FREE WHITEWATER

Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.16.19

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-two.  Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 7:02 PM, for 11h 59m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

On this day in 1925, Robert Hutchings Goddard achieves a breakthrough in rocketry:

Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled (gasoline and liquid oxygen) rocket on March 16, 1926, in Auburn, Massachusetts. Present at the launch were his crew chief Henry Sachs, Esther Goddard, and Percy Roope, who was Clark’s assistant professor in the physics department. Goddard’s diary entry of the event was notable for its understatement:

March 16. Went to Auburn with S[achs] in am. E[sther] and Mr. Roope came out at 1 p.m. Tried rocket at 2.30. It rose 41 feet & went 184 feet, in 2.5 secs., after the lower half of the nozzle burned off. Brought materials to lab. …[14]:143

His diary entry the next day elaborated:

March 17, 1926. The first flight with a rocket using liquid propellants was made yesterday at Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn. … Even though the release was pulled, the rocket did not rise at first, but the flame came out, and there was a steady roar. After a number of seconds it rose, slowly until it cleared the frame, and then at express train speed, curving over to the left, and striking the ice and snow, still going at a rapid rate.[14]:143

Recommended for reading in full:

Michael Gerson asks How can you defend a president who is a danger to democracy?:

A friend just returned from some time with a group of wealthy conservative donors. “They were ambivalent about Donald Trump two years ago,” he said. “Now they are vociferously pro-Trump. There’s a psychological study to be done here.”

Those in and around Republican politics have seen this dynamic at work. In spite of past misgivings, most GOP partisans seem to have accepted the idea that President Trump is their guy in the broader culture/political war.

….

So, in the 2018 midterm elections, Trump tried to nationalize the election on issues that motivate his party — appealing to those voters who are excited by exclusion. And GOP partisans responded by turning out in large numbers. But it was not nearly enough to counteract greater public fears.

In other words, the politics of partisan mobilization works only if you don’t scare the rest of America to death. Republicans have come to the defense of a man who is incapable of widening his appeal. And this has opened up a reality gap between the GOP and the rest of our political culture. The rift between Republican perceptions of the president and the view of the broader public has grown into a chasm. This is now the main political context of the 2020 campaign.

Releasing African Penguins:

Agriculture, Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Gov. Walker, Local Government, State Capitalism, Trade, Trump, WEDC

How Walker and Trump Destroyed Dairies in America’s Dairyland

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One has heard so much these last eight years about how Wisconsin has been ‘open for business,’ and for Walker and the WEDC that has meant countless subsidies and tax breaks for conservatives’ preferred businesses. Walker was never a free-market man; his whole approach rested on state capitalism (government funding some producers) and crony capitalism (government funding producers who are pals).

Bruce Thompson explains how How Walker, Trump Hurt Dairy Industry (“Their policies helped fuel a dairy crisis”):

Given declining demand for milk, one might expect that the last thing state government would decide to do is encourage more milk production. Yet, on March 13, 2012, Governor Scott Walker announced a new program called Grow Wisconsin Dairy 30×20. His accompanying news release explained the name came from the intention to “achieve an annual milk production of 30 billion pounds by 2020.” The release went on to say, “The goal of the Grow Wisconsin Dairy 30×20 program is to improve the long-term viability of Wisconsin’s dairy industry through services … to meet the growing demand of the marketplace.”

Grow Wisconsin Dairy 30×20 quickly achieved its goal. Rather than waiting until 2020, Wisconsin milk production passed 30 billion pounds in 2016.

….

This odd misdiagnosis is reflected in a 2012 op ed by Ben Brancel, at that time Wisconsin’s secretary of agriculture:

Production grew less than 1 percent in 2011 to 26.1 billion pounds. Good, but not good enough to keep us on pace to meet the demands of the state’s growing processing industry and customers around the world. Wisconsin dairy farmers produce approximately 90 percent of the milk volume needed by the state’s dairy processors. We need it to be 100 percent.

This suggests that Walker and his administration were influenced less by farmers than by “the state’s growing processing industry.” Unfortunately, the demand for milk did not grow along with increased production.

A second blow to dairy farmers came more recently as the result of President Trump’s tariff war against America’s trading partners. This war was triggered by the Trump administration’s series of tariffs on imports of certain products from America’s trading partners. Several countries responded by imposing retaliatory tariffs on selected American products, including agricultural.

Rather than allow market conditions to set supply and demand through the price system, Walker chose to boost supply to help processors and in doing do devastated the dairies that produce milk.   Trump came along and made dairies’ distress worse by rejecting free trade in favor of tariffs and a trade war.

Small-town, pro-business notables have adopted this same approach, directing local development agencies to waste hundreds of thousands – and in Whitewater over the years millions – of dollars for their pet projects and crackpot ‘capital catalyst’ ideas. For it all, they’ve done nothing to advance individual and household incomes, and family poverty in Whitewater has increased during their control of the Whitewater Community Development Authority.  See A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA, Reported Family Poverty in Whitewater Increased Over the Last Decade, and Private Businesses Craving Public Money.

Walker and Trump, meanwhile, have harmed the very dairies on which America’s Dairyland depends.

Cats, Science/Nature

The Genetic Secrets of Celebrity Cat Lil Bub

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View this post on Instagram

 

BUB sees stuff that we don’t. #lilbub #scienceandmagic #goodjobbub

A post shared by Lil BUB (@iamlilbub) on

Karin Bruillard reports Scientists have finally discovered what makes celebrity cat Lil Bub so ‘magical’:

Lil Bub is a kitten-size cat with 2 million Instagram followers, a talk show, a stage production, an album and a book. The new study reveals the weird DNA behind what is often described as her magical appeal.

….

It helps to know what Lil Bub looks like to understand why they did this [examined her DNA]. The cat has a short snout, enormous green eyes and a pink tongue that hangs from her stunted jaw like an errant piece of bubble gum. She never developed teeth, and she stopped growing around four pounds. Each of her paws boasts an extra toe, for a total of 22. (Six on the front paws, five on the back.)

….

First, they compared her genome with that of a reference cat, then they focused on genes that control bodily functions. Finally, they asked a colleague who specializes in bone disorders which of those are known to cause osteopetrosis.

That led them to a mutation in a gene called RANK/TNFRSF11A, which has been found in about 15 humans and one mouse — all of whom, the researchers said, share physical similarities with Lil Bub. In X-rays, their bones look deformed and bright white, with little to no marrow cavity. The mouse, like Lil Bub, also was missing teeth, because they can’t erupt through bone that hardens too quickly. (Bub can eat just fine, and she runs and jumps thanks to a pulsed electromagnetic field therapy.)

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.15.19

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be breezy with a high of forty.  Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 7:01 PM, for 11h 56m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 61.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

It’s the Ides of March.

 

Recommended for reading in full:

Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger, and Ellen Nakashima report Documents shed light on Russian hacking of Democratic Party leaders:

Documents unsealed Thursday in a lawsuit have shed new light on how hackers breached Democratic Party email accounts before the 2016 election.

The documents include a forensic analysis by a former top official in the FBI’s cybercrime division, which concluded that a Web server company owned by a Russian Internet entrepreneur was used by Russian operatives to hack Democratic Party leaders.

The Russian businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, has denied involvement in the hack, and his lawyers argued for months that the forensic analysis should be kept under seal and hidden from public view.

The analysis was completed as part of a federal lawsuit Gubarev filed in Florida against BuzzFeed, the online news outlet. Gubarev argued BuzzFeed defamed him by publishing a dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele. The dossier alleged that hackers used servers from two of Gubarev’s companies — Webzilla and its parent company XBT Holding.

The 35-page Steele dossier also alleged that Gubarev played a “significant” role in the hacking operation “under duress” from the Russian security agency FSB. Gubarev has also denied that allegation — and the new forensic analysis, conducted by an expert paid by BuzzFeed as part of the suit, provides no evidence to support the claim that Gubarev was involved.

The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Wanted Russian “Reported” From Mar-a-Lago:

Sergey Danilochkin, a Russian real estate investor charged with tax fraud in connection with the organized crime figures behind the Magnitsky case, now lives in South Florida and attended a January 2018 fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, during which he made a video bragging about his inside access to the property and noting the surprising number of Russian-speakers in attendance.

Miami Herald:

While the guests sipped cocktails and studied photos of African wildlife, Danilochkin, who is also an aspiring journalist, filmed the bustling ballroom on a smartphone and posted the footage on YouTube. Holding a flute of champagne and wearing a dark suit, the Russian émigré addressed the camera in his native tongue, alluding to the uncanny way Russians seem to turn up in the president’s orbit.

“The most interesting thing,” Danilochkin said, “is that we met a lot of people here who speak Russian.”

Ceratogyrus attonitifer – new horned baboon spider from Angola:

America, Babbittry, Culture

The Antidote to Boosterism

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Bret Stephens offers Neal Armstrong as a worthy example in Apollo 11’s Forgotten Virtues (“Armstrong stayed humble, and human, in the era of relentless puffery and self-promotion”):

There’s a short scene near the end of “Apollo 11,” the thrilling new documentary about history’s greatest spaceflight, in which Mike Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong make a TV broadcast on their way home from the moon.

“We’d like to give a special thanks to all those Americans who built the spacecraft, who did the construction, design, the tests, and put their heart and all their abilities into the [space]crafts,” says Armstrong. “To those people tonight we give a special thank you.”

The film cuts to a shot of thousands of technicians assembled in an immense hangar, beaming with pride. At the zenith of his fame, the hero proves his worth by honoring those to whom the glory is truly owed.

….

He stayed humble, and human, in the era of relentless puffery and self-promotion. This, too, feels as bygone as the Saturn V, the Right Stuff, and the “one small step”— and as missed.

Dr. Jonas Salk is another good example of humility from those who have achieved great things.  See For Your Consideration, Dr. Jonas Salk.

We find ourselves with too little modesty, too little humility, in small towns that should embrace these virtues as virtues.  Instead, one finds small-town special interests speaking and writing in a grandiose and flamboyant style:

The GWC is an action-oriented group committed to working with citizens, elected officials and policy makers to identify, craft and implement a pro-business agenda. The agenda advances the economic, education and social policies required to energize and secure the Whitewater area’s economic future, as well as protect Whitewater’s quality of life.

By working closely with the City of Whitewater, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater Unified School District and the local community, Whitewater can increase its visibility and become a beacon for business and leisure in the state of Wisconsin.

See The Middle Lane is a Dirt Road to Decay, Pt. 2.

Whitewater’s better future does not rest with local appeals to vanity and self-promotion, but to the long tradition of humble achievement in America and places beyond.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.14.19

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see showers with a high of sixty-three.  Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 7:00 PM, for 11h 53m 19s of daytime.  The moon is in its first quarter with 50.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

It’s Pi Day:

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world. Pi is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. Pi Day is an annual opportunity for math enthusiasts to recite the infinite digits of Pi, talk to their friends about math, and to eat Pie.

Recommended for reading in full:

Paul Rosenzweig writes Four Lessons From the Manafort Sentencing (“This is bad news for Trump, and good news for the system”):

Last week, many commentators were decrying the perceived lenity of Ellis’s sentence. Today Jackson offered a systemic correction. Given Manafort’s age and the severity of his crimes, seven and a half years seems about right. It’s actually on the high end for similar offenses. And given his age, Manafort may well die in jail, which cannot be a happy prospect for him.

….

Second, and more important for the American public, the New York authorities have made clear that they are willing to serve as a pardon insurance policy for America.

….

Thus, even were Trump to issue a full and complete pardon to Manafort for all the crimes he has committed, that move would not excuse Manafort from answering the New York State charges.

….

Third, the New York indictment is not good news for Trump, personally. The Manhattan prosecutor has brought charges of fraud against Manafort for falsely inflating the value of certain real-estate properties he owned for mortgage purposes.  Those allegations find a strong echo in the recent congressional testimony of the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who said the president engaged in the exact same course of conduct in his personal capacity—inflating real-estate values to increase his net worth when it suited him, and then deflating those same values to avoid taxation.

….

And finally, as bad as this news is for Trump, it is likely even worse news for the Trump Organization—now also possibly in [Manhattan District Attorney] Vance’s crosshairs for real-estate shenanigans.

The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Manafort Lawyer Lies Outside Courthouse:

Paul Manafort‘s attorney Kevin Downing blatantly lied to the media as he stood at microphones outside the DC federal courthouse and announced, “Judge Jackson conceded that there was absolutely no evidence of Russian collusion in this case. So that makes two courts. Two courts have ruled no evidence of any collusion with any Russians.”

In fact, Judge Berman Jackson, made a point of telling the court the matter of collusion was not even under consideration in Manafort’s case. Her effort to prevent Downing from repeating the lie he told the first time around when he spoke to reporters outside the courthouse after Manafort’s Virginia sentencing hearing apparently failed.

Four Motorcycle Stories:

Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, WEDC

Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment

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From the moment then-Governor Walker signed the Foxconn deal, it was clear to national economists (from across the political spectrum) that it was a dubious idea. As the months wore on, one could find more – and detailed – critiques of the project.

FREE WHITEWATER has post after post addressing these sound critiques. The posts themselves aren’t what matters – the links contained within them to national-quality assessments are what matter.

A reasonable and diligent person would see that Foxconn was a sham venture — showy politics but shabby policy.

And yet, and yet, at the local level in places like Whitewater, both the Whitewater Community Development Authority and the Greater Whitewater Committee business league pushed Foxconn long after any reasonable person would have seen the implausibility of that project.  (In Whitewater, the Community Development Authority has been run – for years – by the same men who run that local business lobby.)

Indeed, on November 15, 2018 – after analyses published major publications made indisputable the unsoundness of Foxconn – local officials were still speaking as though it might succeed. From the Whitewater CDA meeting, November 15, 2018:

What Mark Johnson and I have talked about, and Mark’s the director of the Innovation Center here, is we’ve talked about, you know, really trying to establish some connections with Foxconn, see what they’re looking for in terms of, you know, actual product supply chain and innovation supply chain.

Because, as I’ve explained to some people, there’s certainly going to be suppliers that provide, you know, things that go into the products that Foxconn makes. You know, whether it’s glass, they’re going to build their own glass factory down there, whether its other things that go into the glass, it’s cutting these things into bigger display monitors. But Foxconn is also putting a lot of focus on what they are calling a development of an ecosystem of innovation, and they are really basing it on what they call a 5G, 8K platform. 5G talks about the speed of internet transmission, and 8K talks about the resolution of video quality. And 8K is very high resolution. The applications for that technology really are kind of endless and the significant ones like starting telemedicine to other high resolution things.

But what they’re doing is they’re trying to attract innovative, innovation talent, you know, from around the world, and domestically here, to start working on products that can advance sort of the need for their base core base product, that I think they also are really talking about really branching into developing some of those products and new uses themselves.

So, you know and every day I learn a little bit more about Foxconn.

The full video of the 11.15.18 Whitewater CDA meeting is available online.

The FW posts that precede this November 15th meeting – with links to national publications’ critiques – are highlighted in bold, below.

By the time of this meeting, the case against Foxconn was already overwhelming.

To think otherwise is a significant failure of policy judgment.

Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition,  Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, and Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.13.19

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of fifty-four.  Sunrise is 7:08 AM and sunset 6:59 PM, for 11h 50m 22s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 39.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

On this day in 1781, astronomer William Herschel’s observations of Uranus establish that celestial object as a planet:

Sir William Herschel observed Uranus on 13 March 1781 from the garden of his house at 19 New King Street in Bath, Somerset, England (now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy),[24] and initially reported it (on 26 April 1781) as a comet.[25] Herschel “engaged in a series of observations on the parallax of the fixed stars”,[26] using a telescope of his own design.

Recommended for reading in full:

  Charlie Sykes writes Why the Democrats Chose Milwaukee:

“No city in America has stronger ties to socialism than Milwaukee,” declared the executive director of Wisconsin’s GOP. “And with the rise of Bernie Sanders and the embrace of socialism by its newest leaders, the American left has come full circle. It’s only fitting the Democrats would come to Milwaukee.”

Well, yes. And no. Milwaukee has had three Socialist mayors: Emil Seidel (1910–12), Daniel W. Hoan (1916–40), and Frank Zeidler (1948–60). But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez they were not. Unglamorous municipal officials, they were stolid, competent, somewhat dour practitioners of what became known around here as “sewer socialism.” By modern standards, their policies were not particularly controversial or divisive. Among Hoan’s most radical innovations were public housing, harbor improvements, and a city bus system.

….

One Republican insider told me that a better gauge of the current state of play in Wisconsin was the Senate election in which Baldwin decisively defeated her Republican challenger, who ran on an unabashedly pro-Trump platform. Baldwin won Milwaukee County with 71.5 percent of the vote and Dane County with 77.7 percent. She won statewide by more than 10 points and a margin of more than 288,000 votes. If that race really does reflect the political landscape in Wisconsin (and Democrats seem to think that it does), Trump’s reelection is in deep trouble.

….

But perhaps the best point of comparison is, simply, 2016. Hillary Clinton famously neglected to visit Wisconsin, and ended up losing it by just 23,000 votes. Trump won rural, blue-collar counties, some of which had voted twice for Barack Obama, and won the Green Bay area by double digits. The key to that race, however, was Milwaukee County. Clinton got about 39,000 fewer votes there than Obama did four years earlier. She didn’t show up to ask for those votes, and she didn’t get them.

So the DNC’s decision to come to Milwaukee was less about “socialism” than it was about those votes, and a commitment to voters that they will show up this time.

  Opportunity’s last images from Mars:

Crime, Newspapers, Press

Clever? Not Really…

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One reads that the Daily Union, a local paper chasing alleged embezzlement first reported in the Janesville Gazette, has decided to grab the story and add a supposedly clever headline:

Honest to goodness, how does editor Chris Spangler expect ordinary people to keep up with a subtle headline like that?

One needs to take a moment to puzzle this through: (1) someone is alleged to have stolen money from a bakery, (2) bakeries use dough, (3) dough also is slang for money, so (4) Spangler must mean that the bakery allegedly lost a lot of money.

Dizzying, isn’t it?  Somehow, one does the best one can to keep up with wordplay like that.

The Daily Union – a paper that toadies to smarmy insiders, that flacks corporate welfare as though legitimate fiscal policy, and whose Whitewater correspondent copies parts of press releases into his so-called reporting – is hardly a publication one would rely on for clever.

In any event, wordplay this predictable isn’t clever; it’s a dull attempt to repackage a story on which the DU was scooped.

Sycophancy, bad writing, and laziness?  Sure, they’re up for that.

Clever?  No, that’s not their thing.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.12.19

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 6:58 PM, for 11h 47m 27s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 30% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1933, Pres. Roosevelt gives his first Fireside Chat on the radio:

a series of 30 evening radio addresses given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (known colloquially as “FDR”) between 1933 and 1944. Roosevelt spoke with familiarity to millions of Americans about the promulgation of the Emergency Banking Act in response to the banking crisis, the recession, New Deal initiatives, and the course of World War II.

See also text of Fireside Chat, ‘On the Bank Crisis.’

Recommended for reading in full:

Kate Rabinowitz and Kevin Uhrmacher report What Trump proposed in his 2020 budget:

The Trump administration released its 2020 budget request on Monday, proposing major cuts to federal government spending. While the cuts are unlikely to become reality — Congress has rejected many of Trump’s previous requests — the budget is an important signal of the administration’s priorities and suggests a major funding fight in October.

Proposed changes to funding in Trump’s budget

In the document, Trump calls for large budget increases to defense and border security alongside substantial cuts to government benefits. Trump’s budget proposal for the last fiscal year similarly proposed increased defense spending and cuts to other departments. Congress did not act on many of his recommendations. The budget is likely to face even more of an uphill battle with Democrats now in control of the House.

William Gale contends The tax cuts will make fighting future recessions complicated:

the 2017 tax cuts made several changes that significantly reduce the ability to offset the business cycle. First, the corporate income tax rate was reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent. Corporate income tends to soar in booms and plummet in recessions, so lower rates mean that revenues will not adjust as much to our highs and lows in the economy. The tax cuts also reduced rates for income from wages and pass through businesses. As a result, when income falls in a future recession, taxes will fall by less than they otherwise would have.

Next, the tax cuts limits the use of net operating losses. Under prior law, firms losing money owed no income tax for the current year, and they could obtain cash refunds for taxes paid in the previous two years. Firms used this provision more in recessions than in booms, and it served as an automatic stabilizer. To stimulate the economy after the financial crisis, Congress temporarily expanded the carryback period for net operating losses to five years. The 2017 tax cuts, however, repealed carrybacks of losses for most businesses. As a result, as income turns down in a future recession, firms with losses will no longer be able to claim refunds for previous tax payments and therefore will face tighter cash constraints.

  Flame-Throwing Tractors:

Bad Ideas, Corporate Welfare, Foxconn, Government Spending, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC

Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere

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Pay-as-you-go is another lie from proponents of Foxconn.  Much has been paid, while the going is to nowhere.  Ricardo Torres reports Taxpayers have spent more than $225 million on roads around Foxconn:

Between work done on Interstate 94 in Racine County and the local roads and state highways in the Foxconn area, roughly $225 million has been spend [sic] as of the end of January.

And there still is roughly $155.2 million worth of work remaining on local roads and $167.1 million worth of work remaining on Interstate 94.

Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition,  Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, and Foxconn Roundup.

2020 Presidential Election, Milwaukee

Milwaukee 2020

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Bill Glauber and Mary Spicuzza report Milwaukee picked to host 2020 Democratic National Convention:

Milwaukee’s political moment has arrived.

The city will host the 2020 Democratic National Convention, edging out two large and deep-pocketed rivals over a months-long campaign waged behind the scenes through phone calls, contract negotiations and quiet lobbying by some of the most powerful political figures in the country.

The announcement will be made in Milwaukee at a 3 p.m. press conference, according to DNC spokesman Brandon Gassaway.

Monday’s announcement comes after weeks of decision making by Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.

Relying on Midwestern grit to overcome glitzier rivals, Milwaukee snagged the event over Houston and Miami.

The convention is scheduled for July 13-16, 2020, with Fiserv Forum serving as the centerpiece of the event.

Good city, good state, good choice.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 3.11.19

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 6:56 PM, for 11h 44m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 20.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1941, Pres. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act:

The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, (Pub.L. 77–11, H.R. 1776, 55 Stat. 31, enacted March 11, 1941)[1] was an American program to defeat Germany, Japan and Italy by distributing food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945. The aid went to the United Kingdom, China, and later the Soviet Union, Free France, and other Allied nations. It included warships and warplanes, along with other weaponry.

Recommended for reading in full:

David Leonhardt writes The Experts Keep Getting the Economy Wrong: 

President Trump likes to brag about the supposedly booming economy. So do other Republican politicians. Some journalists have gotten into the habit too, exaggerating the strength of the economic expansion, because it makes for a good story.

Here’s the truth: There is no boom. The economy has been mired in an extended funk since the financial crisis ended in 2010. G.D.P. growth still has not reached 3 percent in any year, and 3 percent isn’t a very high bar.

Last week, while attending an economics conference in Washington, I discovered one particularly clear sign of the economy’s struggles — namely, that it keeps performing worse than the experts have predicted. I put together this chart to show the trend:

Again and again, Federal Reserve officials have overestimated how quickly the economy would grow. They keep having to revise their forecasts downward, only to discover that they didn’t go far enough down. Economists on Wall Street and other parts of the private sector have made the same mistake.

  Rebecca Shabad reports House passes Democratic ethics and election law overhaul bill:

The 444-page bill was the first priority of the House Democratic agenda, which includes efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs and craft an infrastructure package.

To make it easier to vote, the new bill proposes a range of reforms such as requiring that states institute automatic voter registration for eligible unregistered citizens and requiring at least 15 days of early voting across the country. It would also prohibit voter roll purges and ensure that people who have completed felony sentences can vote again.

….

The Democratic proposal would also expand a conflict of interest law and divestment requirements for public officials. The bill would require presidential candidates and the president to disclose their tax returns, and it would prevent members of Congress from serving on corporate boards, among other things.

The Peasant Who Became an Emperor: