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Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.25.24: Wisconsin & Arizona Investigations into Fraudulent 2020 Presidential Electors

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:55 and sunset 7:49 for 13h 54m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Community Development Authority will hold a housing roundtable at 9 AM.

On this day in 1898, the United States Congress declares that a state of war between the U.S. and Spain has existed since April 21, when an American naval blockade of the Spanish colony of Cuba began.


The Washington Post reports that in Arizona

Eighteen of former president Donald Trump’s associates and allies have been indicted in Arizona for their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results by trying to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Joe Biden, who won the state by 10,457 votes.

The group includes Trump’s final White House chief of staff and six aides or attorneys who worked on or supported his 2020 campaign. One is now advising his 2024 presidential campaign, and another is a senior official at the Republican National Committee. Also indicted were 11 Arizona Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner and then transmitted it to the federal government.

All defendants appear to have been charged under each count of the indictment. The charges are as follows: conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices, and forgery. All are felonies, with the most serious being fraudulent schemes and artifices, which carries a standard sentence of five years in prison.

Wisconsin, too, had fraudulent presidential electors. In our state, an investigation into those electors is ongoing, although there has been a settlement in a lawsuit from two legitimate electors against the fraudulent ones. Patrick Marley reports that

Investigators for state Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) have interviewed Chesebro as a possible witness as part of an ongoing probe. Other details about the investigation have not been made public. Separately, [Atty. Kenneth] Chesebro, Trump attorney James Troupis and the 10 Wisconsin Republicans who posed as electors recently settled a lawsuit brought by two of the state’s legitimate electors. As part of the deals, they publicly released records about their efforts and withdrew their false filings from the National Archives. In addition, those who acted as electors agreed not to do so again this year or any time Trump is on the ballot. Troupis paid an unspecified amount of money to those who brought the suit.


Sky over Athens turns orange under Sahara sandstorm:

Daily Bread for 4.24.24: How Wisconsin’s Federal Representatives Voted on Foreign Aid

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 5:56 and sunset 7:48 for 13h 52m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1885, American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.


Over at the Washington Post, there are useful tables showing how members of the U.S. House and Senate voted on border measures, sanctions including a TikTok ban, Indo-Pacific aid, Ukraine aid, and Israel aid. (In the Senate, the aid packages and TikTok ban were within a single vote, up or down.)

Wisconsin House Delegation’s Votes:

Wisconsin Senate Delegation’s Votes:

Read full bill text for H.R. 8038 (sanctions, including TikTok ban), H.R. 8036 (Indo-Pacific), H.R. 8035 (Ukraine), H.R. 8034 (Israel), H.R. 3602 (border measures), and H.R 815 (the combined House bill on which the Senate then voted).


Coyote Spotted in New York’s Central Park:

FREE WHITEWATER has repeatedly warned the people of this beautiful city of the danger coyotes represent. Another reminder: if they can occupy Central Park, then they can occupy Whitewater. See Coyotes Begin War Against Humanity and In Whitewater, People Won’t Feed Coyotes — Coyotes Will Feed on People.

Daily Bread for 4.23.24: Becoming Accustomed Again to Having Adversaries

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 67. Sunrise is 5:58 and sunset 7:47 for 13h 49m 22s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1985, Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.


People should desire (and libertarians, among others, do desire) peaceful relations with nations across the globe. It’s been years since Americans understood through consensus that we do have adversaries — enemies — abroad. Ronald Reagan more than once accurately observed that it takes two to tango. We may want good relations with the Chinese or Russian peoples, but dictatorships in both those nations have other desires, ambitions, and plans.

As our forefathers had to do, so we, too, must steel ourselves against the schemes and depredations of others. Wisconsin daily feels the reach of a foreign dictatorship, as an ongoing Investigation into China’s unfair trade practices supports Wisconsin shipbuilding:

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said a new federal investigation into China’s shipbuilding practices is the first step toward addressing the country’s alleged unfair trade practices and to protecting the industry in Wisconsin and across the country.

Baldwin held an event Monday at Fincantieri Ace Marine in Green Bay to highlight the investigation. The company builds vessels for the U.S. Navy and commercial customers at the Wisconsin shipyard. She was joined by officials from the United Steelworkers union and the nonprofit Alliance for American Manufacturing.

She said the United States Trade Representative is leading the investigation, which will collect data about trade practices that allow Chinese shipbuilders to undercut domestic manufacturers.

….

Last year, China built more than 1,000 commercial vessels, while the United States produced fewer than 10, Baldwin said.

That imbalance, she said, drove her to push the Biden Administration to take action to address the issue.

“For years, China has gotten away with tilting the playing field, and it’s American workers and our national security that are paying the price,” Baldwin said. “We cannot let China eat our lunch. That’s why I’ve been so proud to work alongside the steelworkers and other workers across the country to say enough is enough and call on the Biden administration to take action.”

Often, one does not choose an adversary — it is the adversary itself that imposes a hostile relationship.

So be it.


Dozens of aftershocks rattle Taiwan overnight:

Daily Bread for 4.22.24: Pollster Charles Franklin Discusses 2024 Candidates & Issues

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 5:59 and sunset 7:46 for 13h 46m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board goes into closed session shortly after 5:30 PM and returns to open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1977, optical fiber is first used to carry live telephone traffic.


Charles Franklin discusses voter views of Wisconsin issues & candidates:


AI and robotics demystify the workings of a fly’s wing:

Daily Bread for 4.19.24: Barca Declares for Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District (Yeah, That’s Not What Extreme Looks Like)

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:04 and sunset 7:42 for 13h 38m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775,  the Revolutionary War begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.


One reads that Democrat Peter Barca announces bid for Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District (‘Barca stepped down as secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Revenue earlier this month’):

Democrat Peter Barca, a former state representative who served in Congress 30 years ago, announced a new congressional run Thursday. 

Barca will attempt to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil of Janesville, a Republican, to serve Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. Barca most recently served as the secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Revenue, but he stepped down from that role earlier this month.

….

Barca previously served as a U.S. representative for the 1st District from 1993 to 1995. 

The Kenosha resident spent a total of nine terms as a representative in the Wisconsin State Assembly. That included a stint as Democratic minority leader before he stepped down from that role in 2017.

The GOP offered a typically calm & understated reply:

In response to Barca’s announcement, Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Barca would be “too extreme for Southeast Wisconsin.”

“Peter Barca has consistently put his out of touch policies ahead of Wisconsinites, and Bryan Steil will have a resounding victory this November,” Marinella said in the statement. 

Barca as extreme would only make sense to people who haven’t seen or heard of Barca. Marinella’s reply is tailored to low-information diehards who think every last person who’s not bright red is, definitionally, an Extremist-Radical-Leftist-Marxist-Socialist-Rastafarian-Syndicalist-Epidemologist.

If anything, Barca is too mild in manner and too tepid in rhetoric for these times. Steil, by contrast, will say whatever he needs to get his base to the polls. If Barca gets the nomination and makes it a close race, then the 1st Congressional District (and Whitewater, especially) can expect Steil to say anything whatever to motivate the conservative populists of the district. If that means falsely describing Whitewater as a dystopia, then Steil (like Trump in Green Bay on 4.2.24) won’t hesitate.

See also The Local Press Conference that Was Neither Local Nor a Press Conference.


Mount Ruang eruption in Indonesia sparks tsunami fear as hundreds evacuate:

Mount Ruang has repeatedly erupted since Tuesday and officials fear it could collapse into the sea and cause a tsunami, as happened in 1871. The alert level for the volcano, which has a peak of 725 meters above sea level, was raised from three to four, the highest level in the four-tiered system

Daily Bread for 4.18.24: Return of the Cicadas

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:05 and sunset 7:41 for 13h 35m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1775, the British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements.


Chicagoland in May, parts of Wisconsin in June.

See also UW Insect Diagnostic Lab, Learn more about cicadas, and Help map periodical cicadas in Wisconsin.


Cicadas explained: Three facts about the buzzing insects:

Daily Bread for 4.17.24: Big State Surplus Doesn’t Obscure Ongoing Needs

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 64. Sunrise is 6:07 and sunset 7:40 for 13h 33m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 67.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1970, the damaged Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely.


Wisconsin has a large general fund balance, but that multi-billion dollar figure isn’t so big that one can’t see unfilled needs behind it. Jessie Opoien reports Wisconsin’s general fund hit $6.7 billion and other takeaways from policy forum report:

The state’s general fund balance — its largest source of reserves — hit a record high of $6.7 billion by June 2023. That was a 42% increase over the previous year. 

The [Wisconsin] Policy Forum previously found that in 2020, the general fund had closed the fiscal year with a small positive balance for the first time on record — but the news came as the state grappled with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and faced a recession. The report attributes the strength of the general fund to federal aid, a resilient economy and the development of vaccines to mitigate the severity of the pandemic.

As of June 2023, the report found, Wisconsin had nearly 2.5 times more cash and liquid assets than short-term financial obligations — the highest ratio on record since 2002.

….

The percentage of state transportation fund revenues directed to paying off debt rose from 7% in 2002 to 18.9% in 2019. That share is projected to fall to 16.2% by 2025, thanks in part to fee increases and borrowing decreases, but transportation debt remains an issue.

“Going forward, transportation debt will likely remain an ongoing concern for Wisconsin unless lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers identify additional revenues for the transportation fund, make the general fund transfers permanent, or sharply scale back road projects. None of these options are politically appealing, making this an issue to watch in the next state budget,” the report noted.

A large surplus, ongoing needs for road projects, but beyond that: the surplus as a surplus has only a limited value to residents who have needs and lives beyond the influence of either state budgets or state transportation projects. A surplus for the sake of a surplus isn’t productive.

It’s closer to kleptomania.

See also Wisconsin Policy Forum, A High Water Mark for State Budget?


Memorable:

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Daily Bread for 4.16.24: An Open Wisconsin Supreme Court Seat in ’25

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with evening showers and a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:09 and sunset 7:39 for 13h 30m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1945, the United States Army liberates Nazi Sonderlager (high security) prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV-C (better known as Colditz).


Catching up on news from last week, as Henry Redman reports Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley won’t run for re-election in 2025:

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley announced Thursday morning she won’t be running for a fourth 10-year term on the bench. The announcement sets up a race for an open seat on the Court, giving conservatives a better shot at regaining their majority after liberals gained control for the first time in 15 years in 2023. 

The Supreme Court race last year, which was won handily by Justice Janet Protasiewicz over former Justice Dan Kelly, broke national records for campaign spending. In recent years, the Court has been dominated by narrow 4-3 decisions — including cases to affirm President Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020, declare absentee ballot drop boxes illegal and strike down the Republican gerrymander of the state’s political maps. The Court is also expected to soon determine the legality of abortion in the state. 

Bradley won her last re-election campaign by 16 points, yet with the Court’s increasing importance in deciding statewide issues in a state with divided government, the 2025 race is likely to be contentious. Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, a former Republican state attorney general, has already announced a run for the seat. 

“From the beginning of my campaign, I made it clear that I’m not just running against one person, I’m running against the Court’s leftist majority,” Schimel said in a statement. “I wish Justice Ann Walsh Bradley well in retirement after decades of public service. I look forward to continuing the fight to bring integrity and respect for the Constitution back to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.” 

It would be surprising if the race didn’t see a couple of candidates from each of the state’s main ideological camps. The most reasonable forecast (and it’s an obvious point) is that an open seat in ’25 will attract as much interest and campaign spending as the race in ’23.


Lawmakers brawl in nation of Georgia’s parliament:

Georgian lawmakers came to blows in parliament as ruling party legislators looked set to advance a controversial bill on “foreign agents” that has been criticized by Western countries and sparked protests at home.

Daily Bread for 4.15.24: Another Vanity Candidate

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 6:10 and sunset 7:38 for 13h 27m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 47.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1861, Wisconsin Governor Alexander W. Randall received a telegram from Washington requesting one regiment of 780 men to serve the Union for three months in the Civil War. Within a week, ten companies from Kenosha, Beloit, Horican, Fond du Lac, Madison, and Milwaukee were ready.


The fall election in Wisconsin is expected to be competitive for presidential and U.S. Senate candidates. Perhaps it will be. A competitive United States Senate race, however, requires two capable candidates, not one capable candidate and a vanity candidate who sounds like he fell from a turnip truck yesterday. Nikki McCann Ramirez reports Trump-Endorsed Senate Candidate Questions if Nursing Home Residents Are Alive Enough to Vote (“If you’re in a nursing home, you only have five, six-month life expectancy,” Eric Hovde said in an interview earlier this month):

During an April 5 interview on The Guy Benson Show, Hovde, a Republican running to unseat Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, claimed that it was suspicious that some nursing homes in Wisconsin had “100-percent voting” percentages.  “Well, if you’re in a nursing home, you only have five, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote and you had children, adult children showing up saying, ‘Who voted for my 85 or 90-year-old father or mother?'” Hovde told Benson. 

Hovde, whose comments were first reported by Heartland Signal, is not entirely correct in his assessment of nursing home life expectancy. While it’s true that some residents die within months of entering assisted living, many live comfortably for years in long-term residential care, while others voluntarily leave nursing homes for a multitude of reasons, including a preference for in-home care. 

Regardless of how long a person stays in a nursing home, the right to vote has no age-based expiration date. Wisconsin became a focal point for election conspiracies in the aftermath of the 2020 election, including through largely baseless claims that nursing home employees had fabricated or manipulated the votes of elderly patients. 

Hovde, a banker and investor by trade, made an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 2012, and announced his second attempt to win a seat in the higher chamber in February.

Hovde is trying to explain (presumably) that some nursing home ballots are coerced, but he’s green and awkward in mixing that narrow message with a message about life expectancy. An experienced incumbent in a competitive race would not have made a mistake like Hovde’s.

Like Tim Michels before him, Hovde’s a vanity candidate, the choice of established men who assume that other established men must, as though a law of nature, be right for whatever they attempt.

It’s quite the assumption.

See also Tim Michels 2.0 Eric Hovde Announces U.S. Senate Run and Eric Hovde Should Fire His Political Consultants and Hire a Therapist.


The Hop streetcar arrives at Milwaukee’s lakefront with a new route and stop:

Daily Bread for 4.14.24: Devil’s Lake State Park | West Bluff and Tumbled Rocks Trail

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:12 and sunset 7:37 for 13h 24m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 37 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2003, the Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.


Devil’s Lake State Park | West Bluff and Tumbled Rocks Trail:

The Marks of Curiosity channel presents a trip to Devil’s Lake:

The West Bluff Trail is one of the best at Devil’s Lake State Park located near Baraboo, Wisconsin. This beautiful landscape has been carved by ice sheets from the last ice age and an awesome blue lake remains. Part of the Wisconsin State Park system, Devil’s Lake is one of the most popular in the state and for good reason. Swimming, hiking, rock climbing, and photography are just a few of the activities one can enjoy. Devil’s Lake include two sandy beaches named the North Beach and South Beach. Swimming, kayaking, canoeing, scuba diving is popular at these locations. A 2.4 mile hiking loop can be combined from the West Bluff Trail and the Tumbled Rocks Trails.


Happy stories, including of 100 students who orchestrate a moving surprise for 99-year-old WWII veteran:

Daily Bread for 4.12.24: So Much for Conservative Populism Before MAGA

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 58. Sunrise is 6:15 and sunset 7:34 for 13h 19m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 18.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office; Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes President upon Roosevelt’s death.


When Rep. Mike Gallagher decided to resign from Congress, two longstanding conservative populists announced they were running for the open 8th Congressional District seat. See Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher Heads for the Exits and Rep. Mike Gallagher Knows that MAGA Will Be Someone Else’s Headache Soon. The two tenured WISGOP populists running in that district have now learned that tenure as conservatives doesn’t matter. It’s sycophancy to Mr. Trump that matters:

With the support of former President Donald Trump, former gas station owner Tony Wied of De Pere entered the race this week for Wisconsin’s open 8th Congressional District — making him the third Republican candidate to announce. 

Wied, who owned six Dino Stop gas stations and convenience stores in Wisconsin until he sold them in 2022, is positioning himself as an outsider, who would look to deliver the “America First change this country needs” in Congress. He officially launched his campaign at an event in Green Bay on Monday evening. 

“Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District is hungry for an America First outsider,” Wied said in a statement announcing his campaign on Tuesday morning. “For too long, career politicians have failed to deliver the results we desperately need.” 

“I look forward to earning the trust of Wisconsin voters and taking the lessons I’ve learned from three decades of operating businesses in Northeast Wisconsin to Washington, DC,” Wied added.

Two Republicans — former state Sen. Roger Roth of Appleton and current state Sen. André Jacque of De Pere — had already entered the race for the seat, which is open following the surprise departure of U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, who is set to resign next month. 

Conservative populism is roughly synonymous with MAGA, but only up to the moment the MAGA leader decides otherwise. Afterward, as Jacque and Roth have now learned, past tenure as an ideological stalwart melts before the MAGA leader’s personal preferences.


Japan to give DC more cherry trees:

Daily Bread for 4.9.24: Competitive Legislative Races Return to Wisconsin

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 60. Sunrise is 6:20 and sunset 7:31 for 13h 10m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1860, on his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.


Wisconsin has new legislative maps, and although maps do not elect candiates, there’s reason to believe that the extreme gerrymandering begun in the Walker years will give way to a more representative set of legislative districts. In the New York Times, Julie Bosman reports (open link) Fierce Races Loom With Wisconsin’s New Political Maps (‘The new legislative maps reflect a near split between Republican- and Democratic-leaning districts. For more than a decade, earlier maps had helped Republicans hold power’: 

Yee Leng Xiong, a 29-year-old nonprofit executive, has been an elected official in Wisconsin since he was a teenager. From a north central county known for ginseng farming and downhill skiing, he has served on the local school board, the Marathon County Board and the village board of trustees in Weston, population 15,000.

But he is a Democrat, and running for a seat in the State Legislature in a solidly Republican district had always seemed a little outlandish.

Until this year.

In February, new legislative maps in Wisconsin were signed into law after more than a decade of partisan wrangling and legal battles. The new maps undid the gerrymander that had helped Republicans keep control of both state legislative chambers since 2012. The 85th Assembly District in Marathon County, where Mr. Xiong lives, is no longer a Republican-leaning seat: It is a tossup.

“This idea came to reality when the maps changed,” Mr. Xiong said in an interview last month.

….

The state’s residents have long been a close mix of Democrats and Republicans, which makes Wisconsin a crucial swing state in presidential elections and means statewide races are often fiercely contested. The reshaping of the maps is expected to suddenly return many legislative races to the realm of true competition as well.

After more than a decade of languishing in the minority in the State Legislature, Democrats are now in a position to vie for political power with the Republicans, who currently hold about two-thirds of the seats in both the Senate and the Assembly.

Competitive races do not assure outcomes — they are, after all, competitive not prohibitive races. And yet, and yet, competitive races can work their will on candidates, forcing them (if they wish to win) to take positions acceptable to the more balanced electorates in their districts.

It’s been a long time since most WISGOP legislative candidates had to compete earnestly in their districts. They’re going to have to learn compromise and persuasion all over again.

Not so easy for those legislators who’ve lived a troll’s life for a decade.


Daily Bread for 4.2.24: Wisconsin’s Economy and Perceptions of It

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:32 and sunset 7:23 for 12h 50m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, defeat at the Third Battle of Petersburg forces the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate government to abandon Richmond, Virginia.


An improving economy will not reach everyone simultaneously, as quickly as one would hope, or even feel like it has arrived after it does. 

Of those not  reached (and worse for not having been reached), Natalie Eilbert reports Wisconsin’s homeless rate edges upward, after nearly a decade of a downward trend:

Wisconsin’s homelessness population is on the rise for the first time in a decade, a trend that will likely grow as federal pandemic-relief programs end and living costs continue to surge.

The trend, in a report by Wisconsin Policy Forum released Wednesday, appears to be driven by the economic hardships and layoffs that have become synonymous with the pandemic, and consequently, the jump in housing costs in the pandemic’s aftermath.

COVID-19 relief dollars managed to head off the pandemic’s impact on Wisconsin’s homeless rate, but that quickly changed when relief dollars expired and eviction moratoriums lifted, said Don Cramer, the Wisconsin Policy Forum researcher who authored Wednesday’s report.

….

That translated to a 13% increase in Wisconsin’s homelessness rate between 2021 and 2022, and another 2% increase between 2022 and 2023. To put this into perspective, 6,055 Wisconsinites were registered as homeless in 2014, but by 2021, that number had fallen to 4,237 — a 30% drop. As of 2023, Wisconsin reported 4,861 homeless individuals.

“The lowest (homeless) numbers in 2021 happened when the state got the most funding from relief dollars,” Cramer said. “When different aids start falling away, we see higher homeless rates.”

While Cramer attributes success against homelessness to federal and state relief funds, this approach (however successful, even temporarily) was destined to be limited by the availability of those funds. A funding program may be vital during an immediate crisis but insufficient afterward. To call upon economic growth to uplift the homeless, however, is to call upon powerful forces that do not reach everyone, or for those with several maladies, will not reach them without intermediate growth among supportive professions and sectors of the economy. (A person who needs medical care, even after finding permanent accommodations, needs an economy that produces doctors and the means to reach them. Productive and prosperous economies create diverse opportunities beyond mere employment for one population or within one sector.) 

For many consumers, Casey Quinlan writes Experts say the economy is getting better, but consumers don’t feel that way. Here’s why:

Consumer sentiment, a smaller survey [as against consumer confidence] conducted by the University of Michigan, also gauges people’s sense of the economy overall, the labor market, and how they see inflation. On Thursday, U.S. consumer sentiment jumped to 79.4 from 76.9 in February and 62 a year earlier, making this its highest level since July 2021.

Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in the report that this number is an indication that consumers believe the economy is “holding steady.”

“As the election season progresses and debates over economic policy become more salient for consumers, their outlook for the economy could become more volatile in the months ahead,” she added.

Kevin Kliesen, business economist and research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said consumer confidence and consumer sentiment are still far below pre-pandemic levels and that it’s a puzzle as to why when the economy has “been growing fairly strongly” in the past year and a half. But like Pancotti, he added that high prices at the store compared to pre-pandemic prices may be playing a role in those measures.

“If you’re like me, you look at something, and you go, ‘Oh my gosh. I remember when it was so much less before the pandemic.’ So I think that calls into question, probably, a lot of people’s perceptions of the overall state of the economy and importantly their consumer finances,” he said.

There’s sure to be a debate about whether perceptions of particular costs, for example, accurately reflect consumers’ general, measurable gains of the last few years. It may be puzzling that consumer confidence and sentiment are lower than an economist might expect, but it’s sensible to say that there’s likely to be a cause, important to those with low confidence and sentiments.

Perhaps higher prices, perhaps something else, but unlikely either magic or delusion.  


No sweat: Moisture-wicking device keeps wearable-tech dry:

Daily Bread for 3.29.24: Recall Effort Accuses Vos of Support for the CCP

Good morning.

Good Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 6:39 and sunset 7:18 for 12h 39m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1973, the last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam.


The Party expresses its gratitude for the efforts of ‘tacit’ fellow travelers everywhere.

There is now a second recall effort underway against Comrade Speaker Robin Vos. Rich Kremer reports Second recall effort launched against Robin Vos (‘Campaign driven by same organizers behind first Vos recall attempt, which appears to have fallen short of required signatures’)

A second recall attempt has been launched against Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the effort driven by the same organizers who appear to have fallen short of signatures in their first attempt to remove the powerful Republican from office. 

Burlington resident Matthew Snorek filed paperwork with the Wisconsin Elections Commission Wednesday. It states Vos “should be recalled for his tacit support of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a “lack of election integrity” and “flagrant disrespect for his own constituents by calling them ‘whack-jobs, morons and idiots.’”

The insults from Vos were directed at Snorek and others behind their first recall attempt, which started in January.

According to the WEC, signed petitions for the new recall effort would be due no later than May 28.

May 28th? Plenty of time! 


Against the Odds, the US Economy is Thriving: