Here’s the Friday open comments post, following reader responses to a recent poll.
The use of pseudonyms and anonymous postings will be fine.
Although the template has a space for a name, email address, and website, those who want to leave a field blank can do so. Comments will be moderated, against profanity or trolls. Otherwise, have at it.
I’ll keep the post open through Monday afternoon.
For this week, suggestions for topics — residential overlays to preserve local character, and “buying local.” Local surely means a lot to Whitewater. Does local mean more to Whitewater than other places? If it does, is that a good thing?
Have at it.
Thanks for sticking up for consumers. Why should I have to drive to Jefferson or Janesville when I can have a Super Walmart here in Whitewater? I live here and would like to shop for reasonably priced groceries here.
Many towns have conflcts between town and gown, and Whitewater is no exception. Maybe it’s better in some other places, maybe it’s worse. Whitewater may be worse off that most college towns, especially because some don’t even think of Whitewater as a college town.
We can’t have harmony and cooperation just between a few bigwigs. That’s not any good for the majority of residents here because those efforts don’t reach most people. When people see “local” as different from the university campus, then talking about local needs really does become more hindrance than help to Whitewater.
The best idea would be to define what local means. For some people, it may mean having lived here for a long time (20 or 25 plus years) but for others it means being born here. It’s a big question for people here, and they are quick to ask how long someone has been in Whitewater. Many people have been here far longer than Kevin Brunner,for example. So is he local?
If being born here make a person local, then no one who arrives here from somewhere else will ever be local. I know for a fact that people think that way, and it makes new residents insecure.
By the way, I’m local because I was born here, but that doesn’t mean I think that should be our definition of local.
Local should mean one generation of living in Whitewater. I don’t think that people need to be born here, but they should have lived here for about a generation. To me, that’s between 25 and 30 years. Someone who came here in 1980 should count as local by now.
It means born in Whitewater. that’s what it means for people born in America or people born in Canada. They’re Americans or Canadians just like people born in Whitewater are local in Whitewater. People shouldn’t discriminate, but there’s only one kind of local, and that’s people born here.
If local means than living here for more than 4 to 5 years, then no college student will ever be local, even if they buy a house or have a lease. A house or lease represents a stake in this community, that that’s what local should mean.
To the commenter who said local means born here:
Local can’t be just born here. If it is just being born in Whitewater, we have a big problem. Come to think of it, we do have a big problem, a problem with city and campus relations!
Do you think that saying the only local person is someone born in Whitewater makes things better? It doesn’t help us at all. It’s that kind of thinking that makes relations here worse, not better.
It doesn’t matter that other cities have bigger probelms with this issue if we do not get over the idea of being in one camp against another camp.
Anyone can decide for himself, privately, what local means to him or her. A day, a year, a decade, generation, or even a century: one can form one’s own view.
Government, though, should not encourage a view that reduces or limits equal opportunity. Residents may decide as they wish; government should not abet them.
I am reminded of the remarks that now-disgraced Wisconsin speaker Scott Jensen once made, and on which I have commented before: that one of the most important advantages for a politician was to be a third generation Wisconsin resident. He spoke both practically and approvingly: what he felt was necessary, and what he believed was right and proper. (Whatever he felt and believed, it did not keep him from abuse of his office, betrayal of the public trust, and a criminal conviction.)
I wrote of Jensen’s view: “Jensen was wrong to believe that long-term family history was right and proper for a politician. We have that advantage, but what does it say to our Mexican neighbors? Even if citizens, it says that they should wait nearly a century before playing a political role in our community. The three generations are of no advantage, because we have been here for that long, and still we have made a mess of the city. When Jensen — and those among us like him — asks others to wait, they really ask to be able to continue to make a mess of things for another hundred years.”
See, The Smaller Pie.
Jensen, by the way, is still pushing local ties, as he has won a retrial to his home county on corruption charges. Here, the Wisconsin State Journal is surely right: New trial changes little for Jensen: “On and on it goes.
Scott Jensen, the former and fallen speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, has again extended his more than seven-year legal fight against criminal charges of misconduct in office.
The state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously agreed that a new trial for Jensen should be moved to his home county of Waukesha, based on a 2007 state ethics law.
Jensen, a Republican, may hope to find a friendlier district attorney and jury in the GOP stronghold of Waukesha County, which he represented for years. But that’s unlikely. If anything, his own former constituents are probably more mad at Jensen’s violation of public trust than voters elsewhere in the state who didn’t rely on him to represent them honorably in Madison.
Moreover, a conservative-leaning jury should only be more outraged by Jensen’s waste of tax dollars on private political ambitions. Jensen and other top lawmakers – Democrats and Republicans – used public money and resources to pay for their campaigns and those of favored candidates. The devious goal was to unfairly tip elections – including party primaries – in favor of hand-picked loyalists who would keep Jensen and the other leaders in power. Other top state leaders from Jensen’s era have already pleaded guilty and served time behind bars.
Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel, who is taking the case from Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, worried Thursday it would overwhelm his office.
It shouldn’t.
That’s because all of the arguments against Jensen have already been made in Jensens’s first trial. All of the witnesses have already testified to what Jensen did. And Jensen has essentially admitted to those facts.”
Jensen wanted to be speaker of all the Assembly, of all Wisconsin, when it suited him, but when he seeks a retrial, he’s more particular, and doesn’t think that any just any Wisconsinites should be on his jury.