City, Daily Bread, Politics
Daily Bread for 2.16.25: Updating a Post on the Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 23. Sunrise is 6:50 and sunset is 5:28, for 10 hours, 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 85.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1960, the U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.
In 2021, this libertarian blogger posted (as part of a longer series) on the kinds of conservatives in Whitewater. See Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater, April 8, 2021. At that time, there were three conservative types of note: traditionalists (old-school types) transactionalists (deal-making types), and populists (what’s now called Trumpism or MAGA).
There was a question at the time:
The populists are often underestimated. I have been – and am – a critic of these rebranded Trumpists, but have never underestimated them.
These populist conservatives are not deal-makers: they want what they want, on their terms, as soon as they can get it. As the traditionalists fade away, the question among conservatives in Whitewater (and other places) will be whether the deal-makers or the populists dominate right-of-center politics.
There’s a sure answer now, four years later: only the conservative populists matter politically. There’s one movement, one way, one outlook.
A conservative might imagine himself as something else (a traditionalist or a deal-maker), and might be something else, but only in his house or in his head.
Conservatives in Whitewater’s public square are all populists.
Father describes moment humpback whale briefly swallowed his son:
Cats, Daily Bread, Weather
Daily Bread for 2.15.25: Ready for the Weather
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset is 5:26, for 10 hours, 35 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1989, the Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan.
Winter requires the right gear:
Preparing NASA’s CADRE Moon Rovers for Launch:
Daily Bread, Education, Elections, State Government, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 2.14.25: Outlook for Wisconsin’s Spring Primary for Superintendent of Public Instruction
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 25, and snow likely this evening. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset is 5:25, for 10 hours, 33 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.
Robert Yoon writes of the spring primary in AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Wisconsin’s spring primary between incumbent Jill Underly and challengers Brittany Kinser and Jeff Wright:
Kinser leads the field in campaign fundraising thanks to a flurry of contributions in January from big-dollar Republican donors. She had raised $316,000 through Feb. 3, compared with $123,000 for Wright and $121,000 for Underly.
In 2021, Underly narrowly topped the seven-candidate primary field with 27% of the vote. Six candidates were aligned with Democrats, but none emerged as the clear alternative to Underly among Democratic voters. That helped the sole Republican-backed candidate that year, Deborah Kerr, to nab the second spot on the general election ballot with 26% of the vote. Underly went on to win the general election that year with 58% of the vote in a one-on-one contest with Kerr.
This year, three candidates are competing for two spots, and the primary has become several contests stuffed into a single race: one between Underly and Wright among Democratic-leaning voters, another with Kinser trying to consolidate enough support among Republican-leaning voters to outperform one or both of her rivals, and another with all three candidates competing for independent and crossover voters to tip the scales in their favor.
With only two candidates this year to potentially split the support of Democratic-leaning voters, Kinser would likely need to far outperform Kerr’s 26% in the 2021 primary to earn a spot on the April ballot, assuming a competitive contest between Underly and Wright.
See Robert Yoon, AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Wisconsin’s spring primary, Associated Press, February 14, 2025.
If the split between Democratic-leaning voters and Republican-leaning voters in this race is like 2021, then, yes, Kinser would likely need to outperform Kerr’s 2021 vote share.
It would be surprising, however, if the balance between ideologies is like that of 2021. At least, it would be surprising to me. If the conservative1 candidate cannot place comfortably in one of the two spots in this race, then conservatives wasted a campaign on a weak candidate or weak messaging. This environment, Spring 2025, is as much of a high-water level as the conservative populists in Wisconsin may ever have.
I’d guess Kinser will exceed 26 percent easily, and find herself in the Spring General Election against Underly.
We’ll know Tuesday night, and likely early Tuesday night.
______
- Conservative as an ideology in American is now synonymous with conservative populist. There are still a few different individual conservatives, but there is only one ideological movement: populism. ↩︎
Cats
Friday Catblogging: House Cat
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread, Education, Elections, State Government, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 2.13.25: Conservative Candidate Outraises Opponents in State Superintendent Race
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 15. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset is 5:24, for 10 hours, 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable TV Commission meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1960, with the success of a nuclear test codenamed “Gerboise Bleue,” France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.
Brittany Kinser is far ahead in fundraising:
Wauwatosa education consultant Brittany Kinser has signficantly outraised both of her Democratic opponents, according to the latest campaign finance reports. Her half-million dollar haul ($508,000) so far this year is nearly four times as much as state Superintendent Jill Underly raised ($132,000) and about 13 times as much as Sauk Prairie School District Superintendent Jeff Wright ($38,000).
Kinser calls herself a moderate but is backed by conservatives for her pro-school choice positions. Underly, the incumbent, is backed by the Democratic Party, though Wright has chipped away at some of her base. ….
Both state parties are pumping their preferred candidate’s campaigns with cash at an unprecedented level for a state superintendent election at this stage of the race, shattering any assumption about it being a nonpartisan election.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin contributed $200,000 to Kinser’s campaign so far, nearly 10 times the amount it gave in the entire 2021 race. The state Democratic Party gave Underly about $106,000 this month. The party gave her about $208,000 in the entire 2021 race. Wright has neither party’s financial support.
And there’s still a month and a half to go before the April 1 election.
Kinser has more than doubled the superintendent fundraising record set by then-Superintendent Tony Evers in 2017 for this stage of the race. In Gov. Evers’ entire 2017 superintendent race, he raised about $517,000. Kinser has raised nearly the same amount in just the first month of this race.
See Kelly Meyerhofer, In Wisconsin school superintendent race, one candidate is far ahead in fundraising, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 13, 2025.
Inflation increased in January, posing obstacle for tariff plans:
Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 2.12.25: Fundraising Strong in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 6:55 and sunset is 5:23, for 10 hours, 27 minutes of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln is born.
Susan Crawford leads Brad Schimel in reported campaign fundraising, but both candidates are receiving millions:
Liberal candidate Susan Crawford continues to out-raise her conservative opponent Brad Schimel in a race that will decide control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
With roughly 50 days to go until the April 1 election, the race is already on track to smash previous fundraising records for a Wisconsin judicial election.
Crawford, a Dane County judge, has brought in about $7.7 million since announcing her campaign last year, according to the most-recent reports filed by her campaign committee this week.
Meanwhile, Schimel’s campaign has reported about $5 million in donations.
Reports due this week cover donations through early February. Those disclosures were filed by campaign committees and do not reflect outside spending on the race, such as by groups who pay for their own issue-based ads.
Emphasis added.
See Sarah Lehr, Crawford out-raising Schimel ahead of April’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race (‘Both candidates have received large transfers of cash from state political parties’), Wisconsin Public Radio, February 11, 2025.
Detailed reporting on donors and donation amounts to the candidates is available at the Journal Sentinel. Note that while both major parties can transfer money to their preferred candidates, the candidates themselves cannot solicit more than twenty-thousand per donor. Candidate Schimel, predictably, didn’t seem to care about that limitation:
State campaign finance laws restrict donations to Supreme Court candidates to $20,000. But under a decade-old change by the Republican-controlled Legislature, political parties are allowed to receive unlimited donations, money they can then forward to their preferred candidates.
At a Calumet County Republican Party event in July, Schimel was caught on tape urging those who could afford to give more than $20,000 to donate to the party.
“Then, if you want to give a lot more, you can give that to either of the state parties, and they can transfer it,” he said. “They can transfer that to candidates. You can’t earmark it and say, ‘I’m giving you this money but you have to give it.’ But they’re going to those donors who are going to wait till after November 5 (2024) to make sure that I’m the last thing that they give the money to. But that money is going to come.”
See Daniel Bice, George Soros and Wisconsin GOP billionaires dump big donations in Supreme Court race, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 11, 2025.
Minuscule microrobots target drug delivery:
Birds, Daily Bread, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 2.11.25: ‘A Different Kind of Snowy Season’
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 22. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset is 5:21, for 10 hours, 25 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1979, the Iranian Revolution establishes an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
A Different Kind of Snowy Season:
America, City, Daily Bread, Drug War, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 2.10.25: Tariffs Won’t Solve America’s Fentanyl Addiction
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 29. Sunrise is 6:58 and sunset is 5:20, for 10 hours, 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1906, HMS Dreadnought, the first of a revolutionary new breed of battleships, is christened.
In Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and across America, there are people addicted to fentanyl. Tariffs won’t relieve them of their addiction:
Americans consume more illicit drugs per capita than anyone else in the world; about 6% of the U.S. population uses them regularly.
….
One such drug, fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine – is the leading reason U.S. overdose deaths have surged in recent years. While the rate of fentanyl overdose deaths has dipped a bit recently, it’s still vastly higher than it was just five years ago.
Ending the fentanyl crisis won’t be easy. The U.S. has an addiction problem that spans decades – long predating the rise of fentanyl – and countless attempts to regulate, legislate and incarcerate have done little to reduce drug consumption. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis alone costs Americans tens of billions of dollars each year.
….
America’s experiments with tariffs can be traced back to the founding era with the passage of the Tariff Act of 1789. This long history has shown that tariffs, industrial subsidies and protectionist policies don’t do much to stimulate broad economic growth at home – but they raise prices for consumers and can even lead to global economic instability. History also shows that tariffs don’t work especially well as negotiating tools, failing to effect significant policy changes in target countries. Economists generally agree that the costs of tariffs outweigh the benefits.
Over the course of Trump’s first term, the average effective tariff rate on Chinese imports went from 3% to 11%. But while imports from China fell slightly, the overall trade relationship didn’t change much: China remains the second-largest supplier of goods to the U.S.
The tariffs did have some benefit – for Vietnam and other nearby countries with relatively low labor costs. Essentially, the tariffs on China caused production to shift, with global companies investing billions of dollars in competitor nations.
This isn’t the first time Trump has used trade policy to pressure China on fentanyl– he did so in his first term. But while China made some policy changes in response, such as adding fentanyl to its controlled substances list in 2019, fentanyl deaths in the U.S. continued to rise. Currently, China still ranks as the No. 1 producer of fentanyl precursors, or chemicals used to produce illicit fentanyl. And there are others in the business: India, over that same period, has become a major producer of fentanyl.
See Rodney Coates, Why Trump’s tariffs can’t solve America’s fentanyl crisis, The Conversation, February 1, 2025.
Drug War or Trade War: prohibition has been and will be futile against addiction. Domestic demand seeks supply, whether that supply is produced on this continent or elsewhere.
More on tariffs, apart from supposed drug reduction: Metals tariffs ‘will have significant cost’ for US:
Music
Monday Music: Foxes and Fossils Cover A Hazy Shade of Winter
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread, Federal Government, Law, Litigation, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 2.9.25: Wisconsin Joins Multi-State Lawsuit Against Musk’s Access to Restricted Information
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 28. Sunrise is 6:59 and sunset is 5:19, for 10 hours, 19 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1870, President Grant signs a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau.
Overdue, both legally and technically, but justified litigation nonetheless:
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul are joining Wisconsin to a multi-state lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk from accessing restricted government records on millions of federal employees.
In a statement, Evers said the lawsuit is aimed at protecting Wisconsinites’ personal details. “Wisconsinites expect the federal government to treat their Social Security numbers, bank account information, and other sensitive personal details with the highest level of protection and confidentiality — and that obligation doesn’t go out the window just because Elon Musk says it should,” Evers said.“Giving political appointees access to our most personal information like this is illegal. That’s plain as day.”
Agents working for Musk accessed the records maintained by the Office of Personnel Management, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing four U.S. officials with knowledge of the developments.
….
The 19 states are seeking an injunction to block the Trump administration from blocking access to the payment system and a declaration that the Treasury Department’s policy change is unlawful, according to Kaul.
“Donald Trump has put the whims of Elon Musk ahead of Americans’ privacy and security,” Kaul said in a statement. “We’ve gone to court to address this outrageous situation and to protect the American people.”
See Molly Beck, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers joins lawsuit over Elon Musk’s access to restricted information, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 8, 2025.
What a young tapir looks like:
Animals, Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 2.8.25: Saving Orphaned Otters
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset is 5:17, for 10 hours, 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1971, the NASDAQ stock market index opens for the first time.
Watch Boom XB-1 take off and go supersonic in historic flight highlights:
Courts, Daily Bread, Wisconsin
Daily Bread for 2.7.25: Unanimous Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules Elections Administrator Can Remain in Post
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 31. Sunrise is 7:02 and sunset is 5:16, for 10 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 74.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1964, The Beatles land in the United States for the first time, at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport.
This morning, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s Administrator, Meagan Wolfe, can remain in her post. The ruling was probable based on a prior court decision (under a different court majority) from 2022, as Scott Bauer reports:
The court said that no vacancy exists and, because of that, the elections commission “does not have a duty to appoint a new administrator to replace Wolfe simply because her term has ended.”
….
The court relied on the precedent set in its 2022 ruling that allowed Republican-appointee Fred Prehn to remain on the state Natural Resources Board after his term had ended. That ruling came when the court was controlled by conservatives. The court now has a 4-3 liberal majority.
See Scott Bauer, Wisconsin Supreme Court says swing state’s embattled elections chief can remain in post, Associated Press, February 7, 2025.
I felt that Prehn should have resigned at the end of his term (and been removed for failing to resign), but the Prehn ruling in 2022 made today’s decision as certain as a legal outcome could be.
‘Marsquakes’ travel deeper than expected, says new research: