This Thursday, May 10th at 2 PM, there’s a scheduled termination hearing before the Board of Regents for Sabina Burton, tenured professor of Criminal Justice at UW-Platteville. Readers may be familiar with her story from published accounts. Television station KWWL describes how the case began: [O]ne of their professors very vocal about what she’s been…
Politics
City, Congress, Politics
A Better Alternative for Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Local readers may have heard, as I have, that Whitewater’s Community Development Authority chairman recently thanked Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner for federal legislation. Sensenbrenner, for those unfamiliar, is a career office-holding septuagenarian multi-millionaire situated far from the city, serving in a gerrymandered district. (Sensenbrenner, whose only time is behind-the-times, once responded to concerns about online…
City, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Ethics, Gov. Walker, Local Government, Mendacity, Paul Ryan, Politics, State Capitalism, That Which Paved the Way, Trump
The Price of Trumpism is Ruin
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Craig Gilbert looks at the careers of Priebus, Ryan, and Walker: They led the “Cheesehead Revolution,” the GOP’s audacious conquest of Wisconsin. They offered a model for bridging Republican frictions between establishment and base. They became national figures. They ran into Donald Trump. They suffered. They bent to his rise. Now one (Priebus) has left…
City, Elections, Local Government, Politics, State Government, Wisconsin
Local Results from the Spring General Election 2018
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Wisconsin’s spring general election’s now over, and in the paragraphs below I’ll consider the local results for state, district, and city-wide races. These results are unofficial; online detail may be found for the counties of Walworth, Jefferson, and Rock (where Rock County’s detail applies only to the WUSD race). Contest/Question Candidates/Preference City Vote % WI Supreme Court…
City, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government, Open Government, Politics, School District
‘Stable and yet it cannot stand still’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Jurist Roscoe Pound once famously observed that “the law must remain stable yet it cannot stand still.” What is true of the law is true of communities – including Whitewater. Among some (but not all) of the few who have held sway in this town for the last generation, changes are unwelcome, and change itself…
Good Ideas, League of Women Voters, Local Government, Politics
How to Build a Better Candidate Forum
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
Posted originally 2.16.16. Reposted 3.8.18. A private local organization, in the habit of hosting candidate debates forums, may freely follow its national organization’s practices. Fair enough. Whitewater, however, would do better if she adopted better standards. There are two easy ways that Whitewater can make her candidate forums much better. ➤ Release Candidate Statements Before…
Local Government, Police, Politics
The Buck Stops Locally (and Always Has)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Today, Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission will interview candidates for Whitewater’s next police chief. It’s been an in-house hiring process, and just three months ago some members of our PFC praised this approach over a consultant-driven method (as we had at the time of our last hiring). For Whitewater, and other places, the distinction between…
City, Culture, Local Government, Politics
Wisconsin Supreme Court Primary, Whitewater Results
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Wisconsin’s spring primary in Whitewater saw three candidates vie for two spots on the April ballot for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Statewide in preliminary numbers, conservative Michael Screnock had a plurality, followed by liberals Rebecca Dallet and Tim Burns. (It’s Screnock v. Dallet in April.) Look, however, at how different the statewide, Jefferson County & Walworth…
City, Local Government, Politics, School District
The Limits of Community Surveys
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It’s expensive to survey opinion, scientifically, using standard statistical principles. Whitewater, like many small places, understandably relies on community surveys (for the city proper, for her school district). Surveys of this kind are an approximation of overall sentiment. One wouldn’t expect an end to these surveys, but they have obvious, significant limitations. (This is true of…
City, Culture, Demographics, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Good Ideas, Local Government, Planning, Politics, Poverty
Dane, Not the WOW Counties
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
For many years, Republicans have railed against Madison, and against Dane County, as bastions of dysfunctional liberalism. Indeed, this impulse has been strong even after the GOP gained control of both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office. Funny, though, that it’s Dane County – not the WOW counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee, or Washington – that’s…
Newspapers, Politics, Press, That Which Paved the Way
Small-Town News and “The Value of Accuracy”
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Over at The Atlantic, David Beard writes about The Libraries Bringing Small-Town News Back to Life. The story’s not, to my mind, a recommendation that Whitewater’s library should publish a news site – Whitewater has digital and print publications in town and nearby. The story’s interesting for how important accuracy is to news publishing: When…
America, Books, Culture, Politics, Press
Reading Next: Truth Decay (‘An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life’)
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
I’m currently reading Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury on the Trump campaign & administration. (FW has a currently reading widget on the right sidebar of this website.) Afterward, I’ve something in queue, from Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich – their just-published Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis…
City, Local Government, Open Government, Politics, School District
Candidates and Candidacies
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Small towns have reputations for being plain-speaking places, but the less so, in fact, than reputation suggests. One will hear much about who’s running, who’s in, who’s out, but not as much – if anything – about what candidates believe. Longtime readers know that I comment on politics, but know also that I’m opposed to…
Alt-Right, Film, Politics
Kylo Ren as an Alt-Right Villain?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Marykate Jasper argues Why Kylo Ren Is the Perfect Villain for the Age of the Alt-Right (some movie spoilers in her observations): Kylo is incredibly powerful, but he is also incredibly childish. When the Rebels escape him in The Force Awakens, he throws a ludicrous temper tantrum with his lightsaber. In The Last Jedi, Luke goads him by appearing…