Churchill proposed a ‘moral of the work’ for his series The Second World War:
In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill.
Our times are not Churchill’s times, yet the moral of his work is suitable for us.
It’s suitable for us, however, in a partial and unfinished way – we may say of our present political conflict that we have yet required of ourselves only resolution and defiance.
The virtues of magnanimity and goodwill await more favorable conditions.
.@RepJeffries: "Doing the right thing and being constant to our principles requires a love of moral courage that is difficult, but by no means impossible," as shown by the many public servants who spoke up against Trump's corrupt abuses of power. pic.twitter.com/oPqByNj1xE
— The Moscow Project (@moscow_project) February 3, 2020
Good morning. 
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 5:10 PM, for 10h 04m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 64.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1959, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson, and pilot Roger Peterson are killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
Recommended for reading in full —
Mitchell Schmidt writes The Iowa caucuses are Monday, but in 2020 the center of the political universe is Wisconsin:
All eyes might be on Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses Monday, but political experts say the road to the White House this year will likely once again run through Wisconsin, where the battleground state’s sliver-thin margin could tip either way and potentially decide the 2020 election.
Wisconsin is the only state listed as a toss-up by all three of the major national political prognosticators, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Cook Political Report and Inside Elections.
“Wisconsin could be the decider,” said Larry Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “There are only a handful of states that are truly competitive and that switch sides with any regularity, and Wisconsin is one of them.”
Wisconsin’s significance in the presidential election, where close to a dozen Democratic candidates are vying for the nomination and their shot at derailing President Donald Trump’s re-election plans, comes down to the Midwestern state’s nearly even partisan split.
Desmond Lachman writes This Too Shall Crash:
During the 2008 global financial market meltdown, we were painfully reminded of the teachings of the late economist Hyman Minsky, the renowned expert on financial and credit market cycles. Minsky never tired of warning that credit bubbles and prolonged bull markets generally end in epic economic and financial market collapses.
Evidently President Trump and his economic team have either never been warned about “Minsky moments” – sudden, drastic collapses of asset values following prolonged growth — or else they are making the classic mistake of thinking that this time will be different. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why, 10 months before the election, President Trump is placing a booming stock market and a strong economy at the front and center of his re-election campaign.
There can be no doubt that we have been experiencing a global credit market bubble that would have made Minsky shudder – one that an unprecedented and prolonged period of ultra-easy monetary policy by the world’s major central banks helped to inflate. Indications of this monetary largesse can be found in the world’s four largest central banks’ balance sheets, which together have increased by a staggering $10 trillion.
….
Minsky taught that markets and politicians have short memories and that they repeatedly delude themselves into believing that this time will be different. Sadly, once again he is being proved correct. President Trump is giving too much prominence to the stock market in his re-election campaign. Today’s market exuberance – and the political exuberance it begets – are foolish in the face of mounting economic and political risks.
WATCH: Punxsutawney Phil sees no shadow Sunday morning, predicts early spring. pic.twitter.com/SLMZt6ZzUX
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 2, 2020
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 5:09 PM, for 10h 01m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 55% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1925, the Serum Run to Nome (Alaska) arrives with a diphtheria antitoxin by dog sled relay across Alaska with 20 mushers and about 150 sled dogs traveling 674 miles in five and a half days, and so saves the small town of Nome and surrounding communities from an incipient epidemic.
Recommended for reading in full —
Steven Waldman lists The Four Lies Trump Tells Evangelical Christians:
Lie #4: Trump is personally a devout Christian. This is an odd one. Very few conservative Christians seem to believe that Trump is personally religious or even moral. But these factors are not important ingredients in their support. Rather, they argue that Trump’s policies and actions advance a religious agenda despite his personal failings. Trump really doesn’t have to pretend to be religious.
But he does anyway. He has spoken passionately about his love for the Bible in ways that almost always reveal that he’s barely read it. My favorite example of Trump’s fake religiosity was when he was asked why his businesses had been audited by the Internal Revenue Service. He said, “Maybe because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian.”
After all, he reminded us, he has “a great relationship with God.”
Trump and other religious conservatives often talk about how liberal cultural elites hold evangelicals in contempt. This is sometimes true. But it’s hard to think of a greater sign of disrespect than lying to someone’s face and assuming the person won’t have the intelligence to figure it out.
Peter Wehner writes There Is No Christian Case for Trump:
What most stands out to me about [Wayne] Grudem’s case on behalf of Trump is that he is a near-perfect embodiment of an individual fully in the grip of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. And in that sense, he is a near-perfect embodiment of some of the president’s most committed evangelical supporters.
In Grudem and those who think like him, you see astonishing intellectual, theological, and ethical contortions, all in the service of making Trump appear far better than he is. I have a hunch as to why: His supporters don’t want to struggle with the cognitive dissonance created by supporting a man who, if he were a liberal Democrat, they would savage on moral and ethical grounds.
But it isn’t enough to simply remove the tension; they need to justify their decision.
It isn’t enough for many of Trump’s evangelical supporters to say that, by their lights, he is advancing policies that promote the common good even as he is acting in unethical ways that deeply trouble them. In that difficult trade-off, they could admit, they have decided that the former should take priority over the latter. Instead, they have created a cartoonish image of the president, pretending that his character flaws are trivial and inconsequential, while his policy achievements put him near the top rank of American presidents.
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 5:08 PM, for 9h 59m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1950, Curly Lambeau resigns as packers head coach.
Recommended for reading in full —
Patrick Marley, Andrew Mollica, and Eric Litke report Who received the voter purge letter? State lawmakers, a cabinet secretary and a former UW chancellor:
Among the thousands of voters flagged to be possibly removed from Wisconsin’s voter rolls are two state lawmakers, a cabinet secretary, a Milwaukee County supervisor and a former University of Wisconsin chancellor.
Election officials in October asked more than 230,000 people to update their voter registrations because they believed they had moved. The letters triggered an ongoing legal battle over whether the recipients should be quickly taken off the rolls.
State officials for months declined to make public the list of those who had been sent the letters but relented this week and released the list under the state’s open records law.
The list reveals that a smattering of public officials were among the thousands of voters who were sent the letters last year. Most of the officials confirmed to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that they had recently moved and said they had updated their voter registrations or planned to do so soon.
Among those who were targeted were Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam; Rep. David Crowley, D-Milwaukee; Workforce Development Secretary Caleb Frostman; Milwaukee County Supervisor Sequanna Taylor and former UW Extension Chancellor Cathy Sandeen.
Jim Polzin reports Kobe King says frustration was building with coach Greg Gard since early in Badgers career:
King said he began having doubts about playing for UW coach Greg Gard as early as his true freshman season in 2017-18. King thought about leaving after that injury-plagued campaign and again after his redshirt freshman season, but decided to try to stick it out.
The situation got worse this season, according to King. He had three meetings with the coaching staff during the season — two with Gard, one with assistant Joe Krabbenhoft — to express his concerns. The timing of the first meeting with Gard — after a loss at Rutgers — was somewhat odd only because King had scored 18 points against the Scarlet Knights and 24 the previous game vs. Indiana.
King’s issues weren’t about anything on the court.
“I just talked to him about the way we were talked to as a team,” King said, declining to go into specifics. “It’s not about the negativity always, because I’ve seen that.”
King said he played under tough coaches at La Crosse Central (Todd Fergot) and on the AAU circuit with the Wisconsin Playground Warriors (Chris Neubauer). “But for me,” King said, “I always felt like their care was deeper than just basketball.”
….
King said Thursday that other players in the program are frustrated with how they’re handled by Gard, which raises red flags that this isn’t an isolated situation. When asked if he believes this problem involves other players beyond King, Gard said, “Everybody is entitled to their own opinions. I continue to help everybody individually, but at the same time understand that I have to help this team keep moving forward.”
I have a suggestion for @RepAdamSchiff: Within five minutes of the Senate acquittal vote, in his capacity as House Intelligence Committee Chairman, he should (a) notice a hearing scheduled for next week and (b) present @AmbJohnBolton with a subpoena to testify at it.
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) January 31, 2020
Update: 1.31.20 — The story is now back online. The reported data are the same. It is, as a commenter at FW notes, only one story. In this way, it’s also an invitation to others to explore the data more inquisitively.
Update: 1.27.20 — This story is no longer on the Daily Union website. Removing a story without an explanation is, needless to say, a substandard editorial practice. One can be sure the issue is worth pursuing. Some broken links to it, however, remain.
One reads, from Henry Redman in ‘ON THEIR WATCH’ (‘214 reports of discrimination and harassment in area schools over last five years, documents show’), that of eight Jefferson County school districts “Whitewater, with its 69 reports over five years from a student population of nearly 2,000 students, had the highest rate at 3.6 reports per 100 students.” (Emphasis added.)
Indeed, Whitewater had 32% of all reported area incidents.
Redman quotes education consultant Kate McCoy on the consequences of discrimination and harassment:
Some districts received more complaints than others and some didn’t receive any complaints at all. But many or none, the numbers raise questions about the safety and security of the most vulnerable students in Jefferson County schools.
Does a high number of reports mean that school isn’t protecting its students? Does not having any reports mean the district hasn’t fostered an environment in which students feel comfortable coming forward with complaints?
Whatever conclusions can be drawn from the numbers, the impact of even one incident of harassment or discrimination is not in dispute. Kate McCoy, an education consultant who works with the DPI’s prevention and wellness team, said students can internalize the harassment and start to believe what’s being said — which can have widespread ramifications.
“Any individual is going to be different, of course, but what we know is if it isn’t addressed and it’s persistent, it can undermine learning and lead to students getting less out of education,” McCoy said. “It can take up space in a student’s head; it’s harder to learn when you’re feeling harassed, unsafe. A student is less likely to feel like they belong, less engaged, more likely to avoid things. Less likely to engage in positive things such as sports and extracurriculars and participating in class. Might lead them to act out as a behavioral issue. Over time, it can impact students a lot.”
All of those impacts, whether immediate or delayed, change educational outcomes, according to McCoy.
One need offer no explanation for these numbers to know that they represent distress experienced, and that in absolute and relative terms, they are far too high.
Addendum: The danger here is that Old Whitewater – with a distorted culture of boosterism that accentuates the positive regardless of actual conditions – will discourage reporting as a dark solution to accounts of discrimination or harassment. A culturally-imposed concealment (or willful ignorance), resting on an honor-shame foundation, will always – that is, forever – be the wrong approach.
A worthy project for our time requires that Old Whitewater’s boosterism (harmful in so many areas) be consigned to the dustbin.
Instead, a virtuous approach will encourage reports of injuries, as only in this way can one know and address the full extent of injury.
(An aside: Redman is perhaps the last reporter in the area who reports in a thorough way. He doesn’t have Whitewater as a beat, but he’s notably stronger than anyone from the Gazette or any Daily Union employee formerly assigned to Whitewater.)
Hannah Sparks reports that Big cats prefer the warm, spicy scent of Calvin Klein’s Obsession cologne:
What drives the felines wild? The intoxicating aroma of Calvin Klein’s Obsession, according to zookeepers in the UK.
A recent shortage of perfumes, which help to soothe the sometimes aggressive animals, has lead the Banham Zoo in Norfolk, England, to make a public plea for donations of scented sprays. Zoo managers say their lions, tigers and leopards “respond very positively to unique scents when sprayed in their enclosures.”
And while just about any fragrance will tickle their whiskers, the big cats of Banham have a particular preference for Obsession: “For some reason Calvin Klein perfume is a huge hit with all the big cats,” animal manager Mike Woolham told the BBC.
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 7:09 AM and sunset 5:06 PM, for 9h 57m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, Congress passes, and sends to the states, the Thirteenth Amendment (it was ratified by the required number of states on 12.6.1865).
Recommended for reading in full —
Mike Gousha and John D. Johnson report Thousands of Milwaukee homes are no longer owned by city residents in a massive transfer of wealth since the Great Recession:
The Great Recession more than a decade ago hit Milwaukee hard. When the housing market collapsed, the city suffered through a tidal wave of foreclosures. Residential property values plummeted; they didn’t bottom out until 2016.
Since then, housing values in most parts of the city have begun to rebound, although they generally remain well below their pre-recession peaks.
But Milwaukee’s housing market has changed in other fundamental ways:
There has been a dramatic decline in residential properties occupied by their owners.
The city has seen a transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in housing wealth.
Simply put: Thousands of residential properties in Milwaukee are no longer owned by city residents. They’re owned, instead, by individuals and companies with mailing addresses in the suburbs, other parts of Wisconsin, or out-of-state altogether.
These trends raise questions about the long-term health of city neighborhoods, particularly those that are home predominantly to people of color.
Dan Vergano reports US Life Expectancy Has Finally Stopped Declining:
Life expectancy in the US increased by about a month to 78.7 years in 2018, federal health officials reported on Thursday. The increase reverses an alarming — and unprecedented — drop for the past three years in the vital measure of national health.
Around 2.8 million people died in the US in 2018. US life expectancy in that year was still below its 2014 peak of 78.9 years, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Falling heart disease and cancer death rates, the two leading causes of death, as well as a 4% decrease in drug overdose deaths, the first such drop in 28 years, appear to have arrested the decline in life expectancy seen since 2014.
Touchdown – SpaceX rocket lands after latest Starlink launch:
On Monday night, Whitewater’s school board met first in closed session, and about an hour later in open session. (A video of the open session is embedded above.)
Part way into the meeting, after a summary of the latest developments concerning the nearby Palmyra-Eagle School District, a candidate for that school district’s board spoke during a moment of public comment.
(Whitewater’s school board initially backed a plan to divide the Palmyra-Eagle District, taking a part of that district for itself. Later, the Whitewater district wisely abandoned that ill-conceived plan See On the Dissolution of the Palmyra-Eagle School District, Reason Carries the Day, (2) Educational (Among Other) Uncertainties in Rural Communities, (3) School Board, 10.28.19: 3 Points, and (4) Dissolving a School District.)
The Palmyra-Eagle board candidate commented on Whitewater’s reversal (18:58 on video):
And I was here the night you guys passed the east-west resolution and I have got to tell you that was really hard for us walking out of here, we felt really defeated, but I want to say coming back here tonight I feel a lot better.
Later in the meeting, Whitewater’s interim administrator offered his own observations (49:20 on the video):
We’re not in competition with other school districts; at least I don’t feel we are. And when another school district is hurt, there’s frequently some kind of impact on us, and when they succeed it’s good for all of us.
That’s right, both as an educational matter and a practical perspective on how rural communities are now in similar economic conditions. Rivalrous approaches simply ignore the futility of district-specific boosterism.
Years before Whitewater’s interim district administrator arrived, this school district cherry-picked sketchy ACT data to boost itself at the expense of nearby school districts. See Whitewater’s ACT Scores, Whitewater’s ACT Scores and Participation Rates, Whitewater’s ACT Participation Rate Near the Bottom of Area Schools, and The Better, Reasoned Approach on ACT Scores.
A Whitewater promotional flyer even claimed that Whitewater had “eclipsed” nearby districts in her test scores. It was a dishonest claim at the time; it’s simply ridiculous now. No one is eclipsing anyone in our area; all these districts find themselves under the same penumbra of stagnant local economies, brain drain, and lapsing acculturation.
The unmet challenge is to recognize, to speak, and to act on conditions as they are, setting aside forever Old Whitewater’s addiction to public relations and puffery.
