FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Poll

Friday Poll: “Do you think Whitewater teaches and embraces free thinking?”

by  • 

A smart reader wrote and offered an idea for a poll topic — “Here’s my suggestion for a poll question for your blog: Do you think Whitewater teaches and embraces free thinking?” Well, here we are, with that very question.

Quick assumptions:

(1) This question was about our schools, principally, but you may think of it more broadly if you’d like.

(2) I don’t have an answer – I know how I think, but not what’s being taught all over, throughout the community. I do think that there will be much more independent thinking in the years ahead.

(3) I’d say that free-thinking — whether of the left or right — is a good thing for a community, but others are sure to disagree, believing instead that an enforced consensus is preferable.

(In any event, I will always contend that free-thinking is an individual right, trumping compulsory-thinking expectations.)

Here’s that poll: Have at it.


Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.11.12

by  • 

Good morning.

Today looks to be a fine day – mostly sunny with a high of seventy-six.

That makes this afternoon a perfect opportunity for Great Flowers and Gifts at the Floral Villa Cash Mob —

Floral Villa, at 208 Wisconsin Street, is hosting a cash mob event this Friday from 4 to 6 PM. A cash mob is practice where a group of people assemble at a local business at a specified time to make purchases. It’s just the time, for example, for Graduation or Mother’s Day gifts.

Janesville, in 1931, was still battling over Prohibition, as the Wisconsin Historical Society records:

1931 – Janesville Police Nab Prohibition Violator

On this date Clifford Conn of Crandon was apprehended by Janesville police officers with 90 gallons of moonshine in his car. This was the largest single seizure of illegal alcohol by local law enforcement to this date. For the offense, Crandon was fined $700 and sentenced to two months in jail. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Lots of elements to Google’s daily puzzle today: “What economics book, written by a clergyman, helped an English naturalist formulate a model of speciation that was controversial with creationists?”

Farming, Food, Liberty

Supporting food freedom, and agriculture without government subsidies

by  • 

Reason interviewed free-market farmer Joel Salatin in an article published on 5.5.12.

Two of Salatin’s observations stand out.

On deciding what to eat:

I think the government should allow this debate to flourish in the marketplace of ideas. The government entered this debate in the early 1970s by publishing the first food pyramid, a guide for what Americans should eat. The obesity and diabetes epidemic in this country are a direct result of that intrusion, sponsored and massaged along by the grain cartel and big ag, from chemical companies to equipment dealers. Grain requires more machinery, more energy, and more risk (hence justification for manipulation) than pasture based livestock, and especially forage-based herbivores.

On the worst food law in America today:

The prohibition on raw milk specifically and direct producer-eater food commerce generally. If I could do one thing and only one thing legislatively for the food system, it would be to create a Constitutional Amendment called the Food Choice Emancipation Proclamation which would guarantee every citizen the inalienable, fundamental right to consume any product of their choice and legalizing the direct unregulated commerce between consenting adults of said product.

Right now, farmers can give away raw milk and home made pickles; the prohibition is on sales. What is it about taking money for something that suddenly turns it from a wonderful charitable product into a hazardous substance?

On organic milk, I’d say America is heading, however fitfully, toward liberalization. On government’s role in cajoling or banning other food choices, I’d guess we’re heading in the opposite direction.

Via Reason.

Originally posted on 5.8.12 at Daily Adams.

Beautiful Whitewater, City, New Whitewater

Whitewater’s Evolution

by  • 

Update, 5.10.12 @ 8:20 PM: See, along these lines, Whitewater’s city manager’s published acknowledgement in a newspaper interview (online at 1:03 PM today) of a possible position with Walworth County.

Original post of 5.10.12 @ 12:30 PM:

Change comes at varying speeds, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, still other times seemingly (but only seemingly) not at all.

We’ll hear much in the days ahead about changes in Whitewater’s municipal administration. There’s no surprise in this: In general, once people start looking for a new position, they keep going until they find something.

I’ve written recently about possible changes. See, Qui-Gon Jinn’s Sound Advice for Whitewater and Whitewater’s present, future.

I cannot say precisely when there will be a new Whitewater, but I am certain of New Whitewater’s Inevitability. We’ve made the occasional step backwards or sideways, but our direction is principally forward.

Still much work to go, but then the work of the community has always been the work of many thousands, each shaping a part of the city’s future.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.10.12

by  • 

Good morning.

Today’s forecast predicts a sunny Thursday with a high of sixty-nine.

May 10th is a fine anniversary in Wisconsin history, as the Wisconsin Historical Society recalls:

1865 – Wisconsin Troops Capture Jefferson Davis

Just after dawn on May 10, 1865, Col. Henry Harnden of Madison and his squad of 30 volunteers from the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry captured Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy. After Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, Davis fled south with his family and cabinet. Col. Harnden, commanding the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry at Macon, Ga., was ordered to scour the countryside for him. After four days they caught up with Davis and his entourage in the woods near Irwinville.

As they approached, Col. Harnden’s troops were attacked by soldiers in the brush. They returned fire, killing two adversaries before discovering they were U.S. soldiers who had converged on Davis from a different direction. Upon hearing the friendly fire, Davis attempted to escape. But Harnden “rode up, dismounted and saluted, and I asked if this was Mr. Davis. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I am President Davis.’ At this the soldiers set up a shout that Jeff. Davis was captured.” [Source: Wisconsin Local History & Biography Articles]

A good day’s work.

Google’s daily puzzle has a bit of charm and wordplay to it: “What piazza were you standing in if you saw a Giraffe win a horse race last August 16th?”

Libertarians, Presidential race 2012

Is the 2012 Libertarian Party National Ticket the Strongest Ever?

by  • 

Connor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic thinks so:

A former governor of New Mexico, he was re-elected by that state’s voters, left office popular after two terms, and therefore has the most executive experience of any Libertarian Party presidential nominee. He can also cite the state he ran as evidence that nothing radical happens when he’s put in charge. An economic conservative and social liberal, he represents a new direction for a party that has long wrestled with its paleo-libertarian wing….

The question is whether he can match his party’s 1980 high-water mark and win 1 percent or more of the vote, and whether he might win even more in the key swing state of New Mexico, where voters already know and have cast ballots for him.

A result closer to 2% nationally would have an impact in states beyond New Mexico. This may really be the LP’s best year yet.

Via Comparing Gary Johnson to Past Libertarian Party Nominees.

Posted originally on 5.8.12 at Daily Adams.

City

Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters May 2012 Newsletter

by  • 

The Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters’ May 2012 Newsletter is out, featuring both articles and a calendar of upcoming LWV events.

This latest edition is available as a link on my blogroll, and is embedded below.

Upcoming events:

Date: May 19 (Saturday)
Event: Annual Meeting
Where: 10 AM Fairhaven Fellowhip Hall

Date: June 5 (Tuesday)
Event: Recall Election

Date: July 4 (Wednesday)
Event: July 4th Parade — Look for the League entry!

Whitewater League Website

www.lwvwhitewater.org

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.9.12

by  • 

Good morning.

It’s a partly cloudy Wednesday, with a high of sixty-one, ahead for Whitewater.

Today at 2:30 PM Whitewater’s Community Development Authority will meet, in closed session, to conduct interviews for the now-vacant CDA director’s position. Whitewater has been ill-served by the practice these past few years of relying on her city manager to play a director’s role. One has no idea what sort of candidates the search has found, but this is the second effort in recent months at finding someone.

(It says much about how far the CDA has drifted from conventional standards that the search has not been more public, with candidates properly announced and biographies offered. Nonetheless, ending the use of a city manager as a makeshift CDA director is the right decision.)

Astonishingly, the History Channel’s highlight for 5.9. is the publication of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics:

Today’s mention gives hope to crackpot hucksters everywhere.

Google’s daily puzzle offers a clue in a given name: “The famous tourist attraction named after Sir Benjamin Hall is not the largest of its kind in its city. Where will you find the one with that distinction?” more >>

Beautiful Whitewater, City, Elections, Law, Liberty

Beautiful Whitewater

by  • 

If we were to have a blizzard, covering all the city, today would yet be a lovely day.

There are, of course, some individual losses for which there is no human recompense, but for the community, no day is more restorative, and so more welcome, than an election day.

Today will be a bit sweeter, a bit brighter, a bit more hopeful, for the exercise of the right to vote.

Some believe we have too many elections; looking at our long history, it would be truer to say we’ve not had enough.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.8.12

by  • 

Good morning.

It’s a mild day ahead for Whitewater, with a high of sixty-six, and a slight chance of rain in the afternoon.

All America watches Wisconsin’s election day, and awaits the contest ahead in the next month. A day on which people vote always feels better than a day otherwise.

After Germany signed a surrender the previous day, this day in 1945 was celebrated across Europe as VE Day.

Google’s daily puzzle offers a question about Prohibition: “If a man lives in the city that lifted prohibition on March 1st of 1989, and he was born the year it banned beer, how old is he?”

Note: A connectivity glitch of some sort this morning at FW, but easy enough to bounce back. more >>