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School Board, 10.28.19: 3 Points

The Whitewater Unified School District Board met Monday night. I’ll update this post with the meeting video as soon as the school district posts the video online (as its own policy requires).

For now, three points stand out from the agenda items for the meeting.

1. Academic Presentations. There were three presentations on academic plans (from Brokopp for Lakeview Elementary, Fountain for Whitewater Middle School, and Heim for Pupil Services). There are no plans more vital for an educational institution than educational plans, and yet not one of these plans was included in the online agenda packet for community review. Almost as unfortunate, truly: it seems that the board members did not have copies of the plans available to them before the presenters spoke. This would mean that the board members saw these plans only when they were presented, and that not a single board member had a document to review beforehand.

Each and every board member should have seen, and reviewed, these presentations in advance, for consideration and in preparation of relevant questions. When an appellate court hears oral argument, the judges on that court are expected to have read the briefs, so that they can ask relevant, insightful questions of the parties. Simply sitting and listening isn’t enough. In fact, the more talented the judge, the more he or she will gain – and so society will gain – from his or her careful preparation.

I’ll send a public records request to this district’s newly-hired interim administrator (see below) requesting these presentations. They should have been in the agenda packet, the school board should have prepared thoughtful questions based on a prior review of these documents, and this district should confidently share its work online with all the community.

(For more about the district’s failure of communication for key items, see School Board, 9.16.19: Applicant Interviews and Reporting.)

2. An Interim Administrator. The district unanimously approved a contract for 2019-2020 for Dr. Jim Shaw. Dr. Shaw spoke briefly but confidently, expressing a desire to be an active administrator for Whitewater’s schools. A brief bit of background here: Dr. Shaw has a consulting firm, was formerly the superintendent of the Racine Unified School District, an adjunct professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at UW-Madison, and has had a lengthy educational career before Racine.

To hear some of his views at greater length, I’ve embedded immediately below an episode of Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin Show for 4.17.2013 (‘Big Question: School Vouchers‘) where Dr. Shaw discusses that topic.

 

One wishes Dr. Shaw the best in his role as district administrator.

3. Palmyra-Eagle District’s Possible Dissolution. The board voted 6-1 on a resolution urging the Wisconsin legislature to accept a three-party (Whitewater, Mukwanago, and Palmyra-Eagle) consolidation plan. (Stewart dissenting.) Palmyra-Eagle may be dissolved, and if so then a dissolution board may divide that district in accordance with existing law, or the legislature may change the law to allow a three-party consolidation, and the governor may sign that legislation, etc. There are many uncertainties.

It’s the belief of a majority on this board that they should be ‘proactive,’ but it’s an understatement to say that they have not been proactive in informing their own community about the consolidation plan they’ve now urged the legislature to adopt.

In the meeting, a board member (Davis) asked in response to objections to the consolidation resolution what would be different between seeking community input and adopting the resolution without input. (That is, how would informing the public make a difference?) It’s an odd question, truly – one that deprecates responsible representation and open government (although I’m quite sure Davis didn’t mean it this way).

Consider: Could a court of nine judges, deciding that an incumbent candidate was sure to be re-elected, simply cancel a democratic election on the theory that the incumbent’s victory was inevitable? (That is, by asking: what difference would voting make?)

Voting makes all the difference over selection by a panel of judges – it is popular election, itself, that makes the choice legitimate.

In a similar way, some matters are made legitimate not by a board of seven but only after public discussion among thousands. Most in this community have heard nothing about this resolution on consolidation. Nothing at all. (In fact, the plan underlying this resolution wasn’t – just as the academic presentations weren’t – even in the meeting’s online agenda packet.)

One would happily encourage these board members to be proactive – and in this matter, proper proactivity (so to speak) would be to communicate with residents before voting on the resolution.

It’s an expression of respect and regard to reply to a point with the seriousness it deserves.

These board members are intelligent and talented (Davis is obviously so, for example), but the board discussion isn’t intellectually challenging enough to take advantage of the strengths of its members. They don’t mull topics in vigorous discussion. They are not, as it were, their own best interlocutors. Perhaps – although one cannot be sure – some are concerned about discussions becoming too contentious, and so discussion itself is limited.  Over coffee, let’s say, some of these board members could go round after round in a stimulating discussion, but in the room they hold back, and so points are dropped, made imperfectly, etc. See Whitewater’s Major Public Institutions Produce a Net Loss (And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way)

There are in communication and discussion significant – and unnecessarily missed – opportunities in these meetings.

Daily Bread for 10.29.19

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:26 AM and sunset 5:50 PM, for 10h 24m 54s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1929, America experiences a devastating Wall Street crash.

Recommended for reading in full:

  John Hudson, Karoun Demirjian, and Mike DeBonis report House to take first vote on impeachment inquiry of Trump, forcing lawmakers on record:

The House will take its first vote on the impeachment inquiry of President Trump on Thursday, forcing lawmakers to go on record in support or opposition of the investigation and dictating the rules for its next phase.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that the vote would “affirm” the existing probe, now in its sixth week, and establish which hearings would be open and how the transcripts from witnesses who have already testified in closed sessions would be released. Pelosi said the vote also would grant due process to the president and his attorney, countering a repeated criticism by Trump that he has been treated unfairly.

“We are taking this step to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives,” Pelosi said in a letter to Democrats. “Nobody is above the law.”

Nuria Marquez Matrtinez reports ICE Is Rushing to Open For-Profit Detention Centers—Right Before California’s Ban Goes Into Effect:

Five days after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a strict ban on for-profit prisons and immigrant detention centers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly posted a solicitation notice for three new detention facilities in California—a move that advocates are calling a discreet attempt to open up new privately run facilities before the law goes into effect at the start of next year.

ICE is asking for “turnkey ready” facilities near San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles for “the exclusive use of ICE and the ICE detainee population,” according to documents posted on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website on October 16. (When ICE seeks a new contract, the search has to go through a public bidding process.) The facilities would be used to “provide housing, medical care, transportation, guard services, meals, and the day to day needs for ICE detainees,” the documents say. As the Palm Springs Desert Sun first reported, ICE is looking to house up to 6,750 detainees in the facilities.

….

State legislator Rob Bonta, a Bay Area Democrat who wrote the original bill, said ICE is trying to exploit that loophole. “Everything about this is gaming the system,” he said. If ICE rushes to sign a contract before January 1, Bonta noted, the new facility would operate for at least five years. And even though the new law explicitly prevents any contract renewals, the FBO notice states that the contracts have two five-year extension options.

 Quantum supremacy: A three minute guide:

Daily Bread for 10.28.19

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-five.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 5:52 PM, for 10h 27m 33s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets at 6:30 PM in closed session, with an open session beginning at 7 PM

On this day in 1886, Pres. Cleveland presides over the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.

Recommended for reading in full:

Nicholas Fandos and Michael S. Schmidt report Moving Closer to Trump, Impeachment Inquiry Faces Critical Test:

House impeachment investigators are speeding toward new White House barriers meant to block crucial testimony and evidence from the people who are closest to President Trump — obstacles that could soon test the limits of Democrats’ fact finding a month into their inquiry.

What has been a rapidly moving investigation securing damning testimony from witnesses who have defied White House orders may soon become a more arduous effort. Investigators are now trying to secure cooperation from higher-ranking advisers who can offer more direct accounts of Mr. Trump’s actions but are also more easily shielded from Congress.

Democrats are likely to face the first such roadblock on Monday, when one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers is expected to defy a subpoena as he awaits a federal court to determine whether he can speak with impeachment investigators. But others could soon follow, legal experts and lawmakers say, forcing Democratic leaders toward a consequential choice: Try to force cooperation through the courts or move on to begin making an argument for impeachment in public.

Craig Gilbert observes The white blue-collar vote is seen as Trump’s base in Wisconsin. But it’s actually divided into multiple parts:

“Blue-collar white” has become shorthand for the Trump vote.

But as voluminous polling on Trump in Wisconsin makes clear, white blue-collar voters are far from a uniform bloc.

While they were the primary force behind Trump’s 2016 victory in this state, they have been very divided over his performance in office.

Since he entered the White House, Trump’s approval rating with blue-collar whites of all ages in Wisconsin is only slightly more positive than negative: 50% approve, 45% disapprove, combining more than three years of surveys by the Marquette University Law School. That is a little worse than Trump’s numbers with this same demographic group in national polls.

The Marquette polling shows Trump’s standing among non-college whites varies dramatically by gender, age, marital status and religion – many of the chief dividing lines in modern politics.

In fact, Trump’s true demographic base in Wisconsin is not blue-collar white voters collectively, but blue-collar white men, and — above all — blue-collar white evangelicals, who support him overwhelmingly.

Among many other segments of the blue-collar white vote, opinions of the Trump presidency are either evenly divided (as they are among married women and mainline Protestants), or negative (as they are among unmarried women and non-religious voters).

Politics of Pot: The new marijuana law in Illinois:

Daily Bread for 10.27.19

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 5:53 PM, for 10h 30m 11s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1961, America successfully tests the first Saturn rocket, the Saturn I SA-1:

Recommended for reading in full:

Isabel V. Sawhill and Christopher Pulliam write Amend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for more inclusive growth and better jobs:

The centerpiece of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) [Trump tax bill] was cutting the corporate rate from 35 to 21 percent. Supporters argued that this would make the United States a more competitive place for business, leading to more economic growth and higher wages. So far, there is little evidence that the law has had such effects.

….

A profit-sharing tax credit could be implemented by reforming Section 162(m) of the internal revenue code. Before TCJA, 162(m) allowed the deductibility of executive pay above $1 million only if it was performance-based. After TCJA, all executive pay above $1 million is nondeductible (although it is now subject to the lower corporate rate of 21 percent). This provision could be further amended to provide a partial credit based on the portion of profits companies share with all employees up to some salary or compensation cap. Effectively, this would levy corporate or business taxes on the share of profits retained by shareholders and owners, encouraging more companies to treat their workers as part of the team that produced the profits in the first place. Such a credit could be paid for by raising the corporate rate back to some more reasonable level, such as 25 percent.

….

One important reason to engage businesses in achieving more inclusive growth is the unpopularity of the hefty taxes and transfers needed to achieve the goal without a shift in market incomes. A second reason is that receiving a larger paycheck, rather than a government benefit, contributes to a sense of self-respect and dignity tied to the value of work. To substantially reduce inequality without breaking the bank, we need to raise market incomes for those feeling left behind. To be clear, none of this is an argument for not redistributing in response to unparalleled inequality; it is an argument for not relying solely on redistribution to produce more inclusive growth.

More broadly shared growth may be essential to our democracy’s health. The public is feeling increasingly alienated with how the economy is now working; fewer than half of young adults have a positive view of capitalism. At a time when even American business calls for an update to capitalism, maybe our business tax code could use one too. Let’s amend the TCJA in ways consistent with the Business Roundtable’s new emphasis on stakeholder, as opposed to shareholder, capitalism. Will it work? There are no guarantees. But the alternative might be the end of capitalism and democracy as we have known them.

On Witch Watch at Castle Halloween Museum:

Film: Tuesday, October 29th, 12:30 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Get Out

This Tuesday, October 29th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Get Out @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Tuesday, October 29th, 12:30 PM
Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Rated R (Violence, language); 1 hour, 44 min.

This is an unnerving, psychological film in a “Twilight Zone”-style vein. A young African-American (Daniel Kaluuya) visits his white girlfriend’s parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches the boiling point. Also stars Madison native Bradley Whitford (“West Wing”). Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Kaluuya); Winner: Best Original Screenplay.

This is our Halloween film and there will be treats for all!

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

Enjoy.

Daily Bread for 10.26.19

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see occasional afternoon showers with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 5:55 PM, for 10h 32m 51s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 3.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1881, it’s a gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Recommended for reading in full:

Philip Bump writes The U.S. deficit hit $984 billion in 2019, soaring during Trump era:

The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department announced Friday, as the United States’ fiscal imbalance widened for a fourth consecutive year despite a sustained run of economic growth. The deficit grew $205 billion, or 26 percent, in the past year.

The country’s worsening fiscal picture runs in sharp contrast to President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate the federal debt within eight years. The deficit is up nearly 50 percent in the Trump era. Since taking office, Trump has endorsed big spending increases and steered most Republicans to abandon the deficit obsession they held during the Obama administration.

In 2011, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives pushed to pass a constitutional amendment that would require balanced budgets. And the Obama administration created a deficit commission looking for ways to slow the growth of government debt. But those efforts have fallen away, and budget experts believe the country will see trillion-dollar annual deficits far into the future.

Benjamin Wittes describes The Collapse of the President’s Defense:

President Trump’s substantive defense against the ongoing impeachment inquiry has crumbled entirely—not just eroded or weakened, but been flattened like a sandcastle hit with a large wave.

It was never a strong defense. After all, Trump himself released the smoking gun early in L’Affaire Ukrainienne when the White House published its memo of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That document erased any question as to whether Trump had asked a foreign head of state to “investigate”—a euphemism for digging up dirt on—his political opponents. There was no longer any doubt that he had asked a foreign country to violate the civil liberties of American citizens by way of interfering in the coming presidential campaign. That much we have known for certain for weeks.

The clarity of the evidence did not stop the president’s allies from trying to fashion some semblance of defense. But the past few days of damaging testimony have stripped away the remaining fig leaves. There was no quid pro quo, we were told—except that it’s now clear that there was one. If there was a quid pro quo, we were told, it was the good kind of quid pro quo that happens all the time in foreign relations—except that, we now learn, it wasn’t that kind at all but the very corrupt kind instead. The Ukrainians didn’t even know that the president was holding up their military aid, we were told—except that, it turns out, they did know. And, the president said, it was all about anti-corruption. This was the most Orwellian inversion; describing such a corrupt demand as a request for an investigation of corruption is a bit like describing a speakeasy as an alcoholism treatment facility.

How Amazon Returns Work:

Daily Bread for 10.25.19

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty.  Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 5:56 PM, for 10h 35m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 10.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1415,  England is unexpectedly victorious at the Battle of Agincourt.

Recommended for reading in full:

Randall Eliason writes The Republicans’ ‘due process’ arguments are nonsense:

On Wednesday morning, more than two dozen Republican House members, reportedly with Trump’s approvalstormed a secure House hearing room to disrupt the testimony and protest what they claim is an unfair, secret investigation. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has attacked the non-public impeachment inquiry as a sham and a violation of due process. But these objections are baseless: At this stage, there are sound reasons for the House to proceed behind closed doors.

Impeachment is a two-step process. The House investigates and votes on articles of impeachment. If those articles are passed, the Senate holds a trial. In this context, the House is analogous to a criminal grand jury, the body that investigates and returns charges in the form of an indictment. The Senate proceeding is analogous to the public criminal trial that results from an indictment.

In the federal criminal system, grand jury proceedings are secret, closed not only to the public but also to those under investigation. Prosecutors question witnesses before the grand jury but defense counsel are not allowed to be in the room, much less to participate and cross-examine witnesses. With Republican committee members present and able to ask questions at the closed House hearings, the president already has far more representation at the investigative stage than a target of a grand jury investigation.

Philip Bump writes The Trump campaign has over $1 million in outstanding bills from American cities:

As the Minneapolis [Trump] rally loomed, CNN went back to a number of cities that had been identified in June by the Center for Public Integrity as places with outstanding bills in to the Trump campaign. CNN found that there was at least $841,000 still outstanding. The total, though, is more than that: Dave Levinthal, who reported the initial tallies for the Center for Public Integrity, confirmed in an email to The Washington Post on Thursday that he had checked back with all the cities he had identified in July and that none had been paid as of his most recent outreach.

Adding in the bill from Albuquerque, that brings the total outstanding bill to more than $1 million — $1,052,395.78, to be precise. El Paso, which hasn’t been paid for costs from a February rally, added a late fee of about $99,000 earlier this year, bringing the total to $1,151,183.36. Add in the $530,000 that Minneapolis was originally seeking and the total nears $1.7 million.

White bellbirds produce loudest bird call ever recorded:

Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke

Trump insisted Foxconn in Wisconsin would be the eighth wonder of the world, and smarmy development men in places like Whitewater spoke about how much would come of the project, but in a puff of smoke that project’s ‘innovation centers’ are gone.

Nick Statt reports Foxconn finally admits its empty Wisconsin ‘innovation centers’ aren’t being developed:

Electronics manufacturer Foxconn’s promised Wisconsin “innovation centers,” which are to employ hundreds of people in the state if they ever get built, are officially on hold after spending months empty and unused, as the company focuses on meeting revised deadlines on the LCD factory it promised would now open by next year. The news, reported earlier today [10.23] by Wisconsin Public Radio, is another inexplicable twist in the nearly two-year train wreck that is Foxconn’s US manufacturing plans.

The company originally promised five so-called innovation centers throughout the state would that employ as many as 100 to 200 people each in high-skilled jobs, with the Milwaukee center promising as many as 500. Those jobs were to complement the more than 13,000 jobs Foxconn said its initial Wisconsin electronics manufacturing factory would bring to the US, in exchange for billions in tax breaks and incentives that Governor Scott Walker granted the company back in 2017.

Yet after purchasing a building in Milwaukee and announcing plans to build the centers in other Wisconsin cities, Foxconn has done virtually nothing with the plans. In April, The Verge reported that the buildings Foxconn had purchased were empty, a report that the company disputed without providing any specific corrections or evidence to the contrary — and the company still hasn’t provided any 194 days later.

Time proves a hundred lies false, and although we strive mightily to make a truth plain, she does so with a single breath.

Previously10 Key Articles About FoxconnFoxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family HomesFoxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair BudgetThe Man Behind the Foxconn ProjectA Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the TroughEven Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) WorkforceFoxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace ConditionsFoxconn’s Bait & SwitchFoxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying JobsThe Next Guest SpeakerTrump, 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 & FraudFoxconn 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 StupidLost 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 DiscussionAmerica’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, and Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no.

Daily Bread for 10.24.19

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 5:58 PM, for 10h 38m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 18.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Community Development Authority meets at 6 PM, and the Whitewater’s Unified School District’s board meets in closed session at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1933, Amelia Earhart visits Janesville.

Recommended for reading in full:

Ann E. Marimow and Jonathan O’Connell report In court hearing, Trump lawyer argues a sitting president would be immune from prosecution even if he were to shoot someone:

The claim of “temporary presidential immunity” from Trump’s private attorney William S. Consovoy came in court in response to a judge’s question that invoked the president’s own hypothetical scenario. As a candidate in 2016, Trump said his political support was so strong he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters.”

The president’s lawyer was asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to block a subpoena for Trump’s private financial records from New York prosecutors investigating hush-money payments made before the 2016 election. The judges seemed skeptical of the president’s sweeping claims of immunity from not just prosecution but also investigation.

Judge Denny Chin pressed Consovoy about the hypothetical shooting [if Trmp shot someone] on the streets of Manhattan.
“Local authorities couldn’t investigate? They couldn’t do anything about it?” he asked, adding, “Nothing could be done? That is your position?”

“That is correct,” Consovoy answered, emphasizing that such immunity would apply only while Trump is in office.

The exchange came during an hour-long argument centering on Trump’s effort to fend off a subpoena to his longtime accounting firm from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Vance is seeking eight years of Trump’s tax returns from the firm, Mazars USA, among other documents. Unlike past presidents and presidential nominees, Trump has refused to release any of his tax returns.

(Emphasis added. This would make Trump a dictator beyond the law for so long as he held dictatorial power.)

Kate Brannen writes Trump Views U.S. Taxpayer Dollars As His Personal Checkbook:

Trump has been dangling and withholding money to get what he wants throughout his business career and it remains his go-to tactic in the White House. In private life, he appeared to see no difference in transactions involving his personal interests and the interests of the Trump Organization or his charity. Now that he’s in the White House, he approaches the world in the same way: his personal interests come first, always.

….

For Trump, the Ukraine situation is no different. He wants the Ukrainian government to do something, so he’s just going to threaten them with money until they acquiesce.

The difference is that unlike the women he’s paid off or the subcontractors he’s threatened throughout his career, U.S. security assistance is not Trump’s personal money to give and withhold. It’s taxpayers’ money that only Congress has the authority to appropriate.

Trump Claims We’re Building A Wall In Colorado:

Fox News Won’t Be Enough

It’s a sound position to focus criticism of Trumpism on Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders.

This sometimes includes Trumpism Down to the Local Level. (Those local officials across America who have this past decade spread sugary lies of boosterism during the Great Recession, during its aftermath, and during the opioid crisis are contemptibly culpable for the climate of dishonesty on which Trumpism so hungrily feeds.  If local officials across America had told fewer lies this last decade, then some of our fellow citizens would not have become inured to the worst liar in American history.)

What, though, of Trump’s greatest media defenders at Fox News? This: they will not be enough to save Trump’s autocratic, bigoted, mendacious, and avaricious administration.

While it’s true that Fox has a strong grip on about half of all Republicans, Fox’s reach isn’t nearly so wide as the Murdochs (Rupert & Lachlan, principally) would want you to believe. That’s why, despite Fox’s all-out defense of Trump, support for impeachment and removal is growing.

Jack Shafer explains in The Incredible Shrinking Fox News (Don’t believe the hype. Rupert Murdoch and friends can’t reelect Trump by themselves’):

Without a doubt, Fox has amplified the Trump message over the first two years of his presidency, especially on Sean Hannity’s and Jeanine Pirro’s shows — and of course, Fox & Friends. And it’s true that Trump appears on the network with the frequency of a paid contributor, sitting for 41 interviews as president by the end of 2018, more than all the other major TV networks combined. And it’s worth mentioning that the network has defended the president from the Mueller investigation and other congressional and legal probes. But for all this plugging, Fox’s clout proved little help to Trump in the midterm elections, as the Democrats took the House of Representatives.

Fox’s minimal influence is easily explained. While it’s the most popular cable news network, it still draws only a niche audience. Socolow provides the numbers: On an average night, about 2.4 million prime-time viewers tune in, which is about 0.7 percent of the total U.S. population. “With numbers like these,” Socolow writes, “it’s no surprise that Fox News often chases its viewers rather than leading them. In other words: It’s more likely that Fox News caters to the preexisting partisanship of its small but loyal audience than that Fox News actually changes anybody’s mind.”

The hardest days are yet ahead, as Trump’s contempt for the American political tradition and his malignant narcissism mean there’s almost nothing he won’t do.

And yet, and yet, a political outer darkness awaits Trump and his inner circle. They’ll not escape it.

Daily Bread for 10.23.19

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-three.  Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 5:59 PM, for 10h 40m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 28.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1921, the Packers play their first NFL game, defeating the Minneapolis Marines 7-6, before a crowd of 6,000 fans.

Recommended for reading in full:

Aaron Rupar writes Trump’s Dallas rally showed how untethered from reality his impeachment pushback is (‘It’s little more than lies and gaslighting’):

But as I detailed weeks ago, Trump’s attacks on the whistleblower completely miss the point because his core allegations about the July call and the White House’s efforts to cover it up have already been corroborated by the White House itself. And the impeachment-related hearings that have been held in recent days with key players in the Ukraine saga have only further corroborated the whistleblower’s account about what happened during the call and the subsequent efforts to cover it up.

The fact of the matter is the whistleblower’s complaint has both proven to be broadly accurate, and it is also not central to public understanding of the Ukraine scandal. But instead of trying to explain the pattern that has emerged from House hearings, Trump is falling back on his familiar strategy of lashing out and making dark insinuations about deep-state conspiracies.

Along those lines, Trump’s insinuation that intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson conspired against him is absurd on two fronts. First, Atkinson was appointed to his position by Trump in November 2017, so if the president doesn’t know who he is by now, he has nobody to blame but himself. Secondly, the House hearings have made it abundantly clear that Atkinson made the only reasonable judgment possible in finding the whistleblower complaint to be credible.

Jennifer Rubin observes Trump has lost the battle to discredit impeachment:

The latest CNN poll finds that by a 50-to-43 percent margin, Americans favor impeachment and removal of President Trump, a new high in the CNN poll.

A remarkable 45 percent strongly think Trump should be impeached and removed. Support for impeachment mirrors Trump’s support (or lack thereof) among various cross-sections of the electorate. Independents favor impeachment 50 to 42 percent, women by 56-to-36 percent margin and college graduates by a 56-to-37 percent spread (white college graduates favor impeachment and removal 51 to 42 percent). In a perfect distillation of Trump’s standing in general, “26% of white men without college degrees favor impeachment and removal, but [that] … more than doubles to 54% among white women who hold four-year degrees.”

 The Mexican Village Planting 5 Million Trees: