FREE WHITEWATER

Taxes/Taxation

Agriculture, Business, Daily Bread, Economy, Tariffs, Taxes/Taxation, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.16.25: Farmers, Part 2 (Slogans and Reality)

by  • 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 6:11 and sunset is 7:38, for 13 hours, 28 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 89 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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


On this day in 2018,  The New York Times and the New Yorker win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for breaking news of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal.

Yesterday’s post, Farmers, cited reporting on the effects of a trade war on farmers. Trump is aware of these concerns, and so he used his Truth Social platform to publish his position on a trade war’s effects on agriculture. Below are Trump’s remarks contrasted with real experiences.

Trump’s post:

Our farmers are GREAT, but because of their GREATNESS, they are always put on the Front Line with our adversaries, such as China, whenever there is a Trade negotiation or, in this case, a Trade War. The same thing happened in my First Term. China was brutal to our Farmers, I these Patriots to just hold on, and a great trade deal was made. I rewarded our farmers with a payment of $28 Billion Dollars, all through the China deal. It was a great transaction for the USA, until Crooked Joe Biden came in and didn’t enforce it. China largely reneged on the deal (although they behaved during the Trump Administration), only buying a portion of what they agreed to buy. They had ZERO respect for the Crooked Biden Administration, and who can blame them for that? Interestingly, they just reneged on the big Boeing deal, saying that they will “not take possession” of fully committed to aircraft. The USA will PROTECT OUR FARMERS!!!

The farmer John Pihl’s genuine experience with Trump’s subsidies:

The payments were helpful, Pihl said. But they weren’t a fix for the longer-term damage done by Trump’s first-term tariffs.

“That was just for the one year. What about the market loss that continued through his term and into Biden’s term? I think the amount is incredible,” he said.

Of Trump’s remarks:

  1. The greatness of farmers has not made them targets; Trump’s trade war has done that.
  2. As lifetime farmer John Pihl explains above, Trump’s deal in his first term did not make farmers whole, and that deal was insufficient on its own, apart from the Biden Admin. See also Adriana Belmonte, Trump’s massive farmer bailout failed to make up for the ‘self-inflicted’ trade damage, January 18, 2021. (Trump’s bailout was a failure even before Biden took office.)
  3. Trump claims that China has ‘behaved’ during his administration, but he admits in his post that (a) they’ve hit back at Boeing and (b) China has applied huge retaliatory tariffs across the board.

Meanwhile, here’s how ordinary Chinese are depicting the Trump Admin:

Even ordinary TikTok users on the other side of the world have Trumpism’s number.

One can and should oppose the Chinese government without stumbling into an inflationary trade war.

Meanwhile, where did Trump get all those gaudy gold appliqués with which he’s littered the Oval Office? Trump’s vulgar additions are surprisingly similar to what the Chinese sell on Alibaba:

Agriculture, Business, Daily Bread, Economy, Tariffs, Taxes/Taxation, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.15.25: Farmers

by  • 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 6:12 and sunset is 7:37, for 13 hours, 25 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 94 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.


On this day in 1922, U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal.

Farmers in the rural Midwest and across America will feel the consequences of Trump’s trade war:

Tariffs are making life more expensive for John Pihl. He’s been farming in Northern Illinois for more than 50 years.

“These tariffs are going to affect everything. It’ll affect our parts — it’s just across the board. Which is going to hurt everything,” he said.

Not only do tariffs affect the cost of farm supplies, but they also raise the risk of retaliation against exports of U.S. crops: a double-whammy for farmers like Pihl.

“It’s a good way to lose your customers,” he said. “And I think we’ll probably lose more on this round too, because I know that Mexico is our biggest importer of corn. But this time, they may figure out that they can get corn from South America just as easily as from the U.S.”

….

All told, the first Trump administration spent $28 billion bailing out farmers. This time around, the tariffs are much higher than they were six years ago, and it’s unclear how long they will persist.

NPR asked the White House for details on what relief is under consideration this time, but received no response.

The payments were helpful, Pihl said. But they weren’t a fix for the longer-term damage done by Trump’s first-term tariffs.

“That was just for the one year. What about the market loss that continued through his term and into Biden’s term? I think the amount is incredible,” he said.

See Danielle Kurtzleben, China put steep tariffs on U.S. exports. Farmers are worried, NPR, April 12, 2025.

But it’s all fake news, right? These consequences for can’t be true, can they? Mr. Trump has a plan, of course he does. (He had a plan before each of his six business bankruptcies, didn’t he?)

Come for the culture war, stay for the inflationary trade war.

Elephants huddle in ‘alert circle’ to protect young during California earthquake:

Elephants formed an ‘alert circle’ to protect their young after a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in southern California. Video footage from the San Diego zoo safari park showed elephants instinctively circling their young, as soon as they felt the earthquake on 14 April

Business, City, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment, Excuses and Rationalizations, Planning, Tariffs, Taxes/Taxation, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.14.25: Federal Planning for Manufacturing Isn’t Planning at All

by  • 

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 59. Sunrise is 6:14 and sunset is 7:36, for 13 hours, 22 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 98 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Plan and Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.


On this day in 1958, the Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days. This was the first spacecraft to carry a living animal, a female dog named Laika, who likely lived only a few hours.

One of the justifications for tariffs is to bring back manufacturing to states like Wisconsin. It’s ill-considered:

But one of the biggest barriers to bringing manufacturing back, both in Wisconsin and nationally, is a labor shortage. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reportsthe latest data show there were around 1.2 million more jobs open nationally than there were unemployed workers. Wisconsin, meanwhile, has had more openings than job seekers since 2021.

Over the last decade, [founder of the Florida-based Reshoring Initiative Harry] Moser said employers have told him the U.S. labor market is “weak, both in terms of quantity of people and quality of people.” He said there have been efforts in recent years that have helped some, pointing to high school apprenticeship programs. He says Trump’s goal of bringing manufacturing back hinges on workforce.

….

In Wisconsin, a 2023 research report from WMC found the state’s median age was older than the rate nationally, and warned if the population doesn’t grow at a faster rate, workforce shortages would worsen.

“We don’t have enough workers for the jobs that we have, let alone if we want to grow a job (field),” [president of the business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Kurt] Bauer with WMC said. “This is a significant challenge.” 

See Joe Schulz, Trump says tariffs will bring back manufacturing, but Wisconsin’s labor shortage may stand in the way, Wisconsin Public Radio, April 14, 2025.

One hears talk in Whitewater on recruiting for manufacturing before any other priority. It’s more a diversionary tactic than anything else; these gentlemen are simply looking for something, however implausible, to shift the conversion.

Tariffs for Semiconductors Forthcoming:

City, Daily Bread, Tariffs, Taxes/Taxation, Trump, Trumpism, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.13.25: The Anti-Tax Crowd Backed a Taxman

by  • 

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:16 and sunset is 7:35, for 13 hours, 19 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 99.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1960, the United States launches Transit 1-B, the world’s first satellite navigation system.

In Whitewater, and towns across America, the Trump men put up signs reading “TRUMP LOW TAXES, KAMALA HIGH TAXES.” These signs were as ridiculous as they were false: Trump campaigned on tariffs and tariffs are taxes. (Yet the nature of an authoritarian populist movement like theirs is fallacies, fabrications, and as with their claims about COVID or election conspiracies, a refusal to accept contrary evidence.1)

Outside the required orthodoxy of Trumpism, conservative businessmen are among the first to admit the economic damage from these tariffs:

In interviews with Urban Milwaukee, all said the new tariffs will fuel inflation, raising costs for local companies, manufacturers, entrepreneurs and consumers; and that the shock waves created by the policy have the potential to send the U.S. economy into a recession.

“It’s almost unanimous concern, and I have not spoken to any business leader that’s celebrating the tariffs,” said Dale Kooyenga, President and CEO of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, describing the responses he’s heard since the tariffs were announced.

The impact is registering immediately for some businesses, Kooyenga said. Like one local company he spoke with that placed a large product order. The tariff doesn’t apply to the date of purchase, but happens when the goods hit the dock in the U.S. “And so now that their order was so large and the tariff so large,” Kooyenga noted, “it creates significant cash flow issues in a time when interest rates are high.”

The new tariffs will produce a price shock for the local building and trades industry and construction budgets, said Dan Bukiewicz, President of the Milwaukee Building & Trades Council and mayor of the City of Oak Creek. “The reaction is not good,” said Bukiewicz. “From the contractors that perform construction work to small business owners that supply everything from safety vests to gloves, hard hats, safety glasses: [the price of] everything’s going up.” 

See Graham Kilmer, Tariffs Will Hurt Business, Workers in Wisconsin (‘Local business, labor and university experts warn that tariffs will lead to a recession’), Urban Milwaukee, April 7, 2025.

All these loud and proud local anti-tax men supported a candidate who has now inflicted worse than anything they’ve ever complained about.

______

  1. See FREE WHITEWATER, Quick Observations on a Weekend, April 6, 2025. Many of these Trumpists, despite a few having pretensions otherwise, are and will always be Facebook types. See FREE WHITEWATER, Facebook Discussions as Displays of Ignorance, Fallacies, and Marginal Literacy, July 31, 2020. Their preferred medium is more disordered today than it was in 2020. ↩︎

Barred Owl Female Rises To Show Off Duo Of Fluffy Owlets – April 10, 2025:

Watch the female lift up during mealtime to show off her two adorable owlets. The nestlings are 3 and 4 days old as of April 10. Brooding is done solely by the female, and she remains a near constant presence at the nest for at least two weeks until the owlets are large enough to spend some time in the box alone.

Daily Bread, Economics, Economy, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Tariffs, Taxes/Taxation, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 4.11.25: Clueless and Cowed

by  • 

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:19 and sunset is 7:33, for 13 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, American forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp:

A detachment of troops of the U.S. 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, from the 6th Armored Division, part of the U.S. Third Army, and under the command of Captain Frederic Keffer, arrived at Buchenwald on 11 April 1945 at 3:15 p.m. (now the permanent time of the clock at the entrance gate). The soldiers were given a hero’s welcome, with the emaciated survivors finding the strength to toss some liberators into the air in celebration.

Later in the day, elements of the U.S. 83rd Infantry Division overran Langenstein, one of a number of smaller camps comprising the Buchenwald complex. There, the division liberated over 21,000 prisoners, ordered the mayor of Langenstein to send food and water to the camp, and hurried medical supplies forward from the 20th Field Hospital.

We hear so much from this rightwing party, from its leaders and activists across the nation, state, and city about low taxes. And yet, and yet, they supported the leader who said time and again that he would raise tariffs. These tariffs are taxes on Americans. Across Wisconsin, the Congressional Republicans who’d scream and squeal at the very mention of taxes are now silent:

A handful of Republicans on Capitol Hill are pushing to give Congress more oversight over President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, but Wisconsin’s Republicans are not among them. 

In interviews with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the state’s GOP delegation largely dismissed questions about legislative oversight, instead praising the president for imposing the levies — some of which were temporarily paused this week — on scores of foreign trading partners.

Sen. Ron Johnson, the only member of the delegation to publicly express concerns over the tariffs, on Thursday predicted measures aimed at giving Congress a bigger role in the tariff process would fail. And Wisconsin’s House members stood in line with Trump’s moves this week that have shaken global markets. 

“I like the way it’s playing out, actually,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald said Tuesday, when asked if Congress should play an oversight role on the implementation of the tariffs. “I think after a couple days, it’s playing out pretty well.”

See Lawrence Andrea, Wisconsin Republicans silent on tariff oversight as colleagues push for Congress to have a say, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 11, 2025.

Fitzgerald: not merely ignorant, but confidently proud of it.

Note well: At no time, over these many years, have any economic concerns that I have expressed at FREE WHITEWATER ever been about my situation; this libertarian blogger has no personal complaints to make. (Nor would I make them here, even if I had any.)

It’s simply the case that so very many loud & proud anti-tax men are silent on tariffs (being too ignorant or too hypocritical to admit how destructive they are).

World’s oldest gorilla celebrates 68th birthday at Berlin zoo:

Fatou, the world’s oldest gorilla, was presented with a basket full of fruits and vegetables as she celebrated her 68th birthday at the Berlin zoo.

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

Daily Bread for 3.11.25: Doubling Down on Ignorant Economics

by  • 

Good morning.

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

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5 PM.

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

Monday in America: The Rapidly Declining Economic Climate.

Tuesday in America:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Bread, Legislation, State Government, Taxes/Taxation, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.6.24: Gov. Evers Signs Child Care Tax Credit Lift to Federal Level

by  • 

 Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:19 and sunset 5:51 for 11h 32m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 20 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1820, the Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.

Erik Gunn reports Evers signs child care tax credit hike, urges more action on child care support:

Gov. Tony Evers signed legislation increasing Wisconsin’s child and dependent care tax credit Monday and at the same time renewed his call for broader state support for child care providers.

“We need a long-term solution to our state’s looming child care crisis—including direct support for providers through Child Care Counts—and I will work with anyone from either side of the aisle who’s ready to work together to get this done,” Evers said.

The governor signed the legislation — AB-1023 — in a ceremony at a Waukesha child care center, La Casa de Esperanza.

The bill raises the state income tax credit for a family’s child and dependent care expenses to 100% of the federal tax credit from the current 50%. It also raises the maximum amount of expenses that can be counted to calculate the credit.

The child care tax credit is the only measure of four Republican-authored tax cut bills introduced in January that won broad support from Democratic lawmakers and the only one the Democratic governor signed. On Friday Evers vetoed the other three bills — changing the state’s second-lowest tax bracket, exempting the first $75,000 to $150,000 of retirement income, and nearly doubling the maximum tax credit for married couples.

More tax reductions are in order, but if one had to pick one of these bills only (although it wasn’t a choice of only one!), the child care credit hike was the best choice. 

Barred Owls LIVE! WBU Barred Owl Cam:

Bad Ideas, Boosterism, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, Speaker Vos, State Capitalism, Taxes/Taxation, Technology, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Highlight’s from The Verge’s Foxconn Assessment

by  • 

No failure better reveals the bankruptcy of corporate welfare in the Walker and Trump years than the Foxconn project in Wisconsin: exaggeration upon exaggeration, but nothing productive. This was a failure of judgment so obvious and significant that everyone involved should retire from policymaking. Walker Administration, Trump Administration, the WISGOP, the WEDC, down to Whitewater’s Community…

Bad Ideas, Business, Government Spending, Newspapers, Taxes/Taxation

Government Breaks for Local Newspapers are a Bad, Bad Idea

by  • 

There’s understandable worry that communities across America are losing their local newspapers, and so one hears that something simply must be done to save them.  Clara Hendrickson, in Local journalism in crisis: Why America must revive its local newsrooms, proposes that we (1) “provide public funding for local journalism” (via tax incentives, mainly), (2) “address…

Boosterism, Business, CDA, City, Congress, Local Government, Taxes/Taxation

Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner Thinks (or Hopes) You’re Ignorant or Stupid

by  • 

Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner, the gerrymandered, septuagenarian multimillionaire whose district (the Fifth) stretches all the way down to Whitewater, must think (or hope) people are ignorant.  One can conclude as much because Sensenbrenner contends the reason he’s not attending impeachment hearings is because those hearings are not open to the public. Honest to goodness, Sensenbrenner must…

CDA, City, Development, Economy, Local Government, Poverty, Taxes/Taxation

Trump Tax Bill is the Predictable Failure Sensible People Warned It Would Be

by  • 

In Whitewater, there’s a business lobby that amounts to a right-wing landlord or two, the dogsbodies who follow three paces behind, and the municipal officials who have been, variously, beguiled or browbeaten into asserting that government-directed capital spending means general prosperity.  It doesn’t; it’s the great myth of municipal policy.  A building here, a building…