The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

Mike Ford Commentary: Forget Accountability, Pursue Success in Education

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:08:40 -0500

There are several words and phrases that confuse the debate on education reform: Apples-to-apples, finding what works, bringing to scale, and the worst of them all, accountability. The concepts described by these words and phrases are all premised on the idea that there is a single model of delivering quality education to all students.

No such model exists.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Wisconsin Unions are No Stranger to Presidential Politics

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:59:43 -0500

Last Tuesday night, shortly before Tom Barrett strode to the stage to accept his party’s nomination to take on Scott Walker in Wisconsin’s June recall election, Barrett received a big atta-boy from the White House. In a statement, President Obama announced he was "proud to stand with Tom Barrett," because the Milwaukee mayor would "move Wisconsin forward."

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Game On - A Few Questions for Tom Barrett

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:59:35 -0500

Congratulations on your electoral mulligan. To paraphrase one of your television spots; POW! - In 2002, the electorate said you weren’t the guy, they preferred Jim Doyle. Then POW! - In 2010 they spoke again and, that time saying they preferred Scott Walker to you. And finally, POW! Just last December, the public employee unions said you were not the guy. But, were you deterred? Not for a minute, you just kept coming. You have a tenacity that would make Harold Stassen envious.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Book End - Imagine a World Without the Printed Page

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:25:42 -0500

A few days ago, I stood in the local big box electronics store for 20 minutes, gazing at the array of e-book readers lined up on the counter. I felt myself aging ten years per second as I navigated between Nooks and Kindles, gigabytes and dual core processers. In the end, I decided I couldn’t take part in euthanizing the book industry, in which I one day hope to be a participant.

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Mike Ford Commentary: Using Actionable Intelligence to Improve Student Performance

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:24:24 -0500

Parents need good information to make school choices for their children. Policy makers need good information to make accurate assessments of schools.

These two obvious statements are at the root of national and local efforts to create intuitive ways to measure and explain the quality of K-12 education. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker has proclaimed his desire for a statewide school grading system that includes all schools receiving state funds. Though recent education reform legislation signed by the governor did not include school grading, the topic will likely come up again.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Teachers: When Will We Learn?

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 14:04:13 -0500

How did this happen? How did conservatives come to find themselves glaring across the battleground at tens of thousands of Wisconsin’s teachers? In the long run, the confrontation is not one that is likely to end well for conservatives.

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WPRI Report: The History of the Recall in Wisconsin - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 3 Apr 2012 08:29:55 -0500

Recall supporters maintained that Gov. Walker’s action threw out 50 years of settled state law in essentially repealing collective bargaining. This might be true, but a review of history shows that the current effort to recall Gov. Walker is not at all in line with what the progressives intended when they championed the recall amendment 85 years ago. Documents and press accounts from the time indicate that the current use of the recall is far from what the original drafters envisioned.

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WPRI Report: The Economic Power of Early Childhood Education in Wisconsin - by Rob Grunewald and Don Bezruki

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:02:54 -0500

Mike Nichols Commentary: MATC Bill Exact Opposite of an Overreach

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 08:01:40 -0500

Critics of the Milwaukee Area Technical College bill that will finally overhaul the school’s board say it is a "severe overreach."

Overreach, according to my Webster’s, means to "reach too far for and miss" what you’re really aiming at. That happens sometimes in politics.

WI Magazine: Anatomy of a Failed School DIstrict: Picturesque Bayfield has it all: dreadful student performance, community infighting, a powerful teachers' union, outlandish spending. What can be done? - by Mike Nichols

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:21:11 -0500

WI Magazine: Disorder in the Court: A Supreme Court justice speaks frankly of Wisconsin's tarnished judiciary and points critically at Chief Justice Abrahamson - by Michael Gableman

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:19:59 -0500

WI Magazine: The Empire Strikes Back: As the Wisconsin protests show, public unions remain a powerful barrier to innovation as they defend their own perks and privileges - by Charles J. Sykes

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:16:46 -0500

WI Magazine; New Guy, Same Agenda - WMC's Kurt Bauer keeps the focus on politics, job growth - by Sunny Schubert

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:15:58 -0500

WI Magazine: Hiding behind the kids: Citing family, too many pols duck electoral duty - by Christian Schneider

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:15:00 -0500

WI Magazine: Walker Had no Choice: To refloat the state budget and to save education, he had to break the power of the unions - by Rick Esenberg

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:14:19 -0500

WI Magazine Guest Opinion: Half-Crazy, Half-True: Alfie Kohn’s startling message on schools may be hurting Wisconsin’s poorest students - by Michael J. Petrilli

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:13:22 -0500

WI Magazine: Dispatches - by Charles J. Sykes

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:12:44 -0500

WI Magazine: Editor's Note - by Charles J. Sykes

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:12:15 -0500

Mike Ford Commentary: Improving Quality of Life Key to Wisconsin's Future

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:01:02 -0500

The failure of the Wisconsin legislature to pass mining legislation, while a missed opportunity, is not a killer for the state. Wisconsin’s economic future does not lie in luring a mining company any more than it lies in luring back jobs from overseas a la Masterlock. Long-term, we need to make the state a place where talented, innovative, and highly educated people want to live.

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WI Magazine: WHAT IF? Oddsmakers lay out the scenarios for a wild and crazy campaign year - by Jeff Mayers

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 10:14:43 -0600

George Lightbourn Commentary: The Most Dangerous Man

Fri, 2 Mar 2012 09:25:09 -0600

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out himself" - H.L. Mecken

Over the past year in Madison, the psychology of government is changed. No, it’s not because of changes to collective bargaining or recalls. The change is that for the first time in a long time, competence and fortitude have value.

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Mike Ford Commentary: In Politics, There is No Right to be Forgotten

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 09:22:47 -0600

The recent bribery arrest of Milwaukee County Supervisor Johnny Thomas was refreshing for its clarity. Thomas is facing felony charges for accepting $500 in cash in exchange for ensuring a contract proposal be approved by his committee. Even better, the whole exchange was filmed with a hidden camera at a downtown Milwaukee Dunkin' Donuts.

That is good old-fashioned corruption.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: On Madeline Island, a Tiny School Stands Worlds Apart

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:21:18 -0600

But for the often tumultuous waters of Chequamegon Bay, LaPointe Elementary would have long ago been shuttered and forgotten, its students shuttled off to other schools in other places.

LaPointe is one of the tiniest little grade schools in Wisconsin, perhaps because it is barely even in Wisconsin. It sits on Madeline Island, 2.5 miles by ferry - or even wind sled in years colder than this one - across Superior from Bayfield.

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Sunny Schubert Commentary: You Idiots! Republicans are making it hard to defend them.

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:18:52 -0600

Dear Republican members of the Wisconsin Legislature:

How could you be so stupid?

Signing a pledge of secrecy? Passing out written "talking points" on the redistricting map that include the damning instruction to "Ignore the public comments?"

Really? How dumb are you people?

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Mike Ford Commentary: The End of Parent Choice?

Thu, 9 Feb 2012 08:06:12 -0600

Since the 1990s Wisconsin, and Milwaukee in particular, has been a national leader in the belief that parents should be the ones making education decisions for their children. The granting of the No Child Left Behind waiver currently being debated in Madison may be the act that finally puts that notion to rest.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Wisconsin's Unfinished Budget

Thu, 2 Feb 2012 12:44:27 -0600

Squish, squish, squish.

That’s the noise coming from the Capitol in Madison every two years when our leaders assemble the state budget. Although citizens naively think that something as important and as the state budget is anchored in terra firma, such is not the case. State government accounting is an exercise in illusion. In the hands of both Democrats and Republicans, budget numbers are mystifyingly slippery.

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Mike Ford Commentary: Why Nothing Works in Education Reform

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:25:25 -0600

The familiarity of K-12 education makes it an obvious emphasis for those interested in public policy; it is the only policy area where everyone has personal experience. Researchers in particular are drawn to education because of the widespread availability of data such as standardized test scores and graduation rates.

Education reform is well discussed and well researched, so why in 2012 are we as a state still struggling to educate huge segments of our population? Wisconsin is losing ground to neighboring states on test scores, and when it comes to minorities we do just about as bad as anywhere. The problem is all the more perplexing because the solution seems so simple: Find what works and replicate it.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: We Should All Vote in the Same Place We Pay Our Taxes

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:26:15 -0600

Six school districts in Wisconsin – Hartland-Lakeside, Phelps, Oregon, Oshkosh, Beloit and Sparta – have scheduled school referendums for either February or April.
My advice to school officials who want to prevail: encourage high turn-out among voters who cast their ballots at polling places that are actually inside the schools themselves. It, oddly enough, makes a significant difference.

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WPRI Report: A Modern Teacher Compensation System for Wisconsin - by Mike Ford

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:24:50 -0600

A thorough review of teacher compensation in Wisconsin, the values held by Wisconsin teachers and citizens, and existing research on human capital management precedes the formal proposal. The review establishes context as to why Wisconsin teachers are paid the way they are and why the proposed reform is necessary, possible, and likely to positively impact student achievement in Wisconsin.

The shortcomings of Wisconsin’s education system cannot and should not be placed solely at the feet of teachers. The reform proposal that follows recognizes the value teachers bring to this state and seeks to give these professionals the tools and motivations needed to successfully educate the diverse body of Wisconsin’s K-12 students.

Read the Full Report

Mike Ford Commentary: Tom Barrett's Execution Problem

Mon, 9 Jan 2012 09:20:41 -0600

Last week, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett suggested he will be a candidate in this year’s likely gubernatorial recall election. Much has already been made about the difficulty Barrett will have explaining his use of the flexibility given to local governments in Act 10 to help balance Milwaukee’s budget.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: A Resolution for 2012

Thu, 5 Jan 2012 14:19:36 -0600

I’m out. You go on without me.

I know that arguing politics is a rich American tradition, but I’ve decided it’s no longer for me. There was a time I enjoyed a good political argument. I had some doozies with my father-in-law, a WWII vet who baffled me with his support for the U.S. role in Vietnam. In the 90's, well there was no shortage of material. Remember HillaryCare, Monica, and Newt’s Contract with America and much, much more. I used to love the mental thrust and parry that would invariably end amicably, usually involving the combatants buying each other an adult beverage.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Energy and Innovation Takes a Long, Long Holiday

Thu, 8 Dec 2011 13:57:38 -0600

If you have occasion to visit the offices of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in the GEF 2 building in downtown Madison, you will walk down a corridor past the portraits of past superintendents. There’s Bert Grover smiling down on you followed by John Benson and Elizabeth Burmaster. What all of these people have in common is that, while they were in office, the performance of Wisconsin children continued to fall, especially when compared to other states.

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WI Magazine: Prosser Agonistes:In an exclusive interview, Justice David Prosser talks frankly of the ‘somewhat surreal’ world of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. By Charles J. Sykes

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:46:10 -0600

WI Magazine: Looking Out for #1: Professors, like other professionals in American society, are losing sight of their civic obligations. By Donald A. Downs

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:45:32 -0600

WI Magazine: "She Walks Her Own Path:" UW law prof Ann Althouse’s blog has carved out a unique niche challenging liberal pieties. By Sunny Schubert

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:44:41 -0600

WI Magazine: Resurrection: Public workers represent the state's best traditions. By John Nichols

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:44:05 -0600

WI Magazine: It's Taps:We are witnessing the last gasp of public sector unionism. By Stephen F. Hayes

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:43:28 -0600

WI Magazine: Mark Pocan's Smoke Screen: His pieties about protecting middle-class families are a cover for hiking taxes on the poor. By Christian Schneider

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:42:52 -0600

WI Magazine: Tough Challenges Ahead:For conservatives, just saying ‘no’ probably won’t be enough to solve our state’s and nation’s problems. By Rick Esenberg

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:42:19 -0600

WI Magazine: Why Wisconsin's Labor Fight is Crucial - Walker is in the national vanguard fi ghting to reverse destructive union gains. By Fred Siegel

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:41:32 -0600

WI Magazine: Dispatches - Yet More Chaos - by Charles J. Sykes

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:40:57 -0600

WI Magazine Editor's Note: Justice Speaks, by Charles J. Sykes

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:40:04 -0600

WI Magazine: Dave Obey's Big Payoff - Retirement has its perks when you leave after 41 years in Congress - by Mike Nichols

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:21:06 -0600

Dave Obey isn’t bone-tired after all.

When the former House Appropriations chairman stunned the Beltway - and his district back in Wisconsin - and announced he was retiring at the end of the last term, he said he hated to do it.

"There is so much that needs to be done," said the man who was at the pinnacle of his career and one of the most powerful politicians in America. "But, frankly, I am bone-tired. When I first put my name on the ballot for the state Assembly in 1962, I was 23 years old. Now 48 years later, I will soon be 72."

Read the full story

Christian Schneider Commentary: 9-9-9 Hits the Heartland

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:45:40 -0500

"Who here has heard of the ‘9-9-9’ plan?"

Virtually every one of the 150 hands in Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s Thursday town hall meeting shot into the air.

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WPRI Report: Rebuilding and Modernizing Wisconsin's Interstates with Toll Financing - by Robert W. Poole, Jr.

Sun, 2 Oct 2011 20:12:11 -0500

Wisconsin’s 743 miles of Interstate highway are the most valuable component of the state’s transportation system. With less than 1% of state roadway miles, the Interstates (including the southeastern Wisconsin freeway system) carry 18% of all vehicle miles of travel and 21% of all heavy truck traffic.

All highways wear out over time, despite ongoing maintenance. Over the next 30 years, most of Wisconsin’s Interstate system will exceed its nominal 50-to 60-year design life and will need complete reconstruction. When that point is reached, it makes sense to update designs to current safety and operational standards, as was done recently in the reconstruction of the Marquette interchange. And in corridors where demand is projected to exceed capacity, resulting in heavy congestion, it makes sense to add lanes.

Read the full report....

Michael Ford Commentary: All Wisconsin Juniors Should Take the ACT

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:20:27 -0500

In 2010, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) for the first time required all of its juniors take the ACT. Unsurprisingly, the effort, spearheaded by board member Terrence Falk, resulted in a decline in already dismal scores. The average ACT score for MPS pupils, while six points below the state average, does have something on the scores released and touted by districts such as Racine and Madison; they are an accurate representation of the college readiness of pupils in the district. It is time for the rest of Wisconsin to follow the lead of MPS and neighboring states and require all Wisconsin juniors to take the ACT.

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WPRI Report: Why Milwaukee's Police are More Effective than its Teachers - by Mike Nichols

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:43:30 -0500

Read the full report here.

Mike Nichols Commentary: Meaning Amid the Wreckage

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:28:10 -0500

I long ago gave up reading the comments posted anonymously at the end of online stories written by reporters.

But I had a relapse this week.

I read the comments posted after a short story in the Journal Sentinel about a ceremony held Sunday, Sept. 11, at the Milwaukee County War Memorial. Wreckage from the World Trade Center that is to become part of a permanent collection at the War Memorial was displayed Sunday morning as part of a public ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

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WI Magazine: Yes, There is a Free Lunch:Consider the middle-class students feasting on a food subsidy intended for poor families. By Mike Nichols

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:09:33 -0500

WI Magazine: The Revolution that Wasn't: Filled with sound and fury, the recall elections signified nothing at all. By Christian Schneider

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:08:31 -0500

WI Magazine: Not What You Think: Let's peel away the hyperbole to see what Gov. Walker really did in his first budget.

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:07:17 -0500

WI Magazine: Game On! Immigrants like Peter Boscha and Yash Wadhwa understand that competition is the secret to American success. By Warren Kozak

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:06:36 -0500

WI Magazine: Number Crunchers on a Mission: The Assembly's CPAs want to reform the state's funny-money accounting. By Sunny Schubert

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:05:46 -0500

WI Magazine: The Closer - Tough Noogies:So what if Scott Walker didn't campaign on curbing union power? By Christian Schneider

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:04:59 -0500

WI Magazine: Game Changer:Scott Walker is Reagan-Like in his bold steps to remake Wisconsin government - by Rick Esenberg

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:04:17 -0500

WI Magazine: Guest Opinion - Walker Boldly Recasts School Reform:His combative conservatism is a welcome challenge to Bush-era compromises with Democrats - by Frederick M. Hess

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:03:31 -0500

WI Magazine: Dispatches - A Revolution Undeterred - by Charles J. Sykes

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:01:55 -0500

WI Magazine: Editor's Note - Eventful, yes; Apocalypse, no - by Charles J. Sykes

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 08:01:13 -0500

WI Magazine: Turning Point - The tumult of the Capitol protests became a nationwide digital phenomenon - by Marc Eisen

Thu, 8 Sep 2011 08:14:23 -0500

The revolution came to Madison in February, but not the one you think.

Sure, Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to roll back a half-century of labor legislation and the ferocious liberal backlash were earthshaking events. But the outcome of this epic struggle awaits a last act.

No such uncertainty marks the digital revolution. New media played a crucial role in both organizing the Capitol protests and in covering them. The digital future arrived on the wings of text messages, cell-phone photos, flip-camera videos, Facebook posts and Twitter tweets.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Wisconsin's Absentee Elections

Tue, 9 Aug 2011 10:29:45 -0500

It’s been over a decade now since Wisconsin liberalized its absentee voting procedures - not that it was a strictly liberal change.

The initial 1999 bill stating that voters would no longer have to provide a reason for voting absentee was sponsored by Senate President Fred Risser (D-Stone Age). But it was so noncontroversial that it passed on a voice vote. When it went through the Assembly the following year support was virtually unanimous and it was quickly signed into law by then-Governor Tommy Thompson.

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WPRI Report: What Economists Won't Tell You: Why Competition Works - by Warren Kozak

Fri, 5 Aug 2011 14:40:08 -0500

Here is one of life’s little mysteries: If you place two four-year-olds in the middle of a block, they will, without prompting, immediately race each other to the corner. Michael Phelps never breaks records when he is in the pool by himself. But line up five other swimmers on the starting blocks next to him and Phelps smashes world times. And when two teenagers are idling at a red light, engines running and no cop in sight, it might be wise to get out of their way.

We see the impact of competition every minute of every day, yet we are not even aware of it because it is so much a part of us. At the same time, few of us realize that the greatest impact of competition on our lives has nothing to do with sports, sibling rivalry, getting your child into an Ivy League school or the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

Read the full report

WPRI Report: An Essential Turnaround Project - The Reform of State Government Operations: By Robin Gates

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:40:39 -0500

Mike Nichols Commentary: Supreme Court Justices Should Choose Their Own Chief

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:18:21 -0500

Minnesota has had no less than five chief justices since August of 1996. Michigan has had seven. Illinois has had nine.

Wisconsin has had one - Shirley Abrahamson, the liberal icon who has both a legendary intellect and an equally impressive ability to drive many of her fellow justices, Democrats and Republicans alike, stark raving mad. At her.

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Sunny Schubert Commentary: We Know What Women Want

Tue, 7 Jun 2011 12:25:53 -0500

Sigmund Freud once famously asked "What do women want?"

I can tell you: We want men to zip it.

As in their flies.

Keep it in your pants.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Foodshare Fraud: The Big Picture We Need is of Uncle Sam

Mon, 9 May 2011 11:12:19 -0500

Legislators are finally starting to focus on trying to prevent some of the FoodShare fraud that WPRI first wrote about a year ago.

Rep. John Nygren, the Republican from Marinette, wants to require pictures on FoodShare Quest cards, for instance – something he sees as common-sense but which could also cost the state a lot of money and require a waiver from the federal government.

WPRI Report: Failing our Children: Wisconsin's Deficit in Teaching Personal Finance and Economics - by Scott Niederjohn, Ph.D.

Thu, 5 May 2011 07:21:30 -0500

Given the importance of economic and financial education, one might expect to find these subjects emphasized in Wisconsin’s K-12 schools. Other states are ahead of Wisconsin. Twenty-one states now require high school students to take an economics course; thirteen states require students to take a personal finance course. In Wisconsin, neither is required, so few Wisconsin high school students take a course in economics or personal finance, and few teachers are qualified to teach one.

This widespread disregard has real consequences. The financial crisis from which our nation is currently recovering illustrates some of these, having arisen in part from ill-considered decisions by financially illiterate consumers of credit. For American workers, moreover, the trend away from defined-benefit pensions toward defined-contribution pensions places increasing investment responsibilities in the hands of individuals.

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Sunny Schubert Commentary: Run Away! Must We Protect our Schoolkids from Bunnies?

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 09:14:04 -0500

It’s not that I don’t care about K-12 education in Wisconsin. I DO care, very much.

But I have a hard time getting my undies in a bundle over Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed education spending reductions because I have this fantasy that maybe if school administrators have less money, they’ll have less time to come up with dumb stuff in the name of political correctness.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Ernie's Take on Mark Miller

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:37:36 -0500

I hadn’t seen my buddy Ernie in a few months since I had visited him at St. Mary’s. That day Ernie was sipping ice water through a bent straw looking paler than usual - which is something for a guy who spends his free time either in a tavern or a betting parlor. "I never should have listened to that dopey doctor," he moaned. "Jeez, this new hip is killing me."

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Christian Schneider Commentary: What the Supreme Court Election Means for School Funding in Wisconsin

Fri, 1 Apr 2011 09:46:25 -0500

On April 5th, Wisconsin will choose a new Supreme Court justice. While elections to the Court are normally nonpartisan affairs, this election is drenched in political bickering between Republicans, Democrats, and public employee unions.

Public union supporters argue that if incumbent conservative Justice David Prosser is defeated by liberal challenger Joanne Kloppenburg, the Court would then be fertile soil for a lawsuit overturning Scott Walker’s recent law limiting collective bargaining for government employees. They argue that the law was passed improperly, given the last-minute maneuvers by Senate Republicans to vote on the collective bargaining bill without three-fifths of the Senate members in attendance.

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WI Magazine: Dispatches: The Winter of Rebirth - by Charles J. Sykes

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:51:35 -0500

Everything changed for the better, from politics to sports, in Wisconsin.

Winter was the season for transformation. A crippling blizzard paralyzed the state, but its effects were ameliorated by the Green Bay Packers’ extraordinary run through the playoffs to the Super Bowl championship. There was joy in Titletown, underlying a remarkable turnaround for Cheesehead Nation.

In Madison, the new governor pushed his reform agenda at breakneck speed, and the Legislature cranked out an array of business-friendly bills, including tort and regulatory reform, tax cuts, and a budget bill that transformed the political and labor landscape by gutting the power of public employee unions.

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WI Magazine: How Daniels Got His Budget Act Together - by Christopher Ruhl

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:49:43 -0500

After more than six years in office, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has earned a reputation for smart fiscal discipline. It’s easy to forget the problems he inherited when he took office in early 2005.

The state had an annual public expenditure growth rate of 6% during the previous decade. The state was consistently paying out more than it was collecting in annual revenue, and had been running a negative cash balance for years, with debts exceeding cash balances.

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WI Magazine: The Fight to Curb Free Speech: The Supreme Court's defense of corporate politicking has sparked a fierce backlash - by David Blaska

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:45:48 -0500

On Jan. 21, Madison’s Capitol Square was gripped in the dark deep freeze of a lonely Friday evening. On the coldest day of the year, the state employees who remained downtown had retreated to the cozy warmth of the trendy boites for their after-work glasses of Chardonnay.

Huddled against zero-degree temperatures driven by a biting wind, 40 hardy souls clustered outside the State Street entrance to the Capitol, hoisting their hopes aloft in the form of homemade signs.

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WI Magazine: Saving Young Black Men: Kaleem Caire's high-intensity plan for Madison Prep Charter School doesn't include the teachers' union - by Sunny Schubert

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:43:25 -0500

Kaleem Caire is tired of waiting.

He has watched in frustration as yet another generation of young black men fail to reach their potential, as the achievement gap continues to widen, as the economic disparity between blacks and whites continues to grow.

"We have failed an entire generation of young men of color. We have not provided them with an education, and that is why so many of them end up in jail. It has to stop," he says.

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WI Magazine: That Presidential Look: The 2012 GOP presidential crowd gets a makeover - by Christian Schneider

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:41:13 -0500

On Nov. 2, Marco Rubio hadn’t yet been declared the winner of his Florida Senate race before the pundits began speculating on his move up the political ladder.

Some penciled him in as a vice presidential candidate in 2012; others thought he could actually be the GOP’s presidential nominee. The Fox News commentators fumed that it was an injustice that a new coin hadn’t already been released featuring the new senator’s visage. (Coming soon - the 15-cent Rubio.)

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WI Magazine: Why He Did It: For good reason, the Capitol exploded when Gov. Walker struck at collective bargaining - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:10:35 -0500

By now, the political lore is familiar: A major political party, cast aside by Wisconsin voters due to a lengthy recession, comes roaring back, winning a number of major state offices.

The 43-year-old new governor, carrying out a mandate he believes the voters have granted him, boldly begins restructuring the state’s tax system. His reform package contains a major change in the way state and local governments bargain with their employees, leading to charges that the governor is paying back his campaign contributors.

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WI Magazine: The Walker Way - It’s a shock for some: He means what he says, and he does what he promises - by Rick Esenberg

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:08:47 -0500

Last November, Wisconsin voters made Scott Walker their governor. They are now getting to know him.

We in Milwaukee know Walker well and have come to understand how he responds to crisis. We know how he answers those who say that fundamental change is too disruptive and thus impossible.

The story is familiar. Milwaukee County’s elected officials had pillaged the overburdened taxpayers of a relatively poor county.

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Sunny Schubert Commentary - Oh! The Lies Liberals Tell!

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:36:53 -0500

Hey, did you hear the one about how Gov. Scott Walker wants to kill puppies?

A dog-loving liberal told this to me in all seriousness. She added, "It’s in the budget!"

As a dog-loving conservative, I got so upset I began to sputter - but only at the utter falseness of the charge.

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WI Magazine: The Coming Battle: The next election - and the fate of the Republican and Democrat agendas - will be determined in the Midwest - by Jeff Mayers

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 07:59:38 -0500

Can you name the two Midwestern states where the 2012 election battle may be fought the hardest?

Two states crazy about Big Ten sports.

Two states that in 2010 saw big gains by the GOP and where the statehouses are ruled by Republicans.

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WI Magazine: The Class of 2010: Freshmen legislators are pumped and ready to rock. We pick 10 rising stars to watch - by Charles J. Sykes

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 07:24:44 -0500

Bring on the New Guard.

Last November’s electoral tidal wave not only changed the party alignment in the state Capitol, it also marked the emergence of a new class of freshmen legislators, strikingly different from their predecessors. "They are ‘Obama babies,’" says one longtime insider, "nontraditional candidates spawned by offense at Obama’s assault on the American Dream."

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WI Magazine: Thornton's Losing Battle - MPS' failure to shut a struggling charter school reveals the board's stubborn refusal to embrace reform - by Mike Nichols

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:33:26 -0500

Eight months into Greg Thornton’s attempt to bring the systemic change needed to reverse years of decline in the Milwaukee Public Schools, his own fears of being stymied by a micromanaging, fickle school board are coming true.

The new MPS school superintendent was so fearful of second-guessing that his contract assures him "individual board members agree that they will not give direction to the superintendent or any staff member regarding the management of the district or the solution of specific problems."

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George Lightbourn Commentary - The Right Debate

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:58:45 -0500

There could not have been a sharper contrast between the tension in Madison and the calm in Washington DC. Last Tuesday evening, Governor Walker presented his two-year get plan. With drums thumping in the Capitol rotunda, he presented a transformational vision, one aimed at changing the face of Wisconsin for generations. "The facts are clear" he said. "Wisconsin is broke and it’s time to start paying our bills today - so our kids are not stuck with even bigger bills tomorrow."

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Christian Schneider Commentary - The Wisconsin Public Union Protest Dictionary

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:13:13 -0600

As is the case with any extended crisis, the Wisconsin stalemate has begun to create its own vernacular. Previously familiar terms and phrases are used in foreign contexts. Words garner new meaning.

So when listening to politicians debate Governor Scott Walker’s plan to force greater public sector union contributions to their own health and pension benefits, it may be getting hard to understand - and not just because of the funny Wisconsin accents.

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Mike Nichols Commentary - Yet Another Reason For a Sick Day

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:14:15 -0600

The Milwaukee Area Technical College Board and its teachers union signed a new, three-year contract the other day, and it’s worth reading.

Not just the parts guaranteeing no-cost pensions, no layoffs of full-time teachers and eye-poppingly generous (albeit temporarily frozen) salaries for full-time teachers making close to $100,000.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Remembering Tomorrow's Union Worker Protests, Today

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 08:27:18 -0600

Friday, February 11th, 2011 will be a day that lives forever in the annals of Wisconsin Hot Air History. The World Series of Buffoonery took place shortly after Walker announced his plan, when a gathering of Democrat lawmakers took turns out-embarrassing themselves at a hastily called press conference. (Watch it here - but don’t drink anything while you’re viewing it - your beverage will likely end up adorning your computer screen.)

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Warren Kozak Commentary: Spending Watchdogs: Our Hidden Heroes

Tue, 8 Feb 2011 08:36:45 -0600

I have a hero. I don’t know his name. I never met him. But I think of him now and then, actually a lot lately. So is he a great sports celebrity, a military figure, perhaps a teacher or a fireman? Well, the man I am thinking about doesn’t fall into any of these categories. In truth, I don’t even know what he does, or did, for a living.

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Sunny Schubert Commentary: There's More Than One Way to Teach Class

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 07:39:36 -0600

A young friend of mine - I’ll call him Zach because that is, indeed, his name - graduated from college last May and started his first teaching job in August: 7th-grade Spanish in a school with a fairly high population of low-income children.

Zach is a very good-looking young man, but I must emphasize the word "young" because he has, for lack of a better term, a baby face.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:42:51 -0600

Don’t ask me why, but as I was leafing through the recent contract agreed to by the Milwaukee School Board and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Union (MTEA), I couldn’t help but think of the pony joke. You might recall the story told over and over by Reagan about the little boy confronted with a roomful of manure. Ever the optimist, the boy began scooping manure with his bare hands in the belief that, "with all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere."

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Memo to America: Wisconsin's in Charge

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 01:51:46 -0600

As you watched the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers put the Atlanta Falcons back on the bus this weekend, you may have said to yourself "isn’t Green Bay in Wisconsin?"

Then, the more politically astute may have said, "isn’t newly minted RNC chair Reince Priebus from Wisconsin?" After another malty beverage and another Rodgers touchdown, the politically deranged may have said, "isn’t new House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan from Wisconsin?"

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Voter ID? How About Candidate ID?

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:13:14 -0600

Elizabeth Coggs, the new Democratic state representative for the 10th Assembly District in Milwaukee, is against the Voter ID proposal because, she told me today, many poorer residents of her central city district don’t have IDs and would be disenfranchised if one is now required to cast a ballot.

With all due respect, I had to remind her, most folks in the 10th District and many other places aren’t exactly running to the polls anyway.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Let's Feed the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs

Fri, 7 Jan 2011 09:58:15 -0600

Peter Barca, a usually levelheaded Democrat, articulated what has been wrong with state government. In giving an unenthusiastic nod to Governor Walker’s economic package, Barca questioned whether Walker’s actions would help the state’s economic emergency. Like the complaining patient who wants relief from the acute pain, even if the chronic condition remains untreated.

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Christian Schneider commentary: Getting Government off Welfare

Tue, 4 Jan 2011 13:45:57 -0600

Remember back when you could use the word "welfare" in polite conversation? Back when to show concern for one’s "welfare" was to genuinely care about their well-being? Now, being deemed a "welfare recipient" is more damaging to your reputation than being called a shoplifter, or a slow driver, or even worse, an "ex-Viking quarterback."

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WPRI Report: Making the University of Wisconsin More Accountable Through Greater Autonomy - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:11:33 -0600

Making the UW System less reliant on taxpayer funding and more reliant on other sources of revenue could make it more responsive to the Wisconsin economy. If students and their parents are more invested in paying for their own education, the UW would need to be much more responsive to their needs and the demands of employers around the state. Freeing up the university from state regulations could provide the UW with the flexibility it needs in meeting the needs of the Wisconsin economy.

Read the full report

George Lightbourn Commentary: How Scott Walker Can Lead by Example on Public Employee Pensions

Mon, 6 Dec 2010 08:26:18 -0600

WI Magazine: It's Morning Again in Wisconsin: A plan to restore our state's greatness - by George Lightbourn

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:11:00 -0600

WI Magazine: Milwaukee's Story: Stephanie Findley learned the hard way that while the public favors school reform, the political system is rigged to kill it - by Mike Nichols

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:10:05 -0600

WI Magazine: How Johnson Won: An embedded reporter tells the inside story of one of the great political upsets of 2010 - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:09:17 -0600

WI Magazine: Don't Misread the Mandate: Saying "no" will serve Republicans well - by Patrick McIlheran

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:08:34 -0600

WI Magazine: End Times for Progressives? Spare Me: Democrats may be inept, but Walker's another Julius Heil - by John Nichols

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:07:36 -0600

WI Magazine: People Do Stupid Things: That's why political movements should be anchored in ideas - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:06:44 -0600

WI Magazine: Befuddled Democrats: The left's response to the Tea Party was wrong from the start - by Richard Esenberg

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:05:47 -0600

WI Magazine: Really Big: Our shocking election results put Wisconsin in the national spotlight again - by Stephen F. Hayes

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:04:43 -0600

WI Magazine: Dispatches - Fall Reckoning: by Charles J. Sykes

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:03:58 -0600

WI Magazine: Editor's Note - Now What? By Charles J. Sykes

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:02:41 -0600

WI Magazine Special: Behind the Scenes with the Ron Johnson for Senate Campaign Part 5 - The End of the Road: by Christian Schneider

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:18:56 -0600

On Monday, November 15th, the Wisconsin Interest magazine begins an exclusive five-part series written by Christian Schneider that documents the internal workings of the 2010 Ron Johnson for Senate campaign. The series, called "The Making of a Candidate: The inside story of how Wisconsin's Ron Johnson quietly became one of the political stories of 2010," examines Johnson’s rise from an unknown businessman in Oshkosh to toppling 18-year Senator Russ Feingold on November 2nd.

Read Part 5

WI Magazine Special: Behind the Scenes with the Ron Johnson for Senate Campaign Part 4 - A Shot at the King: by Christian Schneider

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:23:50 -0600

WI Magazine Special: Behind the Scenes with the Ron Johnson for Senate Campaign Part 3: Sometimes, You Just Say Stuff - by Christian Schneider

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:18:53 -0600

WI Magazine Special: Behind the Scenes with the Ron Johnson for Senate Campaign Part 2: RonJon Goes Rogue - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 07:46:19 -0600

WI Magazine Special Report: The Making of a Candidate: The inside story of how Wisconsin's Ron Johnson quietly became one of the political stories of 2010 - by Christian Schneider

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 22:55:08 -0600

George Lightbourn Commentary: The Seeds of New Federalism

Thu, 4 Nov 2010 09:55:15 -0500

This was a solemn moment for Wisconsin. Early Wednesday morning the votes were tallied. The people had cleared their throats and said what they had been waiting a long time to say. The voters had been waiting to say their peace since the federal government had pulled out its checkbook and did what had been expected of the newly empowered Democrats. They spent on banks, they spent on pork projects, they spend on the auto industry, they spent on expanding the government workforce and, in their final hours of real power, they spent on health care.

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Christian Schneider Commentary - Why a Lame Duck Session Could be Good For Unions, but Bad for Taxpayers

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:17:26 -0500

For the first time in ages, Wisconsin is going to have a new governor that did not rise to the state’s top job from the ranks of state government. Yet the specter of one of the current candidates is already affecting how the current state government does business.

The polls may be close, but Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has held a consistent lead in the gubernatorial race against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. This fact is not lost on the elected officials and bureaucrats in Madison, who have been bracing state government for a win by the conservative Walker.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: The Negative Side of Negative Politics

Fri, 8 Oct 2010 09:04:00 -0500

You will have to forgive me, you see I’m in the ideas business and, as such, I have a fair amount of disdain for politics. Being election season, this is a tough time for me. There is a whole lot of politics in the air. Ideas have taken a holiday. I’m somewhat like the baseball fan coming to grips with the way football has come to dominate the sports scene. I get it but I do not like it.

Yet it isn’t really politics that I find troublesome, it’s the phenomenal way that negativity and attacks have taken over politics. On a personal level, it’s made television watching more of an effort than usual. And it’s not just me.

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Daniel Suhr Commentary: The Special Committee to Embarrass Conservatives

Mon, 4 Oct 2010 13:04:02 -0500

Readers of this site are likely familiar with the saga of Wisconsin Judicial Commission v. Hon. Michael Gableman.

One would have expected that this battle had come to a close when the Commission failed to convince a majority of the Supreme Court of its charges, and so discontinued its case. Following the Commission’s decision to end the case, it was said that it was time for the Court to move on from this acrimonious period to focus on the people’s business.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: 2010 - The Year America Chose... An Ideology

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 07:28:02 -0500

By 10:00 PM on the night of November 7, 2006, every drop of blood had run from my head. A sickly pallor had fallen over me. The look of shock on my face resembled one of the teenage boys in "Sixteen Candles" who had just gotten a first look at Molly Ringwald’s underwear.

During the 2006 election cycle, I served as a lead staffer for the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate (CERS.) We were charged, obviously, with retaining the 18-15 Republican advantage in the Wisconsin State Senate - and, until the results came pouring in from all over the state, fully expected to do so.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Milwaukee Versus Wisconsin

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:53:11 -0500

The Capital Times ran a story on Tom Barrett not long ago noting that one of "his favorite conversation ice breakers is telling people how he's often told he doesn't ‘seem’ like someone from Milwaukee."

"At first, I didn't know how to respond to that," Barrett was quoted as saying. "It's kind of like someone telling me I don't look as fat as I do on TV."

It’s a good line. Barrett has a well-deserved reputation for amusing self-deprecation. It’s also politically astute - a fact some proud Milwaukeeans might find jarring in a gubernatorial race between two men, Barrett and Scott Walker, who have for years worked a couple blocks away from each other in the state’s biggest city.

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Refocus Wisconsin: The State Crisis and a Need for a New Charter - by Stephen Goldsmith with Jayson White and Ryan Streeter

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:57:31 -0500

Stephen Goldsmith, the transformative former mayor of Indianapolis and someone who studies government, offers us some truly innovative ideas on how to change and adapt our state government. Based on the polling done for this report, it could not come fast enough. Wisconsinites want bold innovation. With charter government, Mr. Goldsmith offers it.
Overview

The American political system - with its system of checks and balances and unique division of responsibilities among federal, state and local authorities - has created the conditions for an unprecedented expansion of personal wealth and political freedoms. However, the recent growth of government’s size, scope and impact on both the private sector and the political process threatens to weaken, and even reverse, these remarkable gains.

