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Friday Poll: Airplane v. Sunbather

German pilot Juergen Drucker almost hit a sunbather while landing his small, private plane in a vacation spot.

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Although Drucker admitted that his landing wasn’t “one of my greatest achievements in the cockpit,” isn’t there another side to this story? After all, isn’t the sunbather very close to a runway?

Who’s more responsible here, do you think: pilot, sunbather, or both equally?


Daily Bread for 6.6.14

Good morning, Whitewater.

In the city today, we’ll have a sunny day with a high of eighty degrees.

It’s the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings at Normandy on 6.6.1944.

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A LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarks troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) wading onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach (Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France) on the morning of June 6, 1944. American soldiers encountered the newly formed German 352nd Division when landing. During the initial landing two-thirds of the Company E became casualties. Via Wikipedia

Here’s the concluding game in Puzzability‘s Surround Sound series:

This Week’s Game — June 2-6
Surround Sound
Hope you can tune in this week. For each day, we’ll give you three clues, each of which leads to a word. The answers to two of those clues, when placed together in the right order, have the name of a musical instrument spanning the gap between the answers. When the instrument’s name is removed, the remaining letters, in order, spell the answer to the day’s remaining clue. The clues are presented in random order.
Example:
Small women’s clothing size; play simply, as a guitar; location
Answer:
STRUMPETITE (from petite, strum, site; the instrument is a trumpet)
What to Submit:
Submit just the full string of letters, with the instrument in the middle (as “STRUMPETITE” in the example), for your answer.
Friday, June 6
Forest or fourposter cover; call off; befuddled, as from medication

Why Don’t Politicians and Bureaucrats Get Any Better?

Someone wrote and asked me why I thought that politicians and bureaucrats don’t seem to learn from past mistakes.  When controversies arise, why don’t officials seem to improve, responsively, over time? 

Why do they seem to have learned almost nothing?

Well, many do learn and improve, but those who don’t are conspicuous.

I’ll suggest a few reasons that keep officials from learning from their mistakes. 

1.  They think they were right all long.  They simply deny that they made any mistakes. 

2.  They don’t care about broad public opinion.  Only the views of a few, like-minded insiders matter to them. 

3.  They’re not interested in policy, so they don’t understand the idea of policy mistakes.  It’s personality and visibility that matters to them, and it’s enough to be seen and included in a small circle of supposed luminaries. 

4.  They see change and revision as weakness.

5.  They have not been taught to think about more than one side of an issue. They reason and contend poorly not for lack of natural ability, but for lack of experience doing so. Habituated to a small, cosseted circle only increases their difficulty of anticipating other points of view, making counter-arguments, etc.  

(In small-towns, politicians expect – and receive – a compliant press.)

What’s so odd isn’t anything about these several points — most people would understand them intuitively. What’s odd is that a meaningful number of officials somehow fail to improve, despite improvement being so sensible and readily achievable. 

Members of declining factions can still see the need for others to change, in other failing organizations.

They rarely see this need in themselves, however, until it’s too late to make any meaningful adjustments.   

What’s left? 

They resort to grousing about how terrible things are among those in the next generation, and the smug but false contention that conditions were better when they still held genuine sway. 

Whitewater addendum:  Locally, the worst mistakes probably involve a huge dose of Point No. 1.  Much of this likely involves pride, as an emotional refusal to believe change is necessary. 

Some of these local gentlemen have a sense of entitlement that could not be greater if God, Himself, had given them tablets on Sinai.

For good policy, this proud stubbornness is, initially, a bad thing: mediocre programs and projects come into being.  Over time, however, the proud refusal of a few to change course even in the face of obvious objections yields a community benefit: an addled clique only further alienates itself from the majority. 

Posted originally at Daily Adams

Daily Bread for 6.5.14

Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a sunny Thursday with a high of seventy-four and calm winds from the southeast at about five mph.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets this evening at 6 PM.

On this day in 1933, FDR takes America off the gold standard:

…the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I, but bank failures during the Great Depression of the 1930s frightened the public into hoarding gold, making the policy untenable…..

Today’s the anniversary of powdered milk:

1883 – Horlick’s Malted Milk Patented

On this date William Horlick patented the first powdered milk in the world. He named his new product, intended to be used as a health food for infants, “Malted Milk.” Horlick’s product went on to be used as a staple in fountain drinks as well as survival provisions. Malted milk was even included in explorations undertaken by Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen and Richard Byrd. [Source: Racine History]

Here’s Puzzability‘s Thursday game:

This Week’s Game — June 2-6
Surround Sound
Hope you can tune in this week. For each day, we’ll give you three clues, each of which leads to a word. The answers to two of those clues, when placed together in the right order, have the name of a musical instrument spanning the gap between the answers. When the instrument’s name is removed, the remaining letters, in order, spell the answer to the day’s remaining clue. The clues are presented in random order.
Example:
Small women’s clothing size; play simply, as a guitar; location
Answer:
STRUMPETITE (from petite, strum, site; the instrument is a trumpet)
What to Submit:
Submit just the full string of letters, with the instrument in the middle (as “STRUMPETITE” in the example), for your answer.
Thursday, June 5
Soldier sent on raids; tree with heart-shaped leaves; versatile Broadway and film writer paired with Green

Creating Taxpayers as Government’s Goal

When seeking to persuade Milton, Wisconsin’s councilmembers to regulate food trucks, an incumbent merchant recently said that more competition might put him out of business, after which he would no longer be a taxpayer

That’s telling: the incumbent’s appeal to government – to a room full of politicians and municipal bureaucrats – is that they should advance polices that increase opportunities to tax, to take private earnings. 

At bottom, there is the crass appeal to local government’s avaricious and adversarial role: please, please, do what you can to take more from others for your desired ends.

Businessmen no longer appeal for lower taxes – they appeal for higher taxes on others, to stifle competition. 

Rather than think that higher taxes are an addiction to be addressed, they see it as an addiction to be fed: there, baby, is what you need, right over there…”

What, by the way, do you think local government will do with that money?  It’s not going to go to the poor; they’ve no cancer research in mind.  

Government will use it to fund projects for its supporters and contributors.  Not one of those people will be hungry; not one of those people will be ill. 

Daily Bread for 6.4.14

Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday brings a likelihood of morning showers and a high of sixty-six. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:19 PM. The moon is a waxing crescent with thirty-nine percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The European Space Agency posted a video recently of the NASA Hubble telescope’s photographs of the distant universe:

Vast and beautiful.

On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway begins:

…the Battle of Midway–one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during World War II–begins. During the four-day sea-and-air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy….

On this day in 1837, a cornerstone ceremony takes place in Madison:

1837 – Territorial Capitol Cornerstone Ceremony Held
On this date Ebenezer and Roseline Peck hosted the Capitol cornerstone-laying celebration at their log public house in Madison. Peck Cabin, Madison’s first residence, business and post office, was demolished in 1857. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers. Edited by Sarah Davis McBride, p. 89.]

Here’s the Wednesday game in Puzzabiliuty’s Surround Sound series:

This Week’s Game — June 2-6
Surround Sound
Hope you can tune in this week. For each day, we’ll give you three clues, each of which leads to a word. The answers to two of those clues, when placed together in the right order, have the name of a musical instrument spanning the gap between the answers. When the instrument’s name is removed, the remaining letters, in order, spell the answer to the day’s remaining clue. The clues are presented in random order.
Example:
Small women’s clothing size; play simply, as a guitar; location
Answer:
STRUMPETITE (from petite, strum, site; the instrument is a trumpet)
What to Submit:
Submit just the full string of letters, with the instrument in the middle (as “STRUMPETITE” in the example), for your answer.
Wednesday, June 4
Group of ants or nudists; Broadway award; subject of discussion

Meanwhile, in New Mexico…

Locusts:

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Above is a zoomed-in, static view of the swarm on radar around Albuquerque. The swarm is so intense in some areas that its clocking reflectivity readings of 35-40 dBZ, or about the strength of a decent rain shower. Notable in the image is the thin line stretching from north to south, which is moving towards the west. These are locusts being bunched up along the leading edge of a gust of wind.

Via Radar Shows Millions of Locusts @ The Vane | Gawker.

Would They Run On It?

When local government’s politicians and bureaucrats propose big projects, they should ask themselves: would we run on it?  That is, would they run on a standalone vote for (or against) their proposal? 

The open secret of local politics is that I’d guess many – if not most – of the big projects proposed would fail if put to a vote. Often, that would not be a matter of cost, but of priority: Many projects are generally needless, benefiting only a few well-placed businessmen. Genuine needs of a truly disadvantaged few are ignored

Local politicians and bureaucrats know this well, so they (1) conceal fiscal costs, (2) conceal or lie about other reasoned objections to a project, (2) conceal or lie about the actual beneficiaries (their cronies) of a project, and (4) use their willing toadies in the local press to trumpet imaginary successes after a project is completed. 
I’ve no doubt that if the Innovation Center, for example, had been put to a referendum in Whitewater, it would have failed.  Claims for it have been false promises, exaggerations, or outright lies.  Not one of the boosters of that project would have won a stand-up contest on its merits. 

Those gentlemen imagine themselves town notables, but they’ve an effective political circle only of hundreds, in a town of thousands. 

Now, someone might propose a question on principle, and run on it regardless of the chances for success.  Most local town squires are not like this – they’d rather win behind closed doors than contest an issue fairly before all the public. 

They feel this way, surely. 

Then again, everyone else knows this about them, too.  

Daily Bread for 6.3.14

Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be sunny, with a high of seventy-six and south winds of ten to fifteen miles per hour.

Downtown Whitewater’s Board meets this morning at 8 AM, and Common Council this evening at 6:30 PM.

Tank-Man1

On this day in 1989, China committed herself to the massacre of peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square, killing thousands. (The photo above is from June 5th, after many had already been killed and martial law in Beijing instituted.)

Puzzability‘s Surround Sound series continues with Tuesday’s game:

This Week’s Game — June 2-6
Surround Sound
Hope you can tune in this week. For each day, we’ll give you three clues, each of which leads to a word. The answers to two of those clues, when placed together in the right order, have the name of a musical instrument spanning the gap between the answers. When the instrument’s name is removed, the remaining letters, in order, spell the answer to the day’s remaining clue. The clues are presented in random order.
Example:
Small women’s clothing size; play simply, as a guitar; location
Answer:
STRUMPETITE (from petite, strum, site; the instrument is a trumpet)
What to Submit:
Submit just the full string of letters, with the instrument in the middle (as “STRUMPETITE” in the example), for your answer.
Tuesday, June 3
Rooting on loudly; fish often served smoked or pickled; cheddar-flavored cracker brand

Janesville Doubles Down

There’s an update about Janesville’s fire station debacle: Janesville’s city attorney reportedly contends that Wisconsin law does not allow a petition to overturn what the City of Janesville contends is an administrative decision.  See, City attorney: Fire station question not for voters to decide

For now, consider the politics of this position.  (Here, I mean this broadly, an an expression of participatory government.)

Council and the Janesville municipal administration now stand to defend against the city’s own voters a process that was once concealed in an unlawful closed session, that will destroy some residents’ homes, and at a high municipal price tag. 

City Manager Mark Freitag had been working to promote a reputation for openness in the aftermath of the closed session.  Those PR gains (such as they were) will now be ignored or treated with scorn.

The Gazette has been on the wrong side of this issue, and now they’re on the wrong side of this issue along with local politicians and the city’s attorney.  That’s not as bad as being on the wrong side of an issue along with Vladimir Putin, but it’s hardly an esteemed group. 

The last place a declining paper should want to be is beside insiders and so-called influencers. It’s even worse when media outside the city are picking up the issue (rather sympathetically) via television.

Circling the wagons against residents is a mistake; when those circling the wagons already look dodgy, it’s a worse strategy.

What should have been done here? 

Any claim about the stated unlawfulness of a resident’s petition should have been combined with a political commitment to open the issue again.  One would say: we don’t believe you can proceed via petition, but we’re prepared to offer an alternative of further discussion (community survey, etc). 

The prior, unlawful closed session taints this whole process; attempts to shut down redress through legal procedures will only exacerbate political alienation.

Honest to goodness, these are maladroit men and women. 

It’s hard to overestimate how poorly all this has been handled.

Insiders’ Press Choices: Stagnation or Decline

There is not a single newspaper in our part of Wisconsin that is not stagnant or in decline.  Not one.

(Stagnation, truly, applies only if one keeps the interval of measurement small; look over any reasonable period and you’ll find ongoing decline.)  

When town squires and self-declared ‘movers and shakers’ look for a compliant publication, they’re choosing among newspapers that are smaller and weaker than they were even last year. 

Media are not stagnant or declining; there are plenty of growing means of expression: Facebook, Twitter, email, text messaging, Instagram, Pinterest, blogs, etc. 

For the old guard, though, for those who expect a soft touch from soft-headed newspapers, there’s less and less on which they may depend. 

They’ve lost a general audience for their views, and now desperately rely on papers with a waning readership, increasingly unrepresentative and out-of-touch. 

Odd, though, because even now it might be different, with a different approach. 

Might be, but probably won’t be, ever again.

How the Local Press Fails

There’s a story at Channel 3000 (the website for WISC-TV) entitled, Janesville resident to petition council’s decision to build a new fire station.

The story says much about (1) government spending, (2) unlawful use of closed sessions to conceal projects, and (3) press competition. 

Here’s the cause of residents’ ire:

Janesville resident Billy McCoy is fighting back against the city’s decision to build a $9.6 million center fire station, saying he and other residents are “fed up” with both the city’s spending and the closed session the council held last year regarding the plans for the new station. McCoy has started a petition asking council to resend its decision.

“It’s time that these people realize, you know they say one thing and turn around and try to do something else, or they go behind closed doors and want to do something. The citizens are fed up with it,” he said.

McCoy needs the support of 3,165 residents to sign the petition. A referendum would require the city to allow residents to vote to support or reject council’s decision to build the new central fire house during the November elections….

Spending.  Ordinary residents see that $9.6 million is a lot of money, but so many local politicians get in office and forget as much.  Politics is littered with candidates who say they’ll hold the line on spending, but who become incumbents who can’t spend fast enough. 

Whitewater has one or two ‘proud conservatives’ whose political careers were exercises in backing every insiders’ big-ticket project that came along. 

Closed Sessions.  Janesville residents know, and so does the Gazette, that Janesville’s city council held at least one unlawful closed session about the proposed fire station.  Excessive spending is a piker compared with unlawful concealment to bring it about. 

Caving on Open Government.  Knowing that there was a council vote that was unlawful, the Gazette‘s editorial board still chose to cave on defending open government from government transgression: “The Gazette or the district attorney could attempt to make the council pay for its illegal meeting, but that time and money might be better spent elsewhere….”

Later, that same editorial board backed the fire station, and told this to residents who learned that their houses would be destroyed to make room for a multi-million-dollar project:

….No, it wasn’t a perfect decision, and neither was the process. The biggest mistake was making the initial choice to expand at the same location behind closed doors. Madison attorney Bob Dreps, an expert in media law, said the council’s closed-session November vote violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law.

Regardless, what’s done is done. Residents don’t have to like how the decision was made, but it’s time to accept it. Sometimes, thinking long term creates immediate pain. That’s the case here…

That’s not watchdog journalism…it’s lapdog journalism. 

Look at the Madison station’s account linked in my first paragraph above, and you’ll see that they’re covering this story without patronizing and condescending to Janesville residents. 

Not only that, they’re covering the story without a subscription fee, and with the added value a video clip of residents’ concerns.

A local paper should be leading the charge against this station, and the planning behind it. Instead, they’ve capitulated to government insiders, and now a Madison news station is poaching their readers.  Running a story now about voters’ concerns is simply scrambling to catch up.

Worse, anything now comes after a shut-up-and-eat-your-peas attitude. 

Still, press capitulation to government causes damage, but not indiscriminate damage: other media gain at the expense of a local newspaper’s sycophancy.