Daily Bread for 9.3.18

Good morning.

Labor Day in Whitewater will see an occasional thunderstorm with a high of seventy-nine.  Sunrise is 6:22 AM and sunset 7:25 PM, for 13h 02m 27s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 45.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 

On this day in 1783, the Treaty of Paris is signed:

The United States delegation at the Treaty of Paris included John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin. Here they are depicted by Benjamin West in his American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Agreement with Great Britain. The British delegation refused to pose, and the painting was never completed.

The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, ended the American Revolutionary War. The treaty set the boundaries between the British Empire in North America and the United States, on lines “exceedingly generous”[2] to the latter. Details included fishing rights and restoration of property and prisoners of war.

This treaty and the separate peace treaties between Great Britain and the nations that supported the American cause — France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic — are known collectively as the Peace of Paris.[3][4] Only Article 1 of the treaty, which acknowledges the United States’ existence as free, sovereign, and independent states, remains in force.[5]

Recommended for reading in full — 

  Pawan Naidu reports Secret cash aided politicians who rewrote Wisconsin law to block claims of lead-poisoned children:

At age 2, Yasmine Clark was lead-poisoned so severely that she had to be hospitalized for emergency chelation treatment to cleanse her blood of life-threatening levels of the heavy metal.

At age 5, Yasmine was again diagnosed with lead poisoning. She suffered significant brain damage. Her IQ declined. She developed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

So, in 2006, at age 5, Yasmine became a plaintiff in a Milwaukee County lawsuit filed against multiple paint companies, including National Lead, now called NL Industries, which had made lead paint like that found in the rental homes where she was raised in Milwaukee.

She was among about 170 Wisconsin children named as plaintiffs in lawsuits against the paint companies. The suits sought compensation for medical expenses and other damages for what their attorneys said were severe and permanent injuries from ingesting lead-tainted paint chips.

While these children had compelling personal stories, NL Industries had something even more powerful on its side: Republican politicians facing recall elections in 2011 and 2012 who secretly benefitted from $750,000 contributed by NL’s owner, Harold Simmons, to an “independent” political group.

At the request of NL’s lobbyist, Republicans inserted a handful of words into the 2013-15 state budget that sought to halt such lead-paint lawsuits, including the one filed by Yasmine, according to a memo obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, a left-leaning watchdog organization that exposes corruption in government.

  Matthew Rosenberg, Michael LaForgia, and Andrew E. Kramer report Wife of Former N.R.A. President Tapped Accused Russian Agent in Pursuit of Jet Fuel Payday:

Ms. Butina’s [Maria Butina, whom American prosecutors now accuse of being a covert Russian agent] efforts to deal in Russian jet fuel, detailed in hundreds of pages of previously unreported emails, were notable not just for their whiff of foreign intrigue but for whom they involved: David Keene, a former president of the National Rifle Association and a prominent leader of the conservative movement, who has advised Republican candidates from Ronald Reagan to Mitt Romney. They also involved Mr. Keene’s wife, Donna, a well-connected Washington lobbyist, and Ms. Butina’s boyfriend, Paul Erickson, who ran Patrick J. Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign and who moved in rarefied conservative circles despite allegations of fraud in three states.

Their attempt to secure the fuel deal illustrates a reality that investigators have had to navigate in bringing a federal case against Ms. Butina. During her time in the United States, she surrounded herself not only with high-profile American conservatives but also with dubious characters who seemed bent on making a fast buck — and it was not always easy to tell one from the other.

….

The driving force behind the jet fuel negotiations appears to have been Mr. Erickson, 56, a former board member of the American Conservative Union who was accused of defrauding investors in California, South Dakota and Virginia. The other major players were the Keenes, who first raised the idea of brokering a sale of Russian jet fuel and then put Ms. Butina and Mr. Erickson in touch with prospective buyers.

  Nelson D. Schwartz and Steve Lohr report Companies Say Trump Is Hurting Business by Limiting Legal Immigration:

The Trump administration is using the country’s vast and nearly opaque immigration bureaucracy to constrict the flow of foreign workers into the United States by throwing up new roadblocks to limit legal arrivals.

The government is denying more work visas, asking applicants to provide additional information and delaying approvals more frequently than just a year earlier. Hospitals, hotels, technology companies and other businesses say they are now struggling to fill jobs with the foreign workers they need.

With foreign hires missing, the employees who remain are being forced to pick up the slack. Seasonal industries like hotels and landscaping are having to turn down customers or provide fewer services. Corporate executives worry about the long-term impact of losing talented engineers and programmers to countries like Canada that are laying out the welcome mat for skilled foreigners.

  Aaron Blake ponders How big is the GOP’s Trump-can-shoot-a-guy-on-Fifth-Avenue caucus?:

Matthew Miller’s reaction to the new Washington Post-ABC News poll Friday caught my eye. The poll showed just 18 percent of Americans believed President Trump should pardon Paul Manafort.

“This is the ‘shoot someone on 5th Avenue’ caucus, and it’s much lower than Trump would have you believe,” the former Obama-era Justice Department official tweeted.

….

That reference, of course, is to Trump’s famous 2016 campaign claim that his supporters would stick by him even if he pulled out a gun and shot someone on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The implication was that Trump could do pretty much whatever he wants and his devotees wouldn’t blink. It doubles as an ego trip for Trump and a handy way for journalists and pundits to describe how Trump skates past controversies, no matter how jaw-dropping they are, because his base shrugs. (Rudy Giuliani rekindled it somewhat in a different context.)

Which got me thinking: How big is the “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” caucus in America?

The answer I arrived at as anywhere from 1 in 8 to 1 in 5 Americans — between 12 and 20 percent, around where Miller pegged it. These are the people who seem prepared to justify and/or forgive pretty much anything Trump has done or even has threatened to do. It represents half or less of Trump supporters.

Here’s how I arrived at that number. [Analysis follows in full article.]

(Blake’s assessment is compelling.  Trump’s true hardcore – his diehard base – probably amounts to 20% or fewer of all Americans.  They’re cocooned, probably watch a steady diet of pro-Trump news, talk to like-minded supporters, and hear all sorts of stories about how they’re ‘winning,’ etc.  This twenty percent is on the losing side of a national conflict, but their intense support, and biases that confirm their views, leave them unwilling or unable to see that most Americans reject Trump and Trumpism.  It’s Trump vs. an America that works [that is, Trump versus a productive and dynamic America].)

   Consider The Logo Design Revolution:

The fields of graphic design and semiotics are inextricably linked. In this way, the first logo creators were most likely the ancient Egyptians, who designed images to convey socio-cultural values and established visual codes of representation. But as the industrial revolution began to give rise to consumer culture as we know it, logo design remained mostly utilitarian; images that represented brands often depicted either the product, the service, or something related to its manufacture, such as a factory.

Then came Paul Rand with his iconic rendering of the IBM logo in 1956. Many design historians see this as the definitive turning point in logo design. Shortly thereafter, Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar founded a design firm that would take things one step further.

“They revolutionized the field when they created simple, bold, memorable, and whimsical identities for companies in a time when soulless corporate modernism was the trend,” said Dan Covert, whose short documentary, 60 Years of Logos, details the contributions of the grandfathers of logo design. “And because of that, their work has stood the test of time.”

These days, said Covert, it’s rare to find a logo that survives five years before it is redesigned. “If you look back at the list of companies Chermayeff and Geismar designed logos for that are still around in their original or slightly altered form, that’s enough to argue their staggering contribution to the field,” he added. Among the companies that boast a Chermayeff and Geismar-designed logo: Chase Bank, PBS, Barney’s, NBC, National Geographic, NYU, The Smithsonian, Cornell University, Brown University, HarperCollins, Showtime, Mobil Gas, PanAm, and Merck.

In the film, Chermayeff and Geismar say that their theory of design reflects a company’s identity more so than it does a company’s purpose. “We interview a lot of people, and you get a sense of the culture,” says Chermayeff. “[In the interviews,] we’re not talking about design; we are talking about what they do, who they are, and how might they best be portrayed. It’s a process of investigation, creativity, and politics.”