Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon showers with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:41 and sunset 7:17 for 12h 36m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
One could say better late than never, but Speaker Robin Vos’s better-late-than-never recognition of Michael Gableman’s misconduct comes only after years of conspiracy-mongering. Anya van Wagtendonk report Vos: Gableman, leader of failed 2020 election probe, should be ‘disbarred’ (‘Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, and fired him 14 months later’):
Michael Gableman — the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who led a pricey probe into the 2020 presidential election that turned up no evidence of wrongdoing — should be “disbarred,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said in an interview that aired over the weekend.
Vos, who initiated that investigation, told WISN-TV’s “UpFront” program that hiring Gableman “is probably the single biggest embarrassment that I have ever had.”
“I hope eventually he gets disbarred,” Vos, R-Rochester, said. “He should not be an attorney. Anybody who thinks about hiring him, call me, because I will tell you what an awful decision that I made to hire him.”
Well, yes. Gableman should be disbarred. Vos did make an awful decision.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:44 and sunset 7:15 for 12h 30m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1812, a political cartoon in the Boston-Gazette coins the term “gerrymander” to describe oddly shaped electoral districts designed to help incumbents win reelection.
A brief post today, about Boardmember Maryann Zimmerman to follow yesterday’s post about conservative populism more generally. (A more detailed series on the district and proposals to improve governance can wait until after the election. Too many people in this town have election fever, and it’s left them dehydrated and decomposed. Their malady is not mine.)
Anyone who has visited this site knows that this bleeding-heart libertarian blogger is, and always will be, an opponent of conservative populism, MAGA, Trumpism, or whatever one calls that ideology. Never Trump before Never Trump, so to speak. See yesterday’s example Rep. Mike Gallagher Knows that MAGA Will Be Someone Else’s Headache Soon.
I am also someone whose family, teachers, and professors did their level best to inspire in me a respect for principle, reasoning, and tradition (in that order). Any success that this pupil has had in that regard owes only to them; they had poor clay with which to work. All their effort on my behalf, over so many years, leads me now and again to see something clearly.
And this is one of those times: the claims and proposals that boardmember (and whistleblower) Maryann Zimmerman has made since December are not conservative populist claims. They are claims of no single ideology or partisan view. Mrs. Zimmerman may hold, as I think she does, conservative populist views. To the extent that she holds those views — but only to the extent that she holds those views — we would find ourselves in disagreement.
Some of her ardent supporters most assuredly hold conservative populist views. To the extent that they hold those views — but only to the extent that they hold those views — we would find ourselves in disagreement.
If in this beautiful city, the answer to Mrs. Zimmerman’s nonpartisan concerns and proposals is an answer directed in opposition to conservative populism, then that answer is misdirected, to the degradation of scholastic standards.
It’s that simple.
I’ve never met Mrs. Zimmerman; we may never meet. One needn’t have met her to grasp that she is willing to speak and write in support of her views when, by striking contrast, the current board president has done no better than to beg off every question with the false, self-protective claim that he cannot speak for legal reasons. (Those who know the law know that those assertions are not merely false but risibly self-serving.)
The district has a superintendent who not only won’t speak but has tried to prevent others from speaking. In Maryann Zimmerman’s recent claims, and in her composed defense of them, there’s no trace of partisan ideology. She’s been admirably clear and steady. Others want to see what’s not there; they are looking into an empty room.
These aren’t the MAGA claims they were looking for.
The United States, Mexico and Canada will experience a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Space.com’s Brett Tingley explains what you can expect. Total solar eclipse 2024: Everything you need to know: https://www.space.com/41552-total-sol…
WARNING: People should always use protective solar eclipse eyewear when viewing a solar eclipse.
Credit: Space.com | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, GreatAmericanEclipse.com
Monday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 56. Sunrise is 6:46 and sunset 7:14 for 12h 27m 48s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM.
Not every issue from a conservative populist (MAGA, Trumpism, etc.) is an issue of conservative populism. One presumes the conservative populists and other ideological groups all tie their shoes the same way. (Whether Mr. Trump, in particular, can reach his own shoes awaits video evidence.)
And yet, and yet, some issues are germane to conservative populism, including the shaky GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Of that shaky majority, Rep. Mike Gallagher knows that MAGA will be someone else’s headache soon. Lawrence Andrea reports 8th District Republicans criticize Mike Gallagher’s early departure from Congress:
Gallagher, who chairs the high-profile select committee on China, received intense scrutiny from his party’s right flank in February after voting against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and he announced his retirement just days later. His decision Friday to depart before the end of his term has only intensified that ire as some on the right see the move as deliberate to keep Republicans’ House majority slim.
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Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said last week Gallagher “should be expelled if he refuses to leave immediately in order to allow his district to hold a special election,” and Bruesewitz said he hopes Greene would move to expel Gallagher should he not resign earlier.
An aide to Greene did not respond to Journal Sentinel questions about her plans.
Gallagher’s office, meanwhile, labeled false the claims that his departure was a deliberate attempt to hurt Republicans, who will temporarily have just a one-seat majority after April 19, further complicating their ability to pass their agenda.
A spokesman for Gallagher told the Journal Sentinel that Gallagher’s move was a family decision and said House leadership had been aware of his plans for weeks and approved the timeline.
It’s improbable that Gallagher cares what Greene, Republicans in the 8th, or anyone else thinks about the timing of his departure.
Note well, Whitewater:While Gallagher’s departure is a MAGA issue (their politics have wrecked the House GOP caucus), some local issues that local conservative populists present in this town are not MAGA issues at all. They are, instead, issues applicable across the political spectrum.
Well-read people defending education need not — should not — conflate claims (too much synthesis, too little analysis?). (Of officials in the Whitewater Unified School District, on the board and at Central Office: they do not honor the instituitions from which they were graduated by conflating specific claims with general ideologies.)
Friday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset 7:10 for 12h 19m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1765, the British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies.
Three years ago, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration released a Vision 2030 plan, which laid out a roadmap for the state workforce in the coming decade. Because of the continued popularity of remote work, it called for consolidating state office space and for selling multiple state buildings in the coming years.
In all, state officials say Wisconsin could save $9 billion in occupancy costs plus more than a half a billion dollars in deferred maintenance expensive by cutting down on office space, according to an update to the plan released last spring.
There’s a hard-nosed (but short-sighted) attitude that says state office workers should sit all day at their office desks. As it turns out, those state office desks are in state office buildings, and state office buildings do not pay for themselves. If workers who do not interact directly with the public can do their work remotely, then the rest of Wisconsin should not be paying for office buildings for those very workers.
It shows a lack of foresight to say one is holding office workers accountable for their in-person attendance when that in-person attendance does not account for wasted money on state buildings.
The State of Wisconsin can and should sell office buildings that have become relics of a last-century service model.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 52. Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset 7:02 for 11h 58m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 33.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Last April the Wisconsin Examiner published an examination of the way that Native American human remains have been retained by public institutions in Oshkosh long after the passage of a federal law that was intended to speed their repatriation to the tribes that once inhabited the area.
The article included some startling details that demonstrated the callousness of the institutions, especially the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. But the university also managed to keep even more graphic information out of the story.
For example, readers did not learn that a Native American skull, collected in Oshkosh on the south bank of the Fox River, had been stolen in 1990 from an exhibit case on campus and “broken during the bungled burglary.” Nor did they read about the time that the remains of one individual went missing from an excavation where an assistant professor found 43 burials but apparently lost track of one “en route to the archaeology laboratory.”
The reason that these details, contained in inventory records that had been easily accessible at the campus library, were not included in my story was that during the course of my reporting university officials stepped in and placed the documents in a restricted area. I was in the midst of reviewing the documents when the university decided that they needed to be kept from the public on the basis of what turned out to be a completely bogus rationale.
Last month the university released a full set of the inventory records under prodding from the Winnebago County district attorney, whose investigation showed that UW Oshkosh had repeatedly and egregiously manipulated state law.
The DA’s investigation confirmed what I had asserted in a complaint filed in July, that UW Oshkosh had made a mockery of the state’s public records law, slow-walking responses, making up excuses for redacting information and misapplying doctrines like the attorney-client privilege. Among other things, I pointed out, UWO had withheld documents from me that it had released to another news organization and claimed that it had the right to keep from me a copy of an email that I myself had written.
(Emphasis added.)
Again and again: public officials in public institutions conducting public business aren’t entitled to private avenues of concealment. Officials who would like private protections can find those defenses just as soon as they return to private life.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 63. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset 7:00 for 11h 52m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Matthew Snorek and other activists said Monday that they submitted about 11,000 signatures to force a recall election of Vos, the powerful Rochester Republican who has frequently sparred with former President Donald Trump. Under state law, the Wisconsin Elections Commission has said it would take 6,850 valid signatures to force a recall election.
But those signatures must come from voters who live in the district Vos represents, which recently changed after Wisconsin’s old legislative map was overturned by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. His new district lines were part of a map that passed the Legislature, which was drawn and signed by Gov. Tony Evers.
According to Wisconsin Elections Commission staff attorney Brandon Hunzicker, recall organizers turned in a total of 9,053 valid signatures, but only 5,905 of those come from Vos’ previous district, the 63rd Assembly District. That would fall 945 signatures short of the total needed.
A memo prepared by Hunzicker for members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that just 32 signatures would fall within the boundaries of Vos’ new district, the 33rd Assembly District, which would fall well short of the required threshold. Even when combined with signatures collected from a third district containing territory previously represented by Vos, the organizers would still come up short.
The Elections Commission has asked A.G. Josh Kaul to request a ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
So MAGA is chasing Vos and Vos may need a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling to save himself from a recall.
Someone might want to push a little kibble sprinkled with Xanax under the bed while Vos awaits a determination beyond his control.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 66. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset 6:59 for 11h 49m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 6 PM and the Public Works Committee also meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 2009, financier Bernie Madoff pleads guilty to one of the largest frauds in Wall Street’s history.
Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) rejected the state Department of Public Instruction’s early literacy curriculum recommendation and, instead, chose to approve a smaller list of instructional guidelines recommended by the Early Literacy Curriculum Council.
The curriculum recommendations are part of the state’s work to improve the way reading is taught by shifting early literacy education to a “science of reading” approach, which emphasizes phonics and learning to sound out letters and phrases, and away from a “balanced literacy” approach, which focuses on pictures, word cues and memorization.
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For the 2024-25 school year, the council’s final list included: Core Knowledge Language Arts K-3, Our EL Education Language Arts, Wit and Wisdom with Pk-3 Reading Curriculum and Bookworms Reading and Writing K-3.
DPI, however, had submitted a longer list of 11 recommended early literacy curricula to the Joint Finance Committee last month for consideration. The agency’s list threw out the “Bookworms” curriculum, saying it did not include instruction in some of the components included in the Act 20 definition of science-based early reading instruction, and included the other three council recommendations along with eight other options.
The committee approved the council’s final curriculum list in a 10-4 vote on Monday.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 62. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset 6:57 for 11h 46m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
MADISON, Wis. — Backers of an effort to oust Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos from office over his opposition to former President Donald Trump announced Sunday that they’ve collected enough signatures to force a recall vote.
Supporters of the recall campaign plan to present signatures Monday to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, saying they have more than the required 6,850 signatures from voters in Vos’ southeast Wisconsin district.
“With more than 10,000 signatures on our recall petition, they’ve said it loud and clear: they’re tired of the status quo and demand new representation,” Matt Snorek, who started the campaign in January, said in a statement.
Vos has dismissed the recall attempt as a waste of time and resources, which he reiterated in a statement Sunday. He questioned the group’s tactics and the validity of the signatures, promising that a team he had assembled would “evaluate each individual signature.”
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 45. Sunrise is 7:12 and sunset 6:56 for 11h 43m 55s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 241 BC, at the Battle of the Aegates, the Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end.
Wisconsin’s employment and jobs picture got off to a strong start in January, setting records in the number of jobs, the number of private sector jobs, the number of construction jobs as well as overall employment, the state labor department reported Thursday.
“We’ve been setting new employment records most of all last year and continued into this year,” said Dennis Winters, chief economist at the Department of Workforce Development (DWD), in a briefing Thursday on the January numbers. Looking ahead, there’s “nothing, that seems to us, that’s going to turn things down much.”
Data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projected that nearly 3.05 million Wisconsin residents were employed in January. The figure is derived from a federal government household survey.
From a separate survey that asks employers how many jobs they have on their payroll, the BLS projected there were nearly 3.03 million jobs in Wisconsin, including more than 2.6 million private sector jobs and 140,000 construction jobs.
All four data points marked new records for the state, Winters said.
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:14 and sunset 5:55 for 11h 41m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.
PBS Wisconsin’s Here & Now aired last night a segment on Wisconsin’s new law on reading instruction. That segment is embedded below:
See alsoThe Wisconsin DPI List of Science-Based Reading Curriculums: ‘Wisconsin, and other states, have moved to a public science of reading curriculum as a matter of law. In this way, the course (for now) on the general approach toward literacy in early grades has been set, even if the debate has not been settled between different academic perspectives (the science of reading or balanced literacy). Adopting a science of reading approach is state policy rather than a local decision.’
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:17 and sunset 5:53 for 11h 35m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 11.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1799, Napoleon captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives.
Wisconsin’s Early Literacy Curriculum Council and the Department of Public Instruction have released their highly anticipated lists of recommended reading curriculums, as required by the state’s aggressive new literacy law Act 20.
Act 20, signed into law last summer, requires curriculum to be backed by the “science of reading”: a decades-old body of research that explains how the brain learns to read. It includes an emphasis on phonics, which teaches students the sounds letters make and how those sounds combine in predictable patterns to form words.
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.
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.
Sunday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 6:24 and sunset 5:48 for 11h 23m 40s of daytime. The moon is in its third quarter with 50.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
“It was hard to break through but it’s good to get out here for a good cold plunge,” a voice narrates, poking at the icy crust that still glazed the lake. Slowly, the camera pans to reveal a shirtless Hovde, nipple-deep in Lake Mendota.
Hovde, a Republican, is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin while also running a company that is not based in the Badger State. He reportedly shot the video near a home he owns on Lake Mendota.
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“So the Dems and Sen. Baldwin keep saying I’m not from Wisconsin, which is a complete joke,” Hovde continued, back hair fluttering in the frigid breeze. “Alright Sen. Baldwin, why don’t you get out here in this frozen lake and let’s really see who’s from Wisconsin.”
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin had a one-word response to Hovde’s invitation to go jump in a lake to prove how Wisconsin-y she is. “No.”
Wisconsin Democrats were not so amused by the stunt.
“If California bank owner Eric Hovde thinks sitting in a lake is going to stop us from telling Wisconsinites about his California bank, California megamansion, and California ties, he’s going to be swimming a whole lot for the next eight months,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Rapid Response Director Arik Wolk said in a statement.
Holy Moly, Hovde must be totally nuts a tad insecure to film a stunt like this. He doesn’t need political consultants — he needs counseling.
This Leap Day in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 43. Sunrise is 6:29 and sunset 5:44 for 11h 15m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1796, the Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain comes into force, facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.
A former Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) warden who served on the agency’s committee to create a new wolf management plan for the state is under investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for killing a wolf in his yard in December. He has claimed self-defense, but he posted on Facebook in November that he was baiting the animals with doughnuts and rice crispy cereal.
The warden, Patrick Quaintance, also sits on the Wisconsin Conservation Congress where he holds positions on the body’s fur harvest and bear committees. The conservation congress serves as an important pathway between residents in Wisconsin and environmental policy makers. In the past, conservation groups have complained that the body is controlled by pro-hunting interests.
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The investigation into Quaintance was first reported by Wisconsin Public Radio and the Ashland Daily Press. The Examiner has confirmed the investigation with the DNR and U.S. Fish and Wildlife.
A month before killing the wolf, in November, Quaintance posted a photo of a wolf from a trail camera on his property to his Facebook page. In the comments, he is asked what he’s baiting them with.
He first responds with an emoji of a doughnut before adding that he used “rice crispy.” Another commenter responds with “snap crackle POP.”
Because wolves are currently listed by the federal government as endangered in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest, a wolf can only be killed in self-defense. The hunting and trapping of wolves, including the use of bait, are currently illegal in Wisconsin.
Quaintance did not respond to a request for comment.
Quaintance’s career places a special burden on him: a warden, or former warden who respects the legacy of his service, cannot uphold the law by breaking it. As a smaller matter, it should be obvious that wolf-hunting with rice crispies is simply a weakling’s method. No bragging rights here, old boy.
