The United States Census Bureau today released its first official 2010 population figures for Wisconsin counties, cities, villages, and towns. These are exciting numbers, and not only for comparing rival cities and hometown trends. The census data will be used, among other things, to tweak the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts to ensure equal representation — a process that will no doubt be mired down in gerrymandering and political intrigue. I'll set that aside for this post, however, and focus on the numbers.

Wisconsin's population grew from 5.36 million to 5.68 million between 2000 and 2010. That's an increase of about 6% — slower growth than in most states, so Wisconsin's rank has slipped from 18 to 20 over the last ten years. That slide in proportion is small enough that Wisconsin will still keep eight congressional representatives and ten electoral votes for the next decade. While overall growth was sluggish, it's notable that the state's Hispanic population increased by over 72% in the last ten years. Hispanic residents now make up nearly 6% of the state's total population.

The map below shows the relative change in the total population of Wisconsin's counties:

The map shows that Wisconsin's population growth was spread fairly consistently across the state and carried over into many rural counties, with the exception of the north woods. Fifty-two counties gained population, and twenty had a loss. This is a stark contrast to what happened in Iowa, where 2/3 of the counties saw a population decrease.

Wisconsin's largest cities remained fairly steady over the last ten years. Milwaukee continued to lose population but at a decreasing rate, and it remains by far the state's largest city. Near Milwaukee, Racine and West Allis also lost population, while Waukesha grew by 9%. Madison saw its population rise by 25,155 people, a jump of 12%. The only change in ranking was that Janesville overtook West Allis as the state's 10th largest city.

Here in Southwest Wisconsin, every county except Crawford gained population. A number of factors likely contributed to Crawford County's loss, but the major back-to-back floods on the Kickapoo River in 2007 and 2008 no doubt played a role: Gays Mills in Crawford County lost over a fifth of its residents; Soldiers Grove lost nearly one in ten. The county seat at Prairie du Chien also experienced a slight decline.

In Grant County, Cassville fell below 1,000 people, and the county seat Lancaster experienced a slight decline, but Platteville's population jumped from 9,989 to 11,224. Fennimore's population skipped ahead of both Mineral Point and Darlington.

La Crosse, the largest city in the region, remains almost unchanged in size with only a slight decline, but it's largest suburb Onalaska grew by nearly 20%.

The table below includes figures for several cities and villages in Southwest Wisconsin. Click on a column header to sort the table by that column.

You can dig for even more census data at the Census Bureau's American Factfinder website. What do you make of the new figures? As always, feel welcome to comment below.

Update: See my new site MapWI.org for interactive maps of the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly!

By now just about everyone has heard about the contentious Wisconsin Assembly vote early Friday morning that approved Governor Scott Walker's contentious "budget repair" bill in mere seconds — without even allowing time for the entire assembly to vote! Since I couldn't find a map of the vote anywhere else, I decided to make one myself. Now it is easy to see whose representatives have been listening, whose have not, and whose weren't given a chance to represent their constituents at all.

You are welcome to copy and share this map. If you want more information, you can access the full vote roll from the Wisconsin State Legislature website. They also offer detailed and numbered maps of the state assembly districts.

Edit: The map has been corrected to show that Janet Bewley (D) of District 74 (Ashland) did not get in a vote. I apologize for any confusion caused earlier.

Protestors in Wisconsin on February 19, 2011.

Photo © 2011 Mark Danielson. Obtained under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.

The protests this month in Madison have incorporated much discussion of fairness — something that people on all sides claim to be seeking. The debate reminds me of a quote by Dr. Samuel Johnson, a British scholar best known for compiling A Dictionary of the English Language in the 1750s. Dr. Johnson was a staunch conservative in an era when conservatism meant defending aristocratic privilege, and he once disparaged an egalitarian movement in England by remarking, "Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves."

These words struck me as a very legitimate criticism. Why is it that those who stand up for fairness so often fixate on cutting down those who are better off, rather than lifting up all of society?

Make no mistake: Dr. Johnson was on the wrong side of political history. At the cusp of the American Revolution, for example, he wrote that "there can be no limited government" and that "since the Americans have made it necessary to subdue them, may they be subdued ... When they are reduced to obedience, may that obedience be secured by stricter laws and stronger obligations!" This does not mean that all of Dr. Johnson's observations lack merit. His comment about levellers seems enduringly and unfortunately relevant. It is, however, something we can change. When we work towards fairness, we should strive to level up, not to level down.

I grant that there are limits. We cannot all rise to be aristocrats, for there would then be no one left to serve our feasts or plow our fields. That dependence on servitude is where the truth becomes manifest: real unfairness comes not so much when some people have more than others, but rather when some people have more than others through coercion — when one class lives high by exploiting the labor of others.

People who legitimately seek fairness and equality will work, not to bring people down, but to raise people up by leveling the distribution of power, eliminating the privileges that give one class, race, or gender the power to exploit or to hold down the rest. That is the way to level up.

Read the rest of this entry »

It's official: 66 of 99 counties in Iowa lost people between 2000 and 2010, even while the overall state population increased by 4.1% owing to the growth of large cities and especially suburbs — continuing a decades-long trend. These details from Census 2010 were released today by the U.S. Census Bureau:

Iowa is the first state in the region for which detailed Census 2010 data has been released. The Census Bureau plans to release data on a rolling state-by-state basis to be completed by April 1. I'll be sure to note the release of data for Wisconsin here at Acceity when that arrives. In the meantime, the Iowa returns offer something to think about.

Protests in Egypt continue to make headlines across the globe today, but not everyone is getting the same story. Take a look at this morning's (8:00am CDT) top story from the web feeds of two leading news agencies on opposite sides of the Atlantic: the AP in the United States, and the BBC in the United Kingdom.

AP "Top Headlines" Feed (archived | live):

Gangs free militants, foreigners try to flee Egypt
"Gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn Sunday, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates as police vanished from the streets of Cairo and other cities." (article)

BBC "Top Stories" Feed (archived | live):

Protesters dominate central Cairo
"Anti-government protesters take over the centre of the Egyptian capital Cairo, as armed citizens' groups form to counter widespread looting." (article)

These stories naturally each go on at length, but I've only copied the headline and summary broadcast by each organization's RSS/Atom feed. Often, this is all that subscribers glance at anyway.

Although both reports are rooted in fact, the difference in emphasis is startling. The AP headline, "Gangs free militants, foreigners try to flee Egypt," stresses chaos, danger, and crime. The less sensational BBC headline, "Protesters dominate central Cairo," stresses the scope of protest — a human right. You might say that the BBC emphasizes "civil" and the AP emphasizes "disobedience."

The summaries show even more contrast. The AP raises the familiar American terror of "Muslim militants" freed by "gangs of armed men", whereas the BBC recognizes "armed citizens' groups." These are not instances of using different terms to refer to the same thing; the focus is on different facts altogether. The facts are, however, related: the AP establishes that "police vanished from the streets," stressing a descent into chaos, while the BBC confirms that "citizens' groups form to counter widespread looting," stressing the people's positive attempts to maintain order.

What I've described is only one isolated example of the disparate perspectives that can arise between two supposedly neutral and objective news agencies. The Internet's deleterious effects on our attention spans might exaggerate these differences, for when news writers compress complicated stories into one-sentence blurbs for syndication, they're likely to concentrate their biases too. Thankfully, the Internet also provides readers with mechanisms for dealing with bias: we can subscribe to a dozen feeds like this from around the world and gain diverse perspectives on every issue, we can click "read more" for the full story, and we can discuss the news on blogs or social networks. The Internet gives us more tools for making sense of the world than ever before — and more reason to use the tools it gives us.