FREE WHITEWATER

Crime

Updated: Student who allegedly made social media school threat is located at Delavan High School

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9:36 AM:

UPDATE: The phone used and person who sent the threat have been located at Delavan High School, according to Delavan Police Chief Tim O’Neill.

O’Neill said it was a male student and he is in custody at Delavan High School.

Officials said Delavan High School was on full lock-down for about 20 minutes when the phone that made the threat was located at the school.

O’Neill said it does not look like any shooting was actually planned.

Via Student who made social media threat is located at Delavan High School @ TMJ4.

Previously: WISN: East Troy says school threat made on social media.

Via WISN’s YouTube Channel: “Published October 17, 2014.  East Troy superintendent Chris Hibner said a threat against a school in the area was made on the social media app Yik Yak.”

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.17.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

The work week ends with mostly cloudy skies, only a slight chance of rain, and a high of fifty-six.

On this day in 1777, British Gen. Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga:

Burgoyne’s strategy to divide New England from the southern colonies had started well, but slowed due to logistical problems. He won a small tactical victory over General Horatio Gates and the Continental Army in the September 19 Battle of Freeman’s Farm at the cost of significant casualties. His gains were erased when he again attacked the Americans in the October 7 Battle of Bemis Heights and the Americans captured a portion of the British defenses. Burgoyne was therefore compelled to retreat, and his army was surrounded by the much larger American force at Saratoga, forcing him to surrender on October 17. News of Burgoyne’s surrender was instrumental in formally bringing France into the war as an American ally, although it had previously given supplies, ammunition and guns, notably the de Valliere cannon, which played an important role in Saratoga.[9] This battle also resulted in Spain joining France in the war against Britain.

Google-a-Day asks a zoology question:

What does the name given to the Aldabra giant tortoise, considered one of the longest-living animals on record at the time of his death, mean in English?

Crime, Open Government, University

Support the Campus Accountability and Safety Act

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Discussion is better than silence; knowledge trumps ignorance. Thousands of universities receive federal funds, including our own campus.

Under the law, those universities are required, since the Clery Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1092(f), 34 C.F.R. 668.46 to record and report instances of crime on and near their campuses. (UW-System schools publish that information in compliance with federal and state law.)

Unfortunately, it’s not enough – auditing of reports is underfunded. Even if reporting statistics are accurate, there’s no way to know with assurance how university administrators addressed incidents of violence. The Campus Accountability and Safety Act, S.2692 — 113th Congress (2013-2014), a bipartisan federal proposal, would require campus administrators to report more comprehensively, and to disclose how they’ve handled reported acts of violence.

(Individual identities would be protected; the goal is to learn of violent incidents and their handling.)

One would prefer – especially a libertarian would prefer – a country that needed fewer laws.

But some of those administrators who count their institutions as entitled to millions in aid will still contend that they’re equally entitled to conceal how they address campus violence. University administrators of better character would be more open; there are too few leaders of that kind.

Those schools that take federal money should both report publicly the crimes on their campuses and how they’ve addressed those reported crimes.

A better climate would push public-relations to the back of the room, or into the hallway, where it belongs:

“Right now schools have reason to repress reporting and be focused on public image rather than being focused on the problem, because there is no real penalty for not accurately reporting and there is no standardized survey,” said Nancy Cantalupo, a research fellow with the Victim Rights Law Center and a researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, who acted as an informal consultant during some stages of the bill’s creation.

Ms. Dauber [professor of law, Stanford] says transparency is the single most important change that Congress could bring about. “Absent transparency, we don’t know what problem we are trying to solve and we have no idea how to solve it,” she said. “We are just fumbling around in the dark. When you want to change, you take an honest inventory of your situation.”

The legislation is not perfect; it could use stronger provisions for investigatory efforts. More money should be authorized for audits of university reporting and handling of campus-related crimes.

Even without the Campus Accountability and Safety Act, our campus and the entire UW System should begin reporting more openly the disposition, and not merely incidents, of violence. (Particular identities are not the goal, but information about the number of incidents and how they were handled should be.)

Administrators throughout the UW System should demand state legislation to require for Wisconsin provisions like CASA’s proposed federal requirements.

Anything less is inadequate.

Embedded below readers will find a summary of the legislation and a draft bill.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.16.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday brings a cloudy morning but a sunny afternoon to the Whippet City. We can expect a high of about fifty-five, and no more than a ten-percent chance of rain.

The Fire & Rescue Task Force meets again tonight at 6:30 PM.

Perhaps you’ve watched a letter or bank statement travel through a pneumatic tube and wondered, ‘what’s that look like from the inside?’ More likely, you’ve not wondered, but someone has. Here’s their video depicting the journey:

On this day in 1976, the song Disco Duck hits number one on U.S. pop charts, confirming (if one needed confirmation) that the 70s were a troubled time:

Google-a-Day has question about a different kind of music for today:

The Curatorial Director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum authored a book describing 50 years of what rock band?

Press

When Endorsements Are Effective

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Political endorsements are effective when they bolster those who similarly believe, or when they persuade doubters to start believing.   

Otherwise, they’re no better than singing in the shower: they sound good to the singer, but no one else hears or enjoys the song.  

Good luck to print publications that don’t seem to grasp these simple truths. 

University

Scalding’s Not the Remedy to Freezing

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A freezing person doesn’t improve his or her health by jumping into scalding water. 

Weak leaders, often weak for years, can’t assure better conditions by shifting wildly from cold indifference to scorching concern.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.15.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be an occasionally rainy day with a high of fifty-five.

On this day in 1989, Wayne Gretzky breaks a longstanding record:

During a game against his old team, the Edmonton Oilers, Canadian ice hockey great Wayne Gretzky breaks Gordie Howe’s National Hockey League career scoring record of 1,850 points.

Gretzky dominated professional hockey during the 1980s, setting numerous records and leading the Oilers to four Stanley Cup victories. In 1988, the “Great One” was traded to the Los Angeles Kings, where he continued to excel as one of the National Hockey League’s foremost players. He retired in 1999 as a New York Ranger, holding records for most career goals, 894; most career assists, 1,963; and most career points, 2,857.

Here are some of his top moments on ice:

Google-a-Day asks a question about baseball:

In what year did the manager and team depicted in the blockbuster film “Moneyball” finally win their first playoff series?

Humor, Libertarians, Politics

That’s Pretty Darn Funny, Actually

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I’ve heard that some Republicans, including radio host Charlie Sykes, are upset that a few Democrats tweeted suggestions for good things Mary Burke might have said about Scott Walker in the first gubernatorial debate. 

Among those tweets was a suggestion from Lori Compas, formerly a state senate candidate, and currently a photographer and leader of a business group (the Wisconsin Business Alliance).

Here’s what Mrs. Compas wrote:

No one on the Right has a sense of humor? 

Honest to goodness that’s funny – it’s well & tersely expressed. 

I’m a libertarian, not a major-party supporter, but have Republicans (and Democrats in other circumstances) lost any appreciation for a well-delivered remark? 

I don’t know Lori Compas, but I did post a few times on her senate campaign. 

Less than a generation ago, politicians would often appreciate rivals’ or opponents’ jokes. 

It’s all so serious – too serious – now.

By the way, like almost all libertarians from old, movement families, I’ve no fondness for Charles & David Koch.  They walked away from our party and movement, trying unsuccessfully to gain control of the libertarian Cato Institute along the way.  They’ve now a seemingly unquenchable thirst for major-party influence.

Gov. Walker, Mary Burke, the Koch Brothers, etc., and their respective supporters should be able to take a joke with equanimity.

Especially, I’d think, a clever one. 

Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Press

Does the Gazette‘s Editorialist Think that Janesville’s Residents Can’t Count?

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All around, daily print newspapers are in decline. For most of them, there will be no more than several years of life left.  By 2020, almost all of them will be gone. (See, along these lines, Clay Shirky’s Last Call: The end of the printed newspaper.)

If a newspaper is at ideological odds with ordinary residents of its community, there’s even more difficulty.  That’s the problem that Lee Enterprises has with the State Journal in Madison, and it’s the smaller Gazette‘s problem in Janesville: self-professed conservative papers in blue cities.

One can make a go of it swimming against the community tide only if one writes and reasons very well.  A paper’s minority views can even be an advantage, if those views are powerfully argued.

For the Gazette, however, there’s a triple burden: (1) their community – both left and right – mostly rejects their version of insiders’ pro-government conservatism, (2) their version is ideologically flimsy, in any event, and (3) the newspaper expresses that flimsy, minority viewpoint poorly.  

Another example comes from the Gazette‘s Monday editorial (subscription req’d), Our Views: SHINE continues hopeful march toward medical isotopes factory.

Janesville has spent over nine million in grants and loan guarantees for a medical isotope project, and the federal gov’t another twenty five million, but here’s how the Gazette‘s editorialist defends that project against charges of corporate welfare:

Critics label these city and federal incentives nothing more than corporate welfare.

Nonsense. Company officials have projected they will have invested $180 million in construction, equipment and regulatory costs by the time the plant opens, and they hope that happens in 2017. SHINE figures it will generate $200 million in revenues in its first year.

Leaving aside that the $180-million figure is a mere projection, and that this projection may not be free of government-provided assistance, one still confronts this question:

Why is it ‘nonsense’ to contend that the thirty-four million from the city and federal government is an example of corporatism (that is, corporate welfare)? 

If anything, the one-hundred and eighty million that SHINE contends it will raise (even if all from private funds) only makes stronger the case against local and federal funding: if the idea should be so strong as backers contend, why can’t SHINE raise all of its capital privately?

Either public money is superfluous, because the project is sound, or investors have legitimate doubts, and want taxpayers to allay that skepticism with tens of millions in subsidies for the project. 

The additional private investment does not negate the charge against the public expenditures.  It makes that public investment more questionable. 

SHINE is getting a huge subsidy that ordinary people wouldn’t get even fractionally, all in the promise of producing a sliver of the jobs that GM did, for a more elite group of medical workers than any factory in the auto industry ever employed. 

If the Gazette writes about a $180-million possibility, do they think that Janesville’s residents won’t notice an actual $34-million subsidy?

Deriding criticism of that subsidy as ‘nonsense’ is merely another example of weak or lazy reasoning – it’s easier to use the word in criticism than to justify the expense by argument.  

And that, really, is why that paper is in so much trouble: at odds with its community, wedded to a selfish defense of powerful insiders, and unable even to explain that defense either powerfully or cleverly.