Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:23 and sunset 8:19 for 14h 56m 20s of daytime. The moon is full with 100 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Board of Zoning Appeals meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1854, the Milwaukee and Mississippi railroad reached Madison, connecting the city with Milwaukee. When the cars pulled into the depot, thousands of people gathered to witness the ceremonial arrival of the first train, and an enormous picnic was held on the Capitol grounds for all the passengers who’d made the seven-hour trip from Milwaukee to inaugurate the line.
“With the temperatures this week and rain showers today and tomorrow, that’s really going to help things,” [Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Insect Diagnostics Lab PJ] Liesch said. “Once the emergence gets going in full swing, we’re probably going to be seeing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of these emerging in relatively small areas in Lake Geneva and other spots in the state.”
Here’s where else the cicadas are expected to emerge in the coming weeks.
Where will 17-year cicadas emerge in Wisconsin?
The Lake Geneva area will be the best place in Wisconsin to see the 17-year cicadas due to their well-established record there, especially along the northern side of the lake, Liesch wrote in his blog.
Other cicada hotspots include areas of Green County and Rock County, including Janesville and Beloit. Additionally, the insects are expected to be prevalent in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless Area counties: Iowa, Sauk, Richland, Crawford and Grant.
Wednesday in Whitewater be windy with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:24 and sunset 8:18 for 14h 54m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable TV Commission meets at 3:30 PM.
On this day in 1968, “Milwaukee Bucks” is selected as the franchise name after 14,000 fans participated in a team-naming contest. 45 people suggested the name, one of whom, R.D. Trebilcox, won a car for his efforts.
On this day in 1849, Abraham Lincoln is issued a patent for an invention to lift boats, making him the only U.S. president to ever hold a patent. On this day in 1906, the Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their “Flying-Machine.”
I’ve posted before about Jane Jacobs, the late journalist & activist on urban planning. (Jacobs had a libertarian period in her writing but later drifted away from that outlook.) While most of her work was about urban life, many of her observations have broader applicability.
Laurence writes of Jacobs’s grasp of cycling’s positive role within a community:
In 1956, when car ownership and the suburban development that this enabled were just being embraced as American cultural ideals, pioneering urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote that the U.S. was becoming “an unprecedented nation of centaurs. … Our automobile population is rising about as fast as our human population and promises to continue for another generation.” She continued, “the car is not only a monstrous land-eater itself: it abets that other insatiable land-eater—endless, strung-out suburbanization.”
Anticipating more than a half-century of suburban sprawl, Jacobs was an early critic of car-dependency and its impacts on the built environment and land use in general. But more than that, Jacobs’s analogy of drivers as centaurs has become all but real today. In Greek mythology, as iconically depicted on the friezes of the Parthenon, centaurs were vicious half-men, half-animals at war with mankind. As Jacobs observed, the car could turn a man half-vehicle and less than fully human in his relationship with others. “Road rage” is perhaps the most familiar of car-induced pathologies.
….
Although Jane generally wasn’t comfortable in front of a camera, some of the most relaxed photos show her with her Raleigh bicycle. She clearly enjoyed the freedoms and joys of the bike. No surprise, bicycling was part of her childhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania, but unlike the typical American who gave up the bike at age 16 when they acquired a driver’s license, Jane didn’t. She never learned to drive. Although her father, a physician, was an early adopter of the automobile and purchased his first one in 1910, when Jane married Robert Jacobs at her Scranton family home in 1944, the couple rode off on their bicycles for a cycling honeymoon in upstate New York. According to their eldest son, Jim, born four years later, both Jane and Bob were “avid” cyclists. One of the many things they had in common was the bike. Before meeting Jane, Bob had done a number of bike tours in the 1930s, traveling between youth hostels; he made one cycling trip to Mexico while he was an art student to see the murals of Diego Rivera and another in 1936, to Holland, Belgium, and Germany, to see the Bauhaus, while he was an architecture student, a trip on which he acquired a German NSU (NeckarSulm) bike that he brought home.
This libertarian blogger isn’t opposed to cars (not at all). There is, however, a useful reminder for us (residents of a small town) in her observations: there is more than one way to get around (and bike travel is inexpensive). How one gets around may begin with individual choice but affects development as much as development affects individual choice. One might design a city to encourage or discourage cycling, but it’s just as possible that, over time, a choice for cycling will compel changes in design.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon clouds and evening thunderstorms with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:17 for 14h 52m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Special Committee meets at 9 AM and the Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1792, a lava dome collapses on Mount Unzen, near the city of Shimbara on the Japanese island of Kyushu, creating a deadly tsunami that kills nearly 15,000 people.
Witness conflicts of interest and hear self-serving claims long enough, and one risks becoming accustomed to them. The claims offered may be no better than a child’s connivances, yet repetition will cause hesitation even among reasonable and independent-minded people. FREE WHITEWATER published a few words on Monday about Whitewater’s new Common Council and Community Development Authority majorities. SeeOn a New Common Council & New Community Development Authority. Today, a few remarks will follow about specific contentions from holdovers of yesteryear’s CDA.
The video of the Whitewater CDA meeting from 5.16.24 is embedded above. In remarks below, I will refer to specific claims from that meeting, and from earlier public meetings.
A few points worth remembering:
1.Whitewater lacks adequate housing. This condition should be evident to everyone and anyone. See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24@33:02.
2.Whitewater’s new CDA majority has proposed a residential development on South Moraine View Drive.See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24@31:47 and professional reporting from WhitewaterWise, CDA recommends approval of 128-unit multifamily development on Moraine View Parkway. This proposal is well-located and would provide a needed boost to our housing supply.
3.Rents in Whitewater are high for many residents.
4. A former CDA chairman, a second-generation landlord, when arguing against these new opportunities for others, concedes his belief that the proposed developments will affect his financial condition:
He [a consultant] mentioned that it would have no effect on student housing. And he’s absolutely wrong.
It’s a candid admission: an acknowledgment that his view is particular, specific, and biased, impacting his interests.
These are not the views of an independent, unbiased analyst. It’s as though someone asked a Volkswagen salesman on commission which car to buy. (Be careful: someone may try to slip in some TruCoat.)
It is an implicit concession that rents will decline in conditions of steady demand and increased supply. With holdings in incumbent properties, this gentleman has a financial interest in preventing an increase in supply that might affect his bottom line.
5. He follows with a disingenuous assertion that he knows of no instance in which the city has provided financial assistance to a project like this.See Video, CDA Meeting of 5.16.24 @36:37.
The claim that there hasn’t been an effort to subsidize is disingenuous because policymakers (and self-interested men) can influence policy not merely through spending but through zoning. They can pay to make something happen, or they can argue against zoning regulations to limit competitors.
Later, when, as incumbents, they decided that they’d rather not have competition, they began to argue against others’ new properties. From 2014 seeDaily Union, Whitewater council eyes zoning for Campus Edge development, where the CDA chairman produced a parade of horribles against more development.
See alsoFREE WHITEWATER @ Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2014 (“So a new apartment building at Main & Prince is ‘too extreme’ in design for Whitewater? Well, I would guess that existing landlords must think so. [Update: For consumers, it’s a good thing, and a bad joke that anyone from the CDA would shill against it.]”)
Years later (they’re tenacious!) they similarly fought in 2018 against a project on Tratt Street. See Daily Union, Common council rezones annexed land.
That project has been quite helpful and attractive.
As with the 2014 effort, they argued up and down against more supply to meet demand.
6. Perhaps, as someone now contends, he’s simply an advocate of affordable single-family homes. No, he’s not. These gentlemen have argued against affordable homes in Whitewater. In 2022, they argued against smaller homes, insisting on larger ones instead.
Whitewater’s Common Council, by a vote of 5-2 at its 9.20.22 session, sensibly approved on first reading the creation of an R1-S zoning district for detached, single-family homes on smaller lots. A zoning change that offers some builders and buyers, even in limited areas, more options is, prima facie, the right decision.
So what a this lights on for us, lights off for you public policy? It’s this:
A tiny clique of landlords has for years addressed this issue opportunistically. These few wanted to liberalize Whitewater’s ordinances to permit more student housing. And so, and so, there were more student apartments in the center of town. Ah, but when competitors sought approval to build on Prince or Tratt Streets, an incumbent landlord (and sometime public official) used one claim after another under the city’s ordinances to prevent or restrict those competitive projects.
These are proud, private businessmen right up until the time they hold public offices and entreat public bodies to bend to their special-interest desires.
The larger homes these men advocated would have been out of reach for many residents.
It’s as though you told a struggling person that he should hold off buying tuna until he could afford caviar. A person taking that advice would go hungry waiting.
They opportunistically shift from one position to another while leaving residents without genuine, real options. Wait a bit is easier for men who already have than men and women who would like something affordable.
These gentlemen want the law liberalized when it liberalization suits their bottom line, but want the law restricted when restriction suits their bottom line. They could not be more obvious if they tried. (In my own case, the best policy would be fewer restrictions all the way down, but that’s not the point here. The point is that their views have shifted with their interests rather than the common good, and their interests are not the same as the city’s interests
7. Tax incremental funding comes up as an objection to this project. One should remember that the new CDA’s program here is to meet an existing need for affordable housing. A reminder: food, clothing, shelter. Any tax incremental fiancing now would meet a fundamental need. (I write this, by the way, as a long-standing critic of tax incremental financing; yet, this critic can see that some cases are more important than others, are more understandable than others.)
For years, these older men were involved in tax increment financing for Whitewater. They weren’t critics then; they’re raising doubts now they see competition. (These are not free-market men; they’re a few self-helping businessmen.)
Expressing optimism with perceived economic improvements, members of the Whitewater CDA recently discussed a number of the areas of the city designated as tax incremental financing (TIF) districts.
Officials briefly went over TIF districts 5 to 8 during a meeting Oct. 23. TIFS 5 and 7 are designated for mixed-use, a term denoting a blend of commercial and residential uses. TIFs 6 and 8, meanwhile, are earmarked for industrial use.
“We’re kind of getting out of the doldrums of this economy,” said CDA Chair Jeff Knight, expressing optimism of future development within the city.
Our current housing needs are, by far, greater than those of any tax incremental plan or other plan that a former CDA has ever advocated in this city.
If these few holdovers from another time would like to lecture others about tax incremental financing, they should first look to their past roles in tax incremental financing in this community.
Most important of all: it’s a city of 15,000 equal people, many of whom have good ideas for our future. A few older men who keep insisting ‘we’ve never done it that way’ or ‘that’s not our history’ only bolster the case for encouraging new officials, new voices, to advance a different way. We’ve not benefited from the public policy advice of the last generation. SeeA Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA and Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.
It’s time — well past time — to blaze a new trail.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with rain and a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:17 for 14h 51m 06s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 91.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1863, after the unsuccessful assault on Vicksburg the previous day, Union forces regroup in front of the city. The 1st Wisconsin Light Artillery and the 8th, 11th, 18th, and 23rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments joined the 14th and 17th Infantries to prepare for the next attack. While these arrangements took place at Vicksburg, the 4th Wisconsin Infantry fought in a skirmish in Cheneyville, Louisiana.
Whitewater now has a new Common Council majority and a new Community Development Authority majority. A few remarks today about these new majorities; remarks will follow tomorrow about specific contentions from a few holdovers from yesteryear’s CDA.
First, the obvious: this libertarian blogger is not, and has never claimed to be, a development man. And yet, and yet, a person need not be a development man to see the difference in quality between the self-serving claims of a conniving clique and the genuine accomplishments of residents and development employees. (One doesn’t have to be a watchmaker to see the difference between a fine timepiece and a cheap knockoff that’s scarcely right twice a day.)
Whitewater is a town of many talented people, of many sharp people, of many capable people. Thousands upon thousands, truly. This isn’t true because I believe it; I believe it because it’s true. Our advanced American civilization is far more than the product of a few — we are the work of millions across centuries. Whitewater, in the same way, is far more than the product of a few — we are the work of thousands across generations.
Whitewater, after all, has a Common Council (lit., ‘belonging to, open to, or affecting the whole of a community’) and Community Development Authority (lit., ‘the people of a district or country considered collectively; society’).
Whitewater does not have a Special Interests’ Council, or a Few Businessmen’s Development Authority. These are public bodies of — and for — the whole community, not simply platitudinous men, self-dealers, self-promoters, and their operatives, catspaws, scoundrels, or sycophants.
Whitewater now has sincere, independent majorities on her Common Council and Community Development Authority. They and I will not always agree, but I and others owe these officials the acknowledgment that whatever disagreements we may have, they are disagreements with capable and independent men and women.
Left, center, right, whatever: first, one must have men and women who exercise their independent judgment on behalf of not fifteen, but all fifteen thousand in this beautiful city.
For tomorrow, particular remarks on the CDA meetings of 4.18.24 and 5.16.24.
For today and always, best wishes and support to those sincere and principled officials acting on behalf of all of our city.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:28 and sunset 8:14 for 14h 45m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 69.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1673, the Jolliet and Marquette Expedition gets underway as Louis Jolliet, Father Jacques Marquette, and five French voyageurs depart from the mission of St. Ignace, at the head of Lake Michigan, to reconnoiter the Mississippi River. The party traveled in two canoes throughout the summer of 1673, traveling across Wisconsin, down the Mississippi to the Arkansas River, and back again.
On this day in 1973, televised Watergate hearings begin in the United States Senate.
Wisconsin jobs and employment held steady in April, extending a strong economic streak that has been in place for more than two years, according to the state labor department.
“Businesses are still telling us that they are looking for workers,” said Dennis Winters, chief economist at the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD), at a briefing Thursday on the April jobs numbers. “Anybody that’s out there [has] probably got a pretty good chance of getting a job if they’ve got some skills to offer. We expect that to continue, too.”
The projected number of jobs in Wisconsin reached just under 3.05 million in April, while the unemployment rate fell below 3%.
The monthly statistical projections are based on two surveys conducted by the federal government. Projections about the labor force and employment are based on a household survey that asks people whether they are working or looking for work, among other questions. The jobs numbers are projected from a separate survey asking employers how many people are on their payrolls.
Based on the household survey projections, in April nearly 3.14 million Wisconsin residents were in the state’s labor force, either working or actively seeking work, DWD reported Thursday — 65.6% of the state’s population over the age of 16. Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate for the month was almost three percentage points higher than that of the U.S., 62.7%.
What a shame it would be for Whitewater to cling to ideas from her failed past rather than join in the favorable trends that other communities are now enjoying. And yet, and yet a few tired men would like nothing more than that a community of fifteen thousand should live as though it served only a few.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:30 and sunset 8:11 for 14h 41m 31s of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 50.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board meets in closed session shortly after 5 PM, to return to open session thereafter this evening. Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1911, in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.
Inflationshowed some signs of improvementin April, as policymakers grapple with whether their fight against abnormally high price growth is losing ground.
Data released Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed prices rose 3.4 percent in April, compared with the year before. That’s down a bit from the 3.5 percent notched in March, and follows months of hotter-than-expected reports. Prices rose 0.3 percent compared with the month before.
In a particularly encouraging note, a key reading of inflation known as “core” — which strips out more volatile categories like food and energy — rose 0.3 percent. That measure was up 3.6 percent on an annual basis, the lowest year-over-year increase since 2021. Policymakers pay close attention to that gauge because it helps them tease out stickier sources of inflation from the kinds of rising prices that typically bounce around month to month.
If conditions improve nationally, and if that national improvement reaches Whitewater, then what will local policymakers make of that improvement? If conditions do not improve nationally, and that lack of improvement besets Whitewater, then how will local policymakers carry on?
Bringing back policymakers from the failed past will only ensure a failed future. Again, a reminder:
The only reason to return to the policies and leaders of the past would be if someone had no hope of either any possible growth or no hope for ameliorating any possible decline. That is, yesterday’s self-promoting mediocrities would be of value to Whitewater only if nothing anyone did would matter. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom and Now is Whitewater’s Time to Seize an Improving National and State Economy. Only hopelessness among many or the selfishness of a few would lead Whitewater to return to her economic past.
People choose freely, sometimes well, sometimes poorly.
Tuesday, May 14th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of The Color Purple @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building: Drama/Musical Rated PG-13 2 hours, 21 minutes (2023) A young black woman in the South in 1909 faces much hardship and sadness, her only happiness being her family and a new…
Thursday in Whitewater will see morning showers with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:36 and sunset 8:05 for 14h 28m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1662, the figure who later became Mr. Punch makes his first recorded appearance in England.
FREE WHITEWATER has chronicled and critiqued the failed corporate welfare scheme that was the Wisconsin Foxconn project (links to many of those posts at the bottom of this post). Now, with Foxconn nothing more than a shell project vanished into the fog, there’s a genuine, private, multi-billion dollar Microsoft investment on that Wisconsin site:Microsoft AI center on site of Trump’s failed Foxconn deal? (‘The multibillion-dollar [private!] investment is expected to create 2,000 permanent jobs and 2,300 temporary union construction jobs’).
In Whitewater, an old guard of bankers, landlords, lobbyists, public relations men, etc., pushed Foxconn more than once. Any ordinary person of normal reasoning and sound basic knowledge would have seen Foxconn was a political scheme masquerading as a legitimate project. And yet, somehow, these same Whitewater types hold themselves out as experts on development policy. They backed a joke plan because they were — and are — unsuited to serious policy. SeeA Sham News Story on Foxconn. (The local business group was the ‘Greater’ Whitewater Committee.)
Trickle-down sloganeering is the best these local types have ever produced. It’s not a free market they want; small-town boosterism and cronyism haven’t uplifted household and individual incomes in this city. SeeA Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA.
Some of these men, when at the Community Development Authority, let this city languish while promoting themselves. Even at the tail end of an economic boom, these gentlemen were walking around trying to figure out which end was up. SeeWhitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.
Whitewater deserves better than this ilk. These men deserve an ongoing critique, and detailed review of their record, if they capture that institution again.
Here is the Foxconn scheme, that these local, old-guard Whitewater men touted, as succinctly described in a national story:
In 2018, when Foxconn, at Trump’s urging, announced plans to create 13,000 good-paying jobs in Mount Pleasant, Wis., he celebrated the company’s $10 billion venture as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Wielding a golden shovel, Trump touted the Foxconn flat-panel display factory as evidence of a broad manufacturing revival stirred by his 2017 tax cuts and tariffs on imported steel. “You know, 18 months ago, this was a field, and now it’s one of the most advanced places of any kind you’ll see anywhere in the world. It’s incredible,” Trump crowed.
The Foxconn facility was to have included dozens of buildings dotting a giant plot of land three times the size of New York’s Central Park. But the project accomplished little more than the destruction of 100 local homes and farms before the company drastically scaled back its ambitions.
In 2020, Wisconsin state officials denied the Taiwanese company special tax credits, saying it had abandoned its original commitment, employed fewer than 520 people and spent just $300 million. Local taxpayers were left with a tab of more than $500 million for site preparation.
By last summer, Foxconn had built four structures on one corner of the site, which were in sporadic use, according to locals. One large building that was originally billed as a manufacturing facility was being used as a warehouse, one former employee said. Foxconn at the time said it employed 1,000 people in Mount Pleasant building computer servers. The flat-panel display factory never materialized.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:38 and sunset 8:04 for 14h 26m 27s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
In a small town, and perhaps elsewhere, there are four tiers within a special-interest hierarchy: principals, operatives, catspaws, and residents. Only the first three serve, reliably, the special interest; the fourth is a large group of unaffiliated people that the special interests must persuade or dissuade repeatedly.
A special-interest faction, or in the case of the Whitewater Schools an unresponsive board and superintendent, depends on the reliable service of the first three groups (principals, operatives, and catspaws). Some residents, however, may be counted on now and again to support special-interest or insider-group actions. These kinds of residents offer hit-or-miss support. I’ll list a few of them, readily recognizable in Whitewater and towns across the world.
Boosterism and Toxic Positivity. There are always a few residents who feel that criticism is a crime, an offense against man and God, and so must not be tolerated. The boosters feel that accentuating the positive, and burying the negative, is a legitimate (indeed necessary) pursuit. You’ll see them patrol social media looking to rebuke others who offer sincere criticism.
The delusional are sufferers of toxic positivity; the most acute cases are simply lickspittles.
Many of these types are a few moments away from screaming ‘love it or leave it.’ All of those who would do so are ignorant of their own country’s proud history of robust criticism. Even the most degraded hovel in medieval Europe, flea and lice-infested, had apologists of someone’s special schemes. Centuries later, in an America that is a world-historical state, there are still a few locals who live as though American liberties meant nothing, carrying on as though vulgar locals in a rat-dominated hamlet of 1300s Bavaria.
The indictment and conviction of the boosters: narrow of mind and small of heart.
These types, however, are useful as apologists and enforcers of special-interest schemes.
The Concerned Passerby. When faced with a challenge to their position, special interest men cannot always count on themselves as principals, or their operatives and reliable catspaws. Cronyism and entitlement do not run themselves! They’ll look around, and find someone who seems unaffiliated, but is willing to do their work now and again. Although not reliable all the time, these types can be persuaded for a specific task.
They’ll seem like concerned passersby, simply trying to help, but no! They’re truly working to advance a special-interest or closed-government perspective. They’re harder to spot than boosters, sufferers of toxic positivity, or lickspittles, but still identifiable to ordinary residents. They’ll show up and profess simple concern, as ‘adults in the room,’ but after listening to them, it’s clear they’re rationalizing a nefarious cause (e.g., advancing a self-dealer’s plan, or shutting down a discussion).
Scoundrels. Special-interest men want to win, and that means bending public policy to their own ends. Closed-government types want to control public policy without public consent. In both cases, they pervert public life. They create a corrupted, degenerate form of government.
When faced with a difficult challenge, and when smearing challengers is too much even for principals, operatives, and catspaws, they’ll turn to scoundrels. The Oxford American Dictionary offers a plentiful list of synonyms that describe the type (e.g., rogue, rascal, good-for-nothing, reprobate, unprincipled person; cheat, swindler, fraudster, trickster, charlatan; informal villain, beast, son of a bitch, SOB, rat, louse, cur, hound, skunk, heel, snake, snake in the grass, wretch, scumbag, bad egg, stinker).
Scoundrels will say anything to aid a special-interest or closed-government cause, while the principals, operatives, and catspaws delight from a distance. (These main types know what’s happening, hoping it will benefit them, yet hoping it won’t be identified back to them.)
In all of this, however, the overwhelming majority of ordinary residents are normal & well-adjusted. It’s a only few, entitled and avaricious, or entitled and autocratic, who beset and bedevil a community.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:44 and sunset 7:58 for 14h 14m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 26.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1957, Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
National job creation slowed last month, with 175,000 additional jobs created. Additional jobs were created, but fewer than the month before. Is there a silver lining in this? Yes, quite possibly. Jeanna Smialek writes The Fed Is Looking for a Job Market Cool-Down. It Just Got One (‘Wage growth and hiring slowed in April, evidence of the job market slowdown that Federal Reserve officials have been waiting on’):
While inflation is the main thing determining when and how much borrowing costs can come down, Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, made it clear this week that central bankers are also watching what happens with hiring and pay.
Mr. Powell emphasized repeatedly this week that the Fed did not specifically target wage growth when setting policy, but he also suggested that pay gains might need to slow further for inflation to come down sufficiently and in a lasting way — which means that Friday’s numbers could be a welcome development.
“We don’t target wages; we target price inflation,” he said. When it comes to cooling the economy, he said, “part of that will probably be having wage increases move down incrementally toward levels that are more sustainable.”
Stock indexes picked up after the report, as investors welcomed the more moderate data as a sign that interest rates may not stay high for as long. Investors in assets like stocks tend to prefer low rates.
These are national job numbers (with implications for the national inflation rate). Overall, these favorable national figures (job creation, relatively low unemployment, and conditions that may cool inflation).
Locally, however, there is a stark truth about municipal economic & development policy: The only reason to return to the policies and leaders of the past would be if someone had no hope of either any possible growth or no hope for ameliorating any possible decline. That is, yesterday’s self-promoting mediocrities would be of value to Whitewater only if nothing anyone did would matter. SeeWhitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom and Now is Whitewater’s Time to Seize an Improving National and State Economy.
Only hopelessness among many or the selfishness of a few would lead Whitewater to return to her economic past.
Wednesday, May 8th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Zone of Interest @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building: Drama/History Rated PG-13 1 hour, 45 minutes (2024) Languages: German, Polish, Yiddish. Shown with English subtitles. Our annual Summer “art film” series returns with the Academy Award winner for Best International…
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:45 and sunset 7:57 for 14h 12m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2000, President Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.
No. (The Republican National Committee press release announcing Trump’s Waukesha visit, however, did include an express reference to Whitewater. There was, therefore, reason to be attentive to his remarks.)
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:46 and sunset 7:56 for 14h 09m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4 PM and the Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the Asiatic Squadron of the United States Navy destroys the PacificSquadron of the Spanish Navy after a seven-hour battle. Spain loses all seven of its ships, and 381 Spanish sailors die. There are no American vessel losses or combat deaths.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 69. Sunrise is 5:49 and sunset 7:54 for 14h 04m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1861, Maryland’s House of Delegates votes not to secede, but to remain in the Union.
A nativist position — immigrants out, migrants out, etc. — is easier to hold if one ignores the economic cost of anti-labor-market policies. ‘Get them out’ trips off the tongue; explaining the value of a free-labor market that has made America the most productive nation in all history takes longer. Rob Mentzer reports Central Wisconsin farmers: Immigration crackdown, trade war affect our business (‘Farmers say US trade, immigration policy choices have direct effects on Wisconsin businesses’):
Those deportations, if carried out, would likely hit Wisconsin dairy farms hard. Dairy producers rely on immigrant labor, often from Mexico and South America, to operate. While many workers come here with legal status through temporary work visas, that is not the case for all of the workforce.
“It seems foolish to just pretend that foreign-born workers aren’t here and that we don’t need them,” said Hans Breitenmoser, whose dairy farm outside of Merrill has about 460 cows. “We need a means by which their presence here can be legal and sustainable, and also provide them with the dignity that they deserve.”
Recent public opinion polling has shown a turn in favor of the crackdown advocated by Trump. An April 25 survey by Axios and The Harris Poll found a majority of Americans said they would support mass deportations.
In Wisconsin, the most recent Marquette Law School Poll found 30 percent of Wisconsinites said undocumented immigrants currently working in the U.S. should be deported — a figure that has nearly doubled in the last two years.
Closer to Whitewater: egg farmers, too, one can guess.
Whitewater, regrettably, may find herself under both a general and a specific immigration focus between now and November. The general focus will be simply as one Wisconsin city among many where an anti-immigration position gains adherents.
A specific focus, made possible because Whitewater’s officials themselves raised immigration as an issue, would name the city expressly in campaign literature and campaign stops. Whitewater has come to the attention of Mr. Trump (or, at least, his campaign aides):
“Does anybody know Whitewater after being inundated with Biden migrants? This tiny town now has a budget shortfall,” Trump said. “Their public schools are straining with hundreds of new migrant students who don’t speak a word of English.”
Earlier this year, Whitewater officials told WPR the influx of immigrants had strained city resources, but they were doing everything they could to help them become integrated into the community. Officials believe the migrants started arriving in early 2022, and didn’t arrive all at once.
Here’s the relationship between general polling and Whitewater as a specific reference: as statewide and national polls show increasing nativist sentiment, then Whitewater will likely be a convenient topic (however misused and falsely described) in statewide and national conversations this fall.
