Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 19.  Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 5:30 PM, for 10h 43m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 29% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks and Recreation Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM, and the Whitewater Fire Department Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM. 

 On this day in 1801, an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr, Vice President by the House of Representatives.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Bill Glauber, Mary Spicuzza, and Alison Dirr report Milwaukee takes center stage as Joe Biden pitches $1.9 trillion COVID relief, seeks to reassure Americans:

In his first major political trip outside Washington, D.C., as president, Biden vowed that he was committed to passing the relief legislation, claiming it would create “7 million jobs this year” and that “the economy now has to be dealt with.”

“Now is the time we should be spending. Now is the time to go big,” he said during a town hall broadcast by CNN and attended by a socially distant group of Wisconsin voters.

Asked when the country will get back to normal, Biden said experts warned him to “be careful not to predict things.”

“By next Christmas I think we’ll be in a very different circumstance, God willing,” he said.

“A year from now there will be significantly fewer people having to be socially distant, having to wear a mask. But we don’t know. I don’t want to over-promise.”

A key to recovery is the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which Biden said would be available to every American by the end of July.

“A lot will be vaccinated in the meantime,” he said.

Biden said “it matters where you continue to wear that mask, whether you continue to socially distance, whether you wash your hands with soap and hot water.”

Jon Keegan, Colin Lecher, and Corin Faife report Trump’s False Posts Were Treated with Kid Gloves by Facebook:

In August, as the election approached and misinformation about COVID-19 spread, Facebook announced it would give new fact-checking labels to posts, including more nuanced options than simply “false.” But data from The Markup’s Citizen Browser project, which tracks a nationwide panel of Facebook users’ feeds, shows how unevenly those labels were applied: Posts were rarely called “false,” even when they contained debunked conspiracy theories. And posts by Donald Trump were treated with the less direct flags, even when they contained lies.

The Markup shared the underlying data for this story with Facebook.

“We don’t comment on data that we can’t validate, but we are looking into the examples shared,” Facebook spokesperson Katie Derkits said in a statement.

Overall, we gathered Facebook feed data from more than 2,200 people and examined how often those users saw flagged posts on the platform in December and January. We found more than 330 users in the sample who saw posts that were flagged because they were false, devoid of context, or related to an especially controversial issue, like the presidential election. But Facebook and its partners used the “false” label sparingly—only 12 times.

World’s most endangered right whale spotted off Spanish island:

Divers unwittingly filmed a North Atlantic right whale calf – one of the world’s most endangered whales – as they navigated back to El Hierro in Spain’s Canary Islands. The recently born calf, who appeared to be alone, was thousands of miles from where the species is usually spotted, along the eastern seaboard of Canada and the US.

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see light morning snow with a high of 17.  Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 5:28 PM, for 10h 40m 23s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 20.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1923, Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Rich Kremer reports Marquette University Laid Off 39 In January. Staff And Students Fear More Cuts Are To Come:

Marquette University laid off 39 staff members last month as part of a yearlong effort to close a $45 million budget deficit brought on by COVID-19 financial losses including a drop in enrollment.

The budget-cutting process has sparked fear on campus among some students and faculty who worry the university is moving away from its liberal arts education and Jesuit mission. 

On Sept. 28, Marquette administrators held a virtual town hall to discuss the financial state of the university. Senior Vice President and COO Joel Pogodzinski shared sobering news: university administration is expecting upwards of 300 faculty and staff reductions in the next two years. 

Marquette’s 2020 freshman class was the smallest it has been since 1997, which — along with unexpected losses from the pandemic — meant there was an immediate budget deficit of $45 million. By 2024, Pogodzinski anticipates that deficit could grow to as much as $65 million.

Shawn Boburg and Jon Swaine report A GOP donor gave $2.5 million for a voter fraud investigation. Now he wants his money back:

Like many Trump supporters, conservative donor Fred Eshelman awoke the day after the presidential election with the suspicion that something wasn’t right. His candidate’s apparent lead in key battleground states had evaporated overnight.

The next day, the North Carolina financier and his advisers reached out to a small conservative nonprofit group in Texas that was seeking to expose voter fraud. After a 20-minute talk with the group’s president, their first conversation, Eshelman was sold.

“I’m in for 2,” he told the president of True the Vote, according to court documents and interviews with Eshelman and others.

“$2 million,” Eshelman responded.

Over the next 12 days, Eshelman came to regret his donation and to doubt conspiracy theories of rampant illegal voting, according to court records and interviews.

Now, he wants his money back.

Gary Paul Nabhan and Austin Nuñez write Along the Southwest Border, Trump’s Wall Is Only One of the Insults He Left Behind:

Border towns from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Coast have suffered disproportionately, sacrificed to policies that ignore lives and livelihoods in favor of a dubious 450-mile-long monument to presidential hubris.

….

The insults include extreme rates of Covid-19 infection because of botched state and federal responses to the pandemic, the loss of thousands of agricultural jobs as a result of tariff wars and the intertwined catastrophes of drought, fire and flood, which the Trump administration’s hostile climate policies most likely worsened.

Most counties flanking the international boundary suffer from poverty levels double that of the U.S. average. In unincorporated settlements known as colonias, from Texas to California, border residents live without such basic services as clean water and waste removal. The Trump administration exacerbated longstanding problems by vilifying the border and those living along it and ignoring the region’s vital role in U.S. cultural, ecological, and trade relations with Latin America.

Tractor-Hacking Farmers Take on John Deere:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 4.  Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 5:27 PM, for 10h 37m 38s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater School Board will hold a legislative breakfast via audiovisual conferencing at 7:30 AM. The Library Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

 On this day in 1862, Confederates commanded by Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd attack General Ulysses S. Grant’s Union forces Fort Donelson, Tennessee. Unable to break the fort’s encirclement, Floyd surrenders the following day.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Dan Bice reports [Wisconsin] Supreme Court didn’t release study showing Black men 28% more likely to do prison time in Wisconsin:

For nearly a year, state Supreme Court officials sat on a court-authorized study that found clear racial disparities in the sentencing of felons by Wisconsin courts.

The 23-page report, completed in January 2020, concluded that Black men convicted of felonies have a 28% greater chance of ending up in prison in Wisconsin than white men. The odds of Black men receiving prison time are even higher for more serious felonies.

Called “Race and Prison Sentencing in Wisconsin,” the study found a similar bias in the sentencing of Hispanic men and an even worse one for Native American men convicted of felonies.

As for white male felons, they were 21% less likely than non-white male felons of ending up behind bars. It found no racial bias in the sentencing of women.

“Among men, a clear pattern emerges where American Indian, Black and Hispanic defendants are more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison versus another outcome like jail, probation or a fine,” concludes the study written by Michael Thompson, head of the Office of Research and Justice Statistics for the courts.

Using information from the state’s online case management system, Thompson looked at nearly 180,000 felony cases over 10 years. His work builds on that of others looking at racial disparities in Wisconsin sentencing.

David Leonhardt explains Why Senate Republicans bucked public opinion to acquit Trump:

But the modern Republican Party has found ways other than majority support to achieve its goals.

It benefits from a large built-in advantage in the Senate, which gives more power to rural and heavily white states. The filibuster also helps Republicans more than it does Democrats. In the House and state legislatures, both parties have gerrymandered, but Republicans have done more of it. In the courts, Republicans have been more aggressive about putting judges on the bench and blocking Democratic presidents from doing so. In the Electoral College, Democrats currently waste more votes than Republicans by running up large state-level victories.

All of this helps explain Trump’s second acquittal. The Republican Party is in the midst of the worst run that any party has endured — across American history — in the popular vote of presidential elections, having lost seven of the past eight. Yet the party has had a pretty good few decades, policy-wise. It has figured out how to succeed with minority support.

Dutch ice skaters take advantage of frozen canals and lakes:

Good morning.

Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 0.  Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 5:26 PM, for 10h 34m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Hope Kirwan reports UW-Platteville Receives Approval For What Will Be Wisconsin’s Largest State-Owned Solar Array:

The university received approval from the State Building Commission this week to build a 2.4-megawatt solar array. The array will be located on 5 acres in the campus’ Memorial Park.

Amy Seeboth-Wilson, UW-Platteville’s sustainability coordinator, said construction will begin this spring, and the project is scheduled to be operational by October.

….

The project is expected to offset campus electricity use by 17 percent, saving the university $217,000 annually and reducing carbon emissions by 2,300 tons per year.

Seeboth-Wilson said the current largest state-owned solar project is a 47.1-kilowatt array at UW-Oshkosh’s Sage Hall. The new array at UW-Platteville will be 50 times larger than that project.

Sam Levin and Lauren Gambino report Trump acquittal: Biden urges vigilance to defend ‘fragile’ democracy after impeachment trial:

US president Joe Biden has urged Americans to defend democracy following the acquittal of Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial, saying: “This sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile.”

In a statement on Saturday night, Biden said the substance of the charge against his predecessor over the Capitol riot on 6 January in which five people died was not in dispute, and noted the seven Republicans who voted guilty.

“Even those opposed to the conviction, like Senate minority leader McConnell, believe Donald Trump was guilty of a ‘disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and ‘practically and morally responsible for provoking’ the violence unleashed on the Capitol,” he said.

Remembering those who fought to protect democratic institutions that day, he added: “This sad chapter in our history has reminded us that democracy is fragile. That it must always be defended. That we must be ever vigilant … Each of us has a duty and responsibility as Americans, and especially as leaders, to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”

 Waverly Long reports University reviewing Uline contract after CEO funded PAC that supported U.S. Capitol insurrection:

The University [Northwestern] is reviewing its contract with Uline and will make a decision on “how to best move forward” after connections surfaced between the company and the Capitol invasion, a University spokesperson told The Daily.

After seeing a WBEZ report that Uline CEO Dick Uihlein contributed over $4 million to the Tea Party Patriots, a conservative political action committee that supported the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a Northwestern alum emailed administrators, calling on NU to end its contract with Uline.

“Northwestern competitively bids and negotiates agreements for the goods and services needed regularly by departments and schools on campus,” the University spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily. “We have a vendor screening process that we follow for each contract, and when we become aware of concerns about the social responsibility of companies we partner with, we review that information to determine what next steps may be warranted.”

Uihlein, a billionaire businessman from the Chicago area, is the single biggest donor to the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The PAC participated in the “March to Save America” rally that preceded the violent attack at the Capitol and was also part of the “Stop the Steal” coalition, according to WBEZ.

(Northwestern is a private school.)

One Billion Flowers:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 5.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 5:25 PM, for 10h 32m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1981, a series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Kelly Myerhofer reports UW System looking at consolidation between UW branch campuses, technical colleges:

[UW System Pres. Tommy] Thompson has added another item to his agenda, one that could reshape public higher education in Wisconsin: Exploring the possibility of consolidation between the System’s branch campuses and Wisconsin Technical College System institutions.

What the consolidation would entail — whether it be physical buildings, academic programs, administrative services or some other combination — isn’t clear. Thompson said all options, including declining to pursue anything, are on the table, stressing that the idea is in its infancy.

“We have a lot of buildings, lot of duplication and I want to sit down, discuss it and come up with a solution,” he said in an interview. “I’m not saying one (system) is better or one should be the only survivor. I’m saying let’s discuss it before the problem gets any worse.”

….

Thompson is pitching the possibility as the System’s branch campuses operate under existential threat because of rising costs, declining state support and tuition that has been frozen for 13 of the past 15 years.

A 2018 restructuring placing the campuses under the authority of various four-year institutions has kept the campuses afloat but done little to stem the steep decline in student enrollment. At UW-Platteville Richland last fall, total headcount was 108 students.

Mary Spicuzza reports Kenosha County says it’s cracking down on Illinois residents crossing the border for vaccine appointments:

Kenosha County says it’s cracking down to make sure out-of-state line jumpers aren’t getting shots of COVID-19 vaccine at clinics in the county, which is located along the Illinois border.

“Our vaccination clinics are for Kenosha County residents 65+ and in the 1A category, or people in those categories who work in Kenosha County,” Kenosha Health Officer Jen Freiheit said in a statement. “We are trying our best to discourage non-residents and some might have slipped through, but we are working to crack down on that going forward.”

Freiheit added: “While we want to get as many shots in arms as possible, Kenosha County residents are our priority.”

Freiheit’s comments come after a woman contacted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to report some family members, including a couple in their 50s who live in the Chicago suburbs — and don’t work in Wisconsin — were able to book appointments with the Kenosha County Division of Health and get doses of the COVID-19 vaccine in Kenosha.

Philip Bump reports Once impeachment is over, the threat to Trump shifts to real courtrooms:

For example, we learned this week that investigators in Georgia were beginning the process of potentially bringing charges against Trump for another facet of his impeachment: his effort to get Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes in the state to give Trump a victory there in the 2020 presidential contest. (Secretary Brad Raffensperger declined to do so.)

It’s unlikely that this will result in charges, but it’s not a casual investigation. Speaking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) explained that her office’s probe extends beyond the recorded call with Raffensperger first obtained by The Washington Post last month. The investigation being led by Willis is also separate from a similar one initiated at the state level.

 Mars arrivals, ‘Farfarout’ object and more this week:

Martian moon projected into night sky over UAE, China enters Mars orbit and captures footage, ‘Farfarout’ is now the farthest observed object in our solar system, and a collection of black holes is discovered by Hubble.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 8.  Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 5:23 PM, for 10h 29m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1932, Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected for a full term to the United States Senate.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Patrick Marley reports Businesses tied to Speaker Robin Vos and other lawmakers could see taxes cut after they took PPP loans:

Businesses owned by Wisconsin lawmakers stand to benefit from legislation they will take up as soon as next week that would cut taxes for employers who received Paycheck Protection Program loans.

At least six legislators or their families have an ownership stake in businesses that received PPP loans, records show.

Among them are Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and Republican Sen. Joan Ballweg of Markesan, who as a member of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee voted in favor of the tax cut on Wednesday.

 Todd Richmond reports Wisconsin biologist charged with lying about caviar scheme:

Prosecutors charged the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ top sturgeon expert [Ryan Koenigs] Thursday with obstructing an investigation into allegations that his employees have been funneling the valuable fish’s eggs to a network of caviar processors under the guise of a scientific study.

….

Investigators interviewed Koenigs in January 2020. He told them that DNR registration workers collect eggs as part of a fertility study. If a spearer wants the eggs back, the workers won’t collect them or they’ll return them after they’ve been studied, Koenigs said.

Investigators asked him why workers at a registration station were putting eggs in a cooler marked for a caviar processor. Koenigs said he didn’t know the processor, that staff shouldn’t be taking custody of eggs and that he didn’t know the processor kept a cooler at the station.

He said he had never called the processor. When the investigators showed him phone records confirming that Koenigs had in fact done so in May 2018, he said he didn’t know what he and the processor discussed, but that he was sure it wasn’t sturgeon eggs.

Alan Feuer reports Oath Keepers Plotting Before Capitol Riot Awaited ‘Direction’ From Trump, Prosecutors Say:

The new accounts about the Oath Keepers’ role in the Capitol assault came on the third day of former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial and included allegations that a member of the militia group was “awaiting direction” from Mr. Trump about how to handle the results of the vote in the days that followed the election. “POTUS has the right to activate units too,” the Oath Keepers member, Jessica M. Watkins, wrote in a text message to an associate on Nov. 9, according to court papers. “If Trump asks me to come, I will.”

….

In a pair of court papers filed on Thursday, prosecutors offered further evidence that the three Oath Keepers planned the attack, citing text messages reaching back to November. In one message from Nov. 16, prosecutors say, Mr. Crowl told Mr. Caldwell, “War is on the horizon.” One week later, court papers say, Mr. Caldwell wrote Ms. Watkins saying he was “worried about the future of our country,” adding, “I believe we will have to get violent to stop this.”

Similar themes were also being struck around the same time by the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, who told the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Nov. 10 that he had men stationed outside Washington prepared to act at Mr. Trump’s command.

French village inherits 2 million euros from Austrian Jewish man it sheltered during WWII:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 8.  Sunrise is 6:55 AM and sunset 5:22 PM, for 10h 26m 51s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1842, there is a shooting in the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature when Rep. Vineyard draws his revolver and shoots Rep. Arndt.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Corrinne Hess reports Community-Based Vaccine Clinic In Rock County Aims To Reach People Without Regular Health Care Access:

Wisconsin is opening its first community-based coronavirus vaccination clinic aimed at reaching people who don’t have access to regular health care. It’s set to start operating at Blackhawk Technical College in Rock County on Tuesday.

The state Department of Health Services is partnering with Virginia-based AMI Expeditionary Healthcare, which will run the clinic. DHS is hoping to work with AMI on six to 10 additional community vaccination clinics across the state as more vaccine becomes available.

On Wednesday, Gov. Tony Evers toured Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, praising the new initiative as a “labor of love.” But Evers said the clinic will start slow, much like many of the 1,500 existing vaccine sites across the state.

“The ability to have supply is critical,” Evers said. “There are lots of people in the state to vaccinate, and we need the supply. If doses stay flat, that’s a problem. We’re opening this great facility, and (doses) come from the state allocation.”

Catharine Smith reports ‘The sewage is in plain sight’: the majority-Black town fighting a sanitation crisis:

For decades, residents of Centreville, a nearly all-Black town of 5,000 in southern Illinois, just a 12-minute drive from downtown East St Louis, have been dealing with persistent flooding and sewage overflows. The smell of it is in the air all over town after a rain, and bits of soggy toilet paper and slicks of human waste cling to the grass in neighborhoods where children used to play on warm days, locals said. Kids don’t play outside any more. Gardens don’t grow.

Like Smith, other locals say their water tastes odd and refuse to drink from their taps, relying on donated shipments of bottled water. They worry about the long-term health effects of living under such conditions, and they say that for years elected officials and local utility companies inadequately addressed their cries for help.

Residents and environmental justice advocates also believe that these issues persist because the town is one of the poorest in America, with a median household income of less than $15,000 a year and almost half of residents living below the poverty line. They contend that authorities at the local and state level might have addressed wastewater problems long ago if the area was wealthier and more influential.

Michael Scherer reports State and local GOP committees attack any Republicans who dare turn on Trump:

The Louisiana Republican Party sharply denounced Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) when he surprised the state by voting Tuesday to support the constitutionality of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

In an unsigned statement, the party declared itself “profoundly disappointed” that its own elected leader, the most senior Louisiana Republican in Washington, would support a “kangaroo court” that amounted to an “attack on the very foundation of American democracy.”

But Cassidy, who just started a six-year term after being reelected by a 40-point margin, did not appear bothered by the threat of grass-roots anger back home, joining a growing list of lawmakers who have decided, for politics or principle, to buck the infrastructure at the lowest rungs of the party.

“As an impartial juror, I’m going to vote for the side that did the good job,” he said of the Democratic arguments he had heard in trial proceedings.

Explaining the icy mystery of the Dyatlov Pass deaths: