FREE WHITEWATER

America, Law, Liberty

Declaration Over Pledge

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When I was a child, we would – as students and politicians do today – recite the Pledge of Allegiance. It sticks in my memory, and so it’s easy to type its words without looking them up: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Among those thirty-one words, there’s mention of liberty, but not so much, so vividly, as the first thirty-six words that declared to all the world America’s deepest, founding principles:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Someday, a time that will be a better day, I believe that we will wisely begin our affairs with a declaration over a pledge.

Education, School District

Design, Late 2016

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Whitewater’s local public school district held a board meeting last night, and one of the topics was physical change to the schools following a successful construction referendum in November.

The district administrator gave an overview of some design possibilities, that one could characterize into two broad categories: design changes for students’ safety (e.g., more secure entrances) and everything else. Of the changes for security, there’s not much to suggest, as one supposes that those prudent alternations have been well-reviewed.

For the other changes, there’s far more play between form and function, so to speak. One has more room to choose between one style or another, and this seems especially true as one departs from elementary school choices. Watching the presentation (with illustrations showing what other schools have or will soon do), I thought that I might comment on the aesthetic of the possibilities.

Thought, but only for a moment: does one aesthetic or another make that much difference now, to America, in late 2016? Will light or dark, or eastward or westward facing objects matter now?

Perhaps so, but not so much as many other choices: a day learning principles of liberty in a shack is preferable to a year ignoring them while in a palace. I see, of course, that one can have both, but we have over-emphasized the material over the ideal (security being the prudent exception).

I’m reminded of a scene from one of Orwell’s essays, where a man facing tragedy still takes a moment to step aside from a puddle. In this, Orwell saw a common humanity between himself and the man, and I’ll surely not disagree.

Yet where Orwell’s account led to only one outcome, we have even now – as a society – more than one possible future, some being destinies, and others mere fates.

The place or size of the puddles before us surely isn’t our principal concern, however much we might wish it to be otherwise.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.20.16

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be much warmer than yesterday, with a high of thirty under mostly sunny skies. Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 01m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 55.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1860, South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the Union. On this day in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was formally completed with a transfer ceremony in New Orleans.  In December 1941, large numbers of Wisconsinites begin enlisting for military duty during the Second World War, with about 320,000 serving during the course of the war.

Worth reading in full — 

Patrick Marley reports that Wisconsin Attorney General Schimel considers reopening Lincoln Hills probe: “Madison — After saying last week he was “in the dark” on an investigation into Wisconsin’s juvenile prison, Attorney General Brad Schimel changed course Monday and said his office now may issue charges over alleged inmate abuses. Schimel’s sharply different tone came a day after a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation reported that state officials missed a series of warning signs coming from Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, which share a campus 30 miles north of Wausau. The Republican attorney general headed a criminal investigation into the facility for a year, but turned it over to the FBI in early 2016. He told the Journal Sentinel on Thursday he had not been seeking updates on the investigation and didn’t know its status….When told FBI hadn’t visited Lincoln Hills for nearly a year, Schimel said he was surprised to hear that, but wasn’t bothered. He struck a much different tone Monday, after the Journal Sentinel’s story appeared. In an interview with The Associated Press, Schimel said his agency may “step back in” and re-launch its own investigation.”

Eli Lake proposes that Obama Should Out Putin’s Wealth as Payback for Election Hacking: “U.S. officials have hinted before that they know more than they are saying about Putin’s money. Adam Szubin, the acting undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, told the BBC in January that Putin “supposedly draws a state salary of something like $110,000 a year. That is not an accurate statement of the man’s wealth, and he has long time training and practices in terms of how to mask his actual wealth.” In October, retired Admiral James Stavridis told NBC News: “It’s well known that there’s a great deal of offshore money moved outside of Russia from oligarchs. … It would be very embarrassing if that was revealed, and that would be a proportional response to what we’ve seen”….The effect of a disclosure by the Obama administration though would be apparent in the West. Putin may not care whether his citizens know how corrupt he is. But I bet his Western bankers and business partners do. Fiona Hill, a senior fellow and Russia expert at the Brookings Institution, told me Monday: “The one thing about revealing this information is that it would stigmatize his wealth. This is shining a spotlight on him and his allies.”

Jennifer Rubin writes that Trump revels in fake news and phony claims: “here is what is different about Trump: He doesn’t try to get it right. He doesn’t assume that people care about the truth or that the truth is important. He will repeat blatant untruths (e.g. Arab Americans celebrated after 9/11, President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, he won by a landslide, we don’t know whether Russia hacked us), and then try to bully those who dispute him. Rather than engage on the facts, Trump insults, demeans and bullies the messenger. Critical voices — even “Saturday Night Live” — are, in his view, “losing” business (even when they are not), because for Trump, financial success makes one good and truthful while financial distress means one is bad and a liar.”

Rich McCormick writes that the Rogue One director says its original ending was very different [spoilers in linked story]: “Rogue One could have been a very different film. Reports of extensive reshoots persisted during its production, and the fact it underwent severe story surgery is backed up by shots seen in the trailers that didn’t make it into the final film. We may never know what the first version of the first Star Wars spinoff looked like, but director Gareth Edwards — who spoketo movie magazine Empire this month — has confirmed that Rogue One’s original ending was one such cutting-room casualty.”

One sees that some Britons decided to send a meat pie to the edge of space, about 100,000 feet above the Earth —

Alt-Right, America, Authoritarianism, Federal Government, Freedom of Speech, Law, Liberty, Trump

The Work of the Next Several Years 

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Charles Blow writes of the work ahead for those many citizens who now find themselves compelled to defend their rights:

I fully understand that elevated outrage is hard to maintain. It’s exhausting.

But the alternative is surrender to national nihilism and the welcoming of woe.

The next four years could be epochal years in the history of this country. They could test the limits of presidential power and the public’s passivity.

I happen to believe that history will judge kindly those who continued to shout, from the rooftops, through their own weariness and against the corrosive drift of conformity: This is not normal!

Via Donald Trump, This Is Not Normal! – The New York Times.

One cannot say that this will be the work only of the next few years, knowing that often a few years stretch into several. There will be some moments of weariness; they will prove nothing as against the vigor that comes from being in the right.

Freedom of Speech, Trump

Trappings of the Authoritarian

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Authoritarian policies matter more than authoritarian trappings, but Trump has a taste for both:

Donald Trump won’t content himself with the standard-issue presidency — he’s going to have his customized. Daily intelligence briefings are out, along with the norms that prohibit the appearance of corruption. “Victory rallies” are in — as is the private security force that policed dissent at Trump’s events throughout his campaign.

Politico’s Ken Vogel reports that Trump has retained his private security detail as president-elect, and he’s expected to carry on doing so even after inauguration — a move that’s both unprecedented and, in the eyes of some Secret Service agents, dangerous….

Trump’s use of private security was aberrant long before he won the White House. Most presidential candidates drop outside security the moment they’re provided Secret Service protection. But the president-elect actually increased his spending on private security after he was provided such protection in November 2015: Even as Hillary Clinton outspent the GOP nominee by nearly 75 percent, Trump spent nearly three times as much on security contracting. In total, his campaign doled out more than $1 million on private security through the end of last month.

With that investment, Trump assembled an anti-protester intelligence squad, tasked with identifying people at his rallies who didn’t look like they belonged. Shockingly, this security team racked up dozens of accusations of racial profiling and the use of undue force.

Via Donald Trump Expected to Retain a Private Security Force As President.

In this matter case, the trappings affect policy significantly, as he’ll be able to use private security to restrict access at public events.

City

Local Assumptions and Outlook, Winter 2016

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This post is a quick summary of thoughts on the local outlook, including the local political economy.

1. Politics & Economy. I’d say the outlook is for turbulence in the national political-economy, and stagnation in the local one. See, The National-Local Mix and The Local Economic Context of It All.  The way out of several years’ local stagnation is a more decisive break with past, but there’s no evidence whatever that Whitewater’s local government will take this step; nothing else will be adequate. See, How Big Averts Bad. More of the same, which is easily served up time and again, will be no more effectual tomorrow than it was yesterday. (Spending too much time on the subject is like giving too much attention to people who believe in perpetual motion machines.)

There’s also a chance that we’ll see local political-cultural  revanchism, using enforcement to buttress one community in Whitewater against others. If that happens, the city will become a place of individual injury, and of toxicity to competitive newcomers (whether conservative or liberal). A hard-to-move short-term offering will become an impossible-to-move one. See, Plain-Spoken in a Small Town? Not Most Leaders.

2. Local Cultural and Charitable Efforts are More Valuable than Political-Economic Ones.  A lively prioritization of private over public, of cultural over political, and small and individual over big and collective, would be an effective local approach even in turbulent times. (Where lively is both a manner of expression and of action.) See, An Oasis Strategy. As is always true, Culture Without Grandiosity Works Best. We can get through difficult times, but what’s been done (and will be done) by local government won’t be adequate.

3. National Affairs Will Dwarf Local Matters.  Honest to goodness, it’s worth asking When Are We?  If these were ordinary times, little different from last year or five years ago, then a commitment to local routine politics (including ineffectual subsidies to entice businesses) would be, so to speak, local routine waste.  If however, these should now be unusual and unusually dangerous times, then an emphasis on local political routine is worse than local waste – it’s an error of immeasurable size. (I’m reminded of a line from the first parapraph of Wells’s War of the Worlds: “as men busied themselves about their various concerns….[w]ith infinite complacency men went to and fro…about their little affairs….”)

I’ve always felt that through national one finds the proper way to see local, but if I’d never thought so before, I’d yet begin to think so now.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.19.16

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s Monday will be mostly sunny with a high of fourteen.  Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 01m 41s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 65.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets tonight at 6:30 PM. Whitewater’s School Board meets tonight, with open session scheduled for approximately 7 PM.

On this day in 1843, Charles Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas. On this day in 1813, Wisconsin’s first governor, Nelson Dewey, is born.

Worth reading in full —

Michael Wines reports that for All This Talk of Voter Fraud? Across U.S., Officials Found Next to None: “After all the allegations of rampant voter fraud and claims that millions had voted illegally, the people who supervised the general election last month in states around the nation have been adding up how many credible reports of fraud they actually received. The overwhelming consensus: next to none. In an election in which more than 137.7 million Americans cast ballots, election and law enforcement officials in 26 states and the District of Columbia — Democratic-leaning, Republican-leaning and in-between — said that so far they knew of no credible allegations of fraudulent voting. Officials in another eight states said they knew of only one allegation.”

David Corn asks Did Russia Spy on Donald Trump When He Visited Moscow?: “With the Washington Post‘s bombshell report that the CIA has assessed that the Russian hacking of Democratic targets was done as part of a Kremlin operation to help Donald Trump win the election, here’s an intriguing question: Has Russian intelligence spied on the president-elect and, if so, what private information has it collected on him? A counterintelligence veteran of a Western spy service in October told Mother Jones that he had uncovered information—and had sent it to the FBI—indicating Russian intelligence had mounted a yearslong operation to cultivate or co-opt Trump and that this project included surveillance that gathered compromising material on the celebrity mogul. Yet there have been no indications from the FBI whether it has investigated this lead. Still, several intelligence professionals say Trump would have indeed been a top priority for Russian intelligence surveillance—especially when he was in Moscow in November 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant, which he owned at the time.”

Anthony Faiola reports that In Poland, a window on what happens when populists come to power: “WARSAW — The Law and Justice Party rode to power on a pledge to drain the swamp of Polish politics and roll back the legacy of the previous administration. One year later, its patriotic revolution, the party proclaims, has cleaned house and brought God and country back to Poland. Opponents, however, see the birth of a neo-Dark Age — one that, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to move into the White House, is a harbinger of the power of populism to upend a Western society. In merely a year, critics say, the nationalists have transformed Poland into a surreal and insular place — one where state-sponsored conspiracy theories and de facto propaganda distract the public as democracy erodes. In the land of Law and Justice, anti-intellectualism is king. Polish scientists are aghast at proposed curriculum changes in a new education bill that would downplay evolution theory and climate change and add hours for “patriotic” history lessons. In a Facebook chat, a top equal rights official mused that Polish hotels should not be forced to provide service to black or gay customers. After the official stepped down for unrelated reasons, his successor rejected an international convention to combat violence against women because it appeared to argue against traditional gender roles.”

Jessie Opoien writes of someone Excommunicated: Charlie Sykes is leaving radio as he questions the direction of the Republican Party: “Sykes has become one of the state’s most influential conservative voices over nearly a quarter-century, but in the last year his opposition to Republican president-elect Donald Trump has earned him an audience beyond Wisconsin. His combative interview with Trump during the state’s presidential primary propelled him into multi-year contracts with NBC and MSNBC and attracted national reporters who sought to capture the story of a prominent conservative who refused to support the Republican nominee. A month before Trump was elected, Sykes announced his plans to leave WTMJ. He said the decision was made more than a year ago, for both personal and professional reasons. Sykes turned 62 this year and his father, Jay Sykes, died at 63. He wants to spend more time writing, traveling and with his family. If he had any doubts about the move, the political climate of 2016 erased them.”

Small-business computers have come a long way since the IBM 5100 —

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.18.16

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Good morning.

Here in Whitewater we’ve partly cloudy skies and a high of minus one ahead for Sunday. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:23 PM, for 9h 01m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, slavery ends in the United States as the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed by the states on December 6th, goes into in effect after Sec. of State Seward’s certification. (“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”)  On this day in 1950, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin makes an unsuccessful bid to be the site of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Worth reading in full —

John Schmid reports that, in a troubled area, a Faith-based pay-what-you-can cafe opens in Sherman Park: “The Tricklebee Cafe, an elegant pay-what-you-can restaurant at 4424 W. North Ave., held its grand opening this week. In a community with an abundance of empty storefronts, the faith-based nonprofit favors vegetarian fare and furnished itself with the pews, pulpit and hymnal board of a former church in northern Wisconsin. “We will never turn anyone away if they don’t have the means to pay,” said the Rev. Christie Melby-Gibbons, an ordained pastor of the Moravian Church, a Protestant denomination. Nor will the Tricklebee turn away patrons who feel philanthropic enough to pay above and beyond the suggested per-meal donation of $5.69-$6.46, a range calculated to cover the cost of procuring locally grown organic food, utilities, rent and a “living wage” for the paid staff. “If people want to ‘pay it forward,’ we gracefully accept that, too,” Melby-Gibbons said. The cafe is open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It launched without fanfare in time for Thanksgiving and used the past month to develop a daily operating rhythm for the kitchen that begins with early morning baking. It reserved its formal inaugural opening for this week.”

Although some Britons worry that Brexit will harm their economy, at least one has found work, as Mike McIntire describes How a Putin Fan Overseas Pushed Pro-Trump Propaganda to Americans: “The Patriot News Agency website popped up in July, soon after it became clear that Donald J. Trump would win the Republican presidential nomination, bearing a logo of a red, white and blue eagle and the motto “Built by patriots, for patriots.” Patriot News — whose postings were viewed and shared tens of thousands of times in the United States — is among a constellation of websites run out of the United Kingdom that are linked to James Dowson, a far-right political activist who advocated Britain’s exit from the European Union and is a fan of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. A vocal proponent of Christian nationalist, anti-immigrant movements in Europe, Mr. Dowson, 52, has spoken at a conference of far-right leaders in Russia and makes no secret of his hope that Mr. Trump will usher in an era of rapprochement with Mr. Putin.”

(There’s limitless audacity in a Briton calling his site a ‘patriot news network.’)

Those who’ve for years argued a so-called ‘states’ rights’ case might want to think about what it means when huge and powerful California takes up that position against a Trump Administration. James Fallows annotates Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent speech to  the American Geophysical Union:

“From 4:30 to 5:15 [in the video], Brown begins one of his “we’re ready to fight” riffs. The speech as a whole is unpolished, but among its charms is Brown’s ability to seem self-aware and even self-mocking. An example is in this passage: First he says that Big Tobacco was brought down by a combination of scientists and lawyers. Then, “And in California, we’ve got plenty of lawyers! … We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight!”

At 5:30, he introduces the “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Brown? You’re not a country” argument, about the way California has used its technical advances and sheer scale to set national and even international environmental standards. “We have a lot of firepower! We’ve got the scientists. We’ve got the universities. We have the national labs. We have a lot of political clout and sophistication for the battle. And we will persevere!”

So many are Trump’s conflicts of interest that one has trouble keeping track. Jeremy Venook provides Donald Trump’s Conflicts of Interest: A Crib Sheet: “legality does not imply propriety. Unless Trump acts to put appropriate distance between himself and his business ventures, these questions are likely to continue throughout his time in the Oval Office. Below is an attempt to catalogue the more clear-cut examples of conflicts of interest that have emerged so far; the most recent entries appear at the top.

Courtesy of the European Space Agency, one sees how beautiful Mars is —

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.17.16

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see snowfall throughout the day, with a high of twenty-two and a few inches of accumulation.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 01m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 83.4% of her visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful powered airplane flight, near Kitty Hawk, N.C.  Demonstrations of their design in France five years later won over doubters: “Facing much skepticism in the French aeronautical community and outright scorn by some newspapers that called him a “bluffeur”, Wilbur began official public demonstrations on August 8, 1908 at the Hunaudières horse racing track near the town of Le Mans, France. His first flight lasted only one minute 45 seconds, but his ability to effortlessly make banking turns and fly a circle amazed and stunned onlookers, including several pioneer French aviators, among them Louis Blériot. In the following days, Wilbur made a series of technically challenging flights, including figure-eights, demonstrating his skills as a pilot and the capability of his flying machine, which far surpassed those of all other pioneering aircraft and pilots of the day.[95][96]

The French public was thrilled by Wilbur’s feats and flocked to the field by the thousands, and the Wright brothers instantly became world-famous. Former doubters issued apologies and effusive praise. L’Aérophile editor Georges Besançon wrote that the flights “have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly …”[97] Leading French aviation promoter Ernest Archdeacon wrote, “For a long time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff … They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure … to make amends.”[98]“

Worth reading in full —

Chelsey Lewis offers 100 things to do in Wisconsin this winter: “The weather outside is frightful, and the fire may be delightful, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place to go. Beat cabin fever with these 100 things to do across Wisconsin this winter.” (Her list starts strong, as numbers 1, 2, and 3 are enticing.)

Adam Entous and Ellen Nakashima report that the FBI backs CIA view that Russia intervened to help Trump win election: “FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to U.S. officials. Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion — and officials say that he never changed his position — suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement on Russian intentions, contrary to suggestions by some lawmakers that the FBI disagreed with the CIA. “Earlier this week, I met separately with (Director) FBI James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” CIA Director John Brennan said in a message to the agency’s workforce, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message.”

Philip Bump reports that Now you can fact-check Trump’s tweets — in the tweets themselves: “We made a tool [an extension for Google Chrome] that slips a bit more context into Trump’s tweets. It’s still in the early stages, but our goal is to provide additional context where needed for Trump’s tweets moving forward (and a few golden oldies). For example, here’s what it shows in relation to that Trump tweet…”

WashPo fact checking tool: extension for Google Chrome, https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/realdonaldcontext/ddbkmnomngnlcdglabflidgmhmcafogn .

Visiting Twitter using Chrome produces a fact-checking box under Trump’s tweets that merit fact-checking. (The extension only seems to apply to tweets that are factually refutable; Trump’s mere opinions, or his many misspellings and grammatical failures of standard written English, are left unaddressed.)

Peter Beinart offers a theory about why some (but certainly not all) conservatives support Trump in The Key to the Conservative Spilt on Trump: “Partly, they’re aping Trump. But there’s something deeper at work. Ideological conservatives loathe Putin because he represents an authoritarian challenge to the American-backed order in Europe and the Middle East. But many civilizational conservatives, who once opposed the Soviet Union because of its atheism, now view Putin’s Russia as Christianity’s front line against the new civilizational enemy: Islam. Among the alt-right, Putin is a very popular man. He’s popular because he resists the liberal, cosmopolitan values that Muslims supposedly exploit to undermine the West. Richard Spencer, who was until recently married to a pro-Putin Russian writer, has called Russia the “sole white power in the world.” Matthew Heimbach, another prominent figure in the alt-right, recently told Business Insider that “Russia is the leader of the free world.” In 2013, Pat Buchanan penned a column entitled, “Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative? In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?”

Capra contributed to the Why We Fight series to explain the moral imperative of America’s war with the Axis. We’ve no such series against racist nationalists, but hearing and seeing Richard Spencer is a reminder why each day compels a complete & tenacious resistance against Spencer and his ilk:

Charity, City, Culture, Hip & Prosperous

An Oasis Strategy

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There’s a wide difference between believing that we’ve difficult national or local times ahead and losing confidence. I’m as confident today as ever that Whitewater has a bright long-term future. There’s simply hard work ahead between now and then, and more hard work now than we might have hoped (national trends being what they are).

What to do? A few simple suggestions, all around the view that Whitewater can pursue an oasis strategy in which she departs from the routine and emphasizes creatively, with liveliness, the genuinely unique, apolitical accomplishments in the wider area.

Unlike a mirage, an oasis is a real place of real respite. An oasis is noticeable and desirable among its wider surroundings; it’s noticeable and desirable for what it genuinely offers. The mirage presents illusory beauty at a distance but offers nothing up close; an oasis is beautiful at a distance but even more desirable upon arrival.

1. Look away from local government. Common Council isn’t the Roman Senate (and then, the Roman Senate wasn’t what one often hears it was; there were very few truly noble Romans, to be clear about it). Forget the notion that local government sits at the peak of the city.  There is no peak; there are thousands of equally valuable spots.

2. Recognize the masking effect of commonplace background noise. Outside Whitewater are Fort Atkinson, Palmyra, Milton, Jefferson, etc. Saying the same things that other towns say in their schools, and at their local council meetings, only gets lost amid the background noise of daily life. Trying to leverage often momentary gains in particular metrics won’t catch anyone’s notice; leveraging selective parts of reports either goes similarly unnoticed, or – far worse – only alienates people already disillusioned with cherrypicking.

Behind tiresome, mundane presentations of school report cards, for example, are stories of genuine, specific accomplishment – what a student wrote, built, said, or discovered. That’s impressive, and compelling. Tell those stores with lively, graceful prose and add video to one’s accounts – short videos will add life to these stories.

3. Emphasize the uniquely creative and charming. We’ve nice restaurants, a charming City Market, an annual race to Discover Whitewater, a Community Foundation, and countless charitable work in the city. More good work is done there than in any conventional political meeting.

The City Market, for example, is charming, but that charm has no particular politics: a style, and a fine selection, are without partisanship.  There’s a playful style to the market, but the sensibility that produced that style transcends politics.  It’s not enjoyable for one group or demographic – it’s accessible equally to all.  When one thinks about something like Discover Whitewater, one wouldn’t think about the politics of the runners – they’re here to have a good time, and the city is here to welcome them.

4.  Whitewater’s not one community, nor need it ever be.  This city’s not of one culture or one identity; we’re not a homogeneous place. We’re a diverse and multicultural community. Revanchism on behalf of some won’t make the city great for any. On the contrary, that path will prolong present difficulties, and delay significantly (although not prevent) this city’s more prosperous future.

In even the most difficult times, of economic and political trouble, Americans have still produced great works, committed to charitable undertakings, and carried on admirably (all the while addressing national issues separately).  This city can do the same, as well as others before us did in their challenging times.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 12.16.16

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Good morning.

Here is our small city we’ll have cold temperatures after afternoon snowfall: Friday’s daytime high will be nineteen, with a significant snowfall beginning in the afternoon and stretching into Saturday.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:22 PM, for 9h 02m 13s of daytime.  The moon’s a waning gibbous with 91.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1773, the Boston Tea Party takes place as colonists protest British taxation.   On this day in 1944, the Battle of the Bulge begins as Germany launches her last major offensive of the Second World War through the Ardennes; the Allies repulsed the offensive within about a month.

Worth reading in full — 

Steven Mufson and Max Ehrenfreund report that Trump considers financial pundit Larry Kudlow for Council of Economic Advisors: “If selected, Kudlow would mark another un­or­tho­dox pick for Trump. Under both Republican and Democratic presidents, the council has provided expert economic advice to the president and attracts a staff of top-flight young economists. But Kudlow lacks a graduate or undergraduate degree in economics and has not written scholarly papers on the subject….In recent years, he has become a popular figure on television, but his record as an economic forecaster is full of potholes. Less than nine months before the economic crisis hit in 2008, Kudlow wrote in the National Review that “There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that’s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well. The Bush boom is alive and well… Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told.”

Elena Holodny reports on a study showing that Juvenile incarceration is way more expensive than tuition at a private university: “The annual cost of youth incarceration for a single individual is $112,555, according to the annual report of the Council of Economic Advisers. That’s about 3.5 times the average tuition and fees at a four-year, non-profit private university ($32,405), and almost five times the average cost of tuition and fees at a four-year public university for an out-of-state student ($23,893), according to the report’s data. The cost of incarceration is also more than 11.5 times the average for a year of Head Start ($9,770), and about nine times the cost of an average year of public school ($12,508).”

Evan Osnos, writing of Xu Hongci’s experiences as a dissident in China, asks a difficult question: “What is the precise moment, in the life of a country, when tyranny takes hold? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight, and, at first, the eyes adjust.”

Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns see Democrats at Crossroads: Win Back Working-Class Whites, or Let Them Go?: “For Democrats, the election last month has become a Rorschach test. Some see Mrs. Clinton’s loss as a result of an unfortunate series of flukes — Russian tampering, a late intervention by the Federal Bureau of Investigation director and a poor allocation of resources — but little more than a speed bump on the road to a demographic majority. Others believe the results reflect a more worrisome trend that could doom the party. It’s is a sensitive topic, touching on race and class, but the choices that Democrats make in the coming months will shape their post-Obama identity and carry major implications in both the 2018 midterm elections and the next presidential race.”

Bob Bryan reports that A professor has calculated how much blowing up the Death Star in ‘Star Wars’ would set back gross galactic product: “In this paper we study the financial repercussions of the destruction of two fully armed and operational moon-sized battle stations (“Death Stars”) in a 4-year period and the dissolution of the galactic government in Star Wars,” began the abstract of the study. “The emphasis of this work is to calibrate and simulate a model of the banking and financial systems within the galaxy. Along these lines, we measure the level of systemic risk that may have been generated by the death of Emperor Palpatine and the destruction of the second Death Star.” With full on footnotes and in-text citations to “Lucas” and “Kershner” (the screenwriters of Star Wars, George and Irvin respectively), Feinstein found that the destruction of the Death Stars and collapse of the Galactic Empire would throw the galactic economy into chaos. “In this case study we found that the Rebel Alliance would need to prepare a bailout of at least 15%, and likely at least 20%, of [Gross Galactic Product] in order to mitigate the systemic risks and the sudden and catastrophic economic collapse,” said the study. “Without such funds at the ready, it likely the Galactic economy would enter an economic depression of astronomical proportions.”