveals wreckage of WWII plane:

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City, Film

Film: Tuesday, October 18th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, CODA

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Tuesday, October 18th at 1:00 PM, there will be a re-showing of CODA @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Comedy/Drama/Music

Rated PG-13; 1 hour, 51 minutes (2021)

As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), Ruby is the only hearing person in her deaf family. When the family’s fishing business is threatened, Ruby finds herself torn between pursuing her passion at music college and her fear of abandoning her parents. Winner of 3 Oscars, including Best Picture, Supporting Actor and Screenplay.

One can find more information about CODA at the Internet Movie Database.

Daily Bread, Politics, State Government, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 10.13.22: The Appointed Squatters on the Technical College Board

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 51. Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 6:14 PM for 11h 07m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5:30 PM. 

On this day in 1903, the Boston Red Sox win the first modern World Series, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the eighth game

Fred Prehn, a repulsive WISGOP holdover beyond his term on the Natural Resources Board, has compatriots on the Technical College System Board. (Of Fred Prehn, see Tiny Fred Prehn and Fred Prehn, the Most Self-Aware Man in All History.) Kelly Meyerhofer reports 18 months after terms expired, GOP appointees to Wisconsin’s technical college board continue to serve and deny Evers’ picks:

Mary Williams isn’t budging.

The former GOP state representative from northern Wisconsin who was appointed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker to the Technical College System Board continues to serve despite her term expiring in May 2021 and Gov. Tony Evers naming her replacement months ago.

“All you have to do is see what the Supreme Court did,” she said. 

Williams and two other holdovers on the board whose terms expired in May 2021 — Associated Builders and Contractors vice president Kelly Tourdot and Rio dairy farmer Becky Levzow — are emboldened to stay since the state Supreme Court ruled this summer that it’s OK for political appointees to continue serving beyond their terms. The court said the expiration of a term doesn’t create a vacancy until the state Senate holds a confirmation hearing. 

The actions of Williams, Tourdot and Levzow mirror Fred Prehn, a Wausau dentist and Walker appointee to the Natural Resources Board who has similarly disregarded his term’s end date, remaining on the board to prevent a Democratic majority from forming.

….

Asked why so many other political appointees over the years step down when their terms expire as opposed to taking her approach, Williams said, “Because everyone’s an individual. Now I’m going to hang up, and I don’t want you to call me again.”

Russians fleeing draft sail in yachts to South Korea:

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Daily Bread, Education, Politics, UW System

Daily Bread for 10.12.22: The Florida Affirmative Action Hire and Wisconsin’s Own Educational Politics

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 61. Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 6:16 PM for 11h 10m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 92.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM. 

On this day in 1810, the residents of Munich hold the first Oktoberfest in celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Louis of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.

Writing at the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin describes the candidacy of U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) to lead the University of Florida as an affirmative action hire. See Ben Sasse: An affirmative action hire if there ever was one. Rubin explains:

Conservatives have long bemoaned the politicization of higher education, accusing faculty and administrators of catering to “wokeness” and engaging in cancel culture personnel policies. Now, we will see how deep their concern about academic freedom really is, thanks to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse.

DeSantis is seeking to install Sasse as president of the University of Florida, which many students, faculty, administrators and donors perceive as an assault on academic independence. And for good reason: DeSantis makes no bones about his contempt for free speech and academic freedom.

The governor has championed an anti-protest law and a measure attempting to bar teachers from talking about race in classrooms, both of which were blocked in state court. He also backed the infamous “don’t say gay” bill, suspended a state attorney for speaking out against the state’s abortion restrictions and, most ominously, changed Disney’s tax status after the company criticized his LGBTQ policies. And he’s routinely tried to exclude the media from events.

With regard to higher education, DeSantis is widely suspected to be behind the University of Florida’s attempt to bar professors from testifying against the state’s voter suppression bill. He also supported legislation that created an exemption to the state’s open government laws, thereby allowing the University of Florida to conduct its president selection process behind closed doors.

Given that the governor’s chief of staff reportedly helped guide Sasse through the selection process, the ensuing outrage that DeSantis is attempting to put a Republican flunky atop the state’s flagship institution was hardly unexpected. Sasse’s vocal opposition to same-sex marriage and support for right-wing Supreme Court judges who disposed of nearly 50 years of abortion precedent naturally don’t sit well in a diverse university setting.

Sasse provided a lame defense of his views during a recent student forum. “The fact that I’ve had political positions and policy positions that reflect the views of Nebraskans, it’s a different job than president of UF.”

No one here credibly thinks that Jay Rothman, longtime attorney and now UW System president, has an ideological record like the one Rubin describes. (It is fair to wonder why the System couldn’t find an academic as its leader, and to wonder more so whether Rothman will be able to overcome demographic and budget constraints at the System.)

Nonetheless, here in Wisconsin, there are legitimate concerns about the politicization of education. James Henderson of UW-Whitewater abruptly left his position as UW-Whitewater chancellor with stated complaints over politicization, and Republican legislators habitually seek control over UW System decisions about which they know nothing. (The Republicans contend that they habitually intervene only to prevent additional politicization, but that approach is more retributive than corrective.)

Wisconsin isn’t Florida, but evolving even a bit closer to Florida seems more curse than blessing.  

This Mach-5 engine will do what no other can:

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Politics, Reasoning

Daily Bread for 10.11.22: Identifying Types and Spotting Issues

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon showers with a high of 74. Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 6:18 PM for 11h 13m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater will have a Finance Committee meeting at 4:30 PM, a Referendum Information Session (Fire & EMS) at 5 PM, and a Public Works meeting at 6 PM.

On this day in 1968, NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission.

Critical to any analysis is an accurate understanding both the whole and also the elements into which one divides it. So, if someone is studying badgers, he’s not supposed to mistake them for skunks, and he’s supposed to understanding something of a badger’s anatomy. He cannot credibly, for example, confuse a badger’s foot with its ear.

This needn’t require a degree in badgerology, but at least someone shouldn’t make basic mistakes of identification.

And yet, and yet, in these overwrought times, mistakes of identification and issues are common.

Mistakes of identification: not knowing one species from another. Skunks, badgers, stoats: getting them all mixed up. 

In Whitewater, this would be ignorance about how many political orientations there are in this small city, or failing to discern the size of each. For political groups and their respective sizes in town see FREE WHITEWATER’s category Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021.

Whitewater does not have, for example, a leftist/communist/socialist/globalist cabal. YMBFKM. Whitewater has a tiny number of progressives who are too few in number to shape policy in this city. One doesn’t have to be a progressive (as I am not) to be able to count their numbers accurately. 

Whitewater does not have, for example, a powerful trade union. It doesn’t matter whether Whitewater should or shouldn’t have a powerful trade union — the city doesn’t have one.  Those holding up the local teachers’ union as a powerful trade moment have no idea what the concept of power means. Our local unions, of whatever kind, are politically inconsequential in this city. (Someone might believe, even insist, that rabbits eat people, but as it turns out they don’t.) 

Mistakes of issue spotting: failing to determine which concerns reasonably arise from a given action. If there’s a badger attack, for example, a relevant and material issue would be treating animal bites. A badger attack would not, however, suggest a concern over whether badgers might be anabaptists.  (They’re not.)

In Whitewater, failing to issue spot correctly often involves seeing too much or too little in a policy choice. For some professions, especially law, failing to issue spot is a fatal career liability. From a given set of facts, a lawyer must be able to identify the relevant and significant legal issues that arise. (This skill is so fundamental to the profession that someone who cannot issue spot accurately should not be graduated from law school. There are other careers, enjoyable and fulfilling, for would-be attorneys who lack this ability; the law would not be among them.) 

As there is a torrent of ideological discussion in America, it’s too easy, deceptively so, to apply national types and topics to Whitewater. Our local problems, and we have them, are not identical to a common set of national problems, either in nature or number. (In Whitewater, it would be a risible error to think, for example, that defunding the police was truly a possibility. It never was, and never will be.) 

There are problems in town, and risks waiting in the shadows, but so far we have escaped the worst ideological struggles that grip other parts of the nation. Keeping local conditions that way — and avoiding worse political conditions — is a social obligation.

Avoiding worse for Whitewater, however, begins with seeing the city with clear and dry eyes.

Fundamental to this task: identifying types and spotting issues. 

 Ukrainian Woman Reunites With Her Dog Who Fled During Russia’s Invasion: 

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Business, CDA, City, Conflicts of Interest, Daily Bread, Ethics, Michels, Regulatory Capture, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 10.10.22: He Won’t Divest — He’ll Only Say He Has

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 67. Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 6:19 PM for 11h 16m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM. 

On this day in 1492, the crew of Christopher Columbus‘s ship, the Santa Maria, attempt a mutiny. 

The Journal Sentinel’s Corrinne Hess and Laura Schulte report that Tim Michels says he will divest from his family business if he’s elected governor. Experts say that will be a difficult task:

Tim Michels, Wisconsin’s Republican candidate for governor, is pitching himself as a successful businessman who can turn around state government.

But if he gets to the governor’s mansion he’ll have to figure out how to untangle his interests from his family’s construction business, which has received more than $1 billion from state road contracts and has ties to a pipeline project that is awaiting a key environmental study.

Michels, co-owner of Michels Corp., the state’s largest construction company, has said he’ll divest himself from the business but has not provided any details.

Experts say his task won’t be easy.  

State records show the Brownsville-based Michels Corp. has received more than $1.1 billion from Wisconsin for construction projects since 2014. 

When Tim Michels entered the governor’s race in April, he said he hoped the company would continue to compete for state work if he won the race for governor. 

He estimated his company had made about $1.3 billion in state road contracts since 2008, during an April 25 interview with conservative host Jay Weber on WISN-AM (1130). 

(Emphasis added.)

The story highlights two points about Michels. First, Hess’s and Schulte’s reporting shows how Michels’s business has been dependent on, if not parasitic of, government spending.

(Admittedly, Tim Michels is not merely a landlord in Whitewater whose business has been dependent on, if not parasitic of, a public university. Michels has worked on a bigger scale.)

Second, Michels talks about the primacy of private industry over public spending (he’s right!) but if he should take office, there’s likely to be finagling about the separation between public and private. Worse, he still wants his hand in the till for more publicly-funded contracts.

(In Whitewater, this would be like a councilman insisting that the city’s Community Development Authority should operate as though private when it is, in fact, a public body organized under state law and local ordinances. These landlords, bankers, and public relations men like to talk private while serving on public bodies.)

Public or private: pick one. Failing to choose leads too easily to regulatory capture — private business interests dominating public bodies in self-interested, anti-market directions.  

 Inside the Final Days of the Doctor China Tried to Silence: