Good morning. 
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:26 AM and sunset 5:46 PM, for 11h 19m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 86.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1972, the Pioneer 10 space probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a mission to explore the outer planets.
Recommended for reading in full —
Catherine Rampell writes The Senate parliamentarian’s ruling on the minimum wage did Democrats a favor:
Firing or overruling the ref won’t help you if your own team can’t decide where the goal posts are.
This has been obvious for a while. Yet Democratic leaders chose to ignore the discord rather than adopt a compromise policy that might be acceptable to moderates — and still achieve, say, 90 percent of the left’s objectives. Which are, presumably, to raise living standards for as many of the working poor as possible.
Raising the federal hourly minimum wage from $7.25 — where it has remained since 2009 — is broadly popular among both voters and Democratic lawmakers. There’s disagreement, though, about what level it should be raised to.
The “Fight for 15” movement, launched in 2012 by fast-food workers with backing from organized labor, cultivated political support for this round-numbered, alliterative goal. The movement has had successes in places such as New York and Seattle, and the left wing of the Democratic Party has worked to expand the minimum to $15?nationwide.
But this policy’s economic and political effects might look different in areas where wages and costs of living are lower. In Mississippi, for instance, the most recent data available show that the median wage is $15 per hour. So if implemented immediately, a federal minimum at that level would apply to half of the state’s wage-earning workforce.
It’s unclear how employers might react to a large mandated increase. Maybe they’d lay off lots of employees or reduce hours, as opponents of minimum wages generally argue. This would undercut the policy’s goal of helping low-wage workers. Or maybe employers would raise prices. Or demand higher productivity. Or accept lower profits. Or some combination of all these things.
Amelia Thomson and Laura Bronner write Police Misconduct Costs Cities Millions Every Year. But That’s Where The Accountability Ends:
As the country has witnessed episode after episode of police abuse, holding police officers accountable for misconduct has become an urgent issue. But despite increased attention, it’s still rare for police officers to face criminal prosecution. That leaves civil lawsuits as victims’ primary route for seeking legal redress and financial compensation when a police encounter goes wrong. The resulting settlements can be expensive for the city, which is generally on the hook for the payouts (meaning ultimately, most are subsidized by taxpayers), and those costs can encourage cities to make broader changes.
Successful settlements are also a helpful source of information for places that are serious about police reform. If cities and police departments want to cut down on misconduct and spend less taxpayer money, they need to know how much they’re paying for police abuse, and what kinds of incidents are most frequent and most expensive.