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CDA, City, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment

Daily Bread for 5.3.24: National Employment & Inflation

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:44 and sunset 7:58 for 14h 14m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 26.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1957,  Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

National job creation slowed last month, with 175,000 additional jobs created. Additional jobs were created, but fewer than the month before. Is there a silver lining in this? Yes, quite possibly. Jeanna Smialek writes The Fed Is Looking for a Job Market Cool-Down. It Just Got One (‘Wage growth and hiring slowed in April, evidence of the job market slowdown that Federal Reserve officials have been waiting on’):

While inflation is the main thing determining when and how much borrowing costs can come down, Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, made it clear this week that central bankers are also watching what happens with hiring and pay.

Mr. Powell emphasized repeatedly this week that the Fed did not specifically target wage growth when setting policy, but he also suggested that pay gains might need to slow further for inflation to come down sufficiently and in a lasting way — which means that Friday’s numbers could be a welcome development.

“We don’t target wages; we target price inflation,” he said. When it comes to cooling the economy, he said, “part of that will probably be having wage increases move down incrementally toward levels that are more sustainable.”

Stock indexes picked up after the report, as investors welcomed the more moderate data as a sign that interest rates may not stay high for as long. Investors in assets like stocks tend to prefer low rates.

These are national job numbers (with implications for the national inflation rate). Overall, these favorable national figures (job creation, relatively low unemployment, and conditions that may cool inflation).

Locally, however, there is a stark truth about municipal economic & development policy: The only reason to return to the policies and leaders of the past would be if someone had no hope of either any possible growth or no hope for ameliorating any possible decline. That is, yesterday’s self-promoting mediocrities would be of value to Whitewater only if nothing anyone did would matter. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom and Now is Whitewater’s Time to Seize an Improving National and State Economy.

Only hopelessness among many or the selfishness of a few would lead Whitewater to return to her economic past.

Semi-truck overturns, hits vehicle amid tornado supercell:

Accidents, Cats, Weird Tales

Friday Catblogging: Galena’s Amazon Warehouse Adventure

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Amy Beth Hanson reports Utah cat with a fondness for cardboard takes surprise trip to California in an Amazon box:

Galena, a 6-year-old house cat from Utah, likes hiding and playing with cardboard. 

Earlier this month, the combination of the two made for a stressful trip [for the cat] in an Amazon package, a feverish search, a California rescue and a tearful reunion.

….

Clark [Galena’s owner, Carrie Clark] said she received a “text that changed my life” on April 17, saying that Galena’s microchip had been scanned, so Clark knew she had been found somewhere. Soon after, she got a call saying her cat was near Riverside, California, after being found in a box along with steel-toed boots that had been returned to an Amazon warehouse.

Clark’s husband had ordered several pairs of boots, kept one and returned the rest in a large box on April 10.

“We realized that that our sweet kitty must have jumped into that box without us knowing,” she said.

….

City, Film

Film: Wednesday, May 8th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Zone of Interest

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Wednesday, May 8th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Zone of Interest @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Drama/History

Rated PG-13

1 hour, 45 minutes (2024)

Languages: German, Polish, Yiddish. Shown with English subtitles.

Our annual Summer “art film” series returns with the Academy Award winner for Best International Film. Summer, 1943. The commandant of Auschwitz and his wife and children live a life of leisure next door to the death camp in Poland. As the war winds on, he is under Reich pressure to increase the numbers of The Final Solution…

One can find more information about Zone of Interest at the Internet Movie Database.


City, Daily Bread, Elections, Immigration, Nativism, Politics, Presidential Race 2024, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.2.24: Did Trump’s Waukesha Visit Include a Mention of Whitewater? No

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:45 and sunset 7:57 for 14h 12m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2000, President Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.

Mr. Trump was in Waukesha yesterday.

Did Trump’s Wednesday visit include a mention of Whitewater (as his 4.2.24 Green Bay visit did)?

No. (The Republican National Committee press release announcing Trump’s Waukesha visit, however, did include an express reference to Whitewater. There was, therefore, reason to be attentive to his remarks.)

For now, Wisconsin’s rising nativist sentiment hasn’t brought yet another false, mendacious use of Whitewater’s conditions.

So much the better for this community that Mr. Trump kept the city’s name out of his remarks.

The state & national distortions of last fall & winter would prove slight as against state and national distortions this fall.

May 2024 Skywatching Tips from NASA:

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Immigration, Nativism, Politics, Presidential Race 2024, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.1.24: Will Trump’s Waukesha Visit Include a Mention of Whitewater?

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:46 and sunset 7:56 for 14h 09m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4 PM and the Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the Asiatic Squadron of the United States Navy destroys the Pacific Squadron of the Spanish Navy after a seven-hour battle. Spain loses all seven of its ships, and 381 Spanish sailors die. There are no American vessel losses or combat deaths.

So, one reads that Mr. Trump will be in Waukesha today. Trump mentioned Whitewater by name while in Green Bay on 4.2.24. If he’s going to keep Whitewater in the headlines, another Wisconsin visit would be a prime opportunity for him to do so.

Will it prove true that Trump again uses Wisconsin’s Rising Nativist Sentiment [to] Keep Whitewater in the News?

Let’s see what happens.

Relocating bees from a Washington, D.C. backyard:

Conspiracy Theories, Daily Bread, Elections, Litigation, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.30.24: Another Product of Wisconsin’s Cottage Industry in Election Conspiracists

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:48 and sunset 7:55 for 14h 07m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first President of the United States.

One person can make a difference, for good or ill. For ill (where ill means filing lawsuits with bogus allegations of fraud), one such person would be Peter Bernegger. Alice Herman reports How one Wisconsin man plagued election offices and stoked mistrust (‘Peter Bernegger has brought at least 18 lawsuits against election clerks and offices over alleged fraud – now he faces criminal charges’):

Peter Bernegger has spent the last three and a half years bombarding local election offices in Wisconsin with litigation and accusations of fraud. He’s brought at least 18 lawsuits against election clerks and offices in state court, and on social media, he has relentlessly promoted his litigation and circulated false claims about election fraud in the swing state.

His campaign has recently landed him in legal trouble – Bernegger now faces criminal charges for allegedly falsifying a subpoena in connection with a lawsuit against the state’s top election office.

It’s an escalation for the 61-year-old activist from New London, Wisconsin, who according to court documents, interviews with election officials and emails obtained by the Guardian, has drained election offices of already-limited resources and stoked mistrust in the electoral process in his years-long quest to uncover election fraud.

In the universe of activists who dispute the results of the 2020 election and have spent years searching for evidence of widespread voter fraud, Bernegger’s star power is small. He has not served on a Trump campaign team, no high-powered conservative law firms have taken on his cases and his media appearances are mostly relegated to interviews with fringe podcasts on the rightwing YouTube alternative Rumble.

But his efforts prove that in a country where election offices are chronically underfunded and heavily scrutinized, a single, relatively unknown person can exercise an outsize, and detrimental, impact on election administration.

In response to a request for comment, Bernegger did not address the claims raised in this article except to call them “false and misleading” and potentially defamatory.

A few people have spent a great deal of time pushing election conspiracies in this state (Michael Gableman most infamously), that, as a consequence, have taken up a lot of others’ time. Bernegger is one of them.

3 zebras captured, 1 loose after escaping trailer in Washington State along I-90:

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Immigration, Nativism, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.29.24: Wisconsin’s Rising Nativist Sentiment Will Keep Whitewater in the News

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 69. Sunrise is 5:49 and sunset 7:54 for 14h 04m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1861, Maryland’s House of Delegates votes not to secede, but to remain in the Union.

A nativist position — immigrants out, migrants out, etc. — is easier to hold if one ignores the economic cost of anti-labor-market policies. ‘Get them out’ trips off the tongue; explaining the value of a free-labor market that has made America the most productive nation in all history takes longer. Rob Mentzer reports Central Wisconsin farmers: Immigration crackdown, trade war affect our business (‘Farmers say US trade, immigration policy choices have direct effects on Wisconsin businesses’):

On immigration, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised mass deportations of those living in the U.S. without legal status.

Those deportations, if carried out, would likely hit Wisconsin dairy farms hard. Dairy producers rely on immigrant labor, often from Mexico and South America, to operate. While many workers come here with legal status through temporary work visas, that is not the case for all of the workforce.

“It seems foolish to just pretend that foreign-born workers aren’t here and that we don’t need them,” said Hans Breitenmoser, whose dairy farm outside of Merrill has about 460 cows. “We need a means by which their presence here can be legal and sustainable, and also provide them with the dignity that they deserve.”

Recent public opinion polling has shown a turn in favor of the crackdown advocated by Trump. An April 25 survey by Axios and The Harris Poll found a majority of Americans said they would support mass deportations. 

In Wisconsin, the most recent Marquette Law School Poll found 30 percent of Wisconsinites said undocumented immigrants currently working in the U.S. should be deported — a figure that has nearly doubled in the last two years.

Closer to Whitewater: egg farmers, too, one can guess.

Whitewater, regrettably, may find herself under both a general and a specific immigration focus between now and November. The general focus will be simply as one Wisconsin city among many where an anti-immigration position gains adherents.

A specific focus, made possible because Whitewater’s officials themselves raised immigration as an issue, would name the city expressly in campaign literature and campaign stops. Whitewater has come to the attention of Mr. Trump (or, at least, his campaign aides):

“Does anybody know Whitewater after being inundated with Biden migrants? This tiny town now has a budget shortfall,” Trump said. “Their public schools are straining with hundreds of new migrant students who don’t speak a word of English.”

Earlier this year, Whitewater officials told WPR the influx of immigrants had strained city resources, but they were doing everything they could to help them become integrated into the community. Officials believe the migrants started arriving in early 2022, and didn’t arrive all at once.

Here’s the relationship between general polling and Whitewater as a specific reference: as statewide and national polls show increasing nativist sentiment, then Whitewater will likely be a convenient topic (however misused and falsely described) in statewide and national conversations this fall.

Drone video shows aftermath of deadly Oklahoma tornadoes:

Campaign Ads, Daily Bread, Elections, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.28.24: Hundreds of Millions in Wisconsin Campaign Spending

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 67. Sunrise is 5:50 and sunset 7:53 for 14h 02m 20s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 79.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1947,   Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to demonstrate that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.

Robert D’Andrea reports Campaigns will spend ‘hundreds of millions’ in Wisconsin, party chairs say (‘Republican chair pledges to use all ‘things that are legal and on the books,’ including early voting’):

Political campaigns will likely spend hundreds of millions of dollars on elections in Wisconsin this year, agreed the state chairs of both major political parties at a forum in Madison on Thursday. 

Democrat Ben Wikler and Republican Brian Schimming would not commit to a specific dollar amount, but they agreed spending will be high for contests up and down the ballot. 

Wisconsin is a pivotal state in the presidential race. There are also competitive races for the U.S. Senate, two congressional seats and new state legislative districts. 

Could spending in Wisconsin indeed be in the hundreds of millions? Yes. Campaign spending in the 2022 Wisconsin gubernatorial race was $164 million, campaign spending in the 2022 U.S. Senate race was $205 million, and spending on 2022 Wisconsin legislative races totaled $41 million.

The World’s Oldest Hat Shop:

Daily Bread, Food

Daily Bread for 4.27.24: French Baker Invents the Crookie

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 77. Sunrise is 5:52 and sunset 7:52 for 13h 59m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1667,  blind and impoverished, John Milton sells Paradise Lost to a printer for £10, so that it could be entered into the Stationers’ Register.

Ségolène Le Stradic reports on a pastry innovation in A Turbocharged Croissant Delights (and Disturbs) Paris (‘Stéphane Louvard married one of his signature croissants with a chocolate chip cookie to come up with the “crookie.” After a slow start, his creation took off after it became a TikTok phenomenon’):

All it took for the crookie to take shape was a baker looking for a diversion, his time-tested croissant recipe and a few cookies for inspiration. It took TikTok to make it go viral.

Stéphane Louvard created the crookie almost a year and a half ago when he came up with the idea of putting cookie dough into a croissant and then baking it again. But demand for his crookies has exploded in recent months after TikTok videos flaunted his creations. On one day in February, Mr. Louvard sold 2,300 of the pastries at his bakery in a bustling Paris neighborhood.

“The entire planet is talking about us. Someone told me he even made the trip from Madrid only to get a crookie — it’s crazy,” Mr. Louvard said as he prepared a baking tray of croissants, ready to be cut in half and stuffed with chocolate chip cookie dough.

The crookie — Mr. Louvard’s son Nicolas, a business school student, came up with the name — has not just taken social media by storm. It has also spread to other bakeries across France and around the world

I’d try one, but a pastry so heavy would call for a strong coffee accompaniment.

See the Crab Nebula and Cassiopeia A in amazing time-lapses that ‘span several decades’:

America, Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 4.26.24: National Inflation Rate Stays Stubborn

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with evening showers and a high of 60. Sunrise is 5:53 and sunset 7:51 for 13h 57m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865,  Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia:

Asking that his hands be raised to his face so that he could see them, Booth uttered his last words, “Useless, useless,” and as dawn was breaking he died of asphyxiation as a result of his wounds

Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman report Stubborn Inflation Could Prod Fed to Keep Rates High for Longer:

The Federal Reserve’s most closely watched inflation measure remained stubborn in March, the latest evidence that price increases are not fading as quickly as policymakers would like, and another reason that interest rates may stay higher for longer.

Investors came into 2024 hopeful that Fed officials would cut rates substantially this year, but those hopes have been fading as inflation has shown much more staying power than expected. Wall Street increasingly sees lower rates coming much later in the year, if the Fed manages to cut them at all.

The latest Personal Consumption Expenditures index reading could keep the Fed on a cautious path as it considers when to lower borrowing costs.

The overall inflation index rose by 2.7 percent in the year through March, up from 2.5 percent in February and slightly more than economists had expected.

….

Investors are now betting that the Fed might make its first move in September or later, based on market pricing, and a small but growing share think that it may not manage to cut rates at all this year.

Massive fire burns at Oceanside Pier in California:

Cats, Science/Nature

Friday Catblogging: New Prehistoric Cat Species Discovered

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Natali Anderson reports New Prehistoric Cat Species Discovered in Spain (‘The new cat species, named Magerifelis peignei, lived in what is now Spain some 15.5 million years ago’):

It belonged to Felinae, a subfamily of small cats having a bony hyoid because of which they are able to purr but not roar.

The new cat species, named Magerifelis peignei, lived in what is now Spain some 15.5 million years ago (Middle Miocene epoch).

….

The estimated body mass of Magerifelis peignei is 7.61 kg, which falls within the range of female individuals of Lynx rufus, Leptailurus serval, and Caracal caracal.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, April 30th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Priscilla

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Tuesday, April 30th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Priscilla @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Biography/Drama

Rated R (language)

1 hour, 53 minutes (2023)

The story of Elvis Presley’s wife, Priscilla, the mother of Lisa Marie. Starring Jacob Elordi (Elvis), and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla). Directed by Sofia Coppola. 

One can find more information about Priscilla at the Internet Movie Database.

Daily Bread, Elections, Fraud, Law, Presidential race 2020, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.25.24: Wisconsin & Arizona Investigations into Fraudulent 2020 Presidential Electors

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:55 and sunset 7:49 for 13h 54m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Community Development Authority will hold a housing roundtable at 9 AM.

On this day in 1898, the United States Congress declares that a state of war between the U.S. and Spain has existed since April 21, when an American naval blockade of the Spanish colony of Cuba began.

The Washington Post reports that in Arizona

Eighteen of former president Donald Trump’s associates and allies have been indicted in Arizona for their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results by trying to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Joe Biden, who won the state by 10,457 votes.

The group includes Trump’s final White House chief of staff and six aides or attorneys who worked on or supported his 2020 campaign. One is now advising his 2024 presidential campaign, and another is a senior official at the Republican National Committee. Also indicted were 11 Arizona Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner and then transmitted it to the federal government.

All defendants appear to have been charged under each count of the indictment. The charges are as follows: conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices, and forgery. All are felonies, with the most serious being fraudulent schemes and artifices, which carries a standard sentence of five years in prison.

Wisconsin, too, had fraudulent presidential electors. In our state, an investigation into those electors is ongoing, although there has been a settlement in a lawsuit from two legitimate electors against the fraudulent ones. Patrick Marley reports that

Investigators for state Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) have interviewed Chesebro as a possible witness as part of an ongoing probe. Other details about the investigation have not been made public. Separately, [Atty. Kenneth] Chesebro, Trump attorney James Troupis and the 10 Wisconsin Republicans who posed as electors recently settled a lawsuit brought by two of the state’s legitimate electors. As part of the deals, they publicly released records about their efforts and withdrew their false filings from the National Archives. In addition, those who acted as electors agreed not to do so again this year or any time Trump is on the ballot. Troupis paid an unspecified amount of money to those who brought the suit.

Sky over Athens turns orange under Sahara sandstorm: