Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 79. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset is 8:34, for 15 hours, 18 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Commission meets at 5:30 PM.
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign is suing billionaire Elon Musk over allegations that he violated multiple state laws, including the election bribery statute, when he offered voters a potential $1 million award for signing a petition as part of his effort to sway the result of Wisconsin’s April Supreme Court election.
Represented by Wisconsin’s Law Forward, Democracy Defenders Fund and New York-based law firm Hecker Fink, the lawsuit accuses the world’s richest man of implementing “a brazen scheme to bribe Wisconsin citizens to vote.”
Musk and his political action committee, America PAC, played a major role in this spring’s election becoming the most expensive judicial campaign in American history. Musk’s involvement in the race, which came as he was leading President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting initiatives and firing thousands of federal employees through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), was widely seen as causing a backlash and helping Dane County Judge Susan Crawford defeat Musk-backed Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel.
Musk and his PAC spent more than $20 million on the race.
Prior to the election, America PAC offered voters $100 if they signed a petition “in opposition to activist judges,” and another $100 if they referred another voter to sign the petition. Later, at a pre-election rally in Green Bay, Musk handed out two $1 million checks to voters, which had been advertised as awards “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”
The lawsuit, filed in Dane County court, notes it is against the law to offer anyone more than $1 to induce them to go to the polls, vote or vote for a particular candidate.
Police in South Carolina engaged in a slow pursuit as they followed an excavator down a main highway for more than an hour at the speed an average adult walks. Read more: https://bit.ly/4l3CnDH
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 86. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:33, for 15 hours, 18 minutes of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston to the Committee of Five to draft a declaration of independence.
A few remarks appear below on recent Whitewater Unified School District actions for a new superintendent and about a school resource officer (SRO) agreement.
Chronology. On 5.27.25, the Whitewater School Board voted 6-1 (Tortomasi dissenting) to offer a contract to Samuel Karns, currently employed in the Beloit School District. On 6.5.27, the board met in closed session, returning to open session, to consider both an employment contract for Karns and a school resource officer for the district.1
The Draft Minutes of the 6.5.25 Board Meeting. The draft minutes of the 6.5.25 WUSD meeting include the following key paragraphs:
ADJOURN INTO CLOSED SESSION A. Adjourn into closed session – Hicks moved and Aranda seconded the motion to adjourn into closed session, pursuant to the provisions of §19.85(1)(c), Wis. Stats., considering employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility, and pursuant to the provisions of § 19.85(1)(e), Wis. Stats., deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds, or conducting other specified public business, whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session. Specifically, to discuss and take action on the terms of the employment contract to be offered to the new superintendent. Pursuant to the provisions of §19.85(1)(e), Wis. Stats., deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds, or conducting other specified public business, whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session. Specifically, to discuss and take action on the proposals related to school resource officer services and the terms of contracting for such services. Motion carried 7-0. Also present was Brian Dorow, Sean O’Neal, and Tom Czarnecki from Secure Resources Unlimited. Jeff Tortomasi left at 6:46 p.m.
OPEN SESSION A. Reconvene into open session – Hicks moved and Aranda seconded the motion to reconvene into open session at 7:36 p.m., pursuant to §19.85(2), Wis. Stats., for possible action on any matter discussed in closed session. Motion carried 6-0-1-0 (Tortomasi – ABSENT). In the interest of transparency, the Board wishes to provide further information to the public regarding its closed session discussions concerning its efforts to contract for SRO services. The Board deliberated regarding its strategy for negotiating a new SRO contract with the entities that have shown interest, including those who responded to the District’s RFP and the City of Whitewater. We believe the strategies discussed will lead to the type of cooperative relationship with the eventual SRO provider that will best serve the safety and security needs of the school community. The Board intends to be open and transparent regarding this matter to the extent possible. In furtherance of that goal, the board will now entertain a motion in open session regarding the action to be taken on the Board’s efforts to contract with an SRO provider. Hicks moved and Aranda seconded the motion to extend the term of the First Amendment to the School Resource Agreement for a period of thirty days from the original date of June 30, 2025, making the new expiration date to July 30, 2025. Motion carried 6-0-1-0 (Tortomasi – ABSENT). Hicks moved and Aranda seconded the motion to accept Sam Karns’ Superintendent contract for the 2025-2026 contract period. Motion carried 6-0-1-0 (Tortomasi – ABSENT).
Actions of the Board on 6.5.25 on an SRO. The draft minutes (acknowledging that it’s a draft) are plain on the board’s decision to extended an existing school resource officer agreement with the Whitewater Police Department for an additional month (“Hicks moved and Aranda seconded the motion to extend the term of the First Amendment to the School Resource Agreement for a period of thirty days from the original date of June 30, 2025, making the new expiration date to July 30, 2025”). (It’s also plain from the minutes that the board did entertain in closed session representatives of a private security firm.)
Extending the existing contract, with the goal of approving a new contract with the Whitewater department, is the only sensible course for this district.
Ambiguities of the Draft Minutes on a New Superintendent. The 6.5.25 minutes leave key aspects of a new superintendent’s contract ambiguous. I don’t think that’s intentional; I think the language of the draft is imprecise. The minutes state that “Hicks moved and Aranda seconded the motion to accept Sam Karns’ Superintendent contract for the 2025-2026 contract period. Motion carried 6-0-1-0 (Tortomasi – ABSENT).” Accepting the contract would mean an offered contract (by the district) has been accepted (by Samuel Karns). The district is the offeror (unless, improbably, these minutes are a discussion of a counteroffer by Karns.) It’s possible the minutes mean that a draft to be presented to Karns was approved at the 6.5.25 meeting. Again, it’s imprecisely written, and does not follow conventional legal usage.
The “2025-2026 contract period” described in the minutes would be for only a single year (July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026) but it’s likely the draft minutes mean to convey a two-year period (July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2027).
Specifically, to discuss and take action on the terms of the employment contract to be offered to the new superintendent.
This sentence suggests that there has been no final offer to the board’s preferred candidate before 6.11.25, and that the 6.5 minutes are not describing an accepted offer (but, instead, board approval and acceptance of something else, or no real acceptance at all). There are other possibilities that might come into play in back and forth discussions between the parties, but I will not speculate on these other possibilities now, as the draft minutes are of limited reliance in that regard.
Deficiencies of the 6.5.25 School Board Meeting. The 6.5.25 board agenda did not include an online live viewing option (in violation of WUSD Board Policy 822.12), does not have even at this date a recorded version, and the draft minutes for the 6.5.25 do not include a return-to-open-session explanation for the absence of a virtual viewing option or a recording of the open session. In the absence of a stated explanation, one cannot tell whether the violations of WUSD policies were negligent or intentional.
Note well: if this community had followed Yesteryear’s Familiar Tune, much about these public issues, about these public officials, and at public expense would have been confined to a dark corner among only a few people.
Whitewater would have known even less.
The best record of an open session is a recording, both live and for reference later, and the interests of transparency are best served in following good open government practices and the board’s own published policies.
“Regular and Special School Board meetings will be broadcast live to community residents with the link posted on the agenda,” Whitewater Unified School District Board Policy 822.1 (revised March 20, 2023). ↩︎
The culprit for the strange blue light show is a specialized train that records track condition information using lasers at speeds of up to 125 mph. It is officially known as the New Measurement Train (NMT) Captured on two nights – May 1 and May 29, 2025 from Oxfordshire, UK on an auroracam and all sky camera.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:33, for 15 hours, 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 3 PM and the Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM.
Color panorama taken from “Larry’s Lookout”. On the far left is “Tennessee Valley” and on the right, rover tracks. Public Domain, Link.
Of all the federal budget cuts to make, cutting food aid is among the least necessary but most vindictive:
Every county in America experiences food insecurity, according to a new report from Feeding America. And recent cuts made by the Trump administration mean $1 billion will no longer fund farms, food banks and school programs.
As 600,000 people face food insecurity across Wisconsin, local food pantries now face increasing demand while having less food to distribute.
“The number of families that come through looking for support with food is staggering for the small number of people in our Waushara County,” Susan Herman, a volunteer with Waushara County Food Pantry, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
The Waushara County Food Pantry in central Wisconsin supports about 1,100 people every month. Last year, the pantry distributed nearly 500,000 pounds of food to those in need, including 2,000 pounds of fresh produce donated by local gardeners and farmers.
To help meet the growing demand this year, the pantry is partnering with the Waushara Gardeners club to distribute more fruits and vegetables to those in need. It is one of many Wisconsin pantries looking to gardeners to help feed people in the community.
In central Wisconsin, an elusive bird called the greater prairie chicken lives in the grasslands of Portage County.
They are generally only visible during the breeding season in spring, when people can watch the males compete over females. The birds will stomp their feet and inflate orange air sacs on the side of their neck that release a deep billowing call.
Conservationists have been trying to help the prairie chicken, going back to the 1920s. However, over the past 70 years the population has steeply declined. Today, it’s considered a threatened species, mainly due to fragmentation and loss of habitat.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 64. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:32, for 15 hours, 16 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1954, Joseph N. Welch, special counsel for the United States Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army–McCarthy hearings, giving McCarthy the famous rebuke, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
• First, the U.S. labor market has been in an uneasy equilibrium where companies aren’t hiring but are reluctant to fire workers that they hustled to find three or four years ago. Like a beach ball that shoots skyward after being held underwater, joblessness can quickly jump once companies decide demand is too soft to keep those workers.
“It starts with one large firm. Then competitors might say, ‘Well, listen, we have to do the same,’ ” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at consulting firm EY.
….
• Second, consumers could finally push back against rising costs, forcing companies to tighten their belts.
Delinquency rates on consumer debt have been on the rise for a year, raising fears that deteriorating finances for low-income borrowers could lead to a more pronounced slowdown in consumer spending.
For the housing market, the spring sales season has been a bust. The U.S. market now has nearly 500,000 more sellers than buyers, according to real-estate brokerage Redfin. That is the largest gap since its tally began in 2013. Home prices could fall 1% this year, said Redfin economist Chen Zhao.
“The market has been at rock bottom for the last 2½ years and there was some hope that we’d get a little bit of a turnaround this year. And it’s just actually been worse than expected,” said Zhao.
….
• Third, financial-market shocks or abrupt sentiment changes remain a wild card. The Fed reduced short-term interest rates by 1 percentage point last year, providing a measure of relief to borrowers with credit cards or variable-rate bank loans.
See Nick Timiraos, The U.S. Economy Is Headed Toward an Uncomfortable Summer (‘Companies are freezing hiring and investment to deal with shifting tariff policies. Even Trump doesn’t know what Trump will do next’), Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2025.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with scattered afternoon showers and a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:31, for 15 hours, 15 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
USS Barbero first day commemorative cover. The return address is the Postmaster General. By USPS, Public Domain, Link.
Upon witnessing the missile’s landing, [Postmaster General] Summerfield stated, “This peacetime employment of a guided missile for the important and practical purpose of carrying mail, is the first known official use of missiles by any Post Office Department of any nation.” Summerfield proclaimed the event to be “of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world,” and predicted that “before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.”
“For a president who is intent on building U.S. manufacturing, the tariff strategy he’s laid out is remarkably short-sighted,” said Gordon Hanson, a Harvard Kennedy School professor whose groundbreaking 2016 research work, “The China Shock,” was among the first to sound the alarm about the threat to American industry. “It fails to recognize what modern supply chains look like.”
“Even if you’re intent on reshoring parts of manufacturing, you can’t do it all,” he said. “Steel and aluminum are part of that.”
If Trump’s tariffs fail to result in a manufacturing renaissance — a central focus of his presidential campaign — it could weaken the prospects of a GOP coalition that’s increasingly reliant on working-class voters who supported his protectionist trade policies. But as unanticipated tariffs continue to drive up input costs for companies that need steel and aluminum for production, the warning signs emanating from manufacturers are getting louder.
An index published this week by the Institute for Supply Management, which tracks manufacturing, slipped for the third straight month in May as companies made plans to scale back production. A quarterly survey conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers reported the steepest drop in optimism since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, with trade uncertainty and raw material costs cited as top concerns. Federal Reserve data this month reported weaker manufacturing output.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:31, for 15 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1965, the Supreme Court hands down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, prohibiting the states from criminalizing the use of contraceptives by married couples.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:30, for 15 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1944, Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, commences with the execution of Operation Neptune — commonly referred to as D-Day — the largest seaborne invasion in history. Nearly 160,000 Allied troops cross the English Channel with about 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating. By the end of the day, the Allies have landed on five invasion beaches and are pushing inland.
Hiring decreased just slightly in May even as consumers and companies braced against tariffs and a potentially slowing economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.
Nonfarm payrolls rose 139,000 for the month, above the muted Dow Jones estimate for 125,000 and the downwardly revised 147,000 that the U.S. economy added in April.
An unexpected observation could result a new way to treat strokes and the scientists who designed it call it the ‘milli-spinner.’ Blood clots can be extremely dangerous, potentially blocking oxygen from vital organs including the lungs and brain. One surgical treatment involves using suction to remove them from blood vessels but this isn’t always successful. Now a surprising observation of the effect of spinning on blood clots has led to the development of a new technology that could be a safer way to treat strokes and other conditions. Read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…
Tuesday, June 10th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Green and Gold @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Drama/Family
Rated PG; 1 hour, 45 minutes (2025).
Foreclosure looms over a Wisconsin dairy farmer (Craig T. Nelson) with mounting debt and loss of the land his family has cultivated for four generations. With time running out, he places a daring Super Bowl bet on his beloved Green Bay Packers in a Hail Mary attempt to save the farm. Filmed in Door County, and at Lambeau Field. Also features Wayne Larrivee (radio voice of the Green Bay Packers) and LeRoy Butler.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon, with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:30, for 15 hours, 13 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Arts Commission meets at 5 PM.
One reads that state budget talks have been called off as Gov. Tony Evers, Republican lawmakers hit impasse (‘The impasse means Republicans who run the Legislature will write the next budget themselves’):
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans who run the Wisconsin Legislature say they’re done negotiating over the state budget, leaving GOP lawmakers to write the document themselves.
While the impasse is hardly shocking in a state that’s lived under divided government since 2019, it followed what Evers’ office said was months of negotiations. Top Republican leaders, who have often criticized Evers for not engaging with the Legislature, all described the talks as “good faith.”
At issue were some of the big picture decisions in Wisconsin’s budget debate, namely how to use a projected $4.3 billion surplus to enact some combination of tax cuts and spending increases.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see morning showers, with partly sunny skies later in the day, and a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:29, for 15 hours, 12 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 63.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The percentage of Wisconsin schoolchildren not receiving state-mandated vaccinations because of their parents’ personal beliefs is four times higher than it was a generation ago.
That rise in personal conviction waivers has driven a decrease in all immunizations among Wisconsin children ahead of new measles outbreaks hitting the U.S. that are linked to three deaths.
Wisconsin’s measles vaccination rate among kindergartners was the third-lowest in the nation in the 2023-24 school year, behind Idaho and Alaska. (Montana didn’t report data.)
….
Wisconsin had been a nationalleader in childhood immunizations.
But increasingly, Wisconsin parents are opting out:
For all childhood immunizations, vaccination rates statewide were lower in almost every quarter from 2020 through 2024, in comparison with the average rate in the three years before COVID-19.
Wisconsin was one of the states with the largest drops in the measles vaccination rate for kindergartners between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, and no county had an MMR vaccination rate above 85%, The Economist reported.
By a different measure, the measles vaccination rate for 2-year-olds in 2024 was as low as 44% in Vernon County and under 70% in 14 other counties.
There is a strong libertarian case for mandatory vaccinations. It’s a case that I support. See Jason Brennan, A Libertarian Case for Mandatory Vaccination, 44 J. Med. Ethics 37 (2018), https://www.jstor.org/stable/26879650. (Brennan argues that “people who refuse vaccinations violate the ‘clean hands principle’, a (in this case, enforceable) moral principle that prohibits people from participating in the collective imposition of unjust harm or risk of harm. In a libertarian framework, individuals may be forced to accept certain vaccines not because they have an enforceable duty to serve the common, and not because cost–benefit analysis recommends it, but because anti-vaxxers are wrongfully imposing undue harm upon others.”)
Saturn and Venus in the morning sky, and Mars at night. June brings the longest and shortest day of the year, depending on your hemisphere. And make your way out to dark skies to marvel at the Milky Way Galaxy’s core. 0:00 Intro 0:13 June planet viewing 1:09 Milky Way core season 1:59 June solstice 3:36 June Moon phases.
This mock-up of the Surveyor spacecraft was taken in 1966. By NASA – NASA, Public Domain, Link
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:18 and sunset is 8:27, for 15 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 44.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1966, Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on another world.
A longtime resident speaks on the SRO issue at the 5.6.25 meeting of the Whitewater Common Council:
I’m not going to get into the details of the negotiations between the two boards, but help me understand how negotiation by press release is a good idea. When the city manager put out a press release laying things out, made it very public. I don’t know why they left, but I believe that [unclear] was here to deal with this issue. I know WTMJ ran a story on it. We don’t need this. They’ll get to it. They’ll get to it.
I have some questions in your packet [concerning particulars of an SRO proposal from the city]
….
But let the boards work with each other. Let’s not make this an issue of individual personalities. We don’t need any more bad press in the community.
A few remarks:
A request. A lifelong resident, who served on the old Community Development Authority, was president of the old Community Development Authority, served on the Whitewater School Board, and was president of the Whitewater School Board, asks “help me understand“ a matter of public importance.
Easily fulfilled. These are public issues involving child safety, about public officials, at public expense. The particulars of the dispute should be known to residents in the city (pop. approx. 15,000) and the whole district (pop. approx. 22,000). These details are not about mere negotiations, but about fundamental claims that should be, and in a well-ordered community must be, public knowledge.
That’s not an issue of personality, that’s an issue of policymaking.
Bad Press. The best way to avoid bad press is to do good work, and the best way to do good work is to expand the discussion to the whole community.
The particulars of the SRO proposal mentioned on 5.6.25. As it turns out, the resident’s assessment (available in the video above) on the city’s proposed SRO contract (including ill-grasped concerns1 that expenses for an SRO were ‘like double-dipping’ ) was wrong. One meeting later, on 5.20.25, the City of Whitewater answered (refuted, truly) the resident’s concerns in a memo. See City of Whitewater, Public Comment Response from May 6, 2025 Common Council Meeting, May 9, 2025.
Familiarity. Old Whitewater — a state of mind rather than a person — has always felt that a few people in this small American town should decide without informing others of vital public issues.
It’s yesteryear’s familiar tune2, as astonishingly predictable as it is predictably astonishing3.
_____
These concerns were evidently erroneous when made on 5.6.25. Anyone with a causal knowledge of prior contractual arrangements would have seen as much. Still, a full memo refuting these concerns was helpful to the public. One can admire a good refutation. ↩︎
Increasingly rare these days, because to call for closed discussions isn’t as common in town as it once was, but then a remnant still has a lack of reflection before speaking. ↩︎
Hearing this never upsets me (although I am intellectually opposed to it): my reaction is perhaps similar to that of an ornithologist who hears once again the call of a fading species. There were years ago more people of this closed-government view in town, flocking here and there. ↩︎
