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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 3-11-10

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Good morning,

Whitewater’s forecast calls for thunderstorms with a high temperature of fifty-three degrees.

There will be a charter schools listening session at 6:30 p.m. in the library of Lincoln School tonight. At Lakeview School, it’s twin day today.

There’s a story in the Walworth County Gazette about the legislation to allow sales of raw milk in Wisconsin, and another story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the same subject. Hundreds of people turned out for a public hearing in Eau Claire.

In Wisconsin history on this date, the Wisconsin Historical Society reports that in

1950 – Jerry Zucker [was] Born

On this date film producer Jerry Zucker was born in Milwaukee. With his brother David, he has written, produced, and directed a number of classic comedies including Naked Gun, Airplane!, Top Secret, Police Squad, and Rat Race. Zucker also produced My Best Friend’s Wedding, First Knight, A Walk In the Clouds, and My Life and gave the 2003 commencement address at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. [Source: Internet Movie Database ]

Economy, Free Markets, Libertarians

Reason.tv: Gov. Gary Johnson on His Economic Vision for “Our America”

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From Reason.tv, here’s a half-hour presentation from former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson on free market economic solutions for America. Here’s a description from Reason:

On Tuesday, February 9, in the midst of one of the biggest snowstorms in recent Washington, D.C. memory, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Harvard economist (and Reason contributor) Jeff Miron talked about economic revitalitization and Johnson’s views on immigration, war, and other issues at the heart of the new organization Our America.

Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie intros the speakers and moderates audience Q&A. Shot by Dan Hayes and Meredith Bragg; edited by Bragg. Approximately 35 minutes. Scroll down for downloadable iPod, HD, and audio versions.

For more Reason.tv with Johnson, go here.

To watch Miron make the “case for doing nothing” (that is, actually letting markets work) during the 2008 financial crisis, go here.

Program Link: http://www.reason.tv/video/show/gary-johnson-event

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 3-10-10

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Good morning,

The forecast for Whitewater today is for a rainy day, with a high temperature of fifty degrees.

There’s a meeting today in Whitewater of the Indian Mounds Park Committee (that group is seeking a name change to ‘Whitewater Mounds Archaeological Preserve’) at 5 p.m. today.

The Wisconsin Historical Society reports that in 1903, Clare Boothe Luce was born. She was a pioneer in many fields, and the Historical Society describes her life:

1903 – Clare Boothe Luce Born

On this date playwrite and diplomat Clare Booth Luce was born in New York. She began her career editing for Vogue and Vanity Fair. She married publisher Henry Luce in 1935. Her play The Women, satirizing wealthy New York matrons, was a success on Broadway. Other hits were Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1938) and Margin for Error (1939). She was twice elected to the House of Representatives (1943-47) as a Republican from Connecticut. During the Eisenhower administration (1953-56) she served as ambassador to Italy. Clare Boothe Luce lived in Marinette, Wisconsin for part of her life.

Government Spending

From Reason.tv: The Pork Party House

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Private charities sometimes spend money, from wealthy private donors, on fancy parties to celebrate and encourage greater charitable giving. Whatever one thinks of those lavish events, there’s no doubt that the donors earned the money they’re spending.

Government bureaucrats can’t say the same – when they hold fancy parties, the fine evening rests not on the earnings of their labors, but on those of ordinary taxpayers who will never be invited to those sophisticated events. Fancy food, a nice venue, and entertainment paid with tax dollars is a good time only for those who attend, and of no real use to those common people who paid for the evening.

Here’s the sad situation in Washington, D.C., as Reason describes it:

If you’re a politician, lobbyist, or insider and you’re in the mood to party, check out a Washington D.C. mansion called the Sewall-Belmont House. Party with senators and celebrities at thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraisers! You might even get to ride a mechanical bull! The Sewall-Belmont House hosts so many A-list events, you might be surprised to find out that your tax dollars help fund this hotspot for Washington insiders. “Over the last 10 years, the Sewall-Belmont House has gotten over $3.4 million in earmarks,” says Leslie Paige of Citizens Against Government Waste.

Reporters often highlight the most ridiculous examples, but politicians have learned how to make their pork projects sound uncontroversial, even appealing. Just say your project will help children, senior citizens, or – if you really want to slip under the radar – direct taxpayer dough to a museum.

“Museums are one of the biggies because they sound so good,” says Paige. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) used that angle to direct a million-dollar earmark to the Sewall-Belmont House (after the Senator received an award from the Sewall Belmont House). Turns out Landrieu was just getting warmed up, because her recent $300 million “Louisiana Purchase” shot her into the ranks of pork legends.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, laments Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of Congress’s few legitimate pork busters. Flake tells Reason.tv that despite pork-laden scandals that stuck some members behind bars – remember Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) – and promises from Barack Obama to reform earmarks, spending on pork continues to swell in the giant pork party house called the U.S. Congress.

“Pork Party House” is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Producer: Hawk Jensen; Host: Nick Gillespie; Field Producer: Dan Hayes; Associate Producer: Paul Detrick; Additional Camera: Meredith Bragg; Production Assistant: Josh Swain; Music: “Get What You Want?” by Beight (Magnatune Records).

Approximately six-and-a-half minutes.

Link: Pork Party House. more >>

Libertarians

Libertarianism Is Real Conservatism

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Jack Hunter writes at The American Conservative that libertarianism is real conservatism. That’s true, as a conservatism before the right became interested in big public programs and meddlesome interference with private lives.

(There’s a way, of course, that we seem bold compared with a stodgy, government-dependent right. That’s why those unfamiliar with libertarian principles think we’re radicals. We’re not; some have simply forgotten the depth of America’s tradition of personal liberty. We’re not radicals; America’s respect for liberty only seems radical in a world of government meddling and intrusion.)

Thoughtful and provocative.

See, Libertarianism Is Real Conservatism.

Planning

Eminent Domain Abuse: Billionaires vs. Brooklyn’s Best Bar

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It’s true that libertarians believe that government solutions are less effective and productive than private ones. It’s also true that business sometimes colludes with government to pressure other businesses. It’s an unfair partnership by which some businesses take opportunities from others, all the while allowing government to claim that it supports business.

Government favoring some businesses over others is neither fair nor efficient.

Here’s an eminent domain abuse story from New York that highlights one aspect of the undesirable partnership between government and business:

Freddy’s in Brooklyn is a happening place that has been named one of the city’s best bars by the Village Voice, Esquire, and The New York Times.

Unfortunately, Freddy’s – and the surrounding neighborhood – is smack-dab in the footprint of the Atlantic Yards project, a multi-million-dollar, 22-acre development that is intended to create “an urban utopia” in the language of developer Bruce Ratner, and a new, publicly subsidized home to Ratner’s Nets, who currently play NBA basketball (if you can call it that) in New Jersey.

But don’t mistake Atlantic Yards as one more instance of the market-driven transformations for which New York is rightly famous. It’s actually the latest case of eminent domain abuse, where private property is seized by the state on dubious grounds and then immediately handed over to private interests for private gain.

In this case, the Empire State Development Corporation has designated the thriving area as blighted to facilitate the taking of privately owned houses and businesses without having to pay full market value. Ratner, whose partners in the venture include rapper Jay Z and the Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, stands to pocket hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal, all thanks to the brute force of the state.

This week, a Brooklyn Supreme Court ruling tossed out the eminent domain objections of residents and property owners who had held out for six years and Ratner plans to break ground on the site on March 11, if not before.

The workers and patrons of Freddy’s, however, are not going gentle into that good night. They’ve pledged to engage in civil disobedience and chain themselves to the bar when the bulldozers and wrecking balls come for their favorite haunt. A state sentator has even declared that she’ll lay down in front of the demolition machinery. The awful 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo, which held that governments can seize property to increase potential tax revenues, may have paved the way for Atlantic Yards, but Freddy’s is the next last stand in an ongoing battle against eminent domain abuse.

Produced by Dan Hayes, who conceived, shot, and edited the video; Damon Root, who researched the legal issues and did logistics; and Nick Gillespie, who co-wrote the piece and hosts.

Approximately 5 minutes.

Link: http://www.reason.tv/video/show/fighting-freddys-and-the-atlan more >>

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 3-9-10

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Good morning,

Whitewater’s forecast calls for a rainy day with a high temperature of forty-four degrees.

This afternoon, from 4 to 6 p.m., there will be a listening session on a charter schools program at the Cravath Lakefront Center. Earlier, at 3:15 p.m., there will be a PTO meeting at Lincoln School. At 6:30 p.m., there will be a P.A.T.T meeting at Washington School.

In history on this date, in 1862, the ironclads Monitor and Virginia fought to a draw off the Virginia coast, near Hampton Roads. The New York Times reported thereafter on the clash:

Fortress Monroe, Saturday, March 8 – The dullness of Old Point was startled today by the announcement that a suspicious looking vessel, supposed to be the Merrimac, looking like a submerged house, with the roof only above water, was mowing down from Norfolk by the channel in front of the Sowel’s Point batteries. Signal guns were also fired by the Cumberland and Congress, to notify the Minnesota, St. Lawrence and Roanoke of the approaching danger, and all was excitement in and about Fortress Monroe….

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City, Police

Whitewater City Manager on Police Chief on Community Outreach

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There’s a paragraph from the Whitewater city manager’s Weekly Report for March 5, 2010 that reveals all one needs to know about how these two gentlemen view community outreach.

Here’s the paragraph:

City and UWW Police Departments Hold Community Forum

On Tuesday of this week, Officer Saul Valadez and Chief Jim Coan participated in a community forum on the UW -Whitewater campus to discuss police-minority student relations. UW-Whitewater Police Chief Kiederlen and one of his officers participated as well. A student panel and audience of African-American and Latino students asked questions about police procedures. The Forum was moderated by Rick Daniels of the UW-Whitewater Career and Leadership Development Office. Chief Coan commented that he believed “we were able to clarify some misunderstandings concerning police procedures and practices. I thought that it was a very positive and productive meeting and went a long way toward building a better atmosphere of trust and understanding.”

One could not have picked a more telling quote — this is the condescending idea of community outreach as correcting others’ mistakes and errors. Such is what passes for a postive meeting. He went, he dispelled, he conquered. A genuinely positive experience comes from listening to community concerns, but that sometimes means admitting official mistakes.

Coan’s a police chief so rigid — and so deeply confused about what real community outreach means — that he probably thinks that meeting with ordinary people, and correcting them, makes him seem generous and giving of his time. Brunner’s a city manager so expecting of deference to authority that he probably thinks a quote like this shows Coan in a good light.

There’s nothing about what Coan might have learned, how he might develop better practices, or find ways to improve — as though, perhaps, he thinks no improvement could possibly be necessary.

There’s an arrogant cluelessness to these gentlemen. They live in a small town, and should be close to their constituents, but they’re as far from common thinking as any detached and aloof big city leader could ever be.

City, Police

Chief Coan Remains

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One sees that Whitewater’s police chief, Jim Coan, wasn’t hired for the public safety director’s job in Mankato, Minnesota.

Coan faced an uncertain field, and even then, he wasn’t hired. One candidate dropped out, one candidate wasn’t even currently working, and the third rival Coan faced wasn’t even a police officer. Coan sought a position that combined police and fire-fighting oversight, and his nearly twenty years of supposed leadership weren’t enough to best someone not an officer. (That’s no criticism of the fire-fighter — he served ably for many years. Yet, Coan’s supposedly amazing career offered no dispositive advantage.)

In the print press from Mankato (but sadly not online), one learns that among the community panel evaluating the candidates, a majority scored Coan last, the fourth of four. (The majority picked the candidate that Mankato finally chose, as did citizen-attendees from the meeting who completed a survey asking for their preferences.) There’s no surprise in this. One could have guessed as much, and there were clues in the coverage of the hiring process that pointed to the unlikelihood of Coan getting the job.

Credit where credit is due — Mankato proved wiser than Whitewater was in 2006, when Coan came scurrying back, hat in hand, from Hudson. Mankato avoided our mistakes, and we should be happy for them that they were not so foolish as we have been.

Coan never should have served, never should have led, never should have been re-hired. Those public officials who have defended him have done so ridiculously and wrongly. They have wrongly conflated the needs of one mediocre leader with the needs of dedicated field officers. Coan isn’t the essence policing in Whitewater — not a bit more than a papier mache animal is a living creature. Too many officials propped up a mess, and in doing so, they have allowed problems to fester, simply by looking away. They are to blame for failing to correct Coan properly for his many transgressions. An obstinate few have made themselves ridiculous to those who believe truly in the fairness and decency of America’s promise for all people.

Coan’s made a mess of his career, at Whitewater’s expense. His recent interview with the Mankato Free Press shows he’s not changed, reformed, or acknowledged his many mistakes. There was little chance any other people, in sensible communities, would be foolish enough actually to hire him.

He remains with us. Coan won’t become a better leader; he’ll likely become a worse one.

Whitewater, like every community in America, deserves real accountability, real community policing, genuine fairness, and a good police leader.

Whitewater will not have good leadership until it stops pretending that it does, or insisting that honest people look away from mediocrity.

No one owes Whitewater’s town fathers a life of lies and delusions.

There’s much good work to be done, and we are just the city where it needs to be done.

I am convinced that there is no better place in the world, in any time in history, than America. Whitewater will always be at her best when she draws closer to the free, honest, open American tradition.

The more here, the better.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 3-8-10

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Good morning,

Today’s Whitewater forecast calls for dense fog, with a high of forty-six degrees.

The City of Whitewater’s Planning Commission will meet at 6 p.m., and our Library Board will meet at 6:30 p.m.

Our public school district’s administrator will hold a two monthly listening sessions today. The English language session will run from 5 to 5:45 p.m., and the Spanish language session from 5:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The sessions will take place at the district’s central office.

Over at the Gazette, there’s a story on a bill that would make legal the selling of raw (unpasteurized) milk. Even in America’s Dairyland, it’s presently illegal to sell raw milk (with minor exceptions that do not cover ordinary consumers).

At Reason, there’s an recent article about raw milk demand, entitled, “A Raw Deal.” The article offers a concise description of the raw milk debate:

Raw milk is simply ordinary milk that hasn’t been pasteurized. Pasteurization—the quick heating and cooling of fresh milk — kills bacteria that can cause food-borne illnesses. When Americans first began pasteurizing milk at the turn of the last century, testing was rudimentary and farms were far less hygienic. Milk quality varied tremendously, transit was slow and the milk that made it into cities often veered into unsafe territory. Pasteurization—which eradicated Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria—saved lives.

Today, the situation is different. Testing for the presence of such pathogens is much more precise, and farms are far cleaner. While processing milk remains a good choice for milk shipped to the population as a whole, there are a group of food rebels who would rather drink their milk straight from the cow. Some say they prefer the taste, calling it richer and more robust. Others say that pasteurization kills beneficial enzymes and helpful bacteria along with the baddies. Whatever their reasons for drinking the raw stuff, the proliferation of raw milk devotees willing to take a small risk for better dairy makes regulators unhappy, and they are looking for ways to crack down on milk speakeasies.

If adults can smoke — and however foolish, it should be legal to do so — then they should be able to drink unpasteurized milk. The truly foolish act, though, is banning a kind of milk in a dairy state.

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