Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny, with an even chance of a late afternoon shower, and a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:55 AM and sunset 8:04 PM, for 14h 09m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission meets at 7 PM.
On this day in 1974, Gerald Ford becomes president of the United States following the resignation of Richard Nixon:
“I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers.”[50] He went on to state:
I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it. Those who nominated and confirmed me as Vice President were my friends and are my friends. They were of both parties, elected by all the people and acting under the Constitution in their name. It is only fitting then that I should pledge to them and to you that I will be the President of all the people.[51]
He also stated:
My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice, but mercy. … let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and hate.[52]
Recommended for reading in full —
Adam Harris reports The Wisconsin Governor’s Race Might Be Decided by Education:
Wisconsin, a state where candidates are jumping over each other to highlight the education bonafides of their campaigns, will be a significant test case. In June, Governor Walker told the Wisconsin State Journal that he’s “a pro-education governor … I’m going to continue to be a pro-education governor and build off of that.” He has boasted that the state has frozen tuition at the University of Wisconsin-system campuses for the last six years. And he has a stated goal of getting Wisconsin to have the highest high-school graduation rate in the country by 2023—it currently ranks ninth, down seven spots from 2011. And the Democratic primary field is no different. All the candidates support increased funding for schools, and Kelda Roys, a lawyer running for the state’s highest office, has advocated for guaranteed early-childhood education and free two-year college for all residents.
For his part, Evers has had virtually every school-related job you can imagine: He’s been a teacher, principal, and superintendent over his more than three decades in education. Running for governor was the farthest thing from his mind just a short few years ago, he says. But that changed after he won a third term as the state’s superintendent of public instruction. “It was clear to me that as much as I love my job as state superintendent—I think it’s a very important one—there are things that I just cannot accomplish for the kids of this state in my present role,” he told me. “And I don’t believe that Scott Walker will deliver on any promise he has around education.”
He offered a more blunt assessment of his motivations during his party’s state convention. “I am running for governor because I am goddamn sick and tired of Scott Walker gutting our public schools, insulting our hard-working educators, and destroying higher education in Wisconsin,” he said during his stump speech. According to a recent Marist/NBC survey, Evers is leading Walker by 13 points—and an Emerson College survey has him seven points ahead of the two-term incumbent—and he holds large leads over the rest of the Democratic field.
(It’s worth noting that although education may decide both the Democratic primary and the general election, Walker’s also brought a level of corporate welfare and crony capitalism to Wisconsin unlike anything we’ve before experienced.
In Whitewater, the Community Development Authority has been a tiny nest for these bad ideas. When someone like CDA executive director Dave Carlson gushes that he has more ‘tools’ in Whitewater than he did in his previous job, he truly means there are more government-directed ways to interfere in free markets of capital and labor. That must be impressive to him, or he would not have mentioned it in an interview; no doubt it’s impressive to the local business league that has such influence over Whitewater’s ‘Community’ Development Authority.
In any event, these ‘tools’ are no more impressive than a sorcerer’s spells or a witch doctor’s potions.)
Josh Barro Indicted Rep. Chris Collins shows why members of Congress should not trade stocks:
Here’s what’s laid out in complaints from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (Collins has pleaded not guilty):
Collins sits on the board of Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian biopharmaceutical company in which he is also the largest shareholder.
On June 22, 2017, Collins learned that Innate’s main drug had failed clinical trials, a grave outcome for Innate’s financial condition.
Literally seconds after learning this news, Collins contacted his son, Cameron, who at the time owned 2% of Innate.
Over the following four days, Cameron Collins and several other associates of the Collinses proceeded to liquidate their positions in Innate before the public announcement of the drug failure on June 26, after which the stock fell 92%. They saved approximately $750,000 by selling before the announcement.
Innate is not an especially large company. As a result, per the SEC: “The sales by Cameron Collins, his girlfriend, and her parents, including Stephen Zarsky, made up more than 53% of the stock’s trading volume [on June 23] and exceeded Innate’s 15-day average trading volume by more than 1,454%.”
Perhaps it is sometimes possible to trade on insider information and have those trades go unnoticed amid a sea of non-insider trades. But if the nonpublic information you’re trading on is likely to tank the stock price by more than 90%, and your trades are going to make up about 15 times the stock’s typical daily trading volume, and your close associate sits on the company’s board of directors, it is probably not best to assume your trades will get lost in the shuffle.
Alyza Sebenius reports Hackers Already Attacking Midterm Elections, Raising U.S. Alarms:
At least three congressional candidates have already been hit with phishing attacks that strongly resemble Russian sabotage in the 2016 campaign. Among them was Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat in one of the year’s most hotly contested races.
Facebook has shut down dozens of accounts and pages to stop what appeared to be a coordinated disinformation campaign.
Three months ahead of the election, President Donald Trump’s top national security officials are sounding the alarm. Five of them went to the White House podium last week to warn of interference and outline the government’s preparations, even as Trump himself continues to publicly raise doubts about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election that he won. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, warned that a major Russian effort to undermine the November election is “only one keyboard click away.”
(It’s worth noting that Trump, himself, isn’t sending an alarm about hacking; on the contrary, he shows no worry at all.)
Bill Glauber reports Wisconsin U.S. Senate race: Leah Vukmir blasts Kevin Nicholson as both claim to be top backer of Donald Trump:
With the primary election just days away, Leah Vukmir came out swinging against charges that she was a latecomer in supporting President Donald Trump.
In unusually blunt terms, Vukmir took issue with a digital ad by her rival Kevin Nicholson and criticized a third-party group that has attacked her with millions of dollars in spending during the heated Republican primary for U.S. Senate.
Vukmir’s counterattack came after last week’s release of a March 2016 video in which she called Trump “offensive to everyone” and held her nose while describing what Republicans thought of the idea of voting for him.
(A race to be Trump’s top backer is a race to the bottom.)
So, How Do Cochlear Implants Work?: