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City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Open Government, Public Records

Daily Bread for 4.23.22: Two Examples in Which the City of Whitewater Fell Short on Open Government

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 77.  Sunrise is 5:58 AM and sunset 7:46 PM for 13h 48m 01s of daytime.  The moon is in its third quarter with 49.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1985,  Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.

Earlier posts this week have presented topics in open government.

On Monday: The Opportunistic Use of Open-Government Principles (‘In the Llano, Texas case, the book-banners are ideologically-motivated populists. There are, however, other groups that also use open-government principles selfishly and particularly. The most obvious situation would be traditional special interest groups (business or trade) seeking regulatory capture’).

On Tuesday: Four Reasons People Oppose Open Government (ignorance, arrogance, indolence, or malfeasance).

On Wednesday: A Suspicious Local Dialect of Opportunistic Demands for Open Government (‘It rouses skepticism that landlords, bankers, and PR men insist on open government now but were less vocal about openness when they played a more prominent role on public boards’).

Consider two situations in which the City of Whitewater has failed to meet open government standards. In the first example, of omission, the municipal government presented a lakes drawdown update that mentioned only dredging of soil but not the proposed pouring of artificial herbicide into the lakes that was, by the city’s plan at the time, a prelude to any drawdown:

When the city presented its lakes drawdown update on 8.17.21, neither any member of the city administration nor any member of the Whitewater Common Council asked a single question about the possible use of herbicides.  In fact, as early as June 2021, in an unrecorded Parks & Recreation meeting, officials broached their plan to dump herbicide into the lakes. See Minutes of the 6.9.21 City of Whitewater Parks & Recreation Meeting (highlighting mine).

But in the more prominent August 17th public meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, there was no mention of this obviously controversial part of the project. It would be easy — too easy — to say that city staff was solely responsible for the omission. There were also seven elected representatives of the public in the council chambers that evening. Public awareness came not from the government but from inquisitive residents, a local news site, and this libertarian blogger. The herbicide use was sensibly abandoned.

In the second example, from November 2021 of expressed withholding, the City of Whitewater acknowledged that it received on 11.11.21 public bids for a dredging project but intentionally omitted those documents about the received bids from the 11.16.21 council agenda packet:

So, um, the lack of material but for a memo in your packet was deliberate…

When the City of Whitewater received public bids about a multi-million-dollar project on 11.11.21, the proper open-government practice would have been to place those documents in the agenda packet. When the city manager admitted his deliberate withholding of those documents during the meeting, the proper council practice would have been to direct him to display on the chamber’s projection screen each and every page of those documents (however long it might take).

Instead, the Whitewater’s city manager intentionally withheld those documents and the Whitewater Common Council took no action during the meeting to remedy this transgression against sound open-government principles.

(Whitewater has seen two years of common council errors and omissions. If the new council president avoids this fecklessness the city will be better for it.)

Mars solar eclipse captured by NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover:

Daily Bread, Fashion, Gableman, Public Records

Daily Bread for 4.22.22: Records-Deleting Fashionista Michael Gableman

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 50.  Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:45 PM for 13h 45m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 61.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1876, the first National League baseball game is played at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia.

Friday brings an interlude into the world of vulgar opinions about women’s appearance fashion assessments from Special Counsel Michael Gableman’s office. Patrick Marley reports As he keeps tabs on public workers, Gableman contends Milwaukee employee is a Democrat because she plays video games, wears nose ring:

Gableman has used his $676,000 budget to look into the backgrounds of those who worked with the Center for Tech and Civic Life and other nonprofit groups, the records show. The center provided more than $10 million to Wisconsin communities to help them run their elections during the coronavirus pandemic. 

A memo from Gableman’s office dubbed a mapping expert who works for Milwaukee as “liberally deplorable” even though she has exhibited “no overt signs of rampant partisanship” on Facebook or other websites. 

The unsigned memo goes on to contend that geographic information system analyst Hannah Bubacz is “probably” a Democrat because she plays video games, “has a weird nose ring,” sometimes colors her hair, “loves nature and snakes” and lives with a boyfriend but is not married to him. 

When his office isn’t tendering style appraisals, Gableman himself is deleting emails he decides on his own are unworthy of retention. Molly Beck reports Michael Gableman deleting records he deems ‘irrelevant or useless’ to his taxpayer-funded election review:

Michael Gableman and his staff in the Assembly Office of Special Counsel are destroying records deemed “irrelevant or useless,” an attorney representing Gableman in a lawsuit seeking records related to Gableman’s election review said in a recent memo to attorneys representing the liberal group American Oversight, the lawsuit’s plaintiff.

The practice is a violation of state law, according to the Legislature’s own attorneys.

“When a document comes to the OSC, the OSC evaluates whether the document is of use to the investigation. If it is, that document is downloaded and kept for further investigation, or for use in the OSC’s reports and recommendations. If the document is irrelevant or useless to the investigation, the OSC deletes that document,” Gableman attorney James Bopp wrote in a letter dated April 8 to American Oversight attorneys.

…

Judge Frank Remington on Thursday issued a ruling siding with American Oversight and ordered Gableman to stop deleting records that could be responsive to the group’s requests. 

Heck of a selection you made there, Robin, heck of a selection.

Growing this grass could help curb climate change:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, April 26th, 1 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Parallel Mothers

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Tuesday, April 26th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Parallel Mothers @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Drama

Rated R (sexuality)

2 hours, 3 minutes (2021)

Spanish with English subtitles

The story of two mothers who give birth the same day: one is exultant, the other, an adolescent, is scared, repentant, and traumatized.

Nominations for Best Actress (Penelope Cruz), director (Pedro Almodovar) and Best Foreign Film.

One can find more information about Parallel Mothers at the Internet Movie Database.

Enjoy.

Cats, Weird Tales

Friday Catblogging: Cat to Become Mayor of Michigan Town

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Jinx, a three-year-old domestic shorthair with unusually large eyes, will be inaugurated mayor of Hell, Michigan on Sunday, April 24th. Edward Pevos reports Cat known for huge eyes, wonky feet to become mayor of small Michigan town:

HELL, MI – A cat known for her oversized eyes and wonky feet is about to become the mayor of a small Michigan town. And not just any town. This little black cat will rule over Hell, located about 20 miles northwest of Ann Arbor.

Anyone can become mayor of Hell for a day. It’s part of the town’s schtick. Pets, though, are another thing. Sunday, April 24 will actually be the first time a cat will make sure all Hell doesn’t break loose.

…

As Jinx grew over the days and weeks, Mia says she noticed her new kitten appeared to be a little different.

“She had big eyes and as she grew bigger, her eyes didn’t get smaller and I also noticed she had big feet. She doesn’t have a condition and the vet says she’s healthy. She just has these birth defects. She’s also not as agile as most cats and is a little clumsy. She only learned how to land on her feet a year ago.”

Jinx will rule over Hell for the day from afar [Jinx lives in California with her human, Mia]. Mia plans to livestream via Jinx’s Twitch page at around 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT where she will make the big announcement to viewers.

Business, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.21.22: Levine About Musk About Twitter

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 64.  Sunrise is 6:02 AM and sunset 7:44 PM for 13h 42m 41s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 72.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

This day in 753 BC is the traditional date on which Romulus is said to have founded Rome.

Matt Levine writes, insightfully and artfully, Bloomberg’s Money Stuff column. Levine’s latest, Elon Checks His Pockets, ponders Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter (all of it). Levine writes that

One problem with Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter Inc. for about $40 billion is that he does not have $40 billion. Of course he is very rich — the richest person in the world, worth $260 billion by Bloomberg’s estimate — but most of that money is tied up in the stock of Tesla Inc., SpaceX, the Boring Co., etc., and it is not obvious that he would want to sell enough of those things to buy a new thing. Nor is it obvious that anyone else would want to give him $40 billion to buy Twitter, given that he sees Twitter as “not a way to make money” and does not “care about the economics at all.”

Another problem with Musk’s offer to buy Twitter is that, if you ask him where the money is coming from, he says things like “I have sufficient assets” and “I am not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it,” which do not inspire confidence that he has actually thought about raising the money.

A third problem with Musk’s offer to buy Twitter is that in 2018 he mused about taking Tesla Inc. private for about $70 billion. “Funding secured,” he said, in an infamous tweet. It turned out that he had had a single casual conversation with representatives of a Saudi sovereign wealth fund in which they did not discuss the price of the deal or how much money the Saudis were willing to invest; ultimately Musk settled fraud chargeswith the Securities and Exchange Commission over this tweet. So the answer to the question “might Elon Musk have made an offer to take a large public company private, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, without giving any real thought to where the money would come from?” is “absolutely yes, and he’s done it before.”

All of these problems mean that, if you are a Twitter shareholder and Musk says “I am going to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share,” you might not believe him. “Show me the money,” you might reasonably say. And in fact, when Musk did publicly announce his bid, the stock price dropped, closing at $45.08 on the day his bid became public. Musk’s proposal was contingent on “completion of anticipated financing,” and that is a big if.

Musk has a record of notable successes but also misses (often from overpromising).

And if the world’s richest man’s business plans haven’t always panned out, then it’s prudent to be cautious (if not skeptical) about the plans of government and businesses.

Dare, one might say, for the plans of local government and local businesses, too.

‘Putin’ the Boar Gets a New Name at German Zoo:

Daily Bread, Open Government

Daily Bread for 4.20.22: A Suspicious Local Dialect of Opportunistic Demands for Open Government

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 48.  Sunrise is 6:03 AM and sunset 7:43 PM for 13h 39m 59s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 82.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Involvement & Cable TV Commission meets at 5:00 PM and the Park and Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1898,  President McKinley signs a joint resolution to Congress for a declaration of war against Spain, beginning the Spanish–American War.

Monday’s and Tuesday’s posts addressed challenges to open government (how populists use open-government principles to advance selfish, particular ends and four general reasons people oppose open government. See respectively The Opportunistic Use of Open-Government Principles and Four Reasons People Oppose Open Government).

Monday’s post, considering populist opportunism in Texas, can be understood in its own suspiciously opportunistic local dialect. Here’s now that translation into a local context would unfold (with highlighting as the translation progresses):

Original language: Populists use open-government principles to advance selfish, particular ends.

Initial translation: Special interests use open-government principles to advance selfish, particular ends.

Refinement: Landlords, bankers, and PR men use open-government principles to advance selfish, particular ends.

It’s possible that a speaker will be misunderstood, and his or her pure intentions may merely seem opportunistic.

And yet, and yet, it’s hard to credit a special interest with general concerns. (After all, by definition they have, well, a special, particular interest.) A business lobby or a trade association is by nature a business lobby or a trade association. It doesn’t stop being a particular interest merely because its members claim a universal interest. (If they’re true to their membership, then they will not have a universal interest, as that’s not what their particular members should reasonably expect. Those who join Audubon sensibly expect advocacy of birding, not universal harmony, however important universal harmony would be.)

It rouses skepticism that landlords, bankers, and PR men insist on open government now but were less vocal about openness when they played a more prominent role on public boards.

And while there is skepticism about these types, a similar public skepticism attaches to their office-holding allies. The development men can and will help someone get into office, but it comes with a question: are these officeholders truly their own men and women, or are they the catspaws of a narrow special interest group?

Those who lose a reputation as independent men and women are unlikely to get that reputation back without heroic efforts.

It’s noticeable how often people in Whitewater cringe when these landlords, bankers, and PR men walk into a room. How unfortunate it is that these types would engender so much concern in a small town of free and equal people.

A serious man or woman would know that it’s incomparably worse, for example, to find oneself in a gloomy wood, one’s way blocked by a leopard, lion, or wolf. That, unquestionably, would be a dire situation.

Knowing as much, one would worry hardly at all about a few entitled business lobbyists.

A commitment to open government deserves, and is best served by, support from independent advocates. There is much to be done, and done sincerely and consistently.

Sheep Gets Over 80 Pounds of Wool Removed:

A 7-year-old sheep named Alex who was rescued after being found on top of a mountain in Victoria, Australia, last month just got a well-deserved shave. Handlers removed approx 80+ pounds of wool from Alex’s fleece—nearly a world record for a single sheep shaving.

Daily Bread, Open Government

Daily Bread for 4.19.22: Four Reasons People Oppose Open Government

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be chilly with intervals of clouds and sunshine and a high of 48.  Sunrise is 6:05 AM and sunset 7:42 PM for 13h 37m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1775, the Revolutionary War begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Yesterday’s post addressed the opportunistic use of open-government principles to advance selfish, particular ends. See The Opportunistic Use of Open-Government Principles. The use of open-government principles opportunistically is a temporary use; open government becomes closed government when it no longer serves a special interest group’s purposes.

Why, however, would a person or group oppose open government consistently? There are four basic reasons.

Ignorance. Those who oppose open government through ignorance believe that the community doesn’t have a right to know the business of government because they mistakenly treat government as though it were merely another private party. They see government not as an instrumentality of popular sovereignty but as a separate and independent organism. There is a name for those who see the state as a living creature with rights over and above people: they’re called authoritarians.

Arrogance. In this case, pride grips those within government to see themselves as special, as secular gnostics with knowledge only they have and only they must possess. This pride is intoxicating, and rapidly consumes those who might otherwise insist that they’re good government advocates.

A reminder: Hubris invites Nemesis.

Indolence. Public work that is known to the public requires a higher standard than hidden work in which errors remain commonly unknown. A concealed shoddy standard is easier for the lazy to maintain than a revealed shoddy standard. Slothful officials love the shadows except when extolling their own praises.

Malfeasance. Once corrupt officials or special interests seize control of government, closed government thereafter aids their control. They may have talked about open government to get inside, but once inside they shut the door. In those concealed spaces, they deal for themselves and against competitors or perceived adversaries.

Japanese ‘electric’ chopsticks makes food seem more salty:

Books, Daily Bread, Open Government, Populists

Daily Bread for 4.18.22: The Opportunistic Use of Open-Government Principles

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see a bit of snow with a high of 39.  Sunrise is 6:06 AM and sunset 7:41 PM for 13h 34m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 96% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 2018, The New York Times and the New Yorker win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for breaking news of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal.

 In a thread on Twitter, Prof. Don Moynihan of Georgetown writes of a partisan group’s use of open government claims opportunistically rather than universally. In Moynihan’s illustration, book-banners are cloaking themselves in open-government garb merely to gain power and thereafter restrict speech and transparency. His thread offers lessons derived from an effort in Texas to ban library books. See Censorship battles’ new frontier: Your public library.

Four of his lessons appear below:

Wallace, the person leading the book banning effort is appointed to the Library’s governance structure, along with others who are not library users.

Lesson #2: the purpose is political control and deconstruction of public institutions, they don’t care about its core mission.

….

Lesson #5: The goal is to replace transparent democratic processes and professional judgment with activist veto power.

….

Lesson #7: they don’t care about the damage they are doing to public institutions, or the erosion of public services people value and depend on.

….

Lesson 10: professional qualifications are devalued, diversity of representation is a fig leaf used to justify hegemonic control

 In the Llano, Texas case, the book-banners are ideologically-motivated populists.

There are, however, other groups that also use open-government principles selfishly and particularly. The most obvious situation would be traditional special interest groups (business or trade) seeking regulatory capture. They demand information and access only until they control an agency. For them, transparency is merely another slogan on the way to dominating public institutions for private ends.

If a group does not advocate for open government consistently and even-handedly, they don’t really believe in open government.

How Russia’s Disinformation Spreads Beyond Its Borders:

Daily Bread, Holiday

Daily Bread for 4.17.22: Happy Easter

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Good morning.

Easter in Whitewater will see some sunshine giving way to clouds with a high of 44.  Sunrise is 6:08 AM and sunset 7:40 PM for 13h 31m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1907,  the Ellis Island immigration center processes 11,747 people, more than on any other day.

  The story of pysanky, traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs:

Sofika Zielyk, a Ukrainian-American ethnographer and artist, tells the story of pysanky, traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs. Her exhibition, The Pysanka: A Symbol Of Hope, at the Ukrainian American Institute is collecting eggs to show support for Ukraine.

Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Gerrymandering, Law, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 4.16.22: WISGOP Gets the Gerrymandered State Legislative Maps It Wanted

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 42.  Sunrise is 6:09 AM and sunset 7:38 PM for 13h 29m 05s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2018, The New York Times and the New Yorker win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for breaking news of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal.

 Following a decision of the United States Supreme Court in March, on Friday the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of Republican-proposed state legislative maps. (The Friday decision does not affect Congressional districts, as those district boundaries had already been approved in state and federal rulings.)

The WISGOP least-change maps that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has adopted cement for another decade a gerrymandered Republican advantage: 

Robert Yablon, University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and redistricting expert, said the court’s decision had reinforced a map that was “strikingly” gerrymandered.

“And it means that although this state is often a 50-50 state one where Democrats have frequently managed to win statewide races, they are going to have virtually no chance of taking control of the Legislature,” Yablon said in an interview with PBS Wisconsin.

An analysis of the competing redistricting plans by Marquette University’s John Johnson found that in a statewide tie, Republicans would be expected to win 63 out of 99 Assembly seats and 23 out of 33 Senate seats under the new GOP map.

(Any least-change approach this decade was assured of preserving last decade’s maximum-change gerrymandering.)

It’s likely that there will be additional challenges to these state districts, but if so those challenges (of dubious prospects based on the latest relevant U.S. and Wisconsin high court decisions) would come too late to change 2022 legislative boundaries.

Candidates for state legislative offices, who under Wisconsin law can circulate petitions beginning April 15th, will now know the boundaries of their districts.

Immediately below, the decision from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

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Can scientists finally decode fire?:

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Daily Bread, Politics, Press Release, School District, U.S. Senate, US Senate Race 2022

Daily Bread for 4.15.22: A Local Visit & Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate Race

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Good morning.

Good Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 45.  Sunrise is 6:11 AM and sunset 7:37 PM for 13h 26m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball’s color line.

 A few days ago, State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski visited the Whitewater Unified School District’s Lakeview School, and thereafter issued a press release about a grant to the district. The press release, issued from Godlewski’s office on 4.12.22, made the rounds in Whitewater.

One day later and a thousand miles away, Jennifer Rubin wrote about the U.S. Senate race in which Godlewski is one of several candidates. See Democrats must make a strategic choice in Wisconsin’s Senate race. There is an unexpected, but happy, synchronicity in Rubin’s post: she reminds that local isn’t merely local.  Wisconsin and America are enmired in a national conflict, the outcome of which will exert an influence greater than any local grant (however welcome).

Rubin is a former Republican, and since the emergence of Trump has committed herself (by intellect, industry, and insight) as a part of a grand coalition in support of the constitutional order (and so necessarily against Trumpism). Others of us, including this libertarian blogger, are also part of that coalition. While Democrats are most of this alliance, there are others of us who are not, and have never been, Democrats.

The outcome of this political conflict between Democrats and Republicans is not a matter of indifference to those of us who are neither.

And so, and so, Rubin and others of us wonder about the best choices that our shared alliance will make.

Rubin considers Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race:

The good news for Democrats is that their front-runner in Wisconsin’s Senate primary seems to be course-correcting. The bad news is that it might be too little, too late.

“Lieutenant Gov. Mandela Barnes has tried to stake out his place as a liberal candidate seeking the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. “But Barnes is now distancing himself from two unpopular, far-left political movements — defunding police and abolishing ICE — despite support from groups backing these efforts and past social media activity referencing these causes.”

….

One can imagine that Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent whom Barnes would face should he win his party’s nomination, would like nothing more than to make this a race against “socialism.” Johnson has a boatload of controversies and gaffes, including his latest flub when he admitted that the plastics business he owned, as well as some of his prominent donors, benefited from the small-business tax provision that he pushed for in the 2017 tax cuts.

….

It is not as if Democrats lack sensible candidates. Sarah Godlewski, the state treasurer, has run a savvy campaign appealing to all segments of the party, including rural counties (which she won in her treasurer’s race). She has mastered the art of advancing center-left ideas that work in Wisconsin with none of the firebrand rhetoric better suited for Vermont or Massachusetts. Meanwhile, Tom Nelson, the county executive for rural Outagamie County and former state assemblyman, has been called a “scrappy” underdog. His pro-union bona fides and working-class constituents give him the feel of a rural populist. Those two candidates, however, have a combined total of 17 percent, roughly 20 points behind Barnes in recent internal polling, although a large percentage of voters remain undecided.

It’s likely that Barnes will receive the Democratic nomination on August 9th. If so, Barnes will deserve and  receive support from those of us who rightly see the unsuitability — indeed detestability — of Johnson.

And yet, and yet, some of us who are not Democrats, but no less committed to an alliance in defense of liberal democracy, worry about whether some candidates will prove capable of withstanding the well-funded, divisive onslaught Johnson is sure to undertake.

Would Godlewski fare better in the fall than Barnes? Some of us feel that she might. We will, of course,  defend any of the possible nominees against Johnson, but an easier defense would be preferable to us than a harder one.

In any event, with so much at stake, how near-sighted it would be to think local is merely local.

Tiny satellites and a new view of humanity:

Cats

Friday Catblogging: Cats Conquer Oakland Coliseum

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David DeBolt writes Feral cats have invaded the Oakland Coliseum:

Feral cats are having a “field day” at the Oakland Coliseum, according to stadium authority executive director Henry Gardner.

An estimated 30 to 40 cats and kittens have made the 130-acre property in East Oakland home, multiplying in population over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, Gardner told The Oaklandside.

“The good news is the cats have been on rat patrol and they have done an excellent job. We have not seen a rodent in almost two years,” Gardner said in a phone interview. “You have to give them an ‘A’ for dealing with the rodents but we don’t need as many in the army right now. We are overstaffed.”

The kittens, who are bold and “don’t know any better,” according to Gardner, have been spotted inside the Oakland Arena and baseball stadium on the outfield turf. Once a bustling complex with three professional sports teams, the Oakland A’s remain the only anchor tenant after the Warriors moved to San Francisco and the Raiders to Las Vegas.

….

Ann Dunn, director of Oakland Animal Services, estimates the cat population to be 40 to 50 and said “if you see that many, there are probably more.” Another feline colony across a canal from the Coliseum on Hegenberger Drive has easily another 100 cats, Dunn said.

….

“It’s a situation that is absolutely out of control,” Dunn said of the increasing cat population in Oakland. “The thing that is so heartwarming is everyone [at the Coliseum and Hegenberger] has the shared goal of doing what’s best for the cats. No one has asked us to remove the cats in a way that would harm them.”

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Populists, School District

Daily Bread for 4.14.22: The Environment That Populism Exploits

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 44.  Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:36 PM for 13h 23m 33s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Board of Zoning Appeals meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1912, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 23:40 (and sinks the morning of April 15th).

  Populism doesn’t emerge merely anywhere, as though at randon. Many afflictions may weaken a community (from natural disatsters to bad policy), but thereafter weak communities are vulnerable to worse maladies.

Populism is one of those worse maladies.

It’s in those already-afflicted communities that populism finds hospitable soil, and then salts that soil so that nothing else will grow.

Mistakes about budgets and buildings are for populism an invitation to impose restrictions on speech and expression.

The fewer the mistakes, the fewer the opportunities for something worse.

Expectations of competency and critiques of incompetency are safeguards against threats worse than mere error.

 What has hapened and what will happen to the people of Urkraine matters incomparably. And yet, it says much about Ukrainaians that even during war, they’ve shown a concern for animals. Puppy Rescued From Rubble in Ukraine: