FREE WHITEWATER

Libertarians

Destroying Cato to Save It

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Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathon Adler’s March 2nd Post, Koch v. Cato, describes the inevitable consequence of a Koch-controlled Cato Institute:

Whatever the merits of the Kochs’ claim, I cannot understand how their actions can, in any way, advance the cause of individual liberty to which they’ve devoted substantial sums and personal efforts over the years. Even assuming their legal claim has merit, a legal victory will permanently injure the Cato Institute’s reputation.

Many libertarian-leaning organizations receive money from the Kochs and their foundations and are attacked on this basis. Such attacks can be deflected, as financial support is not the same thing as control. But if the Koch brothers themselves represent the controlling majority of an organization’s board, that organization is, by definition, a Koch-run enterprise. Progressive activists and journalists will have a field day with this.
They will forevermore characterize the Cato Institute as “Koch-controlled” — and, as a legal matter, they will be correct. No efforts to re-establish the Institute’s credibility or independence will overcome this fact….

….any benefit from whatever changes they could make will be outweighed to the permanent damage to Cato’s reputation caused by turning it into a de facto Koch subsidiary. In short, they will have destroyed the Cato Institute to save it.

Adler’s right, of course, but he’s much too mild: the Kochs have let slip their libertarianism for a more conventional conservatism through their control of organizations like American for Prosperity. We should be well beyond the point of thinking the Kochs are traditionally libertarian.

In their efforts to control Cato they they’ve completed a transformation — years ago begun — from libertarians to conservatives, and manipulative and domineering ones at that.

See, previously, The Kochs Sue to Control the Cato Institute.

Posted originally on 3.6.12 at Daily Adams.

City

Whitewater’s 2.23.12 Common Council Meeting

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There’s a Common Council meeting tonight (3.6.12 @ 6:30 PM), and embedded below is the most recent session before tonight, from 2.23.12.

One may watch the video and draw one’s own conclusions. To me, there’s seems a ponderous quality to the session.

I’d say there’s a discernible gap between promises of planning (for example, what may come from fiber-optic cable) and enthusiasm for those ideas.

It’s not that there’s something wrong with fiber-optic cable; there isn’t. It’s that promises of success from prior investments have proved false, and have been both laughably and infuriatingly exaggerated.

Whitewater’s hit the limits of exaggeration as policy.

The chamber was mostly empty, as it typically is.

How is this? It is not — and cannot be — the fault of residents in the city. I’d guess it’s their reasonable reaction to serial puffery from Whitewater’s city administration. People don’t attend because they’ve other matters — more important and more pleasant — before them.

If the city doesn’t attract more community input, the failure rests with those who govern. It’s an easy, self-serving, and false pose to blame residents for lack of participation, or for community confusion.

If residents are not participating, it’s because government’s not sufficiently enticing to them. If they’re confused, it’s because government’s failed to communicate properly. The world has too many doctors who blame their patients, merchants who hate their customers, and politicians who bemoan public apathy.

It’s the wrong approach.

Common Council Meeting 02/23/2012 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.6.12

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Good morning.

Tuesday: a sunny and windy day for Whitewater, with a high of fifty-eight. There’s our taste of spring.

Common Council meets at 6:30 p.m. tonight.

On this day in 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in the Dred Scott case. The New York Times published a story on the decision, summarizing the holding:

Washington, Friday, March 6 – The opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott Case was delivered by Chief Justice Taney. It was a full and elaborate statement of the views of the Court. They have decided the following important points:

First – Negroes, whether slaves or free, that is, men of the African race, are not citizens of the United States by the Constitution.

Second – The Ordinance of 1787 had no independent constitutional force or legal effect subsequently to the adoption of the Constitution, and could not operate of itself to confer freedom or citizenship within the Northwest Territory on negroes not citizens by the Constitution.

Third – The provisions of the Act of 1820, commonly called the Missouri Compromise, in so far as it undertook to exclude negro slavery from, and communicate freedom and citizenship to, negroes in the northern part of the Louisiana cession, was a Legislative act exceeding the powers of Congress, and void, and of no legal effect to that end.

The text of the full decision – easily the worst decision in federal court history – is available online.

Google daily puzzle asks about a discoveries not-yet-made: “The man who organized all known chemical elements into a table made a prediction that more elements would be discovered. What did he call his as-yet-undiscovered elements?”

City

Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters March 2012 Newsletter

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The Whitewater-Area League of Women Voters’ March 2012 Newsletter is out, featuring both articles and a calendar of upcoming LWV events.

This latest edition is available as a link on my blogroll, and is embedded below.

Upcoming events:

Date: March 10 (Saturday)
Event:   Candidate Forum, Municipal Elections
Where:  10-11:30 AM, City Hall Council Chambers

Date: March 15 (Thursday)
Event:  School Referendum Explained, Eric Runez, WWUSD Administrator; Nate Jaeger, Director of Business Services; School Board Members
Where:   7 PM City Hall Council Chambers

Date: April 3 (Tuesday)
Event:   Municipal Elections and Presidential Primary

Whitewater League Website

www.lwvwhitewater.org

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.5.12

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Good morning.

It’s a mostly sunny day, with a high of thirty-three, for Whitewater today.

On this day in 1946, Churchill delivered his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The full text of the speech is online at Fordham University.

At the Wisconsin Historical Society website, an odd tale about a woman once famous in Wisconsin:

1935 – Elizabeth “Baby Doe” McCourt Dies
On this date, the controversial wife of Horace (H.A.W.) Tabor, silver mine owner during the 19th century Colorado gold and silver booms, died. Born Elizabeth Bondeul McCourt in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1854, she was first married to Harvey Doe, Jr. of Oshkosh but in 1880 divorced him on the grounds of adultery. She then moved to Colorado where she married Leadville’s silver king, Horace Tabor. Despite great wealth, she died penniless and alone in Leadville: she froze to death in a cabin near the famous Matchless mine, which in its heyday had produced $10,000 worth of silver ore per day. Elizabeth and Horace are the subject of an American opera, “The Ballad of Baby Doe”. [Sources: http://www.babydoetabor.com/]

Here’s a Google daily puzzle just right for adventurers: “You’re at the intersection of Tai Mo Shan Road and Route Twisk searching for a mountain to hike. How many feet high is the nearest park’s highest peak?”

Libertarians

The Kochs Sue to Control the Cato Institute

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Since 1977, the Cato Institute has been America’s chief libertarian think tank. Cato had four shareholder-founders: Ed Crane, Charles Koch, George Pearson, and William Niskanen. Following Niskanen’s death last fall, there’s been an ongoing, behind-the-scenes controversy about what would happen to Niskanen’s shares in the organization.

Would the shares go to his widow, or does billionaire Charles Koch have a right to purchase them (if Cato does not or cannot)? Charles Koch has been at odds with Crane’s non-partisan philosophy for Cato, so the ownership of the shares is consequential.

If the Kochs had more shares, they would control Cato, and could take it in any direction they wanted. Cato would likely look more like Charles & David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, an avowedly partisan and conservative organization.

In the fall, just about everyone in the libertarian movement knew that the Kochs would try to use Niskanen’s death to wrest control of Cato from Crane. This conflict been a long-time coming. Talk of behind-the-scenes (now failed) discussions on Cato’s future has been widespread.

The Kochs are now suing to determine who has the right to Niskanen’s shares.

Here’s Crane’s statement on the Kochs’ lawsuit:

Charles G. Koch has filed a lawsuit as part of an effort to gain control of the Cato Institute, which he co-founded with me in 1977. While Mr. Koch and entities controlled by him have supported the Cato Institute financially since that time, Mr. Koch and his affiliates have exercised no significant influence over the direction or management of the Cato Institute, or the work done here.

Mr. Koch’s actions in Kansas court yesterday represent an effort by him to transform Cato from an independent, nonpartisan research organization into a political entity that might better support his partisan agenda. We view Mr. Koch’s actions as an attempt at a hostile takeover, and intend to fight it vehemently in order to continue as an independent research organization, advocating for Individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace.

For more about the Kochs’ lawsuit, see the Washington Post and the court documents in the case.

Writing at Slate, David Weigel describes what’s at stake:

And so, with libertarianism at its modern apex, the Kochs are trying to wrestle the movement’s leading think tank away from the guy [Ed Crane] who built it up. (Literally. They just completed a renovation.)

More to come.

Posted originally on 3.2.12 at Daily Adams.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.2.12

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s winter is not over quite yet. Friday looks to be a day of rain and snow, with a high temperature of thirty-nine.

On this day in 1877, “Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, even though Tilden had won the popular vote.”

Today in Wisconsin history, in 1953, former

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold was born in Janesville, Wisconsin. Feingold graduated from Janesville Craig High School in 1971. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975 and attended Magdalen College in Oxford, England as a Rhodes Scholar. He received a graduate degree in 1977 and graduated from Harvard University Law School in 1979.

He was admitted to the Wisconsin bar in 1979 and practiced law in Madison, Wisconsin from 1979-1985. He served as a visiting professor at Beloit College 1985 and a member of the Wisconsin State Senate from 1983 to 1993. Feingold was elected in 1992 as a Democrat to the United States Senate, reelected in 1998 and in 2004 for the term ending January 3, 2011. [Source:Biographical Directory of the United States Congress].

Google’s daily puzzle is about Paris, a dance hall, and a 19th century artist: “What Parisian dance hall made famous a very short poster artist of the late 19th century?”

Elections, Recall

Recall Organizer Lori Compas’s Declaration Speech

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Embedded below is a video of recall-organizer-turned-candidate Lori Compas declaring against Sen. Majority Leader Fitzgerald in Wisconsin’s 13th District. Despite Sen. Fitzgerald’s numerous challenges to petition signatures, I’d guess a recall election in his district will happen.

(It’s a partisan video, from SSWIDTMS. Compas’s remarks are my only interest; the origin of the video isn’t important to me. )

(I’ve written a bit about Compas & Fitzgerald previously. See, Sen. Majority Leader Fitzgerald’s 12.19.11 Open Office.)

After her formal speech, she makes a few additional remarks near the end of the video. I’ll not offer commentary now, except to say what anyone can see – she’s a natural, unaffected speaker.

I don’t live in the 13th District, but of the many Wisconsin races this year (president, US senator, a gubernatorial recall, senatorial recalls, legislative races, and local elections), I think this race may be among the most interesting.

Posted originally on 3.1.12 at Daily Adams.