Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:57, and sunset is 6:28, for 11 hours, 31 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 7.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater Pride will hold its 4th annual Pride Rally from 11 AM to 2 PM at the Cravath Lakefront.
On this day in 1921, the World Series is first broadcast on radio (the last experimental best-five-of-nine series, which the Giants won in five games to three over the Yankees).
The U.S. economy added 254,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1%, blowing away expectations. NBC News’ Christine Romans and editor-in-chief at Investopedia Caleb Silver break down the promising numbers from the September jobs report.
No reason for Whitewater to waste today’s good national economy on yesteryear’s old–guard fumblers.
Michael T. Miller is a big fan of the Indiana Jones films. His home in Sheboygan houses a vast collection of Indy memorabilia — from movie props to signed Harrison Ford photos — spanning decades of fandom. The quest to collect it all, sparked by early childhood memories, has taken Miller and his wife Martha across Wisconsin and beyond.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 6:39, and sunset is 6:57, for 12h 18m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous, with 99.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Library Board Development Committee meets at 4:30 PM and the Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On the evening of September 17, 1942, after a day of heavy rain, water began rolling through the streets of Spring Valley, in Pierce Co. The village, strung out along the Eau Galle River in a deep valley, had been inundated before, but this was no ordinary flood. By 11:30p.m., water in the streets was 12 to 20 feet deep, flowing at 12 to 15 miles an hour, and laden with logs, lumber, and dislodged buildings. Throughout the early morning hours of Sept. 18th, village residents became trapped in their homes or were carried downstream as buildings were swept off foundations and floated away. One couple spent the night chest-deep in water in their living room, holding their family dog above the water and fending off floating furniture. The raging torrent uprooted and twisted the tracks of the Northwestern Railroad like wire, and electricity and drinking water were unavailable for several days. Miraculously, there were no deaths or serious injuries.
On this day in 1945, General Douglas MacArthur moves his general headquarters from Manila to Tokyo.
Now’s the time for Whitewater to make good on improving national conditions. (The best way for the city to do so is to set aside the low-quality work but above-average sense of entitlement of the aged special-interest men who have kept Whitewater back for a generation1. See of yesteryear’sserial mediocrity Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.)
For all the hype that goes into them, Federal Reserve meetings are usually pretty predictable affairs. Policymakers telegraph their intentions ahead of time, markets react, and everyone has at least a general idea of what’s going to happen.
Not this time.
This week’s gathering of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee carries an uncommon air of mystery. While markets have made up their collective mind that the Fed is going to lower interest rates, there’s a vigorous debate over how far policymakers will go.
Will it be the traditional quarter-percentage-point, or 25-basis-point, rate reduction, or will the Fed take an aggressive first step and go 50, or half a point?
Fed watchers are unsure, setting up the potential for an FOMC meeting that could be even more impactful than usual. The meeting wraps up Wednesday afternoon, with the release of the Fed’s rate decision coming at 2 p.m. ET.
“I hope they cut 50 basis points, but I suspect they’ll cut 25. My hope is 50, because I think rates are just too high,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “They have achieved their mandate for full employment and inflation back at target, and that’s not consistent with a five and a half percent-ish funds rate target. So I think they need to normalize rates quickly and have a lot of room to do so.”
A rate cut of either size will be good for all America, including small-town Whitewater.
One might wonder why these aged men didn’t have more time to choose well for Whitewater when they were younger. Wonder not: exaggerating, tale-bearing, pretending, posing, scheming, memorizing trickle-down jargon, and shoving themselves to the front of the line takes a lot of time, for goodness’ sake. ↩︎
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 6:31, and sunset is 7:10, for 12h 38m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 53.13 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
There is a Special Lakes Advisory Committee meeting at 4:30 PM, and a Special Finance Committee meeting at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1789, Alexander Hamilton is appointed the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. On this day in 2001, the September 11 attacks, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks kill 2,977 people using four aircraft hijacked by 19 members of al-Qaeda. Two aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, a third crashes into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The post-pandemic spike in U.S. inflation eased further last month as year-over-year price increases reached a three-year low, clearing the way for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and likely shaping the economic debate in the final weeks of the presidential race.
Wednesday’s report from the Labor Department showed that consumer prices rose 2.5% in August from a year earlier, down from 2.9% in July. It was the fifth straight annual drop and the smallest since February 2021. From July to August, prices rose just 0.2%.
America had a good night last night, and today the nation awakes to good economic news. And yet, much work lies ahead…
Meet some of the engineers contributing to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which will study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa to see if it has conditions suitable to support life. This trailer is an introduction to the team members profiled in the “Behind the Spacecraft: Europa Clipper” video series.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:11, and sunset is 7:42, for 13h 31m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 79.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1775, King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James’s stating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell laid the groundwork Friday for interest rate cuts ahead, though he declined to provide exact indications on timing or extent.
“The time has come for policy to adjust,” the central bank leader said in his much-awaited keynote address at the Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”
With markets awaiting direction on where monetary policy is headed, Powell focused as much on a look back at what caused the inflation that led to an aggressive series of 13 rate hikes from March 2022 through July 2023.
However, he did note the progress on inflation and said the Fed can now turn its focus equally to other side of its dual mandate, namely to make sure the economy stays around full employment.
“Inflation has declined significantly. The labor market is no longer overheated, and conditions are now less tight than those that prevailed before the pandemic,” Powell said. “Supply constraints have normalized. And the balance of the risks to our two mandates has changed.”
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:00, and sunset is 7:58, for 13h 57m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 59.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
A key measure of wholesale inflation rose less than expected in July, opening the door further for the Federal Reserve to start lowering interest rates.
The producer price index, which measures selling prices that producers get for goods and services, increased 0.1% on the month, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. Excluding volatile food and energy components, the core PPI was flat.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for an increase of 0.2% on both the all-items and the core readings.
A further core measure that also excludes trade services showed a rise of 0.3%.
On a year-over-year basis, the headline PPI increased 2.2%, a sharp drop from the 2.7% reading in June.
Inflation is abating, and growth is up, and in these improving conditions residents of both big cities and also small towns (like Whitewater!) have a chance to avoid the economic mistakes of the past (and those who made them).
Some of Whitewater’s special-interest men (from the 2000s and 2010s) are like declining athletes who should have retired from the game years ago. They stayed too long, and now can’t hit, can’t field, can’t circle the bases. Overweight and underpowered. They want to blame everyone else for their below-average performance. One wonders: why pretend it’s a major-league game with these minor-league banjo-hitters stumbling up to the plate?
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:54, and sunset is 8:08, for 14h 12m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl‘s balsa wood raft, the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America
Christine Durrance, a professor in the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, writesWisconsin’s opioid crisis complicates an already troubled health care system (‘54% of respondents in UW-Madison survey report health care as quite or an extremely big problem for Wisconsin; 69% feel this way about health care being a problem for the country’):
Health care is the third most concerning issue during this presidential election year, according to WisconSays survey data collected as part of this year’s Main Street Agenda, which the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison is using to highlight what matters to Wisconsin throughout 2024.
In this statewide representative survey, 54% of respondents report health care as quite or an extremely big problem for Wisconsin; 69% feel this way about health care being a problem for the country. These sentiments are felt across the state with 58% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans viewing it as quite a problem or an extremely big problem for the state. There is also little divide between urban (54%) and rural (53%) residents.
The effects of the epidemic on our communities and health care system reach far beyond overdose mortality. One understudied aspect of the opioid crisis is its impact on women, infants, and children.
A hundred culture-war issues, pushed relentlessly, have only distracted from, but not alleviated, tens of thousands of yearly tragedies.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 5:40, and sunset is 8:22, for 14h 41m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 77.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The U.S. economy grew at a surprisingly robust 2.8 percent annualized rate in the second quarter, capping two years of solid expansion, despite some signs of softening.
Gross domestic product for the quarter ending in June was double the 1.4 percent reading in the previous quarter, but reflects a general cool-down from last year’s brisk pace, according to Commerce Department data released Thursday morning.
“Economic growth is solid, not too hot and not too cold,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds, a financial research firm. “The soft patch we had at the beginning of the year has gone away and with it, the risks of a recession are dying on the vine.”
These impressive national growth numbers present Whitewater with a challenge:
Why would this beautiful town give time to the same tired, old-guard self-promoters who failed Whitewater in the 2010s?See about that time Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.
The enervated but agitated defenders of this city’s policymaking ‘tradition’ are simply the peddlers of excuses and lies.
Our next generation can — and already is — doing better for Whitewater.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:27 and sunset 8:33 for 15h 05m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 28.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1796, the United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty.
Ebenezar G. Whiting of Racine was issued patent #1232 for his improved plow, the first patent issued to someone from Wisconsin. Whiting’s improvements consisted of making the mold-board straight and flat which, when united in the center with the curvilinear part of the mold-board, would require less power to drag through the dirt. Whiting went on to serve as Vice President of the J.I. Case Plow Company and received another patent for a steel plow in 1876.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation in the United States cooled in June for a third straight month, a sign that the worst price spike in four decades is steadily fading and may soon usher in interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.
In a better-than-expected report, consumer prices declined 0.1% from May to June after having remained flat the previous month, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the first monthly decline in overall inflation since May 2020, when the economy was paralyzed by the pandemic.
And measured from one year earlier, prices were up 3% in June, cooler than the 3.3% annual rate in May.
The latest inflation readings will likely help convince the Fed’s policymakers that inflation is returning to its 2% target. A brief pickup in inflation early this year had caused the officials to scale back their expectations for interest rate cuts. The policymakers said they would need to see several months of mild price increases to feel confident enough enough to cut their key rate from its 23-year high.
Whitewater has a chance to make gains in her community during these improving economic conditions. Yesteryear offers no answers for the city, save what not to do this time.
Hubble Space Telescope observations of the Omega Centauri star cluster, about 18,000 light-years from Earth, has revealed evidence of an intermediate-size black hole.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset 8:34 for 15h 09m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this date, James Jesse Strang, leader of the estranged Mormon faction the Strangites, was crowned king; the only man to achieve such a title in America. When founder Joseph Smith was assassinated, Strang forged a letter from Smith dictating he was to be the heir. The Mormon movement split into followers of Strang and followers of Brigham Young. As he gained more followers (but never nearly as many as Brigham Young), Strang became comparable to a Saint, and in 1850 was crowned King James in a ceremony in which he wore a discarded red robe of a Shakespearean actor, and a metal crown studded with a cluster of stars as his followers sang him hosannas.
Soon after his crowning, he announced that Mormonism embraced and supported polygamy. (Young’s faction was known to have practiced polygamy, but had not at this time announced it publicly.) A number of followers lived in Walworth County, including Strang at a home in Burlington. In 1856 Strang was himself assassinated, leaving five wives. Without Strang’s leadership, his movement disintegrated.
The US labor market added more jobs than expected in June while the unemployment rate unexpectedly rose, reaching its highest level since November 2021, another sign that the job market continues to cool.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday showed the US economy added 206,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in June, more than the 190,000 expected by economists.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.1%, up from 4% in the month prior and the highest reading in almost three years. June’s job additions were a slight decline from May, which saw job gains revised down on Friday to 218,000 from the 272,000 initially reported last month.
The skill to take advange of job gains (and benefit the city still more if there should be interest rate cuts) will not be found among Whitewater’s self-promoting “action-oriented” types of fifteen or twenty years ago. The sooner the city turns away from their monkey shines the better.
Indeed, the work of that aged and addled cohort has been worse for the city, in concept and execution, than Monkey Shines the 1988 b-movie horror film:
It’s hard to estimate precisely, but a rough guess is that Whitewater would have been 179.6% better off with a killer monkey than that failed group from yesterday.
Friday will be partly cloudy with a possibility of afternoon showers and a high of 88. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset 8:37 for 15h 20m 19s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1944, Camp Janesville was established when 250 German POWs arrived in Rock County to help pick and can peas, tomatoes, and sweet corn. The camp was a small town of tents that housed guards and the POWs, many of them from the defeated Afrika Corps led by the “Desert Fox”, Field Marshall Rommel. Another 150 prisoners were assigned to a similar camp in Jefferson. The German POWs were primarily in their mid-20s. They were eventually transferred to an undisclosed camp on September 25, 1944.
On this day in 1945, the Battle of Okinawa ends when the organized resistance of Imperial Japanese Army forces collapses in the Mabuni area on the southern tip of the main island.
Wisconsin workers’ pay rose over 5% from a year ago at this time, slightly outpacing the national average, according to a new report.
The June 5 report from payroll company ADP shows that the median annual pay in Wisconsin in May reached $59,000, up 5.3% from a year ago. That slightly beat out the nationwide median pay of $58,300 and 5% increases.
ADP’s report uses salary data from about 10 million employees over a 12-month period to calculate the data, it said in a media release.
….
ADP’s figures are slightly higher than what USA TODAY reported in February. That report showed that the average annual salary in Wisconsin was $58,552.
These reported wage increases are averages, and ADP’s method is a private assessment. Even within Wisconsin, there are sure to be significant variations in employment levels and salary gains. Nonetheless, gains in individual and household incomes are a foundational measure of community prosperity. The measure of an advanced, productive market economy is whether it advances personal and household well-being across all parts of a community. In this regard, the goal should be the broader the gains, the better.
Some of us in Whitewater have done well over the last generation, but some of us is an inadequate achievement. How odd that, despite having lived long in this city, a few of us don’t seem to grasp this fundamental economic goal (and moral principle).
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 87. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset 8:34 for 15h 18m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 34.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The storm virtually leveled New Richmond on the day the Gollmar Brothers Circus came to town. At the time, New Richmond was a prosperous town of 2500 people and one of the most scenic places in Wisconsin. On the day of the storm, the streets were filled with residents and tourists waiting for the afternoon circus parade. Shortly after the circus ended, the tornado passed through the very center of town, completely leveling buildings. Over 300 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Massive amounts of flying debris resulted in multiple deaths in at least 26 different families. In all, the storm claimed 117 lives and caused 150 injuries.
On this day in 1944, American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France.
The consumer price index showed no increase in May as inflation slightly loosened its stubborn grip on the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.
The CPI, a broad inflation gauge that measures a basket of goods and services costs across the U.S. economy, held flat on the month though it increased 3.3% from a year ago, according to the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a 0.1% monthly gain and a 3.4% annual rate.
Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core CPI increased 0.2% on the month and 3.4% from a year ago, compared with respective estimates of 0.3% and 3.5%.
….
Following the report, stock market futures pushed higher while Treasury yields slid.
Though the top-line inflation numbers were lower for both the all-items and core measures, shelter inflation increased 0.4% on the month and was up 5.4% from a year ago. Housing-related numbers have been a sticking point in the Federal Reserve’s inflation battle and make up a heavy share of the CPI weighting.
(Emphasis added.)
The cost of shelter continues to increase nationally, forcing the many to pay more of their income to the few for a place to live.
Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset 8:31 for 15h 15m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.
June 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. economy created far more jobs than expected in May and annual wage growth reaccelerated, underscoring the resilience of the labor market and reducing the likelihood the Federal Reserve will be able to start rate cuts in September. The Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday also showed the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.0% from 3.9% in April, reaching a symbolic threshold below which the jobless rate had previously held for 27 straight months.
The unexpectedly strong report made plain that while the labor market has softened around the edges in recent months, its still-solid performance is set to keep the Fed on the sidelines and taking its time in deciding when to begin lowering borrowing costs. Financial markets slashed the odds of a September rate cut, reducing the probability to about 55% from about 70% before the report, based on rate futures contracts.
These are national figures; they are not local measures of progress. Whitewater’s old guard wasted a generation by which our city has lagged our nation.
These types would like to tell the city they have answers for the next generation’s needs.
Admittedly, they’re right — they do have answers for the next generation: answers as wrong and counter-productive as the ones they’ve been giving for decades. (If they’d advised and guided correctly, longtime residents now in need wouldn’t be bartering for diapers and small appliances on social media.) If these men have but one skill, it hasn’t been in getting conditions right, but instead in shameless self-promotion while they’ve been getting conditions wrong.
Whitewater will see widespread prosperity when she moves away from her stultifying past.
Greater Sage-Grouse are one of the most iconic birds of the American West. Each spring across the sagebrush steppe, they gather at mating grounds, called leks. There, males perform incredible courtship displays for onlooking females. Experience the magic of sage-grouse from inside a photography blind on a lek in southern Wyoming with Audubon Rockies’ communications manager, Evan Barrientos.
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.
