Good morning.

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

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

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

Recommended for reading in full:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Politics of Pot: The new marijuana law in Illinois:

Good morning.

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

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

Recommended for reading in full:

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

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

….

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

….

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

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

On Witch Watch at Castle Halloween Museum:

Good morning.

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

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

Recommended for reading in full:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Amazon Returns Work:

Good morning.

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

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

Recommended for reading in full:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

White bellbirds produce loudest bird call ever recorded:

Good morning.

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

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

On this day in 1933, Amelia Earhart visits Janesville.

Recommended for reading in full:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

….

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

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

Trump Claims We’re Building A Wall In Colorado:

Good morning.

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

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

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

Recommended for reading in full:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 The Mexican Village Planting 5 Million Trees:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 6:01 PM, for 10h 43m 39s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 39.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1962, Pres. Kennedy speaks to the nation about the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba:

Recommended for reading in full:

Philip Zelikow writes Self-Dealing in Ukraine: The Core of the Impeachment Inquiry: