FREE WHITEWATER

Economy

Business Insider: Don’t Mean To Be Rude, But The Economy Sucks

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Yes, it still does. It went bad under the last administration, has been slow under the current administration, and looks as though it will be anemic for yet longer. A change of administrations, and a change of majorities in the House, were not themselves – nor should we have expected them to be – guarantors of turnaround.

Blodget’s been wrong about things, but he’s right about this:

In the past couple of months, a disconnect has developed between the perception of the US economy and the reality.

The perception is that everything’s just fine: The continuation of a solid if unspectacular recovery that began in the summer of 2009. Stocks continue to rise. Corporate profits continue to boom. The unemployment rate continues to tick down. Wall Street continues to coin money.

But the reality is that the recovery has never been strong and that many key metrics have recently turned south–despite the fact that the government still has its foot stomped on the stimulus gas….

Blodget lists mediocre GDP growth (1.8%), weak job growth, falling home prices, and waxing inflation. They’re all bad signs, and all reason to focus on simple, fundamental fiscal strategies, to the exclusion of complicated schemes or sideshow initiatives.

Via Don’t Mean To Be Rude, But The Economy Sucks.

Charity, Press Release

Program on Memory Loss Offered by the Alzheimer’s Association, May 24th, Delavan

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Program on Memory Loss Offered by the Alzheimer’s Association – Orientation on the implications of memory loss

The Alzheimer’s Association will be presenting a program called ‘Orientation to Early Memory Loss’ on Tuesday, May 24, 2011 from 2:30 – 4:30 p.m. at the Community Bank CBD-Community Center located at 820 E. Geneva Street in Delavan.

This program is for individuals who have been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s disease or a related memory disorder, and their family and friends. Topics will include beginning changes, common decisions, and the first steps to care. This program is being offered at no charge and is open to all members of the community.

Registration for this program is required by May 20th. To register, please contact Bonnie Beam-Stratz at 920.728.4088.

The Alzheimer’s Association is the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer’s care, support and research whose mission is to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected; and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health.

For more information about Alzheimer’s disease and local services visit http://www.alz.org/sewi or call the Alzheimer’s Association 24/7 Helpline at 800-272-3900.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.29.11

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Good morning.

It’s a sunny day ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of sixty-three degrees.

There’s a story over at Wired about an astrophotographer who created an interactive, 360-degree panorama of the night sky.   The story, entitled, Reader Photo: Stunning Interactive Sky Image, describes Nick Risinger’s achievement:

Nick Risinger, a 28-year-old native of Seattle, trekked more than 60,000 miles around the western United States and South Africa to create the largest-ever true-color image of the stellar sphere. The final result is an interactive, zoomable sky map showing the full Milky Way and the stars, planets, galaxies and nebulae around it.

“The genesis of this was to educate and enlighten people about the natural beauty that is hidden, but surrounds us,” Risinger said.

The project began in March 2010, when Risinger and his brother took a suite of six professional-grade astronomical cameras to the desert in Nevada. By June, Risinger had quit his job as a marketing director for a countertop company to seek the darkest skies he could find.

Every night, Risinger and his father set up the cameras on a tripod that rotates with Earth. The cameras automatically took between 20 and 70 exposures each night in three different-color wavelengths. Previous professional sky surveys (including the Digitized Sky Survey of the 1980s, which is the source for the World Wide Telescope and Google Sky) shot only in red and blue. Including a third color filter gives the new survey a more real feeling, Risinger said.

Admirable and beautiful, both.

Charity

Alzheimer’s Association Celebrity Champions

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The Alzheimer’s Association has produced a brief — but powerful — video with famous Americans talking about the disorder, and the good work of the Association.

I’ve been proud to post releases from this organization, from a general interest, rather than personal, that inclines all people to support different, worthy charitable efforts. The work of this Association is surely among any definition of worthy efforts.

I’ll have additional videos up later this week, about their work.



Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.28.11

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Good morning.

Today’s forecast calls for a day of showers and a high temperature of forty-six.

On this day in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl set sail from South America to Polynesia to show that pre-Incan voyagers would have been able to make the 4,300-mile trip across the Pacific.  Below are a short video about the expedition, and a longer, full-length program.

more >>

Freedom of Speech, Open Government, Politics, Press, Press Release

Tracking the Influence of Money in Politics

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The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has issued a press release with good news about new resources to track the influence of money in politics.

Here’s the press release, with links to a new tracking website:

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, today announced a major initiative to help the public and journalists investigate the influence of money in Wisconsin state politics and policymaking.

MapLight.org unveiled a new site, maplight.org/wisconsin, that for the first time combines three databases of information – campaign contributions, legislative votes, and interest group support and opposition – revealing the intersection between money and votes in the Wisconsin Legislature. The site allows users to customize their searches and download the data.

“The goal of our Wisconsin site is to provide quick and easy access to information about campaign contributions, the interests of the groups that make them, and how the lawmakers that receive them vote, drawing back the curtain on how money influences legislation around the issues that people care most about,” said Daniel Newman, executive director of MapLight.org, which is based in Berkeley, Calif.

Under an agreement with MapLight.org, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism will investigate money and politics issues and serve as a resource to news organizations in Wisconsin. The project is supported with a grant from the Open Society Institute.

“By centralizing data on contributions and votes, and combining that information with research on interest group bill support and opposition, MapLight.org will provide Wisconsin’s watchdogs with insights critical to the functioning of our democracy, in a fraction of the time it would take to otherwise assemble these facts from disparate sources,” said Andy Hall, executive director of the Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that launched in 2009.

MapLight.org’s data partner for campaign contributions is the nonprofit Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Mike McCabe, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s executive director, said the “collaboration creates new opportunities for investigative journalism and citizen exploration of the impact of special interest money in Wisconsin politics.”

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism focuses upon government integrity and quality of life issues. It collaborates with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where it is based, Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television and other mainstream and ethnic news organizations across the nation.

The Center publicly acknowledges all of its donors, to increase the transparency – and protect the integrity – of its public-interest journalism. The Center is supported by foundations and individuals, including Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Foundation to Promote Open Society (a partner of Open Society Institute), McCormick Foundation and Ford Foundation. Connect with the Center on Twitter and Facebook.

Readers know that I don’t support limits on campaign contributions (as a restriction on expression), but I’m all for tracking what can be tracked.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.27.11

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Good morning.

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

There’s a Common Council meeting scheduled for this afternoon, at 3 p.m. The agenda is available online.

A story from Australia, Australia Pistachio Disaster Hints at Agricultural Breakdown, may be a cautionary tale for agricultural states like Wisconsin. There, a rapidly-spreading disease has unexpectedly destroyed much of the pistachio crop.

The wide cultivation of genetically uniform plant populations fosters rapid evolution among the pathogens,” said Scot Nelson, a plant pathologist at the University of Hawaii. “Because of this greed, new pathogens or newly reported host-pathogen combinations arise almost daily around the world….

According to Nelson, the outbreak isn’t just a function of weather. It’s likely a result of monoculture crop practices, in which just one or a few varieties of a crop are planted. Australia’s pistachios are descended almost entirely from a single cultivar developed in the early 1980s. Selected for the nuts’ flavor, aesthetically pleasing color and easy-splitting shells, the variety was an easy choice for farmers — but with that choice, the seeds of an epidemic may have been planted.

The high and unexpected cost of uniformity.

Official Misconduct

Lessons from the Talented Dr. Steven Hayne’s Career

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I wrote last week about Dr. Steven Hayne, the incompetent forensic pathologist from Mississippi whose mistakes led to numerous wrongful convictions in that state. He made nothing but excuses — fantastic ones — when critics began to confront him. It took years for critics’ exposure of his shabby, shoddy practices to bring change to Mississippi. (See, The Talented Dr. Steven Hayne.)

Where a just man wouldn’t have done half the things Hayne did, and where a decent man who did any of them would have resigned after being confronted, Hayne clung to his office, continued his bad work, and defied reason for years.

There are countless lessons from Hayne’s career. I think about his bad example often, and from it one can gain insight into less extreme cases, too.

1. A Chair. For selfish officials, there’s nothing more important than retaining office.

2. Contempt for Principle. If having a chair matters much, then principle matters not at all. Men like this only understand having a having a position, not taking one, so to speak. They think value comes from a situation, not a belief.

3. Words. As a consequence of being unprincipled, they’ll say anything to keep power, contradicting yesterday’s views with today’s if they feel it’s useful. They have no underlying conviction exception the conviction that they deserve an official place or post.

4. Useful Allies. Corrupt, incompetent officials are sure to get the support of other corrupt, incompetent officials. Even incumbents who aren’t rotten will often defend mediocrities. Incumbents have a preference for other incumbents.

Bad officials are so situational that they’re like a dog in a story I once heard.

A dog, staying inside a house during the day, hears the mailman visit each day at noon. The dog anticipates the visit, and starts to become angry just before noon. At noon, as he hears the mailman approaching the porch’s mailbox, the dog begins to bark like mad. The canine keeps barking, until he hears the footsteps of the mailman fade away from the house.

Each time, after the mailman leaves, the dog is reassured that his barking forced a potential intruder away. From the animal’s point-of-view, he’s successfully defended the house yet again, as he does day after day at noon.

We know that the dog’s done nothing of the sort; the dog, limited by his surroundings to the exclusion of a broader perspective, can’t see what’s really happening.

In a similar way, small-minded officials cannot see the broader, more powerful trends sweeping through their communities. If anything, an insider’s view actually leads them astray.

It is the lack of principle and perspective, and the underestimation of strong forces in the world beyond an office door, that often undoes the mediocre.

That, and critics’ patient persistence.

Government Spending, Laws/Regulations, Libertarians, Planning

Libertarian Party’s List of Recent Federal Mistakes

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The national Libertarian party’s re-published a list of the top-ten federal government mistakes, with the addition of ten new mistakes. I’ve listed them below — the details for each are available at the LP website. Exec. Dir. Wes Benedict contends that these are mostly mistakes of the Obama Administration, but many of these policies pre-date the current administration, and received (sadly) the support of both parties in Congress.

1. Cash for Clunkers
2. War escalation in Afghanistan
3. Giant government health care expansion bill
4. Post office loses money hand over fist
5. Stimulus package
6. Expansion of “state secrets” doctrine
7. Big increase in unemployment
8. “Bailout” Geithner as Treasury Secretary
9. Skyrocketing federal spending
10. Huge federal deficits

And here are ten new ones:

11. War in Libya
12. Assassination doctrine
13. Big-spending deals with Republicans
14. Keeping Guantanamo open
15. Fed massively inflates fiat currency
16. War on Poker
17. Patriot Act extensions
18. Sustaining warrantless wiretaps
19. Sustaining War in Iraq
20. Medical Marijuana raids