Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of sixty-five. Sunrise is 5:59 AM and sunset 7:46 PM, for 13h 47m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and her School Board in closed session at 6:00 PM (with open session beginning at 7 PM).
On this day in 1970, the Milwaukee Brewers are founded: “On this date the Milwaukee Brewers, Inc., an organization formed by Allan H. “Bud” Selig and Edmund Fitzgerald, acquired the Seattle Pilots franchise. The team was renamed the Milwaukee Brewers, a tribute to the city’s long association with brewing industry.”
Recommended for reading in full —
➤ Robert Samuels reports Wisconsin is the GOP model for ‘welfare reform.’ But as work requirements grow, so does one family’s desperation:
MILWAUKEE — The shock absorbers in James Howlett’s Ford Fusion were busted, but he and his partner, Nadine, packed their two children inside anyway. They were already homeless, and their time on food stamps was running out. They needed to fix the car and dig up documents to try to get back on welfare.
The suburban homeless shelter where they slept the night before was now in the distance as they made their way through the familiar blight of the city neighborhood that was once home. Howlett dropped Kayden, 5, at kindergarten and Cali, 3, at day care in a community center that stood amid the boarded-up houses and vacant fields surrounded by barbed wire that dot Milwaukee’s north side.
That’s when he found himself gripped by a new worry: His run-down Ford might be another barrier to government assistance.
In February, Wisconsin passed a law prohibiting food stamp recipients from owning a car valued at more than $20,000. Just how the law would work was still unclear to him, leaving Howlett to worry whether he’d have to choose between food for his family and his only car.
(The vast costs of government do not come from payments to struggling people who now worry about keeping a single car; they come from multi-billion dollar expenditures benefiting large, connected corporations and influential parties. James Howlett, and others like him are not influential parties, and easy to push about.)
➤ The Washington Post editorial board writes America is still unprepared for a Russian attack on our elections:
As this year’s midterm elections approach, the country is still unprepared for another Russian attack on the vote, and President Trump continues to send mixed signals — at best — about what he would do if the Kremlin launched an even more aggressive interference campaign than the one that roiled the 2016 presidential race.
In last month’s omnibus spending bill, Congress set aside more than $300 million for states to invest in hardening their election infrastructure. They have a lot to do. New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks election technology and procedures nationwide, reports that most states are using electronic voting machines that are at least a decade old, many running antiquated software that may not be regularly updated for new security threats. Though most states recognize that they must replace obsolete machines, not much has changed since 2016.
In the last presidential election, 14 states used the worst of the worst — paperless electronic machines that leave behind no physical record of cast votes. Though these machines are not routinely connected to the Internet, NYU’s Lawrence Norden warns that there are nonetheless ways to infiltrate them, including through computers used to program the machines. Since 2016, only one state, Virginia, has phased out all of its paperless machines. Georgia lawmakers failed last month to pass a bill that would have upgraded the state’s voting machines. And though Pennsylvania is pushingupgrades, the transition will not finish until after November’s vote.
➤ Max Boot contends North Korea is conning Donald Trump yet again:
In light of all this news, a reader writes to ask: “Just wondering if you are going to update your March 8 ‘snooker’ piece.” Yes, I am. Here’s the update: Kim is a more adept con man, and Trump an easier mark, than even I had imagined.
These are not “breakthroughs” signaling peace in our time. These are indications of how skillfully Kim is maneuvering to preserve his nuclear program while relaxing international sanctions and dissipating Trump’s “fire and fury.”
Trump is the one who has made a significant concession by becoming the first sitting U.S. president willing to meet with the leader of North Korea — an act that will inherently legitimize the ruler of the world’s most despotic regime and feed its propaganda that even the world’s sole superpower feels compelled to bow before its mighty nuclear arsenal. What is Trump getting in return? So far, not even freedom for the three American hostages in North Korea — although Kim hints that this small concession will come.
➤ Adam Mount and Ankit Panda remind North Korea Is Not Denuclearizing (“The Trump administration shouldn’t get too excited about Kim Jong Un’s pledge to limit his weapons program”):
All this implies that Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign has not brought Kim to heel. Instead, Kim essentially made a declaration of his regime’s nuclear policy—the act of a confident nuclear power.
In truth, Kim’s announcement represents an opening bid that would allow him to keep his nuclear and missile forces intact. Despite his claims, North Korea has not, by most military and technical standards, created an advanced, survivable, reliable arsenal. Suspending testing would effectively prevent the deployment of new, more efficient, or more compact warhead designs.
But Kim’s proposed cap is only partial. He has said nothing about North Korea’s production of fissile material, which continues today at a frightening pace: The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has found that North Korea may be producingenough material for 12 nuclear weapons each year. In his speech, Kim made no mention of submarine-launched missiles, or of short- or medium-range missiles fired from land, which could threaten U.S. allies in the region. Furthermore, North Korea may circumvent its own limits simply by re-classifying long-range missile tests as space launches, a trick it pulled to scuttle the most recent agreement back in 2012. There are signs of ongoing work on a satellite launcher based on its most advanced ICBM, the Hwasong-15. In short, even if North Korea adheres to the commitments it just set out, it could still produce and test more warheads and missiles.
➤ Time to Consider Why Giant Goldfish Are Invading The Planet: