Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-nine. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:47 PM, for 9h 26m 20s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 73.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred ninety-eighth day.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee is scheduled to meet at 8 AM.
On this day in 1888, Wisconsin resident William Vilas becomes United States Secretary of the Interior.
Recommended for reading in full:
Jim Tankersley reports Shutdown’s Economic Damage Starts to Pile Up, Threatening an End to Growth:
The partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the United States economy than previously estimated, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday, as President Trump’s economists doubled projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week the standoff with Democrats continues.
The revised estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers show that the shutdown, now in its fourth week, is beginning to have real economic consequences. The analysis, and other projections from outside the White House, suggests that the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth and could ultimately push the United States economy into a contraction.
….
Mr. Hassett [chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers] said on Tuesday that the administration now calculates that the shutdown reduces quarterly economic growth by 0.13 percentage points for every week that it lasts — the cumulative effect of lost work from contractors and furloughed federal employees who are not getting paid and who are investing and spending less as a result. That means that the economy has already lost nearly half a percentage point of growth from the four-week shutdown. (Last year, economic growth for the first quarter totaled 2.2 percent.)
(Making America Stagnant Again.)
Bill Kaplan describes How Shutdown Is Hurting State:
Wisconsin dairy and other farmers are no longer receiving special payments because of the loss of foreign markets. “States like Wisconsin, which lost at least 638 dairy farms last year, are particularly vulnerable” (New York Times). Wisconsin Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin had added programs to the farm bill to help alleviate the burden of low prices and resultant stress. The shutdown has put everything on hold. Baldwin said: “More uncertainty and more stress. We can’t afford to wait months. We need to get this moving now.”
The shutdown also threatens FDA inspection of Wisconsin food processing companies (vegetables). Similarly, EPA inspections of state Superfund sites, chemical and industrial factories and water treatment facilities, are on hold. And, Wisconsin Native Americans are in trouble. The Oneida Nation said: “the shutdown is putting the health and welfare of our community and our members at risk and impeding our economic development potential”.
There is a classic move in Professional Wrestling called “The Swerve”. It is where the “heel” (bad guy) suddenly turns into a “face” (good guy). Could that sort of thing be happening with the prospective AG?
I can’t get over the suspicion that Barr is not who he seems, at least to Trump, to be. I’m wondering if he is a Trojan Horse, and is going to throw Trump a face-swerve.
Barr is a man who already has been AG. He is 68 years old. He’s not a Whittaker, for whom the job would be a step up. Barr has nothing to prove, and no rational reason to sully his rep by protecting Trump. He is certainly smart enuf to understand that If he lines up to protect Trump, it will indelibly and eternally shit-stain him. There is no reason for him to do that to himself.
All of which leaves me suspecting that his 20 page “job application” memo was put out there to bait Trump into hiring him, and that his unstated priority is really protecting Mueller. They have been close for decades. Why would Barr throw that away to protect a traitor who is all but certain to be mortally politically wounded by this whole tawdry affair? Absent some sort of kompromat, I can’t see any other reason that he would take the job.
I could be completely full of shit, but it is possible that Barr may emerge as a hero…
It’s curious, indeed. I agree with your assessment. Barr is intellectually and professionally qualified, whatever his politics, in a way that Whitaker obviously isn’t. Barr doesn’t need this job in the way that so many Trump operatives need their jobs to validate lives otherwise misspent (mediocrity, mendacity, etc.).
Let’s hope this is – from Trump’s point of view – a bad pick. If it should be so, then William Barr may prove to be a good pick for America, at least on key matters involving Trump.