FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread for 10.5.20

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:58 AM and sunset 6:27 PM, for 11h 29m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Today is the one thousand four hundred twenty-seventh day. 

 On this day in 1846, Wisconsin’s first state Constitutional Convention meets in Madison.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Christopher Rugaber and Alexandra Olson report Long-term jobless caught in a squeeze that imperils recovery:

On Friday, the government reported that employers added 661,000 jobs in September, normally a healthy gain. Yet it marked the third straight monthly slowdown in hiring. The nation has regained barely half the 22 million jobs that were lost to the pandemic and the widespread business shutdowns it caused in March and April.

In a worrisome trend, a rising proportion of job losses appear to be permanently gone. When the virus erupted in March and paralyzed the economy, nearly 90% of layoffs were considered temporary, and a quick rebound seemed possible. No longer. In September, the number of Americans classified as permanently laid off rose 12% to 3.8 million. And the number of long-term unemployed rose by 781,000 — the largest increase on record — to 2.4 million.

“We have a real chance of there being massive long-term unemployment,” said Till Von Wachter, an economics professor at UCLA.

The nation now has 7% fewer jobs than in February. Yet the damage is far deeper in some sectors. The performing arts and spectator sports category, which includes Valiente’s industry, has lost 47% of its jobs. It hasn’t added any net jobs since the coronavirus struck.

Hotels are down 35%, restaurants and bars 19%, transportation 18%. Advertising, one of the first expenses that companies cut in a downturn, is down 9%.

Higher education has lost 9% of its jobs. Many classes have been delayed or moved online, reducing the need for janitors, cafeteria workers and other administrators. Normally during recessions, the education sector adds jobs to accommodate people returning to school to seek marketable skills or education. Not this time.

Aaron C. Davis reports How Trump amassed a red-state army in the nation’s capital — and could do so again:

The call that came into state capitals stunned governors and their National Guard commanders: The Pentagon wanted thousands of citizen soldiers airlifted to the nation’s capital immediately to help control crowds outside the White House in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Presidents have routinely activated Guard troops to fight foreign enemies, and in extraordinary circumstances have federalized them to quell civil unrest, using the vast power of the commander in chief.

But the June 1 appeal to states was different. President Trump was drawing instead on an obscure law, changed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that made it easier for governors to voluntarily send guardsmen across state lines for counterterrorism missions. His action was not an order but a request, essentially inviting states to augment the D.C. National Guard, which he controls, in a potential clash with civilian protesters.

The request had the effect of cleaving state militias along partisan lines, according to interviews and internal Guard documents. While red states jumped to answer the president’s call, governors and Guard commanders in blue states were incredulous. The result was a deployment to the nation’s capital that military historians say appears to have been without precedent: Over 98 percent of the 3,800 troops that arrived in the District came from states with Republican governors.

How Lobbying Became A $3.5 Billion Industry:

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