FREE WHITEWATER

City

The Tea Parties and a Small Town

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Two hundred-thirty six years ago, a group of patriots dumped tea into Boston Harbor as a protest against British taxation, and really, British rule, generally.

America was born as an independent nation, spread across a continent, and built the most prosperous society in the world in the years since.

While we have grown in so many admirable ways in the intervening generations, we have abandoned – or been asked to abandon – much of the independent and forthright character that made us a free and great republic.

Even in a small town, like Whitewater, Wisconsin, there is an expectation that officials will be treated with a certain deference. What they call politeness is more like a servile deference, a fawning and compliant attitude.

When one person feels this way, he collects and selects others who think as he does.

Some months ago, I wrote about the unfortunate situation in which a homeowner’s property was flooded by a sewer backup while he was serving abroad.

Unfortunate, but more than that – odd, too. Odd that citizens were asked to assume that a decision the insurance carrier for the city made to deny coverage was – by simple consequence – proof that the city was not liable.

That’s odd, because almost anyone knows that there may be a difference between damage an insurance carrier will cover and what the law may determine about an insured’s liability.

Yet, when an official comes to believe that what he says must receive assent because he has said it, then justification and reasoning are secondary to mere declaration.

One often hears that small towns encourage greater humility, but I simply cannot tell.

I am quite sure that websites, blogs, email, digital cameras, hand-held video cameras, and phones that can take pictures and record video make it easier to spread a message that’s free of official influence.

This year, current-day tea party protesters have taken advantage of all these media to spread a message that politicians, bureaucrats, and their status-quo defenders cannot easily obstruct or edit.

Now, I know very well that some progressives dislike the tea party movement, but those on the left should support the means if not the ends. The clever use of video and websites to promote a message is one from which the left can learn, and one which they will surely emulate.

(I am not on the left, but instead am a libertarian. Still, I find it foolish for progressives, or true conservatives, for that matter, to object to media that help advance individual rights.)

Most interesting to me is the use of video recordings of ordinary citizens asking questions at a public meeting. It takes scarcely any time to upload video of a pompous official to YouTube for an entire community to see.

(Predictably, so-called public servants often ban cameras from town halls. Tea Party activists have learned to take in a few cameras in different parts of a room, so that one camera can record the confiscation – sometimes aggressively – of a second camera.)

A politician who grew to maturity in an era of Time, Newsweek, the CBS Evening News and one compliant local newspaper might find this new era chaotic and somehow wrong.

If every meeting in Whitewater were recorded – with audio or video – what would public meetings in our small town be like? We’d have no possibility of leaving something out of the meeting’s minutes, no matter how unintentional those omissions might be.

A video camera could supplement, and improve, the written record. A camera properly placed, costing not much, really, would be an advance over minutes alone.

There are many fine cameras with excellent features that consumers purchase and use satisfactorily each day.

But how willing would groups be to have a video record of every public meeting? (Here I emphasize that my question concerns only public meetings. No official should feel concern about the recording of a meeting that is, in any event, open to the public.)

One of the best ways to assure public awareness of political developments would be video recording of all public meetings, even with a simple camera on a tripod.

Not merely those that are recorded now, but those that are not – the meetings of the Police and Fire Commission, the Community Development Authority (each committee and subgroup, each and every time), etc.

(Our public access channel does a very fine job – the only truly fine job anyone does – of covering the meetings. We would be far less knowledgeable without a complete video record of Council, Planning, and school board meetings, among others.)

You can be assured that the same people who insist that one should never say a contrary word will suddenly have myriad objections and serious concerns about expanded recording.

Oh my – in those objections, one could not be more hypocritical and self-interested, even if one tried.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 12-16-09

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Good morning,

It’s a forecast of mostly sunny skies but cold weather, with a high of fifteen degrees for Whitewater today.

This afternoon, our school district will hold a public meeting from 4 to 6 PM. Here’s the text of the invitation to the meeting, available online:

December 10, 2009

Dear Members of the Whitewater Community:

As the Whitewater Unified School District continues exploring building a 21st Century Learning Community, we are ready to begin looking more closely at the variety of options that are available to us.

Our next community listening session will be designed around a panel of experts we have assembled to share their particular backgrounds and experiences. These areas of expertise include but are not limited to funding options, curriculum foci in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), charter schools, entrepreneurship, world languages and post secondary educational opportunities.

We are very interested in having you attend our next session on Wednesday, December 16 from 4:00-6:00 at the University of Wisconsin University Center (UC) upstairs ballroom.

You will have the opportunity to listen, ask questions and help us determine our next steps. We look forward to having you continue this process with us.

Sincerely,

Suzanne M. Zentner, Ph.D. Mary Whitrock
District Administrator Curriculum/Staff Development Coordinator

In American history on this date, today is the anniversary, on December 16, 1773, of the Boston Tea Party.

Uncategorized

Bill of Rights Day: Cato @ Liberty

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Over at the Cato Institute’s blog, there’s both an acknowledgment of Bill of Rights Day – commemorating the ratification of the Bill of Rights – and an assessment of civil liberties in America today.

America is beautiful for a thousand reasons – I am convinced and confirmed her recognition of individual liberty is first among them.

See, Bill of Rights Day.

City, Innovation Center/Tech Park

Measuring Progress in a Small Town (or any other place)

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There are times when public works projects in a small town have a kind of Andy Hardy ‘let’s put on a show’ quality to them, where there’s a huge effort of time and publicity about a current project – a new building, for example.

There are two measures of a city that are good indications of community well-being: that the community is prosperous and government doesn’t obstruct economic opportunity, and the ordinances and regulations of the city are fairly enforced.

If, by these two standards, a city is doing well, then officials can confidently say that they have discharged their duties well.

By either of these measures, Whitewater is a struggling community, more even than some neighboring, rural towns.

Over one in four children in the city live in conditions of poverty, and the city’s poverty rate is above that of nearby towns. There is prosperity in Whitewater, surely, but it’s hardly a general one. Some have gained, yet countless others are impoverished.

As for the enforcement of our ordinances, there are few who are satisfied with enforcement. The typical criticism of a small town is that laws are enforced with bias and favoritism. Incompetence and lethargy are possible explanations, too.

There are some who contend that we have a problem of under enforcement, and others – I would be one – who feel we are over-regulated. In fact, both may be true, depending on the ordinance: a town may have a problem of over and under enforcement.

It is in matters of enforcement that management slowly gives way to governance. By degree, it’s no longer a matter of making sure the trains run on time, but assuring that fare-paying passengers have an equal chance to board.

I can’t say that the city’s leaders have done either well. Community meeting after community meeting only confirms the result: the same problems are topics at every discussion, unimproved despite the celebration of our city manager as someone of vision, etc. (One presumes his vision is sharpest at a very great distance, far beyond the actual experiences of the residents in the town he manages.)

One would be wrong to think that a city leader is necessarily closer to his fellow residents in a small town. We have no elected mayor, but instead a city manager. Here one imagines that being closer to one’s fellow residents involves more than talking to the same small circle of people in a rural town of thousands, or relying on The Same (Safe) People Everytime.

The image of a small town is that of a folksy and popular elected mayor; many small towns have, instead, the ersatz humility of an unelected, small-town bureaucrat.

If we don’t concern ourselves with general prosperity and equitable enforcement of limited regulations, then what do find most of concern?

1. Spending large amounts (of taxpayer money or in public debt) as a measure of how advanced, sophisticated we are. The amount spent becomes its own measure of success, with the cost and benefit to the community almost secondary.

As though, necessarily, ten million spent must be better than nine million.

2. What we build at taxpayer expense. If we build something big or new, that becomes justification enough. A new building, an Innovation Center, say, would look great, and comes with a great name, too.

3. Self-Description. There’s great concern that we describe ourselves in the most affirmative, most supportive way. It’s as though we are merely the sum of our self-selected adjectives. To speak in less than superlative terms is to speak inappropriately.

I see no reason to think that we’ll talk ourselves to prosperity, but we keep trying.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 12-15-09

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Good morning,

The forecast for Whitewater is for a sunny day, with a high of 13 degrees.

In Whitewater today, there’s a Common Council meeting at 6:30 PM. The agenda is available online.

In our schools, there will be a fifth grade choir concert at the high school, at 1:30 PM and 7 PM.

The Wisconsin Historical Society’s website notes that on this date the first draft of the Wisconsin constitution was rejected, leading to another constitutional convention:

1847 – Wisconsin’s Second Constitutional Convention Convenes in Madison

On this date the first draft of the Wisconsin Constitution was rejected in 1846. As a result, Wisconsin representatives met again to draft a new constitution in 1847. New delegates were invited, and only five delegates attended both conventions. The second convention used the failed 1846 constitution as a springboard for their own, but left out controversial issues such as banking and property rights for women that the first constitution attempted to address. The second constitution included a proposal to let the people of Wisconsin vote on a referendum designed to approve black suffrage. [Source: Attainment of Statehood by Milo M. Quaife]

Economy, Free Markets, Libertarians

Rep. Paul Ryan on Business and Markets

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Whitewater, Wisconsin is divided between two congressional districts, one of which is served by Rep. Paul Ryan. The online Washington Examiner has a brief opinion piece called, “Paul Ryan’s Free-Market Populism.” The article mentions an essay that Ryan recently wrote for Forbes in which he decried the tendency of large corporations to seek government handouts at every turn.

Ryan’s right, of course, that big business seeks big government support whenever possible. It’s also true that by their nature, free markets are populist – they offer greater opportunity for success and prosperity for ordinary people than any other economic arrangement.

Unfortunately, people sometimes confuse – and a few deliberately distort – markets and large corporations. They’re not the same at all. An unfettered market is a place of free exchange between buyers and sellers, of goods or of labor time. The large corporation is merely an organization, and even (and often especially) in an oppressive place one finds large businesses.

Ryan is right to draw the distinction between big businesses and markets, and to emphasize the liberation from poverty that markets offer millions of ordinary people across the world.

Even in a small town, one often finds that what passes for a Republican is really a someone who favors a different kind of business from a progressive, rather than a free market that favors no form of business except what buyers and sellers find momentarily advantageous.

That’s why, after a short time in office, a proud Republican often becomes a proud defender of city or state programs, plans, projects, etc.

Nationally, Republicans in Congress spent too much, legislated too intrusively, and for their efforts they found only defeat at the hands of those who see even greater promise in government regulation and control.

One will hear calls to prop up this business or that, but not a commitment to clear obstacles from the markets that are the foundation of prosperity. On the contrary, the right merely advances a difference list of preferred projects. The spending on these projects amounts to about the same paltry result.

In a small town like Whitewater, it’s nearly obvious to many so-called conservatives in office that community progress and development require a million here, a million there, of tax receipts or public debt. There’s not even any serious question about it. It’s the price of being civic-minded, in the eyes of those in office or on public committees.

One sees it in other places, too. Sometimes a small church will struggle with how to grow, or combat decline, and someone will say: We need to build bigger. (I am not referring to any place in particular, and here I am addressing only those parishes that are struggling, not ones that are growing and need more room.)

So, rather than a message, a clear creed, someone contends that if only everything were bigger or brighter, hundreds of new parishioners would walk into the sanctuary. All the things that might draw one to the faith, other than the faith itself, are a hopeless waste of effort.

In a small town, politics emphasizes the structural over the substantive and principled. So, it matters to those in power how things look, and not nearly so much on what principles things run.

Tax incremental financing is the public version of the ‘if we build it, they will come’ plan for community improvement. Yet for all the proud chatter of a million here or there, the fundamental conditions of rural poverty in Whitewater are unaffected. We have as many destitute children as before all these vainglorous projects began.

We aren’t even the same afterward as before, as we’ve spent what we had, and borrowed more, for no change in misery otherwise ignored.

There might have been a time – not so long ago, really – when conservatives in a small town would have preferred the market to the trough. They might at least have expected some return for an investment in a gilded trough.

Not at all; the answer to a poor result is just more of the same.

Of Rep. Ryan’s remarks, see Ryan on Free-Market Populism.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 12-14-09

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Good morning,

The forecast for Whitewater is for a mixture of rain and snow, with little or no accumulation of snow, and a high of 35 degrees.

It’s a busy day in our small town. In the City of Whitewater, there will be three public meetings involving the city or related organizations. At 4 PM, there is a meeting of the Whitewater Community Development Authority. The agenda is available online. Surprisingly, there’s not a single item about the purchase of a defibrillator or oxygen tank for the resuscitation of Tax Incremental District 4.

Later, at 6 PM, the Planning Commission meets. That agenda is also available online.

At 6:30 PM, the Library Board meets. The agenda is available here.

The Police and Fire Commission meeting last week was cancelled, and the City of Whitewater calendar doesn’t list an updated time for the meeting, as of this post. One should not be surprised. The only surprise is why anyone serves, from Council or otherwise, on a board that does so little, so very consistently.

In our school district, there’s a scheduled listening session with the district administrator tonight, beginning at 5 PM in English, and a second session, in Spanish, beginning at 5:45 PM.

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this day in 1964,

On this date, for the first time, shares of Janesville’s Parker Pen Co. were traded on the New York Stock Exchange. For its first 40 years, the company was a closed corporation. In 1928, Parker stock was offered on the Chicago Stock Exchange, which became the Midwest Stock Exchange in 1949. [Source: Janesville Gazette, December 14, 1964, p.1 ]

The plant will close in January.

City, University

Snowball Throwing…There’s a Regulation Against That

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On our local college campus, as about a foot of snow fell in town, there was a snowball fight. Regrettably, a few windows were broken.

Snowballs, baseballs, and footballs sometimes break windows. Accidental damage is unfortunate; deliberate vandalism is wrong.

A regulation against snowball throwing, on the theory that someone might get hurt, or property might be damaged, is both unnecessary and silly.

I cannot tell from an article in the nearby Janesville Gazette if the windows were deliberately broken, or if all of this was the result of students who can’t throw a ball properly, and accidentally hit a window. (Presumably, that latter situation would fall under a ‘throws like a girl’ regulation.)

There were no tickets issued for the damage because no one was identified as a culprit for the broken windows.

There’s apparently a university regulation against snowball throwing on campus. A campus police sergeant observes that snowballs are expressly mentioned among a list of hard objects one cannot throw on campus.

I don’t know if the prohibition expressly covers toasters, but I am quite certain that if someone threw a toaster and broke a window, the damage would be actionable at law.

The campus regulation is designed to prevent the throwing of hard objects to prevent injury, but one should know that Wisconsin already has laws against inflicting injury or property damage.

Snowballs, footballs, baseballs, bowling balls, marbles, rocks, acorns, staplers, beer cans, rulers, clocks, potted plants, toy cars, light bulbs, Chia Pets: they might all give rise to civil or criminal penalties, if thrown at someone, or against a window.

Ordinary and sensible people think: why spend hours of policing over snowball fights? Oh, please.

I suppose that our campus police force has an anti-snowball squad at the ready for just these situations.

Official remarks like these only cause embarrassment to the university, suggesting a fussy, upright approach to ordinary experiences.

See, Whitewater snowball fight does damage.

Press

Editor & Publisher

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I have a link – at least for a while longer – to the website of Editor & Publisher. The owners of E&P announced that they would be shutting down both print and online versions of the publication.

I will miss Editor & Publisher, despite its occasional errors, because it reported on an industry that should have – to its peril unsuccessfully – reported on politicians with courage and zeal.

I am neither a writer nor a reporter, but in blogging about small-town politics in Whitewater, Wisconsin, I have come to see how much difference a true and vigorous press might have made for our rural community.

We don’t have as much. We have a lapdog press, reporters who become part of the stories they cover, reporters who aren’t supposed to question certain politicians, or news of a peculiar kind from a long-standing incumbent politician, covering the very bodies on which he sits.

This shabby or ersatz press leaves us with a failed politics, flacked constantly as proof of local exceptionalism and triumph.

No one is surprised that politicians are self-interested except people foolish enough to believe that a man becomes a saint public servant as soon as he takes office.

Editor & Publisher had the sad task of chronicling the decline of many newspapers before its own decline. There’s no pleasure in that, for bloggers or anyone else.

When a few in town bemoan a blogger here or there, they inadvertently highlight the decline of a local newspaper, with true news standards. The absence of real journalism in town causes politicians, town squires, self-important bureaucrats, and assorted back-patters to assume that acceptance of whatever they say is a community obligation.

They have grown fat and selfish on the absence of a true local press that should be part of any American community.

Bloggers came to focus on local politics because they saw that local papers stopped being representatives of the American tradition of press scrutiny of politicians. Common citizens acted to fill a breach.

When they stepped in, they predictably found that every politician and bureaucrat claimed that the absence of independent inquiry was the norm. They ignored the history of America, this free and beautiful place, and made their self-interest a community principle, however thinly disguised. Fawning deference to authority – something wholly Un-American – became a community value.

That’s as common now in rural places as anywhere, and it will be a long road back to a better, more American tradition.

City

The Morris Pratt Institute in Whitewater

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Immediately below, in the preceding post, I cite the Wisconsin Historical Society on the Pratt Institute, a center for spiritualism, formerly of Whitewater.

Here I refer to the Morris Pratt Institute, not the noted graduate school in New York.

The Morris Pratt Institute is now located elsewhere in Wisconsin, but occasionally someone will tell me that Whitewater, Wisconsin is an odd place because of the center for spiritualism once located in town. There are also assorted stories about witches having lived in town, and while here having placed various curses on our small city.

I cannot say if anyone once cursed our town, but I am fairly certain that at least a few of our residents might be considered scary.

That’s hardly what makes the town so odd in politics and culture. The answers are far more mundane: that we insist on grandiose claims of our local exceptionalism, that we lack a press that watches politicians closely and unsparingly, that we waste time and money on marquee public works projects, and that many of our politicians and local bureaucrats are excuse-making and self-flattering.

We began as a city of self-reliant individualists. We’ve become a place of fussy and vain bureaucrats. We have lost touch with the true exceptionalism of America, and replaced it with a sad local counterfeit.

It didn’t take witches and kooky seances to make us this way; we did it all on our own.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 12-11-09

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Good morning,

The forecast for Whitewater is for a sunny day with a high of 14 degrees.

It’s Christmas Corner at Lakeview School today, and there’s a school-wide music program at Washington School.

In Wisconsin History for December 11th, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society, signs of our free society:

1833 – First Newspaper in Wisconsin Published

On this date the Green Bay Intelligencer, Wisconsin’s first newspaper, began publication. John Vorhees Suydam and A.G. Ellis head up the publication effort. [Source: History of Wisconsin, Vol. 1]

Later, in 1901, a particular oddity from Whitewater’s past:

1901 – Morris Pratt Institute Incorporated

On this date spiritual leader Morris Pratt gained incorporation for his school of spiritualism located in Whitewater, Wisconsin. Many people of this time embraced spiritualism to try to reach friends and family who had died in the Civil War. As a result, Whitewater became known as the “mecca of modern spiritualism.” Pratt built his institute in 1888, which was initially used as a meeting place for public seances. Pratt decided to turn his institution into an educational school for spiritualists, focusing on science, literature, morality, and communication, as well as spiritualistic instruction. The institute was closed for a few years during the Depression, and then in 1977 relocated to Waukesha, where it remains one of the few institutes in the world that is dedicated to the study of spiritualism. [Source: Wisconsin Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes]

City, Press, University

Real Risks in a Real Town

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There’s a view – almost a wish – that in a small town, life will prove less regulated, and the only regulations the community issues are the most important, truly concerning health and safety.

Sometimes, after paying for another permit, or sitting in a traffic jam caused by another urban plan gone awry, someone in Los Angeles must think: there must be someplace simpler than this.

There is, of course, just not as simple and reasonable as one might hope.

We live in a highly regulated rural town, where every merchant’s sign is scrutinized, and where one can read an increasingly long list of all the activities the city prohibits or restricts – not to do this, that, or the other thing.

Every so often, though, one comes across a story about a real risk, and sees the difference between zealous enforcement of minor matters and real concerns for safety.

Over at our campus newspaper, the Royal Purple, there’s a story entitled, No law bans sexual offenders from living in residence halls

The story reports that a convicted offender lived in one of the residence halls in 2006:

“In a recent Royal Purple article involving sexual offenders living near UW-Whitewater, it was reported that a former residence hall tenant had multiple convictions of sexual assault of a child.

Benjamin Nowak, 31, who lived in Wells West in 2006 was convicted of second-degree sexual assault of a child Oct. 16, 1997, in Waukesha County. Nowak was also convicted April 24, 2000 of a class A misdemeanor for having sex with a child age 16 or older in Waukesha County.

….Local municipalities can pass their own ordinances, Whitewater has not passed any ordinances restricting residency.”

A few paragraphs later, the story concludes with mention of unmet student concerns:

“Despite safety concerns of students living in the residence hall, no action was taken, according to the students….

In order for a student with a history of sexual convictions to live in university residence halls offenders are required to go through their probation officer to setup housing accommodations, Director of Housing Frank Bartlett said.

Although not at his present position in 2006 Kiederlen said he was aware of instances of harassment accusations against Nowak.

“I am aware of the history of the situation, but it is not something I personally dealt with,” Kiederlen said. “My understanding of the situation was many of his actions were harassing in quality and borderline but not necessarily illegal so we ended up not being able to do too much.”

Students who lived in the hall with Nowak say issues of student interaction with Nowak were documented and should make the university and state responsible for tightening restrictions to ensure student safety.”

The story raises a few questions:

1. What is, more fully, the process for a sex offender to obtain campus housing? What must he and his probation officer show or do? The story describes what the offender and probation officer do – set up housing – but what does that require, and what evaluation criteria – if any – are used?

2. In 2006, did any administrator or did university legal counsel assess the risk from Nowak’s residency? There were apparently and reportedly complaints of harassment – who received and processed them?

3. Has any administrator or university legal counsel ever assessed a similar risk?

4. At any occasion, has any administrator or has university legal counsel ever prepared an opinion on actions the university might take? What did they conclude? (One assumes – quite accurately, I’m sure – that this is a decision that the administration would make.)

5. What does University Chancellor Richard Telfer think? Not about what happened then, but what should be the policy of the university now? Why not ask him for his opinion, as he must have an office, and a phone?

6. Finally, in all the regulations over signs, parking, outdoor caf?s, is this not a greater risk – and thus greater concern? Managing the city is a poor substitute for genuine governance. The grandiose claims of management are of principal advantage only to incumbent politicians and career bureaucrats.

Real risk will not be found from a sign that’s too large, a website with independent commentary, or a rule for every small matter.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 12-10-09

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Good morning,

The forecast for Whitewater is for a breezy day with a high of about 6 degrees. The lowest recorded December temperature in state history was 52 degrees below zero at Couderay, Wisconsin in 1983.

It’s Market Day pickup at Lincoln School today, and there’s a Middle School band concert at the High School scheduled for tonight at 7 PM.

For those from out of the city, Whitewater has a public school district with three elementary schools (Lakeview, Lincoln, and Washington), one middle school (Whitewater Middle), and one high school (Whitewater High). The district extends beyond the city limits, to smaller towns nearby. There are no private schools in the area the district serves, and perhaps only the smallest number of home-schooled children.

In Wisconsin History for December 10th, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society, there are two very different anniversaries for December 10th:

1935 – Scarlet Fever in Janesville

On this date an outbreak of scarlet fever quarantined 25 Janesville residents. [Source: Janesville Gazette, December 10, 1935, p.5]

1967 – Otis Redding Dies

On this date a twin-engine Beechcraft carrying Otis Redding crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, killing Redding and four members of his touring band, the Bar-Kays. Otis Redding was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. [Source: OtisRedding.com]

Janesville is about 20 miles from Whitewater, and Madison — the state capital — about 45. more >>

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 12-9-09

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Good morning,

It’s a snowy day in our small town, and across all of Wisconsin. in the last thirty years, Wisconsin averages about 11.9 inches of snow in December. The greatest daily total for snow in Wisconsin was 26 inches in 1904 at Neillsville, Clark County.

School’s cancelled today, as countless other places. Wisconsin will see innumerable snowmen and snow forts today. Other homes will see a comfortable, if sartorially questionable, pajama day.