Kevin Hassett, the Trump administration’s top economist, acknowledged yesterday the economy may not grow at all in the first quarter if the shutdown lasts that long. And White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is eyeing an even longer impasse. He has tasked agency heads with assessing which of their programs will be jeopardized if the situation continues into April.
“Mulvaney wants the list no later than Friday … and it’s the firmest evidence to date that the White House is preparing for a lengthy funding lapse that could have snowballing consequences for the economy and government services,” my colleagues Damian Paletta and Juliet Eilperin report.
“The request is the first known inquiry from a top White House official seeking information about the spreading impact of the shutdown, which has entered its fifth week and is the longest in U.S. history. So far, top White House officials have been particularly focused on lengthening wait times at airport security, but not the sprawling interruption of programs elsewhere in the government.”
One reads that Whitewater’s police force has received accreditation from an association for meeting a checklist of items related to policing. Former chiefs Coan and Otterbacher were big on accreditation, especially Coan.
And yet, and yet, even if there were no accreditation agency, what would anyone have done differently? Has anyone – past or present – needed a photo opportunity, a press release, and a laminated plaque from an association merely to complete a checklist of items?
Past chiefs touted accreditation, and still Whitewater has a town-gown divide, a divide along ethnic lines, economic stagnation, and too few newcomers (because it’s unrealistic to expect new prospects to step into a community of unresolved issues).
What’s been done for these many years has been ineffectual; what’s most needed has not been done.
Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross doesn’t understand why hungry employees don’t take out bridge loans for food:
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says he does not understand why federal employees who are furloughed or have been working without pay during the partial government shutdown would need assistance from food banks.
Several credit unions serving workers at federal departments and agencies have been offering stopgap loans, as they have during previous shutdowns. But it’s not clear how those loans would even be sufficient as the shutdown enters its second month.
“I know they are, and I don’t really quite understand why,” Ross said when asked on CNBC about workers getting food from places like shelters. “Because, as I mentioned before, the obligations that they would undertake, say borrowing from a bank or a credit union are in effect federally guaranteed.”
Honest to goodness, there are unconscious people who have a better awareness of their environments.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-three. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:58 PM, for 9h 41m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rescinded her invitation to President Trump to deliver the State of the Union in the House next week — denying him a national platform for the annual speech in an extraordinary standoff between the two most powerful figures in the nation.
Late Wednesday, the president signaled a retreat from the standoff, announcing on Twitter that he will wait till the shutdown is over to deliver the address to Congress.
(David Frum, in 2017, was right about Trump: “Regular reminder that Donald Trump’s core competency is not dealmaking with powerful counter-parties. It is duping gullible victims.” Trump thought that he could force his way into a State of the Union address – Pelosi properly asserted an independent legislative authority to bring the House into session.)
Back in the day, small rural airports had textile windsocks, simple and empty things that indicated which way the wind was blowing. The ubiquitous Sen. Lindsey O. Graham has become a political windsock, and as such, he — more than the sturdy, substantial elephant — is emblematic of his party today.
When in 1994, Graham, a South Carolina Republican, first ran for Congress, he promised to be “one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up.” A quarter-century later, Graham himself is a gastrointestinal challenge.
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Seven times, Graham has taken the oath of congressional office, “solemnly” swearing to “support and defend the Constitution” and to “bear true faith and allegiance” to it, “without any mental reservation.” Graham, who is just 1 percent of one-half of one of the three branches of one of the nation’s many governments, is, however, significant as a symptom. When the Trump presidency is just a fragrant memory, the political landscape will still be cluttered with some of this president’s simple and empty epigones, the make-believe legislators who did not loudly and articulately recoil from the mere suggestion of using a declared emergency to set aside the separation of powers.
Catherine Rampell, writing about the national GOP, accurately describes their economic policy under Trump in The GOP has become the Soviet party. This has been a building national problem for years, but a building local problem for about as long: a clique of slogan-rich but insight-poor local conservatives have wrecked economies like Whitewater’s economy with a steady diet of government intervention on behalf of ineffectual pet projects. Over the last decade or so, local officials (including Kachel, Knight, Stewart, Allen, and Telfer) have hawked ineffectual government plans for favored businesses or next-big-thing capital spending while Whitewater’s economy has declined. SeeReported Family Poverty in Whitewater Increased Over the Last Decade.
Indeed, they have something to show for their efforts: Whitewater is poorer than she was ten years ago. For more about the local economy, see categories here at FREE WHITEWATER on Poverty and the CDA (Community Development Authority).
Here’s Rampell, describing aptly a national trend that’s a local one, too:
On the macroeconomic front, leadership may be touting “deregulation” but in many ways is moving toward a more centrally planned economy, which includes the shielding of pet industries from the whims of the market or technological change.
That means propping up coal plants, which fracking has made less competitive. And slapping tariffs across thousands of foreign products, to subsidize struggling domestic competitors or sometimes to protect “national security.” And granting more price supports for farmers.
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Just as government has inserted itself into more markets, though, it has abruptly stopped functioning, holding up the processing of those farmer subsidies or tariff exemptions. It’s the old Soviet model in a nutshell: promising much, interfering a lot, failing to deliver.
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Needless to say, “picking winners and losers” was once a thing Republicans abhorred, a practice embraced only by failed socialist states; today the Republican standard-bearer picks winners and losers even within the government itself. The government may be officially shuttered, but President Trump decided to do an end run around the constitutionally mandated, democratic appropriations process. He is picking and choosing which government functions are allowed to function: yes to his offshore drilling plan and tax refunds; no to the Smithsonian museums.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see morning snowfall with a high of nineteen. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:56 PM, for 9h 39m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM.
Nearly 6-in-10 voters — 57 percent — disapprove of Trump’s job performance, compared to the 40 percent that approve. In addition, 54 percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill for the government shutdown. Only 35 percent blame congressional Democrats.
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According to the poll, 57 percent believe it’s likely that Russia “has compromising information“ on Trump, compared to 31 percent who don’t think it’s likely.
BUDAPEST — They make a show of putting their own countries first and breezily dismiss concerns about international law or human rights. They seek to bend the rules to their will, excoriating “the deep state” for getting in their way. And when they are challenged by the press or other critics, they have a two-word rejoinder: fake news.
In countries around the globe — from Brazil to the Philippines, and in many less prominent places in between — a generation of leaders who resemble President Trump in both style and substance is rising, consolidating power and growing bolder in its willingness to flout democratic principles and norms.
The strongman style of leadership is not new, of course, and it is not always obvious who is inspiring whom. Trump himself climbed to power amid a surge of nativist and nationalist politics worldwide, and his chief campaign guru, Stephen K. Bannon, borrowed themes and phrases from European populists to rally the make-America-great-again faithful.
The only detail the interpreter reportedly shared with the officials—including Fiona Hill, the senior Russia adviser at the National Security Council, and John Heffern, then the acting assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at State—was that Trump told Putin, “I believe you,” when the Russian president denied interfering in the 2016 presidential election. The Hamburg meeting is just one of five off-record meetings between the two leaders that Democrats are eager to probe. Another is Helsinki, where Trump famously dismissed the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the election and affirmed, again, that he saw no reason to believe Putin wasn’t telling him the truth. Several U.S. officials told the Post that they were never able to get a substantive readout of the two leaders’ private conversation.
If Whitewater wants – as some profess – to be free of a ‘same ten people’ problem (where a tiny few remain in office seemingly forever), then the solution is no harder than electing representatives other than from a tiny group of the same ten people.
How funny, then, that one finds from among the members of city’s Community Involvement and Cable TV Commission a member who seems to have confused community involvement with individual involvement, and individual involvement with decades-long tenure.
SeeThree running for two spots on Whitewater School Board (“Jim Stewart, who in two stints has about 24 years of experience on the board, is running again for his seat. After about a 10-year absence when he spent time on the Whitewater City Council, Stewart ran three years ago for the school board seat he now occupies”).
A reader kindly recommended a visit to the Kraus Haus restaurant at N8660 Clover Valley Road, Whitewater. It was a kind recommendation: the food is excellent and the atmosphere enjoyable. Now it has been some years since I have written a restaurant review, but writing follows living, and I’ve not stopped eating these last years.
The Kraus Haus offers a Spanish tapas-style menu (smaller portions in combinations of one’s choosing at a meal) but also other, and equally delicious, traditional portions on a lunch menu.
My first visit was untimely (as I arrived after the Sunday brunch hours), but positive nonetheless: someone on staff helpfully corrected my knowledge of the restaurant’s hours, and gave me menus to take. It was a considerate approach toward a patron, and left a good impression.
A second visit achieved its aim: an early dinner on a weekend. Tapas portions can be combined as one likes, with perhaps two or three items (and items that are sometimes enjoyed in succession).
Although the menu is likely to change with the seasons, one can expect items of red or white meat (lamb, ribs, salmon), soups, vegetable dishes, and salads. The Kraus Haus has a full bar, so you’re sure to find a suitable drink with your meal.
The Kraus Haus is on Clover Valley Road, Whitewater. It’s an easy distance from town, or nearby towns (one can head south from Whitewater on Wisconsin Avenue and reach it easily. (The Fuzzy Pig is well-known in the area, and the Kraus Haus is to the right and before the Fuzzy Pig.)
Happily recommended.
LOCATION: N8660 Clover Valley Road, Whitewater, WI 53190. (262) 473-4097.
RATING SCALE: From one to four stars, representing the full experience of food, atmosphere, service, and pricing.
INDEPENDENCE: This review is delivered without financial or other connection to the establishment or its owner. The dining experience was that of an ordinary patron, without notice to the staff or requests for special consideration.
We’ve a long way between now and the nomination of a candidate to oppose Trump (or a Trump surrogate in the event Trump doesn’t or can’t run for re-election). No one who comes forward for this republic will be without flaw; no Trumpist who comes forward to undermine this republic will offer more than flaws.
There’s no need to pick a candidate today (and many of us who will support a nominee against Trump will not, ourselves, be Democrats). And yet, and yet, however this turns out, there’s not the slightest doubt that Kamala Harris on her worst day would be wholly preferable to Trump on his best day.
The video summary above, from the New York Times, seems a fair – but brief – introduction to Harris’s career.
Yesterday I linked to a story from Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel about Milwaukee D.A. John Chisholm’s proposed investigation: Milwaukee DA John Chisholm calls for a statewide review of Catholic Church abuse files. In an email last night, a reader sent along a detailed assessment of what an investigation would require, and I replied privately to that email.
This post mentions a key part of that email exchange from last night: an investigation like this will require state resources (and should receive them). Even large counties would not be able to manage a statewide sexual abuse inquiry thoroughly.
While it’s true that district attorneys across the state have complained about inadequate staffing, it’s also true that not all prosecutors and investigators are suited to this work. Too many years working on low-level offenses have left some prosecutors with shallow benches. Personnel sidelined for years into second-tier work can’t reasonably be shifted to these matters. Mentoring in the applicable kind of work matters, for lawyers and non-lawyers, and without that experience an investigation risks incomplete findings or (far worse) alienating potential complainants.
Johnson’s Journal Sentinelstory makes plain that Chisholm sees the need for help (“Chisholm said he would like to work with district attorneys around the state and newly elected Attorney General Josh Kaul to review all abuse allegations over the last 50 years”).
It’s notable that the well-publicized Pennsylvania grand jury report came from a grand jury to which the Commonwealth’s attorney general presented as part of a two-year investigation. No single county shouldered this matter alone; it required Commonwealth-wide resources.
Although nothing about an investigation like this should depend on an election, consider this: would an investigation of this scope have even been possible without Josh Kaul winning the 2018 Wisconsin attorney general’s race?
It was a close election – those who don’t think voting matters might wish to consider that question, and how the right choice opens possibilities otherwise ignored.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see intermittent snowfall with a high of twenty-eight. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:55 PM, for 9h 37m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
When the Trump administration announced last month that it was lifting sanctions against a trio of companies controlled by an influential Russian oligarch, it cast the move as tough on Russia and on the oligarch, arguing that he had to make painful concessions to get the sanctions lifted.
But a binding confidential document signed by both sides suggests that the agreement the administration negotiated with the companies controlled by the oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, may have been less punitive than advertised.
The deal contains provisions that free him from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while leaving him and his allies with majority ownership of his most important company, the document shows.
With the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election continuing to shadow President Trump, the administration’s decision to lift sanctions on Mr. Deripaska’s companies has become a political flash point. House Democrats won widespread Republican support last week for their efforts to block the sanctions relief deal. Democratic hopes of blocking the administration’s decision have been stifled by the Republican-controlled Senate.
Christine Schmidt writes Nine steps for how Facebook should embrace meaningful interac— er, accountability (“There are broad concerns that Facebook continues to engage in deceptive behavior when it comes to user privacy, and that it is biased against certain groups, but outsiders currently have almost no possibilities to verify these claims.”):
What would you put on Facebook’s to-do list?
Well, a group of Oxford and Stanford researchers (Timothy Garton Ash, Robert Gorwa, and Danaë Metaxa) started with nine items, in their report released Thursday via Oxford and Stanford. (No funding for the report came from Facebook, but the company did provide “under the hood” access to them and other academics.) The focus is on ways Facebook could improve itself as a “better forum for free speech and democracy,” which, you know, the platform has had somestruggleswithin the pastfew years.
Part of the report focuses on the amends Facebook has attempted, such as broader transparency with academics and policymakers and introducing content appeal processes, but also points to the impact (and issues) that can arise from self-regulatory actions instead of external policies. (Remember, senators, he sells ads!) “A single small change to the News Feed algorithm, or to content policy, can have an impact that is both faster and wider than that of any single piece of national (or even EU-wide) legislation,” the authors write.
This Tuesday, January 22th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Alpha @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building:
Alpha (Adventure/Drama/Family)
Tuesday, January 22, 12:30 pm
Rated PG-13. 1 hour, 36 min. (2018)
In an epic adventure set 20,000 years ago during the last Ice Age, a young man struggles after being separated from his tribe during a buffalo hunt. Finding a similarly-lost young wolf, abandoned from its pack, the pair learn to rely on each other – – the origins of “Man’s Best Friend.” This is a visually beautiful, touching film that will warm you on a cold winter’s day.
One can find more information about Alpha at the Internet Movie Database.