This Wednesday, September 4th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of The Guilty @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Wednesday, September 4, 12:30 PM
(Crime/Drama/Thriller)
Rated R (Language); 1 hour, 25 minutes (2018)
Winner of the AARP Movies for Grownups Best Foreign Film Award. A taut, twisty Danish detective story: a dial 911 police dispatcher answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman…and is suddenly disconnected. With a phone as his only tool, it’s a race against time to search for and save the endangered woman. A riveting, harrowing, and haunting film shown in Danish, with English subtitles.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 6:19 AM and sunset 7:30 PM, for 13h 11m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1864, the Battle of Jonesborough, during the Atlanta Campaign, begins as Union troops seize “railroad supply lines into the city. The 1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 21st, 24th, 25th and 32nd Wisconsin Infantry regiments along with the 5th and 10th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries fought in this battle.”
Wisconsin officials from both parties have lawyered up this year at a cost to taxpayers of more than $1 million.
The legal fees will only go up, as was made clear Thursday when Republican lawmakers hired another law firm to assist them in one of several disputes with lawmakers.
It’s the fourth firm they’ve hired since January. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has hired three firms since then to represent him and other state officials.
The reason for the boost in legal bills: a set of lame-duck laws Republicans approved just before Evers and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul were sworn in.
Those laws limit the powers of Evers and Kaul and have been the subject of five lawsuits, three of which are ongoing. Those cases have been the main source of the legal bills for taxpayers.
The lame-duck laws also made it easier for legislators to intervene in litigation over state laws. Legislative leaders have tried to insert themselves into four cases since January, helping fuel the rising legal costs.
Republican efforts to eviscerate unions in Wisconsin have been wildly successful, according to a new report that indicates union membership has plunged by more than 50%, more than double the decline nationally.
University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) released its annual “State of Working Wisconsin” this week, showing that since the passage in 2011 of Act 10 — the law that stripped public unions of bargaining rights — union membership has declined by 53.9%. That’s three times the decrease of 14.9% in neighboring Minnesota. The decrease nationally was 21.2%.
In addition to Act 10, Wisconsin passed a right-to-work law in 2015 that allows union shop workers to decline to pay dues, delivering a blow to the financial position of unions in the private sector as well.
Before Act 10, Wisconsin’s rate of union members was above the national average. That changed in 2012, the year after the law passed.
Last year’s report — which is more detailed on even-numbered years and more a snapshot in odd-numbered years — detailed public-sector union membership rates, which fell from more than 60% since 2010 to 18.9 percent in 2017.
A press release from the MónNatura Pirineus Wildlife Recovery Center release tells the tale:
Today [8.9.19], the first lynx born in the Catalan Pyrenees for more than a century has been presented at MónNatura Pirineus. The animal, which is in perfect health, was born on May 28 at the MónNatura Pirineus Wildlife Recovery Center and is of the European or Boreal Lynx ( Lynx lynx ) species, extinct in this area.
Miquel Rafa, director of the Territory and Environment of the Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation, today highlighted the importance of this birth and explained that this lynx will reinforce the environmental education work done in this center, where there are other species of animals such as the bonebreaker [bearded vulture], el duc [Eurasian eagle-owl], roe deer, marten, garduña [beech marten] and the fox, among others; that explain its ecological function in the Pyrenees.
Among them, the cat’s parents, two lynx that were born in captivity in May 2008 in a zoo in Galicia, and were transferred to the center of MónNatura Pyrenees in August of the same year.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-three. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:32 PM, for 13h 14m 17s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.0% of its visible disk illuminated.
The 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run. By the end of this third day, more than 18,000 soldiers had been killed or wounded and Union forces had been pushed back to Washington, D.C. When the Wisconsin regiments arrived in Washington, they rested on the White House lawn. According to historian Frank Klement, “President Lincoln came out with a pail of water in one hand and a dipper in the other. He moved among the men, offering water to the tired and thirsty. Some Wisconsin soldiers drank from the common dipper and thanked the President for his kindness.”
The maker of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, and its owners, the Sackler family, are offering to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits against the company for $10 billion to $12 billion. The potential deal was part of confidential conversations and discussed by Purdue’s lawyers at a meeting in Cleveland last Tuesday, Aug. 20, according to two people familiar with the mediation.
At least 10 state attorneys general and the plaintiffs’ attorneys gathered in Cleveland, where David Sackler represented the Sackler family, according to two people familiar with the meeting. David Sackler, who was a board member of the company, has recently been the de facto family spokesperson.
See generally Watch Richard Sackler Deny His Family’s Role in the Opioid Crisis (“Sackler testified in 2015 in a lawsuit brought by Kentucky against his family’s company, Purdue Pharma, which makes the painkiller OxyContin. We published the transcript in February. Now you can see the video”) and Under Proposed Purdue Pharma Opioid Settlement, Sacklers Would Still Be Billionaires (“If the Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, accepts the terms of a settlement now under discussion, Forbes estimates they will still be worth between $1 billion and $2 billion, down from a current net worth estimate of $11.2 billion”).
President Trump’s biggest lender has in its possession tax records Congress is seeking in targeting the president’s financial dealings, the bank told a federal appeals court in New York Tuesday.
The disclosure from Deutsche Bank came in response to a court order as part of a legal battle between Congress and the president over access to Trump’s business records.
The bank’s public redacted response filed Tuesday did not identify by name whose records it has.
The Great Lakes — five inland seas holding one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth — are vast, but they are not limitless. So it is alarming that Wisconsin intends to send water out of the basinnot because public health demands it but because a private company wants it. This cuts against the understanding of the lakes as a public trust and, in an era of nationwide water insecurity, sets a dangerous precedent.
Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, is building a plant to make LCD screens in Mount Pleasant, Wis. The state that landed Foxconn with environmental waivers and about $4 billion in incentives decided that it was fine for it to have Great Lakes water, too. In 2018, Wisconsin granted a permit for Racine and Foxconn to use 7 million gallons a day from Lake Michigan, taking it outside the area where water naturally returns to the Great Lakes watershed.
The diversion sidesteps a key piece of water policy that is commonly called the Great Lakes Compact. The compact, along with Ontario and Quebec’s parallel agreement, is a protocol for when water can be taken outside the basin — which is to say, almost never. But there are exceptions for cities and counties that straddle the watershed boundary. With its groundwater contaminated by naturally occurring radium, Waukesha, Wis., went through an intensely scrutinized application to take water from Lake Michigan. It took seven years, including legal appeal, before the diversion was finalized.
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There’s a twist to this story. After the DNR approved the diversion, Foxconn dramaticallyreduced the scope of its plant. But its water allotment is unchanged. Taxpayer dollars are already paying for expanded infrastructure. As a steward of the Great Lakes, Wisconsin should proportionally scale back Foxconn’s diversion. One Taipei-based analyst estimates that Foxconn’s new plans require only 1.4 million gallons a day, rather than 7 million.
Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 17 items.
Item 8D was a mental health presentation from Dr. Lanora Heim, the district’s director of pupil services. The presentation appears from 1:01:00 to 1:19:36 on the video above, and a .pdf from the meeting agenda is embedded below. These efforts are necessary (and so are welcome); they speak well for themselves and commendably for the district.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny, with a chance of late afternoon thundershowers, and a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 6:17 AM and sunset 7:34 PM, for 13h 17m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Joint Review Board meets today at 1:30 PM.
On this day in 2005, Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in Louisiana, causing catastrophic damage to New Orleans and other cities in the region.
More than a dozen lawsuits involving state taxpayers are languishing because Wisconsin politicians can’t agree on how to resolve them under a new Republican law aimed at curbing the power of the Democratic attorney general.
The impasse comes as billions of dollars are on the table for states suing over the opioid crisis — including Wisconsin.
Nine months after Republican lawmakers passed a law requiring Attorney General Josh Kaul to get their permission before resolving lawsuits there’s still no agreement between the two on how to do it.
Kaul and lawmakers have been debating for months on how to navigate the new law and have put off resolving more than a dozen cases, according to documents obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week.
Kaul’s office in July asked the Legislature’s finance committee to hold a hearing to adopt plans to resolve some of the outstanding cases, including one over financial problems at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Foundation.
It’s now inevitable that many newspaper publishers will slash the frequency of their print product. They won’t necessarily change their online output, but will reduce the number of days they spend setting up the newsprint, paying plant workers to assemble it and drivers to deliver it, etc. Chased by newsprint tariffs and squeezing budgets, un-dailying the daily newspaper is “one of the top topics of discussion in the boardroom,” an industry consultant told Ken Doctor earlier this month.
More than 100 U.S. newspapers have changed their printing frequency since 2004, according to UNC’s Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, but that number is expected to skyrocket. This discussion could be wrapped up and in action as early as 2020.
On August 20, visitors to the Zhengzhou Zoo, located in Central China’s Henan Province, were amused by a Colombian white-faced capuchin monkey who had picked up a rock with a sharp edge and was using it to bang away on one of the glass walls of its enclosure, the People’s Daily reports.
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A zoo staffer told Chinese media that this particular capuchin monkey has stood out by using tools to crack open walnut treats, instead of just struggling to bite open the tough shells. After the incident, the rocks in the enclosure were reportedly removed.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-three. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:35 PM, for 13h 19m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 5.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1963, Dr. King delivers his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to over 250,000 civil rights supporters.
Oklahoma delivered a stinging blow to the drug manufacturing firm Johnson & Johnson on Monday, a landmark victory for the state that may help decide more than 2,000 lawsuits targeting opioid makers and distributors around the US. [CNN / Jacqueline Howard and Wayne Drash]
The company was ordered to pay $572 million for its “false, misleading and dangerous” sales campaign that contributed to the massive opioid crisis, as J&J supplied 60 percent of the opiate ingredients used for drugs like oxycodone. The amount, though short of the $17 billion Oklahoma hoped to secure in the trial, could pay for a year’s worth of epidemic relief services in the state. [NYT / Jan Hoffman]
According to Oklahoma’s attorney general, Johnson & Johnson contributed to 6,000 deaths in the state alone since 2000, with the crisis en route to becoming the “deadliest” man-made epidemic. The pharmaceutical firm has already said it will appeal the judge’s decision. [Guardian / Chris McGreal]
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The surge in lawsuits comes after a string of evidence helped tie the companies’ malicious sales tactics to the opioid epidemic. According to Vox’s German Lopez, manufacturers promoted opioid-based painkillers as “safe and effective, with multiple studies tying the marketing and proliferation of opioids to misuse, addiction, and overdoses.” This also led to other waves of drug overdoses, as the use of heroin and, later, illicit fentanyls grew in response to people losing access to opioids or seeking more potent, cheaper highs. [Vox / German Lopez]
President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.
He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.
Trump has repeatedly promised to complete 500 miles of fencing by the time voters go to the polls in November 2020, stirring chants of “Finish the Wall!” at his political rallies as he pushes for tighter border controls. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed just about 60 miles of “replacement” barrier during the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency, all of it in areas that previously had border infrastructure.
There are many ways in which Trump is grotesque – bigot, ignoramus, grifter, liar, admirer of America’s adversaries — but it’s his authoritarian desires that makes these immoralities or errors dangerous to others. As all people are flawed, so in proportion a thirst for control carries risk to others; from those who are not flawed – but rather are malevolent – ordinary risk becomes ruin.
Conservative George Will discusses Trump’s grotesque – literally, repulsively ugly – ambition:
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 6:14 AM and sunset 7:37 PM, for 13h 22m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 12.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1883, Krakatoa erupts, destroying most of the island and nearby archipelago, and as a consequence “darkened the sky worldwide for years afterwards and produced spectacular sunsets throughout the world for many months. British artist William Ashcroft made thousands of colour sketches of the red sunsets halfway around the world from Krakatoa in the years after the eruption. The ash caused “such vivid red sunsets that fire engines were called out in New York, Poughkeepsie, and New Haven to quench the apparent conflagration.” This eruption also produced a Bishop’s Ring around the sun by day, and a volcanic purple light at twilight.”
First, they [candidates opposing Trump] should give a serious speech warning of the dangers of an escalating trade war and inveighing against the preposterous (okay, bonkers) order for U.S. companies to cease doing business with China. The Democrats would do well to point out that the real socialist seems to be the guy in the White House who imagines we have a command-and-control economy. The candidates should also explain that what he proposed, if ever enacted, would have devastating consequences for American consumers, workers and businesses.
Second, they should reaffirm the independence of the Fed and pledge to keep politics out of the central bank. They might want to point out that Trump was the one who replaced respected Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen with Jerome H. Powell.
Third, the senators in the Democratic presidential race should demand hearings when Congress reconvenes with Powell, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and outside experts (perhaps past Fed chairs) to analyze what is going on and explain where this is all headed. What’s the end game? How do we “win”?
Finally, Democrats should explain what they would have and will do about China and the world economic trading system: Pledge to end silly spats with close allies, make whatever tweaks are needed to ratify NAFTA 2.0, revisit the Trans-Pacific Partnership (which would have made China the odd man out) and convene our closest allies, including the European Union, Mexico and Canada, to agree on a joint strategy for addressing the legitimate issue Trump has long since forgotten, the theft of intellectual property.
Posted originally on 7.14.19, now updated with additional information from the Spanish-language section linked below.
Independientemente de su estatus migratorio, usted tiene derechos garantizados por la Constitución. Aprende más aquí sobre sus derechos como inmigrante y cómo expresarlos.
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Agentes policiales pregunta sobre mi estatus migratorio
Cómo reducir el riesgo para usted mismo
Mantener la calma. No corras, discuta, resista, u obstruya al oficial, incluso si cree que se están violando sus derechos. Mantenga sus manos donde la policía pueda verlas.
No mienta sobre su estado ni proporcione documentos falsos.
Sus derechos
Usted tiene el derecho a permanecer en silencio y no tiene que discutir su estado migratorio o de ciudadanía con la policía, los agentes de inmigración, u otros funcionarios. Cualquier cosa que le diga a un oficial puede luego ser usada en su contra en la corte de inmigración.
Si no es ciudadano de los EE.UU y un agente de inmigración le pide sus documentos de inmigración, usted debe mostrárselos.
Si un agente de inmigración pregunta si pueden buscarte, tu tienes el derecho de decir no. Agentes no tienen el derecho de buscarte o tus cosas sin consentimiento o causa probable.
Si es mayor de 18 años, lleve sus documentos de inmigración consigo en todo momento. Si no tiene documentos de inmigración, diga que quiere permanecer en silencio.
Si no tiene documentos de inmigración, diga que quiere permanecer en silencio, o de que desea consultar a un abogado/a antes de responder cualquier preguntas.
Qué hacer en un encuentro con agentes policiales
En unos estados, necesitas que proveer tu nombre a los agentes policiales si eres parado y te dicen que te identifiques. Pero aunque des tu nombre, no necesitas que responder a otras preguntas.
Si estás manejando y te paran, el oficial puede requerir que enseñes su licencia de conducir, registro y prueba de seguro, sin embargo no necesitas que responder a preguntas de su estatus migratorio.
Los funcionarios de aduanas pueden preguntar sobre tu estatus migratorio al entrar o salir del país. Si usted es un residente permanente legal, le recomendamos que responda las preguntas de los oficiales. Si usted no posee una visa de ciudadano, se le puede negar la entrada a los Estados Unidos si niegas a responder las preguntas de los oficiales.
Recursos adicionales
Si necesitas más información, contacta su afiliado local de ACLU en aclu.org/affiliates
Regardless of your immigration status, you have guaranteed rights under the Constitution. Learn more here about your rights as an immigrant, and how to express them.
Monday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of seventy-two. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:39 PM, for 13h 25m 19s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 21.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM. The Whitewater Unified School Board meets in closed session at 6:30 PM, and in open session beginning at 7 PM.
From July 2018 through June 2019, Wisconsin farmers filed 45 bankruptcies under Chapter 12, a section of the U.S. bankruptcy code that provides financially troubled family farmers with a streamlined path to repay all or part of their debts.
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With depressed milk prices besetting Wisconsin’s thousands of dairy operations, the state has led the country in farm bankruptcies in recent years. Ronald Wirtz, regional outreach director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, also has pointed to Wisconsin’s smaller average farm size as a factor.
Wisconsin also has lots of farms — the 11th highest total in the nation, data from the 2017 U.S. Census of Agriculture shows. Even accounting for the relatively large number of farms here, however, Wisconsin’s farm bankruptcy rate is among the highest in the country.
President Trump has suggested multiple timesto senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.
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Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”
Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall.
The briefer “was knocked back on his heels,” the source in the room added. “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'”
Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland. A source briefed on the NSC memo said it does not contain the word “nuclear”; it just says the president talked about bombing hurricanes.
Americans see value in higher education – whether they graduated from college or not. Most say a college degree is important, if not essential, in helping a young person succeed in the world, and college graduates themselves say their degree helped them grow and develop the skills they needed for the workplace. While fewer than half of today’s young adults are enrolled in a two-year or four-year college, the share has risen steadily over the past several decades. And the economic advantages college graduates have over those without a degree are clear and growing.
Even so, there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction – even suspicion – among the public about the role colleges play in society, the way admissions decisions are made and the extent to which free speech is constrained on college campuses. And these views are increasingly linked to partisanship.
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that only half of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country these days. About four-in-ten (38%) say they are having a negative impact – up from 26% in 2012.
The share of Americans saying colleges and universities have a negative effect has increased by 12 percentage points since 2012. The increase in negative views has come almost entirely from Republicans and independents who lean Republican. From 2015 to 2019, the share saying colleges have a negative effect on the country went from 37% to 59% among this group. Over that same period, the views of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic have remained largely stable and overwhelmingly positive.
For it all – and I do not share these partisans’ doubts about higher education – there are clear benefits (of understanding individually & collectively, and of material benefit individually & collectively):
Even amid doubts about the extent to which college prepares people for today’s job market and disagreement about what the role of college should be, the fact remains that a four-year college degree has very real economic benefits. The income gap between college graduates and those without a bachelor’s degree has grown significantly over the past several decades. In 1990, the median annual earnings for a full-time worker ages 25 to 37 with a bachelor’s degree or higher was $53,600. At the time, this compared with $40,200 for a worker with some college experience but no bachelor’s degree and $33,600 for a worker with no college experience. In 2018, the difference was even more pronounced: $56,000 for a worker with a bachelor’s degree or more education, $36,000 for someone with some college education and $31,300 for a high school graduate.
The full essay discussing the latest Pew survey is well worth reading; it’s notable and regrettable that many parts of America have come to doubt the pursuit of happiness – in the deepest sense – that higher education offers.
