Saturday in Whitewater will be windy, with a windchill advisory, and a high of 25. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 4:44 for 9h 20m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
If you’re a fan of the cinematic universe, this is a Great Big Story for you! These strange devices are used in big budget cinematic scores and video games like Cyberpunk 2077. A small team of dedicated engineers called @somasynths based in Warsaw, Poland and led by sound visionary @vladkreimer3176 are hard at work creating beautiful hand-made musical instruments. But you won’t get any old tune out of them, in fact, it’s quite hard to control what comes out of them most of the time. They create harsh shrieks and noises, yet they’re loved by musicians all over the world. Here’s why Vlad’s unusual approach to music creation is catching on…
Friday in Whitewater will be snowy, with significant snowfall, and a high of 31. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 4:43 for 9h 19m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Ron Feldman, first vice president and chief operating officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said the declining rate is encouraging, but it’s still short of the central bank’s goal of bringing inflation down to 2 percent.
“A lot of progress (has been) made on inflation, not at the point at which we are comfortable because we are not at our target,” he said. “We’re likely maybe near a peak (in terms of interest rates), but we’re not at the point at which we can sort of say, ‘We know exactly what we’re going to do.'”
Feldman said projections from the Fed show inflation is expected to continue to come down slowly through 2024, and it’s expected to return to the goal of 2 percent in 2026. During that time, he said unemployment is expected to hover around 4.1 percent.
Feldman also said the Fed may begin lowering interest rates as inflation gets closer to the 2 percent target, but said it’s still too early to know when that will happen.
“If things continue the way they’re going, there’s gonna be some decreases,” he said. “But when those happen, how those happen, and if they happen at all are going to be dependent on the data that comes in.”
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 31. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset 4:41 for 9h 17m 56s of daytime. The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.
Anya Van Wagtendonk reports Recall effort launched against Vos (‘Conservative opponents of the powerful Assembly speaker hope to force a recall election in June’):
Conservative activists have launched a recall effort against Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, citing his criticisms of former President Donald Trump and what they describe as an insufficiently right-wing record.
Matthew Snorek, a resident of Union Grove in Racine County, filed the petition to the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Wednesday. Vos, R-Rochester, has represented parts of Racine County in the state Assembly since 2005.
In the complaint, Snorek alleges Vos “is blocking fair elections in WI” and pointed to Vos not contributing to efforts by a small bloc of right-wing Assembly members to impeach Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top election administrator.
“Wisconsin must move ‘Forward’ without Robin Vos in power,” the complaint reads.
In a statement, Vos called the recall “a waste of time, resources and effort.”
….
Snorek’s petition will need to get about 7,000 signatures — calculated as a quarter of votes cast in Vos’ Assembly district in the 2022 gubernatorial race — in order to force a recall election. Organizers are aiming for an election date in June.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 32. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:40 for 9h 16m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1946, the United States Army Signal Corps successfully conducts Project Diana, bouncing radio waves off the Moon and receiving the reflected signals.
Special Interests Would Rather Not Be Seen. Ideally, they will put their operatives and catspaws on boards and commissions without much attention. For elected positions, they’ll look for districts with no one else running. Districts like that are a golden opportunity to run candidates wholly devoted to them but so objectionable to ordinary residents that those types of candidates could never win otherwise.
Typically (but not always), special interests speak deceptively in the language of good government. They will ask for cooperation, partnerships, collaboration, openness, and transparency. To get close, they will speak the language and make the sounds of those they seek to manipulate.
Their technique is effective with well-intentioned people who assume (mistakenly) that everyone else is well-intentioned.
There are other approaches special-interest men will try, if they’re denied their unjustified requests. They may express outrage (how dare you?!insane! outrageous!). This outrage has both a cause and an intended effect. The cause is, most often, an insult to their excessive sense of entitlement. It hurts them that others do not see them as special, gifted, or better than others. So they squeal and shriek when someone reminds them that they aren’t what they think they are, or they don’t deserve an extra portion of dessert, etc.
This expressed outrage often works an effect favorable to the special-interest types: others simply back down to avoid a confrontation.
If speaking in the language of good government doesn’t work, and if outrage doesn’t work, they may try to show how they are, in their view, more deserving than others. They will not do so themselves, however; they will find a catspaw who will praise how deserving they are in grandiose terms (how much these types supposedly love, care, or feel). These claims will not be measurable (one person’s love against another, for example). Indeed, how could they be? Nonetheless, grandiosity will be their starting point.
Where they are, commentary & criticism will follow. Neither will stop until they do.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:39 for 9h 15m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s city hall and schools are closed today. Play responsibly.
On this day in 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.
Yesterday’s post included a video of the successful launch of a private lunar lander (seeUS firm launches moon lander to space). Not long afterward, that mission went awry. Kenneth Chang reports American Company’s Spacecraft Malfunctions on Its Way to the Moon (‘After a flawless launch to orbit, the privately built robotic Peregrine lander is unlikely to reach the lunar surface because of a failure in its propulsion system’):
The first NASA-financed commercial mission to send a robotic spacecraft to the surface of the moon will most likely not be able to make it there.
The lunar lander, named Peregrine and built by Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, encountered problems shortly after it lifted off early Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The launch of the rocket, a brand-new design named Vulcan, was flawless, successfully sending Peregrine on its journey.
But a failure in the lander’s propulsion system depleted its propellant and most likely ended the mission’s original lunar ambitions.
“The team is working to try and stabilize the loss, but given the situation, we have prioritized maximizing the science and data we can capture,” Astrobotic said in a statement. “We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”
And there we are: awry comes at you fast. Foresight allows the avoidance of many problems, yet not all. For the unavoidable remainder, it’s “what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”
Whitewater, historically, has never been adept at either foresight or alternative missions.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:38 for 9h 13m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
The largest solar project in Wisconsin history is now fully operational in Iowa County, its developers announced Thursday.
The second phase of the Badger Hollow Solar Park began powering homes and businesses last month. The first phase came online in December 2021.
Badger Hollow is a partnership of We Energies, Wisconsin Public Service and Madison Gas and Electric. The utilities say the 830,000-panel site will generate 300 megawatts of electricity, enough energy to power roughly 90,000 homes.
Officials say the panels used also capture solar energy on both sides, which could prove useful in the winter when the sun reflects off snow and onto the panels.
Some years ago, a former city manager in this town insisted that a waste digester, with the importation of manure into Whitewater, would be the ‘greenest’ possible project. He was wrong. After multiple expensive studies found the proposal lacking, the city abandoned a project it should never have considered.
When that municipal manager left, he insisted that ten years hence he would be proved right. He will never be proved right, as wrong cannot be made right. Twice since FREE WHITEWATER began publishing in 2007 efforts for a digester have been turned back. Whitewater will never be a place for the importation of other communities’ animal and human waste.
Those looking at green projects will find them in other forms of energy production, including smaller solar projects for this city.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:37 for 9h 12m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 17.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1610, Galileo writes of his observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa, although he is not able to distinguish the last two until the following night.
Saturday in Whitewater will see flurries in the morning then cloudy skies with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:36 for 9h 11m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 27.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
The largest rodent in the world is a Capybara—and they are VERY cute. Native to South America, these semi-aquatic gentle giants are known for their peaceful, sociable personalities. But there’s something special about the Capybaras in Japan’s Izu Shaboten Zoo – here they live a pampered life, drawing crowds of people to see them.
Spending winter days relaxing in their personal onsen (hot bath), eating fruit they relish their time in the warm waters—an activity that has become a tradition in about 20 zoos across Japan since its accidental discovery in 1982. The Izu Shaboten Zoo, where we find ourselves in today’s Great Big Story, is particularly famous for this practice – sit back, relax and get cosy with these cute Capybaras.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:35 for 9h 10m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority will hold a Visioning & Planning Workshop at 11:30 AM.
On this day in 1781, Richmond, Virginia, is burned by British naval forces led by former American general, and traitor to our people, Benedict Arnold.
Talmon Joseph Smith reports U.S. Job Growth Remains Strong (‘The labor market showed continued resiliency in December, with employers adding 216,000 jobs last month, a sign that economic growth remains vigorous’):
The labor market ended the year with a bang.
Employers added 216,000 jobs in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department reported on Friday, surpassing the expectations of economists.It was the 36th consecutive month of gains.
Altogether, the U.S. economy added roughly 2.7 million jobs over the past year. That’s a smaller gain than in 2021 or 2022, during the economy’s initial resurgence from the pandemic lockdowns. Yet the gains of 2023 are still stronger than those in the late 2010s.
The numbers are buoying expectations of what has been called a soft landing — in which the economy is able to avoid significant job loss while shifting into a calmer, more sustainable gear, after the years of disorienting volatility that began with the arrival of Covid-19 roughly four years ago.
Many experts caution that data for December is notoriously hard to calculate in any year because of the hiring churn caused by the holiday season.
The unemployment rate, based on a survey of households, was unchanged at 3.7 percent.
Average hourly earnings for workers — a common measure of wage gains — rose 0.4 percent from the previous month and were up 4.1 percent from December 2022.
Layoffs remain near record lows, beneath prepandemic levels.
A mixture of economic data in the past couple of months that appears neither too hot nor too cold has given a lift to both investors and policymakers at the Federal Reserve, who have been pleasantly surprised at the continuing balance between falling inflation and sustainable growth.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 32. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:34 for 9h 09m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 46.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
In northern Wisconsin, where outdoor enthusiasts live for snow and ice, warmer than usual weather has skiers and snowmobilers turning to wheels, and race organizers breaking out snowmaking machines.
In December, weather stations in Brule, Ashland and Hayward recorded temperatures more than 12 degrees Fahrenheit above the 30-year average, according to the National Weather Service.
Kevin Huyck, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Duluth, said those areas saw around 11 to 16 inches less snow than average for the month.
“(It’s) definitely been drier than what we’ve seen in the past as far as snowfall for this past month of December,” Huyck said
Understandably, the lack of snow threatens businesses that depend on snow sports. Some enterprises may be able to produce artificial snow, but that creation may not be enough in volume or satisfaction for winter sports enthusiasts.
For it all, however, Wisconsin’s economy does and should rely on many activities rather than fewer. Seeing Wisconsin only through winter sports would be both erroneous and short-sighted.
One can say the same about Whitewater’s student housing market. It’s been profitable for some (a few landlords) who have benefited privately in a relationship with a publicly-funded university. (These gentlemen talk about private business but their income has depended on a healthy public institution. Not one of these men built their enterprises on purely private relationships.)
The city’s economy, however, is and healthfully must be more than a student-housing market (supportive of higher education though I am). Indeed, normal, thriving economies in America simply aren’t built on rental properties. A hundred other industries would take precedence.
Worth considering the next time some of these gentlemen expect preferential consideration…
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:33 for 9h 08m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 54.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Library Board meets in closed session at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1777, General Washington defeats British General Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.
Whitewater has had significant political activity throughout 2023, and the local Spring Election awaits the city in April.
There’s more than one way to think about these changes, but political, economic, and social dynamism is common across America. It’s not merely common, but felicitously a source of our national strength, making us the envy of other peoples around the world.
A few remarks about hockey and Friedrich Hayek (not usually associated) explain much of Whitewater’s recent politics.
Consider ice hockey, starting with the rink on which that game is played.
By Jecowa at English Wikipedia. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1914457
Odd, isn’t it? Circles and lines across a sheet of ice, on a rink where those markings and the players skating in competition would seem incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the game.
And yet, and yet, for a little bit of time and willingness, someone can learn about hockey and enjoy watching or playing a game. Indeed, without markings on the ice, and rules of the game, there would be no National Hockey League. A few people might be on a few rinks, but those few would never unite into a profitable professional association.
As it turns out, local governments have their own version of rules from federal & state statutes, local ordinances, and local policies those communities adopt as binding. In Whitewater, relevant & material statutes, ordinances, and policies are compiled (in significant part) in the city’s Good Government Manual and the CDA Rules of Procedure.
A key point that cannot be emphasized enough: these federal and state statutes, city ordinances, and local policies pre-date the current city administration.They are not a new development. They always should have been, and now are, being read and applied as they were meant to be applied. They were years ago lawfully drafted and adopted. If their application has seemed alien to some in Whitewater, then it is because some have unfortunately become unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the lawful rules and procedures for this very town.
To do otherwise would be to expect the equivalent of a hockey game where players follow no rules or different rules, crashing into each other and the boards.
And look, and look — this libertarian blogger is not a member of the government and never will be. This libertarian blogger has never represented the government and never will. It is right, however, to follow the rules properly established at federal, state, and local levels until they are lawfully revised.
Deprecation of these rules does not advance this city; it perpetuates backwardness.
This brings us to Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek. Hayek was an opponent of most state planning, and rightly so. He understood, however, that some level of preliminary planning (and this meant government planning) was necessary to make private success possible. His remarks on this point in The Road to Serfdom are oft-quoted:
Nor is “planning” a medicine which, taken in small doses, can produce the effects for which one might hope from its thoroughgoing application. Both competition and central direction become poor and inefficient tools if they are incomplete; they are alternative principles used to solve the same problem, and a mixture of the two means that neither will really work and that the result will be worse than if either system had been consistently relied upon. Or, to express it differently, planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition.
It is of the utmost importance to the argument of this book for the reader to keep in mind that the planning against which all our criticism is directed is solely the planning against competition the planning which is to be substituted tuted for competition. This is the more important, as we cannot, within the scope of this book, enter into a discussion of the very necessary planning which is required to make competition as effective and beneficial as possible. But as in current usage “planning” has become almost synonymous with the former kind of planning, it will sometimes be inevitable for the sake of brevity to refer to it simply as planning, even though this means leaving to our opponents a very good word meriting a better fate.
(Emphasis added.)
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom 89 (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2 ed. 2007).
Government’s orderly planning, including the application of established policies, makes government responsible. It also leaves government in its proper, limited place.
Hope for a better future is not only — and not principally — to be found within the walls of city hall. 312 W. Whitewater Street is merely one address in this city. Whitewater is a city of fifteen thousand, not fifteen. Whitewater’s many private needs will not be met through fights among government men or recriminations among them.
The purpose of a well-regulated government, like a well-regulated militia, is (and must be) to protect the flourishing of private life.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:32 for 9h 07m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 64.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1777, American forces under the command of George Washington repulse a British attack at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek near Trenton, New Jersey.
Steven Walters has a list of the Top 10 State Government Stories of 2023. It’s a solid recounting of the biggest state issues of 2023. His Numbers 1 and 2 would appear on any list of major Wisconsin events:
1. Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz not only won a 10-year term on the state Supreme Court, but she won by a landslide in the most expensive ($51 million by candidates and outside groups) judicial race in the nation’s history. Her win gave liberals their first majority on the seven-member court in 12 years.
2. In December, that new Supreme Court majority ruled that Assembly and Senate boundaries Republicans drew in 2021 were unconstitutional. The court gave all sides a Jan. 12 deadline to submit new district lines for November elections and named two experts to advise the justices on next steps. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said the ruling would be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
After his top ten, Walters mentions a few other big stories, and a post-Foxconn future is rightly among them:
Microsoft paid $50 million for 315 acres of Mount Pleasant land owned by Foxconn, officially retiring the 2018 promise by then-President Trump, ex-Gov. Scott Walker and ex-U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryanthat Foxconn’s investment in Racine County would create a high-tech, “eighth wonder of the world.” Microsoft says two data centers will be built.
FREE WHITEWATER has a category dedicated to the Foxconn debacle.
In Whitewater (seeA Sham News Story on Foxconn) and too many other places, support for the Wisconsin Foxconn project was (and should have been) a sign of dog-crap-quality policymaking.
A new year begins in Whitewater with partly sunny skies and a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:31 for 9h 06m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 73.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Sunday in Whitewater will see flurries and ice with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:30 for 9h 05m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 80.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1759, Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.
This brings us to Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek. Hayek was an opponent of most state planning, and rightly so. He understood, however, that some level of preliminary planning (and this meant government planning) was necessary to make private success possible. His remarks on this point in The Road to Serfdom are oft-quoted: