Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with intermittent showers and a high of 56. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset 6:16 PM for 11h 11m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1614, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at the United Nations to protest a Philippine assertion. (No word on whether there were holes in his socks.)
While the best national prospect is lower inflation, steady inflation at the present level is the next-best option. That next-best option is where the national inflation measure is today. Jeanna Smialek reports Inflation Holds Steady, Key measures of consumer prices cooled in September:
American consumers experienced more moderate price increases across several key measures in September as costs climbed only gradually across a range of goods and services, the latest evidence that inflation is continuing to fade toward the Federal Reserve’s goal.
The Consumer Price Index climbed 3.7 percent from a year earlier, a report released Thursday showed. That matched the August reading, and it was slightly higher than the 3.6 percent that economists had predicted.
But after cutting out food and fuel prices, both of which jump around a lot, a “core” measure that tries to gauge underlying price trends climbed 4.1 percent, down from 4.3 percent previously.
Fed officials have been raising interest rates since March 2022 in an effort to slow economic growth and wrestle inflation under control. Inflation has been slowing for months, and the continued progress could add to their confidence that they do not need to lift borrowing costs more in order to wrangle price increases.
Whitewater has, before, seen improving national conditions that longtime local politicians and longtime local officials have failed to bring to the city. Whitewater’s special interests, operatives, and assorted flacks and sycophants have shamelessly left this city a low-income community by their own admission. See A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA and Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom (where longtime local types bemoan the lack of success that is their own fault.)
If the national economy continues to improve, someone in this city will need to ensure that Whitewater is properly situated.
That positioning will not come from longtime (in and out over decades!) CDA men and councilmembers. Yesterday’s shameless failures and excuse-makers will not bring tomorrow’s successes.
It’s wrong, fundamentally, to accord deference and respect to those aged policymakers whose main production has been in their own self-promotion. Some of us have done well over these last decades, but many of our fellow Whitewater residents most certainly have not kept pace. (This libertarian blogger has no personal complaints, so to speak, but sees all around many legitimate policy concerns.)
Those councilmembers or CDA men, old or new, who cannot see as much need to be shown the door.