FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Speech, Law, Legislation, Legislature, Litigation, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.18.26: Anti-SLAPP Legislation Advances in Wisconsin

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Good morning.

Ash Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 58. Sunrise is 6:47 and sunset is 5:30 for 10 hours 43 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1930, Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.

A SLAPP lawsuit is a strategic lawsuit against public participation. These lawsuits are designed to limit free and open discussion of public policies. They’re not good faith grievances — they’re bad-faith efforts to undermine rights of expression under the First Amendment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (of which this libertarian blogger is a member) has opposed SLAPP lawsuits for years. See Joe Mullin, State by State, We’re Making Progress Against Anti-Speech Lawsuits, Electronic Frontier Foundation, July 11, 2022.

About two-thirds of states have anti-SLAPP legislation. Wisconsin may, at last, join their ranks.

Baylor Spears reports on anti-SLAPP legislation’s passage by voice vote in the Wisconsin Assembly:

AB 701, to protect people from Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP), passed on a voice vote. It now goes to the Senate for consideration. 

Rep. Jim Piwowarczyk (R-Hubertus), who is the co-founder of the right-wing publication Wisconsin Right Now, said the bill would strengthen protections for free speech and civic participation and ensure that citizens aren’t silenced through “abusive litigation.” 

“The bill creates a clear, efficient process for courts to quickly dismiss lawsuits that target protected speech or participation in government proceedings. It requires a prompt hearing and stays constant discovery while the motion is pending. It also allows prevailing parties to recover attorney fees,” Piwowarczyk said. “These protections help prevent the chilling effect prolonged and expensive litigation can have on free expression.”

The bill is based on model legislation developed by the nonprofit Uniform Law Commission. 

“It’s a legal tactic … designed to punish someone through stressful, time consuming and expensive litigation,” Rep. Andrew Hysell (D-Sun Prairie) said about SLAPP legislation on the floor, adding that these types of lawsuits target people “simply because they choose to exercise their First Amendment rights to speak.” 

See Baylor Spears, Wisconsin Assembly passes anti-SLAPP legislation, Wisconsin Examiner, February 18, 2026.

The Legislative Reference Bureau has produced a summary of the bill:

Analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau

This bill adopts the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA) approved by the Uniform Law Commission in 2020. 

The bill allows a person served with a complaint in a civil action to file an expedited special motion to dismiss any cause of action asserted against the person based on the person’s 1) communication in a governmental proceeding; 2) communication on an issue under consideration or review in a governmental proceeding; or 3) exercise of the constitutional right of freedom of speech or of the press, the right to assemble or petition, or the right of association, on a matter of public concern. In general, the court must hold a hearing on a special motion to dismiss within 60 days of its filing and must stay the court proceedings, including discovery, until the court rules on the special motion and the time to appeal this ruling has expired. The court must rule on the special motion not later than 60 days after the hearing, and the appeal period is 14 days from the ruling. In ruling on the motion, the court must consider the pleadings, the motion, any reply or response to the motion, and any evidence that could be considered in a summary judgment proceeding. The court must dismiss with prejudice a cause of action if all of the following apply:

1. The moving party establishes that the cause of action is as described in items 1 to 3 above.

2. The responding party fails to establish the applicability of certain excluded situations, such as the cause of action being brought against a governmental unit or employee acting in an official capacity or against a person whose communication relates to the sale of goods or services.

3. The responding party fails to establish a prima facie case as to each element of the cause of action or the moving party establishes either that the responding party failed to state a cause of action or that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

A moving party has a right to appeal an order denying a special motion to dismiss. A court must award court costs, reasonable attorney fees, and reasonable litigation expenses related to the special motion as follows: 1) to the moving party if the moving party prevails on the motion, or 2) to the responding party if the responding party prevails on the motion and the motion was frivolous or filed solely with intent to delay the proceeding.

See also 2025 Wis. Assemb. B. 701, 107th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Wis. 2025), https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/proposaltext/2025/REG/AB701.pdf

Solar eclipse seen from space by European satellite:

City, Daily Bread, Diversity, Equality, Religion, Science/Nature

Daily Bread for 2.17.26: Rainbows

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 56. Sunrise is 6:49 and sunset is 5:29 for 10 hours 40 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Ethics Committee meets at 4 PM and the Whitewater Common Council at 6 PM.

On this day in 1965, the Ranger 8 probe launches on its mission to photograph the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon in preparation for the crewed Apollo missions. Mare Tranquillitatis, or the “Sea of Tranquility,” would become the site chosen for the Apollo 11 lunar landing.

On December 16, at public comment during a meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, a longtime resident (and current candidate for the council) spoke to oppose a possible use for Whitewater’s Innovation Center. One portion of his remarks lingers in memory.

CLAIM: In his remarks, the commenter expressed concern that a proposed use might be decorated in “a bunch of rainbow colors and indoctrinate our kids right out of the womb.”

ASSESSMENT:

Now, now: What to make of this? One begins by noting that the proposal itself made no mention or claim of indoctrination of any kind, let alone about the colors of the visible spectrum.

More particularly, there are three ways one can think about rainbow colors, should they appear to adults and children. Each way is uplifting and inspirational.

As a religious matter, rainbows are, in both Jewish and Christian traditions, meant as a sign of divine reassurance. The rainbow appears, after all, as the sign of God’s covenant with Noah after the Flood: “My bow I have set in the clouds to be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth,” Genesis 9:13. Later, the rainbow is used symbolically to describe divine radiance: “Like the look of the rainbow that is in the clouds on a day of rain, this was the look of the radiance all round, the look of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And I saw and fell on my face and heard a voice speaking,” Ezekiel 1:28. Mention of rainbows in these passages is wholly positive (and, in Ezekiel, descriptive of divine beauty).

As a matter of science, it was Newton who demonstrated that white light is composed of seven visible colors, establishing our scientific understanding of the spectrum. See a nice summary of Newton’s insight (overturning Aristotle’s view of color) at Smithsonian Institution Libraries, The Science of Color: Newton’s Rainbow. Newton’s discovery is enlightening.

As a matter of rights, merely stating the natural diversity among people and expressing a freedom of association among equals in society, the LGBTQIA+ community uses the rainbow as a symbol. (This is merely how I would describe their use of a rainbow in my own ideological terms — fundamentally, it’s how that community defines and describes itself that matters.) Their use of the rainbow as a symbol is positive and affirming.

And look, and look — one can see the symbol of a rainbow in all three ways, together. How odd, indeed, to see rainbows in one way, exclusive of other beautiful and symbolic ways.

Rainbows?

Yes and yes again — we could, truly, benefit from seeing a few more.

Rainbow at Yosemite Falls:

By Mikhail Kalugin – Imported from 500px (archived version) by the Archive Team. (detail page), CC BY 3.0, Link

Daily Bread, Development, Local Government, Reasoning, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 2.16.26: The Disad of TOTAL GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR!

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 62. Sunrise is 6:50 and sunset is 5:27 for 10 hours 37 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1786, Virginia enacts the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson.

Those who were once debaters in high school undoubtedly remember both how instructive and how enjoyable those days were. They first learned skills in argumentation (later expanded in college and professional studies); they made new friends and traveled to interesting places for competitions.

In one popular format, an Affirmative team advanced a proposal (e.g., let’s build more hydroelectric plants) and the opposing Negative team would offer disadvantages — disads — to that proposal.

Starting out, young debaters had to learn how to overcome ridiculous opposing arguments as much as serious ones. Competitive debaters are expected to answer the points the opposing side raises, so even screwy arguments need an answer.

Sometimes, the most ridiculous disads to a proposal were claims that the proposal would lead to TOTAL GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR!

And so, and so, a Negative team might offer a disad to a proposal for building more hydroelectric plants that would have these tenuous links:

(1) a town builds a hydroelectric plant, (2) the plant receives a designation as critical infrastructure, (3) the Russian Federation is known to monitor American critical infrastructure, (4) the least-competent Russian monitors work on the weekends, (5) Russians habitually get drunk on weekends, (6) the Russian monitors will get drunk, (7) drunks typically misinterpret messages about critical infrastructure, (8) the Russians’ misinterpreted communications will get to the Kremlin, (9) Vladimir Putin works in the Kremlin, (10) he works on weekends because he has no friends, (11) he relies on anything he reads, (12) he dislikes the idea of American energy independence, (13) he’s prone to threats of nuclear war, (14) if he makes enough threats he’ll act on one, (15) this will be that moment, (16) he’ll launch a TOTAL GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR, and (17) Boom!

Well, there we would be, from one hydroelectric plant to devastation in fewer than twenty steps. That’s the disad that warns you not to build a hydroelectric plant.

And yet, and yet, outside of a young debater’s tenuous links, cause and effect in the world doesn’t work this way.

I was reminded of these sorts of disads while listening to an out-of-town commenter’s remarks at the February 3 meeting of the Whitewater Common Council against a private housing development: there are trains, there are (ever so improbably) train accidents (with no evidence that those rare accidents took place in conditions like ours), but had Whitewater done a vibration impact study? an acoustical noise analysis? or a soil stability study? etc. All this was offered as if it were serious, despite the development’s long distances from the road, and the existence of similar developments across Wisconsin and America without any incidents whatever.

This parade of odd interrogatories and improbabilities is rational (in the sense of a person speaking words in the English language) but not reasonable (in the way that credible arguments must be more than statistical improbabilities and cherry-picked examples).

People are free, by policy and practice, to offer remarks at the Whitewater Common Council. Those who live in the city, however, are free (and should) disregard claims that are simply a truncated version of a high-school disad.

NBC News correspondents have a dog sledding race in the Italian Alps:

Dog sledding once appeared as a demonstration event in the Winter Olympic Games, but never became an official sport. NBC News’ Gadi Schwartz and Savannah Sellers head to the Italian Alps where they hold their own dog sledding race.

CDA, Daily Bread, Law, Local Government

Daily Bread for 2.15.26: The Curious Case of the Former Board Member Seemingly Unaware of the Actual Sources of His Former Board’s Authority

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset is 5:26 for 10 hours 35 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor explodes over Russia, injuring 1,500 people as a shock wave blows out windows and rocks buildings.

By Aleksandr Ivanov, Cropping and conversion to gif: Hike395, CC BY 3.0, Link

At the February 3 meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, during public comment, a longtime resident, second-generation landlord, former member of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, and former chairman of that same public body, offered a curious comment about the very body on which he had served for so many years.

I’ll consider his comments this morning.

CLAIM:

While talking about the Whitewater Community Development Authority, the resident offered his opinion of the role of that public body within the city:

 I believe the last org chart I saw, the CDA responds to the council. Nobody else.

CITY’S RESPONSE:

In the posted packet for the upcoming February 17 meeting of the Whitewater Common Council, one finds a memo describing the CDA’s actual reporting relationship under Wisconsin statutes and City of Whitewater ordinances. See Memorandum to the Whitewater Common Council, City of Whitewater Oversight of Community Development Authority (Feb. 17, 2026).

ASSESSMENT:

This is an easy assessment. No organizational chart this commenting gentleman cited would supersede state statutes, city ordinances, or judicial decisions (case law) in defining the role of a local development authority. Anyone even vaguely familiar with local government in Wisconsin would understand this.

To have been on the Whitewater Community Development Authority for years, and to have been its chairman, and yet not to look first (indeed, to know by heart) where to find the sources of that authority is absurd.

Honest to goodness — perhaps this resident’s confusion comes from being on a public board for many years and thinking of it as no more than a third-rate private clubhouse. If that should be true, then yes, of course an org chart, bathroom wall, or one’s inner monologue might seem like plausible descriptions of authority.

No and no again.

To the next generation in our beautiful city: live your lives so that your claims are not so superficial.

‘Cloud streets’ surround Florida during arctic blast in time-lapse:

“NOAA’s GOES East satellite captured long, parallel bands of clouds called horizontal convective rolls,” on Feb. 1, 2026, according to NOAA, these “cloud streets” can form when cold air flows over warm water. Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: NOAA.

Daily Bread, School District

Daily Bread for 2.14.26: Former Whitewater Superintendent Source of Uncertainty and Controversy in Her Current Position

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Good morning.

Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 51. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset is 5:25 for 10 hours 32 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1952, NBC’s long-running morning news program Today debuts, with host Dave Garroway.

Caroline Pate-Hefty, the new Manheim Township School District superintendent on Monday, July 7, 2025. SUZETTE WENGER | Staff Photographer | LNP | LancasterOnline

Dr. Caroline Pate-Hefty served as superintendent of the Whitewater Unified School District from 2020 to 2025. She left the Whitewater School District to become superintendent of the Manheim Township School District near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. One now reads from professional reporting that Pate-Hefty’s time with that district has been one of uncertainty and controversy. Ashley Stalnecker writes Manheim Township School District mum on staff departures, superintendent’s status:

Answers about leadership matters are hard to come by from Manheim Township School District officials. Three top administrators resigned their posts in the past three months; a fourth gave notice but later rescinded the resignation.

Calls and emails to the district’s superintendent, Caroline Pate-Hefty, have gone unanswered. She was absent from Thursday night’s school board work session, a meeting she typically attends.

A source said Pate-Hefty did not work from the district’s office all week, and did not appear at a scheduled event at Bucher Elementary School on Tuesday. LNP | LancasterOnline agreed not to name the source because the person did not have permission to speak to the press on the matter.

See Ashley Stalnecker, Manheim Township School District mum on staff departures, superintendent’s status, LNP | LancasterOnline, February 13, 2026.

Stalnecker also reports on an astonishing portion of Pate-Hefty’s contract with the Pennsylvania school district:

The silence of district staff and the nine elected board members might have something to do with Pate-Hefty’s contract, which includes a clause that shields from public disclosure any board-led investigation into her conduct or performance.

Pate-Hefty’s contract also prevents the board from speaking during or following an investigation into her conduct or performance.

“Any investigations undertaken by the Board shall endeavor to complete any such investigation in private and both Parties shall endeavor to avoid any public disclosure by the Board or Superintendent of the commencement or progress of the same,” the contract states.

[…]

Additionally, her contract requires the board to “speak in one voice” rather than “averaging the feedback” of individual members to synthesize private critiques by individuals into a single consensus report.

Stalnecker further reports that Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said the provision in Pate-Hefty’s contract restricting public disclosure of an investigation is “troubling from a transparency perspective.” Indeed, in Wisconsin and in Pennsylvania, this contract provision would be subject to attack as null and void as against public policy. Litigation, however, takes time and is expensive.

(Solid reporting from Stalnecker and LNP | LancasterOnline. Quite admirable. We’ve not had reporting like this for Whitewater since WhitewaterWise.)

Whether litigated or not, the Manheim Township School District’s board, representing six thousand students, foolishly and recklessly cast aside open government for the convenience of Pate-Hefty.

Astonishing on its own, yet predictable from past performance. See FREE WHITEWATER posts about Pate-Hefty’s career in Whitewater.

Whitewater deserved better over those five years from 2020 to 2025. One now wishes better for the students, families, and residents of Manheim Township, Pennsylvania.

Gold thief flees scene of the crime on donkey in central Turkey:

A suspect who broke into a jewelry store using a forklift, allegedly stole 150 grams of gold, and fled the scene on a donkey was arrested in Kayseri, central Turkey. Police teams from the provincial police department identified the suspect after reviewing security camera footage following the incident.

City, Daily Bread, Development, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 2.13.26: Still Too True After All These Centuries

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 49. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset is 5:24 for 10 hours 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 14.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1935, a jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.

It was political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who observed in 1651 that reason is a spy for the passions (“the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired”), where reason is used (however poorly) in service of dark or selfish desires.

Still true in many places, these 375 years later, including too often in Whitewater.

Video shows ocean waves capsizing a boat in Santa Cruz, California:

A boat appears among surfers and ocean waves as it attempts to speed past them before capsizing.

City, Daily Bread, Development, Local Government, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 2.12.26: Empty Allegations Against a Development Project

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:56 and sunset is 5:22 for 10 hours 26 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 22.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln is born.

On February 2, the Whitewater Common Council approved in a first reading changes to zoning for a development project along Bluff Road. See from FREE WHITEWATER, More Housing for Whitewater.

There’s a solid story in the Royal Purple reporting on the unsubstantiated allegations made at the meeting. Eric Arguelles, Community News Editor, reports on that issue in Common Council considers rezoning for housing development:

[Speaker during public comment Andrea] Svec alleged that city manager John Weidl has an existing relationship with Stonehaven and Legacy Realty Group, a real estate service owned by Vandeville. However, Weidl said this same concern had been previously raised, and that repeating it was intended to discredit city staff and obstruct the project.

Weidl denied the allegation, saying he has no undisclosed or improper relationship with Stonehaven, and has no interest in the project beyond his role as city manager.

“Separately, and several years ago, during a transition period between municipal positions, I obtained a Wisconsin real estate license and temporarily affiliated it with Legacy Realty Group, as required by state law,” Weidl said. “During that limited period, I provided high-level economic development guidance related to municipal processes and community planning in the region. I did not act as a broker, agent, or transaction participant in Whitewater while serving as a municipal administrator.”

Weidl also commented that after his return to municipal employment, the license was no longer needed for his duties.

See Eric Arguelles, Common Council considers rezoning for housing development, Royal Purple, February 9, 2026.

I’ll write about this, too, and I should have done so sooner. For today, I will consider Ms. Svec’s wholly unsubstantiated claim of ethical concerns about the development. The video recording and transcript of her particular claim appears below, followed by an assessment. Video of the full meeting is also available online.

CLAIM:

And then finally, and I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, but my question is, are you aware of, or has it been disclosed that there is a relationship between Stonehaven and Legacy Realty and Mr. Weidl and previous employment relationship? And if so, has that been disclosed? And if not, why not?

ASSESSMENT:

There’s nothing here, nothing at all, except ill-crafted insinuation. One hears two claims about Whitewater’s city manager and this private developer, divided by present and past. First, one hears a question of the present asking if “there is a relationship between Mr. Weidl and Stonehaven and Legacy Realty” (spoken of in the present tense — is a relationship.)

This immediate question means too little and implies too much. At its weakest, anyone has a relationship with many others, including his tailor or barber. That’s not untoward. That’s ordinary life.

But that’s not what’s crudely insinuated here, is it? A relationship is alleged in a way that suggests the Whitewater Common Council and residents living with the City of Whitewater should have concerns. These public comments don’t explain why there should be concerns. There’s nothing to show a material matter.

Second, there’s an accusatory question about the past: “and previous employment relationship?”

Previous, but not present, and so not active or ongoing or existing now. A previous employment relationship is one that is by definition inactive, over, and dead. Anyone who has had any vocational success, who has made anything of himself or herself in Wisconsin or beyond, has had previous employment or business relationships. That’s common in many industries and it does not imply or suggest untoward conduct in the present.

There was a question in the Town of Whitewater resident’s remarks that this libertarian blogger can answer. She asks “And if so, has that [a previous relationship between Whitewater’s city manager and the developer] been disclosed?”

I’ll answer: Yes, this question was asked of, and answered by, Tim Vandeville of Legacy at a public meeting of the Whitewater Community Development Authority on September 21, 2023.

I keep a repository of these meetings, and I remember that session well. I’ve a link to that portion of the full meeting.

(The Whitewater city manager was not in attendance, but Tim Vandeville of Legacy spoke. Jeffery P. Knight, a publicly-licensed lobbyist and once a member of the CDA, heard Vandeville’s description on that night on September 21, 2023 — and expressed no concerns whatever. Knight was also in the room on 2.3.26 when Svec spoke critically of a past connection, but was himself silent that evening on the issue. Knight sometimes returns to the Common Council lectern more than once to offer information or comments during a meeting, but remained curiously mute on this point on 2.3.2026. It was Svec who did the talking.)

These are unfounded allegations delivered in a careless, sloppy manner. An assertion should come with concrete terms and substantial proof. This includes assertions crafted as questions in a puerile attempt to evade a burden of proof or standard of credibility. There’s an empty justification these days that one can say whatever one wants if one is ‘just asking questions.’ The Whitewater Common Council should seek a higher standard for itself than cable television or TMZ.

One should also see — if one is to see clearly about this matter — that this is not simply an empty insinuation about one municipal official, but an accusation about the conduct of an official and a private developer. If that relationship (that is a connection between two parties) should be improper on one side (and I don’t believe it is), then it’s improper on both.

Here, one out-of-town commenter asks this city’s Common Council to accept stale and empty claims against a city manager and a private developer. This city should not — indeed must not — discard or impugn private development or developers on these specious pretexts.

This looks yet again like one tiny faction’s desire to say anything about anyone to get its way. All the rest is shallow pretense.

Business, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Laws/Regulations, Legislation, Politics, Regulations

Daily Bread for 2.11.26: Data Centers Will Stay in the News

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 37. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset is 5:20 for 10 hours 21 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 30.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Comprehensive Plan Work Group meets at 4 PM and the Equal Opportunity Commission at 5 PM.

On this day in 1970, Japan launches Ohsumi, becoming the fourth nation to put an object into orbit using its own booster.

This libertarian blogger has written about data centers before, arguing for a minimal set of regulations to allow the industry to develop, community by community. See Data Centers, Gubernatorial Candidates’ Views on Data Centers, and Microsoft’s View on Wisconsin Data Centers.

However one thinks about this issue, it’s not going away:

At a public hearing held by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission Tuesday, dozens of Wisconsin residents decried the effects massive data centers could have on the state’s electricity rates and ability to adopt renewable energy sources. 

The three-member PSC is considering a proposal from the Wisconsin Electric Power Company to establish a tariff system for providing electricity to massive data centers. Under the proposal, “very large” customers that would be subject to the tariff would have a combined energy load of 500 megawatts — the equivalent of powering about 400,000 homes. 

The first phase of Microsoft’s $13.3 billion data center project in Mount Pleasant is projected to require 450 megawatts. 

Critics of the proposal say that under this system, regular consumers will still be on the hook for 25% of the infrastructure costs associated with increasing the state’s energy load. 

Over the past year, the growth of data center development in Wisconsin has spurred an increasingly tense debate. Local governments have been tempted to allow their construction as a source of property tax revenue while local residents raise concerns over energy and water use, the conversion of historical farmland, the ethics of artificial intelligence and long-term environmental impacts.

The massive energy needs of data centers have become the central issue in the debate, with people in Wisconsin and around the country questioning how to manage the demands of giant corporations seeking to use orders of magnitude more energy than is currently being produced.

See Henry Redman, Wisconsin Public Service Commission data center hearing draws public outcry, Wisconsin Examiner, February 10, 2026.

There’s value for a blogger simply in spotting political trends, as there is value for a meteorologist to spot trends in weather and climate.

Well, data centers are surely one of those trends, with both economic and political implications combined.

Buddhist monks conclude 15-week ‘Walk for Peace’ in Washington:

A group of Buddhist monks has finally reached Washington, D.C., after completing a 15-week trek from Texas that captivated the country.

Business, City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Local Government, Low Standards, Special Interests, That Which Paved the Way

Daily Bread for 2.10.26: Unfounded (and Irresponsible) Pessimism at the Common Council Lectern

by  • 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 6:58 and sunset is 5:20 for 10 hours 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 39.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5:15 PM and there is a Whitewater Forward Community Round Table at 6 PM.

On this day in 1763, the Treaty of Paris, also known as the Treaty of 1763, was signed on 10 February 1763 following Great Britain and Prussia’s victory over France and Spain during the Seven Years’ War. The treaty’s provisions included the ceding of what is now Wisconsin (among many other places) from France to Britain.

Yesterday’s post addressed the over-reliance of one resident on one population projection for Whitewater in 2040. See Over Reliance on a Single Population Projection.

How odd, though, to hear a longtime resident, local landlord, former Community Development Authority member, former Community Development Authority chairman, former school board member, and former school board president warning of Whitewater’s supposed demographic decline.

(Every resident should and must have a right to speak at public comment. That right includes speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future, speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future on flimsy grounds, and even speaking bleakly about Whitewater’s future on flimsy grounds while ignoring one’s own below-average record of policymaking in this town.)

Let’s assume this gentleman believes, far too credulously, that a future of decline awaits the city.

If so, then what was he doing all those years on the Community Development Authority and school board? All those meetings, all those plans, and indeed all those controversies, only to lead to decline? Why did he bother?

One possibility is that he and others spent the last decade accomplishing nothing that would last. In this possibility, they were wasting others’ time and futures while live-action role playing at interminable meetings.

I’ll not say that our future is so bleak as that gentleman claims, but I do think he was wasting public opportunity after public opportunity. See from 2018 A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA (‘This new EOZ program allows for private investments to be made, with significant tax benefits, in lower income communities like ours that need a boost to their economy,” said Larry Kachel, Chair of the Whitewater Community Development Authority’). (Emphasis added.)

A lower-income community for many residents over many years, but likely not a lower income for that former chairman of the Community Development Authority. (Perhaps, just perhaps, I’ve been misreading all these years. When I see the title of that public body, it says Community Development not Chairman Development.)

Wasting money, too, it turns out. See from that last decade Meeper Technology Loan Investigation, Memo and Documents (writing off more than $750,000 in loans).

It’s also possible that he simply wants to disparage the work of those now in office who will not bend to his will.1

And so, and so, in this man’s telling, it’s a slope of decline on the way to 2040. Well, if so, in his public roles he played a part in placing us on that supposed path. Of those who told the community time and again in the last decade that they were paramount — can’t they see that if Whitewater will have a bleak future, then they are culpable in that sad fate?

And yet, and yet, as I am a free-market man, and not a self-interested incumbent landlord, I do not share his pessimism (whether real or feigned, whether genuine or spiteful). Although I’m a tragic optimist, optimism is the noun, modified only by an awareness of human loss even in good times.

And look, and look — this is a city of many thousands, interacting freely every day. From those many come myriad possibilities in a spontaneous order. This community is not the possession of one man, whether landlord, city official, or libertarian blogger2. This community’s finest work has happened and will happen apart from any of those roles.

How sad, truly, that this isn’t obvious to everyone.

_____

  1. Of this second possibility I have no assessment to make, being neither a psychiatrist nor a priest; this libertarian blogger neither takes patients nor hears confessions. My role is much smaller. ↩︎
  2. Whitewater belongs to everyone yet no one. ↩︎

What happens when a satellite burns up?:

The European Space Agency’s Draco mission aims to study what happens in a satellite’s last fiery moments as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere.

City, Daily Bread, Local Government

Daily Bread for 2.9.26: Over Reliance on a Single Population Projection

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:00 and sunset is 5:18 for 10 hours 18 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 49.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board holds a Legislative Breakfast at 8:30 AM. Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1775, the British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion.

On January 20, during public comment at a Whitewater Common Council session, a resident1 spoke about a population projection that he saw for Whitewater in 2040. His claim and an assessment of that claim appear below.

CLAIM:

Your report that you did for fire departments and EMS in Walworth County, which I believe came out in October of 2025, had some DOA numbers in them, from the Department of Administration, and they are projecting that Whitewater will lose 3,000 people in its population between now and 2040. They originally did it in 2020 and then updated it in 24, and that’s in the report that was done for the Walworth County Fire and EMS, breaking it down by individual communities.

See Whitewater Common Council, January 20, 2026 Video @ 46:54.

ASSESSMENT:

To begin, this wasn’t a City of Whitewater study. The study was from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. See Rob Henken & Ashley Fisher, One Step Ahead: Preparing for the Future of Fire and Emergency Medical Services in Walworth County (Wisconsin Policy Forum Oct. 2025).

The population projection that the study cites comes from Wisconsin’s Department of Administration (DOA), through the Demographic Services Center (DSC), as part of Wisconsin’s latest municipal projection series. See Wis. Dep’t of Admin., Demographic Servs. Ctr., Population Projections. Anyone who is serious about public policy should mark the difference between a projection and an inevitable outcome.

Any figures like these are hard for anyone not in the field to assess. There’s a huge risk of misunderstanding. There are a few things one can say confidently, however. DOA’s projections are statewide and standardized. That’s to be expected: the DOA does not have the resources to build a specific, boutique model for every municipality. It uses a method that can be applied across the map, so to speak, in a way that places local communities in larger totals.

DOA’s own methodology explains its approach: it uses recent annualized change (including a comparison that runs from 2010 to 2020 and another that incorporates 2020 to a recent estimate period), projects forward, and then adjusts smaller-area projections so they align with the totals implied by county projections. 

That approach does produce a baseline across Wisconsin. But every method has a flaw: the method also produces a projection that can be highly sensitive to short-run disruption — especially in places that are unusual in ways for which the model does not account.

Whitewater is one of those places.

The City of Whitewater’s own housing report flags the reality that the pandemic era and enrollment shifts create unusual conditions for interpreting population patterns, and it explains why it preferred a different approach for its own local projection work. See City of Whitewater, City of Whitewater Housing Report (Feb. 2022), prepared with assistance from Vandewalle & Assocs.

If the years one uses for a trendline are abnormal years, then the projection isn’t destiny but rather short-run disturbances extrapolated to 2040. A more recent report that doesn’t account for local fluctuations is less useful than one prepared a bit earlier that does account for those fluctuations.

There are other local-specific reports that show much higher projections. Whitewater’s Comprehensive Plan materials include a projection series reaching 19,250 by 2040. See City of Whitewater, City of Whitewater Comprehensive Plan: Chapter Two—Vision and Opportunities (adopted July 18, 2017). Whitewater’s Housing Report (cited above) projects 16,016 in 2040 using a linear growth methodology.

If one wants the most reliable way to think about Whitewater in 2040, one wouldn’t choose any single projection:

  • 13,091 is a state scenario produced by a standardized statewide method (DOA).
  • 16,016 is a local moderate-growth scenario offered in a housing planning context. (Housing Report).
  • 19,250 is an older plan-era high-growth assumption used for long-range planning (Comprehensive Plan).

Anyone who tells you that one of these numbers for 2040 is a ‘fact’ is simply wrong. The only fact is that there are several published projections.

Solid, rational planning for 2040 beats picking — cherry-picking, really — one estimate in remarks to the Whitewater Common Council.

_____

  1. Longtime resident, local landlord, former Community Development Authority member, former Community Development Authority chairman, former school board member, former school board president. ↩︎

When neutron stars merge, things get messy:

A NASA simulation shows the magnetic fields of colliding neutron stars meeting and entwining.

Daily Bread, Law, Litigation, Madison, Voting Rights, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.8.26: Wisconsin Elections Commission Challenges Madison’s Argument on Absentee Voting

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 30. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset is 5:17 for 10 hours 16 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1950, the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, is established.

On January 21, this libertarian blogger contended that the City of Madison Argues Wrongly on Absentee Ballots by contending that those ballots were a privilege, not a right. From that post: “This is an occasion when a lawyer, representing a public client, undermines the rights of those that the public client is, itself, obligated to represent. Always a mistake, always a serious mistake, and always a mistake requiring a genuine remedy. An immediate remedy would be for the City of Madison to withdraw its line of defense. A later remedy would be for a court to reject that defense if it is not withdrawn.”

Unsurprisingly, just about everyone, including the founder of a conservative public interest law firm, saw the error of Madison’s legal position:

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, filing its first ever friend-of-the-court brief, challenged Madison’s controversial legal argument that it should not be financially liable for 193 uncounted ballots in the 2024 presidential election because of a state law that calls absentee voting a privilege, not a right.

The argument presented by city officials misunderstands what “privilege” means in the context of absentee voting and “enjoys no support in the constitution or case law,” the commission wrote in its filing Tuesday, echoing a similar rebuke by Gov. Tony Evers last month.

“Once an elector has complied with the statutory process, whether absentee or in-person, she has a constitutional right to have her vote counted,” the commission said.

That both the commission and the governor felt it was necessary to intervene in the case should underscore “both the wrongness and the dangerousness of such a claim,” commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, told Votebeat.

[…]

Meanwhile, Rick Esenberg, the founder of the conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty — which cited the same 1985 law in its 2021 effort to ban ballot drop boxes — said on social media that Madison’s legal argument was likely going too far. 

“Madison is correct in noting that absentee voting is a privilege and not a right in the sense that the legislature has no obligation to permit it at all,” Esenberg said. “BUT if it does and people choose to cast their ballot in the way specified by law, it doesn’t seem crazy to say that Madison has a constitutional obligation to count their legally cast vote.”

See Alexander Shur, Wisconsin Elections Commission challenges Madison’s argument on absentee voting (‘A rare court filing adds to the growing condemnation of the city’s defense against a lawsuit seeking monetary damages for votes that weren’t counted in 2024’), Wisconsin Watch, February 4, 2026.

This is a clear legal issue (the law can and has created a right) but muddy legal representation. The City of Madison’s position was too quick in its effort to shield the city from damages in a voters’ lawsuit without considering the implications of that position.

Legal representation that doesn’t show foresight of implications and counter-arguments is weak (in this case, embarrassingly weak) representation.

Pigs, grizzlies, and humans share this one skincare secret:

Researchers have found telltale clues for how to revitalise skin by looking at curious structures known as rete ridges. Rete ridges are a hard-to-study feature of the skin that could harbour the stem cells needed to allow it to regenerate. There aren’t many animal models available to study them in detail, so these researchers scoured the animal kingdom to find the skin that most resembled humans’. Now they’ve found hints as to how these ridges form, which they hope could one day enable us to reverse ageing in skin.