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City, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment, Recall, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.17.24: Wisconsin’s April Employment Numbers

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Good morning.

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.

Eric Gunn reports Wisconsin jobs, employment numbers remained strong in April:

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.

More to come.

A Mission to Better Understand Earth’s Polar Regions:

Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Politics, Recall, Speaker Vos, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.16.24: What Vos Wrought

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:29 and sunset 8:13 for 14h 43m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 59.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1842,  the first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail from Elm Grove, Missouri, with 100 pioneers.

Rich Kremer reports Dueling radio ads in southeastern Wisconsin call for, against recalling Robin Vos (‘Racine Recall Committee ad accuses Vos of blocking impeachment of top election official, while Wisconsinites for Liberty Foundation ad call recall organizers ‘out-of-state creeps’)

Conservative activists trying for a second time this year to remove Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos from office have launched a $50,000 ad campaign encouraging residents of Vos’ district to sign on to the effort. 

Meanwhile, a group aligned with the speaker is running radio ads calling recall organizers “radicals” and encouraging residents to reject the effort. 

The Racine Recall Committee’s latest radio ad accuses Vos of protecting Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe from impeachment and includes audio of him saying he would work to keep former President Donald Trump from becoming the Republican nominee.

“Vos is bad for elections, bad for Wisconsin and bad for America,” the ad said. “If you live in his district in Racine County, sign the new recall petition.” 

Here’s that radio ad against Vos:

Vos brought this on Wisconsin and himself by advancing conspiracists like Michael Gableman.

Somewhere, possibly in Whitewater, there’s someone (albeit someone impossibly dense) who thinks Robin Vos is a shrewd man whose name is worth dropping now and again.

No, and no again.

How unfortunate that Mad magazine is no longer publishing; Vos would have been a contender for that publication’s cover.

Why Does NASA Want to Explore Jupiter’s Ocean Moon?:

Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Law, Voting Rights, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.14.24: Absentee Drop Boxes, Reconsidered

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 60. Sunrise is 5:31 and sunset 8:10 for 14h 39m 29s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 40.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1953, approximately 7,100 brewery workers in Milwaukee perform a walkout, marking the start of the 1953 Milwaukee brewery strike.

Henry Redman reports that the Wisconsin Supreme Court reconsiders legality of absentee drop boxes:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday heard oral arguments in a case that could once again allow the use of drop boxes for the return of absentee ballots. 

Drop boxes were prohibited by the Court in 2022 when the body’s then-conservative majority decided in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission that state law only allowed for absentee ballots to be brought directly to municipal clerks, not to unmanned drop boxes.

Ballot drop boxes had been used in Wisconsin for decades, largely with slots or boxes at municipal buildings, however in 2020 they surged in popularity as voters searched for ways to safely vote during the COVID-19 pandemic. A Waukesha County voter sued the elections commission, arguing that it had given unlawful guidance to clerks on the permissibility of the boxes. 

Following the 2020 election, conservatives turned on the use of the boxes, arguing they were vulnerable to fraud and abuse. The boxes had been used all across the state, in both rural and urban areas, but conservatives argued they opened the state’s elections up to the possibility of “ballot harvesting.”

In the Teigen case, the Court found that because state law didn’t explicitly permit drop boxes, they’re not allowed. The decision prompted former President Donald Trump to again claim that he had won Wisconsin in 2020, stating that all ballots that had been dropped into the boxes were illegal and shouldn’t have been counted. 

Earlier this year, the national Democratic group Priorities USA brought a lawsuit challenging the Teigen decision, asking the now-liberal controlled Court to overturn its previous decision. Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul joined the case, arguing for the use of drop boxes, while the Republican-controlled Legislature joined to argue drop boxes should remain outlawed. 

The case now before the court is Priorities USA v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2024AP000164, L.C.#2023CV1900. Oral argument was yesterday at 9:45 AM. The question before the court now:

Whether to overrule the Court’s holding in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, 2022 WI 64, 403 Wis. 2d 607, 976 N.W.2d 519, that Wis. Stat. § 6.87 precludes the use of secure drop boxes for the return of absentee ballots to municipal clerks…

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s prior ruling on ballot drop boxes was in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, 2022 WI 64, 403 Wis. 2d 607, 976 N.W.2d 519.

Indonesia’s Mount Ibu spews thick ash cloud:

Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.13.24: Conspiracists of Thornapple, Wisconsin Eliminate Electronic Voting Machines

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see afternoon showers with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:32 and sunset 8:09 for 14h 37m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Planning Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1862, the USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

Molly Beck reports A small Wisconsin town eliminated its electronic voting machines, leading to a federal review:

A rural Wisconsin community’s decision to eliminate electronic voting machines has attracted the attention of federal investigators who are questioning how voters with disabilities cast ballots in the town of fewer than 1,000 people.

The vote by a small board overseeing the Town of Thornapple in Rusk County, population 711, to rely solely on hand counting paper ballots took place last year and caught the eye of state and federal officials after the April presidential primary election when advocates for voters with disabilities rang alarm bells.

The decision was made in June 2023, according to town supervisor Tom Zelm ? around the time of a discussion in the local newspaper over whether to abandon electronic voting machines and amid visits to the area by one of the nation’s most prominent purveyors of election conspiracy theories. Town officials would not tell the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel exactly what prompted the vote, which could violate federal laws mandating accessible voting options, and have so far not responded to requests under the state’s public records law for minutes of the town board meeting during which the vote was taken.

But Thornapple voter and Rusk County Democratic Party chairwoman Erin Webster says she discovered the roots of the decision are in former President Donald Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election.

In a recording made by Webster of an April 2 telephone conversation with town supervisor Jack Zupan that was posted to YouTube, Zupan tells Webster that the board voted to remove the machines because “we believe that there was a stolen election and the computers have to go because they’re full of error.”

Here’s Webster’s recording of Thornapple Supervisor Jack Zupan talking about eliminating electronic voting machines:

Erin Webster writes of her recording: “I called my Supervisor Jack Zupan after I voted and there was no voting machine at my polling location. The County clerk told me it was legally required per Federal ADA guidelines. I wanted to know why the town would not have the electronic machines, so I called him. I realized immediately I should record what he was saying.”

Here’s Zupan’s unfounded, conspiracy-based position about the 2020 election:

0:02: well we made that decision and we’re going to stand with it so why was that
0:08 we believe that that that there was a stolen election and and the computers have to go

Zupan’s full remarks are an example of motivated reasoning.

Thornapple, Wisconsin has work to do. But then, on far different matters closer to home, so do we in Whitewater, Wisconsin.

Plane lands safely without landing gear after circling Australian airport for hours to burn off fuel:

Daily Bread, Flop Sweat, US Senate Race 2024, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 5.10.24: It’s Not Going So Well for Hovde

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 67. Sunrise is 5:35 and sunset 8:06 for 14h 30m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, the Second Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia.

Rich Kremer reports Recent polling shows Baldwin leading Hovde in Senate race (‘A Quinnipiac poll shows Baldwin leading Hovde by 12 points among registered voters’):

With Election Day less than six months away, multiple new polls show Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin leading Republican challenger Eric Hovde in the race for Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seat.
That incl

That includes one survey that showed a double-digit lead for Baldwin, who has led among registered voters in every poll conducted since Hovde entered the race.

A Quinnipiac University Poll released Wednesday shows Baldwin ahead of Hovde among registered voters by 12 percentage points, with 54 percent saying they’d vote for Baldwin and 42 percent saying they’d vote for Hovde.

There’s still time, but Hovde is proving to be a weak WISGOP choice facing a savvy incumbent.

On Hovde previously: Tim Michels 2.0 Eric Hovde Announces U.S. Senate Run, SHOCKING: WISGOP SCIENTISTS INVENT TIME MACHINE, Eric Hovde Should Fire His Political Consultants and Hire a Therapist, and Another Vanity Candidate.

Bad Ideas, Boosterism, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Daily Bread, Flop Sweat, Foxconn, Low Standards, Misplaced Priorities, Special Interests, Willful Ignorance, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.9.24: A Reminder on Whitewater’s Fumbling & Stumbling Old Guard

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see morning showers with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:36 and sunset 8:05 for 14h 28m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1662, the figure who later became Mr. Punch makes his first recorded appearance in England.

FREE WHITEWATER has chronicled and critiqued the failed corporate welfare scheme that was the Wisconsin Foxconn project (links to many of those posts at the bottom of this post). Now, with Foxconn nothing more than a shell project vanished into the fog, there’s a genuine, private, multi-billion dollar Microsoft investment on that Wisconsin site: Microsoft AI center on site of Trump’s failed Foxconn deal? (‘The multibillion-dollar [private!] investment is expected to create 2,000 permanent jobs and 2,300 temporary union construction jobs’).

In Whitewater, an old guard of bankers, landlords, lobbyists, public relations men, etc., pushed Foxconn more than once. Any ordinary person of normal reasoning and sound basic knowledge would have seen Foxconn was a political scheme masquerading as a legitimate project. And yet, somehow, these same Whitewater types hold themselves out as experts on development policy. They backed a joke plan because they were — and are — unsuited to serious policy. See A Sham News Story on Foxconn. (The local business group was the ‘Greater’ Whitewater Committee.)

Trickle-down sloganeering is the best these local types have ever produced. It’s not a free market they want; small-town boosterism and cronyism haven’t uplifted household and individual incomes in this city. See A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA.

Some of these men, when at the Community Development Authority, let this city languish while promoting themselves. Even at the tail end of an economic boom, these gentlemen were walking around trying to figure out which end was up. See Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom.

Whitewater deserves better than this ilk. These men deserve an ongoing critique, and detailed review of their record, if they capture that institution again.

Here is the Foxconn scheme, that these local, old-guard Whitewater men touted, as succinctly described in a national story:

In 2018, when Foxconn, at Trump’s urging, announced plans to create 13,000 good-paying jobs in Mount Pleasant, Wis., he celebrated the company’s $10 billion venture as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Wielding a golden shovel, Trump touted the Foxconn flat-panel display factory as evidence of a broad manufacturing revival stirred by his 2017 tax cuts and tariffs on imported steel. “You know, 18 months ago, this was a field, and now it’s one of the most advanced places of any kind you’ll see anywhere in the world. It’s incredible,” Trump crowed.

The Foxconn facility was to have included dozens of buildings dotting a giant plot of land three times the size of New York’s Central Park. But the project accomplished little more than the destruction of 100 local homes and farms before the company drastically scaled back its ambitions.

In 2020, Wisconsin state officials denied the Taiwanese company special tax credits, saying it had abandoned its original commitment, employed fewer than 520 people and spent just $300 million. Local taxpayers were left with a tab of more than $500 million for site preparation.

By last summer, Foxconn had built four structures on one corner of the site, which were in sporadic use, according to locals. One large building that was originally billed as a manufacturing facility was being used as a warehouse, one former employee said. Foxconn at the time said it employed 1,000 people in Mount Pleasant building computer servers. The flat-panel display factory never materialized.

On Foxconn previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition,  Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirm Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment, Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them, Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair, It Shouldn’t, Foxconn: Wrecking Ordinary Lives for Nothing, Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?, Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!, Foxconn: First In, Now Out, Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no, Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke, Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing, Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls, Foxconn Notices the Noticeable, Journal Sentinel’s Rick Romell Reports the Obvious about Foxconn Project, Foxconn’s ‘Innovation’ Centers: Still Empty a Year Later, Foxconn & UW-Madison: Two Yearsand Less Than One Percent Later…, Accountability Comes Calling at Foxconn, Highlight’s from The Verge’s Foxconn Assessment, After Years of Promises, Foxconn Will Think of Something…by July, Foxconn’s Venture Capital Fund, New, More Realistic Deal Means 90% Reduction in Goals, Seth Meyers on One of Trump’s (and Walker’s) Biggest Scams, the Foxconn Deal, and Adding the Amounts Spent for Foxconn (So Far).

Boosterism, Catspaw, City, Conflicts of Interest, Daily Bread, Ethics, Low Standards, Misplaced Priorities, School District, Self-Dealing, Special Interests, Speech & Debate, Toxic Positivity, Tragic Optimism, Willful Ignorance, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.8.24: The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town (Adjacent Support)

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:38 and sunset 8:04 for 14h 26m 27s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1877, at Gilmore’s Gardens in New York City, the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opens.

In September, I wrote of The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town:

In a small town, and perhaps elsewhere, there are four tiers within a special-interest hierarchy: principals, operatives, catspaws, and residents. Only the first three serve, reliably, the special interest; the fourth is a large group of unaffiliated people that the special interests must persuade or dissuade repeatedly. 

A special-interest faction, or in the case of the Whitewater Schools an unresponsive board and superintendent, depends on the reliable service of the first three groups (principals, operatives, and catspaws). Some residents, however, may be counted on now and again to support special-interest or insider-group actions. These kinds of residents offer hit-or-miss support. I’ll list a few of them, readily recognizable in Whitewater and towns across the world.

Boosterism and Toxic Positivity. There are always a few residents who feel that criticism is a crime, an offense against man and God, and so must not be tolerated. The boosters feel that accentuating the positive, and burying the negative, is a legitimate (indeed necessary) pursuit. You’ll see them patrol social media looking to rebuke others who offer sincere criticism.

The delusional are sufferers of toxic positivity; the most acute cases are simply lickspittles.

Many of these types are a few moments away from screaming ‘love it or leave it.’ All of those who would do so are ignorant of their own country’s proud history of robust criticism. Even the most degraded hovel in medieval Europe, flea and lice-infested, had apologists of someone’s special schemes. Centuries later, in an America that is a world-historical state, there are still a few locals who live as though American liberties meant nothing, carrying on as though vulgar locals in a rat-dominated hamlet of 1300s Bavaria.

The indictment and conviction of the boosters: narrow of mind and small of heart.

These types, however, are useful as apologists and enforcers of special-interest schemes.

(A better outlook: Tragic Optimism as an Alternative to Toxic Positivity.)

The Concerned Passerby. When faced with a challenge to their position, special interest men cannot always count on themselves as principals, or their operatives and reliable catspaws. Cronyism and entitlement do not run themselves! They’ll look around, and find someone who seems unaffiliated, but is willing to do their work now and again. Although not reliable all the time, these types can be persuaded for a specific task.

They’ll seem like concerned passersby, simply trying to help, but no! They’re truly working to advance a special-interest or closed-government perspective. They’re harder to spot than boosters, sufferers of toxic positivity, or lickspittles, but still identifiable to ordinary residents. They’ll show up and profess simple concern, as ‘adults in the room,’ but after listening to them, it’s clear they’re rationalizing a nefarious cause (e.g., advancing a self-dealer’s plan, or shutting down a discussion).

Scoundrels. Special-interest men want to win, and that means bending public policy to their own ends. Closed-government types want to control public policy without public consent. In both cases, they pervert public life. They create a corrupted, degenerate form of government.

When faced with a difficult challenge, and when smearing challengers is too much even for principals, operatives, and catspaws, they’ll turn to scoundrels. The Oxford American Dictionary offers a plentiful list of synonyms that describe the type (e.g., rogue, rascal, good-for-nothing, reprobate, unprincipled person; cheat, swindler, fraudster, trickster, charlatan; informal villain, beast, son of a bitch, SOB, rat, louse, cur, hound, skunk, heel, snake, snake in the grass, wretch, scumbag, bad egg, stinker).

Scoundrels will say anything to aid a special-interest or closed-government cause, while the principals, operatives, and catspaws delight from a distance. (These main types know what’s happening, hoping it will benefit them, yet hoping it won’t be identified back to them.)

In all of this, however, the overwhelming majority of ordinary residents are normal & well-adjusted. It’s a only few, entitled and avaricious, or entitled and autocratic, who beset and bedevil a community.

NASA Simulation’s Plunge Into the Whitewater School District’s Central Office a Black Hole:

Conflicts of Interest, Daily Bread, Ethics, Misconduct, Self-Dealing, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.7.24: Another Fine Public Servant (Mount Pleasant Edition)

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy in the morning, partly sunny in the afternoon, with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:39 and sunset 8:03 for 14h 24m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1864, the Army of the Potomac, under General Ulysses S. Grant, breaks off from the Battle of the Wilderness and continues south, presenting a threat to Lee’s army and the Confederate capital city of Richmond.

Henry Redman reports Mount Pleasant village president dumps waste from private pond on public land to avoid cost:

The village president of Mount Pleasant is facing public criticism for using a village-owned property slated to become a public  park as a dumping ground for the waste created by his homeowners association’s dredging of a pond in his neighborhood.

Residents who live near the property say the president, Dave DeGroot, has used his position to skirt permitting rules for dumping and to help him and his neighbors avoid a hefty price tag to haul the waste elsewhere. 

….

Neighbors of the village property say that if they had tons of muck to dispose of, they wouldn’t have the ability to dump it all on village-owned land. 

“Clearly it’s a cost factor,” Kathy Deverney, who also lives near the property, tells the Examiner. “Mr. DeGroot said, ‘Hey I know where we can dump it.’ If in fact they didn’t pay anything, can any association that has a pond that needs to be dredged can get a permit and go dump it on that land for free? Yeah, that’s irritating. He clearly took advantage of the system, undermined the people who work for him.” 

How many times, in towns across Wisconsin, has one heard repulsive self-dealers declare themselves public servants? How many times, in towns across Wisconsin, has one heard repulsive self-dealers reward themselves with participation trophies for their service (as though they were soldiers)? A better description: old-timers disclaiming conflicts of interest while advancing conflicted interests.

Whitewater has had, and still has, a few men like this.

From World Cats Black:

Birds, Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.6.24: A Varied Bunting, a First for Birders in Wisconsin

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:40 and sunset 8:02 for 14h 21m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1915,  Babe Ruth, then a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, hits his first major league home run.

Paul Smith reports Varied bunting spotted in Grafton, first documented sighting in Wisconsin history:

GRAFTON – Birds were active about 6:35 a.m. Saturday as Bob Dohr of Pewaukee walked on a gravelly path atop the bluff at Lion’s Den Gorge Nature Preserve in Grafton.

A pair of northern cardinals, the brilliant red male and the tawny female, foraged near the trail. And nearby a smaller, darker bird but with a cardinal-like shape also showed.

….

What they at first thought could be an indigo bunting, a bright blue songbird that nests in Wisconsin, turned out to be a close (genetically) but distant (geographically) relative.

The men scrutinized images of the bird on their cameras, shook their heads at the improbability of the evidence but had no doubt what they were seeing.

It was a varied bunting, a species mostly found in Mexico.

….

The sighting was confirmed as the state’s first record of the species, said Mark Korducki of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology. The organization is the official keeper of state bird records.

Moreover, it is the farthest north the species has ever been documented, according to eBird, an online bird reporting system run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Only two other varied bunting sightings, one along Lake Erie in southern Ontario and one in Pennsylvania, have been recorded in eastern North America.

There are yet new discoveries to be made in Wisconsin, and far beyond.

The Sun’s corona in exquisite detail:

Big Lie, Conservative Populism, Conspiracy Theories, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 5.5.24: WISGOP Hires Agitator as Executive Director (Of Course They Have)

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 67. Sunrise is 5:41 and sunset 8:01 for 14h 19m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 9.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halt a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico.

The conservative populists, the overwhelming part of the WISGOP and the only faction of that party that counts electorally, decry every protest, disturbance, or conflict except their own. And so, and so, it is unsurprising that the Former Trump staffer who said to ‘fan the flame’ after 2020 loss [has been] hired to lead Wisconsin GOP:

The director of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign in Wisconsin, who pushed allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked, has been hired to run the Republican Party of Wisconsin heading into the November election.

Andrew Iverson will serve as executive director of the Wisconsin GOP as it prepares to host the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, the state party announced Friday. He takes over for Mark Jefferson, who left in February to serve as executive director of the Tavern League of Wisconsin.

Iverson, a graduate of Wisconsin Lutheran College, most recently worked as regional political director for the Republican National Committee. He previously worked on campaigns in Wisconsin for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil. In 2020, Iverson was the state director for Trump Victory, a joint operation of the Trump campaign and the RNC.

….

Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and the recounts Trump requested.

“Here’s the drill: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need (inaudible) help with. Just be on standby in case there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said in the recording of a meeting two days after the November election that was obtained by The Associated Press.

Iverson’s past work for Trump, Johnson, and Steil is a résumé built on a trifecta of misfits, conspiracy theorists, and the character disordered. See The Local Press Conference that Was Neither Local Nor a Press Conference.

Cat misunderstands its job:

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:

Conspiracy Theories, Daily Bread, Elections, Litigation, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 4.30.24: Another Product of Wisconsin’s Cottage Industry in Election Conspiracists

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:48 and sunset 7:55 for 14h 07m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first President of the United States.

One person can make a difference, for good or ill. For ill (where ill means filing lawsuits with bogus allegations of fraud), one such person would be Peter Bernegger. Alice Herman reports How one Wisconsin man plagued election offices and stoked mistrust (‘Peter Bernegger has brought at least 18 lawsuits against election clerks and offices over alleged fraud – now he faces criminal charges’):

Peter Bernegger has spent the last three and a half years bombarding local election offices in Wisconsin with litigation and accusations of fraud. He’s brought at least 18 lawsuits against election clerks and offices in state court, and on social media, he has relentlessly promoted his litigation and circulated false claims about election fraud in the swing state.

His campaign has recently landed him in legal trouble – Bernegger now faces criminal charges for allegedly falsifying a subpoena in connection with a lawsuit against the state’s top election office.

It’s an escalation for the 61-year-old activist from New London, Wisconsin, who according to court documents, interviews with election officials and emails obtained by the Guardian, has drained election offices of already-limited resources and stoked mistrust in the electoral process in his years-long quest to uncover election fraud.

In the universe of activists who dispute the results of the 2020 election and have spent years searching for evidence of widespread voter fraud, Bernegger’s star power is small. He has not served on a Trump campaign team, no high-powered conservative law firms have taken on his cases and his media appearances are mostly relegated to interviews with fringe podcasts on the rightwing YouTube alternative Rumble.

But his efforts prove that in a country where election offices are chronically underfunded and heavily scrutinized, a single, relatively unknown person can exercise an outsize, and detrimental, impact on election administration.

In response to a request for comment, Bernegger did not address the claims raised in this article except to call them “false and misleading” and potentially defamatory.

A few people have spent a great deal of time pushing election conspiracies in this state (Michael Gableman most infamously), that, as a consequence, have taken up a lot of others’ time. Bernegger is one of them.

3 zebras captured, 1 loose after escaping trailer in Washington State along I-90:

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: