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Daily Bread, Immigration, Presidential Race 2024, Trump

Daily Bread for 10.21.24: Fact Checking Trump on Immigration

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 7:16, and sunset is 6:02, for 10 hours, 46 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous, with 77.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1897, the Yerkes Observatory is dedicated:

Founded by astronomer George Hale and located in Williams Bay, the Yerkes Observatory houses the world’s largest refracting optical telescope, with a lens of diameter 102 cm/40 inches. It was built through the largess of the tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes, who rebuilt important parts of the Chicago transportation system after the fire. Situated in a 77-acre park on the shore of Lake Geneva, this observatory was the center for world astronomy in the early 20th century and invited a number of astronomers from around the world, including Japan, for scientific exchange.

Trump has said much about immigration. The Marshall Project has published Fact-checking Over 12,000 of Donald Trump’s Statements About Immigration. The fact check is detailed, and I’d encourage readers to review the full article. Below are summaries of the main points of the fact check:

TRUMP: “Under Border Czar Harris, our communities are being ravaged by migrant crime.”

FACT CHECK: According to a consistent, overwhelming amount of criminology research, immigrants to the United States, both legal and undocumented, have committed less crime than native-born Americans going all the way back to the 1870s.

TRUMP: “[South American countries are] emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America.”

FACT CHECK: Experts and journalists find no evidence that South American countries are intentionally freeing mentally ill and incarcerated people to infiltrate the U.S.

TRUMP: “Cases like Kate Steinle, murdered in San Francisco by a five-time deported illegal immigrant, or cases like Sarah Root… or my friend Jamiel Shaw who lost his incredible son…”

FACT CHECK: Trump relies on emotionally powerful anecdotes to portray an alleged crime wave by undocumented immigrants, but research shows that immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans.

TRUMP: “They want [unauthorized immigrants] voting, because they believe they’ll be voting for Democrats every single time.”

FACT CHECK: There is no evidence that Democratic immigration policies have led to any meaningful increase in noncitizen voting, or in any form of demographic advantage for the party.

TRUMP: [Democrats] want sanctuary cities, which means crime and drugs and death.”

FACT CHECK: Research consistently shows no link between sanctuary policies and increased crime rates. Instead, migrants in sanctuary cities are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, with cities tending to experience decreases in property crime and homicide rates.

TRUMP: “Do you want to hear ‘The Snake?’…This was an old song that I revised… Think of it as the people that we’re letting in.

FACT CHECK: The daughters of Oscar Brown Jr., the original writer of the snake song, said Trump’s interpretation is dishonest and immigrants are not dangerous like the snake.

TRUMP: “We have no idea who they are. They want to come into our country. They may be ISIS. It may be the great Trojan Horse of all time. Who knows?”

FACT CHECK: Arab and Muslim refugees from the Middle East are unlikely to enter the U.S. due to rigorous vetting. In the rare cases they were accepted, they have been connected to planning or carrying out acts of terrorism in only a handful of instances since 1980.

TRUMP: “Illegal aliens coming into our country under Biden are treated better than our vets.”

FACT CHECK: While it’s true many undocumented people make use of public benefits, their monetary contribution to the country likely exceeds the cost of the benefits they consume, and they do not receive more benefits than citizens who are veterans.

TRUMP: “Democrats are the party of open borders, socialism, and crime, whether you like it or not.”

FACT CHECK: The claim that Democrats want open borders is false, since their recent policies focus on enforcing border laws and reducing illegal crossings.

TRUMP: “Dwight Eisenhower – nice guy – he moved a million and a half people out of the United States.”

FACT CHECK: Trump claims a 1950s-era deportation operation was “humane” and resulted in over a million deportations, but that number is contested, and the initiative took a steep humanitarian toll.

TRUMP: “They’ve taken the jobs of African Americans and Hispanics, and that was obvious to me. Next is gonna to be unions, you watch.”

FACT CHECK: Trump greatly overstates the tenuous connection between people who cross the border illegally to the “taking” of Black or union jobs.

TRUMP: “Believe me, it’s gonna work. Walls work.”

FACT CHECK: The reality of building a border wall is complex, and the barrier has proven to be ineffective, costly to taxpayers, and a driver for more dangerous modes of entry into the country. Historically, many undocumented immigrants overstay their legal visas, something a wall wouldn’t prevent.

TRUMP: “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats… They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

FACT CHECK: There is no evidence to support claims that Haitian migrants are abducting, killing or eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.

State officials discuss election security concerns:

America, City, Daily Bread, Economy, Immigration, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.17.24: Mass Deportation Would Be Economically ($1,000,000,000,000) Devastating

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 7:11, and sunset is 6:08, for 10 hours, 57 minutes of daytime. The moon is full, with 100 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM, and the Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1781, British General Charles, Earl Cornwallis surrenders at the Battle (Siege) of Yorktown:

The British Prime Minister, Lord North, is reported to have exclaimed “Oh God, it’s all over” when told of the defeat.[87] Three months after the battle, a motion to end “further prosecution of offensive warfare on the continent of North America” – effectively a no confidence motion – passed in the British House of Commons. Lord North and his government resigned.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric often proposes with mass deportation, although in neither Wisconsin nor Whitewater is there majority support for that extreme approach. See The Curious Case of the ‘Invasion’ that Didn’t Bark in the Night and Wisconsin Polling on Immigration.

Mass deportation would be a moral failure, as wholesale detention and dispossession would be an ethic cleansing abhorrent to the reasonable & civilized. It would, secondarily, be an economic catastrophe for America.

In a review of mass deportation, Eric Boehm @ Reason writes Trump’s Deportation Plan Would Cost Nearly $1 Trillion (‘And it would wreck the economy’):

The governmental infrastructure required to arrest, process, and remove 13 million undocumented immigrants would cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years and would deal a “devastating” hit to economic growth, according to a report published last week by the American Immigration Council (AIC). The think tank estimates that a mass deportation plan would shrink America’s gross domestic product by at least 4.2 percent, due to the loss of workers in industries already struggling to find enough labor.

Trump has promised to create a “deportation force” to round up undocumented immigrants and eject them from the country. This would entail targeting two groups: the roughly 11 million people who lacked permanent legal status as of 2022 (that’s the most recent number from the American Community Survey) and the estimated 2.3 million people who have entered the country without legal status since January 2023 (that figure come from the Department of Homeland Security).

The notion that the native born would fill jobs and gaps is false, as Boehm writes:

The costs of mass deportation would rebound into the economy in several ways. The economy would shrink and federal tax revenues would decline. The construction industry, where an estimated 14 percent of workers are undocumented migrants, would be particularly hard hit, but the effects would be felt throughout the economy.

“Removing that labor would disrupt all forms of construction across the nation, from homes to businesses to basic infrastructure,” the AIC notes. “As industries suffer, hundreds of thousands of U.S.-born workers could lose their jobs.”

That’s an important point. Immigration restrictionists often assume that deporting millions of undocumented workers would allow more Americans to fill those jobs, but the economy is not a zero-sum game. A shrinking economy would be bad news for many workers who aren’t directly impacted by Trump’s deportation plan.

The AIC’s estimates are generally in line with the estimates made earlier this year by analysts at the Penn Wharton Budget Center (PWBM), a fiscal policy think tank housed at the University of Pennsylvania. “The costs of the former president’s plan to deport the more than 14 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. today could easily reach more than $1 trillion over 10 years, before taking into account the labor costs necessary for such a project or the unforeseen consequences of reducing the labor supply by such drastic amounts over a short period,” reported Marketwatch, which requested the PWBM estimate.

Of the AIC report, see Mass Deportation Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy.

Mass deportation would be morally reprehensible and economically devastating.

Commuter distracted by phone survives close call with train:

A commuter distracted by their phone survived a close call with an oncoming train in Buenos Aires.

Daily Bread, Immigration, Poll, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.16.24: Wisconsin Polling on Immigration

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:09, and sunset is 6:10, for 11 hours, 0 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous, with 98.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis begins as U.S. President John F. Kennedy is informed of photos taken on October 14 by a U-2 showing nuclear missiles (the crisis will last for 13 days starting from this point).

Anti-immigrant messaging from a vocal faction does not represent the sentiments of most Wisconsin voters. Jack Kelly, reporting at Wisconsin Watch, writes that Donald Trump wants mass deportations, but poll finds even majority of Republicans don’t support that:

Anti-immigrant messaging featured prominently at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer.

Convention goers waved “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” signs. The party’s 2024 platform declared that with a second term former President Donald Trump would “CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY.”

But even as immigration remains a top issue for the Trump campaign and voters — it was tied for the second most important issue for voters in a recent Marquette Law School Poll — new survey results suggest a majority of Wisconsin Republicans might not be sold on one of Trump’s top campaign pledges.

The poll, conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which has been conducting in-depth surveys on key issues in six battleground states, found that 63% of Wisconsin residents would prefer finding a pathway to citizenship for “undocumented immigrants who have been living in the US for some years and have not committed a serious crime. They would pay a penalty and any taxes they owe. After several years, they would be allowed to apply for citizenship.”

Only 25% in Wisconsin support mass deportation, described as an effort “with the goal of finding, detaining and deporting most or all of the 11 million people who have been living in the US without legal status. States would be asked to use their local law enforcement or National Guard, and the Federal government may use the military.”

More than three in four Democrats and 51% of Republicans in Wisconsin prefer a path to citizenship over a mass deportation program. Thirty-six percent of Republicans in this crucial battleground state preferred mass deportation. Nationally, 58% prefer a path to citizenship while just 26% favor mass deportation.

Kelly quotes Steven Kull, the Program for Public Consultation’s director, with an explanation for the dissipation of heated rhetoric at rallies and campaign ads when voters as asked to consider proposals:

[I]n a rally or group setting, a message of “this is going to be dealt with” resonates with voters, he said. But, when voters “actually reason through” the pluses and minuses of each option, they are able to shift their views on something they initially like when hearing surface-level details, Kull said.

Rhetoric that tends toward demands for mass deportation is a minority view in Wisconsin, and it’s a minority view in Whitewater. See FREE WHITEWATER The Curious Case of the ‘Invasion’ that Didn’t Bark in the Night.

Pair of giant pandas arrive at National Zoo:

City, Daily Bread, Immigration, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.14.24: The Curious Case of the ‘Invasion’ that Didn’t Bark in the Night

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 7:07, and sunset is 6:13, for 11 hours, 5 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous, with 87.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1947,  Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to exceed the speed of sound.

Whitewater is a beautiful city, there is no better place to live, and I hope that more people of all kinds would join us here.

Some weeks ago, Steve Cortes, a rightwing nativist from far away, mentioned online that he had visited Whitewater.

I thought at the time: what would this tumbledown1 nativist have to contribute to Whitewater?

Well, now we know: a seventeen-minute video entitled Heartland Invasion: Cortes Investigates.

This is the Curious Case of the Invasion that Didn’t Bark in the Night.

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s story from his Sherlock Holmes series, Silver Blaze2, Holmes discerns a critical clue in the disappearance of racehorse Silver Blaze:

[Inspector Gregory] “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
[Sherlock Holmes] “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
[Gregory] “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
[Holmes] “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The dog’s silence tells Holmes something significant about the scene.

Cortes, in seventeen minutes3, describes Whitewater’s situation as “turned upside down by globalism,” and that Whitewater might as well be “on banks of the freaking Rio Grande River,” etc.

If all this were true, as an invasion, more than one woman in her out-of-city house, two men at a picnic table, and one man in a bar would have been visible in protest for these many years. That hasn’t happened here.

One would have to believe that Whitewater’s fifteen-thousand residents, excited and demonstrative over Warhawks and Packers, over the Fourth of July and dozens of community gatherings, didn’t care enough about their own physical safety for several years.

The concern about whether the police force is overworked (fair enough, that can be fixed with hiring) is separate from the lie that Whitewater is dangerous place from immigrants (it’s not). The serious misunderstanding was thinking that entreaties as crafted at the time to increase staffing would not be exploited by out-of-the-city nativists exaggerating and lying about dangers from newcomers4.

As one began, so one concludes: Whitewater is a beautiful city, there is no better place to live, and I hope that more people of all kinds would join us here.

A palate cleanser with something better than Cortes will ever produce. Silver Blaze: A Classic Sherlock Holmes Mystery – Full Audiobook:

  1. Cortes’s career arc points downward: CNBC, Fox, Newsmax, Trumpist, then a DeSantis man, then Trump again when DeSantis went bust, and now a would-be leader of a laughable ‘labor group’ that has only a few as members. ↩︎
  2. Silver Blaze is one the of best of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. ↩︎
  3. The video is lightweight and overwrought. An editorial in WhitewaterWise aptly describes it as a political infomercial rather than a documentary. Yes, certainly so. See WhitewaterWise Our Take: You are what you digest; Left or right, it’s important to consume with clarity. ↩︎
  4. On the Johnson-Steil press conference see The Local Press Conference that Was Neither Local Nor a Press Conference. On advice from FREE WHITEWATER to consider staffing after the 2024 election to avoid politicization (posted 12.4.23) see More on the 11.21 Council Session (“There’s sure to be a desire, from city staff and the department, to address all of this now. Choosing among justifications, however, has political implications. How to present a referendum is a matter that can be addressed when the city is closer to a vote (likely spring 2025). 2025 may seem close, but there’s plenty of time.”) There should have been no doubt whatever that the residents of this city would and will support a referendum for additional officers. I have been a sometime critic of past policing in this city, and yet I would support (and can see that my fellow residents would support) a staffing referendum to boost headcount. See also In Support of Whitewater’s Fire & EMS Referendum and Fire & Rescue, Whitewater’s Most Important Public Policy Accomplishment of the Last Generation. ↩︎

Bigotry, Daily Bread, Immigration, Mendacity, Never Trump, Presidential Race 2024, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.29.24: 8 Clips of Trump at Prairie du Chien, Only Yesterday

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:50, and sunset is 6:38, for 11 hours, 48 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 9.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1789, the United States Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

The Prairie du Chien Area Arts Center, where Trump held an indoor rally yesterday, is 142 miles by road from Whitewater. Not far at all. Whitewater has had a bitter taste of what grandstanding and lying against immigrants can mean. See The Local Press Conference that Was Neither Local Nor a Press Conference. We are fortunate that we have not experienced even worse lies about our city. See It Might Have Been Us.

Trump’s full remarks at that Prairie du Chien venue are available online. Aaron Rupar and Acyn have published pertinent clips from his remarks.

1. Trump lies about conditions in Wisconsin when he says that “I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members.”

Wisconsin is not beset this way; Whitewater is not beset this way. Whitewater, in particular, is a beautiful place to live. Indeed, I wish more people would move here. There’s no better place to live.

Trump’s claims about immigrant crime statistics nationwide are false. See Daniel Dale, Fact check: To attack Harris, Trump falsely describes new stats on immigrants and homicide:

Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically about criminal offenders who entered the US during the Biden-Harris administration; in reality, the figures are about offenders who entered the US over multiple decades, including during the Trump administration. And Trump falsely claimed that the statistics are specifically about people who are now living freely in the US; the figures actually include people who are currently in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences.

2. Trump insists “You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re gonna lose your culture.” Which culture? He’s speaking to his audience, not all Americans. Many have forefathers who came here generations ago, before the Revolution, whether willingly or in enslavement — Trump’s culture is not their culture. He, himself, looks — and is — unacculturated. It is instead many newcomers from so many parts of the world who look — and are — properly acculturated. The nation benefits from their presence.

3. Trump insists that “these people [immigrants] are animals.” Immigrants aren’t animals; Trump’s crowd wants to believe immigrants are animals. Trump’s audiences feel better about themselves if they’re given his permission to feel worse about others.

4. Trump notices a fly in the room (“Oh, there’s a fly. I wonder where the fly came from”) and implies that immigrants brought the fly. There were no immigrants in the room, so perhaps that insect’s presence has another, more proximate cause.

5. Trump pits racial minority against racial minority: “They’re taking all of our Black population’s jobs.” Trump has a long history of racial discrimination in his businesses; his professed regard for Black workers is disingenuous.

6. Trump whines about Kamala Harris’s border remarks from Friday that “then I have to sit there and listen to her bullshit last night. And who puts it on? Fox News. And they shouldn’t be allowed to put it on.” He’s a weak & vain man who wants to talk but cannot brook the contrary speech of others. (Kamala Harris’s thorough assessment of immigration is available at Harris delivers campaign remarks in Arizona after visit to border. See also FREE WHITEWATER, VP Kamala Harris (and Republicans & Trump) on Border Security.)

7. Trump remarks that “global warming doesn’t work anymore, because it’s actually cooling.” He confuses a change in terminology with a change in environmental forces, and fallaciously implies that the former negates the veracity of the latter. Trump plays to the willing, delighted ignorance of his audience.

8. Trump contends that there were “40 to 50,000 people at least out there… It looked like when Lindbergh landed in New York. Do you remember that? Thousands of people… they’re probably leaving and walking home.” The entire city of Prairie du Chien has a population of only about 5,500. There were never forty to fifty thousand people outside. Indeed, the ordinary venue at which he spoke holds only 766 at capacity.

A small point, by the way, in light of his other remarks: Lindbergh did not land in New York — he landed in Paris.

Trump has his history, like so much else, backwards.

Daily Bread, Harris-Walz, Immigration, Kamala Harris, Never Trump, Presidential Race 2024, Trump

Daily Bread for 9.28.24: VP Kamala Harris (and Republicans & Trump) on Border Security

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:49, and sunset is 6:40, for 11 hours, 51 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 15.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1781, French and American forces backed by a French fleet begin the Battle of Yorktown.

Kamala Harris Describes Trump’s Opposition to a Border Bill:

Republicans Admit that Trump Killed the Border Bill:

Even Trump Admits He Killed the Border Bill:

VP Kamala Harris Speaks at Length on a Strong Border Plan:

Bigotry, City, Daily Bread, Immigration, Mendacity

Daily Bread for 9.16.24: It Might Have Been Us

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 86. Sunrise is 6:37, and sunset is 7:01, for 12h 23m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1908, the General Motors Corporation is founded.

Someone sees a burning house in the distance, and wonders whether it might be his house on fire. Perhaps, in those moments, he offers a prayer: Dear God, let this not be my house. And yet, and yet, there is a fire, and someone’s house is burning, and so asking that another might instead bear the loss is a selfish request. A more loving request of the divine: Dear God, let no one be injured and the damage be slight.

Note well: For all the dark publicity and fear-mongering about immigrants in Whitewater, worse lies about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, might have befallen us. See of Whitewater The Local Press Conference that Was Neither Local Nor a Press Conference. The scheming politicians who came to Whitewater were simply less ambitious than the ones who have afflicted Springfield.

I’ll not say that I am grateful misery has struck an innocent population in Springfield, Ohio, as I would not want suffering elsewhere. It is right only to hope that the racist lies told about Springfield cease, and that that town’s Haitian residents suffer no further injury.

Of human affairs, however, one can say this: those who came to Whitewater with matches might have caused a worse fire for us, and we need look only to Ohio to see how a few more matches, a few more lies, might have engulfed us.

Springfield on edge after lies:

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Immigration, Nativism, Politics, Presidential Race 2024, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.2.24: Did Trump’s Waukesha Visit Include a Mention of Whitewater? No

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:45 and sunset 7:57 for 14h 12m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2000, President Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.

Mr. Trump was in Waukesha yesterday.

Did Trump’s Wednesday visit include a mention of Whitewater (as his 4.2.24 Green Bay visit did)?

No. (The Republican National Committee press release announcing Trump’s Waukesha visit, however, did include an express reference to Whitewater. There was, therefore, reason to be attentive to his remarks.)

For now, Wisconsin’s rising nativist sentiment hasn’t brought yet another false, mendacious use of Whitewater’s conditions.

So much the better for this community that Mr. Trump kept the city’s name out of his remarks.

The state & national distortions of last fall & winter would prove slight as against state and national distortions this fall.

May 2024 Skywatching Tips from NASA:

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Immigration, Nativism, Politics, Presidential Race 2024, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.1.24: Will Trump’s Waukesha Visit Include a Mention of Whitewater?

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:46 and sunset 7:56 for 14h 09m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4 PM and the Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the Asiatic Squadron of the United States Navy destroys the Pacific Squadron of the Spanish Navy after a seven-hour battle. Spain loses all seven of its ships, and 381 Spanish sailors die. There are no American vessel losses or combat deaths.

So, one reads that Mr. Trump will be in Waukesha today. Trump mentioned Whitewater by name while in Green Bay on 4.2.24. If he’s going to keep Whitewater in the headlines, another Wisconsin visit would be a prime opportunity for him to do so.

Will it prove true that Trump again uses Wisconsin’s Rising Nativist Sentiment [to] Keep Whitewater in the News?

Let’s see what happens.

Relocating bees from a Washington, D.C. backyard:

City, Daily Bread, Elections, Immigration, Nativism, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.29.24: Wisconsin’s Rising Nativist Sentiment Will Keep Whitewater in the News

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 69. Sunrise is 5:49 and sunset 7:54 for 14h 04m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1861, Maryland’s House of Delegates votes not to secede, but to remain in the Union.

A nativist position — immigrants out, migrants out, etc. — is easier to hold if one ignores the economic cost of anti-labor-market policies. ‘Get them out’ trips off the tongue; explaining the value of a free-labor market that has made America the most productive nation in all history takes longer. Rob Mentzer reports Central Wisconsin farmers: Immigration crackdown, trade war affect our business (‘Farmers say US trade, immigration policy choices have direct effects on Wisconsin businesses’):

On immigration, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised mass deportations of those living in the U.S. without legal status.

Those deportations, if carried out, would likely hit Wisconsin dairy farms hard. Dairy producers rely on immigrant labor, often from Mexico and South America, to operate. While many workers come here with legal status through temporary work visas, that is not the case for all of the workforce.

“It seems foolish to just pretend that foreign-born workers aren’t here and that we don’t need them,” said Hans Breitenmoser, whose dairy farm outside of Merrill has about 460 cows. “We need a means by which their presence here can be legal and sustainable, and also provide them with the dignity that they deserve.”

Recent public opinion polling has shown a turn in favor of the crackdown advocated by Trump. An April 25 survey by Axios and The Harris Poll found a majority of Americans said they would support mass deportations. 

In Wisconsin, the most recent Marquette Law School Poll found 30 percent of Wisconsinites said undocumented immigrants currently working in the U.S. should be deported — a figure that has nearly doubled in the last two years.

Closer to Whitewater: egg farmers, too, one can guess.

Whitewater, regrettably, may find herself under both a general and a specific immigration focus between now and November. The general focus will be simply as one Wisconsin city among many where an anti-immigration position gains adherents.

A specific focus, made possible because Whitewater’s officials themselves raised immigration as an issue, would name the city expressly in campaign literature and campaign stops. Whitewater has come to the attention of Mr. Trump (or, at least, his campaign aides):

“Does anybody know Whitewater after being inundated with Biden migrants? This tiny town now has a budget shortfall,” Trump said. “Their public schools are straining with hundreds of new migrant students who don’t speak a word of English.”

Earlier this year, Whitewater officials told WPR the influx of immigrants had strained city resources, but they were doing everything they could to help them become integrated into the community. Officials believe the migrants started arriving in early 2022, and didn’t arrive all at once.

Here’s the relationship between general polling and Whitewater as a specific reference: as statewide and national polls show increasing nativist sentiment, then Whitewater will likely be a convenient topic (however misused and falsely described) in statewide and national conversations this fall.

Drone video shows aftermath of deadly Oklahoma tornadoes:

City, Daily Bread, Immigration, Local Government

Daily Bread for 2.4.24: Here & Now Reports on Whitewater’s Newcomers

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 Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset 5:12 for 10h 06m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 33.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1789, George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.

PBS Wisconsin’s Here & Now reports on immigration in Whitewater: 

On “Here & Now,” Nathan Denzin unpacks why large numbers of migrants are heading to Whitewater.

However unnecessarily controversial1 the issue has become, this libertarian blogger has not commented on a letter to Pres. Biden that led to state and national discussion of our small town. Not unwillingness but patience has prompted my stance: the truest test of what city officials profess and how they act will come if Whitewater becomes part of the national discussion during the fall election. I would hope that test does not befall our city; this community has endured even now too many lies and too much vilification. 

Knowing what has happened, local officials must be prepared to defend zealously and diligently should distortions of our city become part of a state or national campaign this autumn. 

X-ray sky as seen by eROSITA instrument in space:

 

1. This matter has been unnecessarily controversial. The closed ‘press conference’ of Sen. Johnson and Rep. Steil was all anyone needed to know to see how almost any further communication from the city would be misrepresented. Of the Johnson-Steil press conference see The Local Press Conference that Was Neither Local Nor a Press Conference. Of the sensible recommendation against highlighting migrants further as a staffing justification in 2024’s fraught atmosphere see More on the 11.21 Council Session:

If a [staffing] study on the matter points to the need for more officers, and if the method of hiring requires a referendum, then (but only then) the question of staffing becomes an electoral & political matter. There’s sure to be a desire, from city staff and the department, to address all of this now. Choosing among justifications, however, has political implications. 

How to present a referendum is a matter that can be addressed when the city is closer to a vote (likely spring 2025). 2025 may seem close, but there’s plenty of time.

Agriculture, Conservative Populism, Daily Bread, Dairy, Economics, Economy, Employment, Free Markets, Immigration, Labor

Daily Bread for 10.16.22: Our Dairyland Needs Dairy Workers

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Good morning. Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 51. Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 6:09 PM for 10h 59m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.9% of its visible disk illuminated. On this day in 1923, The Walt Disney Company is founded. Embed from Getty Images…

Bigotry, Cruelty, Daily Bread, Immigration, Migrants, Nativism, Trump, Trumpism

Daily Bread for 9.17.22: The Secret History of Family Separation

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Good morning. Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with high of 82. Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 7:00 PM for 12h 22m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 53.4% of its visible disk illuminated.   On this day in 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia sign the final…