FREE WHITEWATER

Boosterism, Newspapers

Cancel Your Local Newspaper?

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Over at Politico, press critic Jack Shafer writes – provocatively – Care About Journalism? Maybe You Should Cancel Your Newspaper:

It’s heresy for a journalist to ask readers to consider dropping their newspaper. Beyond the obvious self-interest, reporters and editors consider a subscription to your local newspaper as a paramount civic duty, a view shared by academics, politicians, and activists. Local reporters hold government and corporations accountable, the refrain goes. They keep an eye on school boards and polluters and their stories boost voter turnout. They uncover corruption. They knit the weave in the social fabric. They foster democracy!

But when you pay for a newspaper, you’re also making a decision to send money to whoever owns it. And if you really care about local news, you might want to think twice about continuing your subscription to one of the 50-plus dailies operated by Alden Global Capital under the Digital First Media nameplate in Denver, Detroit, Long Beach, San Jose, Boston, St. Paul, and other smaller cities. Good journalism still gets done at these newspapers because reporters care. But less and less of it gets printed, because Alden owner Randall Smith and his right-hand man, Heath Freeman, don’t care about the new. As newspaper industry analyst Ken Doctor has amply documented, Alden is cannibalizing its papers for profit in a way that should repel subscribers.

Shafer is proposing cancellations of local newspapers that are part of a chain. Alden Global Capital owns one such chain, but then another out-of-state chain – APG – owns some of the papers in the Whitewater area (Janesville Gazette and Daily Jefferson County Union).

Cancel? Although one sees Shafer’s point about local-that’s-not-really-local, I’ll not offer advice for subscribers to these (generally struggling) local newspapers. I’ve been a critic of these papers, as I grew up in a newspaper-reading family at a time with much better journalism. Although there’s ample doubt about whether the Gazette and Daily Union will survive, my critique is about reporting and editorial outlook alone. One makes this critique because these papers could do better, and look each day more like advertising-delivery networks that are doing worse

If these newspapers fail, they will fail because they abandoned independence for the boosterism of sugary feature stories and sloppy editorials.

When someone like Trump complains about national newspapers, he calls their reporting fake only because it is rightly embarrassing to his administration. On the contrary, national – and local – newspapers fail not because they are too critical of official misconduct, but because they are too timid in the face of it. Trump (self-interestedly) gets the problem backward.

Local newspapers have slipped far, and the older editors employed there show no ability to teach another generation properly. Mentoring should be more than confidence-building platitudes and atta-boy compliments. Those approaches are sometimes helpful, but it was, is, and always will be true that the substance of one’s work speaks most powerfully.

CDA, City, Culture, Politics

Local Candidacies in Whitewater, 2020

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There are six public seats up for election in Whitewater this spring (three on the Whitewater Common Council and three on the Whitewater Unified School District’s board.) It seems there are six candidates for these six offices (five incumbents and one former officeholder). This is what one would expect of government in Whitewater over these recent years: one year looking similar to the last one.

Some nearby towns have seen greater interest in officeholding; Whitewater has seen less.

Six candidates or sixty, the principal challenge for government in Whitewater is that a public body with individually talented people often produces collectively less than one might expect (or even hope). It’s the opposite of a synergy; collectives here often achieve less than what one might expect considering their strongest members’ abilities. See Whitewater’s Major Public Institutions Produce a Net Loss (And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way).

At the local school district, this is especially evident: a school board that does not review that night’s administrative presentations before the meeting – that, in fact, hasn’t even seen these presentations – can set neither a good example nor expect accountability from others.

Neither school board members, nor centralized administrators, nor principals are drafted into service — these are positions freely chosen from among a marketplace of occupations. When others see that less is exerted in oversight, they will offer less in effort. Over time, they will come to think that whatever they offer, however inadequate, is as though a gift to students and parents, and that the community should be grateful.

Professional services should meet a professional standard; no one owes professionals their sloth. Patients shouldn’t accept a doctor like that, clients shouldn’t accept a lawyer like that, and students and parents shouldn’t accept a lesser standard, either.

The district’s significant challenges will require significant energy and commitment.

For city government, business as usual runs the longstanding problem of ignorant-but-entitled development men (helped by a catspaw or two on the Whitewater Common Council) insisting that they should have pride of place, after years of self-promotion during of years of stagnation.

(They are likely, however, to prowl about even now for more subsidized deals, and special tax districts, at public expense. It’s what they are, and it’s what they’ll do.)

There are, surely, creative and vigorous pursuits in Whitewater. Most of these involve independent merchants or private charitable efforts that realistically address the city’s needs.

Slowly, Whitewater’s diverse communities (and the city is now evidently and undeniably heterogeneous) have begun to look beyond government for expression and meaning. This has been a gradual process for Whitewater, but the city has been moving in that direction (with some pauses and retrograde motion along the way).

Social evolution like this should be allowed to continue, although a disappointed few may do what they can to stop this natural transformation.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.8.20

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of twenty-one.  Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:38 PM, for 9h 13m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1790, George Washington delivers the first regular annual message before a joint session of Congress, in New York City (then the provisional U.S. capital).

Recommended for reading in full —

Scott Bauer reports Democrats focus on Wisconsin for 2020 convention, election:

MILWAUKEE — The head of the Democratic National Convention promised Tuesday that the event in Milwaukee this summer to choose the party’s presidential nominee will be focused more on substance than spectacle as part of a strategy to be more successful in key states such as Wisconsin.

Democrats failed in 2016 to communicate as effectively as they could have in key states, said Joe Solmonese, a longtime Democratic strategist and executive officer for the convention. He spoke to reporters at a media walk-through event Tuesday at the Fiserv Forum, six months before the July convention.

The event and more than 1,000 related events will bring an estimated 50,000 people to Milwaukee, bringing added emphasis to the importance of Wisconsin in the presidential race.

Miranda Suarez reports These Are The Rare Species Discovered Or Rediscovered In Wisconsin In Last Decade:

State conservationists confirmed the return of Blanchard’s cricket frog to Trempealeau County in 2017. Before that, the frog — which is listed as endangered in Wisconsin — hadn’t been documented there in more than 50 years.

A volunteer identified the frog by its distinctive call, a clicking sound the Wisconsin Citizen-based Monitoring Network describes as two ball bearings being smacked together.

Blanchard’s cricket frog is one of several species the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said were discovered or rediscovered in parts of Wisconsin in the last decade.

One newcomer is the evening bat, the state’s first new bat species in more than 60 years, according to the DNR.

Evening bats are “an interesting sort of orange-colored, and some say sort of orange-peel-smelling” creature, said Owen Boyle, a DNR conservationist.

Bruce Murphy writes Journal Sentinel Promotes Long-Gone Writer:

On Sunday the Journal Sentinel, whose display ads have been shrinking for more than a decade, had an ad spot to fill and so it added a promotion for USA Today, whose parent company (Gatehouse-Gannett) also owns the Milwaukee daily. 

The ad was certainly punchy. It featured a photo of writer Michael Wolff, with this come-on: 

READ HIS COLUMN, 

AND THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS

HE’S NOT WRITING ABOUT YOU

No none gives you sharp, brutally honest insights into the world of business quite like USA TODAY’S Michael Wolff.  

Except, to be brutally honest, Wolff hasn’t written a column for USA Today since January 2017. Which, by process of elimination, would mean no one now offers such brutally honest insights in the newspaper. 

SpaceX Lands Rocket After Launching 60 Starlink Satellites:

Culture, Newspapers, Politics

‘Bothsiderism’

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Gina Overholser, a writing about a liberal paper, remarks of the New York Times that

Its investigative and enterprise work rises to today’s unprecedented challenges. But in day-to-day political reporting, the Times is hopelessly stuck in the past. Its proud allegiance to presenting “both sides” in a time of political breakdown renders it a handmaiden to the degradation of truth.

Here’s a recent example: One politician makes an appeal to hold a president accountable. Another responds by telling the first to put aside partisan politics. One statement will stand as historic; the other is nonsense. But the reporter solemnly adds: “But the appeals to rise above the tribalism of the moment from the two veteran lawmakers fell on deaf ears.” The distortions in the name of balance grow more painful as the article continues.

….

Wikipedia calls it “bothsidesism.” Its Twitter hashtag does lively trade. But the Times (and The Washington Post) have girded their loins against the frequent outcries over their commitment to it.

The damage this journalism is doing is awful enough. But think too of the promise of what could happen if we were freed from this contortion. Along with the courts, the press has the capacity to bring the nation together when norms are changing. The Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage is one example. So is press coverage of sexual harassment. (Here’s an interesting piece of research on this topic.)

Via Death to Bothsiderism.

See also The two big flaws of the media’s impeachment coverage — and what went right and The Lazy, False Equivalance in Craig Gilbert’s Analysis.

The only worse view, perhaps, would be to think there’s only one perspective (although those deciding between the lesser of a false moral equivalence and a monochromatic viewpoint have a melancholy choice).

An aside about the New York Times: the paper has a fair number of critics from the right, but it’s criticism from the center-left, in circumstances like ours today, that represents a bigger challenge to the publication’s future. Conservative complaints about the Times have been present for years; center-left critiques like Overholser’s are newer, and grow more common each day. Conservatives may love to hate the NYT, but the center-left, if sufficiently aggrieved, will simply turn elsewhere.

No one in our time will acquit himself or herself well through insistence on false similarities or indiscernible differences. Not everyone’s a liar, not everyone’s a bigot, and not everyone’s a tyrant – society has some, but only some, who are like this.

It’s right and necessary to see as much.

America, City, Never Trump, Politics, Trump

One Year

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For all the discussion of politics over these last three years, America now comes to a critical year ahead. In these next twelve months, we’ll see primaries, conventions, a general election, and thereafter possible challenges to, and necessary defenses of, the constitutional order.

When was there another year so important to America as 2020 looks to be? Perhaps 1864, or before that 1776.

There have been significant losses these last three years, but graciously some gains that offer hope for the future.

These losses – and they have been grievous – have reached all parts of America, affecting millions, and threatening countless more, at home and abroad. A loss to Trumpism would leave nothing unsoiled. Even the smallest and most beautiful places, like Whitewater, would be stained.

Those scheming political men in Whitewater who have for years encouraged the antecedents of Trumpism deserve now only opposition; those other political men who have carried on with heads down and eyes averted deserve no deference. People choose freely — sometimes well and sometimes poorly. Those in Trump’s thrall, and those who have claimed a futile neutrality, have chosen poorly.

There is something profoundly ridiculous about men who hungrily strive for small things while ignoring large things. 

Other years will follow this one; the conditions in those years will depend greatly on our commitment in this year.

 

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.7.20

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:37 PM, for 9h 12m 30s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1901, Robert Marion La Follette is inaugurated as governor of Wisconsin. (Fighting Bob was the first Wisconsin-born person to serve as governor.)

Recommended for reading in full —

Hope Kirwan reports Wisconsin Loses 10 Percent Of State’s Dairy Herds As Fallout From Low Milk Prices Continues:

Wisconsin lost 10 percent of the state’s dairy farms in 2019, breaking last year’s record high.

The latest data from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection shows there were 7,292 registered dairy herds in the state as of Jan. 1.

That’s 818 fewer than at the start of 2019 and the largest decline since state records started in 2004. Wisconsin lost just over 7 percent of its herds in 2018.

Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Wisconsin usually sees a 4 percent decline in herd numbers each year. But the prolonged period of low milk prices from 2014 to 2019 have forced many farms to sell their herds.

And Stephenson warns the decline will likely continue, even though milk prices have started to improve.

“I think we’re going to find that this has a long tail. Our milk prices are recovering right now and it’s a much better time for milk prices than it was say at the beginning of 2019,” Stephenson said. “But there are a lot of farms that just have such damaged balance sheets that I don’t think they’re going to recover from this. It’s a matter of when they decide they need to exit the industry.”

  Todd Richmond reports GOP resurrects bill to make English official language:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican lawmakers have resurrected a bill that would make English the official language in Wisconsin, renewing their argument that the measure will push immigrants to learn the language and make them more attractive to employers.

Sens. Andre Jacque, Dave Craig and Steve Nass began circulating the bill for co-sponsors Monday. The trio is among the most conservative members of the Republican majority.

The proposal would declare English as Wisconsin’s official language and require all state and local government officials to write all their documents in English. The bill would allow for the use of other languages in certain situations, including to protect a citizen’s health or safety, to teach another language, to facilitate census counts and to protect criminal defendants’ rights. The measure wouldn’t restrict the use of other languages for non-governmental purposes.

….

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ spokeswoman, Kit Beyer, didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiring about the bill’s chances. Alec Zimmerman, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, had no immediate comment.

The clock is already ticking for Jacque, Craig and Nass; with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers poised to veto any major GOP initiatives, Vos and Fitzgerald are expected to convene only a handful of floor periods before the 2019-20 session ends this spring.

A Substance Like Nothing Else on Earth:

America, History, Television, Wisconsin

On the American Experience: McCarthy

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Tonight, on the American Experience on PBS, an episode on Sen. Joe McCarthy:

McCarthy chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who came to power after a stunning victory in an election no one thought he could win. Once in office, he declared that there was a vast conspiracy threatening America — emanating not from a rival superpower, but from within. Free of restraint or oversight, he conducted a crusade against those he accused of being enemies of the state, a chilling campaign marked by groundless accusations, bullying intimidation, grandiose showmanship and cruel victimization. With lawyer Roy Cohn at his side, he belittled critics, spinning a web of lies and distortions while spreading fear and confusion. After years in the headlines, he was brought down by his own excesses and overreach. But his name lives on linked to the modern-day witch hunt we call “McCarthyism.”

Bad Ideas, CDA, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, WEDC

Journal Sentinel’s Rick Romell Reports the Obvious about Foxconn Project

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Over at the Journal Sentinel, business reporter Rick Romell reports that More signs emerge that the pace of Foxconn’s Wisconsin project is falling short of expectations.

Honest to goodness – there have been years of reports, and years of analyses, that made clear to any reasonable person that this project was destined for failure. Anyone and everyone has had years of signs. Romell (who is reportedly retiring from the JS) tells readers what any reasonable person expected and saw at each stage of the project.

Those who enthusiastically flacked this project were almost irredeemably ignorant.

Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition,  Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirm Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment, Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them, Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair, It Shouldn’t, Foxconn: Wrecking Ordinary Lives for Nothing, Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?, Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!, Foxconn: First In, Now Out, Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no, Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke, Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing, Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls, and Foxconn Notices the Noticeable.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.6.20

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:36 PM, for 9h 11m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater United School District’s board meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1941, Pres. Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms speech (officially the 1941 State of the Union address).

Recommended for reading in full —

Courtney Subramanian reports Trump again threatens to target Iranian cultural sites amid mounting tensions over Qasem Soleimani killing:

President Donald Trump on Sunday repeated a threat to target Iranian cultural sites, which critics say could amount to a war crime, if Tehran retaliates for a U.S. drone strike that killed its top military general.

“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way back to Washington, D.C, from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

Trump’s comments appeared to contradict Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who earlier on Sunday vowed the administration would “behave lawfully” in regards to a list of targets the U.S. would strike if Iran launched a retaliatory attack for the death of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

….

The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict makes it a war crime to target cultural sites. The international treaty, created in the aftermath of World War II, says, “Damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind.”

And, according to the International Red Cross, because such sites are “normally civilian in nature, the general provisions of humanitarian law protecting civilian property apply.”

See also John Bellinger, Attacking Iran’s Cultural Sites Would Violate the Hague Cultural Property Convention.

  Jennifer Rubin writes Why lying about an ‘imminent’ attack would matter:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and State Department subordinates vigorously argued Friday that the justification for killing Iranian general and terrorist leader Qasem Soleimani was intelligence that an attack was “imminent.”

It is easy to understand why such a rationale would be advanced. An imminent threat would arguably obviate the need for a declaration of war from or even prior consultation with Congress. Exercising the right of self-defense, an established principle of international law, would satisfy allies and sidestep nasty questions about violation of an executive order in place with only minor changes since 1976 that prohibits assassination.

….

Americans have every reason to be skeptical of anything and everything coming out of this administration. The president has lied more than 15,000 times on matters small and large. Pompeo misled the Congress and American people in suggesting there was not convincing evidence of Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Pompeo repeatedly misrepresented to Congress that progress was being made in talks with North Korea. Moreover, given Pompeo’s own fiery rhetoric that essentially demands regime change in Iran (if not using that term), it is logical to assume this was not a defensive action nor one intended to de-escalate violence. Pompeo needs to come before Congress and testify under oath.

Science in Pictures aboard the International Space Station:

Newspapers

On the Scatalogical

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It’s a crime (and a repulsive wrong) for someone to relieve himself repeatedly – over years – on the grounds of a public park. (The park where this happened was Natureland, a small, lovely spot in this area where visitors deserved none of this.) Someone who does so should be – and recently was – assessed a criminal fine and restitution costs. A story about this sad and aberrant conduct appeared in the Janesville Gazette, was picked up by at least two news services (TNS and AP), and became a national and international story.

It’s easy to see why this story spread – the conduct is simultaneously prurient and infuriating.

I would guess that the Gazette (reporter, Pierce; editor Schwartz) is delighted with a story that received far-reaching attention and re-publication.

They’ve no reason, however, to be delighted. The story didn’t draw attention because it was well written or insightful – it drew attention because the subject matter was so strange.

As local newspapers decline, becoming part of newspaper chains that look like nothing more advertising-delivery networks, they’re left relying on one-point-of-view feature stories and scatological crime stories.

There should be feature stories and there should be crime stories; the failure of local journalism is that there isn’t much more. One doesn’t write this as a reporter or journalist – one writes this as someone who grew up in a literate, newspaper-loving family.

These young reporters at the Gazette (and they are young) do not reach the standards of work from even a generation ago. Perhaps some of them cannot reach these standards, but it’s more likely they’re not being taught properly. It’s almost certain that they, themselves, cannot see any deficiencies in their instruction.

Proper mentoring, after all, requires more than offering confidence-building platitudes while the aging mentor marks his time until retirement.

There’s little evidence on the page that local reporters at the Gazette receive and apply proper instruction.

Previously: The Janesville Gazette‘s Sketchy Reporting on Major Topics, A Local Press Responsible for Its Own Decline, and A Local Newspaper Squeaks.

America, Blogging, History

But We Never Went Away…

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Writing at NiemanLab, Joanne McNeil offers a prediction for 2020 in A return to blogs (finally? sort of?):

One reason we might see a resurgence of blogs is the novelty. Tell someone you’re starting a new newsletter and they might complain about how many newsletters (or podcasts) they already subscribe to. But tell them you’re launching a blog and see how that goes: Huh. Really, a blog? In 2020? Wow.

It’s been long enough now that people look back on blogging fondly, but the next generation of blogs will be shaped around the habits and conventions of today’s internet. Internet users are savvier about things like context collapse and control (or lack thereof) over who gets to view their shared content. Decentralization and privacy are other factors. At this moment, while so much communication takes place backstage, in group chats and on Slack, I’d expect new blogs to step in the same ambiguous territory as newsletters have — a venue for material where not everyone is looking, but privacy is neither airtight nor expected.

NcNeil’s spot on about the mood of many publishers today, and the relative influence of newsletters as against blogs. There likely is a shift back to blogging.

And yet, and yet, blogging never went away. Many of us have had increasing success each year, and have seen both absolute and relative gains as other publications have declined (local newspapers are weaker than ever, for example, and often look like little more than advertising-delivery vehicles).

Bloggers are, however, neither newspaper publishers nor reporters; at bottom, bloggers are modern-day pamphleteers. America’s founding era depended on pamphleteers, as they were critical to the Revolutionary and early Constitutional periods. See The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution for Bernard Bailyn’s Pulitizer-winning history of the role of pamphleteering in America’s founding.

(I read Bailyn’s fine work in the early 1980s, long before the development of the web, and thought from the moment I read it how satisfying it would have been to live in a time of pamphleteering.  That era of independent publishing seemed gone forever. Yet, when the web arrived, countless Americans could exercise their free-speech rights through a contemporary version of pamphleteering. In my own case, months of concern after the Star Packaging raid led me to publish FREE WHITEWATER beginning in 2007.)

For some of us, who have embraced an older medium’s new form, there is the work of the day, and the days ahead. We are right where we want to be.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.5.20

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be intermittently cloudy with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:35 PM, for 9h 10m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 72.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1781, British troops led by Benedict Arnold burn Virginia’s capital of Richmond.

Recommended for reading in full —

Hope Kirwan reports Wisconsin Egg Producers Set New Records As Demand For Cage-Free Continues:

The latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows Wisconsin farms produced 193 million eggs in November. That’s about 19 percent higher than in 2018 and the second month in a row that the state’s producers have set a new record high.

….

Scott Schneider owns Nature Link Farms in Jefferson and has produced cage-free eggs for the last 15 years.

“It seems to me anyway that that will be sort of the standard in the future, whereby most egg production will be cage-free,” Schneider said. “The big purchasers of eggs, the McDonald’s, the mayonnaise companies, those types of uses for eggs and egg products, those will be the ones that will start leading the pack. And I think it will take a little bit longer for the retail consumer to really start making those decisions to purchase cage-free eggs when they go to the grocery store.”

Schneider said smaller farms like his will need to find new ways to differentiate their products, like using free-range production or transitioning to organic.

  David Corn and Matt Cohen write With a War Against Iran Brewing, Don’t Listen to the Hawks Who Lied Us Into Iraq:

Shortly after the news broke that a US airstrike in Baghdad ordered by President Donald Trump had killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, Ari Fleischer went on Fox News and proclaimed, “I think it is entirely possible that this is going to be a catalyst inside Iran where the people celebrate this killing of Soleimani.”

Here we go again.

Fleischer was press secretary for President George W. Bush when the Bush-Cheney administration deployed a long stretch of false statements and lies—Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al Qaeda! Saddam had WMDs! Saddam intended to use WMDs against the United States! Saddam’s defeat would lead to peace and democracy in Iraq and throughout the region!—to grease the way to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. In that position, Fleischer was a key spokesperson for the war. Prior to the invasion, he promised the war would lead to a bright future: “Once the Iraqi people see that Saddam and those around him will be removed from power, they’ll welcome freedom, they’ll be a liberated people.” Instead, Iraq and the region were wracked with destabilization and death that continues to this day. About 200,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives in the chaos and violence the Bush-Cheney invasion unleashed, and 4,500 US soldiers were killed in their war.

Before Beatlemania, There Was Lisztomania: