FREE WHITEWATER

Boosterism, CDA, Conservative Populism, Corporate Welfare, Culture, Daily Bread, Economy, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Marketing, Misplaced Priorities, Poverty, Recession, That Which Paved the Way

Daily Bread for 9.6.22: The Boosters’ Big Capital but Small Society

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with high of 76. Sunrise is 6:25 AM and sunset 7:19 PM for 12h 53m 53s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM. 

 On this day in 1803, British scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.

So if boosterism was (and is) grandiose, then how so? The answer is that boosterism was grandiose for publicly-subsidized capital projects, but small in its grasp of society.

In Whitewater, boosterism collected adherents of different politics, under a single banner, although most were traditional conservatives. 

Capital. Of capital, they invariably felt that if a community would only pay or subsidize a big capital project, then presto!: a shiny new world would emerge. If there is any group that held to the view that if you build it, they will come, it was the boosters. A pool, a bridge, a roundabout, a university office building masquerading as an ‘innovation’ center, a road project on the east side, etc. It was all about capital for them. 

Whitewater remained a low-income community all the same.

They were project men, business men, but not, so to speak, market men and women. 

They pushed particular projects and particular businesses, but had no theory whatever of markets. It’s not the project or the particular business that brings prosperity, it’s free and voluntary private transactions among people that bring prosperity. 

These free and voluntary transactions by their nature are not, and cannot be, within the control of a small-town group. 

Society. What the boosters didn’t have, and have never had, is a comprehensive view of society. They consistently conflated their small circles with all the city. From their point of view, they understood society very well, person by person, name by name. That, however, was a narrow view. They were ludicrously myopic, and thought of their small social circle as all.  In a town of thousands, they could see no farther than dozens. 

They weren’t less naturally intelligent than others, but they were instead dim by acquired perspective. (Almost all people are sharp; it’s a poor outlook and lack of knowledge that dooms some to error.) 

From their perspective, it would be impossible for someone outside their circle to understand the community better than they did. On the contrary, it was only by being outside their circle that an accurate understanding was possible. They couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Along the lines of their confusion, see Perspectives Narrow or Wide and The End of DYKWIA in Whitewater. 

There are various competing ideologies to libertarianism, some serious, some silly, some benign, some malignant. Boosterism is notably pathetic in its thirst for subsidies, willful ignorance of social ills, and hunger for self-promoting group-think. 

Old Whitewater ran on boosterism, although many from that time have now retired or passed on. (There’s still some of it around — the school district’s justification for a $1.6 million field project reeked of the if-you-build-it-they-will-come perspective.)

That perspective is, however, afflicted twice over: it doesn’t work, and its adherents will struggle to be remembered for it. The first contention is economic (it indubitably hasn’t improved individual or household incomes) but the second is (however harsh it must seem) equally significant.

The obliging local newspapers that printed boosters’ claims during the century’s first decade are mostly finished now, having withered and then retreated behind paywalls. A few in Whitewater spent so much time getting a favorable headline from a sycophantic reporter, but the collapse of local newspapers has left their efforts mostly inaccessible. Facebook, by its nature more immediate and participatory, doesn’t allow for the prominent, one-sided accounts that the boosters wanted and expected from an obliging reporter.

Families will, of course, remember their own histories (as they should). As a movement, however, boosterism today has neither the energy nor a prominent medium by which to tout its supposed successes. 

Sad, truly, but telling: this ideology is more alive (by way of criticism) on this website than elsewhere in the city (by way of support).

Criticism, however, didn’t do the boosters in. 

Actual conditions, beginning in the Great Recession, proved their outlook wrong. (These years later, those of this ilk who remain probably don’t understand as much. It’s unlikely they ever will.)

What has come along after them, however, is more trouble for the city than even boosterism has been: an assertive, agitated conservative populism wants what it wants without limits.

In their tenuous arguments and treacly claims, the boosters only true accomplishment has been to pave the way for something worse. 

 Chimp escapes from Kharkiv zoo before being given raincoat and taken back on bike: 

Boosterism, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Daily Bread, Economy, Foxconn, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Marketing, Misplaced Priorities, Poverty, Recession

Daily Bread for 9.5.22: The Grandiose

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Good morning.

Labor Day in Whitewater will be party sunny with high of 74. Sunrise is 6:24 AM and sunset 7:21 PM for 12h 56m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 69.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Foxconn project in Wisconsin wasted money, destroyed people’s homes, and saddled nearby communities with decades of municipal debt.  It would not have happened had people not been susceptible of the grandiose (lit., characterized by excessive self-importance or affected grandeur; pompous.) Yet they were. 

Corrinne Hess reports ‘Grandiose expectations’ brought Foxconn to Wisconsin, participants in town hall discussion say:

RACINE — Unrealistic, grandiose plans with a touch of greed is how panelists at a Foxconn town hall meeting described the last five years since the mega factory was announced. 

Mount Pleasant, a bedroom community of Racine, was catapulted to international prominence in 2017 when the Taiwanese-based manufacturing company announced its plan to invest $10 billion and create 13,000 high-paying high-tech jobs there. 

Foxconn has massively scaled back those plans and it is unknown what the company is doing in Mount Pleasant in the four buildings it has constructed. 

Lawrence Tabak, the author of “Foxconned: Imaginary Jobs, Bulldozed Homes, and the Sacking of Local Government,” said every economic developer is looking for the next Silicon Valley. That’s what Mount Pleasant and Wisconsin hoped it was getting with Foxconn. 

….

[Professor of urban planning at the University of Illinois Chicago David] Merriman, who has studied tax incremental financing since the 1980s, said it doesn’t seem like it’s in Foxconn’s interest to continue making payments to the village. 

“We don’t know what will happen — people can tell you they know, but they don’t,” Merriman said.

“The basic question is, is the community better off than it was before? The burden hasn’t fallen on the community, but the risk has. If Foxconn decides to default, Mount Pleasant is not in a good space.” 

For an entire category at FREE WHITEWATER dedicated to this wasteful project, see Foxconn. 

Whitewater’s suffered, and sometimes still does, the affliction of grandiosity. Old Whitewater, a state of mind more than a time or person, produced nothing so much as boosterism’s grandiosity (accentuating only the positive and exaggerating the importance of whatever public project the boosters were promoting). In Whitewater, the years 2006—2007 were its high water mark. The public officials of that time — Brunner for the city, Coan for the police department, Steinhaus for the school district, and Telfer for the university— were exemplars of small-thinking and big-talking.  One looks back and thinks: not one of these officials or their hangers-on was worthy of his or her position. 

(The City of Whitewater recently decided against choosing Brunner’s consulting firm to gather candidates for its next city manager. Honest to goodness, that was an easy, sensible decision. To have chosen otherwise would have opened the city to a lengthy recitation of Brunner’s past managerial mistakes while in Whitewater’s or Walworth County’s employ. Ignoring the past, condemned to repeat…) 

Gains that the boosters touted as extraordinary and eternal (e.g., campus enrollment, a so-called Innovation Center, various road projects) have proved exaggerated and ephemeral. Although their outlook continued for many years after ’06—’07, and even now has a grip on a few, in each subsequent year boosterism has grown less credible.

The Great Recession of ’07—’09 set Whitewater on a course from which she has yet to recover. The boosters had no cure for that downturn; on the contrary, their outlook exacerbated the city’s ills through willful ignorance. An accurate understanding of the city’s political and socio-economic condition requires that one see this clearly. Alternative explanations are erroneous to the degree of their departure from this understanding. 

Government should have been, and should be, limited, responsible, and humble.

Grandiosity? It was a problem in Whitewater long before Foxconn came along. 

How This Florida Town Became the Sea Sponge Capital of the World:

Big Lie, Daily Bread, Elections, Ethics, Law, Litigation, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.4.22: Wisconsin Lawyers Under Fire for Efforts to Overturn the 2020 Election

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see a mix of clouds and sunshine with high of 70. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 7:23 PM for 12h 59m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 59.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 476, Romulus Augustulus is deposed when Odoacer proclaims himself “King of Italy,” thus ending the Western Roman Empire.

Leah Treidler reports 2 Wisconsin lawyers are under fire for efforts to overturn the 2020 election (‘The nonprofit 65 Project filed ethics complaints against 15 lawyers, including 2 in Wisconsin’):

The 65 Project filed ethics complaints against 15 lawyers Wednesday, including Michael D. Dean of Brookfield and Daniel J. Eastman of Mequon, who were involved in a series of lawsuits on behalf of former President Donald Trump.

Neither Dean nor Eastman responded to a request for comment. All 15 lawyers were involved in litigation in Wisconsin.

The 65 Project is named for the 65 lawsuits filed by Trump-allied lawyers in swing states immediately after the 2020 election that seek to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.

The group states that it aims to hold lawyers accountable for “fraudulent legal actions aimed at overturning legitimate elections.”

Since March, the project has filed about 40 ethics complaints against attorneys across the country.

The complaints are meant to deter lawyers nationwide from filing baseless lawsuits by exposing some lawyers, said Michael Teter, the group’s managing director. 

“We want to do that by holding them accountable for their efforts and by publicizing their work so that they are known within their communities as having sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election through abusing the court system,” he said.

Because the results in Wisconsin were close, and because the state Legislature is dominated by Republicans, Teter said lawyers throughout the country targeted Wisconsin. They aimed “to convince the Republican legislature to then disregard the people’s will and to change the outcome of the electoral vote.”

But these lawsuits, he said, were mainly a political tool. Most lawyers didn’t expect to win, he said, and many dismissed their own cases within a week of filing. Despite that, he said they chipped away at public trust in the election results.

….

In the complaints against both Wisconsin lawyers, Eastman and Dean, the 65 Project cited their work on Feehan v. Wisconsin Elections Commission.

That case, the ethics complaint read, “lacked any basis in law or fact” and was “nearly a carbon copy of litigation filed in other cases.” 

Wisconsin’s Office of Lawyer Regulation isn’t known for scrupulous enforcement, so these two will probably carry on as before. 

Dean was graduated from Marquette Law in ’87, and Eastman from the University of New Hampshire School of Law in ’87. They’ve represented their schools poorly.

Each man is an embarrassment to his alma mater and to the profession.

Dog & Two Hikers Rescued from Arizona Canyon:

Daily Bread, Newspapers

Daily Bread for 9.3.22: Misunderstanding Production and Productivity

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see scattered thundershowers with high of 80. Sunrise is 6:22 AM and sunset 7:25 PM for 13h 02m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 48% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1939, France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, forming the Allied nations. 

Understanding the difference between mere production and productivity is critical to measuring meaningful economic achievement. While production is the manufacture (or conversion) of raw materials into goods or services, productivity is the making of those goods or the provision of those services more efficiently than in a prior period. It’s an easy distinction, and most people grasp it it well and intuitively. As it turns out, however, some well-placed executives have embarrassing trouble understanding either of the concepts. 

Josh Barro, writing at his newsletter Very Serious, describes a story in the New York Times about Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan. Ryan wants his reporters to be in the office more often, and he’s been pondering ways to compel them to come back. As Barro observes, this shows that Ryan doesn’t understand production or productivity at his own paper — despite having been the Post publisher for years, and despite having been appointed by businessman-billionaire Jeff Bezos (owner of the Post).

First Ryan’s plan, and then Barro’s spot-on critique.

Reporting on Ryan’s Plan: 

He has expressed his belief to members of his leadership team that there were numerous low performers in the newsroom who needed to be managed out…

Mr. Ryan has expressed annoyance with senior newsroom leaders at what he sees as a lack of productivity by some journalists at the paper. Last fall, he asked for the company’s chief information officer to pull records on which days employees held videoconference meetings, as a way to judge production levels, and found that fewer meetings occurred on Fridays, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

He has also grown increasingly frustrated that some Post staff members are still not in the office at least three days a week, the company’s policy.

In recent weeks, Mr. Ryan asked for disciplinary letters to be drafted and sent to employees who had not made any appearance in the office this year, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. He ultimately decided that the letters should not be sent, and that the people should be called instead.

If this reporting should be accurate, it suggests that Ryan doesn’t understand a key aspect of production or productivity in his own industry.

Barro’s observation:

Having observed other managerial failures at the Post from the outside (I’ve never worked there) it would not surprise me in the least if it’s possible to identify dozens of staff who could be cut with little impact to the quality of the news report.

But the thing about these low performers is that middle managers almost always already know who they are. And especially at a newspaper, it’s not that hard to tell who’s producing and who isn’t. It’s not as simple as looking at how many words per week someone is filing, but if you have a writer who’s producing very little copy, there is generally either an identifiable reason that writer is highly valuable — does she do months-long investigations that break huge news and win awards? — or there isn’t.

And that’s what makes Ryan’s apparent fixation on videoconference meeting schedules and badge scans pretty odd.

There are valid reasons you might want workers in the office (collaboration, supervision, etc.) and also valid reasons not to force them back (competitors are more flexible, and if you aren’t, some strong performers will quit). But for evaluating the performance of individual employees, you can look directly at their actual work, rather than relying on their physical presence in the office as a proxy.

So the whole thing kind of seems like the worst of both worlds, from a personnel-management perspective: antagonizing the staff by scolding them over their physical presence, while failing to actually weed out the staff whose performance is sub-par.

(Emphasis added.)

For reporting that leads to publishable writing, the measure is what you produce and how efficiently are you produce it. If strong and efficient production of news stories comes from reporters who do their work in treehouses, VW buses, or gin joints, so be it.

Does Ryan understand his product? Readers want news, features, and commentary from the Post, and they look for those written words online or in newsprint. Where the stories are drafted doesn’t matter. Showing up in the office only matters if that location is the place of greatest production and productivity for reporters’ work. If it’s not the place of greatest production, then compulsion of workers to the office only leads to lesser production and productivity. 

In any event, for writing, it’s what lands on the page that matters to readers. Ryan already knows what’s on the pages of his paper; he doesn’t need reporters’ office time to measure production. 

Wisconsin’s recent dragonfly swarms are the largest seen in years:

City, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment

Daily Bread for 9.2.22: National Employment Figures Remain Strong

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with high of 84. Sunrise is 6:21 AM and sunset 7:26 PM for 13h 05m 09s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 36.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1945, the Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed by Japan and the major warring powers aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

The national economy continues to add hundreds of thousands of new jobs per month. 

Lauren Kaori Gurley reports Labor market added 315,000 jobs in August, a bright spot in the economy (‘A stellar 20 consecutive months of sustained job growth more than recovered the millions of jobs lost during the pandemic, although hiring slowed in August’):

The U.S. labor market added 315,000 jobs in August, hitting a 20-month streak in strong job growth that’s powering an economy through ominously high inflation.

The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.7 percent, according to a monthly jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, with 344,000 more people unemployed than the previous month.

 

The August jobs gains were the lowest monthly pick-up so far this year, but the labor market remains an area of strength for the economy, especially as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to rein in blistering inflation.

The biggest gains were in professional and business services, which added 68,000 jobs in August, shooting past its pre-pandemic numbers. The industry saw the strongest gains in computer systems design, management and technical consulting, and architectural and engineering services, while legal services lost 9,000 jobs.

A few points that should be obvious — 

These are national employment gains, where some parts of the country are doing better than others.

There’s local talk about growth, about growth in-and-of-itself, or (for the more candid) growth as a way out of stagnation. Growth, however, happens in a competitive environment between communities, where prospective residents choose a place they feel, fundamentally, is safe and clean. Safe and clean includes safe streets, clean air & water,  and a confidence that officials deliver public services efficiently, economically, and humbly. No sensible person or businessperson — and almost all people are sensible — chooses a place solely because they read a press release or saw a Facebook post. 

Prospects will walk about, and look at a community on their own. Marketing decides nothing; at best, it gets the city someone’s first glance. Whitewater spends too much time fussing over marketing, and not enough time acknowledging that new prospects are easily as sensible as any current resident. They can and will judge on their own. 

America is a big county, the Midwest is a big region, and Wisconsin is a big place: people will pass over a community that fails in the fundamentals for a community that accomplishes the fundamentals. America is growing — to enjoy some of that growth in Whitewater means setting aside airy claims and being candid. Serious and competitive people respect candor, and will rise to a challenge. They’ll want to be part of a rebuilding project. By contrast, serious people will smile and but then walk away from the latest too-good-to-be-true marketing pitch. 

Now, I’m here, and I’ll not be going anywhere else (as there is no place yet half so beautiful to me as Whitewater). Love of this small and beautiful place does not, however, induce blindness. Seeing and thinking clearly about growth means thinking about what people and businesses — the elements of growth — themselves think. 

They’ll not settle for marketing; they need to be confident in the fundamentals. Whitewater most certainly can get the fundamentals right, keep them right, and through that dedicated effort enjoy the growth that other places in America now enjoy.

Penguin Gets Custom Orthopedic Boots to Help His Waddle:

Cats

Friday Catblogging: Three White Tiger Cubs Born at Delhi Zoo

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Via Delhi Zoo announces birth of three extremely rare white tiger cubs:

“We are pleased to inform you of the birth of three tiger cubs. Mother and all the three cubs are doing fine. Mother is nursing the cubs regularly and taking proper care. All the three cubs, like their mother, are white in colour,” Mr Rai said on Thursday.

The tiny cubs were born in one of the zoo’s enclosures on 24 August and turned eight days on Thursday, said the zoo’s top official. Keepers waited until the cubs were more than a week old before announcing the birth in a Twitter post. 

Daily Bread, Putin, Russia

Daily Bread for 9.1.22: Putin Loves an Open Window

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with high of 86. Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 7:28 PM for 13h 07m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 26.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

 On this day in 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace, killing all 269 on board, including Congressman Lawrence McDonald.

There is in the Russian dictatorship the chronic problem of tragic falls from open windows. Among the Russian population, there’s no evidence of widespread vertigo. These falls are more singular.

They follow a simple formula: prominent person + speaking out against Putin + a building with a window = tragic accident. 

So it is again. 

Rhoda Kwan reports Head of Russian oil giant that criticized Ukraine war dies after reportedly falling from hospital window:

The head of a Russian oil giant that criticized President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine died Thursday after reportedly falling out of his hospital window.

Lukoil Chairman Ravil Maganov died after falling from a window of the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow, Reuters reported, citing two sources familiar with the situation.

The company issued a statement early Thursday confirming the death of Maganov, 67, “after a severe illness,” but did not specify the cause.

“Ravil Maganov immensely contributed to the development of not only the Company, but of the entire Russian oil and gas sector,” the statement read.

NBC News has not verified how he died. The hospital declined to comment and referred comment to the police, who declined to comment.

Lukoil is Russia’s second-largest oil producer. It was a rare Russian business to come out against Putin’s war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin insists on calling its “special military operation.”

The company’s board of directors called for an end to the war in early March, within days of the full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighbor.

Americans who tout Putin’s Russia reject their own constitutional tradition, resting on thousands of years of philosophy and law, for the whims of a corrupt and murderous empire. In America they are, as they should be, free to do so without needing to live in one-story buildings. 

Free to do so, but no less repulsive for so doing. 

 Sky & Telescope’s Sky Tour Podcast – September 2022: 

Conspiracy Theories, Constitution, Daily Bread, Elections, Insurrection, Sen. Ron Johnson, US Senate Race 2022, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.31.22: Ron Johnson Hires a Bogus Elector as a Staffer

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with high of 84. Sunrise is 6:19 AM and sunset 7:30 PM for 13h 10m 44s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.1% 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.

Wisconsin has two United States senators, and so Whitewater, Wisconsin has two United States senators. (The conservative populists in Whitewater want to talk about national issues until they don’t, after which they insist opportunistically that only hyperlocal discussions matter.)

As it is, one of our U.S. senators is Ron Johnson, a conspiracy theorist, showing sympathy to Russia, and supportive of those engaged in attempted coup against the constitutionally-elected government. Johnson is so sympathetic that he hired one of the bogus electors that coup-plotters organized to submit a fraudulent set of electoral votes from Wisconsin.

Lawrence Andrea reports One of Wisconsin’s Republican false electors is working for Ron Johnson’s reelection campaign: 

For months, Sen. Ron Johnson has drawn scrutiny for his office’s role in attempting to deliver false packets of electors to former Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6.

While the Oshkosh Republican continues to downplay his office’s connection to the effort, saying his participation lasted just seconds, one of Wisconsin’s false electors has been working on Johnson’s reelection campaign.

Pam Travis, one of 10 Wisconsin Republicans who signed official-looking paperwork falsely claiming to be a presidential elector in 2020, has been a full-time staffer on Johnson’s competitive reelection bid since March 2022, according to the woman’s LinkedIn profile.

Federal Election Commission reports indicate Johnson’s campaign paid Travis more than $10,200 for her work since April, and the campaign reimbursed Travis for just over $3,500 in mileage costs between May and July. 

Johnson will tell his supporters that this election is a context between “Freedom and Socialism.” Indeed, he will probably “spend the next two months going on about the supposed contrast between Freedom and Socialism / Communism / Marxism / Leninism / Syndicalism, etc.” The gullible won’t bother to consult even a dictionary to distinguish between these terms, let alone a proper political science text. It’s a stew of superficiality. 

It’s a spew-any-term-or-slogan strategy, however manipulatively used and ignorantly accepted. It’s rally-the-base-or-perish, as he’s nowhere else turn. 

Concerning Johnson, however, it’s not enough for reasonable people to turn away from him. It’s necessary that they should lawfully turn against him, each doing his or her part to bring about his defeat. 

 The future of energy starts with rebuilding the battery: 

Daily Bread, Education, Reading, Reasoning, School District

Daily Bread for 8.30.22: Inoculating Against Misinformation

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with high of 78. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:31 PM for 13h 13m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 11% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1916, Ernest Shackleton completes the rescue of all of his men stranded on Elephant Island in Antarctica.

Jon Roozenbeek, Sander Van Der Linden, and Stephan Lewandowsky write @ Nieman Lab about combating misinformation in Can you inoculate people against misinformation before they even see it? This study says yes:

From the COVID-19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine, misinformation is rife worldwide. Many tools have been designed to help people spot misinformation. The problem with most of them is how hard they are to deliver at scale.

But we may have found a solution. In our new study we designed and tested five short videos that “prebunk” viewers, in order to inoculate them from the deceptive and manipulative techniques often used online to mislead people. Our study is the largest of its kind and the first to test this kind of intervention on YouTube. Five million people were shown the videos, of which one million watched them.

We found that not only do these videos help people spot misinformation in controlled experiments, but also in the real world. Watching one of our videos via a YouTube ad boosted YouTube users’ ability to recognize misinformation.

The study addresses the effectiveness of their approach. See Jon Roozenbeek et al., Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media, Science Advances, Vol 8, Issue 34 (24 Aug 2022) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo6254.

(One of the inoculation videos appears at the bottom of this post.)

In an earlier time, long before YouTube, we were taught in school the main logical fallacies by name, with examples, and a responsibility to spot them when quizzed. There were printed lists that students went through, just as there were spelling lists, vocabulary lists, etc. That old method was, as one can guess, dry compared with a video (although we managed to get by). The use of videos is a useful innovation on that older method.  

What’s necessary, however, is that students are taught to spot and reject fallacies. This isn’t a subject that cannot wait for college, graduate school, or professional school: this teaching should be part of a proper K-12 education. It is false and destructive to say that everyone has an equally truthful point of view. Those who insist on true and false sometimes become incensed when shown that they’ve not thought through an issue. While obstreperous parents might think that their child’s reception into 9/11, QAnon, or election conspiracies is a legitimate position, it’s nothing of the kind. Children educated publicly or privately (including at home) should be taught to spot error, and gently corrected when they make mistakes. 

It’s not hard, if only one would try. 

Some of the same parents who insist they’re in support of Western civilization show little appreciation for the various methods that civilization crafted (and imported) to advance human reasoning. (They also misunderstand, as do shallow critics of Western civilization, how broad and diverse viewpoints often are within that long tradition. A few bullet points from a PowerPoint or cable talkshow chyron aren’t a substitute for solid reading.) 

Inoculation against misinformation? We can use all of the booster shots we can get.

False Dichotomies:

Authoritarianism, City, Conservative Populism, Daily Bread, Horde, Law, Liberty, Local Government, Politics, Populists, School District

Daily Bread for 8.29.22: Trumpism’s Threats of Force and Ruin

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with high of 84. Sunrise is 6:17 AM and sunset 7:33 PM for 13h 16m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM.

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

Yesterday, as Sen. Lindsey Graham and others sensed Mr. Trump might be indicted on federal charges (and he faces state investigations, too), Graham none-too-subtly twice threatened violence during a Fox News interview:

If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle, which you [program host Trey Gowdy] presided over and did … a good job, there’ll be riots in the streets.

….

If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement,” Graham said, “there literally will be riots in the street. I worry about our country.

This is couched, of course, as mere worry over the country, but truly it’s worry that Graham hopes to create, not ponder. 

Unsurprised, unfazed: it is in the very nature of a populist autocratic movement like Trumpism to distort law, contort law, and finally to reject law for the sake of its own ends. The populist means to those ends include threats to violence and, if they feel necessary, violence itself. 

Most of these conservative populists would much rather scare others into submission, and their talk of civil war is often simply live-action role-playing. Some, however, probably will commit acts of violence rather than accept a lawful prosecution of their leader. That’s in the nature of a movement like this. (Under their way of thinking, the law should be what they want, no more or less.) 

At the local level across this country, this faction tantrums and shouts to get its way, and, to be honest, they’ve done pretty well for themselves so far. Sometimes, all it takes is a red trucker cap and local leaders are soaked in their own sweat. See (Local) Fear of a Red Hat. 

It’s always the same with these populists: if others don’t do what they want, they’ll wreck what others have. Won’t decide in their favor at a meeting? They’ll disrupt the meeting. It’s not limits on government that these populists want (as a libertarian would), it’s government power by them, and for them, alone. Trumpism is not smaller government and it’s mostly certainly not liberty for all; it’s bigger government and preferences for MAGA men. 

Individual rights for others? No.

Now, it’s unlikely that most of these conservative populists will use violence, and the ones who do are as likely to harm themselves as anyone else. 

And yet, and yet, one should not be surprised that they’re talking this way — it’s in the very nature of their autocratic movement to threaten the existing legal and constitutional order by whatever means they find useful:

“Nice little community you have here… be a shame if someone wrecked it.”

The Most Expensive Corn Crop in History?:

Adventure, Daily Bread, Film, Sports

Daily Bread for 8.28.22: In ‘The Middle of the World’

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered thunderstorms with high of 80. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:35 PM for 13h 19m 03s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

A runner describes a Grand Canyon run in The Middle of the World: 

An endurance runner shares his experience running from the south rim of the Grand Canyon to the north rim, and back in one day.

Kangaroo v. Kangaroo: 

Courts, Daily Bread, Federal Government, Law, Trump

Daily Bread for 8.27.22: Original and Annotated Versions of the Affidavit for the Search of Trump’s Home

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see periods of clouds and sun with a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:36 PM for 13h 21m 49s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.0% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

The New York Times has published both the original (with court-approved redactions) and an annotated version of the Affidavit for the Search of Trump’s Home. The link I’ve posted of the annotated version is open for anyone, and (of course) the original, redacted version is, a public document.

I’ve the original, below, but would recommend a visit to the open NYT link to make the most of the document. An evergreen point about law: law is one of the humanities, and so is as broad a subject as human interaction itself. While federal procedure, for example, is (or at least should be) familiar to all competent American attorneys, many aspects of an unusual case like this call for reliance on the small number of attorneys who practice regularly in this field. There are sad, disgraceful examples of non-attorneys, and even some lawyers, who are misrepresenting simple matters of law. 

For something like this, it’s critical to rely on professionals who have dealt with these cases, either lawyers or journalists who’ve long covered this field, for solid assessments. Specifically, those who have dealt with cases involving national security classifications and documents. Any random guest on a cable news program just won’t do. The NYT annotation is a good place to start, and attorneys Andrew Weissmann, Brad Moss, Mark Zaid, and Steve Vladeck are knowledgeable lawyers on whom one can rely, 

Artemis 1 will deploy ‘Lunar IceCube’ to study moon’s water: