City, Culture, Employment, Local Government, School District, University
Mentoring
by JOHN ADAMS •
When a small community like Whitewater comes to rely on hundreds of non-resident commuters to provide services (for city, schools, or university), those commuters will have a different work relationship than resident workers. (About these workers see The Commuter Class.)
Many will be less attached to the community (as they’ve freely chosen to live elsewhere for housing, activities, etc.). Some will see that they’re working in a community whose residents cannot fill all the available professional positions (and so come to see the community as dependent). Some will look on the community merely as a job opportunity and so come to look for other opportunities if any moment in the community goes poorly. Others will look on the community merely as a job opportunity and so bend easily to bad local ideas simply to retain employment.
Mentoring new employees or leaders is difficult in this situation: they may not be amenable to longterm guidance, either because there are too few resident leaders to provide guidance or because some of those resident leaders won’t have serious mentoring to offer non-resident professionals in any event.
In this way, a local deficiency of professional workers becomes worse through an inability to mentor adequately those commuting workers who do take employment in the city.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.24.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see an afternoon thunderstorm with a high of seventy-seven. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 42s of daytime. The moon is waxing crescent with 11.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1948, the Soviets begin the Berlin Blockade.
Recommended for reading in full —
Annie Lowrey writes about risks of The Second Great Depression:
At this fraught moment, no one knows enough about consumer sentiment and government ordinances and business failures and stimulus packages and the spread of the disease to make solid predictions about the future. The Trump administration and some bullish financial forecasters are arguing that we will end up with a strong, V-shaped rebound, with economic activity surging right back to where it was in no time. Others are betting on a longer, slower, U-shaped turnaround, with the pain extending for a year or three. Still others are sketching out a kind of flaccid check mark, its long tail sagging torpid into the future.
Excitement about reopening aside, that third and most miserable course is the one we appear to be on. The country will rebound, as things reopen. The bounce will seem remarkable, given how big the drop was: Retail sales rose 18 percent in May, and the economy added 2.5 million jobs. But absent dramatic policy action, a pandemic depression is possible: the Congressional Budget Office anticipates that the American economy will generate $8 trillion less in economic activity over the next decade than it projected just a few months ago, and that a full recovery might not take hold until the 2030s.
At least four major factors are terrifying economists and weighing on the recovery: the household fiscal cliff, the great business die-off, the state and local budget shortfall, and the lingering health crisis. Three months ago, the pandemic and ensuing shelter-in-place orders caused mass job loss unlike anything in recent American history. A virtual blizzard settled on top of the country and froze everyone in place. Nearly 40 percent of low-wage workers lost their jobs in March. More than 40 million people lost their jobs in March, April, or May.
Karoun Demirjian, Matt Zapotosky, and Rachael Bade report Prosecutor to tell Congress of pressure from ‘highest levels’ of Justice Dept. to cut Roger Stone ‘a break’:
A federal prosecutor and another Justice Department official plan to tell Congress on Wednesday that Attorney General William P. Barr and his top deputies issued inappropriate orders amid investigations and trials “based on political considerations” and a desire to cater to President Trump.
Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland formerly detailed to Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, will tell the House Judiciary Committee that prosecutors involved in the criminal trial of Trump’s friend Roger Stone experienced “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break” by requesting a lighter sentence, according to Zelinsky’s prepared remarks. The expectation, he intends to testify, was that Stone should be treated “differently and more leniently” because of his “relationship with the President.”
(Read Aaron Zelinsky’s opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee.)
Zelinsky will be joined by John Elias, an official in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, who will say that Barr ordered staff to investigate marijuana company mergers simply because he “did not like the nature of their underlying business,” according to his prepared testimony.
Apple stock hits all-time high:
more >>Coronavirus, Covidiocy, Public Health, Trump, Unfit
Trump: Slow the Testing
by JOHN ADAMS •
Bad Ideas, Coronavirus, Covidiocy, Public Health, Walworth County
How ‘bout a New Slogan for the Walworth County Fair?
by JOHN ADAMS •
One reads that not only are organizers planning to hold the Walworth County Fair during a pandemic, but that they hope to entice patrons with beer sales.
Candidly, aside from the pig races (always suspenseful), one can be hit-or-miss about the fair. Holding it this year is problematic; looking for ways to attract more people is worse than problematic. It’s simply obtuse.
Critical though one may be, there’s yet an opportunity to help brand the fair to reflect the quality of decision-making that went into holding this year’s event.
Without charge, courtesy of FREE WHITEWATER, here’s a suggested slogan for this year’s fair:
Come for the Beer, Stay for the Coronavirus™.
To all concerned – you’re welcome.
Babbittry, Boosterism, City, Local Government, School District, University
The Commuter Class
by JOHN ADAMS •
When one thinks of a small town – or sees depictions of a small town in books or films – one imagines that the people who work in the town also live in the town. So, city workers live in the town, teachers live in the town, and campus professors live in the town.
For Whitewater, that’s not true: significant numbers of city workers, teachers, and professors live elsewhere. They commute to the city for their daily work, but they purchase homes, raise families, and attend religious & civic events elsewhere. In this way, the City of Whitewater’s motto about the city as a place to ‘live, work, play, and learn’ is only partially fulfilled.
Partially fulfilled: hundreds of professionals combined from the city, school district, and university live in other communities. One needn’t suggest that they must live here; the simple fact of life is that they do not live here.
There a few obvious implications of their choice to live in other places.
Boosterism Fails. Years of public relations touting the city as a place to live have been unpersuasive to hundreds of people who see the city each day. There are myriad government or business marketing schemes to sell the city to others, but scores of people who are are in the city daily from Monday to Friday choose to spend nights and weekends elsewhere.
In effect, Whitewater has a focus group of hundreds of professionals who are telling government and business that they do not wish to live in Whitewater under status quo conditions. These hundreds aren’t buying what’s on offer.
If government and business groups were honest, they would look to themselves to see why these many workers aren’t interested in Whitewater. Instead, the same few longtime residents carry on as before, insisting that more marketing or more press releases will make Whitewater attractive, absurdly claiming that there are no places to live, or that no one knows Whitewater’s location, etc.
These professional workers know where Whitewater is – they drive in and out of the city every day. It’s simply that what local government tells them, and what the local business league tells them, isn’t persuasive.
Old Whitewater has, primarily, itself to blame for the unwillingness of others to live here.
The Same Ten Six People. Whitewater worries over having too few people for public committees and boards, and so fills those positions with the same people over and over. This same-ten-people problem is so acute in Whitewater it’s now closer to a same-six-people problem. If professionals who choose to live elsewhere chose to live in Whitewater, there would be many more people of talent and ability who could serve on boards and committees.
Limited Understanding. One can acknowledge that people should be free to live where they want yet see that living elsewhere leaves these hundreds of day workers less informed than those who do live here, vote here, and pay taxes here. Residents are the ones who directly feel the affects of local policies on their own households.
Community relations do not happen at a distance of fifteen miles – they happen at a distance of fifteen feet.
Those who are community leaders, either by office or (more often) self-promotion, bear the responsibility for failing to inspire many of these commuting professionals to choose freely to live in Whitewater.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.23.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-four. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 58s of daytime. The moon is waxing crescent with 5.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1969, IBM announces that effective January 1970 it will price its software and services separately from hardware thus creating the modern software industry.
Recommended for reading in full —
Davey Alba and report 41 Cities, Many Sources: How False Antifa Rumors Spread Locally:
In late May to early June, there was a rumor that “two bus loads of antifa” were heading to Locust, N.C., about 25 miles east of Charlotte. The rumor was shared in text messages among people in the area — far out of sight of any fact-checking organization.
On June 1, the rumor surfaced in Facebook groups with names like DeplorablePride.org and Albemarle News and Weather.
That same evening, the police in Locust posted a screenshot of a text that had been circulating in the community over the weekend. The text falsely claimed that police officers had been knocking on doors to warn that “a black organization is bringing 2 bus loads of people to walmart in locust with intentions on looting and burning down the suburbs.” The post, on Facebook, assured residents that the Police Department had not been spreading the rumor.
Jeffrey Shew, the assistant chief of police, said all the residents who reached out to the department to report the buses “had no direct knowledge” of violent protesters coming to town. He said they were only sharing what they had seen on social media. By midnight on June 1, Mr. Shew said, it was clear that the rumors were untrue.
“No protests, groups looking to protest or groups looking to riot occurred,” he said.
On June 2, the police posted another message on Facebook emphasizing that the rumors had no substance. It exemplified that often, community members themselves are the ones on the front lines of debunking false rumors.
Oliver Darcy writes State spox mutes reporter after Bolton question:
CNN’s Kylie Atwood and Nicole Gaouette report: On a State Department call in which officials stressed the importance of a free press, the State Department spokesperson closed the line of a reporter who asked about John Bolton’s book. “AT&T we can mute that line,” said State Dept. spox Morgan Ortagus when a reporter asked whether US allies in Asia had reached out with concerns after the excerpts of the book were leaked. Ortagus said that the question was not what the call was about.
Later on the call, another reporter asked Ortagus to “comment on the message you think it sends to foreign journalists and other people who would be listening to this call that you guys are not willing to take questions on the John Bolton, but when you’re also talking about a message of ensuring freedom of the press in the United States.” Ortagus responded angrily afterward, calling it “a pretty offensive question” that was “totally inaccurate,” and defending the State Department’s record in responding to the press…
(Emphasis in original.)
Apple’s WWDC 2020 Event In 14 Minutes:
more >>Crime, Documentary, Drug War, History, Opioids, Public Health
The Public Health Crisis before the Public Health Crisis
by JOHN ADAMS •
Frontline’s Opioids, Inc. (full film):
Pushing opioids. Bribing doctors. Making millions. FRONTLINE and the Financial Times investigate how Insys Therapeutics profited from a fentanyl-based painkiller up to 100 times stronger than heroin — and how some Wall Street investors looked the other way.
Since 2007, communities like Whitewater have faced a Great Recession, an opioid epidemic, economic stagnation, a pandemic, and now another recession. Whitewater’s like places that had to endure both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl at the same time.
It’s notable that, as with the novel coronavirus, America has mostly viewed the opioid crisis as a public health matter. However poorly addressed (or simply ignored), opioid addiction and the coronavirus are rightly public health matters.
Another public health crisis – a surge in the use of crack cocaine in the ‘80s and early ‘90s – wrongly received a punitive, rather than therapeutic, response.
In this moment of increased cultural awareness, the Draconian approach to one group of drug users remains another example of wrongly-biased enforcement.
Film, Music
Monday Music: John Williams, Finale from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.22.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will see scattered thunderstorms with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 11s of daytime. The moon is waxing crescent with 1.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets in closed session at 6:15 PM, with an open session beginning at 7 PM.
On this day in 1943, future United States senator from Wisconsin Joseph McCarthy breaks his leg during a drunken Marine Corps ceremony.
Recommended for reading in full —
Dylan Matthews writes A new paper finds stimulus checks, small business aid, and “reopening” can’t rescue the economy:
The coronavirus pandemic ripped through the American economy at an incredibly rapid pace — so rapidly that it’s been difficult for economists and others to understand what exactly is going on.
Our best data sources about the economy are wildly out of date: Unemployment data comes out just once a month, and GDP data only four times a year. However, a new data source put together by a research group at Harvard, drawing on a variety of corporations’ private data, now allows economists to track what has happened to the economy in real time.
The data they collated shows that the economic crash has been driven disproportionately by the actions of high-income Americans, whose consumer spending has crashed more than that of poorer Americans, devastating low-income workers and small businesses in rich areas.
The data also suggests that economic relief measures have done little for small businesses: Stimulus spending tended to go to Amazon or Walmart, not small local stores, and small businesses eligible for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans are generally not any better off than ones that were not eligible.
And researchers who developed the data found official orders “reopening” states do not increase economic activity, and so appear to endanger public health without any economic benefit.
The picture that emerges in a new working paper based on the economists’ findings is of an economy frozen in place. Simply declaring the economy “reopened” does not seem to do anything to spur high-income people to spend more, and it’s not clear that anything can until the real threat passes.
Paige St. John and Annette Choi report Mysterious deaths of infants, children raise questions about how early coronavirus hit California:
A cluster of mysterious deaths, some involving infants and children, is under scrutiny amid questions of whether the novel coronavirus lurked in California months before it was first detected. But eight weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide hunt for undetected early COVID-19 deaths, the effort remains hobbled by bureaucracy and testing limits.
Among those awaiting answers is Maribeth Cortez, whose adult son, Jeremiah DeLap, died Jan. 7 in Orange County while visiting his parents. He had been healthy, suffering on a Friday from what he thought was food poisoning, and found dead in bed the following Tuesday, drowned by fluid in his lungs.
Can Hollywood Go Virtual After Coronavirus?:
more >>Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.21.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 19s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.0% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1989, the United States captures Guam from Spain.
Recommended for reading in full —
The AP, via the Guardian, reports Trump calls coronavirus ‘kung flu’ and says he slowed testing:
Donald Trump calls the coronavirus ‘kung flu’ and ‘the Chinese virus’ during a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday night. The US president also tells the crowd that he had asked his people to slow down Covid-19 testing across the country because it would find more cases.
Frida Ghitis writes Trump’s Tulsa rally was a flop:
President Donald Trump couldn’t wait. His presidency is nosediving, with bad news erupting all around him. His answer was Tulsa, a campaign rally in blood-red Oklahoma, the state he won by a crushing 36 points in 2016.
But Tulsa did not deliver. The event that was supposed to trumpet his return to greatness — and the country’s return to normalcy — instead brought embarrassing scenes of empty bleachers, a dismantled stage and a familiar speech unsuccessfully trying to reignite public fears.
After raising expectations with claims that a million people had requested tickets for his first campaign rally in more than three months, the vacant seats were the biggest story of the night. It was a bad omen for November, and Trump undoubtedly saw it with his own eyes as he scanned a sea of blue seats devoid of supporters on the top level of the arena that he and his campaign had said would be bursting beyond capacity; so full, they expected, that the campaign planned for a second outdoor speech to bring an additional 40,000 people unable to find a seat indoors.
Instead, the outdoor speech was cancelled, the stage dismantled. The campaign absurdly tried to explain by claiming that protesters blocked the entrances. But every reporter there confirmed that was not true.
See also Trump rallies in red-state America — and faces a sea of empty blue seats.
Choose Your Own Adventure | The World’s Largest Model Railway:
more >>If you love model trains, you will lose your mind on our visit to Miniatur Wunderland. There are more than 1,000 trains traveling 16,000 kilometers of track at the world’s largest model railway, located in Hamburg, Germany. But it’s not just trains. This small-scale world of wonder features mini versions of landscapes ranging from the canals of Venice to a lit-up Las Vegas. It’s also home to the world’s largest model airport, and hundreds of flights take off every day. Enough with the description. It’s time to explore this spectacular creation with our intrepid guide, Great Big Story producer Jacob Harrell. Stick around for the choose-your-own-adventure portion of the trip. We’re offering you the chance for a deeper dive into Miniatur Wunderland’s tiny versions of Las Vegas, Scandinavia, Switzerland and Venice.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.20.20
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with an occasional thundershower and a high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 20m 23s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1944, the United States is victorious at the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
Recommended for reading in full —
Ryan Goodman writes Bolton Book Confirms Most Serious Allegations in Trump Impeachment on Ukraine Quid Pro Quo:
Bolton’s account, across several pages of his book, squarely addresses these parts of the record. A few examples.
1. Only “circumstantial evidence” of what Trump said or did? Bolton provides direct evidence.
“I took Trump’s temperature on the Ukraine security assistance, and he said he wasn’t in favor of sending them anything until all the Russia-investigation materials related to Clinton and Biden had been turned over.”
John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened
2. Trump’s actions were to pursue anti-corruption, not to help his campaign? Bolton confirms it was the latter, unequivocally.
“When, in 1992, Bush 41 supporters suggested he ask foreign governments to help out in his failing campaign against Bill Clinton, Bush and Jim Baker completely rejected the idea. Trump did the precise opposite.”
John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened
3. No evidence of a quid pro quo for military assistance? That’s what Bolton’s direct evidence establishes (see #1).
4. The White House suspended aid to Ukraine as part of a general review of foreign economic assistance? Bolton writes that this was a false cover.
“Mulvaney and others later argued that the dispute over Ukraine’s security assistance was related to rescinding the economic assistance, but this was entirely an ex post facto rationalization.”
John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened
As for the infamous phone call with Ukraine’s president, Bolton thought it simply fit into the ongoing scheme. “Nor, at the time, did I think Trump’s comments in the call reflected any major change in direction; the linkage of the military assistance with the Giuliani fantasies was already baked in. The call was not the keystone for me, but simply another brick in the wall,” the former national security advisor writes.
Devlin Barrett reports U.S. attorney investigating Trump associates resists attempt to push him out:
The Trump administration announced late Friday that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who has overseen a number of investigations involving the president and his political campaign, will be leaving that job, though Berman fired back that he had not resigned and intends to stay in the job to ensure the cases continue unimpeded.
The surreal Friday night standoff marks the latest battle over the Trump administration’s management of the Justice Department. Democrats have decried what they charge has been the politicization of the department under President Trump and his attorney general, William P. Barr.
Barr announced the personnel change in a statement, saying the president plans to nominate the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, for the job.Berman’s office has been conducting a criminal investigation of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in a campaign finance case that has already led to charges against two of Giuliani’s associates.
The iPhone shortcut which records when you say ‘I’m getting pulled over’:
See also ‘Siri, I’m getting pulled over’: A shortcut for iPhones can automatically record the police. more >>
Authoritarianism, Books, Coronavirus, History, Libertarians, Liberty, Public Health, Reasoning, Rhetoric, Russia, Tyranny, Walworth County
An Example of Bottomless Ignorance in Walworth County
by JOHN ADAMS •
Some residents of Walworth County, Wisconsin object to public health measures to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. So hysterical is their opposition that one reads Opponents say county’s coronavirus safeguards are ‘like Russia’:
Confronted by a raucous crowd of opponents fearing government intrusion, Walworth County Board members have backed away from a measure outlining public safeguards against the coronavirus.
County officials said the proposal would have reinforced state law granting county government the authority to quarantine people afflicted with communicable diseases.
But opponents shouting and heckling during a June 9 county board meeting accused officials of moving to undermine individual constitutional freedoms with the public health initiative.
“This seems like something that would happen in Russia — not here,” said Madison Elmer, an opponent from the town of Walworth.
The ordinance recommended by county staff would authorize health workers to quarantine people infected with a communicable disease, involuntarily if necessary.
The measure authorized staff to destroy a person’s furniture or clothing to avoid spreading disease. In addition, it permitted “quarantine guards” to keep infected people isolated, with fines of up to $500 for violations.
County officials said Wisconsin state law already allows counties to take all such actions, if needed, to protect public health in the event of a communicable disease outbreak like the coronavirus.
There are, truly, significant powers to act under Wisconsin law: see Wis. Stat. § 252 (Communicable Diseases). They are, as the chapter makes plain, to be used only during the spread of a communicable disease.
In this way, it is false and ignorant to compare public health measures to conditions “in Russia.” To be libertarian – as I am – requires that someone assess accurately the threats to liberty. Provisional and limited health measures would not render Walworth County like Russia, either under Putin or as it was under the Soviets.
Madison Elmer, who sadly may pass as the most learned man in the Village of Walworth, could use a bit of reading between ignorant claims at disrupted public meetings.
If he cannot read accounts of Soviet and recent oppression in Russia in the native language of that country, he might consider three English language accounts of oppression there. Of recent authoritarianism, I would recommend Masha Gessen’s Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Of Soviet history – millions of murders having been committed under the Soviets – Robert Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine comes to mind.
These accounts should be sufficient to disabuse even foolish people from frivolous comparisons to Russian history.
Cats, Games/Puzzles
Upcoming PlayStation 5 Game Allows You to Play as a Mystery-Solving Cat
by JOHN ADAMS •
Cameron Frew reports New PlayStation 5 Game Stray Allows You To Play As A Mystery-Solving Cat:
Forget Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Resident Evil 8, because upcoming Playstation 5 title Stray puts you in the paws of a cat trying to escape a cybercity.
Last night, June 11, we finally got a peek at Sony’s next-generation of gaming. The console is a beautiful beast, but the main takeaway was the slew of brand-new titles – one such game is Stray, developed by BlueTwelve Studio, ‘a small team mostly made from cats and a handful of humans’.
Suddenly, the PS5 is looking intriguing…