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Daily Bread for 8.31.21: Waukesha Schools Reverse Course on Meals Program

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:19 AM and sunset 7:29 PM, for 13h 10m 04s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 38.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1939, Nazi Germany mounts a false flag attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to attack Poland the following day, thus starting World War II in Europe.

Rory Linnane reports Waukesha school board reverses decision to cut universal free meals: 

Waukesha school board members reversed their controversial decision to leave a federal free meals program with a split vote Monday, following national uproar andlocal protests.

In an incendiary meeting with two lively overflow rooms, debate ranged from the finer points of feeding students to ideological arguments linking free meals to mask mandates and critical race theory.

Board members voted 5-4 to rescind their previous decision, and opt to participate this school year in the federally funded program that has already been providing free breakfast and lunch to all students in response to the pandemic.

The district had been the only eligible district in the state to opt out of the program, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

Superintendent James Sebert asked board members to reconsider their previous decision, noting the program would help families “experiencing situational poverty due to the pandemic” who might not qualify for free meals under the district’s traditional program.

….

Some said if the board reversed course, it would be giving in to a “hateful mob” and giving over power to the federal government.

“It’s time for parents and community members to start paying attention to the forces at work here,” board member Kelly Piacsek said. “When the federal government is responsible for feeding all students at all times regardless of need, they have ultimate authority and we don’t need local school boards anymore.”

Piacsek, who was interrupted by applause as she spoke, said it wasn’t “about food anymore,” but about national influences on local school boards. She likened the debate to those about structural racism and COVID precautions.

(See generally Krista Ruffini, Schoolwide free-meal programs fuel better classroom outcomes for students. The program Waukesha initially rejected, but has now adopted, has lower barriers of entry for hungry students. See Daily Bread for 8.26.21: Waukesha School District Fails Even Before the Day Begins.)

Slippery slope arguments are typically unpersuasive. Piacsek’s is notable, however, as a conservative populist concern with imagined consequences that have nothing to do with providing the most efficient means for offering meals. She’s concerned about what could come next, and for her, what could come next is a list of curricular or cultural changes to which she’s opposed.

Picasek didn’t complain about “human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria,” but perhaps the Waukesha School Board meeting last long enough.

Sometimes a discussion about a meal program is — and should be —simply a discussion of a meal program.

Why Uber And Lyft Rides Got So Expensive: 

Coronavirus, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.30.21: Ivermectin

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:31 PM, for 13h 12m 50s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 48.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1945, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur, lands at Japan’s  Atsugi Air Force Base.

Emma Goldberg reports Demand Surges for Deworming Drug for Covid, Despite No Evidence It Works (‘Prescriptions for ivermectin have jumped to more than 88,000 per week, some pharmacists are reporting shortages and people are overdosing on forms of the drug meant for horses’):

For the past week, Dr. Gregory Yu, an emergency physician in San Antonio, has received the same daily requests from his patients, some vaccinated for Covid-19 and others unvaccinated: They ask him for ivermectin, a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms that has repeatedly failed in clinical trials to help people infected with the coronavirus.

Dr. Yu has refused the ivermectin requests, he said, but he knows some of his colleagues have not. Prescriptions for ivermectin have seen a sharp rise in recent weeks, jumping to more than 88,000 per week in mid-August from a prepandemic baseline average of 3,600 per week, according to researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some pharmacists are even reporting shortages of the drug. Travis Walthall, a pharmacist in Kuna, Idaho, a town of about 20,000 people, said that this summer alone he had filled more than 20 ivermectin prescriptions, up from two or three in a typical year. For the past week he has not been able to obtain the drug from his suppliers; they were all out.

Mr. Walthall was astonished, he said, at how many people were willing to take an unapproved drug for Covid. “I’m like, gosh, this is horrible,” he said.

….

Though it has not been shown to be effective in treating Covid, people are now clamoring to get the drug, trading tips in Facebook groups and on Reddit. Some physicians have compared the phenomenon to last year’s surge of interest in hydroxychloroquine, though there are more clinical trials evaluating ivermectin.

The Food and Drug Administration weighed in last week. “You are not a horse,” the agency tweeted, with a warning explaining that ivermectin is not F.D.A.-approved for treating or preventing Covid-19 and that taking large doses can cause serious harm.

A recent review of 14 ivermectin studies, with more than 1,600 participants, concluded that none provided evidence of the drug’s ability to prevent Covid, improve patient conditions or reduce mortality. Another 31 studies are still underway to test the drug.

See also Daily Bread for 8.24.21: Ron Johnson’s Push for Ivermectin.

What The Next Space Station May Look Like:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, August 31th, 1 PM @ Seniors in the Park, The Phantom

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This Tuesday, August 31st at 1 PM, there will be a showing of The Phantom @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Action/Adventure/Fantasy

1 hour, 40 minutes

Rated PG-13 (1996)

It’s “Saturday afternoon” at the Seniors in the Park Bijou! 400 years ago a young boy survives a pirate attack off the African coast that takes his father’s life. Washed ashore near The Deep Woods, he swears to devote his life to bringing down piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, as The Phantom. His role is passed down from father to son, leading people to believe he is an immortal, “The Ghost Who Walks.”

In present-day New York City, The Phantom must thwart an evil criminal businessman from obtaining four magic skulls that would give him the secret to ultimate power.

Based on the daily/Sunday comic strip still running today. Starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Billy Zane, Treat Williams, and Patrick McGoohan.

If vaccinated, no mask is required. Reservations are no longer required. Free popcorn and a beverage re-instituted!

One can find more information about The Phantom at the Internet Movie Database.

City, Daily Bread, Right-wing Populism, School District, Trumpism

Daily Bread for 8.29.21: Trumpism’s Final Form

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 87. Sunrise is 6:17 AM and sunset 7:33 PM, for 13h 15m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 57.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1997, Netflix is launched as an internet DVD rental service.

 Peter Wehner writes Trumpism Has Entered Its Final Form (‘In today’s Republican Party, Trump is becoming what was once unthinkable—conventional, unexceptional, even something of an establishment figure’):

The GOP base may be identifying less and less with Trump personally—that was inevitable after he left the presidency—but it is not identifying any less with the conspiracist and antidemocratic impulses that defined him over the past five years.

In fact, the opposite is happening.

Not long ago, Trump was viewed as avant-garde, outrageous, and scandalous, America’s enfant terrible. His actions were viewed as so shocking and norm-shattering that he couldn’t be ignored. In today’s Republican Party, however, Trump is becoming what was once unthinkable—conventional, unexceptional, even something of an establishment figure.

In a right-wing movement that is home to a growing assortment of cranks and kooks—Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks and Madison Cawthorn, Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn, Mike Lindell and Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, Cyber Ninjas and QAnon, anti-vaxxers and insurrectionists—Trump looks rather ordinary. He wants credit for the vaccines that were developed during his administration, which mark a genuine medical milestone, but in some quarters of today’s Republican Party, that makes Trump suspect, too closely aligned with the hated Anthony Fauci, a dumbass.

The dark, destructive place the GOP has found itself in isn’t shocking. For more than half a decade, the Republican base—MAGA world—has been fed a constant diet of outrageous lies and conspiracy theories, not just by Trump but also by his allies in the party and the right-wing media ecosystem. Negative emotions such as fear, rage, and resentment have been constantly stirred up. Over time, transgressive behaviors became chic; “owning the libs” became the name of the game. What mattered was hating the right people.

Indeed.  See Man and Movement. 

In Whitewater, Trumpism will try but likely fail in the city, but try and succeed in control of the school district. The loss for the district will be considerable: right-wing populist control in the schools will bring speech restrictions on topics of race and health education, and afterward a push for an end to safe spaces for minority students. What seems impossible today will become the populist agenda tomorrow.  Populism is an insatiable movement —one successful encroachment against others will only lead to more.

How India’s Perfumers Recreate the Smell of Rain on Earth:

Coronavirus, Daily Bread, Medicine, Vaccines

Daily Bread for 8.28.21: Vaccine Testing Falsely Equated with Thalidomide Development

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 94. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:34 PM, for 13h 18m 24s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 66.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1845, the first issue of Scientific American magazine is published.

 Beatrice Dupuy reports Vaccine testing falsely equated with thalidomide development decades ago:

CLAIM: “Rapid 8 month tested vaccine? Thalidomide was a RAPID APPROVED drug introduced in 1957, to address nausea and insomnia in pregnant women. It was marketed in 50 countries before being withdrawn in 1962 due to malformations in newborns. Be careful with what is coming.”

AP’S ASSESSMENT: Missing context. There are different approval processes for the coronavirus vaccines and the drug thalidomide. Thalidomide was not approved for sale in the U.S. when first introduced in the 1950s. The drug did not undergo extensive trials as is being done with COVID-19 vaccines currently being developed.

….

Dr. S. Vincent Rajkumar, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who has studied thalidomide and use of the drug to treat myeloma, said you cannot compare the coronavirus vaccine and thalidomide.

“One was trying to solve the problem of sleeplessness and was marketed with zero data, no efficacy or safety or randomized trials,” he said of thalidomide. “The other is trying to solve the problem of a life-threatening pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and there are two randomized trials showing the vaccines are highly effective.”

“The fact that people were efficient and fast does not mean that any of the safety steps were skipped,” Rajkumar said.

Unlike the early trials of thalidomide in the 1960s, the coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have undergone several trial phases including animal and human tests. The vaccines have been tested in more than 60,000 humans and both companies showed more than 90 percent effectiveness. Trial patients reported mild side effects like muscle aches and sore arms.

Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, an FDA officer in the early 1960s, found that there was not enough safety data on thalidomide as U.S. clinical trials were still being conducted and helped prevent it from being approved for use in the U.S. During the 1950s, clinical trials could be conducted without FDA approval.

These fundamental differences in testing have not stopped a GOP candidate from linking the histories of COVID-19 vaccines and thalidomide. Brad Reed reports GOP candidate caught in a ‘blatant lie’ while attacking FDA’s approval of COVID-19 vaccine:

A Republican congressional candidate on Tuesday was called out for being completely wrong about the Food and Drug Administration’s past approval of the drug thalidomide.

Posting on Twitter, New Jersey Republican Billy Prempeh attacked the FDA’s full approval of the novel coronavirus vaccine by falsely claiming that the agency had caused several women to suffer from severe birth defects after approving thalidomide for pregnant women in the 1950s.

“Thalidomide was given to pregnant mothers in the 50s and 60s to treat nausea,” he wrote. “The result? Severe birth defects. The FDA approves lots of unsafe things. This is about profit not health. Do your due diligence. But hey, what do I know? I’m just some guy named Billy.”

….

While some American women did suffer birth defects after taking the drug, they took the drug despite the fact that it had not been approved by the FDA, as outlined by an article by the University of Chicago Medical Center.

“The FDA subsequently identified 17 cases — 10 linked to Kevadon that Merrell had distributed to 1,267 doctors under the auspices of its ‘investigational’ trial,” writes the University of Chicago Medical Center. “But the country was spared the broad-based catastrophe visited upon Europe.”

But hey, what do they know? They’re just some institution called the University of Chicago Medical Center.

SpaceX’s new drone ship will secure rockets robotically:

Conservative Populism, Daily Bread, Populists

Daily Bread for 8.27.21: Defining Populism

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with scattered thundershowers and a high of 91. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:36 PM, for 13h 21m 08s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 75.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1832, Black Hawk, leader of the Sauk, surrenders to U.S. authorities, ending the Black Hawk War.

 This summer, Isaac Chotiner interviewed Jan-Werner Müller, author of What Is Populism?, on a definition (or in Chotiner’s formulation, a re-definition of populism. Excerpts from the interview with Müller appear immediately below:

Given the ways the world has changed over the past five years, has your conception of populism changed as well?

My understanding of populism has always deviated somewhat from the inherited American understanding of that term, which goes back to the late nineteenth century, and the sense that it is about Main Street versus Wall Street. Partly against the background of a European understanding of politics, I essentially want to argue that populism is really not just about criticizing élites or being somehow against the establishment. In fact, any old civics textbook would have told us up until recently that being critical of the powerful is actually a civic virtue, and now there’s much more of a sense that, well, this could actually somehow be dangerous for democracy.

So it isn’t as simple as that. It’s true that, when in opposition, populist politicians and parties criticize sitting governments and other parties, but for me what’s crucial is that they tend to allege that they and only they represent what they often call the “real people” or, also very typically, the “silent majority.”

….

But it indeed does have two detrimental consequences for democracy. The obvious one is that populists are going to claim that all other contenders for power are fundamentally illegitimate. This is never just a disagreement about policies or even about values, which after all in a democracy is completely normal, ideally maybe even somewhat productive. No, populists always immediately make it personal and they make it entirely moral. This tendency to simply dismiss everybody else from the get-go as corrupt, as not working for the people, that’s always the pattern.

Then, second, and less obviously, populists will also suggest that anybody who doesn’t agree with their conception of the real people, and therefore also tends not to support them politically—that with all these citizens you can basically call into question whether they truly belong to the people in the first place. We’ve seen this with plenty of other politicians who are going to suggest that already vulnerable minorities, for instance, don’t truly belong to the people.

 

Long story short, for me populism isn’t about anti-élitism. Any of us can criticize élites. It doesn’t mean we’re right, but this is not in and of itself anything dangerous for democracy. What’s dangerous for democracy, and what I take to be critical to this phenomenon, is basically the tendency to exclude others. Some citizens don’t truly belong, and we see the consequence of that on the ground in India and Turkey and Hungary and in many other countries.

(Emphasis added.)

This tendency of the right-wing populists to exclude others leads them to the fallacy that the greater includes the lesser: in their thinking, if they can banish someone, so to speak, they can do whatever they want to him or her prior to banishment.  They do not observe traditional moral or ethical limits on their own claims or actions against others. They reject traditional expectations of self-control or responsibility if applied to them. See Jane Jacobs with Useful Advice on Responsibility (for Whitewater, Richmond Township, Delavan, Etc.).

A part of their approach — and this is true of Trump and his ilk — is that they accuse others of the very deficiencies so evident in them.  So, hysterical right-wing populists accuse their opponents of being hysterical, etc. Trump, himself, no longer recognizes the concept of lying if applied to him: he contends that anything he says is a legitimate disinformation effort.

A recent school board meeting in Oshkosh shows what happens when these right-wing populists don’t like a lawfully imposed regulation: Oshkosh School Board meeting postponed after protesters disrupt it, argument breaks out.  (There is a reason that the Fort Atkinson School Board had two police officers on duty in the room during a recent discussion of COVID-19 protocols. It was a sensible precaution.)

Although for now there are different kinds of conservatives in Whitewater, it’s a fading distinction —  every kind of conservative will have to adopt a populist line or the populists will replace him or her with one of their own, true-red kind. In effect, populism will not accept even different kinds of conservatives. (They see others outside their ranks in crude, simple-minded ways, conflating terms so that a single opponent becomes simultaneously a “liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist.”

(Note well, Whitewater: Using these four terms indistinguishably is a measure of a disqualifying lack of knowledge or of sheer indifference. There is, however, a fitting term for someone who so misuses these distinct categories: ignoramus.)

Can CRISPR cure Sickle-cell Disease?:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.26.21: Waukesha School District Fails Even Before the Day Begins

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 86. Sunrise is 6:14 AM and sunset 7:38 PM, for 13h 23m 53s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 83.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

 On this day in 1883, the eruption of Krakatoa begins its final stage.

 In Waukesha, the local school board has voted against participating in the federal government’s free school-meal program. Emily Files reports Waukesha Is Only Wisconsin School District To Opt Out Of Federal Free Meals Program:

But Waukesha school board members oppose the idea. At a May meeting, Karin Rajnicek said families that can afford to feed their children should.

“I had three kids, I had them and so I’m going to feed them. I feel like that’s the responsibility of the adult,” Rajnicek said. “I feel like this is a big problem, and it’s really easy to get sucked into and become spoiled and think, it’s not my problem any more, it’s everyone else’s problem to feed my children.”

Waukesha district CFO Darren Clark agreed, saying he doesn’t want families to become dependent on free meals.

“That’s my fear is that it’s the slow addiction of this service,” Clark said. “There is that concern — free is a funny thing.”

The board voted unanimously in June to return to the National School Lunch Program, which requires families to fill out an application to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Board members said going back to this program will still provide help to the families who need it.

The decision alarmed people working to keep kids from going hungry. Waukesha County Food Pantry Executive Director Karen Tredwell says school meals are a vital source of nutrition for children. She argues that participating in the federally-funded program has no downside for the community.

“My concern is that not only are they not participating in a program that could greatly benefit their students, there is not going to be any positive benefit to taxpayers in the county if they don’t participate,” Tredwell says.

As Krista Ruffini writes in Schoolwide free-meal programs fuel better classroom outcomes for students, the case for free meals (in the easiest way possible) is overwhelming:

The federal school-meals program is the largest form of nutritional assistance to school-age children, accounting for half of the food consumption among children who participate and subsidizing free or reduced-price meals for more than 22 million students in the 2018-19 school year (approximately 40% of children ages 5-17). Known as the National School Lunch Program, it has substantially changed over the past decade: Historically, only students from low-income families received free meals, but schoolwide free-meal programs—in which all students in a school receive free meals regardless of their own families’ income—are becoming increasingly common. In the 2018-19 school year, more than one-quarter of students attended a school that provided breakfasts and lunches to all students at no cost.

….

This framework allows me to compare changes within a district or school before and after CEP adoption, relative to other areas that eventually participated in CEP but did so in a different year. There are three takeaways from this work:

First, schoolwide free meals increase the number of school breakfasts and lunches served. Using administrative data collected from state departments of education on the number of meals served at each school, I find that this measure increases in schools where many students became newly eligible for free meals after CEP, as well as in schools that previously had high rates of free-meal eligibility. This pattern is consistent with the schoolwide nature of free-meal programs reducing stigma and facilitating greater access, as found in other work.

Second, schoolwide free meals improve math performance in districts where relatively few students qualified under the income-based program. Within these districts, elementary and Hispanic students experience the largest academic improvements. Figure 1 summarizes how free meals through CEP affect math performance among different groups of students in these districts with low free-meal participation before CEP. In this figure, the height of the bars shows the estimated impacts and the vertical lines shows the 90% confidence interval. I find that overall math performance improved about 0.016 standard deviations. Elementary students improved more than average, about 0.020 standard deviations. Finally, Hispanic students’ performance improved the most among all racial/ethnic groups—about 0.034 standard deviations.

F1 Selected estimates of schoolwide free meals on math performance

Third, schoolwide free-meal programs significantly reduce suspensions among white male elementary students. In work co-authored with Nora Gordon, we find CEP reduced the number of out-of-school suspensions among white male elementary students by approximately 17%. Our estimates for other elementary subgroups suggest fewer suspensions, but these results are smaller in magnitude and generally insignificant.

That improved math performance and fewer suspensions are found in areas and among subpopulations with low free-meal participation before CEP is consistent with the nature of the program. Specifically, schoolwide free-meal programs increase access for families who don’t qualify under the income-based formula—both families with income above 130% of the poverty line, as well as families that do not complete income questionnaires that determine eligibility.

These conservatives of Waukesha express concern for government spending, but they lack the judgment to distinguish between kinds of spending. The Waukesha School District’s chief financial officer sanctimoniously decides that children’s meal programs are the place to draw the line.

Narrow of mind and small of heart.

What It Takes to Fly The C-17 Globemaster III:

Coronavirus, Daily Bread, Right-wing Populism, UW System

Daily Bread for 8.25.21: Thompson Dares Nass in Front of 5.8 Million People

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 90. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:39 PM, for 13h 26m 38s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Committee meets at 5 PM. 

 On this day in 1812, the American frigate, USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the British frigate HMS Macedonian.

Devi Shastri and Molly Beck report Tommy Thompson spurns the GOP attempt to control, block COVID rules on campuses:

University of Wisconsin System interim President Tommy Thompson said Tuesday the System will not follow a directive by Republican lawmakers to seek legislative approval for COVID-19 rules, essentially daring members of his own party to take the now month-long fight to the courts.

In a statement and an interview with reporters Tuesday, Thompson said the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules’ attempt to control and block campus COVID-19 prevention protocols was “both wrong on the law and wrong as a matter of public policy.”

The motion, proposed by state Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, and passed on a party-line vote Aug. 3, requires UW to seek permission from the rules committee for policies such as those that require students and visitors to wear masks or get regularly tested for COVID-19. The committee, which is made up of six Republicans and four Democrats, could then vote to block some or all of the rules.

“Had this happened last academic year, the university might never have been able to set up community testing and vaccination sites, or even isolate sick students,” Thompson said. “It would have been a disaster.”

On Tuesday, Thompson said the System won’t seek approval from the committee and vowed to take any legal fight up to the state Supreme Court if necessary.

“I’m fairly confident we’re going to win. I have no doubts (of) that if the Legislature sues us,” Thompson said. “I don’t think they will, but if they do, so be it. I’m not abdicating my responsibility. We will contest it. I don’t want a fight with the Legislature, but we will contest it aggressively, whether it be the circuit court, the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court.”

….

Thompson said UW’s situation is grounded in different legal arguments than the Wisconsin Supreme Court case that struck down the statewide mask mandate. UW System’s independent authority to run the schools is enshrined in Chapter 36 of the state statute, he said.

Nass fired back Tuesday, railing against UW’s “Ivory Tower administrators” who he claims are using pandemic rules “to control every adult that dares to walk on their campuses.”

If UW did not comply with the rule by Sept. 2, he said, he would ask Republican state Assembly and Senate leadership to take legal action “to force the UW System to comply with state law.”

Nass’s rhetoric (or, to be more precise, the words Mike Mikalsen may have written for Nass) won’t be enough. Nass will have to persuade the legislature to sue to enforce its claimed authority. If they won’t sue, or if legislative leaders reach a deal with Thompson on Thompson’s terms, then Nass will meet the limits of his reach — a right-wing base, but no more.

Thompson’s position against Nass is institutional, legal, and (doubtless) personal, too: few outside Nass’s base respect him. Some politicians in a vocal minority are respected; Nass isn’t one of them.

See also Steve Nass: Troll-King in Autumn and Daily Bread for 8.8.21: Nass, Again.

Massive waterspouts spotted near Florida beach:

An eyewitness captured footage of at least two waterspouts spinning simultaneously off North Redington Beach in Florida.

Conservative Populism, Daily Bread, Medicine, Public Health

Daily Bread for 8.24.21: Ron Johnson’s Push for Ivermectin

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon thundershowers with a high of 91. Sunrise is 6:12 AM and sunset 7:41 PM, for 13h 29m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4:30 PM. 

 On this day in 1909, workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.

Bill Glauber and Mark Johnson report ‘You are not a horse. You are not a cow’: FDA issues blunt warning on taking ivermectin, drug promoted by Ron Johnson to treat COVID-19:

For months, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has been talking up the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin as part of a cocktail of repurposed drugs for early treatment of COVID-19.

Johnson’s push even earned him a week-long suspension from YouTube.

On Saturday, the Food and Drug Administration issued a blunt warning for people not to use ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

The move by the FDA came amid reports that an increasing number of people in Mississippi and Louisiana were self-medicating with ivermectin intended for livestock.

In Wisconsin, a handful of people have called UW Health in Madison after taking the drug for COVID-19, said Nasia Safdar, the health care system’s director of infection control. Most experienced gastrointestinal side effects after taking the drug, and called because they were worried.

“I would say that we do not recommend it,” Safdar said, “and it is a danger to use it.”

The FDA made much the same point in a tweet: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

Jonathan Yardley, an associate professor at Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, said ivermectin is used to kill worms in horses and cows, but is quite powerful.

There is no evidence that ivermectin will help treat or prevent COVID-19, said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “The clinical data is very weak and there is no confidence in it.”

Worse, Adalja said, some people are using the drug instead of getting vaccinated, and are taking the higher-dose veterinary ivermectin instead of the version that would be used to treat a human.

“I think the misinformation has been great,” Adalja said, singling out Johnson’s hearing for promoting a conspiracy that the drug is being suppressed.

He added: “I get some of the most voluminous amounts of hate mail every time I speak out against ivermectin.”

The same question about Johnson, posed before, applies now: Ambitious, Compromised, or Crackpot? The same answer applies: Whether Ambitious, Compromised, or Crackpot, Sen. Ron Johnson Doesn’t Disappoint.

Johnson’s push for snake oil cures may simply be an effort to undermine any legitimate medical research to which his fanatical supporters object. (Johnson, himself, may not prefer one bogus alternative therapy over another. His goal may be to ingratiate himself with those who doubt conventional medicine.)

America’s vaccines are among the most effective in the world; it serves enemies foreign and domestic to denigrate baselessly American medical science, and to push absurd alternative ‘preventatives.’

Dr. Amesh Adalja’s point about hate mail should not be overlooked. The right-wing populists are emotional, impulsive, and impatient. They disrupt meetings when they hear something they don’t like, and threaten advocates of views contrary to their own. They may describe themselves as possessed of ‘common sense,’ but to a majority watching them, the conservative populists look, sound, and act like crude, threatening adolescents.  (Trump, with his puerile insults, is the model for this ilk.) They prey on a reserved, reticent majority.

It’s a strategy that produces occasional local victories but frequent national contempt.

How Scientists Find, Tag, and Get Rid of ‘Murder Hornets’:

America, Daily Bread, Economy, Productivity

Daily Bread for 8.23.21: Productivity

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 89. Sunrise is 6:11 AM and sunset 7:43 PM, for 13h 32m 03s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Urban Forestry Commission Arboretum Sponsorship Subcommittee meets at 4:30 PM. Whitewater’s School Board meets for a workshop and open session beginning at 5:30 PM and 7 PM, respectively (with a closed session, to return to open session later in the evening). Downtown Whitewater, Inc. meets at 6 PM,

 On this day in 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.

 Heather Long writes The U.S. could be on the verge of a productivity boom, a game-changer for the economy:

The United States is currently experiencing a surge in worker productivity that could rival that of the tech boom 20 years ago — if it lasts.

As companies and customers embrace new technologies, making it easier for Americans to produce more with fewer workers, a growing number of economists say this is not a blip and could turn into a boom — or, at least, a “mini boom” ? with wide-ranging benefits for years to come.

Higher productivity is the economy’s special sauce. Productivity refers to how much output a worker can do in an hour. When workers have better tools or the help of robots and artificial intelligence, they can make cars or process data much faster. Higher productivity typically leads to more goods and services available at a lower cost and increases in wages. Without it, economic growth is sluggish.

The early data in this recovery is promising. Worker productivity grew 4.3 percent in the first quarter, one of the highest rates in years, according to the Labor Department. Second quarter productivity slowed to 2.3 percent growth, but that’s still nearly double the anemic productivity the nation experienced in the decade after the financial crisis — an average of just 1.2 percent.

….

Conditions are ripe for productivity to remain elevated for years to come, according to analysts from Goldman Sachs and the McKinsey Global Institute. As policymakers run the economy hot, there’s heavy demand for products and services. There is also a worker shortage, which is forcing companies to innovate even more as they struggle to find enough employees to fill a record 10 million job openings. If a robot can do someone’s job, companies are trying it.

….

“It looks like we’re on the cusp of a productivity boom, but you have to see it to believe it,” said David Beckworth, a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “The statistics coming out so far in this recovery show a productivity surge. Will that continue? It’s too early to know for sure.”

A national-average productivity boom may await America; some parts of the country will be better suited to it than others. There are parts of America still convinced that adding a building or a business is necessarily a sign of progress. Productivity, obviously, isn’t the same as mere production; it’s building more efficiently per worker.

Wild horse round-up in drought-stricken West sparks debate:

Daily Bread, Government Spending, Police, Politics

Daily Bread for 8.22.21: ‘Defund the Police’ Was a Molehill

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:10 AM and sunset 7:44 PM, for 13h 34m 45s of daytime.  The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1963, X-15 Flight 91 reaches the highest altitude of the X-15 program (67.08 mi).

 Bruce Murphy writes Police Were Defunded Before George Floyd (‘253 municipalities in state cut police funding in 2019 for budget reasons, report finds’):

The call for police defunding, which arose in the wake of George Floyd‘s killing in May 2020 by a police office in Minneapolis, has created controversy across the nation. In Wisconsin, Republicans passed legislation, which was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, which would have reduced state shared revenue payments to municipalities that decreased their spending on police and fire departments.

But in fact, hundreds of local governments across the state had already reduced funding for police departments in 2019, as a new report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum reveals. “The data show 253 municipalities decreased the dollar amount spent on all law enforcement activities,” the  report noted. “This includes large cities (Milwaukee, Green Bay), suburbs (Bayside, Grafton, Stoughton, Verona), and a number of very small communities, including 144 municipalities with fewer than 2,000 residents. In fact, all but 10 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties had at least one municipality that decreased its police budget in 2019. ”

Total spending on law enforcement for all municipalities actually increased by 1.3%, from $1.21 billion in 2018 to $1.23 billion in 2019, with 461 municipalities increasing their spending on police, the report found. But the 253 local governments that did cut funding in 2019 shows that this is commonly done by communities, not to reform police departments, but to balance their budgets.

“Wisconsin municipalities have been operating under strict property tax limits for more than a decade,” the report notes. Meanwhile, state-shared revenue has been declining for about 20 years. This has squeezed local budgets across the state and “likely [has] contributed to the difficulties faced by municipalities in maintaining police and fire department budgets and staffing,” the report finds.

That, in turn, impacted police staffing. “From 2018 to 2019, 79 Wisconsin police departments reported increasing their sworn officers, while 59 decreased them,” the report found.

Whitewater, for example, saw a decrease (2018-2019) in funding before George Floyd was murdered. It wasn’t ideology that drove those cuts; it was the pressure of budgetary constraints the city faces. Indeed, the Wisconsin Policy Forum remarks that

“In both “Dollar for Dollar” and a report we released last September, we noted that as municipal budgets have tightened for various reasons, local officials have attempted to shield police departments from cuts. As a result, those departments now take up a larger share of municipal budgets than a generation ago.”

I’ve never supported a political effort to defund the police, as against simply balancing a municipal budget.

Whitewater’s residents who worried, by the way, about ideological defunding of the police department were overwrought (and politically ignorant of the city’s actual politics). Whitewater was never going to defund her police department for ideological reasons, and any right-wing populist or two thinking otherwise could fittingly be described as politically obtuse. See Built Against Substantive Change.  

The issue has faded nationally, as major figures in the Democratic Party have opposed the idea. (Biden, for example, never took up that cause.)  Defunding is so weak that Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) could recently turn GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) attempt to re-ignite the issue into a 99-0 vote against defunding:

‘Defunding the police’ was a molehill (which, for those who need a reminder, looks nothing like a mountain).

How High-Quality Japanese Cutlery Is Made: