FREE WHITEWATER

City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Good Ideas, Housing

Daily Bread for 6.25.26: The Growing Consensus for More Housing

by  • 

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon showers with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:37 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 82.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1950, the Korean War begins when North Korea invades South Korea.

Even if yesterday’s men want to pretend Whitewater is an island — and she’s not an island — sooner or later, an understanding of something more and better would take hold. So it has. News organizations from across the state have noticed Whitewater’s progress.

Consider recent headlines.

Development haven: Several commercial, residential projects ongoing in Whitewater:

Harbor Homes continues to build single-family homes in the Park Crest subdivision, and have pulled all their remaining building permits.

US Shelter is continuing to build owner-occupied duplexes on the west side of the city.

The Common Council also approved the sale of 3.5 acres of City-owned land to Tanis Construction, who will be building at least four owner-occupied single-family homes on an infill site a short distance from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus.

“We do have a housing crisis,” Becker said. “We’ve had a shortage of new construction housing since the Great Recession, and that’s true of our entire region.”

Before the Great Recession, housing development in Jefferson County and Wisconsin was more than double its current rate.

In 2005, Jefferson County’s net new construction rate was 3.1%, Wisconsin’s was 2.8%, and inflation was 3.4%,” the report [a recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report] states. In 2025, Jefferson’s rate was 0.7%, the state’s was nearly 1.7%, and inflation was 2.6%.

Since 2011, Jefferson County’s rate of net new construction has frequently trailed both the statewide average and inflation.

However, those trends in Whitewater are climbing. And while multifamily housing for students has always remained consistent, Becker again emphasized the need for all housing in the area, especially single family.

See Zack Goodrow, Development haven: Several commercial, residential projects ongoing in Whitewater, Daily Jefferson County Union, June 4, 2026.

How Whitewater is trying to build more housing for university grads:

A recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found development and housing construction in Jefferson County, as in many other communities, has lagged behind demand since the Great Recession.

“Nestled between Milwaukee and Madison and bisected by Interstate 94, Jefferson County in theory has strong opportunities for development,” the report says. “In practice, that has not materialized.”

The slower development has impacted local government coffers through reduced property tax intakes and declining public school enrollment, leading to lower levels of state assistance, even as housing costs rise. In April 2021, the average home sale in Jefferson County was roughly $250,000. This April, it was $394,000, above the statewide average, according to Redfin figures.

“Over time, new construction might bring businesses, jobs, and a variety of residents, including families with children. It might also help to limit increases in housing costs for residents as the population grows,” the Wisconsin Policy Forum report says.

See Will Briggs, How Whitewater is trying to build more housing for university grads, Capital Times, June 2, 2026.

Whitewater neighbors witness new housing construction across the city:

Whitewater hopes to become a place where more people live when classes are not in session. Walworth County’s largest city is poised to grow even more with new housing.

[…]

Stonehaven developer Tim Vandeville says the first homes could be ready for families in 60 days since the homes are being built off-site and moved to the site. He said he wants to provide new housing as soon as he can because of the demand.

“There’s an entire generation of people that are being priced out of the market in general, and future buyers will be completely priced out,” Vandeville said. “For us, it was a mission about tackling affordability and attainability.”

The Stonehaven development is not the only new addition to the neighborhood. Whitewater City Council also approved the future construction of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store and early child education center on Bluff Road during their meeting Tuesday night.

See Taj Simmons, Whitewater neighbors witness new housing construction across the city, TMJ4, June 17, 2026.

There is, perhaps, a futile hope among those few who have made themselves adversaries of progress that they’ll someday get back to their cronyism. Too late: their conflict is not principally with the municipal government but rather with those of us who support the fulfillment of genuine community needs.

This libertarian blogger can say of his own view that there will be no relenting now, either in support of recent progress or in opposition to progress’s adversaries.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Meet the team tailoring spacesuits for lunar astronauts:

America, City, Culture, Daily Bread, Development, Housing, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 6.24.26: Housing Then, Now, and What It Means for Whitewater

by  • 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:37 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks and Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1812, Napoleon’s Grande Armée crosses the Neman River, beginning the invasion of Russia. (Within six months, hundreds of thousands in the Grande Armée would be dead, captured, missing, or would have deserted.)

Yesterday, for the first time in a generation, Congress passed comprehensive housing legislation. This legislation received support from the leaders of both major parties, including conservative Republican leaders:

The bill’s passage, by a lopsided 358-to-32 vote, ended months of sparring between the House and the Senate over a sprawling measure that aims to tackle the housing crisis by boosting supply in a country facing an acute shortage of new homes. The Senate passed its version of the same bill Monday, by a vote of 85 to 5.

With dozens of provisions, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act aims to touch communities across the country, addressing rural and urban needs as part of a strategy to eventually bring down housing costs. It loosens federal regulations, making it easier, faster and cheaper to build; eases lending rules; rewards communities that build; delivers aid to communities reeling from disasters; and, in a policy that proved to be one of the biggest flash points but was favored by Mr. Trump, sets new limits on the role institutional investors can play in the market.

[…]

In the years since the 2008 foreclosure crisis, builders have not constructed enough homes to keep up with a growing population. The country is short several million new housing units, according to some estimates. So, home prices have continued to stay high despite weak demand because there simply aren’t enough of them. Building new homes could bring down prices by adding more supply to the market, but that will take time.

See Ronda Kaysen, Congress Clears Housing Bill, New York Times, June 23, 2026.

These provisions — rectifications, truly, of past mistakes — will take time to work. See Tony Romm, Housing Package Passed by Congress Has Wide Appeal, but It’s No Quick Fix, New York Times, June 24, 2026.

One would have preferred purely private action then or now, but even Congress sees that the many public policy mistakes of the past sometimes require intervention simply to set matters right. (There is a reason, after all, that free-market advocates oppose monopoly, oligopoly, and regulatory manipulation to benefit only a few. That’s why there is antitrust law with redress for past imbalances.)

Locally, a tiny clique of landlords has fought these last several years against any significant improvement in Whitewater’s housing stock. Don’t want this, don’t want that, can’t do this, can’t do that, instead preserving a distorted housing market that favored their own student-rental properties over other options. It was, in fact, men of this ilk who, over the last generation, presided over this imbalance during their control of Whitewater’s old Community Development Authority.

Their claims from the Whitewater Common Council lectern during public comment and debate, while lawful, have been exercises in deficient outcome-driven argumentation.

Again, paraphrasing a line from a film: The greatest trick that Whitewater’s special-interest men ever pulled was convincing anyone, even themselves, that they had any credible economic insights to offer.

Consider, though, the position these gentlemen are in now: in the city, in the state, and across our entire nation, policymakers realize that there is a need for more housing options. This recognition comes from leaders of both major parties, representing places big and small, urban and rural.

And so, and so, the choice is quite stark, isn’t it? One can accept the reasoning and insights of policymakers from across the most productive nation in history, or instead choose the claims of a few small-town men pushing only their own self-interest.

Good luck and God bless to all concerned in making that choice.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

James Webb Space Telescope captures stunning view of Cigar Galaxy:

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Development, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 6.23.26: Outcome-Driven Argumentation Is a Deficient Approach

by  • 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:17 and sunset is 8:37 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 66 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM and the Aquatic Center Committee at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1961, the Antarctic Treaty System, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and limits military activity on the continent, its islands, and ice shelves, comes into force.

By Johannes Hannart (or Jan Hanat). Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, CC0, Link

These recent years in Whitewater have seen the use of outcome-driven argumentation, where the goal of every claim against a proposal, however specious, is simply to undermine the proposal. These claims don’t even have to be truthful — they need only advance (in a claimant’s mind) the proposal’s demise. This ilk becomes so attached to a desired outcome that it begins to judge every fact, every person, and every development by whether it helps that outcome.

Old Whitewater was, and what remains of it still is, a status-based culture. It ran on one’s identity and social standing, and these determined the perceived merit of what one believed. Not at all a meritocracy, but something like a shabby, small-town aristocracy.1 One earns only one’s own accomplishments; reliance on the accomplishments of earlier generations is an intergenerational plagiarism. See The End of Familial Legacy as Public Entitlement.

Outcome-based arguments are suitable for these types: they want what they want, and damn it they should have what they want, so they say what they want to get what they want. Three kinds of groups typically rely on outcome-based arguments: the entitled, special-interests, and children. One sometimes finds a concentration of all three types in one: entitled special-interest types who are emotionally childish.

It should not surprise, then, that among the remnants of Old Whitewater, outcome-driven arguments are a ready recourse. For many years the same men who argued for wasteful projects through boosterism now use outcome-driven arguments against projects not to their liking. Then as now, their claims are tailored to the results that they want.

Arguments against new housing options for Whitewater from the city’s tiny, reactionary landlord class have been like this. The effectual purpose is to preserve a small-town oligopoly. All the rest is rhetorical diversion. They (and those few they’ve persuaded as fellow travelers) have shown themselves willing to say anything to kill a proposal: (1) although once supporting tax-incremental financing they now oppose the same; (2) although once falsely claiming to bring growth they now oppose those who bring genuine growth; (3) although once calling for more students within the school district they now say we have too many students; (4) all the while insisting ludicrously that proposals are safety risks or — honest to goodness — even crimes. (These last claims about possible criminality are so absurd that each and every person in this town who has raised them should commit to a multi-year, remedial education program.)

Outcome-driven thinking reveals obvious intellectual deficiencies: it subordinates truth to preference, it depreciates proper reasoning, it deprecates serious study, and it thereby makes evaluation a matter of an entitled man’s poorly justified mood.

What has changed for Whitewater, much to the community’s gain, is that even entitled men now have to explain their views at the lectern. When they do, it becomes clear that their own self-images greatly exceed their actual abilities.

It upsets them when they don’t get their way, and they are lightning quick to blame one municipal official or another. No, and no again: it’s not one or another who stands in their way.

Times have changed across an entire community, from one generation to another. They need only look in their own mirrors to see who hasn’t kept pace with these changes.

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  1. When I have occasionally mentioned these types as small-town notables or town squires, these references were always applied as terms of light ridicule. Imagining oneself a notable or squire in a small American town is halfway to imagining oneself Napoleon Bonaparte. When I first used these terms so many years ago, someone wrote to me to suggest I was envious of those to whom I applied such descriptions. This greatly surprised me. It had never occurred to me that anyone would be envious of the characters in Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt. I thought then as I think now: those who believe themselves small-town notables should consult a psychiatrist or a priest. ↩︎

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Blazing warehouse sends black smoke across Houston sky:

Daily Bread, Environment, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 6.22.26: Making Wisconsin Pollute Again

by  • 

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:37 for 15 hours 21 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 55.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School District holds an Operating Referendum Workshop at 5 PM and the Whitewater School Board meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1944, President Roosevelt signs into law the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.

Wisconsin doesn’t mine coal, but it does have a highly polluting coal plant that runs on coal imported from elsewhere. The Trump administration intends to keep that plant going:

Earlier this month, the Trump administration listed the plant [in Pardeeville] as one of the beneficiaries of more than $700 million in spending to prop up the coal industry. The plant is expected to get $19 million through funding from the Defense Production Act. 

“Our action will allow these facilities to invest in upgrades that will extend their operational lives for decades into the future, reinforce the reliability of our electric grid, which is really the biggest beneficiary, and most importantly, keep electricity prices very low for the American people,” Trump said in a June 4 Oval Office news conference. 

Department of Natural Resources records show that the pollution emitted by the plant massively increased last year — a sign that the utility companies were ramping up the plant’s usage beyond its planned retirement date. 

In 2024, according to the DNR data, the plant emitted 3.9 million pounds of carbon monoxide. That jumped to 6.6 million pounds last year. Carbon dioxide emissions increased from 11 billion pounds in 2024 to 14 billion in 2025. 

Emissions of particulate matter, which is connected to health problems such as asthma, nearly doubled from 362,833 pounds to 685,876. 

The amount of nitrogen oxide, ammonia, lead, arsenic and cyanide pumped into the air by the plant all increased last year, the DNR report shows. 

See Henry Redman, Emissions of Trump-supported Columbia Co. coal plant jumped in 2025, Wisconsin Examiner, June 22, 2026.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Ospreys feed their chicks:

Business, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.21.26: The Rise and Fall of Pizza Hut

by  • 

Good morning.

Father’s Day (and the first day of summer) in Whitewater will be cloudy with afternoon showers and a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:37 for 15 hours 21 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1942, a Japanese submarine surfaces near the Columbia River in Oregon, firing 17 shells at Fort Stevens in one of only a handful of attacks by Japan against the mainland United States.

The Rise and Fall of Pizza Hut:

Pizza Hut once dominated American pizza. Now its U.S. business is being sold for $1.7 billion by parent company Yum! Brands to a private equity company called LongRange Capital. Its mainland Chinese operations are being sold to the spinoff Yum China Holdings for $1.2 billion. WSJ explains the challenges that led one of America’s most iconic restaurant chains to this moment.

Tastes change.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Being his friend was her first mistake. ‘As for my popularity, being your friend certainly has not helped’:

Conservation, Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 6.20.26: One of America’s Most Important Ecosystems? It’s All Around Us

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:36 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 36.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1975, the film Jaws is released in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing film at that time and starting the trend of films known as “summer blockbusters.”

It’s in the grasslands nearby:

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

How Jaws caused people to stop offering advice to Steven Spielberg:

Steven Spielberg explains how his early blockbuster success with “Jaws” caused his collaborators to suddenly stop giving him feedback.

Animals, Daily Bread, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 6.19.26: The End of Ridglan Farms

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:36 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 26 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, are officially informed of their freedom. The anniversary was officially celebrated in Texas and other states as Juneteenth. On June 17, 2021, Juneteenth officially became a federal holiday in the United States:

On the morning of June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on the island of Galveston to take command of the more than 2,000 federal troops recently landed in the department of Texas to enforce the emancipation of its enslaved population and oversee Reconstruction, nullifying all laws passed within Texas during the war by Confederate lawmakers. The order informed all Texans that, in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people were free:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

(Citations omitted.)

Ridglan Farms’ remaining beagles will soon be released to canine rescue groups in other states. As a matter of animal treatment, but also our state’s reputation, a facility conducting medical testing on beagles has been a disaster for Wisconsin. While medical testing is necessary, all testing depends on contexts, and among those contexts are the subjects of that testing. Some contexts simply cannot be overcome; no level of advocacy can overcome popular revulsion. Reporters from around the world have covered this story. Michael Sainato of The Guardian reports on the upcoming release of the five-hundred remaining dogs:

A beagle breeding and research facility in Wisconsin that has been the focus of animal rights protests is shutting down, and a rescue group in Florida is taking in the remaining dogs.

“Not one dog will remain,” Lauree Simmons, founder of Big Dog Ranch Rescue in Florida, said in a press conference announcing the news on Monday. “No more breeding, no more testing, no more anything.”

[…]

Protesters descended on the Ridglan Farms breeding and research facility in March and April in an attempt to free the beagles there. An estimated 1,000 activists clashed with police in April in another open rescue attempt for the dogs, resulting in 29 arrests, according to the Dane county sheriff’s department.

“Before the open rescue, activists called upon law enforcement, prosecutors, the governor [of Wisconsin, Tony Evers], humane officers, licensing boards, and judges to protect the dogs from Ridglan’s established, lengthy record of cruelty – without success,” said a statement from Chris Carraway, staff attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

After the April protests, Big Dog Ranch Rescue and the Center for a Humane Economy announced they reached an agreement with Ridglan Farms to buy 1,500 of the 2,000 beagles at the facility for an undisclosed price.

Animal rights attorneys then sought a court order to protect the remaining 500 beagles at the facility.

Ridglan Farms in October had reached an agreement with a special prosecutor to resolve criminal animal abuse allegations against the facility. That settlement required the facility to surrender its license to sell and breed dogs – but did not require any changes for the dogs remaining at the facility.

See Michael Sainato, Hundreds of dogs to be sent to rescue as US beagle research facility shuts down, The Guardian, June 16, 2026.

The principal concern is, of course, the humane treatment of living animals, with reputational concerns being only secondary to the principal issue of treatment. And yet, and yet, of that secondary reputational concern one can confidently say that building a testing facility for thousands of beagles was among the worst possible ideas — simply a dunce’s idea of cleverness.

The animals, and Wisconsin, are now better off.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Steven Spielberg on How to Build Suspense in ‘Disclosure Day’ | Anatomy of a Scene:

In the 1971 thriller “Duel,” a made-for-TV movie that became Steven Spielberg’s feature-length debut, the director had an early go at building an intricately suspenseful sequence. He has been showing audiences how suspense is done in the 55 years since. “Duel” involved a menacing trucker who was none too happy with the driver of a red car. In one tense moment, the truck begins to push the car into a moving freight train. Spielberg’s latest film, “Disclosure Day” (in theaters), is a layered sci-fi thriller that has very little in common with the sparse “Duel.” But in one sequence, the two films are in sync, and the new scene is a continuation, of sorts, of the old. In “Disclosure Day,” Margaret (Emily Blunt) and Daniel (Josh O’Connor) are on the run with an archive that could prove the existence of other intelligent life on the planet. As they wait at train tracks, a car rams them from behind and begins to push them into the train. Reflecting on “Duel” in this Anatomy of a Scene video, Spielberg noted, “I had always said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if the truck had actually pushed the car into the train?’ So I thought, I’m going to do that in ‘Disclosure Day.’ I’m going to take that scene to its full realization.” Watch the full video to hear Spielberg reveal more of his techniques in a scene like this, and explain how to keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

Charity, City, Daily Bread, Development, Local Government

Daily Bread for 6.18.26: A Use Far Better Than Vacant Government Land

by  • 

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset is 8:36 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1778, the British Army abandons Philadelphia.

Whitewater is a city of over nine square miles of land and water. The municipal government owns some portion of that land. Of the portion of the land that the municipal government owns, some portion has been without any useful purpose (unless one considers vacant and ignored land a useful purpose).

At its meeting on June 16, the Whitewater Common Council sensibly and without dissent approved the sale of a half-acre parcel to Bethel House, a 501(c)(3) charity, to build its second property providing transitional-housing assistance for families otherwise facing homelessness.

This is easily a beneficial use of the property. The property had no use whatever before, but now this land may be improved for a community need.

The land is not new, so to speak — what’s new is an increased willingness of the local government to support efforts, both for-profit and nonprofit, to develop what was otherwise neglected or ignored for decades.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

A sharp-looking American Kestrel greets you:

Bad Ideas, Daily Bread, Faraway Places

Daily Bread for 6.17.26: What an Absurd Policy Looks Like

by  • 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with scattered showers and a high of 65. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset is 8:36 for 15 hours 21 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbor.

Japan is a technologically advanced, modern society. And yet, even advanced societies sometimes find themselves culturally stymied when faced with challenges and threats. Japan’s approach to bear attacks — that is, real attacks on people in Japan — is an example of a culturally timid approach when bears (family Ursidae) are chasing, mauling, or eating people (family Hominidae).

Posts from FREE WHITEWATER have chronicled Japan’s tepid response to bear attacks.

How Japanese officials have tried to use bells and whistles to ward off bears (from 12.29.25):

How Japanese officials tried to use robot wolves to scare bears away (from 5.14.26):

How bears have been opening windows and escaping from capture to chase Japanese residents around cities (from 6.6.26):

What’s been the response to these bear attacks? Japanese hunters are now drilling by tracking a man in a bear mask:

(It’s sadly fitting, somehow, that the man in the drill complained, by the way, that his bear mask was hot and he couldn’t see anything. Honest to goodness.)

Japanese officials’ diffident response to bear depredations risks turning parts of the country into a real-life version of a 1970s B-movie:

What works better than bells, whistles, robots, and drills with masks?

This: Wis. Dep’t of Nat. Res., Learn to Hunt Bear, Wisconsin DNR (last visited June 17, 2026).

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Business, City, Daily Bread, Development, Free Markets, Good Ideas

Daily Bread for 6.16.26: Opportunity Sends Her Invitation

by  • 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with scattered showers and a high of 69. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset is 8:35 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1858, Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.

It is the nature of a productive, free-market society like ours — America’s — that continued prosperity requires dynamism. We are not a sluggish people. We are an energetic people. Sometimes our dynamism requires great effort; other times it requires only that we consider the opportunities before us.

A confident, composed person considers these opportunities as they arise. Through reasoning, knowledge, and principle he engages in discussions of all sorts. He enters conversations believing himself to be right yet open to being proved wrong. This is the confidence of a well-individuated man. This is the confidence of our dynamic, productive society.

Although opportunity could visit many places — and will remain only where welcome — sometimes she arrives in one’s own town.

One morning, opportunity sends an invitation to a meeting. The offer is one of conversation, of discussion, of a proposal. She awaits a reply.

Accept her invitation, take the meeting, join her at the table.

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

Brilliant fireball streaks across the skies of several U.S. states:

A bright meteor burned up over the skies of Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and more on June 15, 2026.

Business, City, Daily Bread, Development, Early Childhood, Good Ideas, Grocery

Daily Bread for 6.15.26: A Sensible Step Toward More Grocery and Childcare Options

by  • 

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset is 8:35 for 15 hours 20 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1846, the Oregon Treaty extends the border between the United States and British North America, established by the Treaty of 1818, westward to the Pacific Ocean.

On the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting (6.16.26) of the Whitewater Common Council there is a letter of intent from developer Anderson Ashton to the City of Whitewater proposing to develop a city-owned, seven-acre parcel on Bluff Road for a new grocery store and a childcare center. See Letter of Intent from Matthew J. Mehring, President, Anderson Ashton, Inc., to Mason Becker, Community Development Director, City of Whitewater (June 10, 2026.)

The letter of intent proposes a methodical discussion and negotiation with the City of Whitewater for a public-private development, proposes the transfer and improvement of city-owned land for a complementary grocery store and childcare center, with final terms reserved for a later development agreement.

A letter of intent is an invitation — it is not a deal but rather a request to discuss a deal.

There are sound reasons for the Whitewater Common Council to respond affirmatively: (1) the proposal addresses two community needs at once, (2) another grocery would meet a continuing need in a city of nearly sixteen thousand, (3) childcare supports working families, (4) the proposal rests on substantial private investment, (5) the City-owned land is now vacant and private development would bring tax revenue, (6) the proposed terms for land and infrastructure contributions are similar to prior projects in the city, and (7) Anderson Ashton outlines a methodical project schedule that includes subsequent evaluation and approval before Whitewater’s Planning Commission, Community Development Authority, and the Common Council between now and April 2027.

The sensible course is for the Whitewater Common Council to respond affirmatively at its 6.16.26 meeting to Anderson Ashton’s letter of intent.

The letter of intent and accompanying conceptual images appear below:

2026-06-16-CC-Packet Letter of Intent 1Download

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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, Outcome-Driven Argumentation, and a New Ethics Ordinance.

How to Use NASA’s Eyes on Exoplanets:

Use this tutorial to start exploring worlds beyond our own. With this 3D interactive tool, you can visit all the stars beyond the Sun where we’ve found other planets, called exoplanets.