FREE WHITEWATER

Demand

Here’s a follow-on to yesterday’s post, Business Dependency in Whitewater.

There’s a huge effort locally, from the Community Development Authority in particular, to spur growth through large, publicly-funded incentives.  

These addled few are like men who’ve heard the expression, ‘if you build it, he will come,’ but don’t understand when it applies and when it doesn’t.  That’s a much bigger topic than I intend here, and it has both economic and legal implications (ones that are being litigated elsewhere in Wisconsin now). 

Sometimes – and here in Whitewater all too often — building something doesn’t attract anyone, doesn’t attract the target audience, or only attracts someone at an unsustainable cost. 

Consider the story of men in rural Pennsylvania who built a commune, only to find no one else to take them up on the venture:

….They were born Michael Colby and Donald Graves, but once there, on 63 acres in the Mahantongo Valley, a bowl of land in central Pennsylvania, they changed their names to Christian and Johannes Zinzendorf and called themselves the Harmonists, inspired by a splinter group of 18th-century Moravian brothers who believed in the spiritual values of an agrarian life.

Their ideals were lofty but simple: They would live off the land, farming with Colonial-era tools, along with a band of like-minded men dressed in homespun robes wielding scythes and pickaxes. They would sleep in atmospheric log cabins and other 18th-century structures that they had rescued from the area and that they began to reconstruct, painstakingly, brick by crumbling brick and log by log.

But what if you built a commune, and no one came….

The 25 buildings that dot the landscape are mostly dormant, save for Zephram’s house and Johannes’s house….

See, They Built It. No One Came @ The New York Times.

These utopians, to their credit, tried to build a community with their own money; Whitewater’s development gurus want to do this with vast heapings of public money. 

They’ve both the same problem, though: an ambition that exceeds aptitude, a conviction that they know what others want, perhaps better than others, themselves, do. 

Daily Bread for 7.9.15

Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday in the Whippet City will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:34, for 15h 08m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 42.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 
A Live Version from March 1963

On this day in 1962, Bob Dylan records a protest song that he contends isn’t a protest song at all:

“This here ain’t no protest song or anything like that, ’cause I don’t write no protest songs.” That was how Bob Dylan introduced one of the most eloquent protest songs ever written when he first performed it publicly. It was the spring of his first full year in New York City, and he was onstage at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, talking about a song he claims to have written in just 10 minutes: “Blowin’ In The Wind.” A few weeks later, on this day in 1962, Dylan walked into a studio and recorded the song that would make him a star.

Dylan’s recording of “Blowin’ In The Wind” would first be released nearly a full year later, on his breakthrough album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. This was not the version of the song that most people would first hear, however. That honor went to the cover version by Peter, Paul and Mary—a version that not only became a smash hit on the pop charts, but also transformed what Dylan would later call “just another song” into the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement.

A Google a Day asks a sports question:

What piece of sports equipment is described in section 1.10 (b) of the MLB Official Rules?

Business Dependency in Whitewater

For residents facing poverty, one would hope for, and understand, a combination of private and public relief.  Churches and other private organizations do much in this effort; government expenditures for the genuinely needy amount to a small portion of all government spending. Support of this kind is a worthy effort.

Whitewater also has two large public educational institutions, both of which by their nature as public entities receive significant taxpayer support.  Neither the Whitewater Unified School District nor UW-Whitewater could go on without public funding, and as they’re public institutions, that’s hardly surprising.

Look beyond that, though, and one finds a city that talks ceaseless about private development, but in saying so really seeks nothing so much as public money.  What’s an economic development specialist for city government?  It’s a publicly-paid man looking to use public money to manipulate the local economy in ways suited to other public officials.

What’s the Community Development Authority save mostly a collection of present or former public officials, using public money taxed from private citizens, to direct business development in ways those public men find suitable?  (Some of those same men simultaneously hold positions as leaders of a local 501(c)(6) business lobby, looking to influence legislation and public affairs in ways suitable to their organization.)

Even the small downtown merchants’ organization, having been in operation for years, relies on city funding and state guidance (from WEDC, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation) to carry on.  Both practically and ethically, it would be better to take nothing than to take anything from WEDC.   They’ve wasted this state’s money, and disgraced Wisconsin before all America, in the embrace of cronyism and sham economics. 

We’d be better off on our own, however hard that might initially seem. 

The finest song from a WEDC official is as discordant as an ape’s screeching.  Worse, really: the ape vocalizes in a way natural to it; the WEDC man stoops below ordinary human understanding, producing something beneath our society’s capabilities. 

Whitewater is lousy with public officials who talk about business growth but use public funds, derived from private taxpayers less well off than the officials, so that those few can play the role of financiers and developers on the public’s tab. 

That model has failed us, and will continue to do so.   That model has never been broadly believed, and is less persuasive with each successive year. 

In this, at least, there’s progress: these public men are almost out of ideas, having greatly depleted their inventory of shoddy proposals.

Daily Bread for 7.8.15

Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday in town will be mostly cloudy and mild, with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:35, for 15h 10m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 54.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1853, Commodore Perry pays a visit to Japan, in an audacious (if successful) attempt to persuade Japan to establish diplomatic relations with the United States:

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, sails into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron of four vessels. For a time, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but under threat of attack by the superior American ships they accepted letters from President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it had been declared closed to foreigners two centuries before. Only the Dutch and the Chinese were allowed to continue trade with Japan after 1639, but this trade was restricted and confined to the island of Dejima at Nagasaki.

After giving Japan time to consider the establishment of external relations, Commodore Perry returned to Tokyo with nine ships in March 1854. On March 31, he signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade and permitting the establishment of a U.S. consulate in Japan. In April 1860, the first Japanese diplomats to visit a foreign power in over 200 years reached Washington, D.C., and remained in the U.S. capital for several weeks, discussing expansion of trade with the United States. Treaties with other Western powers followed soon after, contributing to the collapse of the shogunate and ultimately the modernization of Japan.

On this day in 1850, an estranged Mormon with a Walworth County residence declares himself a king:

1850 – James Jesse Strang Crowned King
On this date James Jesse Strang, leader of the estranged Mormon faction, the Strangites, was crowned king; the only man to achieve such a title in America. When founder Joseph Smith was assassinated, Strang forged a letter from Smith dictating he was to be the heir. The Mormon movement split into followers of Strang and followers of Brigham Young. As he gained more followers (but never nearly as many as Brigham Young), Strang became comparable to a Saint, and in 1850 was crowned King James in a ceremony in which he wore a discarded red robe of a Shakespearean actor, and a metal crown studded with a cluster of stars as his followers sang him hosannas. Soon after his crowning, he announced that Mormonism embraced and supported polygamy. (Young’s faction was known to have practiced polygamy, but had not at this time announced it publicly.) A number of followers lived in Walworth County, including Strang at a home in Burlington. In 1856 Strang was himself assassinated, leaving five wives. Without Strang’s leadership, his movement disintegrated. [Source: Wisconsin Saints and Sinners, by Fred L. Holmes, p. 106-121]

A Google a Day asks a science question:

What Swedish taxonomist created binomial nomenclature?

The BB Gun Shootings in Whitewater

There’s an account from WISC of injuries an adult BB gun shooter inflicted on others in Whitewater on July 4th.  I’ve embedded it below.  It’s a thorough recounting, and the report offers some of those who suffered personal injury or property damage the opportunity to speak directly. 

Personal injury, in particular, can be a hard thing, but there’s nothing hard about forming an opinion on a crime like this: there’s no justification worthy of the term for any part of the alleged accused’s conduct. It’s wholly wrong.

That residents and emergency workers responded quickly is all to the good, and deserves commendation.

Daily Bread for 7.7.15

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be party cloudy, with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 5:24 and sunset 8:25, for 15h 11m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

goodledoodle070715
Google has a doodle today to commemorate the birthday of Eiji Tsuburaya’s 114th Birthday. Google summarizes Tsuburaya’s many achievements:

The lights dim. Cameras start to roll. A film crew silently watches. Suddenly! From behind a hand-built skyline, a towering beast appears! Shaking off a layer of dust, the massive foam-and-rubber monster leans back to act out an amazing roar (the sound effect will be added in later). Then, stomping towards the camera, the giant moves closer, and closer, until…”Cut!”

Seen this film before? This live action genre, known as “Tokusatsu” (??) in Japanese, is unmistakable in its style, and still evident in many modern beast-based thrillers. In today’s Doodle, we spotlight one of Tokusatsu’s kings, Eiji Tsuburaya, the quiet pioneer who created Ultraman, co-created Godzilla, and brought Tokusatsu to the global cinematic mainstream….

On this day in 1832, Gen. Atkinson’s militia, including Abraham Lincoln, encamp at Palmyra during the Black Hawk War:

1832 – Black Hawk War Encampment in Palmyra
On this date during the Black Hawk War, General Atkinson led his entire militia, which included future President’s Abraham Lincoln and Zachary Taylor, to a camp just south of Palmyra. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers, edited by Sarah Davis McBride]

A Google a Day asks a question about philosophy:

Which virtue do Socrates and Thrasymachus try to define in Book I of The Republic?

Film Foreign Film Series: Leviathan, Wednesday, July 8th @ 12:30 PM

image

The Seniors in the Park Foreign Foreign Film Series will have a showing of Leviathan this Wednesday, July 8th @ 12:30 PM. 

Leviathan is the 2015 Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Language film, and tells of the conflict between Kolya and his town’s corrupt mayor. 

The film will be shown in the Starin Park Community Building in Whitewater. 

Embedded below is the trailer for the film.

The Once and Present Vendor

WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 18 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.

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One might, as in the picture above, see only the rich colors of a forest; looking more closely, though, one sees that vegetation shares the canvas with something else.

From the beginning, in a closed meeting, Whitewater’s city officials met with three design and engineering firms, and one large-scale waste hauler, about waste importation into the city.

Before the first public presentation, long before ‘feasibility studies’ and ‘technical memoranda,’ Whitewater’s city manager and wastewater superintendent held discussions with a waste hauler to import other cities’ unwanted filth into Whitewater.

At those discussions were the Trane, Black & Veatch, and Donohue firms. In these last weeks, I’ve written about Trane’s proposals to Whitewater, for a digester-energy project and for an energy-savings contract. Trane’s role is a story about Trane, but also about the judgment of those who relied on Trane.

Along the way toward this digester project, Trane slipped from view, so to speak, and the Donohue engineering firm became the outside-vendor face of the project. They were present at earlier closed-door meetings, and emerged later as the advocates of both a wastewater plant upgrade and a digester-energy project.

About Donohue’s work toward a digester-energy project, it’s worth offering two principal questions:

(1) what have they considered, and (2) what have they left unconsidered?

In the language of economics, this would be something like what is seen and what is not seen.

What they have considered and what they haven’t is both a matter of their own work and the limitations city officials have placed on it, by defining the scope of the project.

There is no omniscience in Donohue’s analysis or assessments; theirs is human work, and it is susceptible of limitation as all human work is.

In these weeks ahead, I’ll consider Donohue’s published work, written or recorded, in support of a digester-energy project. I’ll do my best to find both what is seen, and that which has been otherwise left unseen.

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.