Here’s a short, solid description of how corporate-welfare case General Motors is lying when it says it’s truly paid back its government loan. Every ad and statement that GM makes to that claim is fraudulent and, of course, self-serving.
I would not contend that GM was a great car company even five years ago, but I am sure it has never been as dishonest as it is now, under a rotten (and likely destructive) relationship to the federal government.
I mentioned the Webby Awards recently, honoring the best websites in categories receiving honors from judges or popular vote. The Webby Awards are the largest awards of their kind, and GameZombie TV of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater has won big:
The student-produced Web series GameZombie TV at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater has won two top awards at this year’s 14th annual Webby Awards.
Competing against projects from much larger schools, GameZombie TV garnered enough votes to win the People’s Voice Award in addition to the Webby Award, whose recipient is chosen by a panel of judges.
“This is something we’ve been striving toward for years now,” said Spencer Striker, UW-Whitewater communication instructor and series creator. “Winning the award from both the academy and the people’s vote makes us the top student online video creators in the world.”
Congratulations to everyone who worked on the series.
(I wrote earlier about the Institute for Justice’s nomination for a Webby Award, and they won a People’s Voice Award in their category.)
For more on the GameZombie TV win, see GameZombie TV Wins Webby Award.
Here’s an 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 Sunday afternoon. A test last night showed that my replies may not appear in the precise order of all comments. No matter for now – comments and replies will post. I’ll sort out the issue before next week.
Binge drinking, planning, questions about libertarian ideas, whatever. I will try to moderate and move comments along as quickly as possible.
I’m not surprised that a majority on Whitewater’s Common Council made the mistake of banning drink specials at Tuesday night’s Common Council meeting. I wrote about the proposal a few months ago, and I did so in the belief that the ban would be passed.
(For remarks on the topic, see, The New Prohibition – Drink Specials (Part 1, Regulation) and The New Prohibition – Drink Specials (Part 2, Advice)).
Two aspects of Tuesday’s discussion are notable.
Bad Origins
First, the proposal began in the worst way — with a few business people meeting away from the whole Council, with the presence of Whitewater’s Police Chief Coan and City Attorney McDonell, and a Council representative. In a better-ordered community, those involved would know not to meet that way. It’s just business as usual for some in Whitewater. A situation like this has all the makings of a proposal for a special pleader.
When one reads the Daily Union‘s May 5th account of how this ordinance first came before council, one reads that “[t]he issue had been brought to the council by a tavern owner who supported the ban.”
That’s not accurate, and it’s misleading. It’s not even consistent with the paper’s prior coverage of the origins of the ordinance, from a story they published in February:
The issue was brought forth by Councilperson Jim Olsen, who said he was presenting it on behalf of some of the local tavern owners after discussing the issue with them.
“This came up during a meeting with the police chief (James Coan), city attorney (Wally McDonnell), and myself and five of the tavern owners, back in August,” he said. “This was something they requested. When they brought it up, the chief thought it was a good idea …”
They’re not the same accounts, are they? In the most recent account, the DU story makes it seem as though someone walked into council during time for citizen comments, and asked for legislative action. In the earlier — and accurate account — this was an ex parte meeting, of a few, with others unnotified at the time.
(One should note that the Daily Union‘s latest account of the ordinance’s origins isn’t even internally consistent. The latest account is contradictory to the actual origins of the proposal, even within the May 5th’s story. Although the 15th paragraph states that someone approached council, one sees in the 32nd paragraph that there was concern about the proposal’s origins — that it was not a conventional path to council at all.)
The recording of the meeting February meeting, and the DU‘s initial coverage, reveals that this was the effort of a few seeking legislation on their own behalf.
The ordinance is a kind of business welfare — support for some at the expense of others.
False Empiricism.
One would hope for a city with less binge drinking, but this legislation will not produce that result. For the most part, there’s really no attempt to show how the legislation might help, except to repeat that binge drinking is a problem. That’s predictable — advocates of additional legislation use the words ‘binge’ or ‘abuse’ like magic wands to conjure away the need for facts.
Chief Coan’s career, for example, seems to rest on the idea that to say something is to prove it; to declare is enough. On those rare occasions I’ve heard him refer to a study, it’s typically something old or trite, long-since discarded as a concept in other places.
There was, however, an attempt at a more empirical approach at Tuesday’s meeting: a representative’s catalog of other municipalities’ binge-drinking ordinances.
It’s a false empiricism, though, resting not on the relationship between legislation and actual drinking behavior (the true concern), but instead is merely a list of cities’ ordinances. This approach conflates the ubiquity of legislation with its effectiveness. It assumes that legislation widely adopted must accurately address the supposed health risks to which it is addressed.
It’s easy to show that the catalog of ordinances does not establish whether an ordinance for Whitewater would be useful.
Consider an example, from the 1920s, regarding leprosy. One might live in a town that was concerned about the risk of lepers infecting other people, and spreading their affliction. That’s a legitimate health concern — one would not want others to become ill.
The town’s government would wonder what to do, about the risk, and might look and see what other towns had done. Perhaps some banned lepers, others jailed them, some confined them permanently to their homes, some marked them with special clothes, and a few have did nothing.
Looking at that situation, what would someone using this ordinance-examination method conclude? That some proposals are more or less restrictive than others, and perhaps that an approach that’s in the middle would be a moderate, prudent course. After all, an approach in the middle wouldn’t be as restrictive and harsh as some towns’ schemes, or as unrestrictive as others’ approaches.
The town fathers might decide that to prevent the spread of leprosy, they would confine lepers to their homes, but not jail or ban them from town.
As it turns out, leprosy is not highly contagious, is likely not contagious for long, and most are immune to it. A solution that confines lepers permanently to their homes would be consistent with other practices, but would be medically unsound.
Following the examples of other towns would not produce an effective, rational solution.
An ordinance examination-approach conflates a catalog of ordinances with a true empiricism (studying how leprosy rises or falls in a given town with or without legislation).
It’s not a comparison of statutes, but a comparison of statutes to conditions in each town that would be a true and useful empiricism.
Tuesday’s method looks in the wrong place. One would need to compare towns with ordinances, towns without, etc., to actual drinking in those towns.
Needless to say, looking at ordinances alone makes no such comparison.
(Note — I’m not even considering the contention that ordinances banning drink specials actually increase binge drinking — that these efforts to ban drink specials will exacerbate binge drinking by driving it underground, and will lead to greater harm than current commercial practices.)
If enough for now to note that a mere ordinance-by-ordinance comparison is an unsound method to consider correctly the effects of legislation on public health. It has the appearance of an empirical approach, but not the substance of a good method.
Legislation should not advance through special pleading, nor by the power of flowery rhetoric or dubious method.
One can see the meeting online, at http://blip.tv/file/2080598/.
Good morning,
It’s a rainy morning, and the forecast calls for a day of rain with a high of fifty degrees.
Tonight at Lincoln School’s upper gym, it’s Spring Fling, from 5 to 8 PM. Over at Washington School, it’s Family Fun Night from 6:30 to 8 PM.
In Wisconsin history on this date, the Wisconsin Historical Society recalls an ironic crime from 1932:
1932 – Illegal Distillery Discovered in Janesville
On this date Rupert E. Fessenden, Rock County’s chief deputy, discovered the largest ever illegal liquor distillery in southern Wisconsin. The distillery was found on the old Frances Willard estate south of the Wisconsin School for the Blind. Ironically, Willard was one of the founders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. [Source: Janesville Gazette].
@ Municipal Building’s community room
Yesterday, I posted a picture of Whitewater’s college campus as it appeared on a postcard. Here’s a bit more about the postcard that someone sent me —
Below the picture, on the front of the card, is the inscription, “The Normal School, Whitewater, Wisc.”
On the reverse, there’s a green, one-cent stamp, with Benjamin Franklin’s picture. The stamp bears a circular postmark from “Whitewater Aug 13 9 AM Wis.”
The card is from the Auburn Greeting card Co., Auburn, Ind.
Someone sent the post card from Whitewater to a recipient in Forest Park, Illinois.
The greeting and addressee listed on the card are both written in pencil, and describe a trip that included a stop in Paddock Lake. The sender describes a decision not to stay overnight there “for one reason,” left unstated.
The sender concludes that the group of which she’s a part would be heading to Madison, after having traveled one-hundred fifty miles thus far. She notes that they “stopped in this town [Whitewater] to eat. Did I eat.”
Generations ago, someone in Whitewater provided travelers a good meal. The record of that trip survives, in a card sent during the Depression, from our small town.
I received the following press release from Friends of the Mounds, about the Indian Mounds in Whitewater, that I’m happy to post:
Dear Neighbors,
As Friends of the Mounds, we met and discussed the proposed name changes to the Indian Mounds Park in Whitewater. There is not consensus in our community about the terminology used to identify the site. The Friends of the Mounds has always supported the preservation of and education about this unique site in the city of Whitewater.
We encourage individuals to share their opinions and to attend the meeting, Monday, May 10, 2010, at 5:00 p.m. at the Community Room of City Hall, Whitewater. In attendance will be Park and Recreation Board, Landmarks Commission, Mounds Task Force and Friends of the Mounds.
Nancy Dade Stone
Carol Christ
Richard Helmick
Mariann Scott
Roberta Taylor
Denay Trykowski
Whitewater, Wisconsin
For questions or more information call Nancy at 262-473- 7917 or Mariann Scott at 262-473-4219
Whitewater’s high school has the whippet as a mascot, following the tradition of many schools to choose impressive animals as symbols. There are, though, some schools in Wisconsin that have chosen tribal leaders or tribes as symbols, including some nearby (the Blackhawks of Fort Atkinson come to mind).
Governor Doyle has signed legislation that allows district residents to complaint to Wisconsin’s superintendent of schools about symbols or mascots that the complainants feel are fostering race-based stereotypes. (The legislation is available online as Senate Bill 25. For more about local districts with such mascots, see Schools Stand Behind American Indian Names.)
The legislation is a bad idea, for four reasons.
First, the legislation takes away local decision-making, and places it in the hands of the state’s superintendent of schools. Local communities should be able to choose their symbols, mascots, etc.
Second, this legislation places the burden on the district , not the complainant, to establish non-discrimination:
At the hearing, the school board has the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that the use of the race-based name, nickname, logo, or mascot does not promote discrimination, pupil harassment, or stereotyping, as defined by the state superintendent by rule.
A resident can contend merely on flimsy grounds, but a district must defend with clear and convincing evidence. The burden of proof has been shifted to engineer an easy road to force change.
Third, there’s already a way to challenge locally those symbols that one might not like — through a local school board, and by voting in elections to that board. Residents have always had this option, and placing decision-making in a faraway bureaucrat is a way to trump local authority unnecessarily.
Fourth, the legislation is so broad that it’s possible to complain about any tribal leader as a symbol. One can see that that’s likely the purpose of the legislation, too — not simply to decide against egregious uses, but to make any symbolic use of a tribal leader suspect and impermissible. Note that it is, after all, the state superintendent of schools who has the power to define his own standards by rule.
In this over-breadth, one finds not a respect for racial diversity, but an ideological motivation to rely on a bureaucrat to ban any symbol hyper-sensitive activists find objectionable. One need only read the comments of Barb Munson, head of the Indian Mascot and Logo Task Force, to see that she’s reaching mightily to ban just about any symbol.
Her efforts to rely on an outside arbiter to decide these local questions — involving logos and mascots, not fundamental rights of voting, for example — will only undermine progress toward racial harmony. Imposition of an outside solution for something like a logo is a bad idea. If residents of a community choose symbols foolishly, or insultingly, it should fall to other residents to seek local redress.
There should, and need, be no compromise of the fundamental the rights of all residents. Certainly, a small town, filled with mediocre bureaucrats, must not be allowed to flout state or federal law. I have argued as much consistently. Many a town squire thinks like Yertle the Turtle, puffed with importance, and ridiculously distorts state law and policy into something unrecognizable as either law or good policy.
These logos are not, however, a matter involving risks to fundamental rights. Good or bad, they do not require a state-imposed solution.
By the way, I don’t believe that a symbol like that of Fort Atkinson is wrong or offensive. It seems just the opposite, actually — a genuine tribute to a tribal leader.
Far important still, I believe that the burden of proof should not have been placed on local districts, and that decision-making should never have been placed in the hands of the state superintendent of schools.
Last week, I mentioned adding comments in response to results from a reader poll. I’ve always been available through adams@freewhitewater.com, but I’m happy to give readers a crack at offering comments in a different way. The leading suggestion, from over half of respondents, was to have an open comments post, as a kind of open comments forum.
I’ll run one on Friday, posted at 8 a.m.
Naturally, use of pseudonyms and anonymous postings will be fine. The template I have has a space for an email address, but those who want to write ‘unlisted’ can do so. Comments will be moderated, against profanity or trolls. Otherwise, have at it. I will try to moderate and move comments along as quickly as possible.
I’ve no idea whether I’ll get any comments, and if I had to guess, I wouldn’t expect more than a few.
I’ll offer a few starter topics, but the comments need not be confined to my selections. Note: I’ll have a post tomorrow at 7 a.m. about Whitewater’s new ban on drink specials.
Finally, if something doesn’t work quite right tomorrow, I’ll head back to the drawing board for next Friday. I’ll not be daunted by an initial glitch. There are no ‘moments,’ in my way of thinking — just an ongoing, consistent commitment of writing and contending.
