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Eleven Fifty-Nine

Eleven Fifty-Nine for 7-14-10

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Good evening,

A very hot day comes to an end, with rain and a low of seventy-four for an overnight temperature.

I was in Lake Geneva today, for a bit, and had a chance to see some of the cycling there. The route went directly through the downtown, and the racers sped through town despite very hot, very humid conditions. If you didn’t have a chance to see it, Walworth County Today offers links to results, a photo slide show, and a video of the racing. Here’s the embeddable video that they recorded:



The online versions of the Janesville and of the Walworth County Gazette are the only online papers that have a full online presence, with not only an electronic version, but ample photos, videos, and both reporters’ and community residents’ blogs. One has to look 50 miles away, to Madison or Milwaukee, to find something similar.

In other cycling today, Andy Schleck remains first in the general classification, with Alberto Contador 41 seconds back, and with Sergio Paulinho winning the stage.

I’ve promised additional comments on my small town’s latest planning commission meeting, and they’ll be up tomorrow. more >>

Uncategorized

Reason Searches the Tea Party for Racists – None to be Found

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In May, seeking to assess the strengh of political charges that Tea Party protesters are racists, Reason.tv went looking to see what they could find.

Lots of protesters, many with views different from the libertarian Reason, but they found no racists among the group.

Lawful protests against an incumbent administration may have many of motivations, and yet not a one based on race. I don’t agree, for example, with the anti-immigration policies of some Tea Party protesters, but that doesn’t mean I think those holding such views are racists.

They aren’t.

The attached video shows what they are, and it’s not racial animosity that animates them.



more >>

Uncategorized

Wisconsin State Journal: Police – Vengeful Blind Man Asked Aasistant to Help Post Craigslist Ad for Bomb

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Sometimes even the most malevolent acts have an absurdity attached to them. That would be true about allegations against a septuagenarian blind man who may have had someone post an ad on Craigslist for a bomb. Here’s the allegation against an elderly Wisconsinite:

The husband of a former Dane County Board member faces a possible attempted murder charge after he allegedly posted an Internet advertisement looking for someone to build him a bomb that he could send to his estranged wife’s boyfriend in Montana, police and court records said.

Jansson S. Wheeler, 76, a former city alderman, a retired attorney for the state of Wisconsin and the husband of recently-retired Dane County Sup. Dorothy Wheeler, posted his ad on Craigslist on May 10 with the help of an assisted living aide, according to a search warrant filed Tuesday in Dane County Circuit Court.

See, Police: Vengeful Blind Man Asked Assistant to Help Post Craigslist Ad for Bomb.

Wisconsin has had more than her share of crimes, including some terrible ones, but these allegations have both malice and oddity combined. The Wisconsin State Journal relates that Wheeler spoke unknowingly with an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent (posing as a bomb-maker) about his request, and that Wheeler was wearing gloves when he met the agent to accept delivery of the supposed bomb.

Odder still is that someone, working at the assisted living home where Wheeler lived, may have helped the elderly blind man place his ad online.

There’s nothing humorous about any of this, but there is something strange about how methodical the accused’s search seems to have been, one for which he must (being blind) have had help.

Politics

Unfounded Charges Against the Tea Party Movement

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Yesterday, at its annual convention in Kansas City, the NAACP issued a resolution condemning elements of the Tea Party movement as racist. It’s an over-reaction to that movement, and debases legitimate charges of racism. No matter how controversial or unwelcome the Tea Party wave is for the left, it’s not a racist movement, and certainly no more of its members are bigoted than other large protest groups.

It its false, undeserved, and likely unavailing, for the NAACP to accuse these disparate groups of racism. It’s also sly and insidious to accuse not the whole group, but elements of it, of racism. In any group of so many, there’s likely to be an elements of racism, unfairness, happiness, confusion, coin collecting, and card-playing. Take a million people, and one will find any element one wants.

On the left, someone not disposed to the Tea Party movement, like Mary Curtis of Politics Daily, sees how futile this resolution against the Tea Parties is:

But every charge by the NAACP will be answered by denials and statements by black Tea Party members, such as the Bishop E. W. Jackson, president of STAND (Staying True to America’s National Destiny) or Rev. C.L. Bryant, a former president of NAACP’s Garland, Texas, chapter, who is now a Tea Party activist.

You can forget about that common ground, over a broken economy, a government — big or small — that works and justice for “real Americans” (you know, the ones who live on farms as well as inner-city apartments)?

Better to argue over a resolution that won’t change one mind.

She’s correct — progressives should be out campaigning for their views, not issuing resolutions like the one from Kansas City.

I am not a member of this movement, but I did once attend a Tea Party rally in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and have followed the effort ever since. See, Scenes from a Tea Party Protest, Jefferson, Wisconsin. (A libertarian has an odd, shifting feeling when watching a Tea Party event — one feels in agreement sometimes, but disagreement in others.)

I found that I agreed with them on some issues (small government) disagreed on others (immigration), but felt that there was nothing racist about their protest. Not at all. Nationally or locally, charging as much is wrong and counter-productive.

The left will one day have its version of these sort of protests, and until they do, they’ll not make ground by false accusations against others.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 7-14-10

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Good morning,

Whitewater’s forecast for today calls for a hot day, with temperatures in the 90s, followed by thunderstorms this evening.

There’s a meeting today, at 9 a.m., of the Whitewater-University Tech Park Board. The agenda is available online.

The French have two big events today. It’s Bastille Day, commemorating the storming in 1789 of a vast fortress to free seven people:

Bernard-Jordan de Launay, the military governor of the Bastille, feared that his fortress would be a target for the revolutionaries and so requested reinforcements. A company of Swiss mercenary soldiers arrived on July 7 to bolster his garrison of 82 soldiers. The Marquis de Sade, one of the few prisoners in the Bastille at the time, was transferred to an insane asylum after he attempted to incite a crowd outside his window by yelling: “They are massacring the prisoners; you must come and free them.” On July 12, royal authorities transferred 250 barrels of gunpowder to the Bastille from the Paris Arsenal, which was more vulnerable to attack. Launay brought his men into the Bastille and raised its two drawbridges.

On July 13, revolutionaries with muskets began firing at soldiers standing guard on the Bastille’s towers and then took cover in the Bastille’s courtyard when Launay’s men fired back. That evening, mobs stormed the Paris Arsenal and another armory and acquired thousands of muskets. At dawn on July 14, a great crowd armed with muskets, swords, and various makeshift weapons began to gather around the Bastille.

Launay received a delegation of revolutionary leaders but refused to surrender the fortress and its munitions as they requested. He later received a second delegation and promised he would not open fire on the crowd. To convince the revolutionaries, he showed them that his cannons were not loaded. Instead of calming the agitated crowd, news of the unloaded cannons emboldened a group of men to climb over the outer wall of the courtyard and lower a drawbridge. Three hundred revolutionaries rushed in, and Launay’s men took up a defensive position. When the mob outside began trying to lower the second drawbridge, Launay ordered his men to open fire. One hundred rioters were killed or wounded.

Launay’s men were able to hold the mob back, but more and more Parisians were converging on the Bastille. Around 3 p.m., a company of deserters from the French army arrived. The soldiers, hidden by smoke from fires set by the mob, dragged five cannons into the courtyard and aimed them at the Bastille. Launay raised a white flag of surrender over the fortress. Launay and his men were taken into custody, the gunpowder and cannons were seized, and the seven prisoners of the Bastille were freed. Upon arriving at the Hotel de Ville, where Launay was to be arrested by a revolutionary council, the governor was pulled away from his escort by a mob and murdered.

But there’s another event, too, that involves neither fortresses nor gunpowder. Stage 10 of the Tour de France takes place this morning,



Much better.

Eleven Fifty-Nine

Eleven Fifty-Nine for 7-13-10

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Good evening,

It’s a party cloudy night, with a low temperature that will be in the low sixties.

The results of the ninth stage of the Tour de France, following a rest day, seemed to make clear that the battle was down to two riders:

And in a sign of what to expect over the course of the next 12 days, Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank) earned himself the overall race lead following his mano-a-mano exploits with Alberto Contador (Astana) that began on the slopes of the Col de la Madeleine. There’s no doubt that the touch paper which was ignited today will result in an explosion for the maillot jaune once the race hits the Pyrenees.

One fact became glaringly obvious, however: this year’s Tour de France has become a battle between Schleck, winner of Sunday’s stage to Morzine-Avoriaz, and reigning champion Alberto Contador. There’s already two minutes between second-placed Contador and third-placed Samuel Sanchez, and each has the team to help them remain at the head of proceedings….

There’s sound reasoning in all this, but it’s still early. After all, at least one publication saw a different possibility, before the race began:



There’s more information now, by far, than there was just nine stages ago, but there’s still much that’s unknown.

Do desperate times call for desperate measures? One of the wealthiest school districts in Wisconsin, in Williams Bay, is looking to ask voters to support a referendum to “to exceed state revenue caps by $498,000 for the next two school years and by $890,000 for the school years after that.” See, Williams Bay School District sets referendum for September.

One could say that our difficult times call for even wealthy districts to fund operations by raising additional revenue — taxes — to keep going. Alternatively, it’s possible that some school boards, no matter how well off their districts, simply cannot imagine not asking residents for still more revenue.

I’ll end the day on a fine, reassuring note, of possibility. Here’s Duke Ellington, from a clip as he plays Take the A Train. Enjoy.



Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHRbEhLj540 more >>

Politics, Press

The Congressman’s Constituents

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There’s a video making its way through cyberspace that’s sure to the the first of many like it this election year. The video shows the reaction of participants in a town hall meeting to Congressman Brad Sherman’s declaration that he knew nothing about a Department of Justice dismissal of a case against of voter intimidation filed against the New Black Panther Party. One attendee asks Sherman a question, and others react, vociferously. He answers her question generally, as one would expect, but he makes the mistake of contending that he knows nothing about the dismissed case. Many in the audience react unfavorably to his denial of knowledge.

Here’s the two-minute video:



Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UymN7t1kX3Q

The Congressman is Brad Sherman, Democrat of California’s 27th Congressional District. (Sherman won his district easily in 2008; he’s been in Congress since first winning the seat in November 2002.)

Sherman stays calm, but seems surprised at the reaction. The situation he faces will prove an increasingly common one, where a someone takes a video camera, someone else asks a question, and members of an audience react. Admittedly, some attendees are surely activists aware beforehand of some of these questions, but that does make the questions, or answers to them, any less legitimate.

For many politicians and bureaucrats, being challenged like this will prove new and uncomfortable, as a sycophantic press would not have reported an encounter like this. Now, these encounters are just a camera and a website away from widespread publication.

A few more episodes like this, and communities may be spared any number of lies or self-serving exaggerations.

Note to the Left — You’ll find yourselves using techniques just like this when conservatives are back in power. What some of you foolishly revile now, you’ll embrace when the balance of political representation shifts.

Hat tip to Powerline.com more >>

Uncategorized

How One Local Government Frequently Loses Items It Purchases

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One often hears that public servants give their time and effort to create a better community. Typically, one hears this from the politicians and bureaucrats who describe themselves as public servants. With all that dedication and attention, it’s not too much to hope that fewer of the goods purchased with taxpayer money would be lost. Sadly, even in a sophisticated community like Los Angeles, almost half of the items reviewed in an audit could not be located.

Reason has the details, in a post entitled, “L.A. Loses Deep-Fryer, 45 Percent of Items Purchased With Taxpayer Funds:

City Controller Wendy Greuel released an audit today showing that various City departments could not locate hundreds of items purchased with taxpayer funds, and that hundreds of other items had been sitting unopened or unused for up to 7 years …. “Of 254 items that we [Greuel’s team] attempted to locate, 115 were not where they should have been. While 56 items were ultimately found in the wrong location, 59 were unable to be located at a cost of $938,000.”

The press release from the controller’s office is available in pdf format.

It’s true that Los Angeles is a big place, but if a big place with ample means for recording and tracking publicly-financed items can’t locate half of them, we have reason to be concerned about happens in less resource-rich communities.

There’s a solution, of course, that would prevent so many taxpayer-purchased items from disappearing or winding up in the wrong location: purchase fewer items with taxpayer money. Government cannot lose items that it has never had.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin for 7-13-10

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Good morning,

Today’s forecast calls for a chance of thunderstorms with a high of eighty-two degrees.

In the City of Whitewater today, there’s a meeting of the Urban Forestry Commission at 4 p.m. The meeting agenda, for a group that would more simply be called a tree commission, is available online. Having abolished the former commission, the city chose to find a new, if less apt, name for the new commission.

The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this date in 1787, the

Northwest Territory [was] Established

On this date the Northwest Ordinance was passed by the Continental Congress. The ordinance provided for the administration of the territories and set rules for admission as a state. The Northwest territory included land west of Pennsylvania and Northwest of the Ohio River, which encompassed present day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, parts of Minnesota and of course Wisconsin. [Source: Indiana Historical Bureau]

And there we are …



Map from Wikipedia

Eleven Fifty-Nine

Eleven Fifty-Nine for 7-12-10

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Good evening,

It’s a slightly overcast evening, with a low of about sixty degrees for the overnight temperature.

I blogged on Whitewater’s Planning Commission meeting earlier this evening, and I will later update that post with a few additional remarks. See, Whitewater’s Planning Commission Meeting for 7-12-10 (Live Blogging). Much of that meeting concerned residential housing (and the difference, that eluded so many, between enforcement of an existing ordinance and adoption of another, more restrictive one on the number of unrelated persons who may live together in a home in a residential neighborhood).

There’s a story in the Journal Sentinel about tiny homes, not now particularly historic, not part of ‘historic neighborhoods,’ but interesting nonetheless. In Tiny House, Big Questions, Mary Louise Schumacher writes that

While architectural bravado tends to grab headlines, some of the most extraordinary architecture being made in the world today are small, adventurous structures, transitory buildings that take little from the Earth and give more than seems possible in return.

At their best, these pocked-sized projects, sometimes called “micro architecture,” do more than set standards for sustainable practices. They challenge the way we live.

One such project is the EDGE (Experimental Dwelling for a Greener Environment), designed by a small Stevens Point firm, Revelations Architects. The abode is so bitty, in fact, that it doesn’t qualify as an actual house in much of Wisconsin, where 750 or 800 square feet of floor space is required.

The JS also has a link to a video that shows the house in greater detail. A commenter to the story writes that it’s a “[n]ice little house. Just the right size for one person and a cat.”

Here’s a video of a different, micro house, to get an idea of how small they are:



Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTF9PfDFv_c

I don’t think these micro homes are superior as a principle (although the architect thinks so, rather smugly) — I simply think they’re interesting.

Homes this small, though, at 500 square feet, for example, would settle many questions about the permissible number of unrelated occupants of a dwelling. more >>

Economy

The Worst Ecological Disaster Ever? Looking Beyond the Gulf

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I’m sure that I’ve thought, of the oil spill in the Gulf, that it must be the worst ecological disaster in our history. At Commentary, John Steele Gordon asks the question, “The Worst Ecological Disaster Ever?” and concludes that the Gulf spill’s not our worst experience.

He offers some experiences far worse:

….how about the Aral Sea, where the Soviets diverted for agricultural use all the water that had flowed into it, destroying what had been the fourth largest lake in the world (26,000 square miles), as well as the vast ecosystem (and fishing industry) it had nurtured?

Or how about the London killer smog of 1952 that is thought to have killed upwards of 12,000 people, more than a thousand times as many people as have died in the Gulf Oil spill?

In this country, the worst man-made ecological disaster was, by order of magnitude, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Drought and poor farming practices in an area that should never have been farmed at all destroyed 100,000,000 acres. One dust storm that started on the high plains on May 9, 1934, dumped an estimated 6,000 tons of dust on the city of Chicago alone — four pounds per person. New York had to turn on the streetlights in broad daylight the next day. Two and half million people fled the area over the decade. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died of dust pneumonia. Many more, especially children, died of malnutrition. Others were blinded when dust got under their eyelids.

I’m sure he’s right. There are valuable reminders of economics and history in his examples: one doesn’t always assess costs correctly from appearances, and one understandably but erroneously considers present disasters worse than distant, ill-remembered, earlier ones. More than one book has been written on these subjects, so to speak.

(The reverse is surely true, as well — that supposed cost savings from green technologies are sometimes exaggerated, omitting costs of adoption not properly considered. Worse, some of these terms are used like incantations, as though saying green or sustainable about a project makes it a genuine conservation effort.)

Libertarians

Do Libertarians Like Their Message? You Bet We Do

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There’s a story from Indiana about how libertarians are fairing in that traditionally Republican state. Entitled, Libertarians Like Their Message, it describes a libertarian candidate as knowing that “your chances of winning are remote, but your goal is to finish as strong as possible and keep building for the future.”

That’s true for those libertarians who run as Libertarians; there are far more libertarians who are independents and swing voters.

There’s a good feeling about advocating something because one believes it and not simply running for personal ambition, hoping to work out a plan only after getting through the door. My preceding post, about how Wisconsin‘s major-party gubernatorial candidates have offered flimsy and incredible solutions, sometimes leads people to a libertarian alternative.

That’s why Chris Spangle, a libertarian from Indiana, can forthrightly say that “[t]here’s no party that represents true fiscal responsibility as much as Libertarians,” he said. “Republicans and sometimes even Democrats talk about libertarian values of fiscal responsibility, but once they get into power, they don’t follow though on all the promises they made.”

Politicians are wrong to blame voters for being apathetic, skeptical, or cynical. People aren’t born that way; if anything, people are too trusting. It’s the emptiness of political promises that leaves people justifiably weary and jaded. A more informed and energetic electorate would develop in a more honest, less selfish political culture. A smaller government would produce a better politics, less attractive to gluttonous politicians.

Years of the major parties pretending that sows’ ears are really silk purses, all the while living as pigs, has taken its toll.

Smaller and limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and commerce with friendly countries.

So, do libertarians like their message? Oh yes, very much indeed.

Uncategorized

Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Candidates’ Cost-Cutting Proposals Don’t Add Up

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There’s a story at the Journal Sentinel entitled, Wisconsin candidates’ cost-cutting plans don’t add up. Jason Stein summarizes the candidates’ proposals:

Candidates for governor are sharing more of their plans to slice spending to help balance the state’s struggling budget, but they’re making promises they could find difficult or even impossible to keep.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat who has shared the most detail on his proposed spending cuts, faces huge obstacles to achieving a key part of his budget proposal, an in-depth look at candidate plans’ shows.

A Republican rival, former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, could see a surplus from his savings plan if the economy keeps growing, but only after nixing hundreds of millions of dollars or more in commitments already written into state law. Neither Neumann nor his GOP primary opponent, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, has released many details about how they’ll make these massive cuts. And in the plans that Walker has released, a large chunk of them amount to little more than a bookkeeping exercise.

In Barrett’s case, state figures show it would be incredibly difficult to save a proposed $200 million in a state health program for the poor by insisting that patients be more conscious of costs.

“I don’t know how they calculated that amount or where it comes from,” said Jason Helgerson, Medicaid director for Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, a Barrett ally. “It has some definite challenges.”

(For more on some of Walker’s supposed savings, by claiming that not filling vacant positions counts as a budget cut, see Meet the New Solution, Same as the Old Solution.)

Stein’s story goes on to illustrate other ways in which each of the major party candidates has offered only incredible, unrealistic budget ideas.

With a $2.5 billion dollar project shortfall in the next two-year budget, and budget-cutting proposals that aren’t cuts at all, Wisconsin’s next governor is sure to disappoint voters who’ll be shocked at inevitable, genuine cuts of which they were never told, and never expected to feel.

Cynicism about politics doesn’t come about accidentally, or because people are naturally skeptical. It comes about in ways like the major candidates’ proposals, offerings that dare residents to believe in, or at least look away from, empty claims and promises.

Press Release

Walworth-Big Foot Historical Society Farm & Place Tour: July 28, 2010

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I received the following press release that I am happy to post:

The Historical Society of Walworth & Big Foot Prairie will conduct their Third Annual Farm and Place Drive-by Tour. The event will occur on Wednesday, July 28 at 6:30 PM with the participants meeting in the parking lot of the Agape School at 215 South Main Street, Walworth. (This is the site of the former Seventh Day Baptist Church.)

The tour will include the farms and homes where the Seventh Day Baptist Society members lived, Cobblestone Cemetery, farms on a route to Zenda, a farm museum tour and South Shore Geneva Lake historical sites. Each family will receive a free map and tour book, then proceed on the tour lead by Co-chairwomen Virginia Hall and Mary Kaye Merwin of Delavan. The tour committee consisting of Virginia Hall, Mary Kaye Merwin, Nancy Lehman, Mike Palmer, Denise Woods, Terry Woods, William Wendeberg, Mary Jordan, Beth Shodeen and Jennifer Coon has worked for months acquiring historical information and personal interviews for the tour. For additional information please call 262-275-2426.