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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

City, Constitution, Daily Bread, Education, Ethics, History, Insurrection, Politics, Right-wing Populism, School District, Trumpism

Daily Bread for 10.4.21: The Basis of a Civics Syllabus for Whitewater’s Schools

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 68.  Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 6:29 PM for 11h 32m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 5.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

 The New York Times editorial board writes Jan. 6 Was Worse Than We Knew:

However horrifying the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol appeared in the moment, we know now that it was far worse.

The country was hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis — not primarily because of the violence and mayhem inflicted by hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters but because of the actions of Mr. Trump himself.

In the days before the mob descended on the Capitol, a corollary attack — this one bloodless and legalistic — was playing out down the street in the White House, where Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a lawyer named John Eastman huddled in the Oval Office, scheming to subvert the will of the American people by using legal sleight-of-hand.

Mr. Eastman’s unusual visit was reported at the time, but a new book by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides the details of his proposed six-point plan. It involved Mr. Pence rejecting dozens of already certified electoral votes representing tens of millions of legally cast ballots, thus allowing Congress to install Mr. Trump in a second term.

A good education requires the right lessons, well taught. A new athletic field may be useful, but it’s not an education. Flooding social media with photos of smiling students may seem useful, but it’s not an education. (A map, after all, is not the terrain.)  Insisting that all positions are equally respectable may seem convenient, but it’s an abdication of moral responsibility.

Decades ago, it was that era’s traditional conservatives who rightly insisted there was no moral equivalence between America and the Soviet Union. Decades later, the populist conservatives wrongly insist that their views are — and must  — be accorded the same respect as any contrary, reasonable positions.

No and never.

There is a constitutional order, and there are those who fought to destroy it.  There is sound medicine and there are those who tragically eat horse paste.  There is free speech and there are those who seek opportunistically to restrict debate.

While the conservative populists tantrum, and some others look away, there are yet more of us who remember.

And so, and so, in a true defense of a worthy education: craft civics lessons using the facts of January 6, 2021.  

Truth, herself, wrote the syllabus; teachers, principals, and superintendents need only follow the text.

Whistleblower says Facebook is misleading public:

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Education, Ethics, Religion, Right-wing Populism, Trumpism, Vaccines

Daily Bread for 10.3.21: Trumpism as a ‘God and Country Lifestyle Brand’

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered thundershowers with a high of 74.  Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 6:31 PM for 11h 35m 40s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 10.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1990, the German Democratic Republic is abolished and becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany.

 David French asks Did Donald Trump Make the Church Great Again? (‘How unchurched Evangelicals are helping create a God-and-country lifestyle brand’):

From the very beginning of the white Evangelical embrace of Donald Trump, there have been a series of raging debates about how that embrace would affect the church. Will the about-face on, say, the importance of character in politicians alienate people from the church? Will the policy gains from a Republican president be “worth” the partisan anger?

But here’s a question that wasn’t asked quite enough. Will Evangelical devotion to Trump change the nature of Evangelicalism itself? Studying American religion is a complex exercise, one that requires sorting through vast amounts of data.

….

But setting aside the instances of individual conversions, what seems to be happening at scale isn’t so much the growth of white Evangelicalism as a religious movement, but rather the near-culmination of the decades-long transformation of white Evangelicalism from a mainly religious movement into a Republican political cause.

Why do I say the transformation is political and not religious? A key metric here is church attendance. An increasing number of self-described Evangelicals go to church rarely or not at all. The numbers are remarkable. Here is Ryan Burge with the data:

….

It is vitally important to understand these distinctions [between kinds of self-described Evangelicals], in part because it can explain why Evangelical political action can be so cruel and often so disconnected from biblical ethics. Why? One answer is found in the simple reality that not only are vast numbers of white self-described Evangelicals unmoored from scriptural truth, they don’t know biblical ethics at all.

An amusing Twitter anecdote illustrates the point. On Thursday, Beth Moore tweeted this:

She clarified that she was referring Philippians 2:1-18, which famously begins like this:

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Russell Moore replied to Beth:

I know these are anecdotes, but it is still absolutely, 100 percent the truth that politicians and activists who seek to mobilize white Evangelicals are trying to mobilize millions of people who do not know or believe scripture and are thus not persuaded by appeals to scriptural principles.

French’s whole essay is worth reading — highly recommended.  He offers a detailed analysis of how Trumpism has turned parts of Evangelical belief into an ignorant ‘lifestyle brand.’  (I’m a mainline Protestant, not an Evangelical, and attend a church well outside the city.  I admire French for his steadfast oposition to Trumpism even from within Evangelicalism. At the least, those who comment on public matters should have a basic grasp of major political, religious, and secular groups. Not all of these groups are, themselves, homogeneous.  Many groups have a poor grasp fundamentals, let alone of what other groups truly believe.)

French’s stark truth: too many of the Trumpists lack a deep moral foundation. Candidly, they lack thorough reading in myriad areas. See from FREE WHITEWATER Formation, General and Formation, Moral.

Of law and politics, they lack an understanding of basic terms, concepts, and history.  Of morality, they’re impulsive, mendacious, malevolent nativists.

Behind the Trumpists, one finds a widespread failure of religious and secular instruction. Failure to teach properly is first a teaching problem; failure to lead properly is first a leadership problem.

There is a particular irony: educators in schools and colleges who have failed to teach properly now often shy from correcting their own educational failures.  Instead, they ask others — in the very name of education — to accept the consequences of their own negligent instruction and administration.  (In this request, they display a decidedly (Local) Fear of a Red Hat.)

No and no again: failed teachers, administrators, or clergy are not owed deference for their self-serving insistence that we should respect all ‘opinions’ and ‘choices’ equally.  Horse paste is horse paste, anti-vax is ignorance, and complaints against the curriculum and safe spaces are infringements on liberty and equality.

Whitewater deserves better.

The Most Beautiful Time Of The Year Has Arrived…

Business, Daily Bread, Development, Foxconn

Daily Bread for 10.2.21: Foxconn Slips Away in the Night

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 79.  Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 6:33 PM for 11h 38m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 18.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 2018, the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

 Adam Rogan reports Foxconn may be purchasing an electric vehicle factory in Ohio as Mount Pleasant plans sit in limbo:

Foxconn reportedly is in the process of purchasing an already-built, 6.2 million-square-foot electric vehicle factory in northeast Ohio.

Lordstown Motors Corp. is “near an agreement to sell its … Ohio factory to Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group,” Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

The factory — located in the Village of Lordstown, about halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh — was originally a General Motors Co. factory, sold to Lordstown in 2019 after GM closed it the year prior.

Lordstown is an American electric truck company, reportedly low on cash and facing legal scrutiny for allegedly lying about the number of preorders it had; its founder resigned in June amid the investigation.

Foxconn has been moving quickly into the business of producing electric vehicles and has partnered with California-based Fisker Inc.; Foxconn has promised to make some of Fisker’s first EV vehicles.

As commenter Joe has noted here at FREE WHITEWATER, Fisker has always been an uncertain prospect for the Foxconn, itself an unreliable company. Credit where credit is due: Foxconn managed to find a company as disreputable as it is (“Lordstown is an American electric truck company, reportedly low on cash and facing legal scrutiny for allegedly lying about the number of preorders it had”: a perfect match).

Foxconn slips off to Ohio without even leaving a note on Wisconsin’s nightstand…

Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition,  Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirm Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment, Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them, Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair, It Shouldn’t, Foxconn: Wrecking Ordinary Lives for Nothing, Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?, Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!, Foxconn: First In, Now Out, Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no, Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke, Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing, Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls, Foxconn Notices the Noticeable, Journal Sentinel’s Rick Romell Reports the Obvious about Foxconn Project, Foxconn’s ‘Innovation’ Centers: Still Empty a Year Later, Foxconn & UW-Madison: Two Years and Less Than One Percent Later…, Accountability Comes Calling at Foxconn, Highlight’s from The Verge’s Foxconn Assessment, After Years of Promises, Foxconn Will Think of Something…by July, Foxconn’s Venture Capital Fund, New, More Realistic Deal Means 90% Reduction in Goals, Seth Meyers on One of Trump’s (and Walker’s) Biggest Scams, the Foxconn Deal, Adding the Amounts Spent for Foxconn (So Far), and Perhaps – Perhaps – a Few Lessons Learned.

New dinosaur species identified in Brazil:

Business, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Free Markets, Poverty

Daily Bread for 10.1.21: The Truth About ‘Dollar’ Stores

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 88.  Sunrise is 6:53 AM and sunset 6:34 PM for 11h 41m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 27.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1941, Walt Disney World opens near Orlando, Florida.

Whitewater may one day — perhaps soon — have a dollar store. Private retailers should come into the city as they wish, with the fewest restrictions (or enticements) possible.  If people want to shop at a dollar store, they should be free to do so; it’s up to a private business owner to gauge whether there is enough demand in Whitewater to support a new establishment.

The type of business a community can attract will, however, say much about the economic strength of a community.  (As will the types of businesses a community can attract will also say much about the quality of past ‘development’ efforts of officials and business people who advocate government intervention and manipulation of the marketplace.  See Gas Stations, Fast Food, and What the Market Will Bear.)

While people should decide freely where they shop, dollar stores in a community are a sign of weak economic conditions (and the failure of self-described ‘development’ men to bring better despite their boosterism).

 Natasha Frost writes Why dollar stores are replacing supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods:

One by one, dollar stores have replaced full-service grocery stores in some of the US’s most impoverished neighborhoods, sometimes receiving tax incentives to do so. In the poorest areas of North Tulsa, Oklahoma, for instance, there are dozens of dollar stores, but not a single full-service grocery store. Despite local legislation to curb their growth in states including Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, their expansion shows no sign of stopping. While some are corporately owned, many are franchised. Liberty Opportunities, which brokers these franchises arrangements, promotes them as a good investment even in times of scarcity: “During the recession, dollar stores continued to stay strong and achieve profits.”

For these franchisees, the economics mean it makes perfect sense to open a dollar store rather than a grocery store: Without stocking perishables such as meat, fruit, or vegetables, managers can avoid leaving a margin for spoilt produce, refrigeration costs, or other issues of stock management.

But these are hardly neighborhood assets. They plunge residents into food insecurity by obliging them to furnish their diet with comparatively expensive, unhealthy options and further trapping them in cycles of poverty and ill-health. African-American residents, the elderly, and those on fixed incomes are a particular target—and those with the fewest alternative options.

It’s bad for the community in other ways, too: The corporate policies of dollar stores often limit how much they can support the community and its sports teams or faith-based organizations, compared to grocery stores. What’s more, they employ as much as 50% fewer staff than grocers, in jobs with few transferable skills and pay as little as legally possible (and sometimes even less than that).

  Zachary Crockett explains The economics of dollar stores:

 Alec MacGillis writes The True Cost of Dollar Stores:

Because dollar stores are heavily concentrated in poor towns and neighborhoods, many middle- and upper-middle-class consumers are unaware of their ubiquity—or of the frequency of armed robberies and shootings. In 2017, the manager of a Dollar General in Baltimore, where I live, was shot and killed as he was closing up. But I discovered the pervasiveness of the problem while reporting elsewhere. In Dayton, Ohio, I got to know Jimmy Donald, who was working for a heating and air-conditioning contractor while trying to start an organization to help ex-felons and others with troubled backgrounds, a category that included himself. Donald, who is thirty-eight, served in the Marines in Iraq. He then spent four years in prison, after being involved in the beating death of a man outside a Michigan bar, in 2004. He lived on the west side of Dayton, which is predominantly black; as the area has lost several grocery stores, the dollar-store chains have proliferated.

This correlation is not a coincidence, according to a 2018 research brief by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which advocates for small businesses. The stores undercut traditional grocery stores by having few employees, often only three per store, and paying them little. “While dollar stores sometimes fill a need in cash-strapped communities, growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress,” the brief reported. “They’re a cause of it.”

The arrival of a dollar store is like the presence abandoned cars by the side of the road: it’s a bad sign.

Tonight’s Sky for October:

Daily Bread, Free Markets, Public Health, Vaccines

Daily Bread for 9.30.21: Immunization Mandates Are Right and Effective

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 85.  Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 6:36 PM for 11h 44m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 36.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1947,  1947 World Series (Yankees v. Brooklyn Dodgers, with Yankees in 7) begins. It is the first to be televised, to include an African-American player, to exceed $2 million in receipts, to see a pinch-hit home run, and to have six umpires on the field.

 David Leonhardt writes The Right to Health (‘Immunization mandates aren’t new. One helped win the American Revolution’):

The United States owes its existence as a nation partly to an immunization mandate.

In 1777, smallpox was a big enough problem for the bedraggled American army that George Washington thought it could jeopardize the Revolution. An outbreak had already led to one American defeat, at the Battle of Quebec. To prevent more, Washington ordered immunizations — done quietly, so the British would not hear how many Americans were sick — for all troops who had not yet had the virus.

It worked. The number of smallpox cases plummeted, and Washington’s army survived a war of attrition against the world’s most powerful country. The immunization mandate, as Ron Chernow wrote in his 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Washington, “was as important as any military measure Washington adopted during the war.”

….

As was the case with Washington’s army, the mandates are largely succeeding:

  • California’s policy has led thousands of previously unvaccinated medical workers to receive shots in recent weeks. At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, about 800 additional workers have been vaccinated since the policy was announced last month, bringing the hospital’s vaccination rate to 97 percent, according to my colleague Shawn Hubler.

  • When New York State announced a mandate for hospital and nursing-home staff members in August, about 75 percent of them had received a shot. By Monday, the share had risen to 92 percent. The increase amounts to roughly 100,000 newly vaccinated people.

  • At Trinity Health, a hospital chain in 22 states, the increase has been similar — to 94 percent from 75 percent, The Times’s Reed Abelson reports. At Genesis HealthCare, which operates long-term-care facilities in 23 states, Covid cases fell by nearly 50 percent after nearly all staff members had finished receiving shots this summer.

Often, the number of people who ultimately refuse the vaccine is smaller than the number who first say they will. Some are persuaded by the information their employer gives them — about the vaccines’ effectiveness and safety, compared with the deadliness of Covid — and others decide they are not really willing to lose their jobs.

A North Carolina hospital system, Novant Health, last week suspended 375 workers, or about 1 percent of its work force, for being unvaccinated. By the end of the week, more than half of them — about 200 — received a shot and were reinstated.

It’s a free labor market: employees who don’t want to be vaccinated can find jobs elsewhere, with smaller or less responsible employers.  Under no circumstances should they receive unemployment compensation for dismissal or quitting after an employer immunization mandate. See The ‘Personal Responsibility’ Crowd Wants a Handout and No Shirt, No Shoes? No Service. 

See also Cato adjunct scholar, and George Mason law professor, Ilya Somin on why vaccine mandates are consistent with libertarian views. (Summarizing: (1) a disease like COVID involves the potential of harm to other people (2) mask mandates, lockdowns, and restrictions on international travel are all much more intrusive than the relatively slight imposition of a safe and effective vaccine (3) there is a strong libertarian case that private institutions, and even the government when acting as employer, can set policies attached to what are voluntary relationships: employees, customers, students, etc. (4) Florida’s recent attempt to ban private businesses such as cruise lines from adopting vaccine requirements has already suffered defeat in court and is one example of an affront to libertarian sensibilities.)

This Coonhound Holds the World Record for Longest Dog Ears:

Daily Bread, Weird Tales

Daily Bread for 9.29.21: Killer Otters and Toilet Rats

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 84.  Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 6:44 PM for 11h 47m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 46.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 6 PM.

 On this day in 1957, the Packers dedicate City Stadium, now known as Lambeau Field, and defeat the Chicago Bears, 21-17.

 Amanda Holpuch reports River otter attacks baffle authorities in Anchorage, Alaska:

Residents of Anchorage, Alaska, used to living alongside moose and bear now face a threat from a more diminutive creature: the humble river otter.

On Friday, the Alaska department of fish and game alerted residents to a pack of aggressive otters which have attacked dogs, children and adults near creeks, rivers and lakes.

Humans are river otters’ only significant predator. Attacks the other way are not common, officials said. Nonetheless, a spate of reported incidents prompted the official warning.

“Because of the risk to public safety, efforts will be made to locate this group of river otters and remove them,” authorities said. “Care will be taken to only remove the animals exhibiting these unusual behaviors.”

Last week, a woman was bitten while rescuing her dog from otters at a lake. The same day, in another part of the city, a group of otters attacked a dog.

Earlier this month, a nine-year-old boy went to the emergency room after four otters chased him and his friends while they played near a duck pond in east Anchorage.

The boy’s mother, Tiffany Fernandez, told the Anchorage Daily News: “He has two fang marks on his back thigh and one on the front thigh on each leg. [He has] one puncture wound on his foot.”

Authorities said the otters would be tested for rabies, which could explain their aggression, though there had been no recent reports of rabid otters in the region.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the Guardian reports Toilet rats! Vermin are all over Britain – and they’re climbing up our waste pipes:

Name: Toilet rats.

Age: Nothing new, but an upward trend.

Appearance: Like a regular rat, but this time in your toilet.

I’ll be honest: I do not like the sound of this one bit. You are not alone.

How did the rat get in the toilet in the first place? It came up the waste pipe.

You mean they’re coming from the toilet? That’s correct.

Why is this happening? It started during the first lockdown in 2020, when entire business districts were depopulated. With less rubbish lying around to eat, rats invaded abandoned offices in search of food.

By swimming up the loo pipes? If toilets aren’t being used the water in the U-bend can evaporate, making them even easier for rats to access.

So as long as someone flushes the loo regularly, everything’s fine? Not really. Rats are excellent swimmers – they can hold their breath for three minutes and tread water for three days. If they want to get in your toilet, they will.

OK, that settles it – I am never going back to the office. The rats have taken that into consideration. With food supplies in city centres running low, they’re now invading our homes as well.

Please no. “I was called out to one job in Norwich and the customer could barely speak, she was in so much shock,” the pest control expert Andrew Dellbridge told the Norwich Evening News.

Don’t tell me any more. “She’d been using the bathroom and heard a noise,” he said. “She looked down and it was in the toilet bowl. And this is happening more and more frequently.” Chilling.

These are not ordinary times.

 In Canary Islands, a “miracle house” spared by the lava flow of La Palma:

Daily Bread, Elections, Fair Maps, Gerrymandering, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 9.28.21: Millions Then, Only a Couple of Dozen Now

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 78.  Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 6:40 PM for 11h 50m 03s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 55.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Finance Committee meets at 4:30 PM.

 On this day in 1066, William the Conqueror lands in England, beginning the Norman conquest.

 Patrick Marley reports Republicans say they want few redistricting changes, but a decade ago they moved millions of voters into new districts:

MADISON – Republican state lawmakers say they want to make as few changes as possible to Wisconsin’s election maps, but they took a dramatically different approach when they drew new legislative districts a decade ago.

Then, GOP lawmakers moved huge swaths of voters into new districts to help create maps that would give them large majorities in the Legislature. In one case, they moved 719 times more voters than they needed to move in one Assembly district.

Now, Republicans are claiming changes to the districts should be minimal — an approach that would ensure the next set of maps continues to help Republicans.

States must draw new maps after each census to make sure districts have equal populations. How the lines are drawn can dramatically boost one political party’s electoral chances.

….

A panel of three judges that year [2012] noted that about 320,000 people needed to be moved into new Assembly districts to balance the populations of the districts. Instead, Republicans moved nearly 2.4 million voters into new Assembly districts as they drew maps to maximize their advantage, the court noted.

Similarly, lawmakers needed to move about 230,000 voters into new Senate districts but instead moved 1.2 million of them. (While all of those voters were placed in new districts, many of them stayed on the same election schedule and didn’t have to wait an extra two years before they could vote in a Senate race.)

At a district-by-district level, the changes could be dramatic.

For instance, lawmakers needed to make virtually no changes to the 60th Assembly District in Ozaukee County because it was underpopulated by just 10 people. Republican legislators instead decided to move about 17,600 people out of the district and about 18,000 people into the district. The shift moved 719 times as many people as what was needed, University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Ken Mayer noted in court testimony at the time.

For the WISGOP, that was then, but this is now…

See also Wisconsin Counties Backing Fair Maps and But Whose New Maps for Wisconsin?

Ford Announces $11 Billion Investment In Electric Vehicle Production:

Local Government, Medicine, Public Health, School District

Daily Bread for 9.27.21: Good Public Health Policy is True Optimism

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 86.  Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 6:41 PM for 11h 52m 56s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, Downtown Whitewater’s Board of Directors meets at 6 PM, and the Whitewater School Board meets at 7 PM.

 On this day in 1777, Lancaster, Pennsylvania becomes the capital of the United States for one day after Congress evacuates Philadelphia.

 Andrea Salcedo reports A school photographer told a first-grader he could shed his mask. He politely declined: ‘My mommy told me not to’:

On the day of his first-grade school photos, 6-year-old Mason told his mom he was excited to show the camera his new “big boy” smile. He recently lost four teeth.

But when the photographer asked Mason to take off his navy mask before snapping his picture, Mason politely declined, his mom Nicole Peoples told The Washington Post.

“My mommy told me not to take my mask off,” Mason replied.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take it off?” the photographer asked.

“No, my mommy seriously told me to keep it on unless I’m eating and far away from everybody,” Mason said.

Perhaps he could take it off for two seconds so she could snap a quick photo, the photographer suggested.

“No, I always listen to my mommy,” Mason said.

The Nevada first-grader said “cheese,” but he wore his mask through the entire photo shoot.

“He stood his ground,” Peoples, 33, told The Post.

Masks in schools have become a flash point across the country as the United States battles another surge in coronavirus cases amid the highly transmissible delta variant. Some schools have implemented mandatory mask policies, while others have said they are recommended but not required. (Masks are mandatory in Mason’s school, his mom said.)

Before this year’s in-person classes began, Peoples told her son about the covid safety measures she expected him to follow, she said. Mason, who lost his great-grandfather to covid earlier this year, agreed not to drink from the water fountain, to keep his mask on except when eating or drinking, and to regularly wash his hands, Peoples told The Post.

Well done.  Mason is a proper American gentleman, and looks suitably sharp.

The very mention of masks infuriates the conservative populists, who set aside their support for banning immigrants and caging children only long enough to complain that simple cloth masks are an infringement on their liberty.  No number of studies will deter this edgy and impulsive horde. They’re much for ‘hope over fear’ and ‘common sense’ until they so quickly lose their cool and start shouting. It’s a short distance for these populists to a destination of heads shaking, arms raised, and shouts of ‘what, what, what?!!’… Chilled Aryan blood proves neither chilled nor Aryan.

Personal responsibility should never be so hard. See Jane Jacobs with Useful Advice on Responsibility (for Whitewater, Richmond Township, Delavan, Etc.)

Officials in small rural communities like Whitewater go on at length about any subject except the pandemic and public health measures to control it.  They mean by this — or at least they insist that they mean — that it’s important to be positive.

Their positivity is merely a transparent evasion of responsibility.

There is, however, reason for a grounded, serious optimism. One finds it in Mason, and so many others, all across America.

See also Boosterism’s Cousin, Toxic Positivity and Tragic Optimism as an Alternative to Toxic Positivity (‘Indeed, much of FREE WHITEWATER is a critique of the boosterism — the accentuation of the positive without regard to real conditions — of some in Whitewater before, during, and after the Great Recession. As much as FREE WHITEWATER is a libertarian blog, it’s also the website of a tragic optimist with a mainline Protestant formation.’)

5 Facts About Alligators:

City, Conspiracy Theories, Development, Disinformation, Economy, Ignorance, Local Government, Medicine, School District, Vaccines

Daily Bread for 9.26.21: The Vaccine Divide and the Economic Divide

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 82.  Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 6:43 PM for 11h 55m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 73% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1789, George Washington appoints Thomas Jefferson the first United States Secretary of State.

Mark Muro and John C. Austin write The vaccine divide will drive even worse economic divides:

Now, the latest phase of the pandemic—with vaccines widely available but significant vaccine hesitancy and denialism in the face of the Delta variant—is tracing its own geography. And it is following and exacerbating the same intractable red-blue divide that has organized so much strife in America in recent years.

Since 2016, we have been analyzing the sharp divides in U.S. economic variables—whether they track output, employment, income, population density, or education levels—across the stubborn gap between “red” areas that voted for President Donald Trump and “blue” ones that have been voting Democratic. Now, as we explained to Bloomberg Businessweek last month, vaccine rates—a critical influence on economic recovery and growth—need to be added to that list of divides, as they will likely delay a return to normal in “red” communities.

….

Examining information on the local share of fully vaccinated people age 12 and above, county by county, we found that the vaccination rate in counties that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 was 61% late last month. In Trump-voting counties, by contrast, the vaccination rate was just 47%—a gap that has widened substantially since April.

That means that the vaccine divide—now aligned with the red-blue divide—will likely exacerbate the other economic divides that are already weakening the nation. Whereas the more heavily vaccinated blue counties will be better able to withstand the economic effects of the Delta variant, red communities will likely struggle as the virus keeps frustrated shoppers, travelers, and workers at home.

The latest figures from Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services show that 48.1% of Walworth County residents have completed at least one vaccine dose, while 56.5% of Milwaukee County residents and 73.6% of Dane County residents have done the same, as have 61.3% in still-red-but-not-as-red as it used to be Waukesha County (see The suburban ‘WOW counties,’ traditionally a GOP fortress in Wisconsin, show signs of cracks).

The statewide one-dose rate for all residents is 56.5%.

Many of the deepest red counties in the state have notably low one-dose vaccination rates (Taylor County 31.7%, Clark County 33%, Rusk County 37.4%).

One doesn’t have to be Democrat — as I am not — to see that High-growth areas in Wisconsin linked to rise in Democratic voting, U.S. census shows.  This likely works two ways: high-growth areas inclining to Democrats, but also Democratic policies more readily attracting new establishments and opportunities.

Nothing, however, says stagnant and unappealing backwater quite like areas beset with anti-mask and anti-vaccine fanaticism. 

There’s a warning here for anyone in Whitewater’s municipal building or the Whitewater Unified School District’s central office: overlooking the views of residents and families that equate vaccination with Third Reich genocide (by fashioning hypodermic needles into the shape of a swastika) or that equate wearing masks during a pandemic with the Nazi requirement that Jews wear a yellow badge is a moral error.

This overlooking is an appeasement of historical ignorance and an impediment to public health.

It’s also a fast track to slow growth. Talented newcomers and businesspeople will not choose a place that ignores fundamental distinctions between truth and error.

Officials might like to get along with everyone, but the merit of that approach depends on what it means to get along. 

A reasonable parent, for example, would not entrust his or her child to a pediatrician who couldn’t tell the difference between penicillin and leeches.

There’s no worthiness in a formal education — high school, college, or professional — that leads to appeasing superstitions and outright lies.

 How Army Riggers Pack 75,000 Parachutes a Year at Airborne School:

Disinformation, Ignorance, Medicine, Sen. Ron Johnson, Vaccines

Daily Bread for 9.25.21: Ron Johnson Descends Still Lower

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 69.  Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 6:45 PM for 11h 58m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 81.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1890, Congress establishes Sequoia National Park.

 Molly Beck reports Despite guidance from health officials, Ron Johnson says vaccinating people during a pandemic ‘could be dangerous’:

In a Tuesday appearance on the John Solomon Reports podcast, Johnson suggested vaccinated Americans could be worsening the pandemic though recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services show the unvaccinated are more likely to become infected.

It is the latest example of comments from Johnson on COVID-19 that are contrary to advice from health professionals and scientists. His comments have been criticized by some medical professionals and Democrats as undermining efforts to get the pandemic under control.

“If you walk around asymptomatic with 250 times the viral load, are you the super spreader? Is that what’s happening here?” Johnson said, referring to a study on vaccinated Americans that has been misrepresented and used to spread misleading information.

The study found vaccinated health care workers with breakthrough infections caused by the coronavirus delta variant had higher viral loads, or the amount of virus detected in a person, compared to patients infected with earlier strains of the virus, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Johnson said recent data from Israel and the United Kingdom means “this does not look like a pandemic of the unvaxxed, this looks like vaccine failure.”

Patrick Remington, a former epidemiologist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s preventive medicine residency program, said the opposite is true.

“This has become a pandemic of the unvaccinated, worsened by people taking risks, such as gathering together indoors, without masks,” Remington said. “The vaccine has been very effective in preventing serious illness, and death. The fact that the delta variant is so much more contagious, means that we cannot rely on the vaccine alone, but need to reduce the risks of getting infected and infecting others.”

Johnson is likely a combination of Ambitious, Compromised, and Crackpot, but his latest remarks betray a perversity: Johnson delights, luxuriates, and revels in attacking established truths regardless of the harm it may cause others. ‘Don’t vaccinate widely during a pandemic’ has nothing to it except Johnson’s exaggerated sense of his own abilities.  He’s just asking questions, you see, one of many ‘inquiring minds’ seeking the truth.

Why have virologists, after all, when America has a thinly-educated, intellectually-unimpressive senator from Wisconsin? Why have medical schools, or research institutions, when we already have Ron Johnson as a guest on the John Solomon podcast?

And who’s podcaster John Solomon? He’s this serial failure: Fox News Parts Ways With John Solomon, Architect of Trump’s Ukraine Conspiracies, The Hill finds John Solomon ‘failed’ to identify key details of sources (‘John Solomon, the former opinion writer at The Hill whose columns were seen as a central part of a smear campaign against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, failed to identify “important details” about his sources — including that they were under investigation or indictment and were even his attorneys, according to a review of his work by his former colleagues. In its review of 14 columns, The Hill’s news team said serious doubts about the credibility of Solomon’s Ukrainian sources were evident even before his interviews with them’).

And so, and so… U.S. Senator Ron Johnson descends to his natural level, as a guest on a bottom-feeder’s podcast.

Therapy dogs bring joy to a Chilean hospital:

City, Daily Bread, University, UW System

Daily Bread for 9.24.21: Ongoing Enrollment Declines at UW-Whitewater, Elsewhere

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 79.  Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 6:47 PM for 12h 01m 35s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1957, President Eisenhower sends the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce desegregation.

 Devi Shastri reports University of Wisconsin schools post 1% enrollment decline, driven by decline in returning students:

Enrollment at University of Wisconsin campuses dropped 1% overall this fall, according to preliminary data released Wednesday.

The 13 universities have enrolled 163,708 students this year.

The decline seems to be driven by a decline in the number of returning students, some of which may have been related to fallout from COVID and the effect it had on the campus experience.

The number of first-year students and new transfer students is up by 4%, or 1,316 students. But the number of returning undergraduates dropped by 4%, or 3,305 students.

….

Here are the enrollment increases or decreases by campus as collected by UW System based on student registration during the first week of school. Because the data is preliminary, the percentages could change.

  • UW-Madison: +6%
  • UW-Green Bay: +3%
  • UW-Superior: +2%
  • UW-Oshkosh: -1%
  • UW-Stevens Point: -1%
  • UW-La Crosse: -2%
  • UW-Milwaukee: -3%
  • UW-Eau Claire: -4%
  • UW-Stout: -4%
  • UW-Whitewater: -4%
  • UW-Parkside: -7%
  • UW-River Falls: -8%
  • UW-Platteville: -11%

As with other schools, UW-Whitewater saw an overall deline, but with an increase in the size of its freshman class.  (Some of these first-year undergraduates may be students who decided against attending UW-Whitewater last year, and are now part of the ’21 fall semester class.)

The decline evidenced in these prelimary 2021 numbers matches a steady decline in UW-Whitewater’s enrollment after 2016, as a combined total from the Whitewater and Rock County campuses (‘multiple values’): 

No single year since 2016 (UW-Whitewater’s enrollment peak) has been decisive or notable by decline — each year has seen a similar drop in total enrollments.

Grizzly Cub and Polar Bear Form Friendship at Detroit Zoo: