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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Budget, Daily Bread, State Government, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 6.30.23: Wisconsin Budget Goes to Governor’s Desk

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 90. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 17m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 88.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Independence Holiday events begin tonight at the Cravath Lakefront: 

Christman Family Amusements Wristband Specials $25 – only during posted wristband sessions. Rides are ticket based outside of wrist band sessions. Tickets/wristbands can be purchased on the midway.

Wristband Session 5-9 PM
Civic Food Vendors & Beer Tent 5-11 PM
Live Music – Marco Wence 5-7 PM 
Karaoke 8-10 PM (onstage!)

On this day in 1864, President Lincoln grants Yosemite Valley to California for “public use, resort and recreation.”

Now that both the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly have passed the biennial budget, the bill is off to Gov. Evers for signature, veto, or approval with selected line item vetos. Baylor Spears reports: 

Income taxes would be cut by $3.5 billion; the University of Wisconsin System would lose money for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts; state employees would get a raise and local governments and public and private schools would receive additional state aid, under the two-year budget bill passed by the Wisconsin Assembly Thursday night. The bill will now go to Gov. Tony Evers desk for signing or potential vetoing.

The bill passed 63-34 with all Republicans voting for the bill and all Democrats voting against it following eight hours of debate. No substantive changes were made to the bill despite calls from Democrats to boost investments in child care, school safety, Wisconsin’s K-12 and university system and other priorities.  

….

The budget bill will now go to Evers, who will have the opportunity to veto the entire bill, sign the bill as is or make changes using his broad partial veto powers before signing. Once he receives it, Evers will have six days, excluding Sunday, to take action. 

Evers told WQOW News 18 on Thursday that if he does sign the budget, “there will be as many partial vetoes as we can muster.” 

“We’re still in the process of looking at it,” Evers added. “Every time they take a whack at it they make some changes, so I want to make sure that the pieces are in place for me to sign it or not.”

Wisconsin Republicans have worked throughout the budget process to limit Evers’ partial veto power by introducing certain budget-related legislation in separate bills and by writing the budget in way that limits his veto authority on individual items. 

Evers can remove or reduce appropriations using his veto power. However, the power has been limited in recent years by rulings of the state Supreme Court that have said the governor is not allowed to strike singular letters to create new words or cut sentences to create new ones. 

There’s a Whitewater idiosyncrasy in this (but of course there is): Sen. Steve Nass was one of only two Wisconsin Senate Republicans to veto the budget. Nass erroneously contends that 

Today (June 28), the Senate is missing an opportunity to maintain sound fiscal practices in developing the 2023-25 biennial budget.  The budget submitted by the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) will take this state from a $7 billion structural balance to a $2.5 billion structural deficit at the start of the next budget period on July 1, 2025.

(Emphasis added.) 

I’ll not predict whether there will be a structural deficit after 2025, but a $7 billion surplus is not a structural balance. It’s an imbalance in favor of hoarded revenue, held by the state rather than returned as tax reductions, local aid, etc. Under Nass’s reasoning, keeping billions — and perhaps accumulating billions more under state control — would be an act of equilibrium. 

There’s a reason the majority of his own caucus ignored Nass’s argument: it’s wrong conceptually. A gigantic state surplus does not represent an equilibrium. Virtually no one in the state (Republican, Democrat, libertarian, independent) would think otherwise. There are debates about how to distribute the surplus, but thankfully there’s no 15th-century faction that believes holding or accumulating more in the state treasury is an act of “balance.”

Chimpanzee is awestruck after seeing open sky after 28 years in a cage:

Cats, Science/Nature

Friday Catblogging: Cat Noses

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Tanya Lewis writes Cat Noses Contain Twisted Labyrinths That Help Them Separate Smells (‘Scientists hypothesize that coiled channels inside a cat’s nose may function like a gas chromatograph’):

Researchers created a computational model of a cat’s nose based on computed tomography scans and tissue slices from a deceased house cat whose body was donated for research. When a cat takes a sniff, airflow is diverted into two different streams for breathing and smelling. The model showed that the animal’s nasal passages then direct the smelling stream through an extensive network of tightly coiled, sensor-studded channels called turbinates. The scientists hypothesize that this structure may function like a gas chromatograph—a sophisticated chemical device that separates different compounds based on their solubility. Scents that dissolve less easily in nasal mucus travel farther than more readily dissolved ones and therefore bind to more distant smell receptors.

“We know that animals—including cats—use a sense of smell for detection of food, for sense of danger and also for kin recognition,” says Kai Zhao, a bioengineer in the department of otolaryngology at the Ohio State University and senior author of the study. The coiled structure the researchers documented is more than 100 times more efficient than the straight channel found in the noses of amphibians and some mammals, and it can fit more smell receptors in a confined head space, Zhao notes. The study was published on Thursday in PLOS Computational Biologyand was partially funded by Mars Petcare UK, a company that manufactures pet food.

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Courts, Daily Bread, Education, Federal Government, Law

Daily Bread for 6.29.23: U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Affirmative Action at U.S. Colleges

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 88. Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 17m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 81.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1620, English crown bans tobacco growing in England, giving the Virginia Company a monopoly in exchange for tax of one shilling per pound

Adam Liptak reports Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Admissions at Harvard and U.N.C.  Liptak writes: 

Race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, the latest decision by its conservative supermajority on a contentious issue of American life.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, said the two programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner” and “involve racial stereotyping,” in a manner that violates the Constitution.

Universities can consider how race has affected an applicant’s life, but he emphasized that students “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarized her dissent from the bench — a rare move that signals profound disagreement. The court, she wrote, was “further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”

“The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated,” she said in her scorching dissent.

The ruling could have far-reaching effects, and not just at the colleges and universities across the country that are expected to revisit their admissions practices. The decision could prompt employers to rethink how they consider race in hiring and it could potentially narrow the pipeline of highly credentialed minority candidates entering the work force.

Here’s what to know:

The opinions in the case — including concurring opinions from Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh and another dissenting opinion from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — total 237 pages. (Justice Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case because she had been on the university’s board of overseers.) Read the opinions here.

….

The two cases were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by Edward Blum, a legal activist who has organized many lawsuits challenging race-conscious admissions policies and voting rights laws, several of which have reached the Supreme Court. The decision, he said, is “an outcome that the vast majority of all races and ethnicities will celebrate.”

In the North Carolina case, the plaintiffs said that the university discriminated against white and Asian applicants by giving preference to Black, Hispanic and Native American ones. The case against Harvard has an additional element, accusing the university of discriminating against Asian American students by using a subjective standard to gauge traits like likability, courage and kindness, and by effectively creating a ceiling for them in admissions. The universities both won in federal trial courts, and the decision in Harvard’s favor was affirmed by a federal appeals court.

Nine states already ban the use of race-conscious college admissions at their public universities, and their experience could provide a sign of the ruling’s consequences.

In 2016, the Supreme Court upheld an admissions program at the University of Texas at Austin, holding that officials there could continue to consider race as a factor in ensuring a diverse student body. Read about that case here.

See Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, No. 20–1199, slip op (2023).

The ruling was generally expected; the practical question is how universities will assure diversity in compliance with this ruling.

AI, Daily Bread, Education

Daily Bread for 6.28.23: ChatGPT Changes the Classroom

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be hazy with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 18m 20s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 71.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets at 8 AM, and the Park Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1832, General Henry Atkinson and the Second Army begin their trip into the Wisconsin wilderness in a major effort against Black Hawk. The “Army of the Frontier” was formed of 400 U.S. Army Regulars and 2,100 volunteer militiamen in order to participate in the Black Hawk War. The troops were headed toward the Lake Koshkonong area where the main camp of the British Band was rumored to be located.

Suspicion, Cheating and Bans: A.I. Hits America’s Schools:

Since its introduction less than a year ago, ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence platform that can write essays, solve math problems and write computer code, has sparked an anguished debate in the world of education. Is it a useful research tool or an irresistible license to cheat?

Stella Tan, a producer on The Daily, speaks to teachers and students as they finish their first semester with ChatGPT about how it is changing the classroom.

An AI panic will only set America back. We did not become an advanced society through fear of new technologies, and we will not remain an advanced society while fearful. AI will change our educational experience, but then calculators changed our experience, computers changed our educational experience, and the internet & the web changed our educational experience. American schools — K12 and post-secondary — can master these technologies. 

The Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot shows off a few of its skills on Caltech’s campus:

Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Federal Government, Law

Daily Bread for 6.27.23: U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Radical Revision of Federal Election Law

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 18m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 61.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, sailors start a mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin.

Adam Liptak reports Supreme Court Rejects Theory That Would Have Transformed American Elections (‘The 6-3 majority dismissed the “independent state legislature” theory, which would have given state lawmakers nearly unchecked power over federal elections’):

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal theory that would have radically reshaped how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures largely unchecked power to set all sorts of rules for federal elections and to draw congressional maps warped by partisan gerrymandering.

The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing the majority opinion. The Constitution, he said, “does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.

The case concerned the “independent state legislature” theory. The doctrine is based on a reading of the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which says, “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

Proponents of the strongest form of the theory say this means that no other organs of state government — not courts, not governors, not election administrators, not independent commissions — can alter a legislature’s actions on federal elections.

The case, Moore v. Harper, No. 21-1271, concerned a voting map drawn by the North Carolina Legislature that was initially rejected as a partisan gerrymander by the state’s Supreme Court. Experts said the map was likely to yield a congressional delegation made up of 10 Republicans and four Democrats.

….

The state court rejected the argument that it was not entitled to review the actions of the state’s Legislature, saying that adopting the independent state legislature theory would be “repugnant to the sovereignty of states, the authority of state constitutions and the independence of state courts, and would produce absurd and dangerous consequences.”

See Moore v Harper, No. 21–1271, slip op (2023): 

Pompeii fresco depicts what might be the precursor of pizza:

Culture, Daily Bread, Economy, Law, Politics

Daily Bread for 6.26.23: It’s More than the Economy, and That Will Affect How People View the Economy

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 19m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 51.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM. The Whitewater School Board goes into closed session shortly after 5:15 PM, to resume into open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1918, Allied forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord defeat Imperial German forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince in the Battle of Belleau Wood.

Casey Quinlan asks Wage growth remains high, jobs are steady and inflation is falling so why are people worried?: 

Economists have been predicting a recession for months, but the labor market has remained resilient, wage growth is higher than before the pandemic, and inflation continues to drop, now at 4% compared to 9.1% in June of last year. Despite this good news, consumers don’t feel confident about the future, according to the consumer confidence index, which is at a six-month low.

The consumer confidence index fell to 102.3 in May from 103.7 in April. The present situation index, which shows how consumers feel about current conditions in business and labor, dropped to 148.6 from 151.8, and the expectations index inched down to 71.5 from 71.7. According to the Conference Board, an economic research and business membership organization that releases the index, an expectations index below 80 is associated with a recession within the next year.  People aged 55 or older were especially pessimistic about the economy. The next consumer confidence survey results come out on June 27.

“The technical term for the type of economy that we’re in now is weird,” said William Hauk, associate professor of economics at the University of South Carolina. “On the one hand, there’s a lot of very good news. We have a very low unemployment rate, really almost historically low at this point. The job market is doing well. At first, coming out of the pandemic, some people were concerned that the low unemployment rate was driven in part by low labor force participation. But that’s really kind of caught up to where it was in pre-pandemic terms.”

The simple explanation is that the economy is one of only several concerns people now have. The Clinton campaign in 1992 emphasized that their focus was on the economy (‘it’s the economy, stupid’).

That was then, this is now. Americans have more worries than simply economic ones (namely heightened legal, political, and cultural concerns). In this way, the economy isn’t merely the economy: people have disparate, significant concerns that make even bright spots look dim. 

A robotic raspberry teaches machines how to pick fruit: 

Budget, Daily Bread, Government Spending, Legislation, Local Government, State Government, UW System

Daily Bread for 6.25.23: Committee Sends Wisconsin Budget to Full Legislature

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 19m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 42.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1950, the Korean War begins when North Korea invades South Korea.

Baylor Spears reports JFC completes work with cuts to income taxes and UW budget, increases in state employee pay:

The Joint Finance Committee (JFC) voted to cut state income taxes by $3.5 billion and reduce the University of Wisconsin system budget while raising pay for state employees as lawmakers wrapped up their work on the 2023-25 state budget Thursday.

The committee voted 12-4 along party lines to recommend the budget for approval by the Legislature. It will likely go to the full Legislature for a vote next week. If passed, the budget would be sent to Gov. Tony Evers, who could use his line-item veto power to make changes before signing it into law. 

….

While Republican lawmakers tagged the plan as a “middle class” tax cut, Wisconsin’s highest earners will receive the biggest cut. The tax rate for Wisconsin’s top bracket, which includes single filers making over $304,170 and joint filers making over $405,550, would fall to 6.5% from 7.65%, a 1.15-percentage-point drop. 

Wisconsin’s two middle brackets would be compressed to one that encompasses earners whose incomes range from $13,810 and $304,170 for single filers and $18,420 to $405,550 for joint filers, all of whom would have a 4.4% tax rate. 

Currently, single filers with incomes from $13,810 to $27,630 and joint filers from $18,420 to $36,840 have a 4.65% rate. Single filers with incomes from $27,630 to $304,170, and joint filers from $36,840 to $405,550 have a 5.3% rate.

 The tax rate for the lowest tax bracket — which includes single filers making up to $13,810 and joint filers making up to $18,420 — would fall to 3.50% from 3.54%. 

There was always going to be a tax cut in this plan, and the tax cut was always going to be the centerpiece of the budget. The $3.5 billion tax cut is more than an order of magnitude higher than the shared revenue increases passed earlier this month (shared revenue increases amounted to “an additional $274.9 million to counties and municipalities.”  The long delay in a shared revenue agreement was notable not because the number was large but rather because the number was relatively small. 

The UW System sees a funding cut in this budget:

JFC Republicans voted to cut $32 million and 188 full-time positions from the UW system budget with the stated purpose of eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts throughout the system. 

….

A UW faculty union leader, however, charged on Twitter Thursday that Republican complaints about DEI were a smoke screen.

“This is not an effort to curb DEI. This is an effort to distract from the fact that the legislature is giving the state university system no new funding—not even an inflationary increase—when we have the largest surplus in state history,” tweeted Nick Fleisher, a UW-Milwaukee linguistics professor and president of the American Association of University Professors Wisconsin Conference.

There was always going to be a UW System budget cut. The System, so to speak, is not a WISGOP constituency:

The education gap among white voters grew notably wider in 2020.  Democrats went from winning 53% of the white college vote in 2012 to 57% in 2016 to 61% in 2020.  By contrast, their share of the non-college white vote declined markedly from 49% in 2012 to 41% in 2016 to 40% in 2020.

Horse rescued from swimming pool by tractor after getting spooked and jumping in:

A horse was rescued after becoming spooked and jumping into a Florida swimming pool. Pasco County Fire and Rescue firefighters were called to the scene on the evening of Tuesday 20 June, where they found the stuck animal. Footage shows the moment the horse was lifted from the water after firefighters secured a hoisting harness to it. It had become spooked by another horse before jumping into the pool, authorities said.

“We are happy to report that the horse is in good condition! Thank you to everyone who responded and worked vigilantly to save a life,” Pasco County Fire Rescue wrote, sharing the video on social media.

Daily Bread, Film, Nature

Daily Bread for 6.24.23: Shadows In The Sky

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 91. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 19m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 33.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1922, the American Professional Football Association is renamed the National Football League.

 Shadows In The Sky:

Dingo caught on camera biting sunbathing tourist: 

Footage has surfaced showing a dingo nipping a French tourist on the backside on Fraser Island in Australia. The incident occurred weeks before a 10-year-old boy was dragged underwater by a dingo while he camped with family on the island. [The boy suffered puncture wounds to his shoulder and bruises to his collarbone in the attack, which happened on the west coast of K’gari Island in front of a camping area on June 16.] 

The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, which has issued warnings about the feral canines, said the boy was walking alone when he was attacked on June 16.

Daily Bread, Economy, Poverty

Daily Bread for 6.23.23: Proposed Changes in the Poverty Measure

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 86. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 20m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1962, Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantic television program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

Maya Srikrishnan reports Why the way we measure poverty matters (‘A national panel is recommending changes to a key poverty measurement. It might sound technical, but the stakes are high’):

Some of the debate boils down to which of the Census Bureau’s two poverty yardsticks is more appropriate for determining who qualifies for government aid: the Official Poverty Measure or the Supplemental Poverty Measure. 

The country’s Official Poverty Measure was developed in the 1960s, based solely on a family’s ability to purchase food. The supplemental, with data first released in 2011, uses a standard of living based on expenditures that include food, clothing, shelter and utilities, compared against a household’s post-tax income, which accounts for government aid and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

It’s rare for the two measures to go in different directions — but recently they have.

The poverty rate under the Official Poverty Measure grew from an estimated 10.5% to 11.6% of the population between 2019 and 2021, the Census Bureau reported last year. In contrast, the rate under the Supplemental Poverty Measure decreased from 11.8% to 7.8%. 

One of the main reasons: stimulus payments from the government to households during the COVID-19 pandemic, which helped raise many households’ incomes temporarily. 

That’s the backdrop to a new National Academy of Sciences panel report, requested by the Census Bureau, that recommends the agency make the Supplemental Poverty Measure its official yardstick and incorporate several updates to it. 

Unlike the Official Poverty Measure, whose methodology has remained largely unchanged since its inception, the Supplemental Poverty Measure was designed to evolve with the changing demands of society. 

The panel was tasked by the Census Bureau to see if the supplemental measure, or SPM,  “was adequately measuring the economic needs of disadvantaged households in the country,” said James Ziliak, professor of economics and director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky, who chaired the panel.

A press release from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine offers additional detail:

The report recommends renaming the SPM which, as currently conceived, fails to convey that it often serves as the primary measure of poverty because, among other things, it allows researchers and policymakers to evaluate the effectiveness of programs designed to reduce poverty. The report proposes Principal Poverty Measure (PPM) as a more apt name. The report also recommends that the PPM replace the Official Poverty Measure as the primary statistical measure of poverty.  

Medical Care 

Most people consider medical care a basic need. However, because medical care is accounted for based on expenditures reported by households, the SPM does not capture unmet needs for people who are uninsured or underinsured. The estimate implicitly assumes that a family’s basic need is equal to whatever the family spends out of pocket on insurance and medical care, which is often not the case.  

The report recommends that:  

  • The proposed PPM should include the need for a basic health insurance plan in estimates of the measure’s threshold and include health insurance benefits provided by employers or the government in estimates of resources. The report notes that the Census Bureau has already begun considering the practical implications of moving toward a health inclusive poverty measure. 
  • For those under 65, the PPM should adopt an Affordable Care Act benchmark health insurance plan to represent the basic health care need for a typical American household. 
  • For those aged 65 and older, and for those under 65 covered by Medicare (e.g., some individuals with disabilities), the basic need level should be set based on the full cost of a Medicare Advantage plan. 

Child Care 

Among families that pay for it, child care accounts for around 16 percent of direct expenditures, which makes it the third-largest budget component after housing and transportation. Comprehensive accounting of child care needs is essential to understanding families’ economic well-being. The committee proposed that, ideally, child care should become an element of the basic needs threshold in the PPM, similar to medical care. The committee acknowledged additional research is required to implement this approach, as there is currently little consensus on how to value child care provided by parents, family, or friends. 

The report recommends that: 

  • In households with children under the age of 13 (or up to age 18 if a child is disabled), the poverty measure should treat parents pursuing education the same as parents who are employed.  
  • Ideally, child care should be included in the PPM threshold, with estimated costs allowed to vary by age and number of children and geographic location (costs could be derived based on federal child care subsidy programs). 
  • For a balanced accounting, financial assistance received for child care should be added to estimates of a household’s resources. Since unpaid child care also has value, it could also be accounted for in the resource estimation. 

Housing 

Housing is often the largest component of a household’s spending, with about a third of U.S. households paying more than 30 percent of their income on it in 2020. The budget share is even higher for renters and households with lower incomes. Rental housing is typically a more attainable goal than purchasing a home. In this sense, the report says, renting represents the baseline housing need. 

The report recommends that: 

  • The PPM housing threshold should be set based on costs for renters only, and rental levels should be estimated using the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual Fair Market Rent estimates. 
  • The proposed PPM should discontinue the current practice of maintaining three separate thresholds based on housing tenure status (homeowners with a mortgage, homeowners without a mortgage, and renters). While owners without mortgages have lower monthly housing costs, these differences can be accounted for in the estimate of households’ resources. 
  • PPM thresholds should continue to reflect geographic differences in housing costs as captured in official Fair Market Rent calculations. 

Given the report’s recommendations to re-specify components of the SPM threshold, the current 20 percent adjustment to capture additional basic needs would also need to be updated by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to align with these changes.  

The study — undertaken by the Committee on Evaluation and Improvements to the Supplemental Poverty Measure — was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce.  

This Scientist Tracked Bats for Decades and Solved a Mystery About a Deadly Disease:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, June 27th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Moving On

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Tuesday, June 27th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Moving On @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Comedy

Rated R (language) 

1 hour, 25 minutes (2022)

Two old friends (Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlin) reconnect at a funeral and decide to get revenge on the widower (Malcolm McDowell) who messed with them decades before. Revenge is oh so sweet…

One can find more information about Moving On at the Internet Movie Database. 

City, Daily Bread, Emergency Services, Fire Dept, Local Government

Daily Bread for 6.22.23: Whitewater’s Quicker Fire & EMS Responses

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 86. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:37 PM for 15h 20m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1978, Charon, the first of Pluto’s satellites to be discovered, is first seen at the United States Naval Observatory by James W. Christy.

A reader kindly pointed me to recent statistics on the Whitewater Fire & EMS Department’s response times. They show a notable reduction in response times. A quicker response offers a better chance of preserving life and property. This blogger, along with a majority of the city’s residents, supported a referendum to fund a municipal fire and emergency services department. See In Support of Whitewater’s Fire & EMS Referendum and Fire & Rescue, Whitewater’s Most Important Public Policy Accomplishment of the Last Generation.

A successful community requires competent and responsive services. For Whitewater, that has meant the embrace of a municipal department.

Credit doesn’t go to those who supported a good idea, however; it goes to the men & women of the department who’ve proved that was a good idea. 

This Is Not An Avocado: 

Meet the artist who has invented the ‘ecovado’, an alternative avocado that might just trick you into thinking it’s the real deal. Arina Shokouhi was an avo-lover before realizing their farming process has a huge impact on the environment.

She decided to take action. With the help of food scientists at the University of Nottingham, UK, together they developed a more sustainable alternative using local ingredients.

Using broad beans, hazelnuts, apple juice and cold pressed rapeseed oil, she was able to create an alternative that closely matches a real avocado in look, texture, taste and even nutritional value.

City, Daily Bread, Local Government, Open Government

Daily Bread for 6.21.23: The Whitewater Common Council Meeting of 6.20

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Good morning.

Summer in Whitewater will begin with sunny skies and a high of 87. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:36 PM for 15h 20m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1898, the United States captures Guam from Spain. The few warning shots fired by the U.S. naval vessels are misinterpreted as salutes by the Spanish garrison, which was unaware that the two nations were at war.

Whitewater isn’t the oldest city in America, but it’s old. Whitewater isn’t wholly staid, but it’s not wholly modern.

One sees this in the city government, where the last municipal manager was not backwards, but did have moments of governmental somnambulance. Modernization will not come all at once, as the time required to review all current practices would consume time needed for daily services.  

Last night’s meeting highlighted areas the city manager and common council have found that require either more information about prior practices or changes from prior practices:

  • The city has an old fireworks ordinance that will require some reworking to avoid stifling restriction on ordinary residents’ small purchases. An ordinance that requires permits for sparklers is both outdated (and has fallen into desuetude in any event). See video @ 26:48. 
  • Whitewater has a policy for mobile home permitting, the performance of which both city employees and the city council expressed uncertainty.  The agenda item was postponed to July to allow for more research. (The next council meeting is 7.18.23). See video @ 31:31. 
  • The way that Whitewater has previously reviewed her city manager, in frequency, procedure, and goals needs updating toward a better practice. There is at least one clear distinction to make: there’s a difference between procedure (how an evaluation is made) and goals (the standards by which an employee or institution are to be evaluated). Both procedure and goals require prior planning, with a written timeline, steps to take, and measurements that are available as a public record. See video @ 39:43.  

These items from the 6.20.23 session are tasks to make municipal government more modern (where modern means more efficient, more transparent, or less burdensome). These steps take time, but it’s time worth taking: efficiency, transparency, and temperance are characteristics of good government. 

BepiColombo spacecraft flies by Mercury for 3rd time – See the pics:

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission flew by Mercury on June 19, 2023. See multiple images captured by the spacecraft’s Mercury Transfer Module’s monitoring camera 3.

Full Story: https://www.space.com/bepicolombo-mer…