Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 33. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 7:15 PM for 12h 32m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1915, Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine for the second time, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
Most people in Whitewater are welcoming, and newcomers receive a supportive reception. Sadly, the city’s reputation as an unfriendly place comes not from most residents, but only those few who occupy notable positions in the community. For that tiny number, there is an expectation that newcomers should, as was once said of children, be seen but not heard. And so, and so, a few who dominate public and private institutions cling to these positions even when far more talented newcomers arrive.
(A word about this, that should be obvious to longtime readers of FREE WHITEWATER: it’s an understatement to say that I have never aspired to the roles of these few: a serious and settled person charts his or her own course. There are a thousand possible roles within a community, and striving for a place among development men, these ‘Greater Whitewater’ types, would be to seek a decidedly lesser position in the community. In this way, describing them as ‘notables’ or ‘town squires’ was always a term of derision, not aspiration. Honest to goodness, Whitewater’s ordinary residents are far more talented than a few local landlords, bankers, and public relations men.)
There is, however, yet ample room for truly accomplished people in Whitewater, and a column from Catherine Rampell, Drain Putin’s Brains, reminds us where we might find them:
I don’t mean attacking the Russian people. I mean welcoming them here, particularly if they have significant economic and national security value to Russia.
We should start by expediting the most compelling humanitarian cases in the region. In Russia, these include dissidents and journalists risking their necks to challenge Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war. But we should also actively court those who might be less political: the technical, creative, high-skilled workers upon whom Russia’s economic (and military) fortunes depend.
Already, Russian talent is rushing for the exits, in what might represent the seventh great wave of Russian emigration over the past century.
….
“Lots of people are not ideological; they just want an opportunity for a good life,” says Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on immigration and trade. “They see that as extremely difficult to do in Russia right now.”
Russian self-exiles are mostly flooding into nearby countries such as Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, but we could smooth their pathway to the United States. Congress already has one blueprint: In early February, the House passed the America Competes Act, which would, among other things, increase immigration of entrepreneurs and PhD scientists from around the world (not just Russia). Alternatively, Congress could tailor a measure toward Russian STEM talent, or the Biden administration could make Russians more broadly eligible for refugee status. (We did something similar for people fleeing the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.)
Sharp and creative émigrés would enrich our community, and we’ve room for many. Their opportunities — and ours by consequence — would be unfettered if only the community would step past a small number of tired locals.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 34. Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 7:14 PM for 12h 29m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1945, the Battle of Iwo Jima ends as the island is officially secured by American forces.
Oklahoma still has tornadoes, of course. But the statistical center has moved. Other research since then has found similar shifts.
Mean number of days per year with a tornado registering EF1 strength or greater within 25 miles, 1986-2015.NOAA Storm Prediction Center.
We found a notable decrease in both the total number of tornadoes and days with tornadoes in the traditional Tornado Alley in the central plains. At the same time, we found an increase in tornado numbers in what’s been dubbed Dixie Alley, extending from Mississippi through Tennessee and Kentucky into southern Indiana.
In the Great Plains, drier air in the western boundary of traditional Tornado Alley probably has something to do with the fact that tornadoes are a declining risk in Oklahoma while wildfire risk is growing.
Research by other scientists suggests that the dry line between the wetter Eastern U.S. and the drier Western U.S., historically around the 100th meridian, has shifted eastward by about 140 miles since the late 1800s. The dry line can be a boundary for convection – the rising of warm air and sinking of colder air that can fuel storms.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with scattered afternoon rain or snow showers and a high of 42. Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 7:13 PM for 12h 26m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 47% of its visible disk illuminated.
Attorney James Bopp has represented Gableman in a couple cases that challenged the former justice’s authority as the special counsel for the state Assembly’s investigation of the 2020 election, which President Joe Biden won. Bopp is well-known nationally as a longtime lawyer for conservative causes.
He was invited to testify Thursday before the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections alongside Catherine Engelbrecht, “True The Vote” founder and president. Bopp has served for years as the group’s lawyer. Like Gableman, Bopp has repeatedly cast doubt on the way the 2020 election was run.
But when asked Thursday whether he believed decertification should be an option, Bopp rejected the idea.
“It serves zero legal purpose, and in my opinion, useful purpose, to be talking about doing some, like, decertification that is pointless,” Bopp said.
Bopp argued that “recertification” would have been an option in Wisconsin prior to Jan. 6, 2021, the day when Congress met to count electoral votes and a group of former President Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. That option, he argued, had since passed.
“It’s over,” Bopp said. “You can’t go back. There is no mechanism, no provision, no anything that would have any practical legal effect.”
To be honest, Gableman deserves more than mere residency in Village of Zero Legal Purpose. He has a fair claim to merit the mayoralty of that unfortunate community.
It’s Oscars Month and the Seniors in the Park Bijou Theatre will be showing three of the Nominated Films. The Academy Awards ceremony is Sunday evening, March 27th.
Tuesday, March 29th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of The Eyes of Tammy Faye @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Biography/Drama/Romance
Rated PG-13
2 hours, 6 minutes (2021)
The rise, fall and comeback of Televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, PTL, CBN and the 700 Club. (Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain; Best Actress nomination). Also nominated for Best Makeup & Hairstyling.
Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered rain or snow showers with a high of 38. Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 7:12 PM for 12h 23m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach dedicates six concertos to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt, now commonly called the Brandenburg Concertos, BWV 1046–1051.
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down two decisions yesterday addressing the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling on least-change maps for legislative and Congresional districts. In a terse decision, the federal high court let stand Wisconsin’s least-change maps for the Congressional districts.
By contrast, in a separate decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Wisconsin’s least-change maps for state legislative districts. Amy Howe of the SCOTUSblog writes of yesterday’s decision that
In an unsigned seven-page opinion, the justices reversed the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision adopting the governor’s map and sent the case back to the state court. The majority explained that by issuing its ruling now, without additional briefing or oral argument, it would give the state court enough time to adopt new maps for the Aug. 9 primary election.
The majority reasoned that, to justify race-based districting, a state must show a good reason to believe that the Voting Rights Act requires such a result. If the Wisconsin Supreme Court regarded Evers as the mapmaker, the majority explained, it was clearly wrong to do so. Evers had contended, without more, that he had drawn an additional majority-Black district because there was a chance to do so – “a sufficiently large and compact population of black residents to fill it.” But even if the Wisconsin Supreme Court saw itself as the creator of the map, it still needs to go back to the drawing board, the majority continued. Among other things, the majority noted, the court could adopt the maps only if it believed the Voting Rights Act required an additional majority-Black district – which, the state court conceded, it could not “say for certain.” When the case returns to the state court, the majority stressed, that court is also “free to take additional evidence if it prefers to reconsider the Governor’s maps.”
In a four-page dissent, Sotomayor noted that summary rulings – those that the Supreme Court issues based on abbreviated briefing and no oral argument – “are generally reserved for decisions in violation of settled law.” But in this case, Sotomayor wrote, the Supreme Court is sending the case back because the state supreme court failed to “comply with an obligation that, under existing precedent, is hazy at best.” What’s more, she wrote, the Supreme Court’s intervention on Wednesday “is not only extraordinary but also unnecessary” because the state court left open the possibility that someone could still bring a challenge to the maps. “I would allow that process to unfold,” she concluded.
A copy of yesterday’s decision, with dissent, appears immediately below.
It’s uncertain how significantly the federal decision will alter state legislative districts across the state. Wisconsin could reaffirm the least-change maps already selected with additional justifying evidence. Alternatively, the state’s high court could select a different set of legislative maps. If a different set of maps should be chosen, some legislators may rethink their election plans (e.g., Don Vruwink only decided to run after the Wisconsin Supreme Court selected Gov. Evers’s preferred maps, and Dale Kooyenga wasn’t going to run after the state high court picked Evers’s proposal.)
New state maps will have to be in place before the August 9th state primary.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 49. Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 7:11 PM for 12h 20m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 69.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.
STURTEVANT – Using public money, Mount Pleasant improved its infrastructure anticipating a massive Foxconn factory and $1.4 billion worth of investment.
With that not happening, village officials believe they can attract another national or international company to the massive and largely vacant site.
“We’ve put in a lot of infrastructure folks,” said Claude Lois, Foxconn’s project manager hired by Mount Pleasant. “We’ve sized this at the time for Foxconn Generation 10, but today, actually because of all the work we did we are sitting pretty good for all the work we did for the future.”
Lois spoke during a special meeting of the Racine County Board and the Mount Pleasant Village Board Tuesday — the first time a public update on Foxconn has been given since 2019. Foxconn representatives were invited to participate but declined.
Residents were not allowed to speak during the meeting but were given a chance to submit questions in advance. Those questions were not answered during the meeting.
Jim Paetsch, executive director of the Milwaukee 7, helped to negotiate the Racine County Intel pitch. He said Foxconn was cooperative throughout the process.
Paetsch said what Intel liked about Mount Pleasant will be attractive to other companies including farming and battery manufacturers.
“The really good news is Mount Pleasant and Racine County have a really good site,” Paetsch said. “We’re looking forward to pursuing more opportunities in months to come. What people don’t understand sometimes about economic development is, if you don’t have a site, you don’t have a deal.”
But some residents say hypothetical deals aren’t good enough.
Kim Mahoney is one of the few remaining homeowners still living on the Foxconn site. Mount Pleasant closed negotiations on buying her property in 2019.
“People gave up their homes for a $10 billion investment and 13,000 jobs, not for speculation as to what might get built there,” said Mahoney, who attended the meeting.
(Emphasis added.)
What Paetsch doesn’t understand is that if you don’t have a solid deal, you don’t take residents’ homes through eminent domain.
Claude Lois is a contracted consultant with engineering firm Kapur and Associates,and he works in Mount Pleasant’s Village Hall. His role as project director has no official job description, and records obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio of Lois’ time card and village-owned calendar do not match.
Lois does not provide public updates to the village on how his time is spent or have a direct boss overseeing his work. Village Administrator Maureen Murphy authorizes his $28,000 per month salary without further documentation. When pressed for further information, Murphy provided WPR with Lois’ 2017 contract.
On a smaller scale, in 2009 Whitewater has also seen grand promises go unfulfilled. Local officials promised that a multi-million-dollar grant for Whitewater’s ‘Innovation Center’ would be “part of an $11,051,728 project which grantees estimate will help create 1,000 jobs and generate $60 million in private investment.”
That was some ‘estimate.’
These years later, we’ve not had 1,000 jobs from a building that’s more like a university annex with a revolving door of here today, gone tomorrow startups.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 46. Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 7:10 PM for 12h 17m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee meets at 5:30 PM. [Updated: Wednesday, not today.]
On this date Eugene Shepard was born near Green Bay. Although he made his career in the lumbering business near Rhinelander, he was best known for his story-telling and practical jokes. He told many tales of Paul Bunyan, the mythical lumberjack, and drew pictures of the giant at work that became famous. Shepard also started a new legend about a prehistoric monster that roamed the woods of Wisconsin – the hodag. Shepard built the mythical monster out of wood and bull’s horns. He fooled everyone into believing it was alive, allowing it to be viewed only inside a dark tent. The beast was displayed at the Wausau and Antigo county fairs before Shepard admitted it was all a hoax.
Geothermal energy has long been the forgotten member of the clean energy family, overshadowed by relatively cheap solar and wind power, despite its proven potential. But that may soon change – for an unexpected reason.
Geothermal technologies are on the verge of unlocking vast quantities of lithium from naturally occurring hot brines beneath places like California’s Salton Sea, a two-hour drive from San Diego.
Lithium is essential for lithium-ion batteries, which power electric vehicles and energy storage. Demand for these batteries is quickly rising, but the U.S. is currently heavily reliant on lithium imports from other countries – most of the nation’s lithium supply comes from Argentina, Chile, Russia and China. The ability to recover critical minerals from geothermal brines in the U.S. could have important implications for energy and mineral security, as well as global supply chains, workforce transitions and geopolitics.
Geothermal power plants use heat from the Earth to generate a constant supply of steam to run turbines that produce electricity. The plants operate by bringing up a complex saline solution located far underground, where it absorbs heat and is enriched with minerals such as lithium, manganese, zinc, potassium and boron.
Geothermal brines are the concentrated liquid left over after heat and steam are extracted at a geothermal plant. In the Salton Sea plants, these brines contain high concentrations – about 30% – of dissolved solids.
If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand.
Disclosures:
1. Bryant Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
2. Michael McKibben currently receives federal funding from the Department of Energy to research the origins of lithium resources in geothermal brines. He occasionally consults for geothermal companies, but does not own individual shares in those companies.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 71. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 7:09 PM for 12h 14m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 88.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
There are particular lies both small and large, but in the repertoire of practiced liars there’s somethingas powerful as any single lie: a torrent of mendacity that aims to undermine confidence in the very possibility of truth. Putin’s regime, drawing on techniques of Soviet propaganda, uses lies this way.
Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson report Truth Is Another Front in Putin’s War (‘The Kremlin has used a barrage of increasingly outlandish falsehoods to prop up its overarching claim that the invasion of Ukraine is justified’):
Using a barrage of increasingly outlandish falsehoods, President Vladimir V. Putin has created an alternative reality, one in which Russia is at war not with Ukraine but with a larger, more pernicious enemy in the West. Even since the war began, the lies have gotten more and more bizarre, transforming from claims that “true sovereignty” for Ukraine was possible only under Russia, made before the attacks, to those about migratory birds carrying bioweapons.
….
The power of Russia’s claim that the invasion is justified comes not from the veracity of any individual falsehood meant to support it but from the broader argument. Individual lies about bioweapons labs or crisis actors are advanced by Russia as swiftly as they are debunked, with little consistency or logic between them. But supporters stubbornly cling to the overarching belief that something is wrong in Ukraine and Russia will fix it. Those connections prove harder to shake, even as new evidence is introduced.
That mythology, and its resilience in the face of fact-checking and criticism, reflects “the ability of autocrats and malign actors to completely brainwash us to the point where we don’t see what’s in front of us,” said Laura Thornton, the director and senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.
As Putin relies on Soviet-era techniques, so do his few defenders here in America. They parrot his ever-shifting claims, moving from one to another, winning approval from the Kremlin as dutiful propagandists.
We face, as a consequence, opponents of the truth both foreign and and domestic.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 7:07 PM for 12h 11m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: “I came out of Bataan and I shall return.”
Will Iowa State attack the rim or bomb away? Iowa State finished with 56 field-goal attempts against LSU. Of that total, 37 were three-pointers. That is a whopping 66% of the team’s shots. The Cyclones entered the game with 669 three-point attempts out of 1,787 overall field-goal attempts, or just 37.4% of their shots. It will be interesting to see if the Iowa State coaches believe they can attack UW off the dribble or will need another three-point barrage to advance.
It’s Oscars Month and the Seniors in the Park Bijou Theatre will be showing three of the Nominated Films. The Academy Awards ceremony is Sunday evening, March 27th.
Tuesday, March 22nd at 1 PM, there will be a showing of King Richard @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Biography/Drama/Sports
Rated PG-13
2 hours, 24 minutes (2021)
The story of tennis Super Stars Venus and Serena Williams and their coach & father, Richard Williams (Will Smith; Best Actor nomination). Also nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Aunjanue Ellis), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture.
Friday in Whitewater will see rain, and perhaps some snow, with a high of 38. Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 7:05 PM for 12h 05m 49s of daytime. The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos left a state Capitol meeting with Republicans seeking to decertify the 2020 election and declared, again, that what they wanted from him wasn’t possible.
But the group said they left Madison with hope for their efforts because of what he said next to reporters: “I think there was widespread fraud.”
Vos’ words emboldened proponents of the unsupported narrative that systemic fraud affected Wisconsin’s election outcome and played into a Republican Party talking point nationally.
Audio of his comments were played over booming speakers in a blacktop parking lot off I-39 in Portage County as a couple hundred people cheered while Vos was across the street meeting with county party leaders to manage their views on the same idea.
“I think he is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and this is one of the dumbest things he has ever said,” Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said Thursday.
“That’s not leadership. We want people to vote. We want eligible people to vote. We want to make it as easy as possible. But when we continue to ratchet up the narrative that there was widespread fraud … that’s wrong. And that’s a leader saying that.”
Vos did not respond to requests for an interview on Thursday.
Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said Vos’ statement will make it even more difficult to assuage concerns within his party over the 2020 election.
(It’s hard to believe that Evers truly thinks that Vos is one of the smartest people he’s met, as Evers has met well more than six or seven people in his life.)
What’s easy to believe, because it’s obvious, is that Vos is a small, scared man. In the presence of the mob, Vos squeals in agreement and scurries away soaked in his own sweat and urine.
Behold, Wisconsin: there goes your Speaker of the Assembly.
