FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Freedom of Speech, Open Government, Politics, Press, Press Release

Tracking the Influence of Money in Politics

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The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has issued a press release with good news about new resources to track the influence of money in politics.

Here’s the press release, with links to a new tracking website:

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, today announced a major initiative to help the public and journalists investigate the influence of money in Wisconsin state politics and policymaking.

MapLight.org unveiled a new site, maplight.org/wisconsin, that for the first time combines three databases of information – campaign contributions, legislative votes, and interest group support and opposition – revealing the intersection between money and votes in the Wisconsin Legislature. The site allows users to customize their searches and download the data.

“The goal of our Wisconsin site is to provide quick and easy access to information about campaign contributions, the interests of the groups that make them, and how the lawmakers that receive them vote, drawing back the curtain on how money influences legislation around the issues that people care most about,” said Daniel Newman, executive director of MapLight.org, which is based in Berkeley, Calif.

Under an agreement with MapLight.org, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism will investigate money and politics issues and serve as a resource to news organizations in Wisconsin. The project is supported with a grant from the Open Society Institute.

“By centralizing data on contributions and votes, and combining that information with research on interest group bill support and opposition, MapLight.org will provide Wisconsin’s watchdogs with insights critical to the functioning of our democracy, in a fraction of the time it would take to otherwise assemble these facts from disparate sources,” said Andy Hall, executive director of the Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that launched in 2009.

MapLight.org’s data partner for campaign contributions is the nonprofit Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Mike McCabe, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s executive director, said the “collaboration creates new opportunities for investigative journalism and citizen exploration of the impact of special interest money in Wisconsin politics.”

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism focuses upon government integrity and quality of life issues. It collaborates with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where it is based, Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television and other mainstream and ethnic news organizations across the nation.

The Center publicly acknowledges all of its donors, to increase the transparency – and protect the integrity – of its public-interest journalism. The Center is supported by foundations and individuals, including Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Foundation to Promote Open Society (a partner of Open Society Institute), McCormick Foundation and Ford Foundation. Connect with the Center on Twitter and Facebook.

Readers know that I don’t support limits on campaign contributions (as a restriction on expression), but I’m all for tracking what can be tracked.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.27.11

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Good morning.

It’s a rainy day ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of fifty-four degrees.

There’s a Common Council meeting scheduled for this afternoon, at 3 p.m. The agenda is available online.

A story from Australia, Australia Pistachio Disaster Hints at Agricultural Breakdown, may be a cautionary tale for agricultural states like Wisconsin. There, a rapidly-spreading disease has unexpectedly destroyed much of the pistachio crop.

The wide cultivation of genetically uniform plant populations fosters rapid evolution among the pathogens,” said Scot Nelson, a plant pathologist at the University of Hawaii. “Because of this greed, new pathogens or newly reported host-pathogen combinations arise almost daily around the world….

According to Nelson, the outbreak isn’t just a function of weather. It’s likely a result of monoculture crop practices, in which just one or a few varieties of a crop are planted. Australia’s pistachios are descended almost entirely from a single cultivar developed in the early 1980s. Selected for the nuts’ flavor, aesthetically pleasing color and easy-splitting shells, the variety was an easy choice for farmers — but with that choice, the seeds of an epidemic may have been planted.

The high and unexpected cost of uniformity.

Official Misconduct

Lessons from the Talented Dr. Steven Hayne’s Career

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I wrote last week about Dr. Steven Hayne, the incompetent forensic pathologist from Mississippi whose mistakes led to numerous wrongful convictions in that state. He made nothing but excuses — fantastic ones — when critics began to confront him. It took years for critics’ exposure of his shabby, shoddy practices to bring change to Mississippi. (See, The Talented Dr. Steven Hayne.)

Where a just man wouldn’t have done half the things Hayne did, and where a decent man who did any of them would have resigned after being confronted, Hayne clung to his office, continued his bad work, and defied reason for years.

There are countless lessons from Hayne’s career. I think about his bad example often, and from it one can gain insight into less extreme cases, too.

1. A Chair. For selfish officials, there’s nothing more important than retaining office.

2. Contempt for Principle. If having a chair matters much, then principle matters not at all. Men like this only understand having a having a position, not taking one, so to speak. They think value comes from a situation, not a belief.

3. Words. As a consequence of being unprincipled, they’ll say anything to keep power, contradicting yesterday’s views with today’s if they feel it’s useful. They have no underlying conviction exception the conviction that they deserve an official place or post.

4. Useful Allies. Corrupt, incompetent officials are sure to get the support of other corrupt, incompetent officials. Even incumbents who aren’t rotten will often defend mediocrities. Incumbents have a preference for other incumbents.

Bad officials are so situational that they’re like a dog in a story I once heard.

A dog, staying inside a house during the day, hears the mailman visit each day at noon. The dog anticipates the visit, and starts to become angry just before noon. At noon, as he hears the mailman approaching the porch’s mailbox, the dog begins to bark like mad. The canine keeps barking, until he hears the footsteps of the mailman fade away from the house.

Each time, after the mailman leaves, the dog is reassured that his barking forced a potential intruder away. From the animal’s point-of-view, he’s successfully defended the house yet again, as he does day after day at noon.

We know that the dog’s done nothing of the sort; the dog, limited by his surroundings to the exclusion of a broader perspective, can’t see what’s really happening.

In a similar way, small-minded officials cannot see the broader, more powerful trends sweeping through their communities. If anything, an insider’s view actually leads them astray.

It is the lack of principle and perspective, and the underestimation of strong forces in the world beyond an office door, that often undoes the mediocre.

That, and critics’ patient persistence.

Government Spending, Laws/Regulations, Libertarians, Planning

Libertarian Party’s List of Recent Federal Mistakes

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The national Libertarian party’s re-published a list of the top-ten federal government mistakes, with the addition of ten new mistakes. I’ve listed them below — the details for each are available at the LP website. Exec. Dir. Wes Benedict contends that these are mostly mistakes of the Obama Administration, but many of these policies pre-date the current administration, and received (sadly) the support of both parties in Congress.

1. Cash for Clunkers
2. War escalation in Afghanistan
3. Giant government health care expansion bill
4. Post office loses money hand over fist
5. Stimulus package
6. Expansion of “state secrets” doctrine
7. Big increase in unemployment
8. “Bailout” Geithner as Treasury Secretary
9. Skyrocketing federal spending
10. Huge federal deficits

And here are ten new ones:

11. War in Libya
12. Assassination doctrine
13. Big-spending deals with Republicans
14. Keeping Guantanamo open
15. Fed massively inflates fiat currency
16. War on Poker
17. Patriot Act extensions
18. Sustaining warrantless wiretaps
19. Sustaining War in Iraq
20. Medical Marijuana raids

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.26.11

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Good morning.

It’s a day of showers and thunderstorms for Whitewater, with a high temperature of sixty-degrees.

In Whitewater today, there’s a special meeting of the Police Commission at 6 p.m.  The agenda for the meeting is available online.

If you’ve ever wondered how ants protect themselves from flooding — and at one time or another, who hasn’t? — here’s an answer: they form rafts.  At least, that’s what fire ants do.  Wired offers a video of the ants in action —



See, Ant Rafts Repel Water Like Gore-Tex. more >>

City, Freedom of Speech, Politics

On Forward Whitewater

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There’s a new political group, Forward Whitewater, recently formed in the city. The organization has its own Facebook page. (Note: I’ve been a libertarian critic of Gov. Walker, but I have no connection to Forward Whitewater.)

Here’s the description and mission of the group, from Facebook:

Description —

Forward Whitewater is a group of citizens from the city of Whitewater and the surrounding area, dedicated to opposing the radical agenda put forth by Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in the state legislature. We welcome members of any party (or no party) who wish to stand up for democracy in Wisconsin.

Mission —

Educate the public about Gov. Walker’s budget repair bill, as well as his proposed biennial budget, and how they will affect Wisconsin workers and families.

Recall Scott Walker and Republicans in the legislature in order to put Wisconsin’s government back in the hands of the people.

I’ve written before about the balance between conservatives and progressives in the city. See, Why Whitewater Isn’t a Progressive City; Why Whitewater’s ‘Conservatives’ Hold the City Tenuously.

A few quick points.

1. There’s no other group like Forward Whitewater specific to the city, for either the left or right.

2. Although there are both Republican and Democratic groups in the city, they’re not particularly visible (especially off campus).

3. The conservative Tea Party group, the Rock River Patriots, is more active than any GOP group in the city. The Patriots cover an area greater than Whitewater; there’s no group in Whitewater alone that’s like them.

4. Many conservatives in Whitewater aren’t market conservatives — they’re simply right-of-center defenders of the status quo. Look at them closely, and they are less like Reagan and more like Nixon. They advocate any number of big projects, not to help ordinary people, but as much for their own self-promotion as anything else.

Some of them have been at the epicenter of fiscal quake after quake (TID 4, the wasteful Innovation Center, etc.). They’re shameless, though, so they move from mistake to mistake, lying about their errors while spending taxpayers’ money on new errors-to-be.

It’s unfair to call people like this true conservatives — they’re not big on conserving other people’s money, for example.

5. There’s no practical difference between stodgy town squires of this ilk and an official like Whitewater’s city manager. In main consequence, he’s indistinguishable from many defensive, status-quo town squires.

That’s what makes all this unexpected — it’s not Whitewater’s habit to have grassroots political groups — and I’m not sure what will come of this effort. A grassroots group that’s critical of the governor will be met with some considerable consternation from Whitewater’s town fathers. They’re suspicious of advocacy, expression, and protests.

In this regard, they think little of ordinary people. They’d much prefer Whitewater as a collaborative enterprise of a few dozen people, with a few hundred cheerleaders beyond that. That’s their secret — despite what they say, they’ve little more than a few hundred committed supporters, out of all the city, even after all these years. (Libertarians, by contrast, are among those who believe most deeply and optimistically in the power of ordinary people — free from government, free from any elite’s supposed guidance — to accomplish great things.)

A grassroots political effort of this kind — and others that may follow (right or left) — would be common, expected, and a sign of good health in other communities. I think it’s a sign of those positive things in Whitewater, too.

We’ll see what Old Whitewater thinks of this. It’s New Whitewater they’ll be seeing, and about which they’ll be thinking.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.25.11

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Good morning.

It’s a rainy day ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of fifty-eight.

The Wisconsin HIstorical Society notes that on this day in 1996,

Governor Tommy Thompson signed the W-2 (Wisconsin Works) program into law, making Wisconsin the first U.S. state to replace a benefits-based welfare system with a requirement that recipients work to get aid. W-2 formed the basis for national welfare reform.[Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Tommy G. Thompson Center].

Ars Technica has a fine story for the holiday — Happy Easter: pygmy rabbits reintroduced to the wild:

Rare pygmy rabbits are being reintroduced to their native Columbia Basin in the United States, from the brink of extinction. It will be the first time that the endangered species has been seen in the wild since 2004, after a mere 16 of the remaining little fluffballs were taken into captivity in an attempt to save their species in 2001.

With adults weighing in at under 500g, the pygmy rabbits don’t share the same reputation as their larger cousins—pygmies do not breed capriciously in the wild, one of the reasons why bringing them back from extinction (as they were declared in the 1990s) is such an achievement for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Here’s a video from the Oregon Zoo that shows how small these rabbits are —



more >>

Libertarians, Liberty

Why the MacIver Institute’s Not Libertarian

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….Brett Healy, president of the conservative John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy in Madison, said it’s important to distinguish between public and private sector unions.

“Unions originally were established to help a group of individuals come to a reasonable agreement with their employer,” he said. “In this case, the employer is the government. So the question I keep going back to is, ‘Why do we need to protect these individuals from their own government?’ “

He doesn’t think government’s capable of over-reach; might just as well say he doesn’t think.

Via Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.

Cross-posted at Daily Wisconsin.

Twitter

Recent Tweets, 4.17 – 4.23

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Of JoAnne Kloppenburg The right is mistaken to confuse, perhaps wishfully, careful manner for weakness FREE WHITEWATER http://bit.ly/igohIp
21 Apr

Pulitzer Winner’s Surprisingly Ugly Website nothing says prestige like DOUBLE DAZE coupon offers | DAILY WISCONSIN http://bit.ly/gUMBaB
20 Apr

A True Success – President: Whitewater Aquatic Center costs have dramatically decreased Walworth County Today http://bit.ly/fibahs
18 Apr

Walker doesn’t address role of Foley & Lardner Walker denies Planning Financial Martial Law: ‘Absolutely False’ http://bit.ly/h0B4SE
18 Apr