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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.26.19

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 39.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1834, an act of Congress creates new land districts:

On this date an Act of Congress created the Green Bay land district (east of a line from the northern boundary of Illinois to the Wisconsin River) and west of this, the Wisconsin Land district. The act followed land cessions by Native Americans defeated in the Black Hawk War. The creation of the land districts opened up much of southeastern Wisconsin for settlement.

Recommended for reading in full:

Mary Spicuzza, Patrick Marley, and Molly Beck report Provision on electric vehicles is aimed at getting GOP senator who sells Tesla parts to vote for budget:

A last-minute budget provision to make it easier to sell cars made by Tesla is aimed at winning the crucial vote of Sen. Chris Kapenga, who has pushed for the measure in the past and owns a business that sells Tesla parts and salvaged electric vehicles.

Assembly Republicans added the measure to the budget Tuesday, a day before the GOP-controlled Senate was to take it up. Kapenga is a longtime supporter of the Tesla proposal but said he wasn’t sure yet if he would vote for the budget.

(How very odd: it’s almost as though WISGOP scheming were no more subtle than an avaricious landlord and his few dogsbodies interfering in the economic policy of a small rural town.)

 Danny Hakim reports N.R.A. Shuts Down Production of NRATV:

The National Rifle Association has shut down production at NRATV.

The N.R.A. on Tuesday also severed all business with its estranged advertising firm, Ackerman McQueen, which operates NRATV, the N.R.A.’s live broadcasting media arm, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times.

While NRATV may continue to air past content, its live broadcasting will end and its on-air personalities — Ackerman employees including Dana Loesch — will no longer be the public faces of the N.R.A. It remained unclear whether the N.R.A. might try to hire some of those employees, but there was no indication it was negotiating to do so.

The move comes amid a flurry of lawsuits between the N.R.A. and Ackerman, and increasing acrimony that surfaced after two prominent N.R.A. board members first criticized NRATV in an article in The Times in March. The separation had become inevitable: The two sides said last month that they were ending their three-decade-plus partnership.

(A legitimate defense of the Second Amendment involves neither support for Trump nor financial dependency on Russian oligarchs.  See Investigators Are Zeroing in on Top NRA Leaders’ Russia Ties—and Challenging the Gun Group’s Story.)

Places to avoid: Rat Falls From Ceiling, Onto Customer’s Menu at Restaurant: 

Newspapers, Press

Another Newspaper in the Shredder

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One reads that APG has purchased another Wisconsin newspaper, the Beloit Daily News.

 

A few reminders:

1. Advertising revenue won’t sustain most locals newspapers, in print or online.

2. Only desperate advertisers will pay for ads in local newspapers running mostly press releases. There aren’t enough of desperate advertisers.

3. Subscriptions (for newspapers or online content behind a paywall) are an option only for sought-after content.

4. Press releases are seldom sought-after content. There aren’t enough readers who’ll pay to read press releases.

5. Local chains lost their way with editors and editorial positions that reflexively embraced local officials, business insiders, and happy-talk news.

6. Some of these chains, including APG, are making few changes in editors or editorial positions.

7. Keeping the same editors and editorial positions will leave these local papers effectually unchanged.

8. Effectually unchanged means eventually doomed.

Residents should craft their own publications, of their own views, from their own means, under their own control, publishing independently of others’ political or economic influence.

Nothing else will endure.

Law, Laws/Regulations, Liberty, Open Government, Public Records 2, School District

Closed Government is Expensive Government

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Small communities – by definition places with small populations – have fewer people from whom residents can choose officials, elected or appointed. The rational response for these communities would be to be as open as possible, to make best use of their full populations, and to encourage newcomers.

Pride, however, stands in the way of the rational, and so the desire of a few to dominate and to control civic life means that even in a small place one may find not openness but cliques making small towns even smaller.

One reads that a city like Milton, Wisconsin has a school board president complaining about the supposed burden of open government.

It is a burden these officials have, themselves, created and then inflicted on residents. Those who govern while imagining themselves as a class apart should expect in response that their neighbors will seek information through public records requests at law (Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31-19.39).

If this is too hard for Milton’s school board president to understand, or to manage without whining, he should resign.

It is a burden their legal counsel has inflicted on residents, all the while charging fees on the theory that requests are ‘complex,’ where complex also means profitable.

I’m not connected to those enmired in various disputes that have overtaken the Milton School District, but I do have a grasp of Atty. Shana Lewis’s quality of representation for that district. It’s enough to say that public officials would have been better off burning the money they spent on her counsel without having taken any of her advice.

Part of the problem is that these officials don’t see this, and another part is that the local press is servile in the face of public records denials. See A Local Press Responsible for Its Own Decline.

Milton is, in this, a bad example for other cities.

Closed government benefits only a few at the price of civic discord and higher costs.

Education, School District

Educational (Among Other) Uncertainties in Rural Communities

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Near Whitewater, another rural school district, Paymyra-Eagle, may dissolve and be absorbed into surrounding communities. That there are so many uncertainties about what might happen to the Palmyra-Eagle district, and how this might affect surrounding districts, should not surprise. From a lack certainty about local rural schools, economies, and government one cannot expect districts near Palmyra-Eagle to know what’s next.

In the video above, one gets a good sense about how struggles in one community affect others nearby.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.25.19

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a likelihood of an afternoon thundershower with a high of eighty-three.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 38s of daytime.  The moon is in its third quarter with 49.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1950, Communist North Korea attacks the South, beginning the Korean War.

Recommended for reading in full:

Maria Sacchetti, Nick Miroff, Rob Kuznia, and Arelis R. Hernández report Despite delay of ICE raids, immigrant communities mobilize for roundups:

President Trump’s decision to postpone the mass arrests of immigrant families with deportation orders offered a two-week reprieve to shaken cities and towns Sunday, but faith and immigration leaders said they will continue to mobilize for roundups in case talks between the White House and congressional Democrats break down.

After Trump threatened raids a week ago, immigrant rights groups in Chicago, Washington, New York and nationwide publicized emergency hotlines, alerted volunteers and hastily arranged gatherings to teach immigrants what to do if an agent knocks on their door — efforts that are ongoing since the president called off the raids Saturday. The arrests were set to begin Sunday.

“We’re ready. We’re going to be vigilant,” said Richard Morales, director of the immigrant rights campaign for Faith in Action, a national faith-based network in more than 20 states. “Whether it happens today or it happens in two weeks, our congregation, our clergy, they’re ready to respond.”

See also A Trump official tried to argue that detained children don’t need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be ‘safe and sanitary’ while in Border Patrol custody.

Matt Velasquez reports Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo is named NBA’s MVP:

Six years ago, Giannis Antetokounmpo was still an unknown quantity even among the most experienced basketball minds. A gangly, 6-foot-9 teenager born to Nigerian immigrants in Greece, he was relatively new to basketball and it was anyone’s guess what he would become when the Milwaukee Bucks selected him 15th in the 2013 NBA draft.

What he has become, after six years in Milwaukee, is the NBA’s Most Valuable Player for the 2018-19 season, an accomplishment that became official on Monday night at the NBA Awards in Santa Monica, California, where Antetokounmpo took home the Maurice Podoloff Trophy. In earning the honor, he beat out last year’s MVP James Harden of the Houston Rockets as well as Paul George of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

See also Bucks’ Mike Budenholzer named NBA 2018-19 coach of year.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy makes dramatic early morning launch:

Babbittry, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Education, Employment, Government Spending, Local Government, WEDC, Wisconsin

Public Money for Unskilled Manufacturing Jobs is Money Wasted

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In times of historically low unemployment, communities are simply wasting public money when they subsidize unskilled manufacturing jobs.  The jobs, jobs, jobs mantra only makes sense in conditions of unemployment, unemployment, unemployment.

Despite relatively low unemployment, ‘community development men’ in places like Whitewater still push business subsidies for companies using unskilled labor.  Pretending that dead-end jobs at a recycling plant are valuable positions at a state-of-the-art facility is a bureaucrat’s way of making subsidies to an employer look like gains for employees. (It’s also a newspaper stringer’s way of ingratiating himself with local cronies and not reporting on public projects seriously.)

Pretending sows’ ears are silk purses offers communities and workers false hope by encouraging dead-end jobs at public expense, with scant wages, in poor conditions.   The big gain comes to corporate employers, who can use the subsidies to profit at taxpayers’ expense.

A small rural town – with a university, of all advantages – should be leaning toward that university to assure an emphasis on post-secondary studies and skilled training.  The data are clear that rural communities benefit from an emphasis on post-secondary studies.

John Austin asks and answers in What do Midwest working-class voters want and need?:

But what do these workers want and need? The President and his allies on the right offer a mixture of economic nostalgia, crass nativism, and trade wars. Many on the left (though not Biden himself) promise a guaranteed income for underemployed and out-of-work populations.

Yet evidence suggests that most of these voters ultimately want the “dignity of work” via a good-paying job. With labor markets tightening and employers facing skills gaps—even in places like Detroit, Cleveland, and others across the former Rust Belt—the only path to that good job and concomitant dignity runs through higher levels of postsecondary education.

….

Today the region’s workers are facing an economy that demands greater skills and technical training beyond high school. Beginning 40 years ago, under competitive pressures to cut costs and improve quality, the region’s employers dramatically restructured their business models, leading to the loss of many good-paying, lower-skill jobs in Midwest communities. Where once five workers bolted fenders on the auto assembly line, today one worker with a higher level of education and training may program and monitor robots to do the same amount of work.

If it should be true that communities should lean toward nearby colleges, then it’s just as important that these colleges send into nearby communities those who care for residents who are struggling.  (The opposite of what’s needed would be a college employee who merely wants to be noticed for being noticed, and reflexively embraces others of the same ilk, defending every local expression of babbittry in a circle of mutual back-patters.)

Community development in small rural communities like Whitewater means outreach to the disadvantaged, the encouragement of residents’ further schooling, a rejection of business welfare, and an openness to newcomers without expectation that they’ll fall into line behind yesterday’s (and today’s) failed cronyism.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.24.19

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see scattered thundershowers with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 59.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School Board meets at 6:30 PM in closed session, with open session scheduled to begin at 7 PM.

On this day in 1946, Mellen, Wisconsin receives 11.72 inches of rain in a single day.

Recommended for reading in full:

Olivia Herken reports In Wisconsin, users of cannabis and CBD are as close as Main Street (‘Users of marijuana and its derivatives are everywhere — from children with serious illness to dogs, and in cities and a small town hair salon’):

Recently, the state of Wisconsin legalized the sale and use of CBD, or cannabidiol, an active ingredient in cannabis. CBD contains just trace amounts or no THC, the psychoactive chemical found in the plant.

Marijuana remains illegal in Wisconsin, although Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has proposed legalizing its use for medical conditions and decriminalizing possession of small amounts. He has signaled he is open to legalization for recreational uses. However, top Republicans in the GOP-run Legislature have vowed to block Evers’ proposals.

Kickapoo Kind [a CBD and hemp shop in Viroqua, Wis.] owner Tim Murphy said he has seen the popularity of cannabis blossom, including among some unlikely people. Customers come from many miles away to check out Murphy’s products. The shop recently moved to larger space on Main Street in Viroqua to handle the demand.

“I’ve had people come from Richland Center, Prairie du Chien, Elroy, all over,” Murphy said. “All walks of life. I’ve had 90-year-old grandmas in here, and I’ve had little babies (with epilepsy) in here. Every single walk of life that you can think of has walked through that door.”

(I don’t use these products, but others should be free to do so. This consumer trend is, so to speak, home grown.  For years, prohibitionists and drug warriors have insisted – pretended, truly – that demand for these products came from outsiders, non-residents, urban dwellers, non-whites, etc.  Oh, no: there is broad, local support.)

Eillie Anzilotti reports Madison is the first city to go 100% electric for its bike share:

As of June 18, BCycle, the local bike share, became the first citywide system in the U.S. to transition its fleet entirely to electric-assist bicycles. “We have seen the e-bike trend in the larger bike business exploding in the past few years, and we’re so excited for it to come into bike share,” says Morgan Ramaker, exeutive director at BCycle.

