Groundhog Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 41. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset 5:09 for 10h 01m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 53.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
By Detroit Publishing Co. – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID det.4a24546. Commons: Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30037697
The United States delivered a much bigger-than-expected batch of jobs last month, adding further evidence that the economy still has plenty of steam.
Employers added 353,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department reported on Friday, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.7 percent.
After the loss of 14 percent of the nation’s jobs early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the labor market’s endurance for more than three years has surprised economists, who expected factors including the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases to slow hiring more sharply. The strong data on Friday is likely to reinforce the Fed’s patience in beginning to cut rates.
“There’s layoffs happening, but workers are able to find new positions,” said Sara Rutledge, an independent economics consultant. “It’s almost like a ‘pinch me’ scenario.”
Ms. Rutledge helped tabulate the National Association for Business Economics’ latest member survey, which found increasing optimism that the country would avoid a recession — matching a turnaround in measures of consumer confidence as inflation has eased.
The growth in January was all the more impressive on top of upward revisions to the prior two months, which brought the monthly average job gain in 2023 to 255,000. Professional and business services accelerated to pile on 74,000 jobs, while health care added 70,000. The only major sector to lose jobs was mining and logging.
The bumper crop of added jobs, nearly twice what forecasters had expected, mirrors the similarly surprising strength in gross domestic product measurements for the fourth quarter of 2023.
Now’s the time for communities across America to take advantage of this favorable environment. Now’s the time for Whitewater.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 47. Sunrise is 7:08 and sunset 5:08 for 9h 59m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1942, Voice of America, the official external radio and television service of the United States government, begins broadcasting with programs aimed at areas controlled by the Axis powers.
There’s a difference between a private company, a public company, and a public agency. Ordinary people understand this difference, but special interests conflate these three different arrangements to maximize their influence over wholly public agencies.
First the distinctions, with help from Matt Levine’s description of Elon Musk’s influence on private companies as against public companies. A private company is held individually or by shareholders with shares that do not trade on a public exchange. A public company is a private enterprise with shares that do trade on a public exchange (e.g., the New York Stock Exchange). Levine writes of Musk’s considerable leeway with a purely private company like SpaceX:
At all but one of his companies, he could stroll into the boardroom, throw a big bag of ketamine down onto the table, and say “I need the company to spend $50 million to build a giant golden statue of me riding a rocket,”1 and
the board would be like “yes definitely let’s do it,”
the board members themselves probably are, or represent, big shareholders of the company, and as shareholders they would happily go along with the statue plan to keep Musk happy and dedicated to their company,
the other shareholders, the ones without board seats, are probably even bigger Musk fans, and are probably working on their own Musk statues in their garages anyway, so they’ll be fine with the company spending their money on a corporate gold statue, and
nobody else really has any standing to complain.
And so in fact when Musk went to SpaceX and asked to borrow $1 billion until payday so that he could buy Twitter Inc., the board was like “here’s the check, we’ve left the amount blank, take whatever you need.” And, look, was there a Wall Street Journal article saying “hey that’s weird”? There was; it was weird. Did anything come of that? No. SpaceX could just do that: Musk controls SpaceX, the board loves him, the shareholders love him, nobody in a position to complain has any complaints, and everybody else is in no position to
SpaceX is a bigger version of many private companies: these companies may have one or more owners, and those owners may be shareholders, but those shares are not available for ready trading by the general public. These owners have considerable leeway.
By contrast, a public company is also a private enterprise, but it offers shares on a public market to which the general public has access during trading hours. Trading on public markets comes with public — governmental — rules & regulations. (There’s a Securities and Exchange Commission, after all.) Levine explains how rules for a public company like Tesla limit Musk:
Tesla is a public company, which means that, even if 99% of shareholders love him, if 1% of shareholders don’t, they can sue.3 They can say: “Look, the board has a fiduciary duty to manage the company on behalf of all shareholders. Giving Musk a giant golden statue of himself is not necessary, or a good business decision, or fair to the shareholders; it’s just the controlling shareholder fulfilling his own whims with corporate money, and an ineffective board of directors giving him whatever he wants. He should have to give it back.” And they will go to court, and the shareholders will make those arguments, and the board will say — accurately! — “no you see giving him this giant golden statue is necessary for us to get more of his incredibly valuable time and attention,” and that will sound bad in court. And then a judge will get to decide whether the deal was fair to shareholders or not, and if it was not, the judge can make Musk pay the company back. Even if the board, and 99% of the shareholders, want him to keep it!
Levine’s description of Musk ends here, understandably, because Levine is writing about Musk’s role in private and public companies. An analysis of these companies is distinct — as Levine knows intuitively — from public agencies and governmental bodies.
Special interests, however, don’t see it that way: they look at public bodies (a town council, a school board, or a community development agency) and expect that they can manipulate and control that public institution like a private company. They see a public body as another of their private possessions.
No, and no again: formed only by statutes and ordinances, maintained only under statutes, ordinances, and publicly-adopted policies, these councils, boards, and agencies are public from alpha to omega.
Special interest men in Whitewater take public bodies and illegitimately and wrongfully refashion them through catspaws into versions of private companies. In this way, they place their hands around a public agency and squeeze until it does their private bidding.
Which appointed officials come along matters less to the health of this community than that special interests meet their match from among residents until attrition and exhaustion take their toll on that scheming faction.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 43. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset 5:06 for 9h 57m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 72.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
Wisconsin students who miss 30 or more days of school could be held back a grade, under a new proposal.
If the legislation is approved, beginning in the 2025-26 school year, public school students and students at private schools that receive state money who miss a month or more of class would not advance to the next grade.
Currently, state law requires school boards to have policies stating what conditions a student must meet to be promoted from third to fourth grade, fourth to fifth grade and eight to ninth grade.
The bill, and five other truancy-related proposals, are the result of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s Task Force on Truancy. If passed by the Legislature, the legislation would need approval from Gov. Tony Evers.
The state’s attendance rate reached a new low of 91 percent in the 2021-22 school year and nearly a quarter of students missed at least a month of school, according to data from the state Department of Public Instruction.
New truancy data won’t be released until March 2024.
Vos aims to solve a socio-economic problem that varies across hundreds of Wisconsin districts with uniform state statutes. Success seems doubtful. Alternatively, Vos aims to convince the delusionally gullible WISGOP base that He’s got this, Wisconsin! Your dawg Robin’s on it!
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:10 and sunset 5:05 for 9h 54m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 80.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1930, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union orders the confiscation of lands belonging to the Kulaks in a campaign of Dekulakization, resulting in the executions and forced deportations of millions.
Trump is old, and Biden is old. Neither is getting any younger. And yet, and yet, if that’s all someone sees in these men, then he or she is politically blind. Along comes the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with a story that gives voice to the ignorant and obtuse among us in ‘They’re both dinosaurs’: Concerns about age drive lack of enthusiasm for Biden and Trump.
It’s much easier for the Journal Sentinel to publish a story with a handful of snide quotes from superficial voters than to use their print & web space to show political and legal differences between the candidates.
Meanwhile, in Whitewater, an evergreen reminder: Telling readers who the applicants are for local offices (before the deadline has arrived!) matters less than what those applicants believe and how they would act on those beliefs.
Environmental activists splattered the Mona Lisa with soup on Sunday morning as they called for the right to healthy and sustainable food. The protesters threw tomato soup at Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, which is protected by a glass case in the Louvre museum in Paris.
The painting wasn’t damaged and the gallery where it hangs was closed for an hour for cleaning, the Louvre said. The room reopened at 11:30 a.m. local time.
Quick comments: (1) Most performative protests are unproductive or counter-productive, (2) throwing soup at painting to protest for “healthy and sustainable food” is nuttily counter-productive, (3) Oh, my — France went from Devenue and Belmondo on the run to Riposte Alimentaire‘s soup-hurling act? That’s a disturbing devolution if ever there were one.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset 5:04 for 9h 52m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 86.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Wisconsin’s budget surplus will be less than what was projected six months ago.
The state is predicted to have a surplus of $3.25 billion by the end of the current budget cycle, according to a new estimate of the state’s general fund from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
That’s nearly $800,000 less than what was projected when the current budget was signed last June.
Three billion, two-hundred fifty million is still a big number…
Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:12 and sunset 5:02 for 9h 50m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 92.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1813, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is first published in the United Kingdom.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:13 and sunset 5:01 for 9h 47m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1967, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting the usage of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes.
Friday in Whitewater will see light rain with a high of 36. Sunrise is 7:14 and sunset 5:00 for 9h 45m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
For the next few years, at least, to be successful Whitewater will have to adjust from plugging leaks to surfing the waves.
At first, wave upon wave will seem unpredictable, as though the water, itself were awry, askew. And 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.”
The tired refrain that this is how we do business around here won’t be good enough. Not even close to good enough.
Over time, the skillful and adroit will manage the waves and enjoy the ride.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset 4:59 for 9h 43m 36s of daytime. The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 5 PM and the Board of Zoning Appeals meets at 6 PM.
When the national economy is poor, it’s unlikely that Whitewater (having for years lagged the national economy) would do well. When the Wisconsin economy is poor, it’s unlikely that Whitewater (having for years lagged the state economy) would do well. Even when the national economy was doing well years ago, Whitewater was behind.
As it turns out, happily, the state and national economies are again doing well. Those favorable economic conditions are an opportunity for Whitewater — now’s the time to join in America’s and Wisconsin’s achievements. Of those national economic gains, there’s more good news from across a continent with 340 million people. Ben Casselman reports U.S. Economy Grew at 3.3% Rate in Latest Quarter (‘The increase in gross domestic product, while slower than in the previous period, showed the resilience of the recovery from the pandemic’s upheaval’):
The U.S. economy continued to grow at a healthy pace at the end of 2023, capping a year in which unemployment remained low, inflation cooled and a widely predicted recession never materialized.
Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That was down from the 4.9 percent rate in the third quarter but easily topped forecasters’ expectations and showed the resilience of the recovery from the pandemic’s economic upheaval.
The latest reading is preliminary and may be revised in the months ahead.
Forecasters entered 2023 expecting the Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign of interest-rate increases to push the economy into reverse. Instead, growth accelerated: For the full year, measured from the end of 2022 to the end of 2023, G.D.P. grew 3.1 percent, up from less than 1 percent the year before and faster than in any of the five years preceding the pandemic. (A different measure, based on average output over the full year, showed annual growth of 2.5 percent in 2023.)
Tuesday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset 4:56 for 9h 39m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Dozens of stories, many from national publications, now report on the arrival and departure on late Sunday afternoon (1.21.23) of the of the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe onto the UW-Whitewater campus. Of those stories, reporting from Kimberly Wethal at the Wisconsin State Journal, UW-Whitewater condemns antisemitic incident on campus, is the most concisely informative:
UW-Whitewater’s chancellor is condemning an incident Sunday night during which a small group of people projected Nazi and antisemitic imagery on the side of a residence hall and chanted white supremacist slogans.
Shortly before 5:45 p.m. Sunday, campus police received reports of four people, dressed all in red, standing outside Knilans residence hall on the east side of campus, chanting phrases such as “there will be blood” and projecting a swastika and antisemitic phrases onto the side of the residence hall.
The group’s actions and appearance are consistent with members of “the Blood Tribe,” a Neo-Nazi group that has made two appearances at UW-Madison and a pro-LGBT event in Watertown last year.
In an email to students and staff, UW-Whitewater Chancellor Corey King called the actions of the group “abhorrent,” adding that they go against the university’s core values.
“At UW-Whitewater, we strive to create a safe community where everyone feels a sense of belonging. We take pride in our Warhawk family. We reject hate in all its forms,” King said. “On this first day of the new semester, I ask all of us to reaffirm our commitment to our core values and not let the actions of an outside group that seeks to incite hate, division and fear take us off course.”
In the email, King said the university has no reason to believe the group presents a threat to campus, and the group left shortly after police were called. But university police have increased patrols.
One cannot say whether this fanatical band will be back, but they were not from here, were not welcome here, and will never be welcome here.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset 4:55 for 9h 37m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 89.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM and the Police & Fire Commission at 6 PM. The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 5:30 PM, and the full school board enters closed session shortly after 6:30 PM with open session scheduled at 7 PM.
On this day in 1957, the New York City “Mad Bomber,” George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and charged with planting more than 30 bombs.
Wisconsin’s monthly employment snapshots finished the year with a new record for the number of jobs and an upbeat assessment from the state’s labor department.
A survey of employers projected a total of nearly 3.03 million jobs in Wisconsin in December 2023, according to the Department of Workforce Development (DWD).
Based on a separate survey of households, DWD projected an unemployment rate of 3.3%, the same as in November 2023. The unemployment rate calculates how many people are not working in the total labor force, which consists of people who are working or actively seeking work.
The data show Wisconsin employers and workers are “just continuing the trends we saw all year,” said DWD’s chief economist, Dennis Winters, at a media briefing Thursday. “And the way things are shaping up for 2024, we expect the same thing.”
The employers survey counted a total of 3,026,500 nonfarm jobs in Wisconsin in December, a gain of 80,000 from a year ago.
There is, however, a requirement to capitalize on the state’s improving outlook: it takes high-quality leaders and ideas to make the most of good times.
Whitewater has been in this situation before, in 2020 before the pandemic, when local men looked around at a positive national and state economy and bemoaned better times had not reached Whitewater.
“We’ve just had one of the most booming economies that this country’s seen in close to 60 years. And we’re not at the table. We’re not playing. We’re not out there.”
Well, yes. There was a national boom, uplifting many cities, but it passed by Whitewater. What did Whitewater get after the Great Recession, years into a national boom? Whitewater received a designation as a low-income community. (The gentlemen speaking, these ‘Greater Whitewater’ development men, were by their own accounts at the center of local CDA policy during most of the years that the state and national boom ignored Whitewater.)
Leaders then were responsible for having positioned the city poorly. Once again: it takes high-quality leaders and ideas to make the most of good times.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 17. Sunrise is 7:18 and sunset 4:53 for 9h 35m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 84.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1960, Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board.
Water quality on the upper Mississippi River has largely improved over the last 30 years, but action is needed to address different contaminants than those seen in previous decades.
That’s the takeaway from a new water quality report by the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association, or UMRBA, which represents Wisconsin and four other states.
The same report was first completed in 1989, when the river was largely polluted around urban areas, according to UMRBA’s executive director Kirsten Wallace.
She said this year’s version highlights the impact from years of work to reduce contamination from wastewater treatment plants, agricultural land and other sources throughout the river basin.
“We’re seeing declining trends in total (sediment and algae), metals and particles that attach to the sediment like phosphorus,” Wallace said. “So that all has been good.”
But Wallace said the monitoring data, collected from sites along the river between 1989 and 2018, shows there are some pollutants that have increased in the last three decades.
Levels of nitrogen, a nutrient that often comes from runoff of farm fields and other lands, have increased in the section of the river along Wisconsin.
A community that expects beneficial development keeps harmful waste to a minimum, exports its waste to places where it cannot harm other humans or animals, and does not import others’ harmful waste into its borders. Three times since FREE WHITEWATER began publishing officials in this city’s government have recklessly considered plans to bring others’ waste into this city. Each plan was, at last, sensibly abandoned when repeated studies showed the impracticality of the plan (while not addressing all of the obvious environmental risks to Whitewater’s residents).
If there should one day be a fourth effort, then it will fare no better than the last three.
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 16. Sunrise is 7:19 and sunset 4:52 for 9h 33m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1929, the first full-length talking motion picture filmed outdoors, In Old Arizona, is released.
In the bustling city of Berlin, an extraordinary ramen phenomenon has taken flight thanks to a man named Christopher. From the confines of his apartment, Christopher crafts and delivers fresh ramen kits in a most unconventional manner. Using a vibrant red bucket suspended from his window, he lowers these delectable packages to eager customers waiting below. What started as a creative solution for social distancing during lockdown has evolved into a cherished ritual in the culinary landscape. Christopher’s flying ramen delivery system has become an iconic symbol of his business, capturing the imagination of locals and international patrons alike. As customers eagerly await their airborne ramen, the act of receiving this unique delivery has transformed into a communal experience, making Christopher’s flying ramen a beloved and distinctive culinary adventure in the heart of Berlin.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 11. Sunrise is 7:19 and sunset 4:51 for 9h 31m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 66.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1983, the Apple Lisa, the first commercial personal computer from Apple to have a graphical user interface and a computer mouse, is announced.
Credit where credit is due, including credit for recognizing that the attempts to impeach the Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe are baseless (where baseless properly excludes drunken delusions, chanting voices in one’s head, or congenital cognitive deficiency). Scott Bauer reports Wisconsin Republican leader derides GOP impeachment attempt targeting state’s top elections official:
In the Assembly, state Rep. Janel Brandtjen has introduced a resolution to impeach Wolfe. As of Thursday, it had just five co-sponsors in addition to Brandtjen. It would require 50 votes to pass.
Brandtjen tried in vain on Tuesday to be recognized to speak in an attempt to get a vote on her proposal. Brandtjen, who has endorsed discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, accused Republican leaders of being “Administrator Wolfe’s PR team.”
During a news conference before Thursday’s session, Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August said Brandtjen’s proposal would not be voted on because it doesn’t have enough support to get out of committee or be approved by a majority of the Assembly.
“We have a process that has been utilized in this building for decades of how to bring a bill or a resolution to the floor,” August said. “And that’s the process that we’ll continue to use.”
August said if Brandtjen has enough support to bring the measure forward for a vote, she can.
“But the fact is she doesn’t,” August said. “Our caucus is focused on real things, not grifting and not making a big show for the cameras. And that’s all she’s interested in doing.”
Now, I’m not inclined to agree that the WISGOP is focused on real things, but it’s indisputable among non-lunatics that Brandtjen is focused on unreal things. A low bar, yes.
And yet, and yet, among the 5.8 million Wisconsinites, Brandtjen is not the state’s only crackpot, although she now seems to sit on the crackpottery throne. (Where Michael Gableman is these days I do not know, as Arkham Asylum is a fictional place. )
By Mikel Janín / DC Comics – [1], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54136917
