FREE WHITEWATER

City, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment, Recall, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.17.24: Wisconsin’s April Employment Numbers

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:28 and sunset 8:14 for 14h 45m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 69.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1673, the Jolliet and Marquette Expedition gets underway as Louis Jolliet, Father Jacques Marquette, and five French voyageurs depart from the mission of St. Ignace, at the head of Lake Michigan, to reconnoiter the Mississippi River. The party traveled in two canoes throughout the summer of 1673, traveling across Wisconsin, down the Mississippi to the Arkansas River, and back again.

On this day in 1973,  Televised Watergate hearings begin in the United States Senate. On this day in

Eric Gunn reports Wisconsin jobs, employment numbers remained strong in April:

Wisconsin jobs and employment held steady in April, extending a strong economic streak that has been in place for more than two years, according to the state labor department.

“Businesses are still telling us that they are looking for workers,” said Dennis Winters, chief economist at the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD), at a briefing Thursday on the April jobs numbers. “Anybody that’s out there [has] probably got a pretty good chance of getting a job if they’ve got some skills to offer. We expect that to continue, too.”

The projected number of jobs in Wisconsin reached just under 3.05 million in April, while the unemployment rate fell below 3%.

The monthly statistical projections are based on two surveys conducted by the federal government. Projections about the labor force and employment are based on a household survey that asks people whether they are working or looking for work, among other questions. The jobs numbers are projected from a separate survey asking employers how many people are on their payrolls.

Based on the household survey projections, in April nearly 3.14 million Wisconsin residents were in the state’s labor force, either working or actively seeking work, DWD reported Thursday — 65.6% of the state’s population over the age of 16. Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate for the month was almost three percentage points higher than that of the U.S., 62.7%.

What a shame it would be for Whitewater to cling to ideas from her failed past rather than join in the favorable trends that other communities are now enjoying. And yet, and yet a few tired men would like nothing more than that a community of fifteen thousand should live as though it served only a few.

More to come.

A Mission to Better Understand Earth’s Polar Regions:

Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Politics, Recall, Speaker Vos, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.16.24: What Vos Wrought

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:29 and sunset 8:13 for 14h 43m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 59.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1842,  the first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail from Elm Grove, Missouri, with 100 pioneers.

Rich Kremer reports Dueling radio ads in southeastern Wisconsin call for, against recalling Robin Vos (‘Racine Recall Committee ad accuses Vos of blocking impeachment of top election official, while Wisconsinites for Liberty Foundation ad call recall organizers ‘out-of-state creeps’)

Conservative activists trying for a second time this year to remove Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos from office have launched a $50,000 ad campaign encouraging residents of Vos’ district to sign on to the effort. 

Meanwhile, a group aligned with the speaker is running radio ads calling recall organizers “radicals” and encouraging residents to reject the effort. 

The Racine Recall Committee’s latest radio ad accuses Vos of protecting Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe from impeachment and includes audio of him saying he would work to keep former President Donald Trump from becoming the Republican nominee.

“Vos is bad for elections, bad for Wisconsin and bad for America,” the ad said. “If you live in his district in Racine County, sign the new recall petition.” 

Here’s that radio ad against Vos:

Vos brought this on Wisconsin and himself by advancing conspiracists like Michael Gableman.

Somewhere, possibly in Whitewater, there’s someone (albeit someone impossibly dense) who thinks Robin Vos is a shrewd man whose name is worth dropping now and again.

No, and no again.

How unfortunate that Mad magazine is no longer publishing; Vos would have been a contender for that publication’s cover.

Why Does NASA Want to Explore Jupiter’s Ocean Moon?:

America, CDA, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy

Daily Bread for 5.15.24: National Inflation Rate Improves Slightly

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:30 and sunset 8:11 for 14h 41m 31s of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 50.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board meets in closed session shortly after 5 PM, to return to open session thereafter this evening. Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1911,  in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.

Rachel Siegel reports Inflation improved slightly in April, with timing for rate cuts still uncertain:

Inflation showed some signs of improvement in April, as policymakers grapple with whether their fight against abnormally high price growth is losing ground.

Data released Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed prices rose 3.4 percent in April, compared with the year before. That’s down a bit from the 3.5 percent notched in March, and follows months of hotter-than-expected reports. Prices rose 0.3 percent compared with the month before.

In a particularly encouraging note, a key reading of inflation known as “core” — which strips out more volatile categories like food and energy — rose 0.3 percent. That measure was up 3.6 percent on an annual basis, the lowest year-over-year increase since 2021. Policymakers pay close attention to that gauge because it helps them tease out stickier sources of inflation from the kinds of rising prices that typically bounce around month to month.

If conditions improve nationally, and if that national improvement reaches Whitewater, then what will local policymakers make of that improvement? If conditions do not improve nationally, and that lack of improvement besets Whitewater, then how will local policymakers carry on?

Bringing back policymakers from the failed past will only ensure a failed future. Again, a reminder:

The only reason to return to the policies and leaders of the past would be if someone had no hope of either any possible growth or no hope for ameliorating any possible decline. That is, yesterday’s self-promoting mediocrities would be of value to Whitewater only if nothing anyone did would matter.  See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom and Now is Whitewater’s Time to Seize an Improving National and State Economy. Only hopelessness among many or the selfishness of a few would lead Whitewater to return to her economic past.

People choose freely, sometimes well, sometimes poorly.

Sage the Miniature Poodle wins Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club:

Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Law, Voting Rights, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.14.24: Absentee Drop Boxes, Reconsidered

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 60. Sunrise is 5:31 and sunset 8:10 for 14h 39m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 40.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1953, approximately 7,100 brewery workers in Milwaukee perform a walkout, marking the start of the 1953 Milwaukee brewery strike.

Henry Redman reports that the Wisconsin Supreme Court reconsiders legality of absentee drop boxes:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday heard oral arguments in a case that could once again allow the use of drop boxes for the return of absentee ballots. 

Drop boxes were prohibited by the Court in 2022 when the body’s then-conservative majority decided in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission that state law only allowed for absentee ballots to be brought directly to municipal clerks, not to unmanned drop boxes.

Ballot drop boxes had been used in Wisconsin for decades, largely with slots or boxes at municipal buildings, however in 2020 they surged in popularity as voters searched for ways to safely vote during the COVID-19 pandemic. A Waukesha County voter sued the elections commission, arguing that it had given unlawful guidance to clerks on the permissibility of the boxes. 

Following the 2020 election, conservatives turned on the use of the boxes, arguing they were vulnerable to fraud and abuse. The boxes had been used all across the state, in both rural and urban areas, but conservatives argued they opened the state’s elections up to the possibility of “ballot harvesting.”

In the Teigen case, the Court found that because state law didn’t explicitly permit drop boxes, they’re not allowed. The decision prompted former President Donald Trump to again claim that he had won Wisconsin in 2020, stating that all ballots that had been dropped into the boxes were illegal and shouldn’t have been counted. 

Earlier this year, the national Democratic group Priorities USA brought a lawsuit challenging the Teigen decision, asking the now-liberal controlled Court to overturn its previous decision. Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul joined the case, arguing for the use of drop boxes, while the Republican-controlled Legislature joined to argue drop boxes should remain outlawed. 

The case now before the court is Priorities USA v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2024AP000164, L.C.#2023CV1900. Oral argument was yesterday at 9:45 AM. The question before the court now:

Whether to overrule the Court’s holding in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, 2022 WI 64, 403 Wis. 2d 607, 976 N.W.2d 519, that Wis. Stat. § 6.87 precludes the use of secure drop boxes for the return of absentee ballots to municipal clerks…

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s prior ruling on ballot drop boxes was in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, 2022 WI 64, 403 Wis. 2d 607, 976 N.W.2d 519.

Indonesia’s Mount Ibu spews thick ash cloud:

Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.13.24: Conspiracists of Thornapple, Wisconsin Eliminate Electronic Voting Machines

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see afternoon showers with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:32 and sunset 8:09 for 14h 37m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Planning Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1862, the USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

Molly Beck reports A small Wisconsin town eliminated its electronic voting machines, leading to a federal review:

A rural Wisconsin community’s decision to eliminate electronic voting machines has attracted the attention of federal investigators who are questioning how voters with disabilities cast ballots in the town of fewer than 1,000 people.

The vote by a small board overseeing the Town of Thornapple in Rusk County, population 711, to rely solely on hand counting paper ballots took place last year and caught the eye of state and federal officials after the April presidential primary election when advocates for voters with disabilities rang alarm bells.

The decision was made in June 2023, according to town supervisor Tom Zelm ? around the time of a discussion in the local newspaper over whether to abandon electronic voting machines and amid visits to the area by one of the nation’s most prominent purveyors of election conspiracy theories. Town officials would not tell the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel exactly what prompted the vote, which could violate federal laws mandating accessible voting options, and have so far not responded to requests under the state’s public records law for minutes of the town board meeting during which the vote was taken.

But Thornapple voter and Rusk County Democratic Party chairwoman Erin Webster says she discovered the roots of the decision are in former President Donald Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election.

In a recording made by Webster of an April 2 telephone conversation with town supervisor Jack Zupan that was posted to YouTube, Zupan tells Webster that the board voted to remove the machines because “we believe that there was a stolen election and the computers have to go because they’re full of error.”

Here’s Webster’s recording of Thornapple Supervisor Jack Zupan talking about eliminating electronic voting machines:

Erin Webster writes of her recording: “I called my Supervisor Jack Zupan after I voted and there was no voting machine at my polling location. The County clerk told me it was legally required per Federal ADA guidelines. I wanted to know why the town would not have the electronic machines, so I called him. I realized immediately I should record what he was saying.”

Here’s Zupan’s unfounded, conspiracy-based position about the 2020 election:

0:02: well we made that decision and we’re going to stand with it so why was that
0:08 we believe that that that there was a stolen election and and the computers have to go

Zupan’s full remarks are an example of motivated reasoning.

Thornapple, Wisconsin has work to do. But then, on far different matters closer to home, so do we in Whitewater, Wisconsin.

Plane lands safely without landing gear after circling Australian airport for hours to burn off fuel:

Daily Bread, Technology

Daily Bread for 5.11.24: Delivery Robots

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 66. Sunrise is 5:34 and sunset 8:07 for 14h 33m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1955, the NBA approves transferring the financially strapped Milwaukee Hawks to St. Louis. The Hawks stayed in St. Louis until 1968, then moved to Atlanta.

The Future of Takeaways in Dubai:

Chinese zoo under fire after dyeing dogs to resemble pandas:

Daily Bread, Flop Sweat, US Senate Race 2024, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 5.10.24: It’s Not Going So Well for Hovde

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 67. Sunrise is 5:35 and sunset 8:06 for 14h 30m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, the Second Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia.

Rich Kremer reports Recent polling shows Baldwin leading Hovde in Senate race (‘A Quinnipiac poll shows Baldwin leading Hovde by 12 points among registered voters’):

With Election Day less than six months away, multiple new polls show Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin leading Republican challenger Eric Hovde in the race for Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seat.
That incl

That includes one survey that showed a double-digit lead for Baldwin, who has led among registered voters in every poll conducted since Hovde entered the race.

A Quinnipiac University Poll released Wednesday shows Baldwin ahead of Hovde among registered voters by 12 percentage points, with 54 percent saying they’d vote for Baldwin and 42 percent saying they’d vote for Hovde.

There’s still time, but Hovde is proving to be a weak WISGOP choice facing a savvy incumbent.

On Hovde previously: Tim Michels 2.0 Eric Hovde Announces U.S. Senate Run, SHOCKING: WISGOP SCIENTISTS INVENT TIME MACHINE, Eric Hovde Should Fire His Political Consultants and Hire a Therapist, and Another Vanity Candidate.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, May 14th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, The Color Purple

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Tuesday, May 14th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of The Color Purple @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Drama/Musical

Rated PG-13

2 hours, 21 minutes (2023)

A young black woman in the South in 1909 faces much hardship and sadness, her only happiness being her family and a new suitor. Starring Taraji P. Henson, Colman Domingo, Jon Batiste, and Lou Gossett, Jr. Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actress, Danielle Brooks.

One can find more information about The Color Purple at the Internet Movie Database.




Bad Ideas, Boosterism, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Daily Bread, Flop Sweat, Foxconn, Low Standards, Misplaced Priorities, Special Interests, Willful Ignorance, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.9.24: A Reminder on Whitewater’s Fumbling & Stumbling Old Guard

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see morning showers with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:36 and sunset 8:05 for 14h 28m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1662, the figure who later became Mr. Punch makes his first recorded appearance in England.

FREE WHITEWATER has chronicled and critiqued the failed corporate welfare scheme that was the Wisconsin Foxconn project (links to many of those posts at the bottom of this post). Now, with Foxconn nothing more than a shell project vanished into the fog, there’s a genuine, private, multi-billion dollar Microsoft investment on that Wisconsin site: Microsoft AI center on site of Trump’s failed Foxconn deal? (‘The multibillion-dollar [private!] investment is expected to create 2,000 permanent jobs and 2,300 temporary union construction jobs’).

In Whitewater, an old guard of bankers, landlords, lobbyists, public relations men, etc., pushed Foxconn more than once. Any ordinary person of normal reasoning and sound basic knowledge would have seen Foxconn was a political scheme masquerading as a legitimate project. And yet, somehow, these same Whitewater types hold themselves out as experts on development policy. They backed a joke plan because they were — and are — unsuited to serious policy. See A Sham News Story on Foxconn. (The local business group was the ‘Greater’ Whitewater Committee.)

Trickle-down sloganeering is the best these local types have ever produced. It’s not a free market they want; small-town boosterism and cronyism haven’t uplifted household and individual incomes in this city. See A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA.

Some of these men, when at the Community Development Authority, let this city languish while promoting themselves. Even at the tail end of an economic boom, these gentlemen were walking around trying to figure out which end was up. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.

Whitewater deserves better than this ilk. These men deserve an ongoing critique, and detailed review of their record, if they capture that institution again.

Here is the Foxconn scheme, that these local, old-guard Whitewater men touted, as succinctly described in a national story:

In 2018, when Foxconn, at Trump’s urging, announced plans to create 13,000 good-paying jobs in Mount Pleasant, Wis., he celebrated the company’s $10 billion venture as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Wielding a golden shovel, Trump touted the Foxconn flat-panel display factory as evidence of a broad manufacturing revival stirred by his 2017 tax cuts and tariffs on imported steel. “You know, 18 months ago, this was a field, and now it’s one of the most advanced places of any kind you’ll see anywhere in the world. It’s incredible,” Trump crowed.

The Foxconn facility was to have included dozens of buildings dotting a giant plot of land three times the size of New York’s Central Park. But the project accomplished little more than the destruction of 100 local homes and farms before the company drastically scaled back its ambitions.

In 2020, Wisconsin state officials denied the Taiwanese company special tax credits, saying it had abandoned its original commitment, employed fewer than 520 people and spent just $300 million. Local taxpayers were left with a tab of more than $500 million for site preparation.

By last summer, Foxconn had built four structures on one corner of the site, which were in sporadic use, according to locals. One large building that was originally billed as a manufacturing facility was being used as a warehouse, one former employee said. Foxconn at the time said it employed 1,000 people in Mount Pleasant building computer servers. The flat-panel display factory never materialized.

On Foxconn previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition,  Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirm Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment, Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them, Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair, It Shouldn’t, Foxconn: Wrecking Ordinary Lives for Nothing, Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?, Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!, Foxconn: First In, Now Out, Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no, Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke, Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing, Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls, Foxconn Notices the Noticeable, Journal Sentinel’s Rick Romell Reports the Obvious about Foxconn Project, Foxconn’s ‘Innovation’ Centers: Still Empty a Year Later, Foxconn & UW-Madison: Two Yearsand Less Than One Percent Later…, Accountability Comes Calling at Foxconn, Highlight’s from The Verge’s Foxconn Assessment, After Years of Promises, Foxconn Will Think of Something…by July, Foxconn’s Venture Capital Fund, New, More Realistic Deal Means 90% Reduction in Goals, Seth Meyers on One of Trump’s (and Walker’s) Biggest Scams, the Foxconn Deal, and Adding the Amounts Spent for Foxconn (So Far).

Boosterism, Catspaw, City, Conflicts of Interest, Daily Bread, Ethics, Low Standards, Misplaced Priorities, School District, Self-Dealing, Special Interests, Speech & Debate, Toxic Positivity, Tragic Optimism, Willful Ignorance, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.8.24: The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town (Adjacent Support)

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:38 and sunset 8:04 for 14h 26m 27s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1877, at Gilmore’s Gardens in New York City, the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opens.

In September, I wrote of The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town:

In a small town, and perhaps elsewhere, there are four tiers within a special-interest hierarchy: principals, operatives, catspaws, and residents. Only the first three serve, reliably, the special interest; the fourth is a large group of unaffiliated people that the special interests must persuade or dissuade repeatedly. 

A special-interest faction, or in the case of the Whitewater Schools an unresponsive board and superintendent, depends on the reliable service of the first three groups (principals, operatives, and catspaws). Some residents, however, may be counted on now and again to support special-interest or insider-group actions. These kinds of residents offer hit-or-miss support. I’ll list a few of them, readily recognizable in Whitewater and towns across the world.

Boosterism and Toxic Positivity. There are always a few residents who feel that criticism is a crime, an offense against man and God, and so must not be tolerated. The boosters feel that accentuating the positive, and burying the negative, is a legitimate (indeed necessary) pursuit. You’ll see them patrol social media looking to rebuke others who offer sincere criticism.

The delusional are sufferers of toxic positivity; the most acute cases are simply lickspittles.

Many of these types are a few moments away from screaming ‘love it or leave it.’ All of those who would do so are ignorant of their own country’s proud history of robust criticism. Even the most degraded hovel in medieval Europe, flea and lice-infested, had apologists of someone’s special schemes. Centuries later, in an America that is a world-historical state, there are still a few locals who live as though American liberties meant nothing, carrying on as though vulgar locals in a rat-dominated hamlet of 1300s Bavaria.

The indictment and conviction of the boosters: narrow of mind and small of heart.

These types, however, are useful as apologists and enforcers of special-interest schemes.

(A better outlook: Tragic Optimism as an Alternative to Toxic Positivity.)

The Concerned Passerby. When faced with a challenge to their position, special interest men cannot always count on themselves as principals, or their operatives and reliable catspaws. Cronyism and entitlement do not run themselves! They’ll look around, and find someone who seems unaffiliated, but is willing to do their work now and again. Although not reliable all the time, these types can be persuaded for a specific task.

They’ll seem like concerned passersby, simply trying to help, but no! They’re truly working to advance a special-interest or closed-government perspective. They’re harder to spot than boosters, sufferers of toxic positivity, or lickspittles, but still identifiable to ordinary residents. They’ll show up and profess simple concern, as ‘adults in the room,’ but after listening to them, it’s clear they’re rationalizing a nefarious cause (e.g., advancing a self-dealer’s plan, or shutting down a discussion).

Scoundrels. Special-interest men want to win, and that means bending public policy to their own ends. Closed-government types want to control public policy without public consent. In both cases, they pervert public life. They create a corrupted, degenerate form of government.

When faced with a difficult challenge, and when smearing challengers is too much even for principals, operatives, and catspaws, they’ll turn to scoundrels. The Oxford American Dictionary offers a plentiful list of synonyms that describe the type (e.g., rogue, rascal, good-for-nothing, reprobate, unprincipled person; cheat, swindler, fraudster, trickster, charlatan; informal villain, beast, son of a bitch, SOB, rat, louse, cur, hound, skunk, heel, snake, snake in the grass, wretch, scumbag, bad egg, stinker).

Scoundrels will say anything to aid a special-interest or closed-government cause, while the principals, operatives, and catspaws delight from a distance. (These main types know what’s happening, hoping it will benefit them, yet hoping it won’t be identified back to them.)

In all of this, however, the overwhelming majority of ordinary residents are normal & well-adjusted. It’s a only few, entitled and avaricious, or entitled and autocratic, who beset and bedevil a community.

NASA Simulation’s Plunge Into the Whitewater School District’s Central Office a Black Hole: