Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 5:37 PM for 10h 58m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM. (At four o’clock, the City of Whitewater will host an immigration attorney’s presentation that may have a quorum of council members in attendance, but at which no Common Council action will be taken.) 

 On this day in 1778, Baron von Steuben arrives at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to help to train the Continental Army.

 There’s a hope — one deserving of fulfillment  — that in a small town, at least, people would treat each other without self-importance or entitlement. No one higher, no one lower: all being equal and none exhibiting pretense. 

It’s not that way, of course: as in big cities, small towns, too, are afflicted with a few self-important men and women who are convinced they, and they alone, are deserving of public positions for life. What is it about being a small-town landlord, banker, or public relations man that leads these men to think that out of thousands they’re deserving of lifetime public positions? They’d tell you it’s talent, but… looking around one sees that anyone pulled from a phone directory would have done as well as they have. 

We have in this small city middling versions of national business types who won’t let go. Of those national types, Rob Copeland and Maureen Farrell report Hedge Fund Billionaire Extracts Billions More to Retire:

In the end, Mr. Dalio, with an estimated net worth of $19 billion, agreed to surrender his control over all key decisions at Bridgewater only if the firm agreed to give him what could amount to billions of dollars in regular payouts over the coming years through a special class of stock.

Mr. Dalio did not respond to requests for comment.

Bridgewater, which manages roughly $125 billion on behalf of public pensions and sovereign wealth funds, is dealing with a situation that’s becoming increasingly common across corporate America. Builders of companies big and small appear unwilling to let go, or are asked to step back in when there is turbulence.

Recently, Marc Benioff, of the technology giant Salesforce, returned to solo leadership of the company he co-founded in 1999 and cut around 8,000 jobs. Howard Schultz, now on his third go-round as the chief executive of Starbucks, has appeared intent on crushing efforts across the company to unionize store workers.

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have stepped in and out of their company several times. And over the summer, Bill Conway, one of the founders of the investing behemoth Carlyle, took the reins after the chief executive left abruptly, and helped choose a new one this month.

At least these national figures once achieved privately for the nation; they are private men clinging to their own private companies, however repulsively needy they seem.

Worse by far are our own local versions who insist on manipulating public councils and authorities forever with only self-promotion to justify their efforts. What an empty conceit it is that they’re somehow sharper or somehow more talented than others.

Aside: In what normal appraisal of industry and talent would anyone place landlords, bankers, or public relations men at the height of achievement? No worse than others, perhaps, but certainly no better. And yet, these men advance themselves as experts. This libertarian blogger has never touted himself as an expert; these men falsely say as much about themselves at every opportunity.

Sadder, still, of course, would be those deluded few who repeat the dull talking points of that entitled lot. (Better never to hold office than to sit on the Whitewater Common Council or Community Development Authority and be known as a landlord’s parrot.)

Somehow, the city is expected to believe these few rather than evidence all around. Quite sad, really.