FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.3.11

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Good morning,

High winds and morning rain visit the Whippet City today, with a high temperature of fifty-one. I’m sometimes asked why I write briefly about the weather each morning. There are three reasons. First, it’s a holdover from a long-ago comparison I made between the Farmers’ Almanac and National Weather Service forecasts. Second, it gives faraway readers an idea of what conditions are like here on any particular day. (Questions received about the city range from weather to politics to how many cows we have.) Third, it’s simply a rhetorical scene-setter for my morning post.

More about that scene: it’s a new moon, and we’ll have 10h 14m of sunlight and 11h 13m of daylight.

There’s a Police Commission meeting in town tonight, beginning at 6 PM, with both open and closed sessions (the closed session taking part in the middle of the meeting, for interviews of police captain candidates). The meeting agenda is available online.

Good news –

Recently released statistics show the state produced 219 million pounds of cheese in September, up one percent from that month a year ago. That production accounted for one-fourth of the nation’s cheese output.

Wisconsin may have her share of problems, but she’s still – and I would guess forever will be — America’s leading cheese-producer. We’ll not be bested. See, Wisconsin still tops the nation in cheese production.

Police

The Shrewd Mr. Flynn

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I wrote yesterday about the press battle between the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Milwaukee’s Police Chief Flynn. Conflicts like this often lead to wagon-circling, a self-defeating response. See, The Predictable, Dead-End Response.

And yet, Flynn is sure to have a second term, something unusual for Milwaukee, but common in most departments. Commonly, police commissions go with what they know: they favor incumbents or internal candidates. The advantage an incumbent or internal candidate has is nearly overwhelming.

If that should be so — and it is — what does that say about open applications processes, and the nature of the chief’s role?

On processes. For open processes, it’s not any given outcome, but the process itself, that matters. That process is a general good, but also has occasional practical benefits. Each and every word of a candidate’s application statements may be used as a standard by which to measure conduct in office after his selection. Did he do what he said he would do? Were those words, instead, all just the rhetoric of the moment, the mere parroting of platitudes and pale promises?

There’s a value in measuring actions against good practices, and another value in measuring words against actions.

On the chief’s role. Flynn’s looking for a second term, and he’ll get one, and he has done so shrewdly. Like him or not, the Journal Sentinel sees that Flynn’s a politically clever, nationally-recognized chief. He didn’t get that way by being obvious or outwardly fawning toward Milwaukee’s police commission.

Flynn knows what small-town pols and bureaucrats can’t quite grasp – that a chief’s authority doesn’t depend on shows of closeness with a police commission, but on the public’s direct and immediate support for community safety. Flynn doesn’t need his hand held, nor does he need to make a show of holding anyone else’s hand.

If anything, a smarmy relationship between commission and chief only reveals conflicts of interest, failures of oversight, and embarrassing neediness. Rather than serving the interests of good policing, it only serves as another avenue of legitimate criticism.

Flynn may have made a dozen mistakes, but he’s not made any of the avoidable mistakes that mediocre, dull leaders make. It’s one of the reasons that, unlike middling leaders, he’s likely to survive (even now!) with his standing mostly intact.

Laws/Regulations

Reason’s Nanny of the Month for October 2011

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It’s an international edition this month, and the winner is the European Union, as that vast bureaucracy has regulated children’s activities from “baby rattlers (which have brand-new noise restrictions) to blowing up balloons (not to be done by tots under age eight!).”

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.2.11

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Good morning,

It’s a rainy day with a high temperature of fifty-four for Whitewater today.

Whitewater’s an old Midwestern town, and her Landmarks Commission meets this afternoon at 5 PM. The Commission’s agenda for the meeting is available online.

Wired has an article about humanity’s domination of the planet. In Making Sense of 7 Billion People, Brandon Keim writes that

According to a back-of-the-envelope calculation, there are about 1.7 million other top-level, land-dwelling, mammalian predators on Earth. Put another way: For every non-human mammal sharing our niche, there are more than 4,000 of us.

In short, humans are Earth’s great omnivore, and our omnivorous nature can only be understood at global scales. Scientists estimate that 83 percent of the terrestrial biosphere is under direct human influence. Crops cover some 12 percent of Earth’s land surface, and account for more than one-third of terrestrial biomass. One-third of all available fresh water is diverted to human use.

Altogether, roughly 20 percent of Earth’s net terrestrial primary production, the sheer volume of life produced on land on this planet every year, is harvested for human purposes — and, to return to the comparative factoids, it’s all for a species that accounts for .00018 percent of Earth’s non-marine biomass.

We are the .00018 percent, and we use 20 percent.

Astounding. If we are so very influential among all of the natural order – and we are –  we might expect more of ourselves for the exercise of such unrivaled power over other creatures.

We often don’t, but we should.

 

Open Government, Police

The Predictable, Dead-End Response

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Writing about the feud between Milwaukee’s Chief Flynn and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Bruce Murphy writes that

Experts on police departments will tell you that criticism from outside inevitably results in everyone on the force circling the wagons.

That’s very true. So true and predictable, that it’s more predictable and regular than Old Faithful has ever been. It’s why I’ve mentioned previously that bad organizations often don’t get better, they get worse.

One might think that failed leaders would see this, and would correct past mistakes through a routine of openness and new ideas. They don’t; typically they huddle more closely together. Mostly, this is because weak leaders would prefer the easy path of a small, sycophantic cadre to the better, but harder, scene of a dynamic organization. (It’s also because they isolate and delude themselves from growing criticism.)

In drawing ever closer and inward, the members of a weak organization only compound their mistakes and deficiencies.

The best option for a community is, of course, organizational reform. The second best, though, is exactly the organizational wagon-circling of which Murphy writes. Huddling together only exacerbates existing problems, speeds decline, and makes the case for reform stronger.

One would prefer the first option; as a reformer, one would still readily accept the second, knowing the eventual result is reform.

Via Inside Milwaukee.

City

Residency and the Decline of a Small-town Elite

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Small-town Whitewater has a residency requirement for public leadership positions in city government. It’s a sign of the decline of Whitewater’s town squires that they cannot consistently enforce a rule of their own making

Ironically, although I don’t support Whitewater’s mostly narrow and short-sighted town fathers, I’ve supported the residency requirement for two reasons.

First, it applies to leaders who should set an example of living in the community they serve, enjoying its benefits and sharing its burdens. If they’re compensated from the community, they should live in the community that taxes residents for that compensation.

Second, it’s a lawful requirement now, that should be applied equally and fairly to all who fall within its range. (I’d even apply this rule to interim leaders, on the same first reason, listed above.) The residency rule for leaders doesn’t say sometimes, maybe, or when someone feels like following the rules. Within the city – for services and tax purposes — actually means within the city, not kinda, sorta close by.

(If the rule changes, so be it; as long as it’s in force, all leaders should have to comply with it equally.)

Imagine how absurd it would be for someone to say he’d pay his taxes a year from now, or maybe a year after that, or thereafter if Whitewater’s Common Council thought it absolutely necessary.

Similarly, if he ran a stop sign into an empty oncoming street, no one would excuse him for being, well gosh, just halfway out into the road. On the contrary, it would be the municipal offense of the century that a common person did something like that. If he lived near the city, no one would allow him to vote in city elections just because he kinda, sorta lived near the city line.

Although some of Whitewater’s leaders have long been in the habit of making exceptions for themselves, the real story here is that Whitewater’s leaders cannot assure the enforcement of simple rules they, themselves established. Residency was supposed to be evidence of a commitment to Whitewater, to the ‘exceptional’ quality of life here, to all that these leaders had uniquely achieved.

Yet, they lack even the confidence to insist on their own standards. (If they’d really wanted those standards enforced, they would have chosen a better negotiator for the city’s position, too.)

Residency rules? Here today, gone tomorrow.

A stodgy town faction’s ability to enforce even its own standards? Just plain gone.

Politics

Gov. Walker’s Actual Political Standing in Wisconsin (October 2011)

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I’m not a Walker supporter, because Gov. Walker’s far from libertarian.

If one is a Walker supporter – as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute surely is – it’s right to see Walker’s political prospects honestly. Despite a bit of spin in a WPRI narrative, a recent poll commissioned and published by WPRI reveals Gov. Walker’s weak political standing.

He’s underwater – 42% approve, 56% disapprove:

11. Now let’s turn to the political scene here in Wisconsin. Overall, do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove of the way Scott Walker is handling his job as Governor of Wisconsin?

Strongly approve 24
Somewhat approve 18
Somewhat disapprove 11
Strongly disapprove 45
Don’t know / Refused 2

These results, by the way, are more reliable than airy talk about how well the governor’s policies are being received, or results from dodgy pollsters that partisans reflexively prefer. WPRI has a preference, of course, but they’ve nonetheless candidly published results inauspicious to their own camp.

Via The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

Politics

Conservative Website FreeRepublic.com to Romney Supporters: ‘ENEMIES OF THE CONSTITUTION … ARE NOT WELCOME HERE’

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No real surprise about FreeRepublic.com taking this position, but other rightwing sites may follow, and that’s the bigger deal for Romney.

I’m no fan of Romney, but I wouldn’t consider him an enemy of the Constitution. (He’s more like a younger McCain in his politics, but that similarity only cements his reputation as an enemy of the Constitution for some conservatives.)

Just when one thought 2012 might be a dull rematch match between Obama and McCain Romney….

See, POLITICO.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 11.1.11

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Good morning,

I hope you had a happy Halloween, one of all treats, no tricks. Today will be mostly sunny day with a high of sixty-two in Whitewater – unseasonable, but pleasantly so.

Whitewater’s Common Council resumes budget deliberations tonight. The meeting’s agenda is available online.

At Science News, Rachel Ehrenberg reports that Facebook value overstated, study finds: Researchers warn of a social networking bubble in the offing. She writes that

“It’s not the same volume of the dot-com bubble. That was really widespread,” says coauthor Didier Sornette. Nevertheless, he and colleague Peter Cauwels conclude, a social networking bubble — and its impending pop — loom.

The ETH Zürich researchers argue that determining the value of social networking sites is vastly simpler than with other companies, because there’s a relatively direct link between the number of users and profit. This boils the math down to a simple equation: the number of users times the profit per user. Calculated that way, Facebook’s value is probably in the neighborhood of $15 billion to $20 billion, the team reports online October 6 at arXiv.org.

Twenty billion’s still a huge sum; the discrepancy between the lower figure and the higher one matters most to those basing commitments or investments in the company on a larger number. For day-to-day users, and (day-to-day vendors of Facebook), the company’s dependable.  As a matter of valuation, though, it’s significant, as being wrong by a factor of five, for example, is a huge error.

Best bet for a price estimate on any particular day – what people would pay to buy a company.  If that’s higher than the study’s estimate, then it’s the study’s estimate that’s in error.

I saw this animated penguin .gif today, although I’m not sure it’s an undoctored photo. If it should be real, then I’d like to thank the penguins involved for their contributions to human amusement. Enjoy.

Holiday

Boo! Scariest Things in America, 2011

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Here’s the FREE WHITEWATER list of the scariest things in America for 2011. I’ve done a scariest things in Whitewater for years, and here’s the national version. (The 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 local editions are available for comparison.)

The list runs in reverse order, from mildly frightening to super scary.

10. Empire. We’re a republic, not an empire, but that doesn’t stop proud schemers from dreaming of perpetual empire, in Iraq or elsewhere. Pres. Obama is right to bring Americans in Iraq home: we’ve been there long enough. Americans have served there well and ably, beyond any other nation’s ability.

Our strength lies not in control over foreign territory, but in the openness of our institutions and strength through the freedom of our markets.

9. Delicacy and Sensitivity. In Wisconsin, someone intentionally dumped beer on Assemblyman Robin Vos as a protest. It was wrong to do, but to hear people tell it, Vos was shockingly assaulted.

Beer, as a bad thing in Wisconsin – can no one shake anything off? He might even have made a joke of it (“Domestic or imported?”), but instead he’s portrayed as a true victim. A man got wet, from beer, in Wisconsin – he’ll survive, and would have done better to take it in stride (and insist against charges being pressed).

Hundreds of graduate students could profitably write on how America’s Greatest Generation led to America’s Most Sensitive Generation…in just a generation.

8. Occupy This or That. We’ve had ant-war protests, Tea Party protests, and now Occupy protests. We’re still standing, and these protests have involved little if any violence despite vast numbers attending. I don’t agree with much of the Occupy rhetoric, but no matter. America will be just fine, and the protests are no harm – but much benefit – to society.

7. Classes. No one’s supposed to talk about class in America. Now some are talking about classes (and divisions with classes). Why not? Go ahead, have at it. Anne Applebaum’s right, by the way. See, Can America survive without its backbone, the middle class?

6. Public Employee Unions. All those state workers are thugs you see, wrecking America. No one looks at the state legislators, governors, county executives, county boards, mayors, town councils, and school boards that gave them them what they have and asks for accountability from those givers.

It’s politicians who’ve failed here. Giving government more power by dissolving union rights only compounds a long-standing political failure.

5. Mormons. I’m not a member of the Latter Day Saints, and doubtless very few readers are. Still, we’re sure to learn more about that faith over the next year, much of it from among those topics designed to scare us into voting against Romney.

There are many reasons to be doubtful of a Romney presidency. His Mormon faith isn’t one of them. That won’t stop the Right (and later the Left) from saying that we should be very afraid indeed.

4. Free Marketeers. Either free marketeers are falsely portrayed as agents of indifference, or big-government types long guilty of indifference are portraying themselves as free marketeers. Either way, advocacy of free markets in capital, labor, and goods is misunderstood. Proponents will have to do a better job; we’ll not find help from others.

3. Contest Shows. Having watched little of them, I now know why I’ve previously avoided Dancing with the Stars, America’s Got Talent, etc.: there’s a level of manipulation and melodrama found elsewhere only from television news or political commercials.

Add into the mix that some on of both sides of the judging table are utter loons, and these shows are just too odd for prolonged viewing.

2. Individual Mandates. Government’s outrageous requirement that you buy a product or service will only grow if left unchecked — and you though you lived in free society.

1. Big Government. It’s back — and nothing has kept it down. 2010’s Tea Party wins haven’t changed the 2012 presidential election prospects, at least not yet. If you’re looking at an Obama-Romney race, you’re not looking at a race between men committed to limited government. The Tea Party might want to explain how, despite all their efforts, we’ve landed here. They’ll find their answer in the many diffuse, disparate, distracted efforts they’ve undertaken in the last year.

Small government, and small government alone, would have been the better bet, for the Tea Party and for America. They haven’t taken that path.

2012 may wind up looking like 2008, to America’s detriment.

Scary, indeed.

City, Holiday

Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2011

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Here’s the FREE WHITEWATER list of the scariest things in Whitewater for 2011. The 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 editions are available for comparison.

The list runs in reverse order, from mildly frightening to super scary.

10. Snow. Is every snowflake Armageddon? No. It’s Wisconsin – we’ve had snow before — and here’s a guess — we’ll have snow again. If Americans can fight the Taliban in Afghanistan (and despite the sadness of that conflict, do so with honor and stoicism), we can endure a little rain and snow back home in Whitewater.

9. Potholes, Gravel, Cracked Roads. Some day — some day in 2012 — we’ll have a new bridge along North Street. Until then, and long after then, many other streets will look like roads left over from ancient Rome.

8. Protesters. Tens of thousands protested at the Capitol, for weeks, with scarcely any trouble, yet it was the very end of civilization for some. Mobs, etc. everywhere, each assumed to be vandals (to the point of being, well, Vandals). Here in Whitewater, a few protesters on a sidewalk were a horde of pickets, threatening our tender and delicate community. Such fussy, prissy nonsense — no one was threatened, no one was harmed. A heavy police presence at one protest, and watching officers nearby at another, were a waste of time.

Those who are whining about supposed ‘threats’ to the social order are — almost invariably – new men parroting what they think an established man would say in these circumstances (“Oh dearie me, can you imagine these savages, running amok? What ever will we do?”) Complainers’ fussiness gives them away: an established man would be – should be – must be – nonplussed.

The sky isn’t falling.

7. Federal Testing Standards. There are lots of reasons to worry about education. National No Child left Behind standards are not among them. One-size-fits-all fits poorly.

6. Independence. Is there a policy that says those on a commission should be beholden to those they are meant to oversee? Too many people have somebody else’s back, in demonstrations of grinning so obvious they might as well be from of a litter of Cheshire Cats.

5. The Poor. We seldom talk about the poor, in a town teeming with them. It’s all so down-market and depressing, after all. Let’s accentuate the positive (and for goodness’ sake, stop talking about the rest)!

4. Studies and Risks. Want to stop a project you don’t like? Forget about about causality and good science – trot out any study and make any claim you can. Pronto. Say something terrible might happen “on occasion,” without any way for others to assess that likelihood against countervailing harms. Fear, uncertainty and doubt: it’s your ticket to policy-success-through-scaremongering, and it saves you the trouble of thinking clearly while still getting what you want.

Is there a study that shows that Presbyterians in Omaha in 1972 sometimes threw dead fish at passersby during basketball games? Perfect – use it to show that seafood sales in Whitewater should be watched and monitored closely, very closely. While you’re at it, regulate Presbyterianism in the city through a mandatory ankle-bracelet-monitoring ordinance. One can, after all, never be too careful.

3. House Parties. If over-drinking is a problem, make sure you avoid dealing with it effectively. That’s hard work, and requires genuine outreach and real community policing. Instead, take the lazy man’s path to avoiding a solution: stage a big raid once a year, crow about it, and post headlines in your How I Spent My October scrapbook.

Of course drinking will keep going on — but if it’s not in the news, did it really happen?

2. Immigrants. Unemployment, poverty, empty spaces, foreclosed homes, and general malaise? Why not expand state power, detain supposedly illegal immigrants on any suspicion, regardless of actual criminality, and ship them out of town?

There is — and as long as human nature endures there can be — no better general allocation of resources in a society than a free market in capital and labor. There are exceptions, but none so great that a market solution is not generally preferable in most cases.

A rounding up immigrants of any kind is economically irrational, and it’s no less irrational than believing that stars and planets shape one’s destiny.

Worse, of course, is the rending of the social fabric an anti-immigrant policy would inflict on Whitewater. It’s simply impossible to yield or overlook the economic and social harm from something like Assembly Bill 173.

There’s a Know-Nothingism about this; it will fare no better as policy now than it has in the past. America is an open and welcoming place – we’ll stay that way (as so many will fight to remain that way), a few narrow legislators not withstanding.

1. The Plain and Simple. Here, one finds a recurring ailment. America yearns for the plain and simple, and assumes they still thrive in small-town America. Those standards are around us, but they’re hardly thriving.

It’s all big ideas and big plans, with the allure of municipal-led development trumping efficient and impartial delivery of basic services. When a city manager tries to convince town squires that his role as a so-called development leader means more than his administration’s delivery of basic neighborhood services, then we can conclude that we’ve truly lost our way.

Whitewater’s city government doesn’t need a financier, a wheeler-dealer, or a mover-and-shaker; that role belongs elsewhere, in a separate and independent organization. If the job of city management isn’t thrilling enough, the fault doesn’t rest with, and shouldn’t fall on, the residents of this beautiful but struggling town.