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Daily Bread for 10.21.25: On an Application of Newton’s Third Law of Motion to Whitewater, Wisconsin

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Good morning. Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 49. Sunrise is 7:15 and sunset is 6:02 for 10 hours 47 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated. The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM. On this day in 1805, a British fleet…

Courts, CRT, Culture, Daily Bread, Diversity, Education, Law, Trumpism, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.21.25: Department of Public Instruction Says No to Trump on DEI

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 56. Sunrise is 6:03 and sunset is 7:44, for 13 hours, 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 44.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

This day in 753 BC is the traditional date on which Romulus founds Rome.

The Trump Administration takes an extreme view of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and assumes that institutions public and private must comply unquestioningly with the administration’s interpretation of that decision. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction chooses otherwise:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction rejected the Trump administration’s request to certify compliance with a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion in K-12 public schools. 

State Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement that Wisconsin schools are following the law. 

“We’ve put that into writing to the USDE,” Underly said. “We believe in local control in Wisconsin and trusting our local leaders – superintendents, principals, educators – who work together with parents and families every day to support students. They know their communities best. Washington, D.C. should not dictate how schools educate their kids.” 

The U.S. Department of Education sent a letter earlier this month to state agencies across the country requesting that agencies check with local school districts to ensure they don’t have diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. 

The federal administration is trying to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, which said race-based programs in higher education violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, to K-12 education. The administration said state agencies needed to ensure compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court decision. 

Wisconsin is one of several states, mostly led by Democrats, that have pushed back on the request. The Trump administration, which has been targeting diversity efforts in K-12 schools as well as in higher education and other sectors, has threatened that it could pull funding from states that don’t comply with the request.

See Baylor Spears, Wisconsin DPI rejects Trump administration request for certification on DEI ban compliance, Wisconsin Examiner, April 18, 2025.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) was Trumpism’s chief enemy not long ago, but it’s since been replaced with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Trumpism is at bottom a cultural movement,1 seeking to exact revenge against the movement’s cultural enemies (e.g., gays, ethnic minorities, and others identified now and again to give the movement an opponent).

Today it’s DEI. Tomorrow it will be something and someone else. Today will be easier for them if their targets simply comply. They’ll not stop; their grievances are fathoms deep.

There’s no reason to make their lives easier while they make others’ lives harder. They expect swift compliance. Refusing to comply at their mere demand is a strong initial response. They are unworthy of others’ anticipatory obedience (to borrow an apt phrase).

Underly was sensible to respond with a rejection.

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  1. Trumpists are laughable on economics, for example, because their authoritarian movement’s sustaining energy is cultural. They’ve no developed economic theories because their attention is elsewhere and they find it’s too much work for middle-aged men and Boomers to rummage around for a coherent economic concept or two. Instead, they wind up plucking terms and assembling them into nothing better than a Frankenstein’s monster ↩︎

Fact Check — What Mars Rovers Really See:

Agriculture, Culture, Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.29.25: Three Wisconsin Generations Tap Maple Trees

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 6:41 and sunset is 7:18, for 12 hours, 36 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1999, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the 10,000 mark (10,006.78) for the first time, during the height of the dot-com bubble.

Three generations tap maple trees during Saint Patrick’s season:

Each Saint Patrick’s Day weekend, generations of the O’Brien clan gather in the family’s maple grove to tap the sap, cook the syrup and enjoy each other’s company. The family’s creation of combination sap shed and gathering space ensures their family tradition will go on for many generations.

James Webb Space Telescope captures a ‘cosmic tornado’:

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured an amazing video of the outflow Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50), a newborn star.

Courts, Culture, Daily Bread, Elections, Narcissistic Injury, Schimel, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.16.25: Brad Schimel’s Halloween Costume

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see light snow, mostly cloudy conditions, and a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset is 7:02, for 11 hours, 58 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1935, Hitler orders Germany to rearm itself in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht.

Schimel’s supportive costume1:

And for years, Judge Schimel has repeated some of Mr. Trump’s talking points about Wisconsin elections.

During an April 2018 interview with one of the state’s leading conservative talk-radio hosts, Judge Schimel said it was not clear that Mr. Trump, who carried the state in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes, or Senator Johnson, who won by about 99,000 votes that year, would have prevailed had the state’s voter identification law not been in place.

In January, he said he did not object to Mr. Trump’s pardons of supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Then there was the Halloween party last year.

In the final week before the election, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage.” Mr. Trump responded by dressing up in a sanitation worker’s reflective vest and driving a garbage truck.

Two days later, when Judge Schimel’s cover band, 4 on The Floor, played a Halloween gig at Michael’s Funky Monkey bar in Waukesha, he wore a reflective vest just like Mr. Trump’s and rocked out while playing the Rolling Stones classic “Sympathy for the Devil.”

See Reid J. Epstein and Steve Eder, The Trump Loyalist Aiming to Swing Wisconsin Back to the Right (‘Brad Schimel, a judge who is so supportive of the president that he dressed up as him for Halloween, is hoping to flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court for conservatives’), New York Times, March 13, 2025.

There are many ways to describe Schimel’s costume choice, some supportive (identifying with his political hero and that hero’s supporters who believe they’ve been insulted), some not (a weak man’s choice, identifying with an autocrat who stokes the narcissistic insult that a populist horde too quickly feels).

Both can be true, but the latter tolls more strongly.

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  1. The link to the New York Times story is open, and one can play the clip of Schimel with maracas standing around awkwardly groovin’ to the vibe. ↩︎

Cougar cubs:

America, City, Culture, Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Tariffs, Taxes/Taxation, Trump, Trumpism, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.11.25: Doubling Down on Ignorant Economics

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 7:13 and sunset is 6:57, for 11 hours, 44 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act into law, allowing American-built war supplies to be shipped to the Allies on loan.

Monday in America: The Rapidly Declining Economic Climate.

Tuesday in America:

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will double his planned tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% for Canada, escalating a trade war with the United States’ northern neighbor and showing an indifference to recent stock market turmoil and rising recession risks.

Trump said on social media that the increase of the tariffs set to take effect on Wednesday is a response to the price increases that the provincial government of Ontario put on electricity sold to the United States.

“I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD,” Trump posted Tuesday on Truth Social.

After a brutal stock market selloff on Monday and further jitters Tuesday, Trump faces increased pressure to show he has a legitimate plan to grow the economy instead of perhaps pushing it into a recession. But so far the president is doubling down on the tariffs he talked up repeatedly during the 2024 campaign and throwing a once stable economy into utter turmoil as investors expected him to lead with deregulation and tax cuts instead of colossal tax hikes.

See Josh Boak, Rob Gillies, and Michelle Price, Trump doubles planned tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum to 50% as trade war intensifies, Associated Press, March 11, 2025.

Update, 3.12.25: Only hours later on Tuesday, Trump reversed course. (Trump defines decisive down.)

The reporting is sound: tariffs do act as tax hikes, and Trump’s tariffs will be, in effect, colossal tax hikes on consumers and businesses. All America will feel them.

See Firefly’s Blue Ghost moon lander drill, vacuum and deploy electrodes:

The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost moon lander has begun its work on the moon using its drill, vacuum and electrodes. Blue Ghost has drilled into surface to determine heat flow from interior of Moon. It has deployed four tethered Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) electrodes and an 8-foot mast to study the deep interior of the moon. Also, it’s Lunar PlanetVac collects lunar soil and more using pressurized nitrogen gas.

America, City, Conservative Populism, Culture, Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Flop Sweat, Populists, Trump, Trumpism, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.10.25: The Rapidly Declining Economic Climate

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 66. Sunrise is 7:15 and sunset is 6:55, for 11 hours, 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 2017, the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea in response to a major political scandal is unanimously upheld by the country’s Constitutional Court, ending her presidency.

Whitewater is in Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is in America. The economic outlook for America is in decline. Whitewater will not escape national and state trends.

A man with six business bankruptcies now won’t rule out a recession in 2025:

“I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said when pressed about the possibility of a recession during a recorded interview that aired on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”

….

The rosy economic outlook that greeted Trump’s return to the White House has dimmed in recent weeks. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1% in February, boosted by firings in the public sector. And consumer confidence fellby the most in any given month since August 2021. 

American consumers share concerns that tariffs will raise prices on everyday goods, while corporate CEOs are eager for clarity as the president has continually announced and then rolled back new tariff packages. His moves last week, levying and then delaying 25 percent tariffs on a major chunk of Mexican and Canadian goods until April, are just the latest example. The confusion has sent markets scrambling. The S&P 500 fell by more than 3 percent on the week.

See Gregory Svirnovskiy, Trump won’t rule out a recession in 2025, POLITICO, March 9, 2025.

The conservative populists have no sound grasp of economics, as theirs is a movement of cultural revenge, not economics. Trump’s first term was an economic failure, yet many of them delusionally imagine him as an economic guru.

Truth in advertising: Come for the culture war, stay for the recession.

Stocks take another tumble after Trump’s weekend comments on inflation:

Conservative Populism, Culture, Daily Bread, Populists, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.9.25: Costs & Efficiencies Are Mere Pretenses for the Populists

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 7:16 and sunset is 6:54, for 11 hours, 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (rebuilt from the engines and lower hull of the USS Merrimack) fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships.

The populists don’t seek government efficiency merely for its own sake. The use government efficiency as a means to pressure others into silence over speech the populists don’t like:

An Assembly Republican is using the authority of the Elon Musk-inspired GOAT Committee to investigate the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives of local governments across the state before the committee has even met.

Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers, the committee’s vice chair, confirmed Thursday he sent or plans to send information requests to all 72 counties and the state’s 50 largest cities. Wisconsin Watch first reported Thursday that Sortwell had sent requests on Feb. 20 to multiple cities and counties. 

The requests state that GOAT “has been charged with undertaking a review of county use of taxpayer dollars for positions, policies, and activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Sortwell’s emails ask for “documentation” from January 2019 to the present relating to the following items:

  • DEI-related grants the communities may have received.
  • the communities’ “adopted/enacted” DEI policies. 
  • any DEI training programs the communities might be involved with.
  • the titles and salaries of employees with DEI-related positions. 
  • and the “estimated associated costs” of DEI-related policies and trainings.

Officials for Fitchburg, Manitowoc, Oshkosh and Racine told Wisconsin Watch their respective cities plan to treat and fulfill Sortewll’s request like any other public records request they receive.

Sortwell did not respond to questions for Wisconsin Watch about his information requests and the committee’s work.

See Jack Kelly, Republican uses GOAT Committee authority to investigate local government diversity efforts, Wisconsin Watch, February 26, 2025.

Of course they do: no group in America is more disturbed by contrary speech than the conservative populists. Critique their work, and they experience narcissistic injury rarely otherwise seen1. They insist that they want free speech, but blanch2 at criticism, and when in power define speech that they do not like as unlawful.

It’s all about speech with them, until it’s not. It’s all about local control with them, until it’s not.

Populism3 is a horde’s insecurities and vendettas transformed into a political movement.

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  1. At least, rarely seen outside an institutional setting. ↩︎
  2. In their case, even paler than normal. ↩︎
  3. See also Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism? (2016). ↩︎

Multiple wildfires burned earlier this week in Tennessee:

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Entitlement, Reasoning

Daily Bread for 2.27.25: The Sad Legacy of a Status-Based Culture

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 42. Sunrise is 6:33 and sunset is 5:42, for 11 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1782, the House of Commons of Great Britain votes against further war in America.

A key aspect of Old Whitewater was that it was a status-based culture. Who’s who mattered a lot. Which family, etc. I’ve satirized that outlook (‘town squires,’ ‘town notables’) only because it was, and is, nuttily narrow. We are a town of fifteen-thousand equal & ordinary people, not fifteen important people. (If everyone in this town had always felt on this point as I do, there would have been less community need for Excedrin and Korbel1.)

And yet, and yet, if I’ve thought it absurd, others have taken that status-based view of the world, that hierarchy, as though a law of nature. They grew up with it, were assured by their parents that it would be unchanging, and that they in their time would be as influential as their parents were in the generation before.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

Our present time, in Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and America has a different outlook. Ours is an unsettled time, where nice hierarchies no longer matter. Over the last decade, that old way has faded in this town2, and the fading has left older men grasping for their placed in a changed city.

There’s another problem the remaining status-based old guard faces: they have not developed skill at reasoned argument (as it was unnecessary if one could simply demand a result based on status). Their idea of an argument is sometimes little more than words wrapped around a question: DYKWIA?

Good argumentation is hard, and takes time, to produce. Indeed, it’s hardest for those who are truly skillful, as they can see how much can (and should) be done.

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  1. Potable, and popular here in Wisconsin, but there’s better available. ↩︎
  2. It’s faded across all America, honest to goodness. We’re a freer and more egalitarian society for it. ↩︎

3,000 Golden Retrievers. Go, Dogs, Go: