FREE WHITEWATER

Misconduct

Reed Hall’s Inauspicious Choices

Reed Hall, who ‘boldly,’ ‘innovatively’ uses the private title of CEO for an organization that runs on public money, has written two defenses to his agency’s latest audit fiasco.  The first of those appears as a few platitudinous paragraphs online (‘WEDC takes bold, innovative approach to economic development,’ subscription req’d,  and the second as a…

The Tragedy of Dr. Oz

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon and vice chairman of the surgery department at Columbia University’s medical school.  Most people know him, sadly, as a celebrity,  television star, or as a promoter of quack remedies.  Other prominent physicians across America, at leading institutions, have had enough of the embarrassment that Oz’s sales pitches are…

How UW-Whitewater Treated a Sexual Assault Victim

I’ve written before about the handling of sexual assault complaints nationwide and at UW-Whitewater. The more one reads on the matter, the more concerned one becomes, both generally and locally. There’s a new and troubling story about how UW-Whitewater handled an assault victim’s Title IX assault complaint at WISC-TV. In the report, entitled, Graduate speaks…

The Act Utilitarians

The worst of officials, even in a fair society, look like a parody of utilitarians: as though they were the crudest act utilitarians, justifying any action merely by whether it produces a presumed, aggregate benefit of happiness. (Motivated only consideration of aggregate human enjoyment, for example, a perverse society of dog-haters might commit acts of…

Seventeen Questions: Injustice in Walworth County Wrongly Sends a Fourteen-Year-Old to Jail

Yesterday, I posted about an appellate court decision that reversed a juvenile’s conviction and remanded the case for a new trial.  See, Injustice in Walworth County Wrongly Sends a Fourteen-Year-Old to Jail.  Today I’ll post several questions concerning the decision and two published accounts about of it.  The appellate decision (“Appellate Decision”) is online at…

The Truth About the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

There are those times when small-government conservatives, Democrats, and libertarians agree. Acknowledging the misconduct, failures, and cronyism of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation would be one of those occasions. It is, among other things, the state’s biggest white-collar welfare scheme, both mismanaged and mendacious. Here’s the effectual motto of the WEDC: Corruption, Cronyism, and Incompetence…

The Great Innovator

A small, sad truth that I ran across recently: “Fortune named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years.” That’s the one-and-only Enron, the now-bankrupt energy company whose name lives on as a reminder of lies, misconduct, and accounting fraud.  All those billions lost, those thousands left unemployed, those many more swindled.  Reproach not,…