FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread, State Government

Daily Bread for 1.10.23: What Price for a Wisconsin Legacy?

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 42. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:41 PM for 9h 16m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 6 PM. 

 On this day in 49 BC, Caesar crosses the Rubicon, signaling the start of civil war.

Steven Walters writes Evers, Vos Seek Legacy-Defining Wins: 

The Capitol’s two top elected officials, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, fought over dozens of major policy issues over the last four years. But they share one thing — worry about their legacies — in the 2023-24 legislative session that began last week.

The 71-year-old Evers is unlikely to seek a third four-year term in 2026. So, he wants both this session and the one that follows to write his eight years in office into Wisconsin’s history books.

Vos will turn 55 on July 5, just past the deadline for approval of the 2023-25 state budget. Vos took his 10th oath of office last week; he will have spent more than one-third of his life in the Assembly by mid-2023. The longest-serving Assembly speaker in state history, Vos has passed on all runs for statewide office and is not expected to run against Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2024.

But Vos had a political near-death experience last August, when he won his party’s nomination for re-election by only 300 votes over a challenger backed by former President Donald Trump.

All this may have Vos, who runs several small businesses, asking how much longer he wants to be a Capitol power broker.

….

Evers and Vos may find one definition of a “legacy” helpful: “Learning from the past, living in the present, and building for the future.”

What deals are truly worth making with a gerrymandered — illegitimate — leader? 

There may be a few (e.g., medical marijuana), but only few. 

A better definition of legacy would be holding to principle. 

Ozone layer on track to recover within decades, UN reports:

Daily Bread, Elections, Gerrymandering, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 1.9.23: Wisconsin’s Near-Death Experience

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:39 PM for 9h 15m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM. 

 On this day in 1962, NASA announces plans to build the C-5 rocket launch vehicle, then known as the “Advanced Saturn,” to carry human beings to the Moon.

Ari Berman writes How Democracy Nearly Died in Wisconsin: 

If the redistricting maps drawn in secret by Republican staffers and passed by the GOP-controlled legislature in 2011 were unfair, the maps adopted by Republicans in 2021, over Evers’ objections, were even more one-sided. As a result, the number of GOP-leaning seats increased to 63 out of 99 in the state Assembly and to 23 out of 33 in the state Senate. That meant that—­according to calculations by Marquette University Law School research fellow John Johnson—Democrats would have to win the 2022 statewide vote by 12 points just to get to 50 seats in the Assembly, while Republicans could garner a majority with only 44 percent of the vote.

At the state GOP convention back in May, held at a Marriott in suburban Madison, GOP Assembly leader Robin Vos candidly laid out his plan for total domination of state politics. His top priority, he said, was defeating Evers. But short of that, if Republicans picked up one more seat in the Senate and five in the Assembly, Vos explained, that would give them a two-thirds supermajority that would “make Tony Evers irrelevant.”

That supermajority would have given legislative Republicans unfettered authority to override Evers’ vetoes and the power to implement an extreme and unpopular agenda on issues ranging from guns to education to abortion—including, potentially, the ability to overturn election results. “If Republicans get supermajorities in the state legislature,” Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler warned before the election, “it’s a threat to the foundations of American democracy.”

On November 8, Vos’ first plan failed. Evers was reelected by 3.5 points—triple his margin in 2018 and practically a landslide by Wisconsin standards—marking the first time since 1962 that Wisconsin had voted for a Democratic governor while a Democratic president was in office. But Vos’ backup plan almost succeeded: Despite Democrats winning four out of five statewide offices, Republicans picked up the state Senate seat they needed and ended up just two Assembly seats short of a supermajority, coming remarkably close to nullifying the power of the twice-elected governor.

In a year in which seemingly the entire GOP radicalized against democracy, Republicans in Wisconsin were on the cutting edge of attacking free and fair elections. Donald Trump had made the state the focal point of his obsession to decertify the 2020 election; nearly three-quarters of Republicans in the legislature acted to discredit or overturn the results; and critics of the way elections are conducted in Wisconsin ran for governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. That was just the beginning of their plans. The GOP hoped to wrest control away from the bipartisan commission that supervises elections and turn it over to the ultra-gerrymandered legislature, which could give it more power over how elections are certified. That could’ve allowed Republicans to toss aside election results in 2024 through more sophisticated and ostensibly legal means than Trump used in 2020.

A place nearly drowned yet saved.  

‘Flying boat’ makes waves at CES:

Daily Bread, Elections, Presidential race 2020, Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 1.8.23: Why Have a Popular Vote When the Gerrymandered Wisconsin Legislature Can Pick the Winner?

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:38 PM for 9h 14m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 2005, the nuclear sub USS San Francisco collides at full speed with an undersea mountain south of Guam. One man is killed, but the sub surfaces and is repaired.

Scott Bauer reports New documents detail Sen. Ron Johnson asking about GOP-controlled Legislature choosing Wisconsin electors: 

The former chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson spoke to him weeks before Joe Biden assumed the presidency about having the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature, rather than voters, choose Wisconsin’s presidential electors, according to newly released documents from closed-door testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee.

Johnson, in a statement Tuesday, said he had no recollection of the conversation with Andrew Hitt and accused the committee investigating the 2021 Capitol insurrection of attempting to “smear” him by selectively releasing text messages.

….

Hitt, who resigned as state party chairman in July 2021, testified before the Jan. 6 committee on Feb. 22. The transcript of his interview was released on Monday. Hitt did not respond to messages from The Associated Press left Tuesday seeking comment.

Hitt provided the committee with a text message he sent to Mark Jefferson, the Wisconsin Republican Party executive director, on Dec. 7, 2020. That was just a week before Wisconsin’s electors met to cast their ballots for Biden, who defeated then-President Donald Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in the state. At the same time, Republicans were discussing ways around having the state’s electors awarded to Biden.

“Ron called me right after and now is arguing for us to have the legislature choose the electors. OMG,” Hitt’s text message to Jefferson said.

“What is he doing?” Jefferson replied.

“There is a huge amount of pressure building on them to find a way around the electoral college,” Hitt told Jefferson.

“How can he feel good about promoting that though?” Jefferson said. “Does he believe we won here?”

Jefferson declined to comment Tuesday.

Should anyone be surprised?

You get what you pay vote for. 

 Arsonists Set Themselves on Fire While Trying to Burn Down Immigration Services Business:

[spacer height=”100px”]

Congress, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.7.23: Only the Best People

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:24 AM and sunset 4:37 PM for 9h 12m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1904, the distress signal “CQD” is established only to be replaced two years later by “SOS.”

Live Video Feed from Kitten Rescue in Los Angeles: 

Caturday (plural Caturdays)

noun

(Internet slang) Saturday, as the day of the week for posting lolcats or other pictures of cats.

This is a live stream of a cat room at Kitten Rescue, an organization founded in Los Angeles, in 1997, dedicated to rescuing and taking care of homeless cats with the help of more than 100 volunteers.

[spacer height=”200px”]

Congress, Daily Bread, Elections, Gerrymandering, Legislature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 1.6.23: What Extreme Gerrymandering Wrought

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 30. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:36 PM for 9h 11m 38s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 2021, violent supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump attack the United States Capitol to disrupt certification of the 2020 presidential election, resulting in five deaths and evacuation of the U.S. Congress.

Dennis Aftergut writes The Chaotic House That SCOTUS Built (‘The Supreme Court enabled Republicans’ addiction to extreme gerrymandering. Now they’re reaping what they’ve sown’): 

Momentously, in 2019, a radical Supreme Court majority composed of Republican nominees issued a 5–4 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause. It gave radical partisan gerrymandering the court’s blessing as constitutional. The fifth vote in that ruling came from ultraconservative justice Neil Gorsuch, who was only seated after Senate Republicans unscrupulously refusedto hold a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland. He would have almost certainly cast the fifth vote the other way.

If you doubt Rucho’s effect in creating today’s Republican House majority, look to Florida as a case study. In 2022, its governor, Ron DeSantis, “strong-armed” through the state legislature an extreme, gerrymandered map that eliminated half of Florida’s Black-dominated districts. In November’s election, the state flipped red three blue congressional seats.

Similarly, North Carolina’s gerrymandering added three Republican seats that, based on the state’s Democratic vote-share, should have gone Democratic. (Incidentally, North Carolina is the state whose gerrymandered map the Supreme Court upheld in Rucho, and it is also the state whose map the court will judge in this term’s much-discussed case of Moore v. Harper.)

Similar results seem to have occurred in Texas and Kentucky, where partisan voter registrations are evenly divided. Yet in Texas, 25 of the 38 congressional representatives are Republican, a 2-to-1 ratio. In Kentucky, five of the six representatives are Republican.

Democrats, too, have gerrymandered in states whose legislatures they control, but their efforts have been far surpassed by Republicans’, and without the destructive effects for the country’s institutions.

And so, the debacle we’ve been witnessing in Congress. From gerrymandered Republican seats come noncompetitive districts that elect hardliners with little to no incentive to compromise on choosing a speaker—or anything else. They gain attention via television and social media and raise money from their MAGA base by standing firm and dropping pipe bombs on the system of governing, and rarely face consequences for the fallout.

Indeed.

The Wisconsin Legislature, too. 

The Milwaukee County Zoo’s Gentoo penguin chick, born Dec. 17, 2022, gets examined:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, January 10th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Jerry and Marge Go Large

by  •  •  Comments

Tuesday, January 10th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Jerry and Marge Go Large @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Drama/Comedy

PG-13; 96 minutes (2022)

Based on the true story of a long-married Michigan couple (Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening) who win the lottery and use the money to revive their small hometown.

One can find more information about Jerry and Marge Go Large at the Internet Movie Database.

Cats

Friday Catblogging: Wildcat

by  •  •  Comments

Rob Thomas reports Melissa Lesh goes from Madison to the Amazon with ‘Wildcat’ movie:

“Growing up in Madison was a huge part of my early love of nature,” Lesh said in a recent Zoom interview. “It definitely helped form my appreciation and love of wildlife and wild places.”

For the last decade, Lesh and her partner Trevor Frost have traveled the world capturing wildlife on film, from orangutans in Borneo to sturgeon in Virginia. They’ve spent the last four years on a feature documentary, “Wildcat,” for which they lived deep in the Amazon rainforest documenting a program to reintroduce baby ocelots into the wild.

It sounds like an adorable project — who doesn’t love kittens? But while “Wildcat” does have stunning (and, yes, adorable) animal footage, the documentary focuses just as much on the mental health struggles of the couple working with the cats. Harry Turner is a young British veteran suffering from PTSD from a tour in Afghanistan, while his partner Samantha Wicker carries her own trauma from an abusive childhood.

Praised by critics for its intimacy and authenticity, “Wildcat” opens in theaters Wednesday, including in Madison at Marcus Palace, and will premiere on Amazon Prime Video Dec. 30.

Corporate Welfare, Daily Bread, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government

Daily Bread for 1.5.23: Will Mount Pleasant’s Local Government See Accountability for Foxconn?

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:35 PM for 9h 10m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM. 

 On this day in 1914, the Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and minimum daily wage of $5 in salary plus bonuses.

Evan Casey reports Slate of Foxconn opponents announce run for Mount Pleasant Village Board (‘The 4 opponents plan to gain a majority of the village board this spring’): 

Local opponents of Mount Pleasant’s Foxconn project are looking to change the direction of the community’s village government. 

The local watchdog group A Better Mount Pleasant has been lobbying against spending related to the development for years. Now the group is running a slate of candidates, hoping to create a majority on the village board, while unseating Village President Dave DeGroot, who has been a vocal supporter of Foxconn. 

“This is our chance to have a majority and to really transform the village in ways we know residents to want to see,” said Kelly Gallaher, who is running against DeGroot. 

Gallaher, spokesperson for A Better Mount Pleasant, has been one of the more vehement opponents against Foxconn. 

“While all of us had big hopes for it when it was first announced, it has failed, and it’s really left Mount Pleasant holding the bag in terms of debt and bonding for this project,” she said. 

Foxconn initially planned to invest $10 billion on a large flat-screen manufacturing plant in Mount Pleasant and employ 13,000 people. Those plans never came to fruition, and a far smaller manufacturing facility now operates on the site. 

Kim Mahoney owned the last home on the Foxconn development area with her husband. She is now is running for a seat on the village board alongside Gallaher.

According to A Better Mount Pleasant, the village, Racine County and the state have spent $200 million on land purchases, $185 million for water and sewer, $140 million for electric and power storage and $225 million for roads for the Foxconn project. 

“We do want to get control of the amount of money that continues to be spent on the project and see if we can pull back some of the spending or eliminate some of it,” Mahoney said. 

And so, and so, a question: Will government officials responsible for this grandiose failure be held accountable? Alternatively, can a local government do anything with impunity? 

One hopes for the best for the residents of Mount Pleasant. 

See FREE WHITEWATER’s category on Foxconn.

How robotics is miniaturizing surgery:

City, Daily Bread, Education, School District

Daily Bread for 1.4.23: A Dozen Candidates for Whitewater’s School Board! Awesome, Wow!

by  •  • 2 Comments

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:34 PM for 9h 09m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 94.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 2004, Spirit, a NASA Mars rover, lands successfully on Mars.

Seldom has the expression ‘can’t see the forest for the trees‘ been more apt than in news of a dozen candidates running for the Whitewater Unified School Board. It’s not the number that reveals ridiculousness, but rather apparent excitement over it.   

First, it should have been obvious that more candidates would run when two incumbents declared they were not running. Indeed, it was obvious to insightful residents. Worries over having too few candidates were unfounded. There was going to be a large slate. See It’s Okay, Whitewater — Somehow, Some Way, We’ll Manage. 

Second, and this is what truly matters, these dozen are not the same in ability or outlook, and to think of this number, by itself, as an indivisible good is obtuse. These dozen represent, if elected as factions, different and opposing possibilities for the direction of the district. The Whitewater Unified School District will find itself in a world of hurt if a deficient faction from among these twelve prevails in April. 

From an earlier post at FREE WHITEWATER: 

How many people are in government matters less than what government does. Let’s suppose, despite all possibility, that no one ever runs for school board again in Whitewater. No one, ever. There will still be public education in Whitewater, however organized. Then — as now — it will matter what is taught and how it is taught. It’s what you do that matters, and the doing of education, so to speak, is teaching and learning. See “You are what you do. A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.”

And so, and so, something more useful for the city is in order. Of college — but useful for any level of education — Jonathan Malesic writes The Key to Success in College Is So Simple, It’s Almost Never Mentioned: 

One of the most important factors in [college student] Ms. Zurek Small’s success seems almost too obvious to mention but, in fact, deserves far more attention and discussion: a simple willingness to learn. In more than 20 years of college teaching, I have seen that students who are open to new knowledge will learn. Students who aren’t won’t. But this attitude is not fixed. The paradoxical union of intellectual humility and ambition is something that every student can (with help from teachers, counselors and parents) and should cultivate. It’s what makes learning possible.

The willingness to learn is related to the growth mind-set — the belief that your abilities are not fixed but can improve. But there is a key difference: This willingness is a belief not primarily about the self but about the world. It’s a belief that every class offers something worthwhile, even if you don’t know in advance what that something is.

Excitement over the number of board candidates or even debates over expenses are lesser concerns that betray a lack of educational understanding. Educating effectively means teaching effectively. Either that’s happening our it’s not. All other matters are secondary or tertiary.

(Budget item discussions should be brief, honest to goodness: get three bids, discuss for no more than five minutes, then vote. That’s it. Anything more is a waste of a professional’s time.)

How are students learning? Why or why not? What’s being done if they’re not? How will the district help them?  

Those who wish to be taken seriously need to focus on serious matters. 

Big coronal mass ejection from Sun’s farside seen by SOHO spacecraft:

The ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured a coronal mass ejection erupt from the farside of the Sun on Jan. 3, 2022. .

Art, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.3.23: The Medium is Snow

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with scattered showers and a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:33 PM for 9h 08m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 89.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1957, the Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.

Winter is a demanding season — as these months are desert-like in their sparsity — and yet deserts are abundant in sand as winter is abundant in snow.  Rob Mentzer reports This Stevens Point sculptor’s medium is snow: 

When Jef Schobert started making snow sculptures, he faced them toward his house. He’d shape a Mickey Mouse or some other cartoon character for his young daughter.

One day, his mail carrier stopped and told him he should make them face the street, for everyone to enjoy. 

“It kind of blew my mind,” said Schobert, a 57-year-old with a white Santa Claus beard.

That was likely thousands of snow sculptures ago. In the decades since he started making them, Schobert’s annual sculptures have become a fixture outside his Stevens Point home, which he calls the Snow Art Zone. He makes around 100 different pieces per winter — carvings of a castle or a carriage or Aquaman on a throne — and posts photos and videos on his Facebook, Instagram and TikTok pages. Occasionally, one goes viral, as did his January 2021 sculpture of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wearing mittens.

“Snow is very temporary,” Schobert said. “I take pictures of it, and the pictures then become my art, even after the art’s gone.”

There’s a fellow who knows how to make the most of an austere season. We should all hope to do half so well. 

Severe Wind Forces easyJet to Abort Landing in England: 

Severe winter winds in Bristol, England, forced this easyJet to abort its landing on December 28. Luckily, the plane was able to reclimb, circle back, and safely land approx 15 min later.

Daily Bread, Fellow Traveler, Fox News, Propaganda, Putin, Russia

Daily Bread for 1.2.23: Delusion Far and Near

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with rain & drizzle and a high of 39. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM for 9h 07m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1942, the FBI obtains the conviction of 33 members of a German spy ring headed by Fritz Joubert Duquesne (the Duquesne Spy Ring) in the largest espionage case in United States history. 

Consider, from the faraway Russian dictatorship, a New Year’s Eve special on state television:

The clip is from Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews), whose reporting and translation of Russian state media is comprehensive and praiseworthy. Her work is painstaking and revealing. 

The Russian program looks to outside eyes as though it could not possibly be real, as though it were a scene from an American parody like The Producers. The program has a Springtime for Hitler feel. 

It’s real.  

Such are conditions in Europe, that hundreds are killed each day while Russians dance in Moscow.

And yet, and yet, such are conditions in America, that fellow travelers of Russia’s dictator would prefer the dancing go on all night. 

Russia rings in New Year attacking Ukraine with 45 drones:

.

.
.
.
.
.

City, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.1.23: Happy New Year

by  •  •  Comments

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 44. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:32 PM for 9h 06m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1836, the Wisconsin Territory is formed by an act of the Michigan Legislature. Brown County lost a portion of its original possession north of the Menominee River but gained the remainder of the eastern peninsula. Territorial officials were sworn on July 4th of the same year.

A quiet day in this beautiful and precious city, before the year’s work begins. See What Ails, What Heals.  

Opportunity is bountiful, if only one would see as much.  

Each day begins, as always, from a position of humility. See The Better Approach of the Dark-Horse Underdog. 

Happy New Year. 

What’s in the Night Sky January 2023: