Evening of 9.10.20: Updated with full session video. As always, the best record is a recording. Original post follows — Last night, at a special meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, that public body voted 5-1 against consideration of a municipal ordinance to regulate mass gatherings during the pandemic. (The agenda packet, with the ordinance…
Laws/Regulations
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…
City, Coronavirus, Laws/Regulations, Local Government, Public Health, University
Whitewater Common Council Meeting, 9.1.20: Culture & Prohibitions
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
At last night’s meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, the council discussed and gave direction to the city attorney to draft an ordinance regulating large gatherings of people on private property during the pandemic. (Updated with video. A revised agenda is available here.) The council plans to meet again on 9.9.20, where they will consider a…
Coronavirus, Education, Justice, Law, Laws/Regulations, Public Health, School District
Whitewater School Board Meeting, 8.24.20: 5 Points
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
At last night’s meeting of the Whitewater Unified School District’s board, the board heard, among other items, a report on summer school, a report on the district’s use of seclusion and restraint, approved unanimously a new metric the district will use to determine its next instructional plan beginning September 28th, and held a budget hearing.…
City, Coronavirus, Laws/Regulations, Local Government, Open Government, Public Health
Whitewater Common Council Meeting, 8.4.20: 6 Points
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
At last night’s meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, among other items — the council slightly modified its mask ordinance, discussed (but took no action on) a racial justice initiative that would create an Equal Opportunities Committee, voted unanimously to extend the lake drawdown project for approximately another year, and voted to continue virtual public…
Business, City, Coronavirus, Laws/Regulations, Libertarians, Liberty, Local Government, Open Government, Public Health, School District, University
Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Temporary Mask Ordinance: 7 Points
by JOHN ADAMS • • 10 Comments
Updated evening of 7.22.20 with meeting video. (The discussion on Whitewater’s mask ordinance runs from 31:09 to 3:37:50.) At last night’s meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, the seven-member council voted unanimously for a temporary mask ordinance, taking effect 8.1.20 and running through 12.31.20, requiring masks in parts of buildings open to the public, and…
Courts, Federal Government, Law, Laws/Regulations
U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on DACA in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program allows certain persons who arrived in the United States as children to apply for a forbearance of removal. Today, a five-person majority of the nation’s high court ruled in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California that the Trump Administration violated the Administrative…
Horde, Law, Laws/Regulations, Police
The Horde
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Embed from Getty Images Over these many years, legitimate critics of law enforcement have been wrongly accused of radicalism. Defenders of the most mediocre – let alone wrongful – practices have insisted hysterically that their critics are extremists, fanatics, blacks, browns, ‘soft’ whites, liberals, members of the ACLU, libertarians, Rastafarians, whatever. In a place like…
ACLU, Asylum, City, Immigration, Law, Laws/Regulations, Local Government, Migrants
Derechos de los Inmigrantes — Immigrants’ Rights
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Posted originally on 7.14.19, now updated with additional information from the Spanish-language section linked below. Independientemente de su estatus migratorio, usted tiene derechos garantizados por la Constitución. Aprende más aquí sobre sus derechos como inmigrante y cómo expresarlos. …. Agentes policiales pregunta sobre mi estatus migratorio Cómo reducir el riesgo para usted mismo Mantener la…
Law, Laws/Regulations, Liberty, Open Government, Public Records 2, School District
Closed Government is Expensive Government
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Small communities – by definition places with small populations – have fewer people from whom residents can choose officials, elected or appointed. The rational response for these communities would be to be as open as possible, to make best use of their full populations, and to encourage newcomers. Pride, however, stands in the way of…
City, Enforcement, Government Spending, Laws/Regulations, Local Government, University
Scrounging Through the Junk Drawer
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
When UW-Whitewater’s enrollment was expanding, and so student housing was in demand, some residents opposed to more rental properties rushed to local government in a futile effort to hold back the student tide, through zoning or code enforcement. Now that there’s a worry that student enrollment is declining, and rental properties are less in demand,…
Laws/Regulations, Litigation, Politics, State Government, Tony Evers, Wisconsin
Evers Turns the Board Around
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Tony Evers, by his nature, avoids initiating a confrontation. He seems to have found a political and legal strategy to match his natural disposition. Patrick Marley reports Tony Evers says it will take a lawsuit to get him to go along with lame-duck legislation: Incoming Gov. Tony Evers said Wednesday he would not go along…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, CDA, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Elections, Gov. Walker, Kakistocracy, Law, Laws/Regulations, Local Government, Mendacity, State Capitalism, State Government, Tony Evers, WEDC, Wisconsin
Once a Gerrymanderer…
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Wisconsin, with a gerrymandered legislature and a crony capitalist, lame-duck governor, was never going to have an easy transition back to a tradition of democratically representative government and sound economic policy. The men who engineered years of the wrong approach were never going to go gently to the political outer darkness that, deservedly, awaits them.…
City, Laws/Regulations, University
The Limits of Messaging
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
UW-Whitewater quadruples parking without a permit fine Whitewater, like many small towns, is marketing mad: claims, professions, insistence, publicizing, and declarations exceed actual conditions. Newly-increased fines over Whitewater’s available parking spaces on campus illustrate this problem. The local campus is large, relative to the non-campus parts of the city, and that places pressure on both…