FREE WHITEWATER

City, Local Government

Term Limits, Briefly Considered

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There was a discussion last night at the Whitewater Common Council about term limits (if any) for appointees to city boards and commissions. The discussion followed a briefer one on 4.18.17.

I mentioned yesterday that this would be an interesting agenda topic, and it was. It’s worth noting that although I thought there should have been advance notice in the press about it, I don’t have a single strong opinion on this matter. Instead, for me it’s ambivalence: not indifference, to be sure, but rather conflicting sentiments. (Yesterday’s post described the topic as historical: “reflections not of where Whitewater’s going, as much as where she has been (and where she is)”).

The matter has been referred to a community involvement committee within the council, and they’ll consider options. One can write at greater length when there’s a proposal to consider.

Two quick points for now:

1. Remarks about the city needing to do more for those who have volunteered strikes me as right. Term limits or not, most committees have a useful role but not a particularly ideological one: volunteering should be rewarded. Whitewater, on her own, can easily come up with ideas for acknowledging committee and board members, including ones who currently receive less recognition.

2. It’s true that expertise matters. It may not matter everywhere equally, but it does matter. The trick here – one that could not be solved in brief remarks – is how to assess and select based on a broad understanding of expertise. It comes in more than one form, and extends beyond formal academic credentials to experiences in past or present work. Too much emphasis on formal work will be counter-productive.

Any discussion of expertise, of whatever kind, has to be done in an understated way to avoid creating unnecessary offense.

(It’s worth noting that in the ten years I’ve been publishing FREE WHITEWATER, I’ve not once held myself out as an expert, touted particular academic credentials or accomplishments, or professional work. There’s no fixed route to expertise; it’s for that reason that tribunals have discretion in certifying experts.)

It seems to me a general truth that in all communities one finds many sharp and capable people. Indeed, I am convinced that most people are sharp indeed, and that society could not function half so well if it were otherwise. One many need instruction of various yet particular kinds, but of natural ability one sees abundance all around, of any race, ethnicity, or gender. 

This means that to give reasonable form to an acknowledgement of expertise will take some review. Unlike what should be the overdue but easy fix of acknowledging existing committee members (internally done), a plan for evaluating expertise should look to what other communities have done successfully (an external review).

Critically, any plan this city might adopt regarding expertise, tenure, term limits, etc., must be neutral concerning gender, race, or ethnicity. No one would intentionally wish otherwise, but it’s necessary to avoid inadvertent yet nonetheless impermissible barriers to participation on those bases.

Whitewater is sure to have more discussion on the topic. Our community is more than capable of crafting a solid approach.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.3.17

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of sixty-two. Sunrise is 5:44 AM and sunset 7:58 PM, for 14h 13m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 54.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred seventy-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1936, Joe DiMaggio makes his major league debut with the Yankees, batting ahead of Lou Gehrig. On this day in 1898, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, whose family settled in Milwaukee, and where she graduated from Milwaukee Normal School (now University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) is born.

Recommended for reading in full —

Charles F. Gardner describes the Bucks season in review: Reason for optimism: “Despair could have taken over a team that had lost 12 of its last 14 games and appeared headed for another draft lottery appearance. Instead, the Bucks finished the season with a 20-10 record in their last 30 games and reached the playoffs as the sixth-seeded team in the Eastern Conference. It was a remarkable turnaround that the Bucks hope they can carry into next season and beyond. How did they do it? Coach Jason Kidd got major contributions from rookies Thon Maker and Malcolm Brogdon, starting both of them in the final month of the season and in the playoffs.”


Drew Harwell and Matea Gold report that While in White House, Trumps remained selling points for ‘very special’ Philippines project: “Investors looking to buy a condo at Trump Tower in the Philippines would have found, until this week, some high-powered video testimonials on the project’s official website. There was Donald Trump, in a message filmed several years before he was elected president of the United States, declaring that the skyscraper bearing his name near the Philippine capital would be “something very, very special, like nobody’s seen before.” Then there was his daughter Ivanka Trump, now a senior White House adviser, lavishing praise on the project as a “milestone in Philippine real estate history.”

Jugal Patel and Henry Fountain report on an astonishing (but disturbing in fundamental ways) possibility, that As Arctic Ice Vanishes, New Shipping Routes Open: “As global warming melts sea ice across the Arctic, shipping routes once thought impossible — including directly over the North Pole — may open up by midcentury. But high costs may keep the new routes from being used right away. The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean has declined sharply each decade since the 1980s, according to measurements taken each September when the ice is at its minimum. Older, thicker ice is disappearing as well. Scientists say global warming is largely responsible for the changes. Parts of the Arctic are warming twice as fast as elsewhere.”

Conservative Jennifer Rubin asks How did Ryan’s Faustian bargain with Trump work out?: “How did things work out for Ryan? He has signed onto a spending bill that Clinton would have liked (Planned Parenthood funding, no wall, domestic spending restored, a little bit — but not enough — defense spending). He has not gotten health-care reform. His chances of obtaining tax reform are slim. Other than a Supreme Court justice and some deregulation, virtually nothing on Ryan’s agenda — one Trump was supposed to share — seems likely to come about. By ignoring fundamental questions of competency and character, Ryan vouched for a man who echoed Russian agitprop and encouraged Russian cyber-mischief during the campaign and who continues to deny the existence of mounds of evidence proving Russian efforts to meddle with our election. Ryan enabled an administration that has a bevy of ties to Russian officials, originally hired as national security adviser a man acting as an agent for foreign governments and still employs an aide (Sebastian Gorka) with ties to Hungarian fascists. Surely Clinton, for all her faults, wouldn’t have done all that.”

How is Whiskey Made? Here’s how:

Books, Culture, Economy, Janesville

Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 2 of 14)

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This is the second in a series of posts considering Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story. In this post, I’ll write about the prologue and the first four chapters of Janesville (Prologue, A Ringing Phone, The Carp Swimming on Main Street, Craig, and A Retirement Party).

Janesville, Wisconsin’s manufacturing story reaches back far before General Motors produced its last SUV at the local plant on 12.23.2008 (a Tahoe “LTZ, fully loaded with heated seats, aluminum wheels, a nine-speaker Bose audio system, and a sticker price of $57,745 if it were going to be for sale in this economy in which almost no one anymore wants to buy a fancy General Motors SUV”). Still, it’s the plant’s closure – and really what that closure has meant to Janesville – that surely drew Goldstein. If GM had reopened the plant (or closed it only briefly), then there’d be little here that drew the attention of a national reporter. Janesville is, in this way, a story of loss and attempted recovery.

Goldstein’s Prologue presents Janesville’s two manufacturing titans:

The first was a young telegraphy instructor in town named George S. Parker. In the 1880s, he patented a better fountain pen and formed the Parker Pen Company. Soon, Parker Pen expanded into international markets. Its pens showed up at world leaders’ treaty signings, at World’s Fairs. Parker Pen imbued the city with an outsized reputation and reach. It put Janesville on the map.

The second was another savvy businessman, Joseph A. Craig, who made General Motors pay attention to Janesville’s talent. Near the close of World War I, he maneuvered to bring GM to town, at first to make tractors. Over the years, the assembly plant grew to 4.8 million square feet, the playing area of ten football fields. It had more than seven thousand workers in its heyday and led to thousands of jobs at nearby companies that supplied parts.

Her early chapters describe – in a seemingly supportive way – three contemporary residents as they learn about the plant’s closing. The first is Paul Ryan (in A Ringing Phone), and although Goldstein describes Ryan without express criticism, here description conveys that he didn’t see the closing coming, despite his prominent role (even then, although more so now, of course):

[Ryan] has made a point of nurturing relationships with the company’s top brass. When Rick [Wagoner, GM Chairman & CEO] is in D.C., Paul meets him for breakfast. Nearly every week, he talks with Troy Clarke, president of GM North America. So he certainly is not oblivious to the facts that GM has been faltering since before the recession, gasoline prices just past $4 a gallon are on the brink of an all-time high, and the Janesville Assembly Plant is churning out full-size, gas-guzzling SUVs whose popularity has fallen off a cliff.

Paul is aware of these facts, and yet, lately, as General Motors’ fortunes have been falling and falling, his private conversations with Rick and the rest of the brass have yielded no whiff of concern that the assembly plant’s future is in peril.

So it is hard for him to absorb what Rick is telling him: Tomorrow, General Motors will announce that it is stopping production in Janesville.

For an instant, Paul is stunned.

Subtle, but damning nonetheless: on this reading, despite breakfasts and repeated phone calls with executives, Ryan gleaned nothing about the plant’s closure.

Chapter 2, The Carp Swimming on Main Street, begins with an account of Bob Borremans, and Goldstein describes him in a way that offers a clue to what she thinks of some job-training programs:

Bob has been the Job Center’s director for five years. For almost a quarter century before, he was an administrator at Blackhawk Technical College, the two-year school that provides most of the job training in town. As a young man, he had been a mild, back-of-the-room kind of guy until the president of the college noticed in him a spark of creativity, promoted him to be a vice president, and helped him find his voice, which over the years grew more and more outspoken. Sometimes even now, months past sixty, his trim beard gone white, Bob thinks that people who knew him when he was young wouldn’t recognize the person he has become.

Call it arrogance, call it what you want, Bob sees himself as a fix-it guy—the adult in the room, the one with a doctorate who can take on a project and do it better than anyone else.

One could call it arrogance, and it’s Goldstein who’s doing the calling. (I’d not disagree with her on the point.) It’s a clue she’s left us, about where she might be going…

Chapter 3 looks back to Joseph Albert Craig’s success in persuading GM to build a plant in Janesville, how that plant switched from tractors to automobiles, and other ways in which Janesville kept auto production going. (Creative labor-management relations in the 30s prevented violence that beset other GM plant during the 1936–37 General Motors Sit-Down Strike.)

Chapter 4, A Retirement Party, describes the impending retirement of longtime GM worker Marv Wopat around the time that GM announces the closing:

The morning of the closing announcement, Marv awoke to a call from a friend making sure that he’d heard. As soon as he hung up, Marv phoned his GM’er kids, his son, Matt, and his daughter, Janice, right away. He did not want them to find out from anyone else. He was the one, after all, who had taught them while they were growing up that the assembly plant was the best place for a steady job with good pay. And even though the situation was scary now, no doubt, Marv began in those very first calls to his kids to impart his conviction. Just because the company says it is closing Janesville, no reason to think that the plant won’t end up getting a new product instead. Even if the plant shuts down for a while, he figured, it will reopen. It always has.

Now, under the Schilberg pavilion, Marv wants to believe that everything will work out okay.

So he does not say out loud a thought burning inside him: Matt and Janice may not have the opportunity to work at the plant long enough to retire.

One can be cold about many things, and yet find these words genuinely moving, conveying as they do Wopat’s natural concern in the face of powerful, uncertain forces.

A few words about Goldstein’s second chapter, The Carp Swimming on Main Street. That chapter draws its title from flooding in southern Wisconsin around the time the GM plant closing was announced:

By Wednesday, June 11 [2008], eight days after GM has unleashed the impending economic disaster, the National Weather Service predicts a natural disaster by the weekend: the worst flooding of the Rock River since the government began keeping track. Volunteers and jail inmates fill more than 260,000 sandbags. The sheriff calls in the Wisconsin National Guard. More than seven inches fall in Wisconsin and Iowa onto land still soaked from a harsh, snowy winter….

It exceeds a hundred-year flood. The county estimates the damage at $42 million….

The Rock River rushes so hard and so high that it washes fish off course. Carp are now swimming on Main Street. Near the street’s northern end, in the flooded parking lot of the United Way of North Rock County, the carp find a favorite new spawning ground. Hearing about the misdirected fish, people in town regard it as a spectacle, not a disaster. On the first dry land above the flooded street, despite the damage all around, people of Janesville—and some tourists, too— gather for days, snapping photos and laughing and cheering as the hundreds of yellow carp swim by.

There’s a Whitewater connection to all this, beyond GM. The City of Whitewater (and partner public entities) received a grant in 2009, totalling $4.7 million dollars, due to the loss of automotive jobs and the 2008 flooding:

September 7-September 11, 2009

….$4,740,809 to the Whitewater Community Development Authority, the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, and the City of Whitewater, Wisconsin, to fund construction of the new Innovation Center and infrastructure to serve the technology industrial park, including a road linking the project with the University of Wisconsin’s Whitewater campus. The goal of the project is to create jobs to replace those lost in the floods of 2008 and those lost from recent automotive plant closures. The Innovation Center will serve as both a training center and technology business incubator and will be constructed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification standards. A portion of the project’s cost will be funded through EDA’s Global Climate Change Mitigation Incentive Fund. This investment is part of an $11,051,728 project which grantees estimate will help create 1,000 jobs and generate $60 million in private investment.

See, Whitewater’s Innovation Center: Grants and Bonds.

What I wrote then (“Every part of this description of the grant’s goals is astonishingly inapplicable to the use and value (such as it is) of the Innovation Center that Whitewater is actually building”) is more true today, as nothing of benefit to afflicted workers has or ever will come from the building. It’s nowhere close to meeting its estimate.

When Janesville’s residents absorbed the loss of their factory, while watching those carp swim by, there cannot have be one rational person among them (or anywhere) who would have foolishly thought that Whitewater’s eventual use of those millions would produce a result near the estimated value.

Goldstein remembers Janesville’s past; it’s the least that I can do to remember Whitewater’s.

Previously: Part 1.

Tomorrow: Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 3 of 14). more >>

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.2.17

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty. Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 7:57 PM, for 14h 11m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 43.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred seventy-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Fire Department has a scheduled business meeting at 6:30 AM, and Common Council will be in session tonight at 6:30 PM.

Common Council is scheduled to hear an update on a waste receiving station (item C-5), and to consider (on a first reading with a second reading to be waived) a proposed ordinance to end term limits for appointees to city commissions and boards, so that members might be appointed perpetually.

There was a brief discussion of an end to term limits, as Councilmember Allen proposed it, at the last session of Common Council, although it was not reported along with other events that evening. (The Daily Union‘s Welch predictably reported on everything except this discussion.) One can find Allen’s remarks from the 4.18.17 session at approximately 47:47 on this video link.

Both topics, in their own way, are reflections not of where Whitewater’s going, as much as where she has been (and where she is): these dies have already been cast. The considerations on a change in term limits (most likely to affect long-time members of the CDA and PFC) are, however, interesting, and I’ll write more after the meeting.

Recommended for reading in full —

Erik Wemple describes the results of an interview in ‘I don’t stand by anything’: Trump withers under heat from CBS News’s John Dickerson:

JOHN DICKERSON: Did President Obama give you any advice that was helpful? That you think, wow, he really was–

DONALD TRUMP: — Well, he was very nice to me. But after that, we’ve had some difficulties. So it doesn’t matter. You know, words are less important to me than deeds. And you– you saw what happened with surveillance. And everybody saw what happened with surveillance–

JOHN DICKERSON: Difficulties how?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — and I thought that — well, you saw what happened with surveillance. And I think that was inappropriate, but that’s the way–

JOHN DICKERSON: What does that mean, sir?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You can figure that out yourself.

JOHN DICKERSON: Well, I– the reason I ask is you said he was– you called him “sick and bad”.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Look, you can figure it out yourself. He was very nice to me with words, but– and when I was with him — but after that, there has been no relationship.

JOHN DICKERSON: But you stand by that claim about him?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don’t stand by anything. I just– you can take it the way you want. I think our side’s been proven very strongly. And everybody’s talking about it. And frankly it should be discussed. I think that is a very big surveillance of our citizens. I think it’s a very big topic. And it’s a topic that should be number one. And we should find out what the hell is going on.

JOHN DICKERSON: I just wanted to find out, though. You’re– you’re the president of the United States. You said he was “sick and bad” because he had tapped you– I’m just–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You can take– any way. You can take it any way you want.

JOHN DICKERSON: But I’m asking you. Because you don’t want it to be–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You don’t–

JOHN DICKERSON: –fake news. I want to hear it from–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You don’t have to–

JOHN DICKERSON: –President Trump.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: –ask me. You don’t have to ask me.

JOHN DICKERSON: Why not?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Because I have my own opinions. You can have your own opinions.

JOHN DICKERSON: But I want to know your opinions. You’re the president of the United States.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, it’s enough. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Will Bunch contends that The problem with NY Times and climate change isn’t what you think: “Simply put, the Times decision to hire and promote Stephens trashed its own brand, the brand that it’s spent years and millions of dollars building up. From a business standpoint — and yes, the New York Times is very much a business, now struggling to find new strategies to save itself — the move almost makes the 1985 debut of New Coke look good. And that the people who run the New York Times didn’t see this — and still don’t seem to understand the problem — should make people very afraid about the future of American journalism, especially at the moment when the media is also under assault from a wannabe strongman at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Times’ editors who hired Stephens were following a tired playbook that’s over a century old — even as the nature of both journalism and how readers relate to the news has changed radically in the last decade. Simply put, mainstream news orgs have an almost mystical, quasi-religious faith in the notion that to be moral and ethical they must have some approximate balance between liberal and conservative opinion writers. But it wasn’t always that way, and there’s no logical reason for this in 2017.”

Laura Reston explains Where Trump Gets His Fuzzy Border Math: “Trump repeatedly cited CIS [Center for Immigration Studies] studies in his TV ads and speeches, tweeted links to the group’s research, and used its data to argue that immigrants are “bringing drugs” and “bringing crime” into the United States. After he implemented his controversial Muslim ban, CIS provided Trump with much-needed political cover: Media outlets from NPR to The Washington Post quoted the center’s experts defending the policy. Most, in fact, portrayed CIS as a respectable research institute—after all, the group boasts that its board of directors includes a mix of “active and retired university professors” and “civil rights leaders.” CIS, however, is far from a reputable scholarly organization. It’s a far-right fringe group that was founded on disturbing and discredited ideas about racial inferiority. Today, CIS churns out doctored “studies” that portray an America under siege from immigrants pouring over our borders, destroying our environment, and draining our coffers.”

Amanda Diaz describes the views of a federal former budget director in David Stockman: Trump’s tax plan is ‘dead on arrival’ and Wall St. is ‘delusional’ for believing it: “David Stockman has a stern message for investors: They’re living in a fantasy land about Trump. In a recent interview on CNBC’s “Futures Now,” the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan said that “Wall Street is totally misreading Washington,” and President Trump’s promises of tax reform will be “dead before arrival.” The president is “essentially a 70-year old kid in a candy store who wants one of everything: More for defense, veterans, border walls, law enforcement, infrastructure and ‘phenomenal’ tax cuts, too—without the inconvenience of paying for any of it,” said Stockman. Of the proposed tax bill announced this week, he said, “It’s a wonderful fantasy…but there’s no way to pay for the $7.5 trillion cost of the main features.”

SpaceX successfully landed its 10th rocket (this time to place an intelligence satellite in orbit):

City, Culture

Describing a Weekend

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Here in this rural college town, so much has been written about last year’s Spring Splash weekend, and concern that a weekend college event this year (even without the same principal sponsor) might prove equally disappointing.

Discussions, debates, plans, hopes for a good experience, arguments about who was responsible for last year’s mishaps, a draft and a final mailer warning about penalties for nuisance-behavior: Whitewater saw it all. (I’ll write about the drafts & the mailer at a later time, as they’re an illustration of officials’ community outlook.)

And yet, and yet, here we are, after a cold and rainy weekend that surely discouraged time outside.

One key to this community’s culture will be found in how this successful weekend is described. Comparing headlines from the Janesville Gazette with the local Banner website is illuminating.

Janesville Gazette (main page link & article after link):

Whitewater party goes smoothly
No major issues in absence of Whitewater’s Spring Splash (article after link)

Whitewater Banner:

(May 1) Public Safety Maintained in Whitewater Throughout Weekend

Quite the difference. The Gazette describes a general success from the point of view of the festivities; the Banner (and local officials, presumably) look at this as maintaining order.

The two publications likely have similar demographics, but the Gazette is more distant from locals’ worries about college students, and so approaches the weekend without leading with the perspective that social events are about maintaining order.

Indeed, I doubt that most local officials could view the event in any other way; they’d not be able to write freely a headline like the Gazette‘s.

Fair enough, but one can see that the in-town headline is only useful in town: it’s no recommendation that after decades of living in this city, local officials still haven’t found a way to relate to the campus through a cooperative, and not an authority-driven perspective. To be candid, though, that’s what many non-college residents in Whitewater want.

One can view and respond to the university this way, of course, but only at the price of holding back the attraction of the campus relative to competitor schools with better town-gown relations.

Books, Culture, Economy, Janesville, Politics

Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 1 of 14)

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This is the first in a series of posts considering Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story. Bloggers have the luxury of time, so I’ll happily use that abundance to write at length on Goldstein’s book, one for which many have been waiting these last few years.

Before beginning, though, I’ll post an introduction to the book from the Washington Post, where Goldstein is a reporter (she was part of  a “team of Washington Post reporters awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for the newspaper’s coverage of 9/11 and the government’s response to the attacks. She was also a 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting for an investigative series she co-wrote with her colleague Dana Priest on the medical treatment of immigrants detained by the federal government.”)

See, at that paper, JANESVILLE: AN AMERICAN STORY: When the nation’s oldest operating General Motors plant closes, residents emerge from the Great Recession into an uncertain future. I think the story is a concise overview to the book, and gives a good sense of Goldstein’s outlook.

I’ll also recommend an interview with Goldstein on the Joy Cardin Show of Wisconsin Public Radio.

See, at the WPR website, Exploring Human Consequences Of GM Plant Closure In Janesville, including a link to the audio of the interview.

Tomorrow: Considering Janesville: An American Story (Part 2 of 14).

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 5.1.17

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Good morning.

A new month begins in Whitewater with rain tapering off as the day unfolds, with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 5:47 AM and sunset 7:56 PM, for 14h 09m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 32.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred seventy-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1931, Pres. Hoover officially opens the Empire State Building when he turns on the buildings lights with the push a button in Washington, D.C. On this day in in 1954, Milton House (“”an architectural wonder when it was built in the Wisconsin wilderness” one hundred ten years earlier) becomes a museum.

Recommended for reading in full —

Mark Landler reports that Trump’s ‘Very Friendly’ Talk With Duterte Stuns Aides and Critics Alike: “During their “very friendly conversation,” the administration said in a late-night statement, Mr. Trump invited Mr. Duterte, an authoritarian leader accused of ordering extrajudicial killings of drug suspects in the Philippines, to visit him at the White House. Now, the administration is bracing for an avalanche of criticism from human rights groups. Two senior officials said they expected the State Department and the National Security Council, both of which were caught off guard by the invitation, to raise objections internally. The White House disclosed the news on a day when Mr. Trump fired up his supporters at a campaign-style rally in Harrisburg, Pa. The timing of the announcement — after a speech that was a grievance-filled jeremiad — encapsulated this president after 100 days in office: still ready to say and do things that leave people, even on his staff, slack-jawed.”

Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger report How the Republican right found allies in Russia: “On issues including gun rights, terrorism and same-sex marriage, many leading advocates on the right who grew frustrated with their country’s leftward tilt under President Barack Obama have forged ties with well-connected Russians and come to see that country’s authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, as a potential ally. The attitude adjustment among many conservative activists helps explain one of the most curious aspects of the 2016 presidential race: a softening among many conservatives of their historically hard-line views of Russia. To the alarm of some in the GOP’s national security establishment, support in the party base for then-candidate Donald Trump did not wane even after he rejected the tough tone of 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, who called Russia America’s No. 1 foe, and repeatedly praised Putin.”

Darron Simon reports that Controversial Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke faces protests Monday: “Thousands are expected to take to the streets of Wisconsin on Monday to demand that the governor remove controversial Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a tough-talking firebrand who wants to use his deputies and correction officers to enforce federal immigration laws. Among other concerns, organizers of the march in Milwaukee are critical of Clarke’s desire to join the Department of Homeland Security’s 287(g) program, which essentially deputizes local law enforcement agencies to operate as federal immigration agents. The Department of Homeland Security wants to expand the government’s ability to empower state and local law enforcement to perform the functions of immigration officers. “Sheriff Clarke, right off the bat, really waved the flag to say we’re going to bring it to Milwaukee County,” Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, the immigrant rights group organizing the statewide march, said Sunday of the 287(g) program. “It basically legalizes racial profiling because you can be stopped and questioned and put in detention based on how you look,” she said.”

Rosie Gray describes norm-disregarding Trump in The Entertainment Presidency: “Whether Trump’s challenges to convention permanently change Washington’s culture, though, or become a cautionary tale for future politicians, may largely be less determined by his success in reshaping debates than by his ability to deliver substantive results. “If you are viewed as successful, yeah, you may have altered the presidency,” said Tim Naftali, a clinical associate professor of history and public service at New York University. “But if you’re viewed as a failure, no.” “The long-term effects of his allergy to existing norms will depend on how well he does as president,” Naftali said. And, at the moment, views of Trump are starkly polarized. His approval ratings are historically low for a president at this point in his tenure. A Gallup poll this week put Trump’s approval at 43 percent.”

Nature is full of curiosities. Meet the giant salamander known as the ‘snot otter’:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.30.17

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy, with an occasional thunderstorm, and a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 5:48 AM and sunset 7:55 PM, for 14h 06m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 21.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred seventy-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, aged 73, of Wisconsin’s Fifth Congressional District plans a town hall at Whitewater’s municipal building at 1 PM. Sensenbrenner has been in the national news most recently for his observation that “nobody’s got to use the internet” and for losing his cool at a February town hall (“The congressman, who prides himself on his prolific schedule of town-hall-style meetings, banged his gavel and insisted that his rules for civility be obeyed.“).

Sensenbrenner’s rules for civility are singular. Readers may recall that Sensenbrenner commented negatively (at a church fundraiser, of all places) on Michelle Obama’s weight, for which he later apologized:

” ‘He then talked about how different first ladies have had different projects – Laura Bush and literacy – and he named two or three others,’ Marsh-Meigs said in an interview last week. ‘And then he said, ‘And Michelle Obama, her project is obesity. And look at her big butt.’ ‘

” ‘That’s basically what he said,” she continued. “It was a combination of her work on obesity and her shape.’

“The remark stunned the five congregants, according to Marsh-Meigs, who was the only woman at the table where the conversation occurred. She said she believes Sensenbrenner might have thought she wasn’t paying attention because she was busy knitting.”

(Perhaps a staffer has supplied the congressman with a helpful Post-it® note for today’s town hall: (1) stay calm (2) don’t say anything foolish.)

On this day in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed on 30 April by Robert Livingston, James Monroe, and Barbé Marbois in Paris. On this day in 1864, Joseph Bailey directs Union soldiers, including the 23rd Wisconsin, to support six Union warships: “Bailey, who was from Wisconsin Dells and an experienced lumberjack, served as an engineer in the 4th Wisconsin Cavalry. In a doomed campaign against the Confederates on the Red River in Louisiana, Union warships found themselves trapped by low water and the rocky river bed. As Confederate soldiers approached, Bailey employed water control techniques used by loggers to construct a series of dams that successfully narrowed the river, raised the water level by six feet, and provided enough surge to free the trapped fleet of gunboats. For his role in this rescue, Bailey was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He also received a Tiffany punch bowl from his fellow officers.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Sarah Kendzior offers Want to survive another 100 days of Trump? Don’t get complacent: “For over a year, citizens refused to accept that the unthinkable was not only thinkable, but probable. His win was a lesson in the dangers of complacency. The 100 days have shown Mr. Trump’s failures to be not a natural result of incompetence, but of vigilance that citizens and officials must continue to apply if they want to keep their republic. A new translation of Dante’s The Inferno bears the lines: “Forget your hopes. They were what brought you here.” This is good advice for those living in Mr. Trump’s special hell. The era of hope and change is over. The era of resistance and resolve is now.”

Pope Francis recently gave a surprise TED talk on why the only future worth building includes everyone:

Andrew Kramer reports on an aspect of Putin’s Russia in Despite the ‘Yuck Factor,’ Leeches Are Big in Russian Medicine: “Leeches — yes, leeches — are still widely prescribed in Russian medicine, about 10 million of them every year, in many cases as a low-cost substitute for blood thinners like warfarin. “When you do it the first time, you think, ‘My God, leeches!’” Mrs. Kalinicheva said. “But after you go through it, you understand there is nothing to worry about.” In Russia, a medicinal leech costs less than $1, and a typical application requires three to seven of the ravenous little creatures. Leech treatments, available throughout the country, take 30 to 40 minutes, though the resulting wounds ooze blood for an additional six hours or so until the natural anticoagulant in leech venom wears off. Though Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin is muscling its way back onto the world stage militarily, economic development has lagged woefully, and that includes the medical system.”

Alicia Parlipiano and Larry Buchanan have been Cataloging Every Tweet by the President Since He Took Office: “As Mr. Trump approaches 100 days in office, we’ve taken stock of how he has used the medium, cataloging his Twitter posts into 10 themes: Undermining Obama (15 tweets), Raising Alarm (40), Pressuring Congress (24), Discrediting the Media (41), Bullying Foreign Leaders (25), Singling Out Companies (12), Serving as Spin (101), Creating Drama and Excitement (38), Promoting the Administration (31), Making America Great Again (169)”

From above, a drone shows the landscape of Norway’s Lofoten Islands, shot using a DJI Mavic Pro:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.29.17

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Good morning.

Saturday in this rural college town will be mostly cloudy, with afternoon showers, and a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 5:49 AM and sunset 7:54 PM, for 14h 04m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred seventy-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1899, composer & pianist Duke Ellington is born. On this day in 1862, the Siege of Corinth, Mississippi begins: “Following their victory at Shiloh, 110,000 Union soldiers marched to Corinth, Mississippi. The city sat at the junction of rail lines that stretched south to Alabama and Florida, and north to Kentucky and Virginia. It would take three weeks to drive Confederate troops from the city.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Andrew Restuccia, Josh Dawsey, and Daniel Lippman report on the White House eyeing [Milwaukee Sheriff David] Clarke for Homeland Security post: “Clarke is in line to be appointed as assistant secretary at DHS’ Office of Partnership and Engagement, which coordinates outreach to state, local and tribal officials and law enforcement. The position does not require Senate confirmation. A senior administration official cautioned it’s “not a done deal yet.” Clarke, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, has long been rumored as a possible candidate for a job in the administration and met with Trump in November at Trump Tower. He also spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last year. He has come under fire in recent days amid revelations about the case of Terrill Thomas, who died of dehydration last year at the Milwaukee County Jail after guards turned off the water in his cell.”

Audrey Carlsen, Jesse Drucker, Stuart A. Thompson, and Nadja Popovich report that Trump Could Save Tens of Millions of Dollars in One Year Under His Proposed Tax Plan: “Mr. Trump could save as much as $10.4 million on business income and $16.6 million on income from real estate and other kinds of partnerships under this plan, compared with his tax burden under current law. (In 2005, much of this taxable income was offset by a $103.2 million write-down in business losses.)”

Maria Sacchetti and Ed O’Keefe report that ICE data shows half of immigrants arrested in raids had traffic convictions or no record: “The two-month total represents a 32 percent increase in deportation arrests over the same period last year. Most are criminals, administration officials have said. But 5,441 were not criminals, double the number of undocumented immigrants arrested for deportation a year earlier. The administration has released a detailed breakdown of the criminal records only of the raids in early February. Trump has said that public safety threats are his top priority. Shortly after he was elected, he vowed to first deport serious criminals from the United States. But critics say immigration agents instead have also targeted students, parents of U.S. citizens who do not have serious criminal records and minor offenders.”

Felicia Schwartz reports that Sec. of State Tillerson Proposes 2,300 Job Cuts From State Department: “WASHINGTON—U.S. chief diplomat Rex Tillerson is floating a plan to slash 2,300 jobs and 26% of the budget from the State Department, affirming the Trump administration’s intention to favor military over diplomatic spending, people familiar with the proposal said. Mr. Tillerson’s proposal follows the Office of Management and Budget’s plan that included President Donald Trump’s call to cut funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development by 31%. Officials cautioned that the budget discussions continue and the administration’s final funding request to Congress won’t be released until the second week of May.”

How would one Make The World’s Tiniest Cup Of Coffee Out Of A Single Bean? Here’s how:

Cats

Friday Catblogging: Snow Leopard Triple Sighting

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Three snow leopards surprised wildlife researchers in China by snuggling in front of a monitoring camera – a rare sighting they say will help us better understand and protect the big cats. And they hope it’ll help scientists estimate just how many of these elusive animals are left in the wild.

The big cat conservation group Panthera released a stop-motion video of the felines last week, captured in the highlands of China’s Qinghai province, near a monastery where the agency is working alongside the Snow Leopard Trust and a local nonprofit named Shan Shui. In the minute-long clip, a snow leopard lopes in front of the camera. Another soon joins it for a nap and a third big cat crawls on top of them before settling in the back of the frame.

Via Snow Leopard Triple Sighting A Treat For Viewers, And Even Better For Science.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 4.28.17

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a likelihood of afternoon rain, and a high of sixty-one. Sunrise is 5:51 AM and sunset 7:52 PM, for 14h 01m 33s. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred seventy-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Downtown Whitewater board of directors is scheduled to meet at 8 AM.

A mutiny on the HMS Bounty takes place on this day in 1789, as “Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian [and] disaffected crewmen seize control of the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set him and 18 loyalists adrift in the ship’s open launch.” On this day in 1862, the 5th Wisconsin Infantry takes part in a reconnaissance at Lee’s Mill, Virginia.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jacob Carpenter and Dave Umhoefer report that 3 Milwaukee County Jail staffers point fingers at others in dehydration death: “Three Milwaukee County Jail staffers blamed each other Thursday for failing to document the shutoff of an inmate’s water seven days before he died of dehydration. A corrections lieutenant and two officers all said they believed a co-worker had noted in jail logs that staff cut off the water in inmate Terrill Thomas’ solitary confinement cell. Without the notation, other corrections officers and supervisors had no way of knowing Thomas was deprived of water. The testimony came on the fourth day of the inquest into the death of Thomas, 38, whose untreated bipolar disorder rendered him incapable of asking for help. An inquest is a rarely used legal procedure that allows prosecutors to question witnesses under oath in public before they decide whether to criminally charge anybody over a death. A jury hears the testimony and issues an advisory verdict on whether there’s probable cause to file charges.”

Thomas Kaplan and Robert Pear report that Health Bill Vote Scrapped for Now as G.O.P. Support Wanes: “The lost opportunity was perhaps the biggest blow to the future prospects of Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who has a long relationship with Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Priebus had pushed aggressively for the House to schedule a vote this week, according to several people who spoke with him within the West Wing and on Capitol Hill. Earlier on Thursday, Mr. Ryan appeared to shy away from pushing for a fast vote. “We’re going to go when we have the votes,” he said, adding that Republicans would not be constrained by “some artificial deadline.” House Democrats, sensing an advantage, pressured Republicans to once again back away from the bill, just as they did a month ago in an embarrassing defeat for Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan. Democratic leaders threatened to withhold votes from a stopgap spending measure to keep the government open past Friday if Republicans insisted on trying to jam the health care bill through the House on Friday or Saturday, which is Mr. Trump’s 100th day as president.”

Brian Stelter reports an Exclusive: Federal probe of Fox News expands: “The U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of Fox News has widened to include a second law enforcement agency. Financial crimes experts from the United States Postal Inspection Service are now involved, according to four sources connected to the investigation. Mail fraud and wire fraud cases are part of the USPIS purview. Investigators from both the USPIS and the Justice Department have been conducting interviews in recent weeks — including with some former Fox staffers — to obtain more information about the network’s managers and business practices, the sources said….In February the investigation was reported to be focusing on settlements made with women who alleged sexual harassment by former Fox News boss Roger Ailes, and questions about whether Fox had a duty to inform shareholders about the settlement payments. The investigators have been asking “how the shareholder money was spent; who knew; and who should have known,” one of the sources said.”

The Times considers President Trump’s Laughable Plan to Cut His Own Taxes: “the skimpy one-page tax proposal his administration released on Wednesday is, by any historical standard, a laughable stunt by a gang of plutocrats looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the country’s future. Two of Mr. Trump’s top lieutenants — Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, both multimillionaires and former Goldman Sachs bankers — trotted out a plan that would slash taxes for businesses and wealthy families, including Mr. Trump’s, in the vague hope of propelling economic growth. So as to not seem completely venal, they served up a few goodies for the average wage-earning family, among them fewer and lower tax brackets and a higher standard deduction. The proposal was so empty of illustrative detail that few people could even begin to calculate its impact on their pocketbooks. Further, depending on where they live, some middle-class families might not benefit much or at all, because the plan does away with important deductions like those for state and local taxes.”

Chicago Bears fans – and the rest of humanity, really – had trouble understanding why their team would go for a quarterback when a defensive player would be so useful. They expressed their surprise:

Culture, Newspapers, Politics, Press

Media Dependency

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Concerning national publications, Eliana Johnson describes How Trump Blew Up the Conservative Media. Her observation on this point has local relevancy (both about and apart from Trump). Here’s Johnson’s key observation:

“For the 89 percent of Republican voters who cast ballots for Trump, their backing represented a departure from many of the principles that have animated the American conservative movement for six decades. Today, those voters remain broadly supportive of the president personally, and as a result, insiders say, the conservative media have been increasingly pulled by a tractor beam that demands positive coverage of the president regardless of how far he wanders from the ideas they once enforced. Producers and editors have been faced with a choice: Provide that coverage or lose your audience.”

That’s spot on.

It has local meaning, too: nearby publications either tip-toe around Trump, or avoid the subject entirely.

Consider what that means: these publications are too timid to address the most significant political development (toward a nativist authoritarianism) of contemporary times.  It’s not for or against for them, it’s head down, eyes averted, let me be your buddy.

This weakness may be financial (‘please, I’ll not say anything that might make our few over-charged, under-served advertisers complain’) or emotional (‘please, I’ll keep quiet about a major political development so that I can ingratiate myself with others’).

Either way, it’s not worth publishing on those sad terms. No one has to discuss, let alone cover, political issues. If a publication does cover politics, however, and skirts these issues, it’s not truly covering politics.

The noted English philosopher Adam Ant beautifully explained the terms of a good life in his 1982 masterwork, Goody Two Shoes:

We don’t follow fashion
That’d be a joke
You know we’re gonna set them, set them
So everyone can take note, take note

One stays true to one’s convictions.

The Revolution, Abolition, the defense of the Union, civil rights: those great moral & political causes called for more than faint hearts and a faltering step.

A few national publications have been invigorated in opposition to Trump, and a few nativist ones have profited in support, too. For many others – both local and national – an existing, difficult media environment is doubly constraining now.

The way forward requires (1) financial independence (or at least diversification) and (2) the confidence to express one’s views clearly and firmly. Indeed, the latter makes the former more likely. This is a key point: one lives better – in the deepest, fullest sense – this way.

A publisher’s policy that begins with distance and detachment, and ends with diligence, is incomparably better than living one’s life in constant servility to national or local pressures.