BCycle is a nationwide bike-share provider owned by Trek Bikes, which is based near Madison in Wisconsin. With 47 dock-based systems across the U.S., including Indego in Philadelphia and B-Cycle in Houston, BCycle is one of the largest providers in the country. Though it’s privately owned, it works closely with local governments in each city where it has a presence to understand local needs.

5 Food Facts You Probably Never Knew:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, June 25th, 12:30 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Isn’t It Romantic

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This Tuesday, June 25th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Isn’t It Romantic @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building:

“Isn’t It Romantic” (Comedy/Fantasy/Romance)

Tuesday, June 25, 12:30 pm
Rated PG-13; 1 hour, 29 minutes

OK, all of you fans of Hallmark Channel romance comedies: this one’s for you! A plus-sized young woman (Rebel Wilson) disenchanted with love finds herself trapped inside a “rom com” from which there is no escape. Also stars Liam Hemsworth and Adam Devine. A hilarious take on all of these conventions.

One can find more information about Isn’t It Romantic at the Internet Movie Database.

Enjoy.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.23.19

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see occasional thundershowers with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 67.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

It’s Whitewater Heritage Day, with a tour of older local homes and related events:

The Whitewater Heritage Day event runs from 10am to 4pm on Sunday, June 23, 2019, and features architectural and cultural history within Whitewater’s Main Street Historic District. All proceeds from tour tickets benefit restoration of the Bassett House. Properties open for touring that day are Bassett House, Victoria on Main (Engebretsen-Dorr Home), Delta Zeta Sorority (George Esterly Home), Cultural Arts Center (White Memorial Building), Hamilton House, and Smith-Allen House. The Whitewater Arts Alliance at White Memorial Building will offer a one-day pop-up exhibit featuring local artists showing images of Whitewater subjects. In addition, the Whitewater Historical Society Museum at the Train Depot will also be open from 10am to 4pm. Food Truck Festival (10am – 2pm) at the public library parking lot across from Smith-Allen House, and Ice Cream Social at Bassett House (1-3pm). Shuttle van available. Tour tickets are $15 each available day of event. No charge to enter White Memorial Building to view pop-up art show! Or to visit Depot Museum!

On this day in 1911, the first home-built airplane flies:

On this date Wausau native John Schwister became a pioneer in Wisconsin aviation by flying the state’s first home-built airplane. The plane, named the “Minnesota-Badger,” was constructed of wooden ribs covered with light cotton material. Powered by an early-model aircraft engine, the “Minnesota-Badger” flew several hundred feet and reached a maximum altitude of 20 feet. [Source: Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame]

Recommended for reading in full:

Kayla Epstein, Nick Miroff, Seung Min Kim, and Maria Sacchetti report Trump says he will put deportation efforts on hold temporarily:

President Trump abruptly suspended his wide-ranging threat to deport “millions” of undocumented immigrants starting Sunday, demanding that Democrats and Republicans forge a plan to stanch the record flows of asylum-seeking families across the southern border into the United States.

Trump had announced the raids Monday in a surprise tweet that ignited a frenzy of fear in immigrant communities nationwide and drew criticism from law enforcement and elected officials in California, New York and other states. Then, in a move that has become a hallmark of his chaotic presidency, he reversed the plan in a tweet Saturday, mere hours before the raids were to begin.

Trump tweeted that he had “delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border.”

“If not, Deportations start!” he wrote.

(Trump’s like a man who threatens to beat his wife, tells her he’ll hold off for a bit, and expects everyone to be grateful to him for it.)

How This Mexican Chef Is Changing Perceptions With Food:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.22.19

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of seventy-four.  Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1944, Pres. Roosevelt signs the G.I. Bill into law.

Recommended for reading in full:

Nick Miroff reports ICE raids targeting migrant families slated to start Sunday in major U.S. cities:

President Trump has directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct a mass roundup of migrant families that have received deportation orders, an operation that is likely to begin with predawn raids in major U.S. cities on Sunday, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans.

The “family op,” as it is referred to at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, is slated to target up to 2,000 families in as many as 10 U.S. cities, including Houston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and other major immigration destinations, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the law enforcement operation.

(Trumpism is bigoted authoritarianism at home and subservience to authoritarians abroad.  Nothing delights his base like actions against non-white migrants.)

Annie Gowen reports ‘I don’t know how we’re going to survive this.’ Some once-loyal farmers begin to doubt Trump:

Like farmers around the country they [residents of Orient, S.D] were faced with gut-wrenching choices: Plant their corn in muddy fields or file an insurance claim? How much would they receive from the $14.5 billion of aid that Trump promised in May to offset their losses from China’s tariffs, and what crops would they have to plant to receive it?

Some rural residents are growing increasingly frustrated with the ongoing trade feuds and wonder how long Trump will call upon farmers to make sacrifices as the country’s “patriots.”

“People are starting to say, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to survive this,’?” said Martinmaas, who voted for Trump in 2016, but says he’s open to a Democrat like Montana Gov. Steve Bullock this time. “You know, we’re the ones taking the brunt of it in all these negotiations, so they need to be kind of helping us out right now.”

Martinmaas, whose family homesteaded this land in 1888, said his farm operation lost more than $700,000 last year. He’s had to put a moratorium on buying new equipment, and he’s stuck with grain bins full of soybeans, because China isn’t buying. Other farmers can’t pay their bills for the hay and grain they bought from him.

Martinmaas, 69, says he’s skeptical that Trump’s aid package will help, given the uncertainty about how much individual farmers will receive and who will qualify.

(People choose freely: sometimes well, sometimes poorly.  To choose Trump is to choose poorly.)

Why There Is A Helium Shortage:

Alt-Right, America, Bigotry, Culture, Ethnicity, Herrenvolk, Immigration, Misconduct, Never Trump, Politics, Race, Resistance, Trump

Trump’s Base Delights in Tales of Others’ Deprivation

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In this conflict between defenders of America’s liberal democratic order and Trumpism, those of opposition and resistance have wisely steeled themselves for stories of cruelty as state policy. Trumpism’s aim is a herrenvolk, where his demographically homogeneous base receives permanent preference over others, and in which that same base delights in deprivations and depravities inflicted on anyone outside their own horde.

One should not be surprised, then, when Meagan Flynn reports Detained migrant children got no toothbrush, no soap, no sleep. It’s no problem, government argues:

The government went to federal court this week to argue that it shouldn’t be required to give detained migrant children toothbrushes, soap, towels, showers or even half a night’s sleep inside Border Patrol detention facilities.

The position bewildered a panel of three judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Tuesday, who questioned whether government lawyers sincerely believed they could describe the temporary detention facilities as “safe and sanitary” if children weren’t provided adequate toiletries and sleeping conditions. One circuit judge said it struck him as “inconceivable.”

“To me it’s more like it’s within everybody’s common understanding: If you don’t have a toothbrush, if you don’t have soap, if you don’t have a blanket, it’s not safe and sanitary,” Senior U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima told Justice Department lawyer Sarah Fabian. “Wouldn’t everybody agree to that? Would you agree to that?”

Fabian said she thought it was fair to say “those things may be” part of the definition of safe and sanitary.

“What are you saying, ‘may be?’” Tashima shot back. “You mean, there’s circumstances when a person doesn’t need to have a toothbrush, toothpaste and soap? For days?”

The Trump Administration doesn’t need to win these legal conflicts; it simply has to show Trump’s base that it will inflict misery on outsiders, even children, as a sign of commitment to those most fanatical followers.

This ilk often assumes that, if it should go far enough, a tender-hearted opposition and resistance will dissolve into a pool of tears at news of others’ mistreatment.

In this they are mistaken.  One is reminded of the expression that it is foolish to mistake kindness for weakness.

The liberal democratic order, resting as it does on individual rights and dignity, does tend toward kindness.  It does not, however, tend toward weakness, as countless failed autocracies have come to see only too late.

No matter – this die is cast, and the conflict between a traditional democratic order and Trumpism will end with only one of them prevailing.