In the spirit of the season —
Watson’s Climbing Rat and Orange Nectar Bats Take Over a Panama Feeder:
Daily Bread, Elections, Local Government, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 10.30.25: Wisconsin Polling on Partisanship
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 7:27 and sunset is 5:49 for 10 hours 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 58.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1995, Quebec citizens narrowly vote (50.58% to 49.42%) in favor of remaining a province of Canada in their second referendum on national sovereignty.
One of the themes here at FREE WHITEWATER is that we live in a time when true bipartisanship has collapsed (and won’t be back soon). See That ‘Bipartisanship’ Didn’t Last Long — Because It Was Never There, The WisDems’ Bipartisan Delusion, Seeing Once Again That Wisconsin’s Not a Bipartisan Environment, ‘Bipartisanship’ in Wisconsin Is Simply the Vulnerability of the WISGOP Under Fair Maps, and After Bipartisanship.
Results within the latest Marquette Law School Poll support this view. (It’s only one pollster and only one poll, but it’s a well-regarded one.) Most of the attention on this poll concerns how little Wisconsin voters know about the gubernatorial candidates. See Rich Kremer, Marquette poll: Most voters unaware of candidates for governor, Supreme Court, Wisconsin Public Radio, October 29, 2025. (There’s likely to be at least one more candidate in the race, but the Marquette poll did not include as-yet-undeclared candidates.)
Look, however, at some of the poll findings for the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court election:
Fifty-six percent say Wisconsin Supreme Court campaigns have become so partisan that we should change to partisan election of judges, while 43% say we should continue the current non-partisan election of judges to the court. Among Republicans, 63% say we should change to partisan elections, while 49% of independents and 49% of Democrats favor partisan elections.
It’s a judicial contest that Wisconsin has established by law as non-partisan, but large numbers of voters know it’s only nominally non-partisan (and so they want to call it what it is). In a well-crafted electoral environment, overwhelming numbers of voters should believe that the environment is accurately described. Even when Wisconsin designates the race as non-partisan under the law, Wisconsin voters perceptively say that’s not what this is. (It’s as though you called a witch doctor a physician, and yet patients said “Oh, no, that’s not true. That’s a witch doctor, dammit.”)
Whether it should become a partisan election is another question; at least voters see what it has become. It seems improbable that we’ll soon return to conditions where non-partisan state elections are truly non-partisan.
There’s a consequent consideration: if intended non-partisan statewide races are truly partisan, what would one say about intended non-partisan local races?
That’s a question worthy of further exploration. I’ve touched on it only slightly, not in the depth it deserves. See ‘Coalitions’ from Quick Observations on a Weekend.
I’m a strong proponent of the claim that ‘you are your vote, you are your coalition.’ No one should care what an elected official thinks or says if he votes contrary to those ideas and statements.
There’s more to be done on the topic, I think, about local candidates clustered on the right or left.
Statewide, however, it’s a settled question — politics is partisan to the marrow.
Pet monkey gets loose in Spirit Halloween store:
Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 10.29.25: The Wisconsin Attorney General’s Race Will Be a Rematch
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 56. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 5:50 for 10 hours 25 minutes of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 49.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1929, the New York Stock Exchange crashes, ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and eventually contributing to the Great Depression.
If the Wisconsin gubernatorial election next year will be all new, then the Wisconsin attorney general’s race will be familiar. The state is in for a rematch of the Kaul-Toney race of 2022:
Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, a Republican, announced Tuesday [10.21] he’s running for a second time to unseat Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul.
The 41-year-old Toney has been the DA in Fond du Lac County since 2012. He ran against Kaul in 2022, losing by 35,000 votes. Kaul, a Democrat, recently announced he would be running for a third term as attorney general, ending speculation that he would run for governor after Gov. Tony Evers announced his retirement.
In the campaign announcement, Toney said he would prioritize supporting law enforcement officers, reducing violent crime in Milwaukee and being more aggressive in prosecuting drug crimes.
….
The Wisconsin attorney general is the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the state, responsible for overseeing state law enforcement agencies, enforcing state laws as varied as water quality rules and election laws and defending state agencies in court. This year, Kaul has been especially active in joining multi-state lawsuits against Trump administration policies.
See Henry Redman, Republican Eric Toney announces second run for attorney general, Wisconsin Examiner, October 21, 2025.
Kaul defeated Toney in the close 2022 attorney general’s race, 50.64% to 49.31%. Whether this race is close, or has a larger margin one way or the other, is likely to depend on how Wisconsin voters view federal policy as much as state policy.
Elections across the nation have become a test of support or opposition to federal actions. Absent an unexpected personal issue for a candidate, that’s likely how our own state elections will unfold.
Statewide has become a proxy for nationwide.
Pumpkins were enjoyed by all at the Cincinnati Zoo. Click on the picture to play the video:
City, Daily Bread, Weird Tales
Daily Bread for 10.28.25: Our Haunted Past
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 5:52 for 10 hours 28 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 39.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis ends and Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.
Whitewater has a long-standing reputation as a haunted place. The topic emerges now and again because stories and legends about Whitewater are more numerous here than in ordinary Wisconsin places that have been beset only by mosquitoes and coyotes. (There’s a Spirit Tour in this town because there are stories about spirits in this town.)
Milwaukee Magazine’s Tea Krulos writes of Second Salem: The Haunted History of Whitewater’s Spiritualist Past:
These spooky stories are thick on the ground in Whitewater, a college town of less than 15,000 about an hour’s drive southwest of Milwaukee. They say that Whitewater’s three cemeteries form the points of a “Witch’s Triangle,” with all the area within its borders under a curse. Under the light of the Halloween moon, the spirit of a bloodthirsty witch (who also happens to be an ax murderer in some versions) named Mary Worth rises from a crypt to stalk new victims.
Over at UW-Whitewater’s Andersen Library, there’s an ancient, leather-bound spellbook locked in a cage that will drive anyone who reads it (or even asks about it) insane. Elsewhere on campus, a magical altar is said to be buried under a building. A network of underground tunnels is used by a coven to traverse to Starin Park, where they assemble to perform Black Mass on unholy nights in front of the “Witches Tower.” Whitewater Lake has a kraken-like beast lurking beneath the surface, possibly conjured by witchcraft. And on and on.
All of these tales are weaved from a singular source at the center of the web: the Morris Pratt Institute, a unique college begun in Whitewater where communicating with the deceased was part of the curriculum. The legacy of this school, built at the peak of the Gilded Age religious movement of Spiritualism and bankrolled by a prophesied iron bonanza, is still alive today – not just in the urban legends it spawned but also in reality.
No story about our past would be complete without mention of Morris Pratt, capitalizing on loss and longing to bring his heterodox beliefs to Whitewater:
Pratt made good on his word [to advance Spiritualism] and began making Whitewater into a hub for his beliefs.
In 1889, a three-story brick building opened at the corner of what is now Whitewater’s Fremont and Center streets: the Sanitarium and Hall of Psychic Science, later renamed the Temple of Science. Pratt’s Spiritualist center had lecture halls, living quarters and a space for the practice of séances, mediumship and scrying (visioning the future in reflective surfaces such as crystal balls). The latter was known as the White Room for its entirely colorless paint and furnishings….
Pratt’s brusque approach didn’t endear him to the town, either. At the Temple of Science’s opening day, the lineup of lecturers reportedly attacked and ridiculed other religions. Later that year, Pratt placed an announcement in the Whitewater Register challenging leaders of the other churches in town to debate him. When no one accepted, he began showing up at their church services for “highly argumentative, belligerent confrontations that caused him to be shunned and ridiculed in Whitewater,” author Len Faytus wrote in The Spook Temple: The Morris Pratt Institute in Whitewater, Spiritualism and the Occult.
See Tea Krulos, Second Salem: The Haunted History of Whitewater’s Spiritualist Past, Milwaukee Magazine, October 20, 2025.
However frightful or delightful, after an occasional Halloween interlude, one leaves behind stories of creatures or specters and returns to daily life in our small city of fifteen thousand.
Video shows view from inside the eye of Hurricane Melissa:
City, Daily Bread, Entitlement, Open Government, School District
Daily Bread for 10.27.25: There’s Defensive and Then There’s the Whitewater School Board’s Excessively Defensive Posture
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset is 5:53 for 10 hours 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 29.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board will conduct an Annual Budget hearing at 5:30 PM and a Regular Meeting at 6 PM. (Note, Monday evening: The district listed the Regular Meeting to begin at 6 PM. In fact, the Annual Budget hearing ran later than 6 PM, so the Regular Meeting began later than the posted time.)
On this day in 1775, King George III expands on his earlier Proclamation of Rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies during a speech from the throne at the opening of Parliament.
The Whitewater School Board meets tonight. As part of its Regular Meeting agenda, before public comment, the following cautionary words appear:
Citizens may speak under Public Comments, but no School Board action will be taken. Issues raised may become a part of a future agenda. Participants are allotted a three-minute speaking period. A Citizen Comment Request should be filled out prior to speaking. In accordance to [sic] Board Policy 187, personal criticism and/or derogatory remarks directed at School Board members or employees of the district will not be tolerated. Should there be a number of citizens planning to speak, the President will announce the total time for citizen comments and divide the time between speakers equally with no more than three minutes allotted to each participant. The Board will not be able to respond to individual questions at the meeting. Complaints against an employee should be sent to the Superintendent or Board in writing with your signature. Please keep in mind that students often attend or view board meetings. Speakers’ remarks should therefore be suitable for an audience that includes Kindergarten through 12th grade students. The Board President or officers of the Board may interrupt, warn or terminate speakers’ statements that are unrelated to the business of the School District or inappropriate for K-12 students or disruptive to an orderly, productive meeting. The time estimates noted for agenda items are for informational purposes only and may not be reflective of actual discussion during the meeting.
Well, now we know. Honest to goodness, it’s not merely cautionary or advisory, it’s excessively so. These many warnings convey that the board is watching the public very carefully. That’s an inverted order: the public should be watching the board. Left, center, or right — Whitewater’s school board has been a self-protective, self-defensive board for many years. That’s not public service; it’s self-service.
It should be obvious that the effect of this advisory is to remove legitimate concerns about the district, administrators, or staff from public mention. There’s a difference between wanting a government position and wanting that position on terms that undermine the position’s very legitimacy in a free and open society.
As it turns out, the board president has sometimes read these words before scheduled public comment at a meeting. Here’s an example from July (which compounds the written advisory’s chilling effect with an auditory one, where neither advisory should have been fashioned or delivered the way it has been):
Speak only a bit faster, and it would sound like this:
How odd to be a man who voted for Obama, or a woman who voted for Trump, only to win seats on the school board with a shared perspective that among the most important votes are one’s own defensive position against the rest of the public. Perhaps, at bottom, that’s what’s left of bipartisanship.
I’m sure that there’s someone on the Whitewater School Board, of whatever political ideology, who would say that these measures are necessary to prevent disruptions from members of the public. To which this libertarian blogger would say that the advisory is excessively restrictive of the public, thinks too little of the public, and that these boardmembers are, in any event, from that same public.
Looking around Whitewater, after all, one doesn’t find anyone from the House of Windsor… and we’re better off for it.
Holiday, Music
Monday Music: Halloween Trio No. 3
by JOHN ADAMS •
Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells (from The Exorcist)
Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind, The Shining
Ennio Morricone, The Thing
City, Daily Bread, School District
Daily Bread for 10.26.25: The Superintendent’s Presentation
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 7:22 and sunset is 5:55 for 10 hours 33 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 21.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1881, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place in Tombstone, Arizona.
On Tuesday, at a meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, the Whitewater Unified School District’s superintendent, Samuel Karns, presented his goals.
I’ve written before that one should wait about a year to see if this new superintendent’s approach has begun to make a difference. That’s a sound approach. This district has been ideologically divided among its constituent communities, has been professionally divided among its faculty, and tensions that were present before the pandemic have grown worse afterward. An autocratic administrative approach these last five years and a closed-government approach that saw some community members as adversaries made academic goals almost secondary to political controversy and managerial overreach.
Meeting after meeting wasted on funding about the aquatic center or a school resource officer are examples of frivolous endeavors styled as serious ones.
The district has been a dark field into which open government principles and a collaborative approach go to wither and die. There have been supporters of this approach — of course, of course — on the school board and in the community. See Yesteryear’s Familiar Tune.
And yet, even among those of a given ideology, there was division and discord. Backbiting, ankle-biting, — lots of biting among people who shouldn’t have been biting anyone. In general: the district tends toward an insider-outsider divide. Insiders imagine themselves (as is common in these divides) to be more insightful, more talented. (There’s no evidence of this imagined superiority, in fact, but then some people are Flat Earthers against all evidence to the contrary.)
If this district’s new superintendent and its existing board can, during his tenure, manage to avoid the governance mistakes of the last five years, establish a better relationship with the community, and make genuine academic progress, then Whitewater and the smaller towns of the district will be better for it.
A slow but steady recuperation would do the Whitewater Unified School District well.
Rare ‘red lightning’ captured in timelapse video by New Zealand photographer:
City, Daily Bread, University
Daily Bread for 10.25.25: The Final Fall Enrollment Numbers for UW-Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 7:20 and sunset is 5:56 for 10 hours 36 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Adlai Stevenson shows the United Nations Security Council reconnaissance photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.
In September, the Universities of Wisconsin published preliminary enrollment figures for their campuses. See, previously, For UW-Whitewater, More Students Mean More Opportunity. The final fall numbers appear below:
The final 10-day fall 2025 enrollment figures for each university are:
- UW-Eau Claire: 9,487
- UW-Green Bay: 11,519
- UW-La Crosse: 10,584
- UW-Madison: 51,481
- UW-Milwaukee: 22,909
- UW-Oshkosh: 12,191
- UW-Parkside: 3,920
- UW-Platteville: 6,426
- UW-River Falls: 5,377
- UW-Stevens Point: 8,532
- UW-Stout: 7,061
- UW-Superior: 2,872
- UW-Whitewater: 12,267
The final figure for UW-Whitewater is higher than the preliminary number of 12,075.
While it’s true that there is a statewide and nationwide decline in the demographic cohort of traditional college students, some institutions will achieve above and some below the state and national trends. It is wildly improbable that every institution will experience decline.
Why some grow, and why some decline, is the relevant and material question for each. One matter seems clear, especially contrasted with the growth at UW-Whitewater that evaporated by the end of the last decade: it’s not possible to sustain growth on marketing alone. If that were true, then there would have been no decline in growth at the school in the late Teens — marketing would have carried UW-Whitewater along forever. There were administrators (e.g., 1 and 2) from that time who carried on as much, as though gains would be everlasting until thousands of students became hundreds of thousands, then millions, and before one knew it, all America would have been attending UW-Whitewater.
It was not, and never will be, that easy to maintain a university’s population. It may be years before all the ingredients of today’s enrollment success in a difficult demographic environment become evident.
It’s enough for now to know that UW-Whitewater is holding its own.
Clean Wisconsin program director on expanding renewable energy in Wisconsin:
City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Reasoning
Daily Bread for 10.24.25: Expressions Change with Changing Times
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 51. Sunrise is 7:19 and sunset is 5:57 for 10 hours 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line across the United States is completed.
These many years, writing about policies and claims whether local or state, this libertarian blogger has used the expression ‘no and no again.’ Regrettable, truly — it’s simply false (and ignorant) to contend that someone who loves this small town has ever wanted to use an expression of disapproval. On the contrary, each and every use has been, to my mind, necessary — and sadly so. One speaks and writes as the occasion requires.
On the evening of October 21st, at a meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, at a little over fifty minutes into the meeting, an official of the local government offered this observation of municipal finance:
If a community wants stable services, but also insists on low taxes, then the only way to balance that equation is through greater density, meaning more homes, businesses, and taxpayers sharing the cost of those services. If we want to keep low density and stable services, we must accept higher tax rates for them. If we want low density and low taxes, then we have to be prepared for service cuts because there simply isn’t enough revenue to maintain current service levels. The point here is not to say that the one preference is right or wrong, but to show that choices have consequences. So our community’s fiscal sustainability depends on understanding this balance between services, taxes, and growth. So as we move forward with our budget discussions, the framework that we’ll keep in mind is what balance does Whitewater want to strike?
Those one hundred, forty-three words, spoken plainly as part of a meeting of many more words, compel one’s attention. They ask for a reply.
And so, and so — ‘yes and yes again.’ Expressions change with changing times.
The words spoken in that meeting are not cold words, they’re warm; they’re not stagnant but rather they require an appreciation of the dynamic nature of a prosperous community. Too much of our local policy these last two decades has reflected only one need, often expressed insistently and at other times demanded imperiously. We are not one action, not one need, but thousands of actions and interactions among fifteen thousand people. Not one person’s prosperity, not one faction’s prosperity, but that of all the city.
That common prosperity requires foresight and calculation among many options on behalf of many thousands of people.
See the Milky Way’s stellar nurseries in this amazing animated 3D fly-through video:
Cats
Friday Cataloging: Halloween Treat
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Film
Film: Tuesday, October 28th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Sinners
by JOHN ADAMS •
Tuesday, October 28th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Sinners @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Folk Horror/Period Drama/Supernatural/ Thriller Rated R (language/violence/frightening & intense)
2 hours, 17 minutes (2025)
Our annual Halloween horror film has received multitudinous accolades and awards season buzz. It’s a good, old fashion rip-roaring monster movie. Please be advised to bring your own crucifix, garlic, silver bullets, and a wooden stake.
One can find more information about Sinners at the Internet Movie Database.
City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Housing
Daily Bread for 10.23.25: The Single-Family, Owner-Occupied Housing Proposal for Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 50. Sunrise is 7:18 and sunset is 5:59 for 10 hours 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2001, Apple Computer releases the iPod:
Portable MP3 players had existed since 1997; however, Apple found existing digital music players “big and clunky or small and useless” with user interfaces that were “unbelievably awful”. They also identified weaknesses in existing models’ attempt to negotiate the trade-off between capacity and portability: flash memory-based players held too few songs, while the hard drive based models were too big and heavy. To address these deficits, the company decided to develop its own MP3 player. [Citation omitted.]
On September 16th, the City of Whitewater’s Economic Development Director, Mason Becker, told the Whitewater Common Council that our local government would propose a single-family, owner-occupied housing plan this October. Of that September meeting on development generally, see An Upcoming Presentation on Development.
Whitewater has now had a chance to look at that single-family, owner-occupied plan, first at the Community Development Authority meeting of October 16th and then at the Common Council meeting of October 21st.
As with so many others in our small city, I’ve been awaiting that plan.
It’s a notably strong plan: sound in its direction, perceptive in its grasp of market needs, and thorough in its details.
The plan and its author speak for themselves sensibly and persuasively. I’ll add no remarks of my own today, leaving the presentation for readers’ review. I will note that the Whitewater Common Council voted unanimously to adopt Option A (the full amount of the fund for a Home Renewal Program) of the two options presented in the plan, with further consideration of the age of the housing stock eligible for assistance. (Video at 1:52:21.)
Below are the video remarks from the city’s Economic Development Director and his accompanying presentation —
King Charles prays with Pope Leo in 500-year first:
City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Open Government, Special Interests, Unfounded Aspersions
Daily Bread for 10.22.25: Anatomy of an Unfounded Aspersion
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 48. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset is 6:00 for 10 hours 44 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1962, President Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval quarantine of the Communist nation.
On Monday morning, October 13th, FREE WHITEWATER published a post entitled Two Techniques of the Special Interest Men. One of those two enumerated techniques was to level
False claims about lack of transparency….
Listen closely, and a special-interest faction of small-town cronyism will do what it can to level charges that it was not told something, did not know something, was denied information about something. These are the same men who for years concealed information on the old Community Development Authority, e.g., unfavorable audits, a cease and desist order, lost paperwork, firings, the terms of wasteful deals, the reasons for wasteful deals, etc.
By Monday evening, October 13th, at a meeting of the Planning and Architectural Commission, they’d helpfully provided an example of that technique. This post presents and assesses an unfounded aspersion about supposed lack of transparency.
The Agenda Item. On the agenda for the Planning meeting that night, Items 6 and 7 listed a notice that there had been a change to the agenda, and cited Whitewater’s Transparency Ordinance:
The change, printed in red, lists the date and time (10.11.25 @ 9 AM), lists the nature of the change (“update to memo”), and cites Whitewater’s Transparency Ordinance (Whitewater Transparency Enhancement Ordinance, Whitewater, Wis., Code of Ordinances ch. 2.62).
A Question About the Change. The chair of the Planning Commission (and a councilmember) raised an objection to the consideration of Items 6 and 7 during the October 13th meeting (Video @ 4:12):
I will make a motion to remove items six and seven until the next meeting and my reasoning for that being it’s obviously a hot button topic for the city already. I don’t know if there was changes to the planner’s report. I would like to see those out to the city for the 72 hours to allow the public to comment and or digest them.
My motion is just to remove items six and seven to the next meeting. Is there any second? Second. All right. [Moved by Hicks, seconded by McCormick.]
An Explanation of the Change. Whitewater’s Code Enforcement Officer offered an explanation (Video @ 5:03):
The only change that was made was I expanded slightly on my review of the comprehensive plan amendment and I added in some more details pertaining to the reason for the project meeting our comprehensive plan amendment requirements. So, no changes to the application or no changes to what they’re requesting. The only change was my memo and adding in further detail and expansion on some bullet points in the first section of my memo.
Motion to Postpone Item Rejected, and so Approval of the Waiver After Explanation of the Change (Video @ 12:19).
The Accuracy of the Explanation. As it turns out, this libertarian blogger keeps his own record of municipal agendas and recorded videos. I have both the original agenda .pdf from Friday, October 10th and the memo-updated agenda .pdf from October 13th. Comparing the two documents, the only changes were exactly as Whitewater’s Code Enforcement Officer had described them. If they were otherwise, then I’d be the first person in this city to say so. The updates were not otherwise — they were as she has described them.
A Public Comment Much Later in the Meeting Complaining About the Update on Items 6 and 7 (Video @ 1:24:01):
I had a question that, that has troubled me. And that was the amended transparency ordinance for seven, six and seven. And I didn’t see this and I had a conflict. I wasn’t going to be here. But so the question I’ve got is when did that change get thrown in? And why are we rushing these? Why couldn’t this take time where more people could have possibly attended. But can somebody explain to me related to seven? Why was there a change 24 hour change in the agenda…I got here late because in fact, I canceled somewhere else. I was going to be here. What happened that created that issue?
An Assessment.
The motion to delay consideration comes even before an explanation of why the agenda was updated.
The motion to delay gives the game away by contending that it’s a ‘hot-button issue.’ A hot-button issue is not a procedural irregularity. One person’s hot-button issue suggesting delay is another person’s need to proceed with ordinary municipal and business transactions initially advanced in the Whitewater Common Council many months ago. This was not a new issue, it was not a rushed one.
The original agenda item was timely posted, and the changes here were minor (not involving the item itself, but only small changes to supporting materials). In fact, the aspersion against the update is only possible because the city was notably and admirably transparent.
This city government represents 15,000 people. Having posted an agenda properly, it does not owe a delay to one resident’s scheduling conflict.
In the video, one hears that same resident, having not noticed or managed his schedule properly, is troubled. In life, there are reasons that a man or woman might be troubled. I’ll suggest this is not one of the reasons to be troubled in one’s life. One would have expected that lobbyists were of stouter heart.
After receiving an explanation (that should have been clear by reading the document’s plain language of ‘update to memo’ or attending on time to hear an explanation when it was first given), all that accusatory energy (being troubled) fades away into “Okay, thank you very much” after the explanation was given a second time during the meeting.
Keel-billed Toucan Takes a Bite During Lunch:
City, Culture, Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Entitlement, Reasoning, Special Interests, Speech & Debate
Daily Bread for 10.21.25: On an Application of Newton’s Third Law of Motion to Whitewater, Wisconsin
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:15 and sunset is 6:02 for 10 hours 47 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1805, a British fleet led by Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve in the Battle of Trafalgar.
Newton’s many works have been rightly lauded for centuries, both particularly as science and generally as an example of comprehension of the world. Of that broader view, consider Alexander Pope’s observation about Newton:
“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”
See Alexander Pope, Epitaph: Intended for Sir Isaac Newton (1727), in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (Yale Univ. Press 1963), https://verse.press/poem/epitaph-xii-intended-for-sir-isaac-newton-in-7321.
Well, that’s quite an epitaph.
So what was that Third Law of Motion, in particular, from Sir Isaac? It was this, translated into English:
Law III.
To every Action there is always opposed an equal Reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
Whatever draws or presses another is as much drawn or pressed by that other. If you press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone. If a horse draws a stone tied to a rope, the horse (if I may so say) will be equally drawn back towards the stone: for the distended rope, by the same endeavour to relax or unbend it self, will draw the horse as much towards the stone as it does the stone towards the horse and will obstruct the progress of the one as much as it advances that of the other…
See, Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 17–18 (Andrew Motte trans., London 1729), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mathematical_Principles_of_Natural_Philosophy_%281729%29/Axioms%2C_or_Laws_of_Motion.
Of physics, this blogger has nothing to add — obviously — to the application of Newton’s observations of ordinary mechanics to Whitewater, Wisconsin.
There is, however, a metaphorical way to think about Sir Isaac’s observation that To every Action there is always opposed an equal Reaction — the application of an understanding of the physical world to social reactions of ordinary people (e.g., political, cultural).
Most of the time, and in a free society very often, a human action produces a human reaction. Not always, and not always of equal proportion, but a reaction of similar magnitude. And so, and so, a reaction not so definite and certain as with the ordinary physical world, but yet still probable and meaningful.
On its own, that doesn’t seem to be much of an observation. And yet, and yet, there are times when this isn’t plain, when it’s not obvious to a few. Which times and which people would those be?
People with a status-based outlook, people who are entitled, people who are self-absorbed, and people who are in the grip of motivated reasoning typically lack the sense to see that their actions will produce a reaction. They take action, but can’t grasp a reaction (for human events of equal or even greater magnitude than their own actions) coming in response.
Special interests are often like this. They can make a claim (however specious), but can’t imagine a counterclaim (however trustworthy). This ilk overestimates itself, and underestimates everyone else.
The Better Approach of the Dark-Horse Underdog is to see “issues without entitlement, without over-confidence. There is, each time, nothing other than the work of observing, assessing, and writing thereafter.”
Can’t imagine any other way.
See also The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town, Two Techniques of the Special Interest Men, and The Shock of the Normal.
Kevin the Canadian Chihuahua understandably loves fall weather, even if, like many Canadian canines, he expresses his affection in salty terms. Click on Kevin’s picture to play the video: