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Monthly Archives: March 2018

Daily Bread for 3.24.18

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 7:12 PM, for 12h 23m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 48.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1965, the Ranger 9 probe reaches the moon:

Ranger 9 was a Lunar probe, launched in 1965 by NASA. It was designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras – two wide-angle (channel F, cameras A and B) and four narrow-angle (channel P) – to accomplish these objectives. The cameras were arranged in two separate chains, or channels, each self-contained with separate power supplies, timers, and transmitters so as to afford the greatest reliability and probability of obtaining high-quality television pictures. These images were broadcast live on television to millions of viewers across the United States.[1] No other experiments were carried on the spacecraft.[2]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Steven Erlanger and Gerry Mullany report ‘The Whole World Should Be Concerned’: U.S. Allies React to Bolton’s Appointment:

BRUSSELS — John Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser seems to many around the world to represent President Trump unbound, and they are trying to puzzle out what exactly that means.

A fiercely intelligent man with deeply conservative, nationalistic and aggressive views about American foreign policy, Mr. Bolton may bring more consistency and predictability to President Trump’s foreign policy, many suggest. But others worry that his hawkish views on Iran and North Korea, among others, may goad Mr. Trump into seeking military solutions to diplomatic problems.

But some also wonder whether Mr. Bolton, who has played the outsider even when serving as a senior American diplomat in the State Department and at the United Nations, will be able to adjust to a high-pressure job where he must be less public, less strident and more of a mediator of differing policy views.

And it is an open question whether he will be able to manage his relationship with Mr. Trump, who seems to tire quickly of anyone outside his own family who tries to guide or restrict his behavior, his public statements or his instincts.

➤ Michael Kranish and Karen DeYoung report Kushner Companies confirms meeting with Qatar on financing:

Jared Kushner’s father met with Qatar’s finance minister three months after President Trump’s inauguration, a New York City session at which funding for a financially troubled real estate project was discussed, the company acknowledged Sunday.

However, Charles Kushner said he turned down possible funding to avoid questions of a conflict of interest for his son, who had run the family company until he became Trump’s senior adviser. The elder Kushner said that the Qataris had asked for the meeting, and that he told them he couldn’t accept sovereign funds.

“I was invited to a meeting,” he said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Before the meeting, Kushner Companies had decided that it was not going to accept sovereign wealth fund investments. We informed the Qatar representatives of our decision and they agreed. Even if they were there ready to wire the money, we would not have taken it.”

The company said Kushner agreed to the meeting as a courtesy.

A spokesman for the Qatari Embassy in Washington said his government had no comment.

➤ Eric Levitz reports Ben Carson Might Be Next on Trump’s Chopping Block:

When Ben Carson first took the reins of American public housing — a system plagued by a $49 billion repairs backlog, in which entire complexes regularly lack heat and hot water in the winter — his greatest concern was that its tenants might be too comfortable in their lodgings. “Compassion,” Carson argued, meant not giving people “a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.’”

But Carson took a decidedly different view of the value of creature comforts when it came to his own accommodations – opting to spend $31,000 on a dining-room set for his office, even though he was only authorized to spend $5,000. When news of this profligacy first broke, the Housing secretary said that he was unaware that “the table had been purchased” — but nonetheless felt the price was not “too steep,” and thus, he did “not intend to return it.” Days later, he claimed that as soon as he learned of the table’s exorbitant cost, he tried to cancel the purchase. Then, he pinned responsibility for the entire affair on his wife — until internal emails revealed that Carson had personally participated in the selection of the table. The Housing secretary proceeded to insist that he’d spent $31,000 of taxpayer money on a piece of furniture for the sake of “safety” — according to Carson, the office’s existing furniture had caused people to be “stuck by nails, and a chair had collapsed with someone sitting in it.”

Finally, during an appearance before the Senate Thursday, Carson “took responsibility” for the ordeal — while stipulating that he believed Jesus would have approved of his response to the episode, as it had been modeled on Christ’s advice in his Sermon on the Mount, which Carson summarized as “don’t worry about what people are saying about you, and do the right thing.”

(One would have to be utterly self-serving – or utterly dense – to think that the Sermon on the Mount applies to the purchase of federal office furniture. For that matter, there’s no worthy exegisis of Christ’s words that merely  reduces to Caron’s description of them. It’s like summarizing War and Peace as ‘a bunch of Europeans were fighting and stuff.’ )

➤ Anne Applebaum writes First Russia unleashed a nerve agent. Now it’s unleashing its lie machine:

Maybe he was a drug addict; maybe he was suicidal. Maybe his British handlers decided to get rid of him; maybe it was his mother-in-law. Ever since Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, was poisoned in a provincial English town, Russian state media and Russian officials have worked overtime to provide explanations.

The British government identified the poison as Novichok, a substance made only in Russia. A spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry spokesman parried the claim by insisting that the Czechs, the Slovaks and the Swedes had it, too. And, of course, the British themselves.

One Russian journalist opined that the assassination attempt was a rival’s ploy to undermine Russian President Vladi­mir Putin; another blamed a Ukraine attempt “to frame Russia.” The Russian foreign minister declared the whole story was an attempt to “distract from Brexit.”

The conspiracy theories came so thick and fast that some had to be retracted. One Russian scientist admitted that the Soviet Union had created Novichok; the interview was removed from the Internet because it contradicted the foreign ministry spokesman, who claims Novichok never existed. So far, the British foreign office has tallied 21 separate explanations for the assassination attempt, with more presumably on the way.

No one was surprised by this barrage of contradictory claims: This was exactly how the Russian media and Russian authorities responded after Russian-backed troops in eastern Ukraine shot down a Malaysian passenger plane in 2014, killing everyone on board. Those explanations were just as varied and far-fetched (the Ukrainians were trying to shoot down Putin and missed; the plane took off from Amsterdam with dead bodies on board), and they had the same aim: to pollute the conversation and make the truth seem unknowable.

➤ Ponder The Weird World of Competitive Dog Grooming:

For competitive groomers, dogs are more than pets—they’re living canvases. These dedicated hobbyists spend months sculpting, coiffing, and dyeing their canines into vibrant works of art, ranging from recreations of Michael Jackson to Disney characters to lions. Rebecca Stern’s whimsical short documentary Well Groomed follows creative groomers as they intricately style their dogs to compete for Best in Show. But this is no Christopher Guest movie; Stern’s film is earnest proof of creativity’s variegated forms.

“It was surprising to find out how vast the world of competitive dog grooming is,” Stern told The Atlantic. “Like a lot of people, I’d only really seen the Westminster Dog Show and had assumed the breeding was what made the coats that shiny. I was so wrong. A lot goes into dog grooming, and there’s an entire world of people passionate about making our furry friends look their best. In fact, they’ve staked their livelihoods on it.”

For more information, including Well Groomed’s future as a feature film, visit the website.

(It seems reasonable, by contrast, to contend that dogs need only be groomed more simply for them to be clean and happy.)

‘Stable and yet it cannot stand still’

Jurist Roscoe Pound once famously observed that “the law must remain stable yet it cannot stand still.” What is true of the law is true of communities – including Whitewater.

Among some (but not all) of the few who have held sway in this town for the last generation, changes are unwelcome, and change itself to produce greater stability must seem paradoxical.

No matter, this is the city’s direction, all around us, reflected not in the wishes of a few, but the countless free and voluntarily transactions of thousands of residents each day.

A quick follow-up on open government, along these lines. Whitewater’s latest school board meeting, from 3.19.18, is available online. That’s good for open government (as they should be online), but then open government brings a wider good. The more one sees, regularly and in the most complete form, the more suitably conventional government becomes (people see without mystery, and officials find themselves governing without an air of conceit).

Those are causes of greater stability, and part of a well-ordered politics.

A right is, so to speak, right in-and-of itself; it’s also useful to assure a successful community: ‘stable and yet it cannot stand still.’

Daily Bread for 3.23.18

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 7:11 PM, for 12h 20m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 36.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1933, German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.

On this day in 1865, Wisconsin troops are victorious in North Carolina: “the 21st Wisconsin Infantry, made up mostly of soldiers from the Oshkosh area, finished fighting their way through the South during Sherman’s March to the Sea and reached Goldsboro, N.C., where the campaign in the Carolinas ended. Its veterans reunited 40 years later in Manitowoc. [Source: 21st Wisconsin Infantry homepage]”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Spencer Ackerman and Kevin Poulsen report EXCLUSIVE: ‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer:

Guccifer 2.0, the “lone hacker” who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russia’s military intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. It’s an attribution that resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft.

That forensic determination has substantial implications for the criminal probe into potential collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia. The Daily Beast has learned that the special counsel in that investigation, Robert Mueller, has taken over the probe into Guccifer and brought the FBI agents who worked to track the persona onto his team.

But on one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the government’s Guccifer investigation. Twitter and WordPress were Guccifer 2.0’s favored outlets. Neither company would comment for this story, and Guccifer did not respond to a direct message on Twitter.

Working off the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow. (The Daily Beast’s sources did not disclose which particular officer worked as Guccifer.)

Security firms and declassified U.S. intelligence findings previously identified the GRU as the agency running “Fancy Bear,” the ten-year-old hacking organization behind the DNC email theft, as well as breaches at NATO, Obama’s White House, a French television station, the World Anti-Doping Agency, and countless NGOs, and militaries and civilian agencies in Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

(When Trump operative Roger Stone admitted he was talking over Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, Stone was admitting he was talking with a Russian agent.)

➤ Eduardo Porter and Guilbert Gates explain How Trump’s Protectionism Could Backfire:

Republicans could not lose in this deep red enclave in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Still, in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump carried Lee County, where Tupelo sits, by a 38-percentage-point margin over Hillary Clinton — nine percentage points more than Mitt Romney’s lead over Barack Obama four years before.

And yet it’s not working out great for the working men and women of Tupelo. Indeed, President Trump’s first big trade barrier — tariffs against steel and aluminum imports — is, again, threatening to undermine their livelihood.

For every job in Tupelo producing steel or aluminum, there are 200 jobs in industries that consume them that could be put at risk as tariffs push up the prices of these metals, according to research from Jacob Whiton and Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution.

This is true across the country. The lesson the White House has yet to figure out is that the tariffs meant to protect the businesses that make these metals will end up hamstringing the industries that rely on them.

➤ Ron Brownstein asks Has Trump Already Sealed the GOP’s Fate in 2018?:

Every time Donald Trump breaks a window, congressional Republicans obediently sweep up the glass.

That’s become one of the most predictable patterns of his turbulent presidency—and a defining dynamic of the approaching midterm elections. Each time they overtly defend his behavior, or implicitly excuse him by failing to object, they bind themselves to him more tightly.

➤ The New York Times editorial board asks Why Is Trump So Afraid of Russia?:

The former C.I.A. director John Brennan pulled no punches on Wednesday when he was asked why President Trump had congratulated his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for his victory in a rigged election, even after Mr. Trump’s national security staff warned him not to.

“I think he’s afraid of the president of Russia,” Mr. Brennan said, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, of the phone call on Tuesday between the two presidents. “The Russians, I think, have had long experience with Mr. Trump and may have things they could expose.”

The possibility that Mr. Putin could have some hold on the American president has lurked in the background over the past year as Mr. Trump displayed a mystifying affection for the Russian leader and ignored or excused his aggressive behavior and nefarious activities, most important, his interference in the 2016 campaign, a subject of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

➤ So, Has There Ever Been an Actual Case of Someone Being Pelted With Tomatoes During a Performance?:

Owner-Occupied Housing in the Whitewater Area

During these years I have written, and long before, one has heard from local officials and residents that the City of Whitewater needs more single-family housing. Single-family housing is a kind of owner-occupied housing (e.g., one owner, two adult owners, a single-family).

Indeed, one hears that the City of Whitewater needs more single-family housing the way it needs more sunny days or cute puppies: as an unalloyed good.

Despite all this talk, government-backed efforts to alter the housing mix this way are futile, and unnecessary.

Consider owner-occupied housing in the Whitewater area of the City of Whitewater, Fort Atkinson, Jefferson (city), and Milton (city):

 Community

Total Units

 Occupied Units

 Owner-Occupied

 Renter-Occupied

 City of Whitewater

 5,247

 4,754

 1,498 (31.5%)

 3,256 (68.5%)

 Fort Atkinson

 5,285

 5,014

 3,105 (61.9%)

 1,909 (38.1%)

 Milton

 2,452

 2,334

 1,551 (66.5%)

 783 (33.5%)

 Jefferson

 3,203

 2,911

 1,774 (59.4%)

 1,214 (40.6%)

American Fact Finder Selected Housing Characteristics 2012-2016 for WhitewaterFort Atkinson, Jefferson (city), and Milton (city).

A few key points:

Whitewater’s Not An Island. When people talk about the City of Whitewater needing more owner-occupied units, they overlook the vast, existing supply of owner-occupied housing in the area.

In all the area, there are no less than 7,928 owner-occupied units.

A Free and Voluntary Distribution. This distribution, with most owner-occupied units outside the city, and the largest number of renter-occupied units within it, did not come about by force, coercion, or command. People – buyers, sellers, and renters – chose this distribution.

Honest to goodness, they freely chose it because it makes practical sense: the greatest number of rental units are in the City of Whitewater, where there is a UW System campus.

Many attendees of UW-Whitewater choose to rent, and it’s practical for them to rent in the city; some homeowners have decided to live farther out, as is to their tastes.

Banana-Growing in Alaska? No Thanks. Suppose the people of Alaska decided that rather than importing bananas from tropical places where that fruit is commonly grown, they should grow their own. Indeed, imagine that a movement arose, with a slogan that captivated its residents: Go Bananas for Alaska!™

That would be a poor idea. There are many tropical places with banana plantations, producing delicious fruit economically, in abundance. There’s no need for Alaskans to produce a local variety that – owing to their climate – would require indoor growing at great cost, and likely for an inferior product.

The better distribution is for Alaska to produce oil and sled dogs, and tropical places to produce bananas.

       

The Crazy-High Price of Subsidies or Regulations. Imagine what it would take to produce even a 50-50 distribution of owner-occupied homes in Whitewater: to equal the number of rental units Whitewater has now, she would have to add 1,758 owner-occupied unitsmore than the entire stock of existing owner-occupied units.

What would a government program of getting to 50-50 require? It would require either vast sums to subsidize owner-occupied construction or – and this is even less plausible – restrictions on just about any rental opportunity in the futile hope that they’d all someone how become owner-occupied.

I am a homeowner within Whitewater’s city limits, and I would encourage others to purchase or rent within the city. It’s beautiful here.  One cannot imagine a better place. Whitewater should not be, however, a government-engineered community. To love something is not to force it by regulation or lure it by public spending into something it is not, by nature.

(Needless to say, arguing against government incentives for large-scale private builders has nothing to do with targeted existing programs to help the poor. The concern expressed here is closer, so to speak, to arguing against subsidizing banana plantations in Alaska.)

Whitewater would do better, and be better, if she allowed buyers, sellers, and renters to choose freely without government’s fruitless attempt to make the city something thousands of residents have not chosen for themselves.

Daily Bread for 3.22.18

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 7:10 PM, for 12h 17m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 26.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1765, Parliament imposes the Stamp Act on her American colonies:

The Stamp Act of 1765 (short title Duties in American Colonies Act 1765; 5 George III, c. 12) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a direct tax on the colonies of British America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.[1][2] Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies. Like previous taxes, the stamp tax had to be paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper money.[3] The purpose of the tax was to help pay for troops stationed in North America after the British victory in the Seven Years’ War and its North American theater of the French and Indian War. However, the Colonists had never feared a French invasion to begin with, and they contended that they had already paid their share of the expenses.[4] They suggested that it was actually a matter of British patronage to surplus British officers and career soldiers who should be paid by London.

On this day in 1854, Eugene Shepard, Father of the Hodag, is born:

On this date Eugene Shepard was born near Green Bay. Although he made his career in the lumbering business near Rhinelander, he was best known for his story-telling and practical jokes. He told many tales of Paul Bunyan, the mythical lumberjack, and drew pictures of the giant at work that became famous. Shepard also started a new legend about a prehistoric monster that roamed the woods of Wisconsin – the hodag. Shepard built the mythical monster out of wood and bull’s horns. He fooled everyone into believing it was alive, allowing it to be viewed only inside a dark tent. The beast was displayed at the Wausau and Antigo county fairs before Shepard admitted it was all a hoax. [Source: Badger saints and sinners, by Fred L. Holmes, p.459-474]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ ABC News reports Mueller team zeroing in on political consulting firm with Trump ties:

➤ Daniel Bice and Mary Spicuzza report Wisconsin GOP operative Mark Block helped link Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica:

Of course, there’s a Wisconsin connection to the Facebook scandal involving Cambridge Analytica.

And, not surprisingly to some, it involves longtime Wisconsin GOP operative Mark Block.

Block, who has a history of campaign missteps, has been named as a key player in the international uproar over Cambridge Analytica, a London-based firm that mined data from 50 million Facebook users to try to influence the 2016 presidential race.

Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower who brought the scandal to light, identified Block as the middleman between former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica.

In a story posted earlier this week, the Guardian newspaper said Wylie offered “what sounds like a tall tale, though it’s one he can back up with an email.”

“Mark Block, a veteran Republican strategist, happened to sit next to a cyberwarfare expert for the U.S. Air Force on a plane,” the newspaper said. It continued, “And the cyberwarfare guy is like, ‘Oh, you should meet SCL (Group). They do cyberwarfare for elections.’ “

SCL Group is the parent company for Cambridge Analytica.

The firm, which was hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, has been listed as having a New Berlin address in some Federal Election Commission filings. That P.O. Box has been used by Block in the past.

➤ Mary Spicuzza also reports Thousands of Milwaukee voters have been dropped from rolls, including some erroneously:

Thousands of Milwaukee voters have been dropped from voter rolls — including some erroneously — through the state’s registration system, city officials said Wednesday.

Some 44,000 voters were removed from city rolls after the state started using a new process in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), they said. It’s unclear how many of those were dropped in error.

“This is not a problem that has been caused at the local level,” Mayor Tom Barrett said at a City Hall news conference.

Barrett said problems were caused by incorrect data provided by the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the U.S. Postal Service, leading some voters who haven’t actually moved or changed addresses to be erroneously dropped from the rolls.

“We are very concerned with the number of legitimate voters whose records have been deactivated,” Barrett said.

➤ Jennifer Rubin observes Trump doesn’t bother to hide his submissiveness to Putin anymore:

Trump’s servility when it comes to Putin defies a benign explanation and takes us to the heart of the Russia scandal: What does Putin “have” on Trump, and why is Trump so reluctant to defend American interests when it comes to only this world leader? Mueller can ask Stephen K. Bannon and Michael Flynn about Trump’s mysterious passivity, but he might want to question outgoing secretary of state Rex Tillerson, too. He would no doubt be entirely candid and might have some important insights into Trump’s refusal to challenge Putin. Come to think of it, Mike Pompeo, the CIA director who has been nominated to replace Tillerson, might have something to say on this score as well.

➤ Meg Jones reports Clover, the adorable fox kit found abandoned last week, is improving at Humane Society:

A week after the shivering ball of fur was found, he has gained half a pound, is recovering from the maladies and is weaning off liquid food. His eyesight has improved and his ears, laid back when born, have now perked up.

“He’s like a true toddler now,” said Crystal Sharlow-Schaefer, wildlife supervisor at the Wisconsin Humane Society’s Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

“Wild parents are good parents. For him to be in this shape, the fox family had to have been in crisis. He was a nugget of problems, but he has really rallied,” Sharlow-Schaefer said.

Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes

In Whitewater, one often hears about the importance of single-family homes. Policymakers insist that the city should have more such homes. Strategies for increasing single-family homeownership often involve either restricting or inhibiting rental home purchases, or publicly subsidizing owner-occupied housing starts.

Some of those who’d like more single-family homes for Whitewater simultaneously back a Foxconn project that will destroy dozens of single-family homes near that multi-billion-dollar, taxpayer-supported project:

Angry homeowners on Tuesday night challenged the authority of Mount Pleasant to take their property for the Foxconn project, with some vowing to press the fight against the village on the issue.

At a public hearing attended by more than 70 people, about a dozen residents whose homes may be taken by eminent domain laid into village officials for the way they are seeking to amass some 2,800 acres of land for Foxconn’s planned electronics factory and associated development.

Chief among their complaints: being offered 1.4 times the market value of their small parcels while large landowners got several times the going rate for their property, and the village’s proposal to declare the 2,800-acre Foxconn district a blighted area.

Via Foxconn-area residents angry over plans to take their homes:

To take the homes of those residents and pay as little as possible for them, the village stretches the meaning of blight, using an over-broad statute, to an absurdity:

Homeowners and their advocates, meanwhile, called the plan to declare the mostly agricultural Foxconn district a blighted area “absurd,” “a ruse,” “a sham,” “fraudulent” and a “farce.”

“How on God’s earth can a beautiful agricultural area be considered blighted?” said Kim Janicek, 4204 Highway H.

But Alan Marcuvitz, an attorney for the village, said the village is properly using a section of state law that allows an area to be declared blighted even though not a single property within it is blight-ridden.

(Emphasis added.)

Those in Whitewater touting Foxconn are backing a project that threatens the single-family homes of those near the plant, destroying the houses those residents have built and enjoyed, and leaving them with far less by percentage than major landowners.

See also 10 Key Articles About FoxconnFoxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, and The Man Behind the Foxconn Project.

Daily Bread for 3.21.18

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 7:08 PM, for 12h 14m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 18% of its visible disk illuminated . Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1918, Imperial Germany launches the Spring Offensive:

a series of German attacks along the Western Front during the First World War, beginning on 21 March 1918, which marked the deepest advances by either side since 1914. The Germans had realised that their only remaining chance of victory was to defeat the Allies before the overwhelming human and matériel resources of the United States could be fully deployed. They also had the temporary advantage in numbers afforded by the nearly 50 divisions freed by the Russian surrender (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk).

By late April 1918, the danger of a German breakthrough had passed. The German Army had suffered heavy casualties and now occupied ground of dubious value which would prove impossible to hold with such depleted units. In August 1918, the Allies began a counter-offensive with the support of 1–2 million fresh American troops and using new artillery techniques and operational methods. This Hundred Days Offensive resulted in the Germans retreating or being driven from all of the ground taken in the Spring Offensive, the collapse of the Hindenburg Line and the capitulation of the German Empire that November.

On this day in 1865, Battle of Goldsborough, North Carolina, ends:

The 21st, 22nd and 25th Wisconsin Infantry regiments took part as three Union armies totaling 100,000 men captured the city and its railroad facilities. These were then used to supply troops moving north toward Virginia. Union forces occupied Goldsborough until April 10, 1865, the day after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ella Nilsen and Rachel Wolfe of Vox Senetences have a summary entitled Facebook status: in deep trouble:

  • Facebook is in deep trouble over new revelations of how the personal data of 50 million users was accessed and used in the runup to the 2016 election. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
  • The problems for Facebook started when the New York Times and the UK Observer published reports this weekend revealing that Cambridge Analytica collected the data of tens of millions of users without their permission. [NYT / Matthew Rosenberg, Nicholas Confessore, and Carole Cadwalladr]
  • The analytics firm is owned by conservative hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and at the time of the data leak, it was headed by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon. [UK Observer / Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison]
  • Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge Analytica, characterized the data leak as a bid to use a massive amount of Facebook data to target political ads and posts to users, to “exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.” [UK Observer / Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison]
  • That’s all the more interesting because Trump’s 2016 campaign used Cambridge Analytica, paying them $5.9 million. (Ted Cruz’s campaign used the firm as well.) [Vox / Emily Stewart]
  • What Wylie is saying is that Mercer, Bannon, and other right-wing figures were using data to essentially wage a new “culture war” online, targeting people’s fears in campaigns. [Guardian / Carol Cadwalladr]
  • It’s important to note that this wasn’t a hack. And the news about the Facebook data breach isn’t really news; it’s been around for years. [Vox / Aja Romano]
  • But with the political implications of what the firm was able to do with the data, lawmakers in the US and the EU are furious and are calling for further investigations. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
  • Beyond the question of what this means for our data, there are huge implications for Facebook’s business. The company’s stock took a nosedive amid the recent reports. [Vox / Emily Stewart]

➤ Ari Berman reports Kris Kobach Just Got Humiliated in Federal Court (“The Kansas secretary of state wanted to prove his claims of widespread voter fraud. Instead, he was repeatedly embarrassed.”):

Kobach’s battle against the ACLU was supposed to be a showcase for his claims of widespread voter fraud. When he ran for Kansas secretary of state in 2010, Kobach said “the illegal registration of alien voters has become pervasive.” That led Kansas to pass the law requiring people to provide documentation including a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers to register to vote. The law prevented 35,000 Kansans from registering between 2013 and 2016.

Kobach, who led President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission and is now running for governor, hired Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation to support his claim that illegal votes by non-citizens had swung US elections. But under questioning from ACLU lawyer Dale Ho, von Spakovsky admitted he couldn’t name a single election where votes by non-citizens had decided the outcome.

Over and over, the claims of voter fraud offered by Kobach and his witnesses collapsed under scrutiny. Kobach asked Tabitha Lehman, the clerk of Sedgwick County, Kansas, to share a spreadsheet showing that 38 noncitizens in the county had registered or attempted to register. But under questioning from the ACLU, Lehman conceded that only five of them had voted over the past two decades, when 1.3 million votes were cast in the county. Kobach has often said that the evidence of fraud he’s uncovered in Kansas is only “the tip of the iceberg.” In his closing argument, Ho said, “The iceberg, on close inspection, Your Honor, it’s more of an ice cube.”

(Emphasis added.)

➤ Whistleblower [the Cambridge Analytica director of research]: We tested Trump slogans in 2014:

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie says the company tested Trump slogans such as “drain the swamp” and “deep state” as early as 2014, before Trump announced a presidential run.

➤ Jennifer Rubin delivers A reminder of just how wrong Trump apologists were:

The promise that he would be saved by advisers with more intellect, temperament and experience also ignored Trump’s unwillingness to hire critics who voiced their qualms during the campaign. Those who had served at senior levels in prior administrations didn’t come in. That left him with a mediocre talent pool. And now — ah, his defenders would have shuddered to know this a year or so ago — he’s resorted to hiring TV personalities.

Moreover, Trump’s insistence on bringing with him the security blanket of family members — who were neither competent nor ethically pristine — meant that whomever he officially selected for top posts would have to deal with a competing power center (Javanka). And hiring his daughter and son-in-law meant their conflicts of interest were ladled into the toxic brew of his own conflicts, nontransparent finances and foreign emoluments.

In sum, Trump could neither hire nor heed the advice of “very best people” on his staff or Cabinet. The pusillanimous Congress was never going to challenge him. But here’s the thing: By removing the GOP majority in Congress, the country can mitigate — not eliminate — Trump’s increasingly unhinged conduct. To get the institutional check that Republicans such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) promised, it seems, they need to be stripped of that majority.

➤ Explorers are Discovering Life Under Antarctica’s Ice:

A Detention Machine

America, of all places, should not be in the business of this sort of detention. Not now, not ever. We are, and always will be, at our best as a free and welcoming place.

“Maybe it is a concentration camp; I don’t want to make it look nice.” Joe Arpaio stands by his 2008 description of his infamous “tent city” jail. The former Arizona sheriff cultivates an image of toughness on immigration. In 2016, Donald Trump welcomed Arpaio’s support, saying, “When Sheriff Arpaio gives you an endorsement, you know you’re the king of the border.” Rewarding Arpaio with a presidential pardon in 2017 after the sheriff defied a judge’s order to stop immigration arrests, Trump sent a clear message that the handcuffs were off Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Every day, as many as 50,000 people wake up behind bars in immigration detention centers across America, including families fleeing violence and seeking safety in the United States. Last year, ICE arrests of non-criminals more than doubled.

Deportation Nation, a new documentary from The Atlantic, goes behind the scenes of America’s sprawling network of detention centers, where 179 people have died awaiting deportation since 2003.

“There are safer and more humane ways of doing this that are just as tough,” says John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE, in the film. “It makes no sense to me. We should ask ourselves a larger question: Why are we in this business? What do we get out of this?”

A Bit More on Examples

I’ve written about Milton as a bad example for Whitewater, and I’ve written about Jefferson this way, too. See Sunshine Week 2018 (The Bad Example Nearby), Attack of the Dirty Dogs, and Thanks, City of Jefferson!.

The Milton-related post prompted two readers to ask about my connections to that troubled school district’s politics. I’ve replied to them directly, and I’ll share my general reply here (there’s nothing whatever confidential in it, and I’ve no connection).

A key practice for a town blogger is to be open to political events and readers’ messages without becoming part of the factions contesting over local events. The best policy is one of distance, detachment, and diligence (where diligence operates from a distant and detached perch). One cannot state how important this practice is: one loses much by becoming enmeshed in a factional conflict.

When one writes about another place, doing or well or poorly, it doesn’t mean that one is connected to anyone there. (Indeed, concerning troubled places, one would have no reason to want to be connected other than by observation and reflection.)

The Milton School District is struggling (honest to goodness, it’s a mess in many ways, and a case study in how not to manage, how not to serve on a school board, and how not to advise a school district). Jefferson’s Harry Potter Festival is an example of how shabby productions become entrenched when officials’ pride causes them to double-down on bad ideas. (Whitewater’s now-abandoned waste-to-energy scheme was like this: the city’s wastewater superintendent couldn’t on his own let go of an economically and environmentally bad idea.)

Milton’s taken the wrong course on open government, and serves as a bad example for us, but even without that example one could identify and rightly oppose a retreat from open-government in Whitewater.

So many local officials and local notables mistakenly, but hungrily, see themselves as cosseted celebrities. The limelight should belong to good ideas and good causes, and to the marketplace of ideas where good ideas daily contest against worse ones. More public information, of the most accurate kind, enriches.

As for following majoritarian fashion, one can happily leave that to others. British philosopher Adam Ant always inspires: “We don’t follow fashion/That’d be a joke/You know we’re going to set them, set them/So everyone can take note, take note.”

Daily Bread for 3.20.18

Good morning.

Spring begins in Whitewater with partly sunny skies and a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 7:07 PM, for 12h 11m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.3% of its visible disk illuminated . Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1854, the Republican Party is founded:

On this date Free Soilers and Whigs outraged by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, met in Ripon to consider forming a new political party. The meeting’s organizer, Alvan E. Bovay, proposed the name “Republican” which had been suggested by New York editor Horace Greeley. You can see eyewitness accounts of the meeting, early Republican campaign documents, and other original sources on our page devoted to Wisconsin and the Republican Party. Though other places have claimed themselves as the birthplace of the Republican Party, this was the earliest meeting held for the purpose and the first to use the term Republican. [Source: History of Wisconsin, II: 218-219]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Britain’s Channel 4 News reports Revealed: Trump’s election consultants filmed saying they use bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians:

An undercover investigation by Channel 4 News reveals how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses were filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers.

(Trump’s consultants troll with the techniques that would appeal to someone like Trump.)

➤ Alexis Madrigal asks What Took Facebook So Long? (“Scholars have been sounding the alarm about data-harvesting firms for nearly a decade. The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it may be too late to stop them”):

While the specifics of this particular violation [data of tens of millions in Trump’s consultants’ access] are important to understand, the story reveals deeper truths about the online world that operates through and within Facebook.

First, some of Facebook’s growth has been driven by apps, which the company found extended the amount of time that people spent on the platform, as retired users of FarmVille could attest. To draw developers, Facebook had quite lax (or, as one might say, “developer-friendly”) data policies for years.

Academic researchers began publishing warnings that third-party Facebook apps represented a major possible source of privacy leakage in the early 2010s. Some noted that the privacy risks inherent in sharing data with apps were not at all clear to users. One group termed our new reality “interdependent privacy,” because your Facebook friends, in part, determine your own level of privacy.

➤ Niraj Chokshi reports Assaults Increased When Cities Hosted Trump Rallies, Study Finds:

A study published on Friday appears to confirm what news reports suggested long ago: President Trump’s campaign rallies were associated with a rise in violence when they came to town.

A city that hosted a Trump rally saw an average of 2.3 more assaults reported on the day of the event than on a typical day, according to the study, led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and published in the journal Epidemiology. The authors found no corresponding link between assaults and rallies for Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

“It appeared to be a phenomenon that’s unique to Donald Trump’s rally,” said Christopher Morrison, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and the lead author of the study.

It may come as little surprise that the rallies were associated with increased violence, as the often volcanic clashes between Mr. Trump’s supporters and opponents were widely covered at the time.

(See Assaults on Days of Campaign Rallies During the 2016 US Presidential Election.)

➤ Alan Levin reports Russian Hackers Attacked U.S. Aviation as Part of Breaches:

Russian hackers attempted to penetrate the U.S. civilian aviation industry early in 2017 as part of the broad assault on the nation’s sensitive infrastructure.

The attack had limited impact and the industry has taken steps to prevent a repeat of the intrusion, Jeff Troy, executive director of the Aviation Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said Friday. Troy wouldn’t elaborate on the nature of the breach and declined to identify specific companies or the work that was involved.

“It hit a part of our very broad membership,” Troy said. The intrusion wasn’t something that would directly harm airplanes or airlines, he said. “But I did see that this impacted some companies that are in the aviation sector.”

Troy’s comments confirmed the effects on aviation of a Russian attack that was described more broadly on Thursday by U.S. government officials. The assault was aimed at the electric grid, water processing plants and other targets, the officials said, in the first formal confirmation that Russia had gained access to some U.S. computer systems. The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation identified aviation as one of the targets, but didn’t provide specifics.

➤ Here’s Why Airplanes Still Have Ashtrays In the Bathroom:

4 Points About the Work Ahead

 

Whitewater’s in a time of transition. Those who have been here, who are here, and who are yet to arrive will face this truism: people make history, but not in conditions of their own choosing.

Three key points stand out:

The past sets the conditions from which one chooses in the present. Serial past mistakes diminish the present, and limit future choices. No one sets aside the effects of cumulative error merely by saying as much, as though a glutton who has eaten too much merely declares himself healthy. No nutrition or exercise program is that easy.

Past mistakes have left Whitewater with only a slight margin for additional error. Our city has foolishly wasted years on self-serving happy talk.

All decisions are made from the present. What’s happened before is a sunk cost; one chooses presently with a recognition – but not a servility – to the past.

Eating too much for years has a cumulative effect one cannot ignore, but that effect doesn’t compel someone to keep eating on the theory that if one has finished most of a pie, one should gorge on all of it. If 7/8ths of a pie makes make someone sick, then he should forgo the last piece.

Difficult is not impossible. Good news, overall, and a view sincerely held — Whitewater does not, as she once did over a century ago – face economic collapse. Her condition is less dire – she faces stagnation that represents a slow, relative decline. Stagnation can be overcome, although it operates slowly so many do not see a pressing need to address it. It cannot be effectively addressed, however, with grandiose claims, sketchy data, or all-is-well declarations.

Progress depends on preserving existing gains. A retreat to lesser standards in some areas diminishes gains made elsewhere.

One can be a optimist, as I truly am, and yet see that the next few years will require a rigorous commitment to needed improvements.

On the other side of this, if we apply ourselves sensibly, waits a more prosperopus and dynamic city.

Daily Bread for 3.19.18

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-seven. Sunrise is 6:57 AM and sunset 7:06 PM, for 12h 05m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.1% of its visible disk illuminated . Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater CDA’s Seed Capital Committee meets at 5 PM and the Library Board at 6:30 PM. The Whitewater School Board meets at 6:30 PM, with its regular session beginning at 7 PM.

C-SPAN, the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, launches on this day in 1979. On this day in 1865, the Battle of Goldsborough, North Carolina, begins: “The 21st, 22nd and 25th Wisconsin Infantry regiments took part in the battle at Goldsborough, North Carolina, during the Campaign of the Carolinas. Three Union armies totaling 100,000 men attacked the city in order to control its strategically important railroad lines.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, and Mark Hosenball report Exclusive: Sources contradict Sessions’ testimony he opposed Russia outreach:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony that he opposed a proposal for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who told Reuters they have spoken about the matter to investigators with Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees.

Sessions testified before Congress in November 2017 that he “pushed back” against the proposal made by former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a March 31, 2016 campaign meeting. Then a senator from Alabama, Sessions chaired the meeting as head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team.

“Yes, I pushed back,” Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 14, when asked whether he shut down Papadopoulos’ proposed outreach to Russia.

Sessions has since also been interviewed by Mueller.

Three people who attended the March campaign meeting told Reuters they gave their version of events to FBI agents or congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election. Although the accounts they provided to Reuters differed in certain respects, all three, who declined to be identified, said Sessions had expressed no objections to Papadopoulos’ idea.

One person said Sessions was courteous to Papadopoulos and said something to the effect of “okay, interesting.”

The other two recalled a similar response.

“It was almost like, ‘Well, thank you and let’s move on to the next person,’” one said.

➤ Joby Warrick reports Poisoning of Russian ex-spy puts spotlight on Moscow’s secret military labs:

Since the start of Putin’s second term, a construction boom has been underway at more than two dozen institutes that were once part of the Soviet Union’s biological and chemical weapons establishment, according to Russian documents and photos compiled by independent researchers. That expansion, which includes multiple new testing facilities, is particularly apparent at secret Defense Ministry laboratories that have long drawn the suspicions of U.S. officials over possible arms-treaty violations.

Russian officials insist that the research in government-run labs is purely defensive and perfectly legal. But the effort has come under increased scrutiny in the wake of allegations of Moscow’s involvement in the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain. Both were sickened by exposure to Novichok, a kind of highly lethal nerve agent uniquely developed by Russian military scientists years ago.

“The big question is, why are they doing this?” said Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological weapons expert with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. In a newly released book, “Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia,” ­Zilinskas and co-author Philippe Mauger analyze hundreds of contract documents and other records that show a surge in Russian research interest in subjects ranging from genetically modified pathogens to nonlethal chemical weapons used for crowd control.

➤ Michael Biesecker, Jake Pearson, and Jeff Horwitz report Trump wildlife protection board stuffed with trophy hunters:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new U.S. advisory board created to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinos is stacked with trophy hunters, including some members with direct ties to President Donald Trump and his family.

A review by The Associated Press of the backgrounds and social media posts of the 16 board members appointed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke indicates they will agree with his position that the best way to protect critically threatened or endangered species is by encouraging wealthy Americans to shoot some of them.

One appointee co-owns a private New York hunting preserve with Trump’s adult sons. The oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., drew the ire of animal rights activists after a 2011 photo emerged of him holding a bloody knife and the severed tail of an elephant he killed in Zimbabwe.

➤ Clive Irving contends Elon Musk’s ‘Big F**king Rocket’ Is a Big F**ing Deal:

Elon Musk, the maestro of SpaceX, has figured out a new way to fly into deep space. In doing so he seems to have disrupted all previous proposals for returning to the moon and reaching beyond to Mars.

Musk is gambling on the success of a project that is a radical departure from anything seen before—and far simpler than any competing space program. It is centered on a 157-foot long spaceship named BFR (Big Fucking Rocket). No kidding: That’s longer than the longest version of the Boeing 737 and, with a width of 29 feet it’s eight feet wider than the Airbus A380 super jumbo’s fuselage.

It will be designed to be used in three ways: to carry three kinds of payloads—people, cargo, or fuel (playing the role of a tanker to refuel other vehicles in space).

This Artist Creates Mesmerizing Moving Sculptures: