Good morning.
Tuesday brings a high of twenty-nine, and light show (with limited accumulation) to Whitewater.
It also brings Gov. Walker to town, at 10:15 AM, for a Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation Announcement:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
The Whitewater University Technology Park Board members have been invited to attend an announcement ceremony on Tuesday, February 5, 2013, beginning at 10:15 a.m. at the Whitewater Innovation Center, 1221 Innovation Drive, Whitewater, Wisconsin. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will be in attendance. It is highly likely that a quorum of Technology Park Board members will be in attendance at this presentation. Notice is being provided to inform the public of this gathering, and to confirm that there is no plan to conduct any Whitewater University Technology Park Board business during this meeting.Richard J. Telfer, WUTP President
“To whom it may concern’ – that’s too funny, really, but I’d guess the humor’s wholly lost on Chancellor Telfer. There just aren’t a lot of people who publish a public notice about a possible quorum, required to be announced under law for all one’s fellow residents, addressed as ‘to whom it may concern.’
But there’s an advantage in that notice, too: this endless of grabbing of public money, and the Potemkin Village that is the Tech Park and Innovation Center, would not have been possible without Telfer. The city would have made far fewer mistakes, wasted far less grant money, taken on far less public debt, and inspired far fewer ridiculously exaggerated press stories, had Telfer not pushed crony capitalist ‘partnerships,’ ‘innovations,’ etc.
There’s much more to write about the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, yet to come.
Later today, at 6:30 PM, Common Council meets.
On this day in 1937, Pres. Roosevelt announced his (later failed) court-packing scheme:
The President suddenly, at noon today, cut through the tangle of proposals made by his Congressional leaders to “bring legislative and judicial action into closer harmony” with a broadaxe message to Congress recommending the passage of statutes to effect drastic Federal court reforms.
The message- prepared in a small group and with deepest secrecy — was accompanied by a letter from the Attorney General and by a bill drawn at the Department of Justice, which would permit an increase in the membership of the Supreme Court from nine to a maximum of fifteen if judges reaching the age of 70 declined to retire; add a total of not more than fifty judges to all classes of the Federal courts; send appeals from lower court decisions on constitutional questions, direct to the Supreme Court, and require that government attorneys be heard before any lower-court injunction issue against the enforcement of any act of Congress.
Avoiding both the devices of constitutional amendment and statutory limitation of Supreme Court powers, which were favored by his usual spokesmen in Congress, the President endorsed an ingenious plan which will on passage give him the power to name six new justices of the Supreme Court.
On February 5, 1849, the University of Wisconsin opens:
1849 – University of Wisconsin opens
On this day in 1849 the University of Wisconsin began with 20 students led by Professor John W. Sterling. The first class was organized as a preparatory school in the first department of the University: a department of science, literature, and the arts. The university was initially housed at the Madison Female Academy building, which had been provided free of charge by the city. The course of study was English grammar; arithmetic; ancient and modern geography; elements of history; algebra; Caesar’s Commentaries; the Aeneid of Virgil (six books); Sallust; select orations of Cicero; Greek; the Anabasis of Xenophon; antiquities of Greece and Rome; penmanship, reading, composition and declamation. Also offered were book-keeping, geometry, and surveying. Tuition was “twenty dollars per scholar, per annum.” For a detailed recollection of early UW-Madison life, see the memoirs of Mrs. W.F. Allen [Source: History of the University of Wisconsin, Reuben Gold Thwaites, 1900]
Google-a-Day offers a science question: “What element on the periodic table is named after the European capital where it was discovered in 1923?”