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Monthly Archives: December 2008

Daily Bread: December 29, 2008

Good morning, Whitewater

Happy Birthday, General Mitchell. More on that, below.

The last week of your year.

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater today. I am sure that someone will talk about something with someone else at the Municipal Building, but nothing useful is likely to come of it. Your local government — committed by its own account only to a better community — at work for you.

The National Weather Service predicts a windy day, with a high of 38 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts that today will offer fair skies, and later in the week increasing clouds will follow.

There is no school today, of course. What is to be done with so much youthful energy set lose in the community? I see no risk in it, but there is a possibility that our school board may yet have left unexplored. Could we not harness so many unoccupied students for a group project, perhaps connected through a home computer network?

How about a project easy to undertake, that will require little computational power, to begin? Perhaps, this assignment: Effort and dedication of the District Administrator to the district from which she is compensated over the last few months?

I’d start there — the students of Whitewater could complete a scientific study (great for a college application), and still be back to World of Warcraft in short order.

In Wisconsin history today, the Wisconsin Historical Society marks the anniversary of General William “Billy” Mitchell’s birth in 1879.

On this date aviation pioneer Billy Mitchell was born in Nice, France. Mitchell grew up in Milwaukee and attended Racine College. During World War I, Mitchell was the first American airman to fly over enemy lines. He also led many air attacks in France and Germany. Upon return to the U.S., he advocated the creation of a separate Air Force. Much to the dislike of A.T. Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, and other contemporaries, Mitchell asserted that the airplane had rendered the battleship obsolete, and attention should be shifted to developing military air power. Mitchell’s out-spokenness resulted in his being court martialed for insubordination. He was sentenced to five years suspension of rank without pay.

General Douglas MacArthur — an old Milwaukee friend — was a judge in Mitchell’s case and voted against his court martial. Mitchell’s ideas for developing military air power were not implemented until long after his death. In 1946 Congress created a medal in his honor, the General “Billy” Mitchell Award. Milwaukee’s airport, General Mitchell International Airport, is named after him.

He was right about airpower, of course — but then, Mitchell was right from the beginning. From Nice, actually — a fine place, a fine country, indeed.

Daily Bread: December 23, 2008

Good morning, Whitewater

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater again today. Whitewater, did you get your Christmas wish early? I think you did.

The National Weather Service predicts a certainty of snow, with a high of 26 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts that today will be fair and pleasant.

Yesterday’s better prediction: NWS.

In world history on this date, in 1970 Wired reports that the “World Trade Center Tops Out”:

Construction workers place the highest steel on the highest building in the world. New Yorkers will first hate it, then get used to it and eventually mourn its destruction.

The massive project was conceived in the 1950s to energize lower Manhattan. Architect Minoru Yamasaki worked in conjunction with Emery Roth and Sons to design twin towers 110 stories high.

Ground was broken Aug. 5, 1966, and steel construction began in August 1968. The North Tower topped out at 1,368 feet (some sources say 1,353 feet) Dec. 23, 1970. Ribbon-cutting took place April 4, 1973.

The twin towers knocked New York City’s own Empire State Building (1931, 1,250 feet) off the top of the list of the world’s tallest buildings, but lost out in 1974 to Chicago’s Sears Tower at 1,451 feet. The twin 1,483-foot Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, surpassed Sears in 1998, only to be overtaken by Taipei 101 in Taiwan at 1,667 feet in 2004. But Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is already above 2,250 feet and slated to reach 2,300 feet soon.

With an acre of rentable space on each of the upper floors of each tower, the WTC’s 110 stories were occupied by about 50,000 people. The South Tower had an observation deck on its 107th floor, offering views for 45 miles in all directions, skies permitting.

The architects and engineers had solved a number of problems with great ingenuity. To keep the nearby Hudson River from flooding its foundations, the buildings were constructed in a vast concrete case, called the Bathtub. A central core in each tower carried the dead (or gravitational) weight of the building’s materials, while light walls were designed to withstand the force of wind on a tall, giant building.

The amount of space taken up by elevators was reduced by creating “sky lobbies” at the 41st and 74th floor, served by express elevators. Local elevators could stop at any floor within each zone. It was a vertical model of a New York subway line.

Despite these innovations, many New Yorkers greeted the towers with derision. They were assailed for being out of scale with the surrounding neighborhoods and a distortion of the classic midtown peak of the Manhattan skyline. Some rudely suggested that the towers looked like the plain boxes out of which two Art Deco classics, the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, had been unpacked.
Yamasaki died in 1986. The final building in the 16-acre complex, 7 World Trade Center, was completed the following year.

Terrorists exploded a massive bomb in the WTC’s parking garage Feb. 26, 1993, killing six people and
injuring more than a thousand. The towers withstood the blast.

But they could not withstand the impact of the fully fueled jetliners that terrorists crashed into the twin towers Sept. 11, 2001. That attack brought them down within hours, killing almost 2,800 people.
Construction on new WTC buildings, including the Freedom Tower to replace the twin towers, is now underway.

Libertarian Bob Barr Says Hello

I get a good deal of email, but imagine my surprise when Libertarian Bob Barr wrote to me, using my given name, to wish me a Merry Christmas. I will walk around all day, now, with a warm, holiday, free enterprise glow.

(Quickly, before someone writes to tease me – Yes, I know that, really, I received the email as part of a political party’s email list. It’s no ordinary party, though, so I am contented.)

Here’s part of Barr’s message (he’s not known for the delicacy of his expression):

My wife, Jeri, and I want to wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and Happy New Year.

In our home, we have a lot to be thankful for and we are happy to be able to share this season with our family, our long time friends and our new acquaintances.

This past year has brought us joy in many ways, not the least of which has been giving a voice to the direction you and I would like to see our country take.

It’s easy to say “Someone should do something about  . . .” But it’s far more difficult to accept that challenge and realize you are that “someone.” And, if you will not do it, why should someone else do it? How can we expect them to?

You and I accepted the responsibility of our citizenship and got involved. Together, we made a difference. We raised the issues that no one wanted to talk about.

While other candidates tried to make the case that $17 billion of “earmarks” are the source of our country’s fiscal problems, you and I know the problems go much deeper. You and I know that runaway federal spending and the long term impact that will have of creating a $100 trillion dollar unfunded liability on our children and grandchildren, is the real problem.

When the public debate in recent months was all about granting immunity to telecoms for their role in domestic spying, you and I focused on the government’s intrusion into our personal privacy through the use of warrantless searches and abuses of the Patriot Act.

When the financial policy makers in this administration were declaring their friends in huge financial institutions were ‘too big to allow to fail’ you and I said, “Wait!” Let the good businesses buy the good parts of the failures and let the Brainiacs who that created the problems suffer the consequences.
Instead, the establishment decided to reward bad businesses with the gift of your hard earned tax dollars, and allowed them to continue to do bad business as usual. There have not been any meaningful fraud investigations. No perp walks!

One alleged Wall Street fraudster is sitting in his $7 million dollar apartment under “house arrest” accused of bilking investors out of tens of billions of dollars. While he resides in luxury instead of jail, you and I will be expected to bailout his victims.

Our state elected officials are doing little better than their federal cohorts. Scandals abound. And yet another governor is probably going to declare that a US Senate seat is a birthright to the Kennedy dynasty. We have had enough of family dynasty politics; we deserve principled, legitimate representation, not socialites and prima donnas.

We have a lot to do in the New Year, and we need to get prepared now! We have just begun to be heard….

Again, Jeri and I wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

Bob Barr

Daily Bread: December 22, 2008

Good morning, Whitewater

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater today. Not, it seems, even a special meeting. Not, even, an extra-special meeting. You may be particularly relieved.

The National Weather Service predicts a cold day, with a high of 4 degrees, and snow tonight. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts that today will be fair and pleasant. For a penguin, that’s surely true.

Last week’s better prediction: NWS.

In science history, Wired reports on “Looking at Christmas in a Whole New Light”: 1882: An inventive New Yorker finds a brilliant application for electric lights and becomes the first person to use them as Christmas tree decorations:

Edward H. Johnson, who toiled for Thomas Edison’s Illumination Company and later became a company vice president, used 80 small red, white and blue electric bulbs, strung together along a single power cord, to light the Christmas tree in his New York home. Some sources credit Edison himself with being the first to use electric lights as Christmas decorations, when he strung them around his laboratory in 1880.

Sticking them on the tree was Johnson’s idea, though. It was a mere three years after Edison had demonstrated that light bulbs were practical at all.

The idea of replacing the Christmas tree’s traditional wax candles — which had been around since the mid-17th century — with electric lights didn’t, umm, catch fire right away. Although the stringed lights enjoyed a vogue with the wealthy and were being mass-produced as early as 1890, they didn’t become popular in humbler homes until a couple of decades into the 20th century.

Keynesians — Still as Wrong as Ever!

Over at Cato’s website, there’s a post from Daniel J. Mitchell on how, despite the rush to spend and tax our way to prosperity, it’s clear Keynesian economics is, still, bad economics. 

Who, by the way, said we’re all Keynesians now? That’s right, the man who was wrong about almost everything — Richard Nixon.  Goldwater hated Nixon for a reason — lots of them, actually, and each one completely justified. 

How bad is Keynesian economics?  So bad, its principal errors are readily understood after only 7 minutes and 29 seconds, even including about 30 seconds taken up with introductory chatter. 

See, now, the awful truth that confronts government interventionists…

more >>

Press Release: Award Winning Potter Offers Ceramics Classes in Lake Mills Studio

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, AWARD WINNING POTTER OFFERS CERAMICS CLASSES IN LAKE MILLS STUDIO

Lake Mills WI –December 17, 2008 Bruce Johnson’s distinctive raku ceramic pieces have been enjoyed by people all over the nation for over 25 years. For the first time ever, Johnson is offering to share his knowledge and technique with others by offering lessons in wheel thrown and hand built ceramics.

Johnson has received invitations to show his work at juried art shows throughout the country. His decorative vessel, “Cosmo,” was selected for the Niche Award in wheel thrown ceramics from Niche Magazine, a national trade publication for retailers of American craft. “With my years of experience as a full-time artist, I believe I have much to offer those interested in ceramics,” says Johnson, “whether they are just beginning or already experienced in working with clay.”

In this unique learning opportunity, students will learn the art of making functional and decorative pottery, both hand built and wheel thrown. The pieces will be fired in food-safe, high-fire glazes, and in the ancient technique of raku firing.

All sessions will take place at Bruce Johnson Clay Studio, 302 W. Campus Street, in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, beginning the week of January 5, 2009. The class includes one session a week for seven weeks, 25 pounds of clay, and all glaze materials, including firing. Classes will be held Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6:30pm to 9pm, and Saturday mornings from 10am to 12:30pm. Each class is limited to six students to ensure individual attention for each student.

To register, or for further information, contact Johnson at 920-648-3049 or bruce@brucejohnsonclaystudio.com. Samples of work can be seen on his website, www.brucejohnsonclaystudio.com.

Daily Bread: December 18, 2008

Good morning, Whitewater

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater today.

A lucky streak begins…

Rest assured, I am only teasing…in part.

The National Weather Service predicts a mostly cloudy day, with heavy snow tonight, and a high of 27 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts that conditions will be turning wet, “especially the Great Lakes.”

Yesterday’s better prediction: NWS.

In Wisconsin history for this day, a milestone for our campus at Madison: UW Fieldhouse Dedicated:

On this date the University of Wisconsin Fieldhouse was dedicated as the Badgers beat the University of Pennsylvania, 25-12, in a college basketball game. The Badgers played their first game there five days earlier against Carroll College.

Too silly —

Of course Wisconsin beat Pennsylvania — Penn’s mascot is the Quaker, and there is no way a school can win with a rally song that calls, “Fight, Quakers, Fight!”

Daily Bread: December 17, 2008

Good morning, Whitewater

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater today.

The National Weather Service predicts decreasing clouds, and a high of 18 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac continues its series, predicting conditions turning wet, “especially the Great Lakes.”

Yesterday’s better prediction: NWS — “snow” trumps “wet.”

In our schools today, there is a Choir Concert at 7:30 PM in the high school auditorium.

In Wisconsin history for this day, the Wisconsin Historical Society marks the birthday of Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, born in 1933.

On this date Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson was born in New York City. A graduate of Hunter College high school, Abrahamson received a BA from NYU in 1953. She received a JD from Indiana University Law School in 1956. She was first appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1976, to fill a vacancy created by the death of Chief Justice Horace W. Wilkie. She became Chief Justice on August 1, 1996, upon the retirement of Chief Justice Roland B. Day. Abrahamson is the first female to serve as Chief Justice for Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Happy birthday, and best wishes for the retention campaign ahead.

Much more to be posted, I’m sure, on the record of your likely — but unready — opponent, Judge Koshnick of Jefferson County.

Libertarians as a Loyal, Zealous, Principled Opposition to Obama

Yesterday, I posted on Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s view that a new ‘libertarian moment’ awaits America, and that the best days for libertarianism are yet ahead.  Their optimism was general, not specific to any strategy. 

Reason follows that article from its December issue with another, from January’s issue, on how libertarians will argue against an Obama Administration’s push for more government intervention in economic and social life.   David Weigel’s article, entitled, “Beat the New Boss,” is available online now:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/130323.html

The title is an obvious play on the libertarian-oriented Who song, Won’t Get Fooled Again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3mi-bKtDGA

So what does Weigel think Obama’s victory means for libertarians? 

Washington’s libertarian activists and think tankers are still trying to wrap their brains around the new reality. Today you can sort them into two rough categories. There are the Bargainers, the ones who believe they can do business with President Barack Obama. And there are the Battlers, the ones who believe Obama can-and should-be impeded while the Republican Party is rebuilt into a genuinely liberty-minded organization….

“No president is going to be as eager to wield the power that Bush arrogated to the executive branch,” [Jameel] Jaffer [of the ACLU] says. “Executive unilateralism was a signature idea of his administration.” The problem is that Obama isn’t so easy to read. After saying he’d vote against it, he voted for a bill that legalized warrantless monitoring of international communications involving people in the United States, previously prohibited by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “It was by far the most sweeping surveillance statute enacted by the Democratic Congress,” Jaffer says. “We think it’s unconstitutional. I hope a lot of leaders come to recognize that they made a mistake.”

Unquestionably, libertarians are likely to be more respectful of Obama than big-government Republicans.   Big-government Republicans – the worst thing to happen to their party since Nixon. 

Bombast is not an alternative, winning strategy.  Free minds and free markets – thanks, Reason – that’s an alternative.  Better – by far – even than, “Yes, We Can.’ 

How to fight?  Libertarians still aren’t sure —

With the Bush administration ending in a frenzy of disappointment, most libertarians don’t expect much more luck with Obama, outside of a few issues involving drug policy and executive power… 

Libertarians will fight that good fight — sincerely and on principle.    

Daily Bread: December 16, 2008

Good morning, Whitewater

There is one public meeting scheduled today in the City of Whitewater: the Common Council meeting this evening at 6:30 p.m. in the municipal building. The agenda for that meeting is available online.

The National Weather Service predicts snow today, and a high of 17 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac begins a new series, predicting conditions turning wet, “especially the Great Lakes.” I would have guessed as much.

Yesterday’s better prediction: NWS.

In our schools today, there is a Lincoln School Fifth Grade Choir Concert at 1:30 PM and 7 PM in the high school auditorium.

In American history for this day, in 1773, the Bostonians took action against British impositions and held the Boston Tea Party, as the History Channel recounts the event:

In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,” was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny.

When three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor, the colonists demanded that the tea be returned to England. After Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused, Patriot leader Samuel Adams organized the “tea party” with about 60 members of the Sons of Liberty, his underground resistance group. The British tea dumped in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16 was valued at some $18,000.

Parliament, outraged by the blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

The British response was typical, really — a siren’s call — to respond with ever greater control, restriction, and limitation. A small moment became a bigger one, through political arrogance.

December’s Reason Magazine: “The Libertarian Moment.”

In our time of unfolding recession, criticism of free exchange, and bailouts, one might conclude that the libertarian way of life is a faint shadow from another time. 

Nothing could be more false.  Over at Reason, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch persuasively contend, in the Libertarian Moment, that far from ending, a new libertarian era awaits.  (See, The Libertarian Moment, http://www.reason.com/news/
show/129993.html.) 

Consider another time of government ascendancy, as Welch and Gillespie do:

If someone looked you in the eye in 1971 and said “Man, you know what? We’re about to get a whole lot freer,” you might have reasonably concluded that he was nuts, driven mad by taking too much LSD and staring into the sun.
Back during that annus horribilis, a Republican president from the Southwest, facing an economy that was groaning under the strain of record deficits and runaway spending on elective and unpopular overseas wars, announced one of the most draconian economic interventions in Washington’s inglorious history: a freeze on wages and prices, accompanied by an across-the-board 10 percent tariff on imports and the final termination of what little remained of the gold standard in America.

Big-state Nixon then; big-state Republican and their progressive successors now. 

We are in fact living at the cusp of what should be called the Libertarian Moment….Due to exponential advances in technology, broad-based increases in wealth, the ongoing networking of the world via trade and culture, and the decline of both state and private institutions of repression, never before has it been easier for more individuals to chart their own course and steer their lives by the stars as they see the sky. If you don’t believe it, ask your gay friends, or simply look who’s running for the White House in 2008.

The Libertarian Moment is based on a few hard-won insights that have grown into a fragile but enduring consensus in the ever-expanding free world. First is the notion that, all things being equal, markets are the best way to organize an economy and unleash the means of production (and its increasingly difficult-to-distinguish adjunct, consumption). Second is that at least vaguely representative democracy, and the political freedom it almost always strengthens, is the least worst form of government (a fact that even recalcitrant, anti-modern regimes in Islamabad, Tehran, and Berkeley grudgingly acknowledge in at least symbolic displays of pluralism). Both points seem almost banal now, but were under constant attack during the days of the Soviet Union, and are still subject to wobbly confidence any time capitalist dictatorships like China seem to grow ascendant in a time of domestic economic woe. Though every dip in the Dow makes the professional amnesiacs of cable TV and the finance pages turn in the direction of Mao, there is no going back to the Great Leap Forward.
Or the Great Society, for that matter.

Libertarians relax – we’re more right than wrong, now as much as we were a generation ago. 

Press Release – Rep. Hixson Calls for Support of Economic Recovery Proposal

December 12, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                    
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

State Representative Kim Hixson/608-266-9650

REP. HIXSON CALLS FOR SUPPORT OF ECONOMIC RECOVERY PROPOSAL

Wisconsin citizens need assistance from the Federal Government in these tough economic times

WHITEWATER – Representative Kim Hixson (D-43rd Assembly District) pledged Friday to work with other state and local officials to push for a federal economic stimulus package for Wisconsin requested by Governor Jim Doyle in Washington, D.C. this week.

The package includes a number of projects throughout the state and in the south-central Wisconsin that will create jobs and build infrastructure.

“These are tough economic times – people are working harder for less money,” Hixson said. “As your State Representative, I’m committed to finding ways to cut state spending. But cuts alone won’t help the guy in my district looking for work, or the family struggling to put food on the table right now. Our area needs the assistance that would be provided in the Governor’s federal stimulus package for states.”

Hixson said it is essential the Federal Government invest critical resources into our state’s crumbling transportation and educational infrastructure. “Wisconsin must find a way to create new jobs and put money back in the pockets of working families,” Hixson said.

Governor Doyle’s testimony before the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, Chaired by Rep. David Obey (D-Wausau) suggested that up to $1.64 billion of federal assistance could be used to make infrastructure improvements, including road work, maintenance on school buildings, and environmental projects. These projects could be started immediately. 

INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS:

$2,958,150 – STH-11 Footville – Janesville bypass – pavement replace and overlay

$365,650 – I-39 Madison to Janesville Road – bridge painting           

$365,100 – I-39 Madison to Janesville Road – bridge painting

$391,400 – I-39 Madison to Janesville Rd- bridge painting              

$2,857,037 – STH-59 Whitewater – Palmyra Road – pulverize and overlay                  

Railroad Rehabilitation:
$27,300,000 – Waukesha to Milton

$11,050,000 – Janesville to Beloit                     

$22,880,000 – Janesville to Monroe                     

                        
UW-Whitewater:
$246,500 – East Campus Steam – Condition Replacement            $475,600 – Residence Hall Steam District Renovation             $1,546,000 – Campus Substation – Switchgear Transit Replacement

$189,700 – Roseman Hall – Window Replacement    $286,000 – Multi-Building Internal Door Replacement – 15 campus buildings                      

“As your State Representative, I will work closely with the Governor and all levels of government to ensure that we effectively use this federal money to rebuild our state’s crumbling infrastructure. This is essential economic development in our area,” Hixson said. “I’m going to be in touch with local leaders throughout this process to ensure that if such appropriations are made, the money will be put to use immediately.  We’ve got to make sure projects will be ready to go.”

While Doyle’s requests must be approved by Congress, President-elect Barack Obama has expressed support for the swift passage of a federal aid package for the states after his inauguration on January 20, 2009. According to officials in the Governor’s office the list of projects included may be subject to change.

Rep. Kim Hixson represents the 43rd Assembly District, which includes parts of Rock, Walworth, Jefferson and Dane Counties. If you have any questions about this issue or any other matter facing Wisconsin State Government, please feel to address your concerns to him at P.O. Box 8952 Madison, WI 53702, call his office at the State Capitol at 1-888-534-0043, or email him at: Rep.Hixson@legis.wi.gov.

On Press Releases

I have written in the past about press releases, and have posted some, too. My concerns about press releases are simple enough – newspapers and websites sometimes print press releases, carefully crafted or re-worked, without acknowledging that what appears on the printed page is the work of a third party.

It does not matter whether the publisher contends that he meant no harm, or insists that the release is the product of a government body, and so is in the public domain.

(Quick notes about public domain documents: not all levels of government across America recognize public domain in the same way, and contending that something is in the public domain does not mean that it is true. There is a simple belief some have that whatever government produces is true and neutral. That’s nonsense, of course. The idea is particularly strong in Whitewater, though: government as impartial, righteous, truth-teller. Too funny, really – a leadership that sees flaws only in others.)

Still, I see nothing wrong with publishing a press release, as I have done with certain charities, verbatim, and acknowledged as such. No editing, redaction, etc.: just the release, on its own.

Nor am I particularly concerned that some of the views in the release may not be my own. I think that readers know my views well, can always write and ask of those views, and will be able to see clearly that the posting is a release properly identified as another’s work. In these cases, I would be inclined to post the release on its own, without commentary. (If I felt I had some opposition to the content, I could post separately on that matter, after all. I would be inclined to wait a day between publishing a release and separate remarks on it.)

I’ll post a release that I have received recently, and more, from time to time, as they arrive to me.

Daily Bread: December 15, 2008

Good morning, Whitewater

There are two public meetings scheduled today in the City of Whitewater: the CDA Board of Directors meets this afternoon, at 3:30 p.m. in the municipal building. The agenda is available online.

Later tonight, at 6 p.m., there is a meeting of the Planning Commission, also in the municipal building. The agenda for that meeting is online at the Whitewater website. (Earlier, I had listed the wrong time and date for the event. To every planner, in our city and beyond, in all the wide world, I extend my apologies.)

The National Weather Service predicts a high of only 9 degrees, with high winds. The Farmers’ Almanac concludes a four-day series predicting fair weather, turning colder. This would be that colder, so to speak.

Last week’s better prediction: NWS.

In our schools today, there is a Middle School choir concert at 7 PM in the high school auditorium.

(Last week I suggested — very subtly and sweetly, really — if the students at Washington School would consider singing Oingo Boingo’s Capitalism. Sadly, my musical recommendation was left unadopted. There’s still time for cooler and more receptive heads to prevail, at tonight’s concert — I am an optimist at heart.)

In Wisconsin history for this day, from the Wisconsin Historical Society, in 1847, our state’s Second Constitutional Convention Convenes.

On this date the first draft of the Wisconsin Constitution was rejected in 1846. As a result, Wisconsin representatives met again to draft a new constitution in 1847. New delegates were invited, and only five delegates attended both conventions. The second convention used the failed 1846 constitution as a springboard for their own, but left out controversial issues such as banking and property rights for women that the first constitution attempted to address. The second constitution included a proposal to let the people of Wisconsin vote on a referendum designed to approve black suffrage.

Wisconsin’s current constitution may be found online.