FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Corporate Welfare, Government Spending

The Empty Bus

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The Empty Bus from John Adams on Vimeo.

Whitewater’s Common Council will tonight consider the performance of an often-empty Janesville Transit Bus that mostly benefits one multi-billion-dollar corporation. At the end of this post, readers will find links to prior posts about this failed project. I’ve also embedded the relevant documents from tonight’s meeting – the bus would require 80% more money from Whitewater than last year, and more public money overall. There’s no funding in the proposed budget for this project – anyone advocating continued funding would have to take from another, budgeted item.

Any city funding, in any event, would be better used elsewhere.

Those Whitewater residents who’ve noticed that the bus is empty when driving through Whitewater are right. The short, looping video that I’ve embedded above shows from the inside what the bus looks like from the outside while going through town: mostly empty, mile after mile, wasting fuel.

And yet, and yet, the case against this project does not rest simply on a video clip, but more fully on sound arguments and data. The transit figures, themselves, reveal powerfully what a small clip merely illustrates in part, as I wrote in an earlier post:

‘What do they show (assuming these are even accurately reported passenger trips)?

Generac – flush with a market capitalization of $2.92 billion and a stock price up 72% over the last year – accounts for 30% of all riders, with the Janesville terminal supplying 29%, other Janesville stops 21%, the Milton Piggly Wiggly 10%, Milton other stops 3%, the UW campus only 5%, and non-students, non-Generac workers in Whitewater only 2% of riders.

2%

That’s why the bus seems empty – because when driving through the city, it is empty (or nearly so).‘

To those who have kindly written to me over the last year and a half, with their disappointment in the project (and their detailed arguments against it), I offer my heartfelt thanks. I’ve done my level best to make good use of your suggestions. Whitewater has better uses for this money, surely. But if through guile funding from Whitewater somehow continues, we’ll continue on, too, with point-by-point assessments of public statements about this project, clip by clip, measured against actual performance.

Prior Posts: Whitewater’s 3.20.12 Common Council Meeting, A Local Flavor of Crony Capitalism, A little consistency would be in order, Whitewater Uses Public Money for Big Corporation While Big Corporation Invests in Whitewater Mexico, The City of Whitewater’s 2013 Draft Budget: Crony Capitalism, Ceaseless Press Errors About the So-Called ‘Innovation Express’, The Innovation Express Generac Bus: ‘Public Transit Is Not Expected to Make Money’, and Janesville Transit’s Ghost Bus. more >>

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.5.13

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Good morning.

Whitewater will have a seventy-percent chance of rain today, and a near-certainty of rain tonight. Tuesday’s high will be fifty-five.

Common Council meets tonight, at 6:30 PM. Tonight’s meeting includes, among other topics, budget presentations.

On this day in 1862, Lincoln removes a general:

….a tortured relationship ends when President Abraham Lincoln removes General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan ably built the army in the early stages of the war but was a sluggish and paranoid field commander who seemed unable to muster the courage to aggressively engage Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia….

After his removal, McClellan battled with Lincoln once more–for the presidency in 1864. McClellan won the Democratic nomination but was easily defeated by his old boss.

Google’s homepage today celebrates a renowned industrial designer, Raymond Loewy, who was born one-hundred twenty years ago today:

raymond-loewys-120th-birthday-ca-fr-us-nl-uk-ie-6388231276855296-hp

Google’s latest doodle celebrates the birthday of Raymond Loewy, the late industrial designer of the Coca-Cola bottle who was also involved in creating the Shell, Exxon, TWA and former BP logos.

Loewy’s slenderised design for an S1 steam locomotive that saw service in the eastern US forms the basis of the doodle.

Described by admirers as the “father of industrial design”, Loewy, who died in 1986 at the age of 92, was responsible for other notable symbols including the Lucky Strike cigarette packet.

Born in France, he emigrated to the US in 1919 after completing his engineering studies at the Université de Paris and École de Laneau.

On this day in 1912, a referendum to grant women the right to vote fails:

1912 – Women’s Suffrage Referendum
On this date Wisconsin voters (all male) considered a proposal to allow women to vote. When the referendum was over, Wisconsin men voted women’s suffrage down by a margin of 63 to 37 percent. The referendum’s defeat could be traced to multiple causes, but the two most widely cited reasons were schisms within the women’s movement itself and a perceived link between suffragists and temperance that antagonized many German American voters. Although women were granted the vote in 1920 by the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Wisconsin’s own constitution continued to define voters as male until 1934. [Source: Turning Points in Wisconsin History]

Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about fatal diseases. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)

What is the number one killer of American women?

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.4.13

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Good morning.

Our week begins with breezy skies and a high of fifty-three.

On this day in 1928, a gambler plays his last hand:

Arnold Rothstein, New York’s most notorious gambler, is shot and killed during a poker game at the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. After finding Rothstein bleeding profusely at the service entrance of the hotel, police followed his trail of blood back to a suite where a group of men were playing cards. Reportedly, Rothstein had nothing good in his final hand.

From an early age, Rothstein had a talent for playing numbers. As a teenager, he built a small fortune gambling in craps and poker games, and by age 20 he owned and operated his own casino. Rothstein became a legendary figure in New York because of his unparalleled winning streak in bets and card games. However, it is believed that he usually won by fixing the events. The most famous instance of this was in 1919 when the World Series was fixed. Abe Attell, a friend and employee of Rothstein, paid some of the key players on the Chicago White Sox to throw the games. When the scandal was uncovered, Rothstein fiercely denied any involvement to a grand jury and escaped indictment.

In private, however, Rothstein never denied his role, preferring to enjoy the outlaw image.

Also on this day, in 1909, Wisconsin sees an aviation first:

1909 – Nation’s First Commercially Built Airplane
On this date in Beloit, a plane was assembled and built by Wisconsin’s first pilot, Arthur P. Warner. This self-taught pilot was the 11th in the U.S. to fly a powered aircraft and the first in the U.S. to buy an aircraft for business use. Warner used it to publicize his automotive products.[Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers]

Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about an angle. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)

What is Brewster’s angle?

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.3.13

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Good morning.

Sunday will be sunny with a high of forty-nine. The return to standard time now complete, sunrise is 6:32 AM and sunset 4:44 PM.

On this day in 1957, the Soviets launch a dog into space:

The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space—a dog name Laika—aboard theSputnik 2 spacecraft.

Laika, part Siberian husky, lived as a stray on the Moscow streets before being enlisted into the Soviet space program. Laika survived for several days as a passenger in the USSR’s second artificial Earth satellite, kept alive by a sophisticated life-support system. Electrodes attached to her body provided scientists on the ground with important information about the biological effects of space travel. She died after the batteries of her life-support system ran down.

At least a dozen more Russian dogs were launched into space in preparation for the first manned Soviet space mission, and at least five of these dogs died in flight. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1. He orbited Earth once before landing safely in the USSR.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.2.13

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Good morning.

Saturday will be cloudy with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 7:31 AM and sunset will be 5:46 PM.

On this day in 1947, the Spruce Goose (a term creator Howard Hughes disliked) flies:

….Development of the Spruce Goose cost a phenomenal $23 million and took so long that the war had ended by the time of its completion in 1946. The aircraft had many detractors, and Congress demanded that Hughes prove the plane airworthy. On November 2, 1947, Hughes obliged, taking the H-4 prototype out into Long Beach Harbor, CA for an unannounced flight test. Thousands of onlookers had come to watch the aircraft taxi on the water and were surprised when Hughes lifted his wooden behemoth 70 feet above the water and flew for a mile before landing.

Despite its successful maiden flight, the Spruce Goose never went into production, primarily because critics alleged that its wooden framework was insufficient to support its weight during long flights. Nevertheless, Howard Hughes, who became increasingly eccentric and withdrawn after 1950, refused to neglect what he saw as his greatest achievement in the aviation field. From 1947 until his death in 1976, he kept the Spruce Goose prototype ready for flight in an enormous, climate-controlled hangar at a cost of $1 million per year. Today, the Spruce Goose is housed at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

Poll, Weird Tales

Friday Poll: Would You Want to Know if Someone Once Died in Your Home?

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CNN has a story about a website that claims that, for a fee, it can tell prospective home buyers if someone once died in a home those buyers are considering. I’m not vouching for the website, but here’s this week’s question: would you want to know if someone had died in a house under your consideration (or in the house or apartment in which you now live)?

I would be interested in a home’s history, but it would not change a buying decision, I think.


Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.1.13

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Good morning.

The end of the week will bring scattered showers (a fifty-percent chance) and a high of forty-seven.

On this day in 1512, the Sistine Chapel ceiling goes on public display.

Sistine_chapel

Sistine Chapel ceiling – photograph by Patrick Landy via Wikipedia

On this day in 1863, a pen magnate is born:

1863 – George Safford Parker Born
On this date George Safford Parker was born in Shullsburg. While studying telegraphy in Janesville, he developed an interest in fountain pens. In 1891 he organized the Parker Pen Company in Janesville. The company gained world-wide acclaim for innovations like the duo-fold pen and pencil. Parker served as president of the company until 1933. Parker died on July 19, 1937. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, p.280]

Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about energy. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)

About what percentage of the universe is dark energy thought to comprise?

City, Holiday

Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2013

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20131031-113210.jpg

Here’s the seventh annual FREE WHITEWATER list of the scariest things in Whitewater for 2013. The 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 editions are available for comparison.

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

10. Red Foxes. There are few people who don’t find red foxes beautiful; I’d guess that even people accustomed to the bright colors of the tropics would find a red fox’s coat impressive.  But when one first appeared on campus, we might have thought that a Martian had encroached on the city, with warnings not to go near it, or feed it, or encourage it to stay.    

We’re a rural area; people are familiar with wildlife nearby and know how to conduct themselves.  It’s been here for a bit; in time it will move on.  We’ll conduct ourselves properly around it until it leaves the area.       

Besides, listen to how foxes sound:

9. Planning from Madison.  Whether Democrat or Republican, planning from Madison doesn’t work well.  When the WisDems controlled state government, Republicans were right to complain that state-initiated planning rested on dodgy ‘Madison Math.’ 

It did; they were right.

But now the WISGOP’s in Madison, and working on its own state-centric solutions to local issues, and we’re still stuck with planning that doesn’t work well.  It’s right-leaning rather than left-leaning, but it’s still planning that’s as ineffectual or counterproductive as it was before.     

8. Numbers Policing.  Living one’s life with the outlook that every day is another long slog to hold back the tide must be a wearisome outlook.  This city has not, and will not, get a handle on property and nuisance crimes until it gives up a perspective that rests on numbers – counting like that simply doesn’t add up. 

There’s lip-service to community policing, but little more, by way of understanding or by daily practice.  Us against them (with the feeling of us against the world) is a futile approach.     

Managing a tide requires one to abandon one’s fear of the water, and to learn to swim in, and through, the ocean.

7. New People. They shouldn’t be scary, but for some they are.  That’s too bad, because we’ve no positive future without an influx of new and energetic residents. 

6. Consumer Preferences.  Tastes change over time.  There’s no reason to fear those changing preferences – they’re not imposed from a small elite, but are simply the consequence of thousands of daily, voluntary transactions and encounters between ordinary people. 

5. Crony Capitalism & Big Projects. A few, who have much already, use government to amass more for themselves at the expense of common taxpayers.  There is nothing good – but much that’s bad – about a Reverse Robin Hood. 

Crony capitalism is false capitalism.

It’s not the poor, public safety, or the administration of justice these avaricious few have in mind – it’s their own enrichment.   

We could make far better use of this money, with the best option being leaving it with taxpayers who earned it. 

Still, all the hours of discussion, hundreds of headlines, and millions of dollars would have been better applied toward working out fusion power, or a cure for a deadly disease, or even a rewrite of the Obstruction rule in Major League Baseball.  (By the way, congratulations, Red Sox – the use of that rule in Game 3 didn’t change your happy outcome.)   

4. Empty Transit Buses. Just about any project would have been better than this year-and-a-half failed experiment.  There’s more about this yet to be decided, and more to be said, next week.    

3. Empty Jargon. Somewhere, there must be Rosetta Stone language software for empty jargon (Business-Speaking Made Easy, Conversational Bureaucratese, etc.)  There must be, because one hears proposal after proposal where the substance goes no farther than synergy, leveraging, incentivizing, etc.    

2. Conditions.  For a few, it’s deeply disturbing to read about some of the city’s actual economic conditions.  It’s as though citing statistics that describe material life here were akin to spitting inside the Sistine Chapel. 

Quick reminder, to those concerned: it’s not like spitting inside the Sistine Chapel. 

Anyone walking about knows that we’re a combination of great beauty and occasional economic difficulties.  Anyone visiting will see the same, quickly and surely.

1. Fear Itself.   I’m no one’s idea of a New Dealer – I think those varied programs actually forestalled better times.  (Here I’m writing about economic policy. On foreign policy, it seems clear to me that any president who led America in a war against the Axis powers deserves humanity’s enduring gratitude.) 

Still, I deeply admire Roosevelt and the New Dealers’ love for common men and women, their willingness to describe conditions honestly, and their correct assessment that an honest description would lead to better times. 

Politics, policy, and sensible planning demand more than an over-use of exclamation points. 

We have no reason to fear looking at hard economic facts; being afraid of the reaction of others, being afraid of what people might say, etc. – simply a general fear – is what’s really scary.   

We’ve taken accentuating the positive so absurdly far – out of insecurity or pure vanity –  that we’ve abandoned the realistic.

We surely do have a brighter future ahead in our small city – there’s no reason to be afraid to discuss in detail our present position and the road ahead.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.31.13

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Good morning and Happy Halloween.

We’ll have a rainy Halloween this year, but also one of mild temperatures, with a high of sixty-two. Trick or Treat in Whitewater is from 4 to 7 PM this evening.

On this day in 1776, King George III speaks publicly in Parliament, for the first time, since the signing of the Declaration of Independence that July:

….in his first speech before British Parliament since the leaders of the American Revolution came together to sign of the Declaration of Independence that summer, King George III acknowledges that all was not going well for Britain in the war with the United States.

In his address, the king spoke about the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the revolutionary leaders who signed it, saying, “for daring and desperate is the spirit of those leaders, whose object has always been dominion and power, that they have now openly renounced all allegiance to the crown, and all political connection with this country.” The king went on to inform Parliament of the successful British victory over General George Washington and the Continental Army at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, but warned them that, “notwithstanding the fair prospect, it was necessary to prepare for another campaign.”

Today in 1968 was a good day for the Milwaukee Bucks:

1968 – Milwaukee Bucks Win First Game
On this date the Milwaukee Bucks claimed their first victory, a 134-118 win over the Detroit Pistons in the Milwaukee Arena. The Bucks were 0-5 at the time, and Wayne Embry led Milwaukee with 30 points. Embry became the first player in Bucks history to score 30 or more points in a regular season game. [Source: Milwaukee Bucks]

Scientific American‘s daily trivia question asks about testing. (Clicking on the question leads to its answer.)

How long does it take to test the safety of a pesticide?