Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 55m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 65.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1854, the first railroad reaches Madison: “On this date the Milwaukee and Mississippi railroad reached Madison, connecting the city with Milwaukee. When the cars pulled into the depot, thousands of people gathered to witness the ceremonial arrival of the first train, and an enormous picnic was held on the Capitol grounds for all the passengers who’d made the seven-hour trip from Milwaukee to inaugurate the line.”
Recommended for reading in full —
Mark Sommerhauser writes Report: Wisconsin local governments turn to wheel taxes as state road funding stagnates:
Local governments, including Dane County, increasingly resorted to imposing wheel taxes since 2011 to fund local roads, as the buying power of state funding declined, a new report found.
The report was released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum.
It found vehicle registration fees, also known as “wheel taxes,” were in place in 27 communities at the end of 2017 — compared to four in 2011. Wheel tax revenues in the same period nearly tripled from $7.1 million to $20.7 million.
Local governments rely on a mix of state and local revenues to fund the roads, bridges and transit for which they are responsible. State aid for local roads increased 15.5 percent from 2007 to 2017, the study found. But that failed to keep pace with the Consumer Price Index, which typically rises more slowly than road construction costs, according to the report.
Emily Stewart reports Harley-Davidson took its tax cut, closed a factory, and rewarded shareholders:
In September 2017, House Speaker Paul Ryan traveled to a Harley-Davidson plant in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, to tout the Republican tax bill, which President Trump would sign later that year. “Tax reform can put American manufacturers and American companies like Harley-Davidson on a much better footing to compete in the global economy and keep jobs here in America,” Ryan told workers and company leaders.
Four months later and 500 miles away in Kansas City, Missouri, 800 workers at a Harley-Davidson factory were told they would lose their jobs when the plant closed its doors and shifted operations to a facility in York, Pennsylvania — a net loss of 350 jobs. Workers and union representatives say they didn’t see it coming.
Just days later, the company announced a dividend increase and a stock buyback plan to repurchase 15 million of its shares, valued at about $696 million.
It’s a pattern that’s played out over and over since the tax cuts passed — companies profit, shareholders reap the benefits, and workers get left out. Corporate stock buybacks hit a record $178 billion in the first three months of 2018; average hourly earnings for American workers are up 67 cents over the past year. Harley-Davidson is an American symbol, and President Trump has trotted it out as an example of business success. But as it’s getting its tax cut, it’s outsourcing jobs and paying shareholders.
(When a corporation gets a tax cut, they’ve more than one option for using it. Stock buy-backs are lawful, and I’d not contend otherwise. It’s a confidence game, however, for Trump, Pence, and Ryan to dupe workers into thinking that particular jobs in particular locations might be preserved through the Trump tax legislation. They’ve not been honest about the possibilities – and consequences – of their own legislation.)
Paul Kane observes Republicans wanted a weak speaker. They’ve succeeded, and then some:
House Republicans made a calculated decision eight years ago as they began their campaign for the majority: They wanted a weak speaker.
So their 2010 campaign-style document — “A Pledge to America,” crafted at the time by a backbench Republican, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — vowed to reform the process and empower rank-and-file lawmakers to take part in drafting policy. Leaders were forbidden from rushing bills to the House floor and forced to demonstrate the constitutional veracity of any bill introduced.
The “Pledge” did not cure the disease of legislative dysfunction. But Republicans sure have succeeded in weakening the House speaker in terms of dictating the outcome of legislative battles and in exposing the current occupant to periodic eviction threats.
Now, eight years later, as McCarthy’s allies rally support for his own bid for speaker, one thing is all but certain: If McCarthy, currently the No. 2 GOP leader, ever does claim the gavel, he will almost certainly be a weak speaker worried about ideological threats within the House Republican Conference.
Laurie Goodstein writes ‘This Is Not of God’: When Anti-Trump Evangelicals Confront Their Brethren:
LYNCHBURG, Va. — The night before Shane Claiborne came to town to preach at a Christian revival, he received a letter from the chief of police at Liberty University warning that if he set foot on the property, he would be arrested for trespassing and face up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.
At first glance, Mr. Claiborne hardly appeared a threat to Liberty University, a dominant force in Lynchburg, Va., and a powerful engine in evangelical Christianity. Wearing baggy clothes that he sews himself, Mr. Claiborne preaches the gospel, lives among the poor and befriends prisoners on death row, modeling his ministry on the life of Jesus.
But to the leaders of Liberty, he was a menace to their campus. He and his national network of liberal evangelicals, called the Red Letter Christians, were holding a revival meeting to protest in Liberty’s backyard. Their target: Jerry Falwell Jr., Liberty’s president and a man who has played a pivotal role in forging the alliance between white evangelicals and Donald J. Trump, who won 81 percent of their vote.
Mr. Claiborne and his group are the other evangelicals. The Red Letter Christians, a reference to the words of Jesus printed in some Bibles in red type, are not the evangelicals invited for interviews on Fox News or MSNBC. They don’t align neatly with either political party. But they have fierce moral and theological objections to those evangelicals who have latched onto Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.
See also Michael Gerson, The Last Temptation (“How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory”).
Consider the Science Of Why People Hate The Word ‘Moist’:
(The word’s never been irritating to me, but I’ve met people who find it truly unsettling.)