FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread, Gubernatorial Race 2026, Tom Tiffany, Trump, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 10.9.26: Three Billionaires Fill Tom Tiffany’s Campaign War Chest

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon showers with a high of 70. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset is 6:22 for 11 hours 21 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

A false-color composite (CXO/HST/Spitzer Space Telescope) image of the supernova remnant nebula from SN 1604. Public Domain, Link.

On this day in 1604, Kepler’s Supernova is first observed within the Milky Way. It remains the most recent supernova observed with certainty within the Milky Way:

Visible to the naked eye, Kepler’s Star was brighter at its peak than any other star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of -2.5. It was visible during the day for over three weeks. Records of its sighting exist in European, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic sources.

It was the second supernova to be observed in a generation (after SN 1572 seen by Tycho Brahe in Cassiopeia). No further supernovae have since been observed with certainty in the Milky Way, though many others outside the galaxy have been seen since S Andromedae in 1885. SN 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud was visible to the naked eye at night.

It’s lawful, but perhaps telling, that WISGOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany’s campaign funds disproportionately come from only three people. Did Tom Tiffany receive more than 90% of his campaign donations from 3 billionaires since July 2026?:

Yes.

Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor, received more than 90% in campaign contributions from three billionaires – Diane Hendricks, Richard Uihlein and Elizabeth Uihlein – for the reporting period of July to September 2026. 

Tiffany’s campaign fund received more than $26 million, and $24 million, or 93%, came from the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The party received $27 million of its $29 million from the Uihleins and Hendricks in that period. 

Individuals can donate up to $20,000 to a campaign, but can give unlimited amounts to a party, which can then contribute unlimited amounts to a campaign.  

See Eva Wen, Did Tom Tiffany receive more than 90% of his campaign donations from 3 billionaires since July 2026?, Wisconsin Watch, October 9, 2026.

What should one make of this? First, it’s lawful: Tiffany’s done nothing wrong in this regard. Three fat cats gave to the WISGOP, and the WISGOP gave to Tiffany.

Second, Tiffany could win this race. He’s slightly behind in the few reputable, published polls on our governor’s race. (We have fewer polls than in larger states or states with flamboyant candidates who have drawn more attention.)

Third, and this should surprise no one, Tiffany is a bland choice reflecting typical WISGOP positions. He doesn’t have a significant proportion of small donors because he’s not the sort of candidate who attracts small donors. (If anyone voted for Tiffany in the primary thinking he was that sort of candidate, then those voters are profoundly confused.) In fairness to Tiffany, that’s not his campaign, that’s not his manner, that’s not his outlook. He’s a backbench congressman running for governor with Donald Trump’s endorsement. If that endorsement had gone to someone else, it’s improbable Tiffany would have been the WISGOP nominee.

Tiffany’s whole campaign has been advanced through the endorsements or contributions of a few billionaires in the primary or general election. He wouldn’t be on this stage otherwise.

One can be sure that he’ll have his dependency on those very few in mind if he should become governor.

Navi Pillay awarded Nobel Peace Prize for advancing international justice:

The South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay, who is currently an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote peace and international law. Pillay’s work “is a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in announcing her win in Oslo, Norway.

Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.8.26: What Everyone Except One Ignorant Man and His Enablers Knew — Americans Pay the Tariffs

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 70. Sunrise is 6:59 and sunset is 6:25 for 11 hours 26 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Downtown Whitewater Activation Initiative holds an open house at 8:30 AM.

On this day in 1862, Union forces successfully halt the Confederate invasion of Kentucky after the Battle of Perryville.

Earlier this year, Donald J. Trump, having lived his whole life off an inherited real estate business from his father, declared of tariffs that “I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off” Americans. See Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the State of the Union, Feb. 24, 2026, transcript reproduced in PBS NewsHour.

No and no again. On the contrary, these many burdensome tariffs that Trump has imposed are paid by Americans, whether businesses or consumers. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Columbia University recently published an important study estimating how tariffs truly affect consumer prices. Tariffs raise consumer prices:

A tariff raises the price a U.S. importer (which could be a firm or a consumer) pays for a foreign good, unless the foreign exporter cuts its price to absorb some of the cost. In a previous post, we found that foreign exporters lowered their prices very little, so that nearly 90 percent of the 2025 tariffs were passed through to U.S. import prices. We find the same result here using data through February 2026. The effect is immediate: import prices rise almost one for one with tariffs in the first month after a tariff is raised. Our conclusion is unchanged when we account for exchange-rate movements: the dollar depreciated over this period, which also raised import prices, but we still estimate a tariff pass-through of around 90 percent.

[…]

Our estimates attribute this increase [in consumer goods prices] to the tariffs: by February 2026, tariffs had contributed 2.9 percentage points to goods price inflation, and without them goods prices would have fallen slightly.

Tariffs Raised Consumer Goods Price Inflation

Line chart tracking the actual change in consumer prices for the goods in the authors’ sample (solid red) and the authors’ estimate of the contribution of tariffs (dashed blue) in percentage (vertical axis) from 2022 to 2026 (horizontal axis); the authors estimate that by February 2026, tariffs had contributed 2.9 percentage points to goods’ price inflation, and without them, goods’ prices would have fallen slightly.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; U.S. Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics; U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC); U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; authors’ calculations.
Notes: The solid line is the twelve-month change in consumer prices for the sixty-seven non-oil goods categories in our sample, weighted by 2022 consumer expenditure. The dashed line subtracts our estimate of the contribution of tariffs, shown by the shaded area. The estimates compare goods that were more exposed to tariffs with goods that were less exposed, holding economy-wide factors fixed.

(Emphasis added.) See Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise, and David E. Weinstein, How Fast Do Tariffs Pass Through into Consumer Prices?, Liberty St. Econ., October 6, 2026.

Consumer goods price inflation was falling quickly in 2023 and 2024, but began to rise (to a level now higher than in 2024) after Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” imposition of tariffs.

Launching an ill-considered, ill-planned war in the Persian Gulf has done nothing to improve our economy. It has, however, done much to weaken Wisconsin’s economy. See FREE WHITEWATER, Wisconsin, Dependent on Canadian Trade, Braces for More Tariffs and Wisconsin’s Economy Depends on Diesel (and Now Diesel Costs Much More).

‘I hadn’t heard about a hurricane,’ Trump says on plans to watch Georgia-Alabama game:

Forecasts have the storm menacing the Gulf Coast. That might affect Alabama in coming days.

Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Energy, Free Markets, Trump, War, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.7.26: A War Brought Us Here. An Executive Order Won’t Get Us Out.

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:59 and sunset is 6:25 for 11 hours 26 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4 PM and the Landmarks Commission at 6 PM.

On this day in 1777, Americans defeat British forces under General John Burgoyne in the Second Battle of Saratoga, compelling Burgoyne’s eventual surrender.

Diesel fuel is inordinately expensive, with the reckless and feckless war against Iran having pushed fuel costs higher. See FREE WHITEWATER, Wisconsin’s Economy Depends on Diesel (and Now Diesel Costs Much More), September 18, 2026.

Does the man who started this war in February have a solution in October? No, he does not.

Instead, he has a futility wrapped in an executive order:

The Trump administration, growing increasingly fretful of high fuel prices just a month before the U.S. midterm elections, issued late Monday a novel executive order meant to make diesel fuel a little cheaper for beleaguered truckers and farmers. It almost certainly won’t help.

U.S. President Donald Trump authorized the deferral, through the end of the year, of federal taxes on diesel fuel used to power vehicles on roads and highways. (That tax revenue, like the gasoline tax, helps pay for highway maintenance.) His solution is to temporarily legalize the use of so-called red-dye diesel—a tax-free diesel flavor normally earmarked for off-road uses such as agriculture, mining, and logging—for use by truckers.

[…]

But there are a lot of problems with the hail-mary measure. For starters, it is only a deferral of those federal fuel taxes, not an outright suspension. Unless Congress passes legislation, at some point those deferred taxes will come due, which simply means storing up bigger bills and bigger accounting headaches for truckers down the road. 

“It’s one thing to waive a tax and another thing to simply defer it. This just looks like a mess, but then again, it’s all a circus,” said Tom Kloza, the chief energy advisor at Gulf Oil and a four-decade veteran of petroleum product markets.

More importantly, while the measure could, if taken up by both sellers and buyers of red-dye diesel, slightly lower prices for some highway users, it won’t add any supplies to a very tight market. The reason U.S. diesel prices are high is because supplies of diesel are strained, and there is little relief on the horizon. U.S. refiners can’t produce any more than they already are, and other global exporters have voluntarily or involuntarily curbed their own supplies.

“This doesn’t move the needle in any way on diesel availability,” Kloza said.

See Keith Johnson, Trump’s red-dye diesel plan has a major flaw, Foreign Policy, October 6, 2026.

Economic ignorance isn’t the stuff of victory — it’s the stuff of otherwise foreseeable consequences regrettably ignored.

James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Cosmic ‘Technicolor Dreamscape’:

Take a close look at NGC 7129, a spectacular stellar nursery about 3,300 light-years from Earth, in this stunning image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope that has been described as a “technicolor dreamscape” by the European Space Agency (ESA). Webb’s infrared views reveal dense clouds of gas and dust, revealing stars and protostars at different stages of formation. The bright central star LkH 234 is surrounded by a massive cavity carved into the molecular cloud by powerful outflows, while younger protostars hidden in the dusty region to the right are blasting out streams of superheated material.

Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Trade, Trump

Daily Bread for 10.6.26: Markets Confound Donald J. Trump Yet Again

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset is 6:27 for 11 hours 30 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 18.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1927, The Jazz Singer, the first prominent “talkie” movie, opens.

In free trade between nations, a trade surplus or deficit, alone, tells us little about a nation’s economic health — what matters is why the balance exists and whether the underlying economic conditions are sound. In Donald J. Trump’s way of thinking, a trade deficit means that one nation (or one nation’s exporters) is somehow taking money wrongly or unfairly in exchange for supplying goods or services.

This is nonsense: When this libertarian blogger buys a ButterBurger® at Culver’s for cash, it is a fair exchange with Culver’s — I give them cash, and they give me a burger. We’re even. Buying more from someone than one sells to that person does not establish that one’s been cheated.

And so, and so, possessed of a misunderstanding of free trade, Trump has done his best to defy market forces, altering our trade with the world, and reducing commerce that he falsely believes is unfair. He’s failing in that effort (as in so many of his policies):

The U.S. trade deficit rose sharply in August to hit a 17-month high, driven by an increase in imports of petroleum, gold and chips used for artificial intelligence.

The trade deficit — a measure of the difference between what the country imports and what it exports — grew by 13.7 percent from the previous month to $105.6 billion, the largest monthly total since before Mr. Trump imposed his global tariffs in April of last year.

[…]

Imports grew 4.3 percent from the previous month, to a record $420.8 billion. U.S. exports grew 1.4 percent compared with July, hitting $315.2 billion. Because growth in imports outpaced that of exports, the trade deficit widened.

The Trump administration has tried to reduce the trade deficit, which President Trump views as a sign of America’s weak manufacturing sector, by imposing hefty tariffs on everything from toys and steel to drones and auto parts.

But in recent months, the metric has trended stubbornly upward, in part because of the A.I. boom. Companies are importing far more expensive computer chips, most of which are made in Asia, to construct new data centers.

Many economists have also questioned whether tariffs are a good tool for reducing the trade deficit. They argue that the metric is often driven by other macroeconomic forces, like economic growth or government debt.

See Ana Swanson, U.S. Trade Deficit Widens in August (‘New data from the Commerce Department showed that imports grew in the month, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to limit foreign products’), New York Times, October 6, 2026.

There has been a powerful economic basis for free trade for centuries, and a consensus in its favor for generations: Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations bk. IV, ch. II (1776) and Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation ch. VII (1817).

What does one see? One aged real estate man, having inherited his position from his father, presuming to defy market forces of which he’s utterly ignorant.

Francis Halzen wins Nobel Prize in physics for work on ‘ghost particles’ called neutrinos:

University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor Francis Halzen has been named the 2026 Nobel laureate in physics. The Nobel Committee for Physics said Halzen’s work was instrumental to the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. Halzen helped pull the curtain back on a rare gang of neutrinos that scientists consider messengers from the cosmos, offering clues to how the universe evolved.

Daily Bread, Gubernatorial Race 2026, Tom Tiffany, Trump, War

Daily Bread for 10.5.26: Tom Tiffany Voted Five Times Against Ending the Iran War

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 67. Sunrise is 6:56 and sunset is 6:29 for 11 hours 33 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 29.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1921, the World Series is broadcast on radio for the first time.

So, has Tom Tiffany voted five times against ending the Iran war?

Yes.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany voted against five House resolutions directing President Donald Trump to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran. 

Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor, voted as follows:

Tiffany was not present to vote on a Sept. 15 war resolution that came three days after he survived an emergency landing of a plane carrying him from a campaign event.

Tiffany said during a May 14 podcast appearance that it was time to “wrap up” the conflict in Iran. He said on Sept. 22 that his past no votes were because the president already has the authority to exit the war.

See Chris Mueller, Has Tom Tiffany voted five times against ending the Iran war?, Wisconsin Watch, September 30, 2026.

Tiffany’s reasoning behind his five votes is that, because Trump could end the war, Tiffany has no responsibility to say that the war should end. If a man could stop robbing banks, that’s no reason to refrain from demanding that he should stop knocking them off. Under Tiffany’s reasoning, the ability of a person to stop his own destructive behavior precludes anyone else from intervening — even through a lawful vote — to stop that destruction.

Tiffany’s explanation confirms the worst about his approach to Trump: he’s incapable of telling Trump to stop in any situation where Trump is determined to keep going. Tiffany might just as well turn his congressional district over to Trump’s representation for all the difference it makes. If elected governor, Tiffany will do the same for the governor’s mansion, turning it over as if it were a cottage for Donald J. Trump’s personal use, littering it with the same vulgar decor that Trump prefers elsewhere.

How Trump Directed Tax Dollars to Ads Praising Him:

President Trump personally directed the use of taxpayer money for ads praising his presidency, according to people familiar with the matter. Our White House correspondent Maggie Haberman explains.

City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Employment, Housing

Daily Bread for 10.4.26: Sluggish National Job Creation

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 69. Sunrise is 6:55 and sunset is 6:30 for 11 hours 35 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 39.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1957, Sputnik 1 becomes the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.

Friday’s national employment figures were disappointing:

A weaker-than-expected report on the labor market released on Friday affirmed a widespread sentiment: the U.S. economy does not feel as if it is delivering prosperity to everyone.

Employers added 29,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate rose to 4.2 percent, data released Friday by the Labor Department showed, slower than expected growth for a job market that had appeared robust in recent months.

That resiliency has stood in tension with the strain of higher prices as inflation has marched higher since the start of the war in Iran. For most workers, wages haven’t kept up. Growth in average hourly earnings fell to 3.0 percent on an annual basis in September, well below inflation, and the slowest since the pandemic. Employment gains for July and August were revised down by a combined 60,000 jobs.

See Talmon Joseph Smith, U.S. Labor Market Shifts to a Lower Gear (‘The economy added fewer jobs in September and unemployment ticked up, while inflation has maintained pressure on markets and raised costs’), New York Times, October 2, 2026.

Only a few days ago, 1,400 autoworkers were laid off from a truck plant in Ohio:

Sipping tea from beer mugs with his co-workers, Kyle Bos listed the ways his life is changing.

Bos has two daughters, with a third due in January. At the grocery store, five items cost as much as a full cart once did. And on Wednesday, Bos and nearly 1,400 other people were laid off from their jobs at what had been the Navistar truck factory in southwestern Ohio.

The layoffs — occurring just three days before President Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday at a nearby high school — were large enough to basically erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton, Ohio, area. And they are one reason why Bos, 30, plans to spend the final weeks before the November election canvassing votes for Democrats.

Asked how many times he had voted for Trump, Bos held up three tattooed fingers. But he said he’s done with the president.

“Something has to change politically in this country,” said Bos, a member of the United Auto Workers who identifies as a centrist. “Seems like it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”

See Josh Boak, A gut punch in Ohio: Nearly 1,400 laid off at truck factory just days before Trump rally, Associated Press, October 3, 2026.

Now, for Whitewater: This city has managed to add businesses, both retail and light industrial, since January 20, 2025. It’s no easy feat for a small city to swim against a national riptide. Whitewater’s successes have been commendable.

One more observation — vital to a proper economic understanding of Whitewater’s prospects — is that it will not be a choice between jobs and housing, but a simultaneous, synergistic increase of both that assures a positive, prosperous future for Whitewater. (It’s simply false, and often self-interested, when a few aged men argue that only jobs should matter now, with new housing ignored until a time between many years to come and never. On these matters, the municipal administration has the better view.)

In any event, if jobs truly and sincerely mattered to these men of yesteryear, then they’d be among those rejecting and opposing federal economic policy. Haven’t heard that yet.

Why the Diesel Fuel Crisis Has No Easy Solutions:

G-7 countries agreed to release 100 million barrels of diesel fuel and crude oil, but it most likely won’t be enough to bring prices back down. WSJ’s Jinjoo Lee explains why.

15th Senate District, Agriculture, Daily Bread, Dairy, Economy, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 10.3.26: Ruining Dairy After Ruining So Much Else

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset is 6:32 for 11 hours 38 minutes of daylight. The moon is in its last quarter with 50.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater Pride holds its 6th annual Pride Fest today from 10 AM to 3 PM at Cravath Lakefront.

On this day in 1990, the German Democratic Republic is abolished and becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany. The event is afterwards celebrated as German Unity Day.

Wisconsin has a proud tradition of agriculture, and dairy is the very center of that tradition. Some number of dairy producers have supported Donald Trump in each of his campaigns. That support is now unrequited:

IN HIS OTHERWISE INEXPLICABLE trade war with Canada, U.S. dairy was supposed to be the one industry President Donald Trump was actually helping.

He frequently namechecks the sector in his social media posts and interviews about Canada, citing it as evidence that our polite northern neighbors are really a bunch of dirty cheats. Sometimes, Trump complains that Canadian dairy tariffs on the United States are 250 percent; sometimes, according to Trump, they’re 400 percent.

And look, it’s true that dairy trade has been a source of friction between the two countries over the years. Trump’s response to that friction, however, has been to tariff, bully, and ban his way to prosperity. To which American dairy farmers are now saying: Please, stop helping.

[…]

“The notion that for dairy, Canada is a problem to the U.S. is a joke, in my opinion,” said Pete Hardin, the editor of Wisconsin-based dairy publication the Milkweed, which he’s been publishing for forty-seven years. “Canada’s dairy industry is perhaps 10 percent or less of our total milk production.”

[…]

“Canada has taken advantage of us for so many years. The worst of any country,” Trump ranted this week, while wandering off-script at a Hispanic Heritage Month event. “They act like they’re totally innocent. They’re not. They were very bad. But now they’re being taught a little lesson.”

This “little lesson” has been felt on both sides of the border, given our integrated economies. Trump’s saber-rattling and tariffs have been met with counter-tariffs by Canada, including a 25 percent tariff on U.S.-sourced cheese that began last month.

This has already delivered a huge blow to the U.S. dairy sector, particularly in Wisconsin, which produces most of the cheese exported to Canada. Hardin said he’s spoken in the past three weeks with two Wisconsin cheese-plant owners, each of whom said they had large orders set to go to Canada that have been canceled.

See Catherine Rampell, Who Cut The Cheese? Trump Did (“The dairy industry was supposed to be the one sector that benefited from Trump’s trade war”), The Bulwark, October 1, 2026.

I’d recommend Rampell’s post in full — it’s both economically insightful and cleverly crafted.

Now, for Whitewater: It’s possible to be a candidate for Wisconsin Senate District 15, even a WISGOP candidate for that district, and even a WISGOP candidate for that district whose few supporters place the candidate’s signs along Main Street.

It is not possible, however, for that same WISGOP candidate to claim credibly that he’ll “ensure agriculture remains the backbone of our rural economy.” That candidate’s party, and the octogenarian billionaire who leads it, are bringing only loss to Wisconsin’s and America’s economies.

No thank you.

October 2026 Skywatching Tips from NASA:

Saturn takes center stage, a meteor shower lights up the sky, and the Moon visits the Seven Sisters. On October 4, Saturn reaches opposition, giving skywatchers one of the year’s best opportunities to see the ringed planet. In addition, learn about a 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn’s south pole that was recently revealed by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The Orionid meteor shower peaks October 21-22. Debris from Halley’s Comet produces the meteors, but this year, a bright Moon will obscure some of the fainter streaks. The best viewing chances will likely be the hours before dawn, after the Moon sets. Then, on October 27-28, look east in the evening for the Moon passing close to the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters. The star cluster is visible to the unaided eye and even more spectacular through binoculars.

Congress, Daily Bread, Mendacity, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 10.2.26: The All-Too-Predictable Congressman Derrick Van Orden

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset is 6:34 for 11 hours 41 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning gibbous with 62.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1919, seven days after suffering a “physical collapse” following a speech in Pueblo, Colorado, President Wilson has a catastrophic stroke at the White House, leaving him physically and mentally incapacitated for the remainder of his presidency.

Less than a week ago, on Sunday, this libertarian blogger paid Congressman Derrick Van Orden the one compliment of which he is truly deserving: “Extreme populism isn’t Van Orden’s brand (whatever that overused term might mean), it’s his very nature. The one position that Van Orden gets right is to be true to that nature…”

And so Van Orden has been true to that nature, most recently by using deepfake videos to distort the words of his opponent, Rebecca Cooke:

Attorneys for congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke have sent a cease-and-desist letter to U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R- Prairie du Chien, over Van Orden’s use of deepfake videos. 

Cooke, a Democrat, is challenging Van Orden this November in a closely-watched race for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional district.

Van Orden has repeatedly used artificial intelligence to post videos to his X account, showing Cooke saying things she never said.

See Sarah Lehr, Cooke campaign sends cease-and-desist to Congressman Van Orden over AI deepfakes, Wisconsin Public Radio, October 1, 2026.

It’s not necessary to reach the question of whether Van Orden’s distorted videos are defamatory to settle on the conclusion that these videos, like the rest of his campaign, rest on lies and frauds. In this, Van Orden is, again, true to the man he so obediently follows.

I’ll leave aside the question of why Van Orden or his campaign seems to have a familiarity with deepfakes…

Record diesel prices could raise the cost of almost everything you buy:

Record-high diesel prices could push up the cost of food, deliveries and other goods while adding to inflationary pressures.

City, Culture, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.1.26: Iced Coffee at an Interview Is About More than Iced Coffee at an Interview

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will again be rainy with a high of 67. There’s life and beauty in the rain. Sunrise is 6:52 and sunset is 6:36 for 11 hours 44 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning gibbous with 72.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1903, the Boston Americans play the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of the modern World Series. (Boston upsets Pittsburgh five games to three, winning with pitching depth behind Cy Young and Bill Dinneen.)

A recruiter, posting on TikTok, has sparked a national debate in this time of many debates: Should a job candidate bring an iced coffee to an interview? Well. As a question of practicality, the simplest solution for a job-seeker would be to adapt his or her conduct to the interviewer’s expectations. (That is, adapting ordinary, trivial conduct, not principles or truthfulness.)

If the question about iced coffee were, however, merely about adapting ordinary, trivial conduct to a single interview, then discussion of it would not have become so widespread so quickly. It is at bottom a question about cultural expectations between generations, isn’t it?

For myself, if interviewing someone for a position, I would not mind at all if someone brought iced coffee to an interview. In this, my views would be like those of Gov. Pritzker of Illinois:

Yes, indeed. In these or any other times — but certainly in these turbulent times — it’s hard to imagine drawing the line at iced coffee. (Coffee, by the way, is a catalyst for American productivity. That delicious beverage has helped many people and institutions begin the day energetically. Hot or iced, it’s very much part of our society.)

There are cultural conflicts between generations even now over interview drinks, ink, piercings, or a dozen other matters like that. There is not one of those differences that should matter as against a candidate’s abilities and possibilities. On the contrary, trying to inhibit diverse, innocuous cultural differences between one generation and a succeeding one is at best conceited, and at worst oppressive.

Consider markets, broadly and properly working: free and mutually advantageous encounters or transactions between people. Each person comes forward as an individual, and part of that individuality should be freedom of style and presentation (because style and presentation are far more than superficial).

(A quick reminder, however: When someone intentionally tries to adopt a style, especially an older and established person, he should be expected to achieve the look at which he’s aiming. Trump, for example, despite being an octogenarian billionaire, has never managed to dress himself properly for the very style at which he’s aiming. Yet more important: Enough About Trump’s Looks. His Presidency Is Ugly.)

Iced coffee at an interview is about more than iced coffee at an interview — it’s about cultural orthodoxy imposed from one generation onto another.

Much — too much — of the local debate about policy changes in Whitewater seems similarly rooted in a desire to freeze the city in amber, to the benefit of an aging, controlling faction. Part of this desire is a transparent effort to maintain a landlords’ economic oligopoly that treats student renters as a disposable commodity while being indifferent to graduating students’ (or others’) hopes to remain residents or settle here.

Another part of it is simply an aged generation that believes ‘this is the way we talk around here,’ ‘this is our tradition,’ and ‘this is how you do it,’ etc. Whitewater always deserved more than subservience to yesterday’s men, a silly faction of pedigree pushers and bloodline boosters. Old Whitewater — what’s left of it — has had no higher principle than insisting that the best course of action is to do whatever Old Whitewater thinks best. We are not the only town with a version of this problem.

(Note well: This libertarian blogger doesn’t find these types insulting. I find them ludicrous.)

Imposing a standard for culture and style from one generation to another stifles innovation, creativity, and personal liberty. Almost as bad, this imposition reveals an older generation as too weak or too selfish to adapt within a dynamic society. So inflexible, so rigid, that they cannot engage with others while recognizing the fundamental individuality and equality of others.

If someone wants to bring iced coffee, fine. If someone else in the room doesn’t want iced coffee, fine. None of that should stand in the way of a productive and mutually beneficial conversation.

For those so inclined, here’s a recipe for eiskaffee to try. Enjoy.

Swiss glaciers lose more than 5% of ice:

Swiss glaciers are shrinking rapidly after suffering one of their worst years of ice loss during a record-breaking European heatwave. The glaciers lost more than 5% of their ice in 2026, a report showed.

Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.30.26: The Self-Destructive Economic War with Canada

by  • 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 67. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset is 6:37 for 11 hours 46 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning gibbous with 81.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1939, NBC broadcasts the first televised football game:

The 1939 Waynesburg vs. Fordham football game was a college football game between the Fordham Rams and the Waynesburg Yellow Jackets played on September 30, 1939. The game was played at Triborough Stadium on New York City’s Randall’s Island. Fordham won the game 34–7….NBC broadcast the game on station W2XBS with one camera and Bill Stern was the sole announcer. Estimates are that the broadcast reached approximately 1,000 television sets.

Wisconsin’s economy depends heavily on trade with Canada. See Wis. Econ. Dev. Corp., Wisconsin Export Data (over $7 billion in exports in 2025, Wisconsin’s leading export destination), John Miller on How the US-Canada Trade War Affects Wisconsin, PBS Wisconsin., Here & Now, August 28, 2026, and Bus. Roundtable, Wisconsin Depends on Trade with Canada and Mexico 1 (2025).

Canada buys over one-quarter of Wisconsin’s exports and supplies vital imports. Selling to Canada, and importing what we need from Canada, supports Wisconsin jobs and promotes prosperity.

And yet, and yet, a destructive trade war with Canada now escalates into an outright ban on many Canadian imports. Where tariffs self-destructively increase costs, a ban denies goods outright, leaving importers to pay more elsewhere or, worse, go without what they need. See Jenni Reid, America’s Canadian import restrictions come into force. Here are the products barred from entry, CNBC, September 29, 2026.

There are many severe grievances against this federal administration: nativism, bigotry, corruption, violence at home, war abroad, the pardoning of unrepentant criminals, attacks on voting rights, use of federal power to suppress lawful dissent, the destruction of public property, and placing liars and layabouts in the highest positions of authority. No list could be complete — there is not enough ink in all the world to keep one’s pen filled.

After all these many offenses against our own people, a tariff man yet brings another to our small Midwestern state: a conflict with a peaceful nation on which our own prosperity depends. This libertarian blogger often wonders: Is there nothing this senescent autocrat would not ruin?

In the video below, Catherine Rampell and Sam Stein of The Bulwark explain that Trump’s War With Canada Has Officially Lost the Plot:

Catherine Rampell and Sam Stein bring the receipts on Trump’s increasingly baffling fight with Canada, his latest promise of $5,000 checks and the ugly polling behind it, and his move to weaken fuel-efficiency standards while gas prices are sky-high.

Astonishing, truly — there are people who have lived their whole lives without a public mistake like Sen. Eric Schmitt’s — Senator’s Accusation Against Jack Smith Falls Apart:

Senator Eric Schmitt, a Republican eager to prove that Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald Trump, was dishonest, appeared to instead demonstrate his own confusion over basic facts.

Authoritarian Populism, Daily Bread, Gerrymandering, Legislature, Never Trump, Speaker Vos, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 9.29.26: Robin Vos Leaves Office Weak and Confused

by  • 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:50 and sunset is 6:39 for 11 hours 49 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1918, Germany’s Supreme Army Command tells Kaiser Wilhelm II to open negotiations for an armistice to end the war.

For nearly fourteen years, on the foundation of an extreme gerrymander, Robin Vos has been speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly. He’s retiring this year. In remarks to the New York Times, Vos shows — even now — how little he understands about our politics, and reveals how diffident he is when discussing what little he does understand:

Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the State Assembly whose power was once immense and who now plans to retire at year’s end, said 2026 always loomed as a challenging midterm election. President Trump is “a drag,” Mr. Vos said, adding that “some of the ways that he operates, not the policies per se, turn people off.”

See David Chen, With a Gerrymander Vanquished, Wisconsin Democrats Aim for Control (‘The swing state of Wisconsin had one of the most undemocratic State Assembly maps in the country. Now Democrats have a chance to take control of the legislature’), New York Times, September 7, 2026.

It’s not certain that Democrats will take the Legislature; it’s indubitable that Vos can’t bring himself to describe our politics clearly.

Of Trump, for those who see him clearly in support or opposition, “the ways he operates” are enmeshed in the “policies per se.” (‘Per se’: Vos threw in a bit of Latin where English, a beautiful and expressive language, would have done just fine.) Vos wants to make a distinction — using my way of describing Trump — between that man’s many vulgarities and his many vices.

Vos’s distinction doesn’t impress: an ignorant nativist with a fondness for cheap trinkets is still essentially an ignorant nativist. Trump’s tariffs and his wars would be wrong even if, against all likelihood, Trump somehow learned to knot a tie, otherwise dress himself properly, or listen to others without interrupting. Politesse is not Trump’s true failing. Authoritarian populism is Trump’s indelible and ineradicable sin.

This is why Representative Derrick Van Orden’s complete embrace of Trump has the advantage over Speaker Vos’s unavailing distinctions: Van Orden acknowledges openly and candidly that he, Van Orden, espouses what everyone can see he espouses.

Vos has made himself tall only on gerrymandered stilts. And yet, and yet, there’s probably someone in Whitewater who looks up to Vos. We are a town of sixteen thousand — there must, sadly, be among us one or two jackasses. Those one or two might even have spoken to Vos now and again: “Oh, look, happy day, it’s a call from Robin!” Admiration for Vos is evidence that one doesn’t understand the proper objects of admiration.

(I cannot, truly, imagine why any normal person would look forward to a call from Robin Vos. A call from Robin Wright, most assuredly; a call from Vos, not at all.)

Vos leaves office weak and confused, unable or unwilling to admit his destructive embrace of extreme populism in our politics.

Now bears want food from farmers’ markets:

A hungry bear caused a stir at an Aspen, Colorado, farmers’ market on September 26, after wandering through the stalls to snack on baked goods. Captured on video by bystander Staci Egloff, the animal bypassed the crowd to feast on breads and pastries before climbing a nearby tree, where it eventually fell asleep.