Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-nine.  Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:47 PM, for 9h 26m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee is scheduled to meet at 8 AM.

On this day in 1888, Wisconsin resident William Vilas becomes United States Secretary of the Interior.

Recommended for reading in full:

Jim Tankersley reports Shutdown’s Economic Damage Starts to Pile Up, Threatening an End to Growth:

The partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the United States economy than previously estimated, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday, as President Trump’s economists doubled projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week the standoff with Democrats continues.

The revised estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers show that the shutdown, now in its fourth week, is beginning to have real economic consequences. The analysis, and other projections from outside the White House, suggests that the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth and could ultimately push the United States economy into a contraction.

….

Mr. Hassett [chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers] said on Tuesday that the administration now calculates that the shutdown reduces quarterly economic growth by 0.13 percentage points for every week that it lasts — the cumulative effect of lost work from contractors and furloughed federal employees who are not getting paid and who are investing and spending less as a result. That means that the economy has already lost nearly half a percentage point of growth from the four-week shutdown. (Last year, economic growth for the first quarter totaled 2.2 percent.)

(Making America Stagnant Again.)

 Bill Kaplan describes How Shutdown Is Hurting State:

Wisconsin dairy and other farmers are no longer receiving special payments because of the loss of foreign markets. “States like Wisconsin, which lost at least 638 dairy farms last year, are particularly vulnerable” (New York Times). Wisconsin Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin had added programs to the farm bill to help alleviate the burden of low prices and resultant stress. The shutdown has put everything on hold. Baldwin said: “More uncertainty and more stress. We can’t afford to wait months. We need to get this moving now.”

The shutdown also threatens FDA inspection of Wisconsin food processing companies (vegetables). Similarly, EPA inspections of state Superfund sites, chemical and industrial factories and water treatment facilities, are on hold. And, Wisconsin Native Americans are in trouble. The Oneida Nation said: “the shutdown is putting the health and welfare of our community and our members at risk and impeding our economic development potential”.

 Deer in Door County rescued after falling through ice:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-four.  Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:46 PM, for 9h 24m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 62.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1967, the Packers win the first Super Bowl (35-10 over the Chiefs).

Recommended for reading in full:

Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper report Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia:

There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

(No greater gift to Vladimir Vladimirovich than the end of American participation in the NATO alliance.)

 Fred Kaplan considers Trump and Putin’s Cone of Seclusion (“It’s not just unusual that there are no notes from Trump’s meetings with Putin. It’s unprecedented”):

Whether his translator’s notes hold anything incriminating about Trump’s fealty to Putin, it is appalling that he would go into a one-on-one meeting with the Russian president without a note taker—especially given his shallow grasp of the issues and the very real possibility that he could have given away U.S. interests or disclosed vital secrets without understanding what he was doing. He also conducted his one-on-one with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, at their summit in Singapore, without a note taker present.

….

Quite aside from matters that may be of concern to special counsel Robert Mueller, who knows what concessions Trump may have made in these sessions? In the follow-on meetings that have since taken place between U.S. and North Korean negotiators, American diplomats have sometimes raised points that they consider vital—only to have their North Korean counterpart wave it away, saying, “Go talk with your president.” Did Trump concede these issues in his one-on-one without telling his subordinates? We may never know; some U.S. officials suspect he did.

Meg Jones reports USO Wisconsin collecting gift cards for Coast Guardsmen working without pay because of shutdown:

Like other federal workers working without pay, Coast Guard members and their families are facing hardship paying bills, buying groceries and filling gas tanks.

To help, USO Wisconsin has started a gift card collection for local Coast Guardsmen and their families.

How to help pollinators in cities:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-four.  Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:45 PM, for 9h 22m 56s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 52.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6:30 PM.

On January 14, 1863, the 23rd Wisconsin Infantry leads an expedition to South Bend, Arkansas. On this day in 1865, the 12th, 16th, 17th, 25th, and 32nd Wisconsin Infantry regiments seize Pocotaligo, South Carolina.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Tory Newmyer writes Government shutdown threatens to take real bite out of economic growth:

The longest shutdown is on track to turn a month old this coming weekend, and the economic damage is starting to pile up. 

Given that there’s no end in sight, the damage may need to get significantly worse to break the stalemate.

Economists disagree on what the shutdown has done to broader economic growth so far. The rough standard is that every week or two the government is shuttered trims a tenth of a percent from GDP growth. 

But the knock-on effects — when government contractors or others who rely on federal workers as customers get stiffed, then fail to pay employees or creditors and, potentially, see their businesses fail — are hard to measure, Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson argued in a research note over the weekend. “Even a one-month shutdown would seriously hit growth, to say nothing of the misery caused,” he wrote. And if the situation drags on for the duration of the first quarter, “we would look for an outright decline in first quarter GDP.”

(Emphasis in original.)

Vanda Felbab-Brown surveys Trump’s bogus justifications for the border wall:

President Trump’s speech this week did not change the fact that a border wall won’t make the United States safer or more prosperous. Despite the president’s spin and pretend newly-found humanitarianism, a wall—whether a steel barrier or concrete—remains a waste of money. No matter how tall, deep, or thick a barrier, illicit flows will find a way around. Instead, the wall would undermine the rights of Native Americans and critically damage U.S. biodiversity.

A wall can’t stop smuggling. Drug smugglers have been using tunnels to get drugs into the United States since 1989. Between 1990 and 2016, 224 tunnels have been discovered underneath the U.S.–Mexico border. With no great difficulty, tunnels can be built under any wall. Drugs are also smuggled through drainage systems between border towns and by drones. People and contraband can be smuggled by boats, landing far north on U.S. coasts. Ports such as Miami and Boston are key drug-trafficking hubs.

Contraband and migrants can be hidden within the legal cargo entering through the 52 ports of entry between the United States and Mexico. Most high-value drugs are smuggled across the land border that way. Checking every car, truck, and train compartment that crosses the border is simply infeasible because of time and costs. It would paralyze legal trade and travel.

Dolphins join surfer for amazing ride off California coast:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:44 PM, for 9h 21m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 42.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1922, WHA radio station is founded. (The station dates back to 1917, making it “the oldest station in the nation.”)

Recommended for reading in full:

 Mitch Smith reports Students in Rural America Ask, ‘What Is a University Without a History Major?’:

STEVENS POINT, Wis. — Chancellor Bernie Patterson’s message to his campus was blunt: To remain solvent and relevant, his 125-year-old university needed to reinvent itself.

Some longstanding liberal arts degrees, including those in history, French and German, would be eliminated. Career-focused programs would become a key investment. Tenured faculty members could lose their jobs. The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Dr. Patterson explained in a memo, could “no longer be all things to all people.”

….

But critics say that in trying to carve out a sustainable path for Stevens Point — and build a model for other struggling, regionally focused universities — administrators are risking the very essence of a four-year college experience.

Adam Harris worries The Liberal Arts May Not Survive the 21st Century:

Many people attribute the Wisconsin Idea, as it is known, to Charles Van Hise, the president of the University of Wisconsin from 1903 to 1918. “I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every family of the state,” Hise said in an address in 1905. “If our beloved institution reaches this ideal it will be the first perfect state university.” His idea was written into the mission of the state’s university system, and over time that system became a model for what public higher education could be.

But the backbone of the idea almost went away in 2015, when Governor Scott Walker released his administration’s budget proposal, which included a change to the university’s mission. The Wisconsin Idea would be tweaked. The “search for truth” would be cut in favor of a charge to “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

To those outside Wisconsin, the proposed change might have seemed small. After all, what’s so bad about an educational system that propels people into a high-tech economy? But to many Wisconsinites, the change struck at the heart of the state’s identity. They argued that the idea—with its core tenets of truth, public service, and “improving the human condition”—is what makes Wisconsin, Wisconsin.

Walker ultimately scrapped his attempt to alter the Wisconsin Idea, claiming that his administration hadn’t meant to change it, that it was just a “drafting error.” And so the Wisconsin Idea was preserved—at least in an official sense. But though the words survived intact, many Wisconsinites believe that in the years since, the change Walker had proposed has taken place nevertheless. And one of the state’s institutions, the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, is the epicenter of that change.

How One Man Circumnavigated the World … By Car:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-four.  Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:43 PM, for 9h 19m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 33.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1904, Henry Ford sets a land speed record:

Henry Ford personally drove the rechristened 999 with his mechanic Ed “Spider” Huff at the throttle. A new land speed record was achieved of 91.37 mph (147.05 km/h) on an ice track carved into Lake St. Clair’s Anchor Bay.  (Photo shows Ford and Barney Oldenfield in 1902 with a model 999.)

Recommended for reading in full:

Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt, and Nicholas Fandos report F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia:

WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it. That inquiry is part of Mr. Mueller’s broader examination of how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with them.

….

F.B.I. officials viewed their decision to move quickly as validated when a comment the president made to visiting Russian officials in the Oval Office shortly after he fired Mr. Comey was revealed days later.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to a document summarizing the meeting. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

 Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare summarizes this news:

It was about Russia. Full stop. It was always about Russia.

See from Wittes What if the Obstruction Was the Collusion? On the New York Times’s Latest Bombshell.

 Why is Duct Tape So Strong?: