FREE WHITEWATER

Monthly Archives: June 2025

Daily Bread, Hunger, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 6.10.25: Responding to Federal Cuts in Food Aid

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:33, for 15 hours, 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 3 PM and the Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM.

On this day in 2003, the Spirit rover is launched, beginning NASA‘s Mars Exploration Rover mission.

Color panorama taken from “Larry’s Lookout”. On the far left is “Tennessee Valley” and on the right, rover tracks. Public Domain, Link.

Of all the federal budget cuts to make, cutting food aid is among the least necessary but most vindictive:

Every county in America experiences food insecurity, according to a new report from Feeding America. And recent cuts made by the Trump administration mean $1 billion will no longer fund farms, food banks and school programs.

As 600,000 people face food insecurity across Wisconsin, local food pantries now face increasing demand while having less food to distribute.

“The number of families that come through looking for support with food is staggering for the small number of people in our Waushara County,” Susan Herman, a volunteer with Waushara County Food Pantry, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”

The Waushara County Food Pantry in central Wisconsin supports about 1,100 people every month. Last year, the pantry distributed nearly 500,000 pounds of food to those in need, including 2,000 pounds of fresh produce donated by local gardeners and farmers.

To help meet the growing demand this year, the pantry is partnering with the Waushara Gardeners club to distribute more fruits and vegetables to those in need. It is one of many Wisconsin pantries looking to gardeners to help feed people in the community.

See Courtney Everett, Wisconsin Gardeners, Food Pantries Unite to Feed the Hungry (‘Amid federal food aid cuts, a call to ‘Plant A Row for the Hungry’), WPR, June 7, 2025.

Cutting food aid won’t make people work harder or longer; they’ll keep the less fortunate where some of the more fortunate want them to stay.

Preserving Wisconsin’s elusive prairie chicken, whose population has steeply declined:

In central Wisconsin, an elusive bird called the greater prairie chicken lives in the grasslands of Portage County.

They are generally only visible during the breeding season in spring, when people can watch the males compete over females. The birds will stomp their feet and inflate orange air sacs on the side of their neck that release a deep billowing call.

Conservationists have been trying to help the prairie chicken, going back to the 1920s. However, over the past 70 years the population has steeply declined. Today, it’s considered a threatened species, mainly due to fragmentation and loss of habitat.

Business, Daily Bread, Economy, Tariffs

Daily Bread for 6.9.25: Three Risks Facing the U.S. Economy This Summer

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 64. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:32, for 15 hours, 16 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1954, Joseph N. Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army–McCarthy hearings, giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

In the Wall Street Journal, Nick Timiraos writes of the uncertain economic conditions ahead:

Three risks loom large.

• First, the U.S. labor market has been in an uneasy equilibrium where companies aren’t hiring but are reluctant to fire workers that they hustled to find three or four years ago. Like a beach ball that shoots skyward after being held underwater, joblessness can quickly jump once companies decide demand is too soft to keep those workers.

“It starts with one large firm. Then competitors might say, ‘Well, listen, we have to do the same,’ ” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at consulting firm EY.

….

• Second, consumers could finally push back against rising costs, forcing companies to tighten their belts.

Delinquency rates on consumer debt have been on the rise for a year, raising fears that deteriorating finances for low-income borrowers could lead to a more pronounced slowdown in consumer spending.

For the housing market, the spring sales season has been a bust. The U.S. market now has nearly 500,000 more sellers than buyers, according to real-estate brokerage Redfin. That is the largest gap since its tally began in 2013. Home prices could fall 1% this year, said Redfin economist Chen Zhao.

“The market has been at rock bottom for the last 2½ years and there was some hope that we’d get a little bit of a turnaround this year. And it’s just actually been worse than expected,” said Zhao.

….

• Third, financial-market shocks or abrupt sentiment changes remain a wild card. The Fed reduced short-term interest rates by 1 percentage point last year, providing a measure of relief to borrowers with credit cards or variable-rate bank loans.

See Nick Timiraos, The U.S. Economy Is Headed Toward an Uncomfortable Summer (‘Companies are freezing hiring and investment to deal with shifting tariff policies. Even Trump doesn’t know what Trump will do next’), Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2025.

Escaped zebra airlifted back to its owner:

A runaway zebra was captured and airlifted back to its owner after a week on the loose in Tennessee, local officials said.

Business, Daily Bread, Tariffs

Daily Bread for 6.8.25: Tariffs Threaten Industry They’re Meant to Save

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with scattered afternoon showers and a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:31, for 15 hours, 15 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

USS Barbero first day commemorative cover. The return address is the Postmaster General. By USPS, Public Domain, Link.

On this day in 1959, USS Barbero and the United States Postal Service attempt the delivery of mail via Missile Mail:

Upon witnessing the missile’s landing, [Postmaster General] Summerfield stated, “This peacetime employment of a guided missile for the important and practical purpose of carrying mail, is the first known official use of missiles by any Post Office Department of any nation.” Summerfield proclaimed the event to be “of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world,” and predicted that “before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.”

Tariffs threaten an industry they’re meant to save:

“For a president who is intent on building U.S. manufacturing, the tariff strategy he’s laid out is remarkably short-sighted,” said Gordon Hanson, a Harvard Kennedy School professor whose groundbreaking 2016 research work, “The China Shock,” was among the first to sound the alarm about the threat to American industry. “It fails to recognize what modern supply chains look like.”

“Even if you’re intent on reshoring parts of manufacturing, you can’t do it all,” he said. “Steel and aluminum are part of that.”

If Trump’s tariffs fail to result in a manufacturing renaissance — a central focus of his presidential campaign — it could weaken the prospects of a GOP coalition that’s increasingly reliant on working-class voters who supported his protectionist trade policies. But as unanticipated tariffs continue to drive up input costs for companies that need steel and aluminum for production, the warning signs emanating from manufacturers are getting louder.

An index published this week by the Institute for Supply Management, which tracks manufacturing, slipped for the third straight month in May as companies made plans to scale back production. A quarterly survey conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers reported the steepest drop in optimism since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, with trade uncertainty and raw material costs cited as top concerns. Federal Reserve data this month reported weaker manufacturing output.

See Sam Sutton, Trump wants a manufacturing boom. The industry is buckling, Politico, June 6, 2025.

US Veterans Mark 81 Years Since D-Day:

Books, Daily Bread, Faraway Places

Daily Bread for 6.7.25: This Place Holds the Biggest Book on Earth

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:31, for 15 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1965, the Supreme Court hands down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, prohibiting the states from criminalizing the use of contraceptives by married couples.

This place holds the biggest book on Earth:

Types of cat loaf:

Daily Bread, Economy, Employment

Daily Bread for 6.6.25: National Hiring Reported for May, Unemployment at 4.2%

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:30, for 15 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1944, Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, commences with the execution of Operation Neptune — commonly referred to as D-Day — the largest seaborne invasion in history. Nearly 160,000 Allied troops cross the English Channel with about 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating. By the end of the day, the Allies have landed on five invasion beaches and are pushing inland.

The latest employment figures:

Hiring decreased just slightly in May even as consumers and companies braced against tariffs and a potentially slowing economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls rose 139,000 for the month, above the muted Dow Jones estimate for 125,000 and the downwardly revised 147,000 that the U.S. economy added in April.

The unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.

See Jeff Cox, U.S. payrolls increased 139,000 in May, more than expected; unemployment at 4.2%, CNBC, June 6, 2025.

This tiny device spins blood clots away:

An unexpected observation could result a new way to treat strokes and the scientists who designed it call it the ‘milli-spinner.’ Blood clots can be extremely dangerous, potentially blocking oxygen from vital organs including the lungs and brain. One surgical treatment involves using suction to remove them from blood vessels but this isn’t always successful. Now a surprising observation of the effect of spinning on blood clots has led to the development of a new technology that could be a safer way to treat strokes and other conditions. Read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, June 10th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Green and Gold

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Tuesday, June 10th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Green and Gold @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Drama/Family

Rated PG; 1 hour, 45 minutes (2025).

Foreclosure looms over a Wisconsin dairy farmer (Craig T. Nelson) with mounting debt and loss of the land his family has cultivated for four generations. With time running out, he places a daring Super Bowl bet on his beloved Green Bay Packers in a Hail Mary attempt to save the farm. Filmed in Door County, and at Lambeau Field. Also features Wayne Larrivee (radio voice of the Green Bay Packers) and LeRoy Butler.

One can find more information about Green and Gold at the Internet Movie Database.

Budget, Daily Bread, State Government, Wisconsin, WisDems, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 6.5.25: Seeing Once Again That Wisconsin’s Not a Bipartisan Environment

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon, with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:30, for 15 hours, 13 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Arts Commission meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1947, in a speech at Harvard University, the United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe.

One reads that state budget talks have been called off as Gov. Tony Evers, Republican lawmakers hit impasse (‘The impasse means Republicans who run the Legislature will write the next budget themselves’):

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans who run the Wisconsin Legislature say they’re done negotiating over the state budget, leaving GOP lawmakers to write the document themselves.

While the impasse is hardly shocking in a state that’s lived under divided government since 2019, it followed what Evers’ office said was months of negotiations. Top Republican leaders, who have often criticized Evers for not engaging with the Legislature, all described the talks as “good faith.”

At issue were some of the big picture decisions in Wisconsin’s budget debate, namely how to use a projected $4.3 billion surplus to enact some combination of tax cuts and spending increases.

See Shawn Johnson, State budget talks called off as Gov. Tony Evers, Republican lawmakers hit impasse, Wisconsin Public Radio, June 4, 2025.

These months of negotiations were likely headed to one result: to reveal yet again that there is no meaningful bipartisanship in Wisconsin. See also The WisDems’ Bipartisan Delusion and That ‘Bipartisanship’ Didn’t Last Long — Because It Was Never There.

Aerial video captures severe storm above Austin:

Video taken from a plane shows a severe storm heading toward Austin that would knock out power for thousands of people.

Daily Bread, Health, Libertarians, Vaccines, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 6.4.25: For Wisconsin, Vaccinations Are Down

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see morning showers, with partly sunny skies later in the day, and a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:29, for 15 hours, 12 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 63.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1876, an express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco via the first transcontinental railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.

One reads, with disappointment, how Wisconsin, once a leader in childhood vaccinations, [is] now a leader in vaccine skepticism:

The percentage of Wisconsin schoolchildren not receiving state-mandated vaccinations because of their parents’ personal beliefs is four times higher than it was a generation ago.

That rise in personal conviction waivers has driven a decrease in all immunizations among Wisconsin children ahead of new measles outbreaks hitting the U.S. that are linked to three deaths.

Wisconsin’s measles vaccination rate among kindergartners was the third-lowest in the nation in the 2023-24 school year, behind Idaho and Alaska. (Montana didn’t report data.)

….

Wisconsin had been a national leader in childhood immunizations. 

But increasingly, Wisconsin parents are opting out:

  • For all childhood immunizations, vaccination rates statewide were lower in almost every quarter from 2020 through 2024, in comparison with the average rate in the three years before COVID-19.
  • Wisconsin was one of the states with the largest drops in the measles vaccination rate for kindergartners between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, and no county had an MMR vaccination rate above 85%, The Economist reported.
  • By a different measure, the measles vaccination rate for 2-year-olds in 2024 was as low as 44% in Vernon County and under 70% in 14 other counties.

See Tom Kertscher, Wisconsin, once a leader in childhood vaccinations, now a leader in vaccine skepticism, Wisconsin Watch, June 2, 2025.

There is a strong libertarian case for mandatory vaccinations. It’s a case that I support. See Jason Brennan, A Libertarian Case for Mandatory Vaccination, 44 J. Med. Ethics 37 (2018), https://www.jstor.org/stable/26879650. (Brennan argues that “people who refuse vaccinations violate the ‘clean hands principle’, a (in this case, enforceable) moral principle that prohibits people from participating in the collective imposition of unjust harm or risk of harm. In a libertarian framework, individuals may be forced to accept certain vaccines not because they have an enforceable duty to serve the common, and not because cost–benefit analysis recommends it, but because anti-vaxxers are wrongfully imposing undue harm upon others.”)

See also For Your Consideration, Dr. Jonas Salk for a model of demeanor and an example of an American life well lived.

What’s Up: June 2025 Skywatching Tips from NASA:

Saturn and Venus in the morning sky, and Mars at night. June brings the longest and shortest day of the year, depending on your hemisphere. And make your way out to dark skies to marvel at the Milky Way Galaxy’s core. 0:00 Intro 0:13 June planet viewing 1:09 Milky Way core season 1:59 June solstice 3:36 June Moon phases.

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Open Government, School District

Daily Bread for 6.2.25: Yesteryear’s Familiar Tune

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Good morning.

This mock-up of the Surveyor spacecraft was taken in 1966. By NASA – NASA, Public Domain, Link

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:18 and sunset is 8:27, for 15 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1966,   Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on another world.

Whitewater has been in the midst of a contractual impasse between the Whitewater Unified School District and the City of Whitewater over the district’s objections to a long-standing arrangement for a school resource officer. See from FREE WHITEWATER Discussion of Whitewater’s School Resource Officer Merits a 120-Day Contract Extension, More on a Whitewater School Resource Officer, Update on School Resource Officer Discussions Between the Whitewater School District and the City of Whitewater, Status of a School Resource Officer for Whitewater’s Schools, and City of Whitewater Renews Proposal and Encourages School District to Negotiate.

A longtime resident speaks on the SRO issue at the 5.6.25 meeting of the Whitewater Common Council:

I’m not going to get into the details of the negotiations between the two boards, but help me understand how negotiation by press release is a good idea. When the city manager put out a press release laying things out, made it very public. I don’t know why they left, but I believe that [unclear] was here to deal with this issue. I know WTMJ ran a story on it. We don’t need this. They’ll get to it. They’ll get to it.  

I have some questions in your packet [concerning particulars of an SRO proposal from the city]

….

But let the boards work with each other.  Let’s not make this an issue of individual personalities. We don’t need any more bad press in the community.

A few remarks:

A request. A lifelong resident, who served on the old Community Development Authority, was president of the old Community Development Authority, served on the Whitewater School Board, and was president of the Whitewater School Board, asks “help me understand“ a matter of public importance.

Easily fulfilled. These are public issues involving child safety, about public officials, at public expense. The particulars of the dispute should be known to residents in the city (pop. approx. 15,000) and the whole district (pop. approx. 22,000). These details are not about mere negotiations, but about fundamental claims that should be, and in a well-ordered community must be, public knowledge.

That’s not an issue of personality, that’s an issue of policymaking.

Bad Press. The best way to avoid bad press is to do good work, and the best way to do good work is to expand the discussion to the whole community.

The particulars of the SRO proposal mentioned on 5.6.25. As it turns out, the resident’s assessment (available in the video above) on the city’s proposed SRO contract (including ill-grasped concerns1 that expenses for an SRO were ‘like double-dipping’ ) was wrong. One meeting later, on 5.20.25, the City of Whitewater answered (refuted, truly) the resident’s concerns in a memo. See City of Whitewater, Public Comment Response from May 6, 2025 Common Council Meeting, May 9, 2025.

Familiarity. Old Whitewater — a state of mind rather than a person — has always felt that a few people in this small American town should decide without informing others of vital public issues.

It’s yesteryear’s familiar tune2, as astonishingly predictable as it is predictably astonishing3.

_____

  1. These concerns were evidently erroneous when made on 5.6.25. Anyone with a causal knowledge of prior contractual arrangements would have seen as much. Still, a full memo refuting these concerns was helpful to the public. One can admire a good refutation. ↩︎
  2. Increasingly rare these days, because to call for closed discussions isn’t as common in town as it once was, but then a remnant still has a lack of reflection before speaking. ↩︎
  3. Hearing this never upsets me (although I am intellectually opposed to it): my reaction is perhaps similar to that of an ornithologist who hears once again the call of a fading species. There were years ago more people of this closed-government view in town, flocking here and there. ↩︎

Italy’s Mount Etna sends huge ash plume into air during eruption:

Birds, Daily Bread, Nature

Daily Bread for 6.1.25: Pileated Woodpecker Snacks on Seeds and Suet

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:19 and sunset is 8:27, for 15 hours, 8 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1495,  a monk, John Cor, records the first known batch of Scotch whisky.

A small pterodactyl male pileated woodpecker snacks on seeds and suet:

Watch a male Pileated Woodpecker stop by the Cornell Lab FeederWatch Cam for a snack of seeds and suet. The large woodpecker starts by excavating some suet before settling in on the seed cylinder for a long foraging bout.

The convenience of an ATM: