Innovation Center/Tech Park, Planning, Poverty

The Biotech Park That Never Was – Reason Magazine

by JOHN ADAMS • 02.02.2011

Jesse Walker writes about a large-scale Biotech Park project in Baltimore that’s an utter waste and wreck. Whitewater’s own experience with a so-called tech park, although far smaller, will prove no better. A projects like these depend on (1) dishonesty, and (2) flacking and covering for dishonesty.

The story doubles as a tour through some of the most common ways local governments screw their citizens, from eminent domain to TIFs to public-private partnerships. And then, of course, there’s good old fashioned neglect:

The Daily Record’s investigation found that The New East Baltimore’s public funding is so complex and poorly scrutinized that local elected officials, some of whom serve on EBDI’s board, said they had little grasp of the $108.5 million in city funds committed to the project at a time of tax increases, and furloughs and pay cuts for city workers, including firefighters and police.
[Sheila] Dixon told The Daily Record that she did not know the city sold $78 million in bonds to support the project when she was mayor.

Although a project like this depends on mediocrity and mendacity, that’s not where it leads — it leads to neglect of ordinary residents’ needs, all for an empty suit’s empty promises.

East Baltimore residents have every reason in the world to be disappointed and frustrated:

East Baltimore residents’ dreams derailed by EBDI project from Maryland Daily Record on Vimeo.

Via The Biotech Park That Never Was – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine. more >>

Holiday

Early Spring

by JOHN ADAMS • 02.02.2011

So says Punxsutawney Phil.

Laws/Regulations, Libertarians, Liberty

Nanny of the Month (Jan 2011) Drug Testing 11-year-olds! Fining iPod Users!

by JOHN ADAMS • 02.02.2011

Via reason.tv – Videos – Nanny of the Month (Jan 2011) Drug Testing 11-year-olds! Fining iPod Users!.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2-2-11

by JOHN ADAMS • 02.02.2011

Good morning,

Whitewater’s forecast calls for a windy and snowy day, with a high temperature of twenty degrees.

Both Whitewater’s municipal building and schools are closed today.

Here’s what a major storm looks like, from space:

NOAA/NASA GOES Project, 1.31.2011

Science/Nature, Wisconsin

Snowy Day

by JOHN ADAMS • 02.01.2011

The National Weather Service offers statistics to put the present snowstorm into perspective. The current record for a day in February for Madison snowfall is 11.9 inches (on 2.6.2008) and for Milwaukee snowfall it’s 16.7 inches (2.10.1960). We’ll see a great deal of snow over the next day, but there have been snowy days before.

We’re a hardy lot.

Although I’m not much for present-day England, the English have proved themselves hardy in the past, most surely during the Second World War. There’s a poster they created in 1939, that’s far, far more justified during our natural, snowy winter than it was during their genuine and terrible emergency, an horrific crisis —

Facing only nature, we’ll be just fine.

Enjoy the snow day ahead.

City, Politics

Nietzsche and the Dark Hope Against a Better Local Politics

by JOHN ADAMS • 02.01.2011

It’s been a while since I last read anything of Nietzsche, but his work — even when profoundly wrong — is memorable. There’s a passage from Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, that is, itself, about memory. It’s useful for understanding a certain, irresponsible view about how Whitewater’s politics should work.

Imagine the lack of recollection in a herd animal:

Consider the herd grazing before you. These animals do not know what yesterday and today are but leap about, eat, rest, digest, and leap again; and so from morning to night and from day to day, only briefly concerned with their pleasure and displeasure, enthralled by the moment and for that reason neither melancholy nor bored…..

Man may well ask the animal: Why do you not speak to me of your happiness, but only look at me? The animal does want to answer and say: because I always immediately forget want I wanted to say – but then it already forgot this answer and remained silent: so that man could only wonder.

Nietzsche erroneously thinks that some men might envy the animal’s condition; he did not live long enough to see how wrong he was, how perverse is the idea that the condition of animals might be enviable.

But, about the idea of the animal as without memory — at least of the kind that we have — he was surely right. The herd animal (and although he does not specify, I have always imagined Nietzsche wrote of gazelles) does not recall day after day as we do. It can’t even remember a question long enough to utter an answer, as it were.

And yet — and yet — we have a local politics that assumes ordinary people are like this, that they cannot recall from day to day. Memory of an officials’ mistakes, misconduct, and mendacity isn’t supposed to endure from moment to moment; it’s as though every day begins the world anew.

It’s a view both false, shamefully condescending, and utterly irresponsible. In a world where no one recalls, no one will be accountable. It’s the hope of every mediocre career bureaucrat — that there will be no memory of prior, absurd mistakes and lies, and so no consequence for them. Worse than a false view of how the community is, it’s a dark hope of what the community should be, and against a better local politics.

But if some should have this hope, they hope in vain. To disprove the view that we have no memory, and to prevent a time when we should find ourselves without any, it is enough to recount what has happened, as it actually happened.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2-1-11

by JOHN ADAMS • 02.01.2011

Good morning,

It’s a snowy and windy day for Whitewater, with a high temperature of twenty three.

There’s a common council meeting scheduled for tonight, at 6:30 p.m. The agenda is available online.

Update: this council meeting will now take place at 6:30 on February ~~1st~~ 7th due to snowy weather.

There are, even now, many new discoveries to be made. Over at Wired, there’s a story, entitled, That Ain’t No Jackal: New African Wolf Species Identified, that describes one of those discoveries:

Conservationists in Egypt have discovered a new species of wolf, which shares DNA with Indian and Himalayan cousins.

The “Egyptian jackal”, as it’s known, is not in fact a jackal at all, despite the visual similarities it bears to another local species, the golden jackal. The discovery sheds light on how wolf species migrated through Africa and Europe – proving that grey wolves emerged in Africa about 3 million years before they spread to the northern hemisphere.

Scrawny but still a wolf

Government Spending, Politics

E.J. McMahon: State Bankruptcy Is a Bad Idea – WSJ.com

by JOHN ADAMS • 01.31.2011

The biggest state budget gaps will never be closed until politicians use the tools they already have to challenge the overweening power of public employee unions. Meanwhile, Washington can help by lifting some of the burdens it imposes on the states. Converting Medicaid into a block grant, for example, would remove one big excuse governors now have for failing to do more to control their health-care costs. By giving states more flexibility to deal with this program and other federal mandates, Congress will have greater justification for telling governors to fix their own problems.

Via E.J. McMahon: State Bankruptcy Is a Bad Idea – WSJ.com.

Conservation, Nature

Sandhill Cranes

by JOHN ADAMS • 01.31.2011

A video of a huge flock Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, USA. The video clip includes cranes landing.

Via http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grus_canadensis_-Bosque_del_Apache_National_Wildlife_Refuge,_New_Mexico,_USA-8.ogv

By snowpeak (John Fowler)
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/snowpeak/5396822610/)
[CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] via Wikimedia Commons more >>

Public Meetings

Common Council

by JOHN ADAMS • 01.31.2011

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1-31-11

by JOHN ADAMS • 01.31.2011

Good morning,

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

It’s the 31st day of the year, with 334 days left in 2011, and with one day left for voting in the Pepsi Refresh Project for the Treyton Kilar Field of Dreams.

From across Whitewater, and places beyond, so very many people have supported this project, and their support have kept this fine effort in the running for a grant from PepsiCo.

I have been voting for it each day this month, and will happily add today’s vote to those that came before. A vote for this project is a simple, quiet act of goodness and hope.

Here’s the project overview, from the Pepsi Refresh website —

Treyton Kilar, age 6, was killed in a senseless car crash by a drunk driver on September 2, 2010. In an effort to create hope out of despair, the Whitewater community has united to build a new baseball field to honor Treyton and provide a happy, healthy place for families and children to come together safely. Treyton’s big dream was to someday play professional baseball.

He spent countless hours practicing at home and on teams through the Whitewater Parks and Recreation Department. Although Treyton’s dream was cut short by a senseless tragedy, this new ball field will provide our young people with an opportunity to achieve their dreams. By providing a place for family friendly and safe activities, the Treyton Kilar Field of Dreams will provide an alternative to drinking and driving and be a monument to overcoming evil with goodness and love.

Here’s how to vote —

1. Register at http://www.refresheverything.com/treytonkilar and then vote for the Field of Dreams project. Once registered, you’ll be able to vote for the project.

2. For Facebook, go to http://www.refresheverything.com/treytonkilar, and install the blue Facebook application (it’s in the right column of the page).

3. Text 105500 to Pepsi (73774)