Good morning. Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 58. Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 6:40 PM for 11h 50m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM. On this day in 1781,…
Babbittry
Babbittry, City, Corporate Welfare, Culture, Daily Bread, Economy, Free Markets, Housing, Hubris, Hypocrisy, Local Government
Daily Bread for 9.27.22: Housing Opportunity and Opportunity’s Adversaries
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Good morning. Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 56. Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 6:42 PM for 11h 53m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4:30 PM. On this day in 1777, Lancaster, Pennsylvania becomes…
Babbittry, City, Corporate Welfare, Culture, Daily Bread, Economy, Free Markets, Local Government
Daily Bread for 9.26.22: Up from Business to Markets
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 60. Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 6:44 PM for 11h 56m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater Unified School District’s board…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, Blogging, Boosterism, City, Confidence Schemes, Coronavirus, Culture, Local Government, Mendacity, Politics, School District, Special Interests, Whitewater's Local Politics 2021
Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: Marketing
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
This is the ninth in a series on Whitewater’s local politics of 2021. Through all the difficult events of the last two decades (a Great Recession, an opioid epidemic, economic stagnation, creeping nativism, a pandemic, a pandemic recession), Old Whitewater has responded with the same question: how can we market the town to others? If…
Babbittry, Blogging, Boosterism, Culture, Disinformation, Freedom of Speech, Mendacity, Public Relations, Rhetoric
The Power of Refutation
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Laura Hazard Owen writes When’s the best time to correct fake news? After someone’s already read it, apparently: Debunking > prebunking. If you want someone to not believe that false or misleading headline they just read, when’s the best time to correct it? We hear a lot about inoculating people against fake news or “prebunking”…
Babbittry, Boosterism, Conflicts of Interest, Culture, Disinformation, Local Government, Mendacity, Negligence, Politics, Public Relations, Reasoning, School District, Self-Dealing, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, Trumpism, University
Consequences, Accountability, Repentance, Redemption
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
David Frum, writing of Trump & Trumpism in The Conservative Cult of Victimhood, observes that There is no redemption without repentance. There is no repentance without accountability. There is no accountability without consequences. He rightly concludes that for the Trumpists, the absence of a moral order of accountability and repentance has meant that Even as Trump commits…
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Conflicts of Interest, Culture, Ethics, Local Government, Never Trump, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, Trumpism
Before Man & Movement, That Which Paved the Way
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Trump did not spring from the ground; he did not fall from the stars. Neither horticulture nor astrophysics played any role in his rise. Before Trump and Trumpism, there were towns and cities into which he and his movement found receptive audiences. Patients already ill are often susceptible of worse maladies. So it has been…
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Culture
Boosterism’s Cousin, Toxic Positivity
by JOHN ADAMS • • 6 Comments
In political life, boosterism is the overzealous promotion of officials or programs while ignoring actual conditions (particularly conditions of the disadvantaged). It’s wrong and repulsive. (An acknowledgement worth making: I have never criticized boosterism because of a personal concern. My life is comfortable; objections to political boosterism are deep-seated in me as a matter of learning.) Civilizations…
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Coronavirus, Culture, Laws/Regulations, Local Government, Politics, Public Health
Whitewater’s Local Government: Always Literally, Not as Often Seriously
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It was the Trump apologist Salena Zito who, by way of defending Trump, suggested that his words should be taken ‘seriously, not literally.’ (She offered this defense in a deceitful effort to absolve Trump from the plain meaning of what he said, at any moment. Instead of considering his statements, one was supposed to take…
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Conflicts of Interest, Coronavirus, Culture, Ethics, Local Government, Politics
Social Capital and Hardship
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
What role does social capital play in a community’s health? Adam Gopnik, in The Paradoxical Role of Social Capital in the Coronavirus Pandemic, ponders whether there’s a relationship between communities with high social capital and a community’s public health. Gopnik uses a traditional definition of social capital as the “parts of society that, without being…
Babbittry, Boosterism, CDA, City, Culture, Economy, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Police, Press Release, School District
Built Against Substantive Change
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Over time, no matter how small the city, national conditions and trends make their way to the edge of town. Some towns will address these conditions, but others will be resistant to substantive change. For those towns in the latter category, business as usual and rhetorical feints suffice in response to powerful forces to which…
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Local Government, School District, University
The Commuter Class
by JOHN ADAMS • • 5 Comments
Babbittry, Boosterism, Culture, Newspapers, Public Relations
Public Relations v. Journalism
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Anyone familiar with a proper newspaper should be able to tell the difference between public relations and journalism: the former advances a corporate or government perspective, the latter reports and assesses that perspective. There are public relations outfits (often called media relations) in big and small communities, with this obvious difference: small communities have few…
Babbittry, City, Corruption, Federal Government, Law, Local Government, Official Misconduct, Open Government, Police, Politics, State Government
Cameras, Not Committees
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Recent protests across America against excessive and biased use of police force began after ordinary people in those communities recorded official (to the point of murderous) actions, and then shared their recordings with others. It was not government – local, state, or federal – that promptly shared these recordings of excessive force; it was ordinary…