Despite our successful form of government, our prosperity is increasingly endangered by a public sector that has grown overly expensive, decreasingly effective, less responsive to the interests of citizens and excessively controlled by special interests. Government bureaucracies have become ossified and resistant even to marginal improvement. The types of disruptive innovation in the private sector that deliver increasingly better products at better prices have become effectively outlawed in most of the public sector.

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Refocus Wisconsin: Sustaining a Great Public University - by Mike Knetter and Gwen Eudey

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:55:48 -0500

Mike Knetter, UW Business School dean and now the president of the UW Foundation, has a plan for applying market principles to higher education. His plan will maximize the value state taxpayers can realize from the university.

Wisconsin faces a conundrum: Just when thestate and its citizens need a research university most to attract outside funding, fuel job growth, equip individuals to compete in a more knowledge-intensive labor market, and help spawn our own technology-intensive companies- the state is finding it harder to fund the university. There is, however, a logical solution.

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Refocus Wisconsin: Great Schools? Not Without Great Teachers - by Sarah Archibald

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:54:15 -0500

Sarah Archibald, an education policy consultant, diagnoses the key problem facing education in Wisconsin: how to ensure that our classrooms are led by the best possible teachers. Archibald prescribes a tough-love approach that will turn the education establishment on its head. The people of Wisconsin asked for bold leadership. Sarah Archibald’s ideas are just what they asked for.

Here is one of the great disconnects of our time: 60 percent of Wisconsin citizens rated the public schools in the state, with the exception of Milwaukee, as excellent or good. Two years ago, that number was even higher - just under 70 percent. People don’t seem to believe anything is holding education back in Wisconsin. But there are times when fact interferes with perception and - bad news here - this is one of those times. When compared to 17 other large urban districts including Chicago and New York City, Milwaukee’s students are in the back of the pack - only Detroit’s students score lower in math and reading in fourth and eighth grades. Largely driven by the abysmal performance of many of Milwaukee’s public schools, our state has the most persistent gap in achievement between black and white students in the country.

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Refocus Wisconsin: Desperately Seeking a New Tax System - by Richard Chandler

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:52:42 -0500

Former state Revenue Secretary Rick Chandler shows us how Wisconsin’s mix of taxes is constraining our capacity to create jobs and economic growth. This should be required reading for the next governor and Legislature.

An Introduction

Imagine that there’s an old guy driving down the hill in his Model T Ford. He’s out of gas, the muffler has fallen off, and the tires are pretty well shot. But he’s still driving because of gravity and inertia. So, as far as he’s concerned, all is well with the world. Of course, he may run into a problem if he needs to climb up another hill, but that’s not his problem right now.

Imagine this old guy as Wisconsin’s past and present tax system. It’s soaking income earners and property owners. There’s a big hill coming up - the state faces a projected deficit of more than $2 billion in the next budget. And if nothing changes, more businesses and workers, which fund the state, will head to other states, leaving fewer people to pay the bills. But, like our friend going down the hill, we still seem to be doing all right for the time being.

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Refocus Wisconsin: Maybe Elvis Should Have Stayed in the Building - by Alan Borsuk

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:50:47 -0500

Alan Borsuk compares the public schools of Milwaukee and Boston—two cities with similar problems. But one faced those problems with innovation, while the other seemed to fight any kind of change. The results are, sadly, not in Wisconsin’s favor.

A decade ago, opposition mounted to a Wisconsin law adopted several years earlier calling for creation of a test that all students would have to pass to receive a high school diploma. Testing experts were well along the road of developing the test when, buffeted by critics, particularly suburban Milwaukee moms, the graduation requirement began having a series of near-death experiences. One person who was central to the events started privately calling the test "Elvis" -Elvis has left the building, Elvis is back in the building, Elvis is hanging around the door.

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Refocus Wisconsin: Public Opinion in Perspective - Wisconsin's Mind is On Education: by Kenneth Goldstein and William Howell

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:48:59 -0500

Americans are notoriously ill informed about politics and public policy, in general, and education policy, in particular. But the most striking finding on education from the survey done for the Refocusing Wisconsin project was that that citizens of Wisconsin are paying attention - close attention - and have strong opinions when it comes to education. Wisconsin residents are much more likely to stake out a clear position on various education policies than is the American public as a whole.

The survey done for the Refocusing Wisconsin project was a comprehensive examination of state attitudes. It permitted us to examine statewide opinion with a much larger and statistically precise sample than is normally available and also allowed us to compare attitudes across different areas of the state and among different demographic groups.

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Refocus Wisconsin: Leaving the Middle Behind - Wisconsin at a Turning Point: by John Gurda

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:46:56 -0500

Twenty-five years is not a particularly long time, even by American standards. A quarter-century is barely enough for a single generation to grow from infancy to adulthood - hardly an epoch in the annals of the republic. And yet in that blink of an eye, that snap of the fingers, the world can change on a multitude of levels.

Consider the shifts of the most recent quarter-century. In 1985, unless you were in the military, there were no cell phones, much less cell phones that took pictures. There were no iPods, no DVDs, and the first minivans were still under warranty. Some fixtures of American life have slipped beneath the waves since 1985 -typewriters, card catalogs, long-distance bills - and we have grown accustomed to such new features as Google, bar codes, and Viagra.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Does Anyone Still Care About the Supreme Court?

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:21:52 -0500

We’re once again having that old debate over whether to elect or appoint our state Supreme Court justices.

Forced to choose, it’s clear from statistics issued the other day, increasing numbers of Wisconsinites are coming down firmly on the side of "Who cares?" Or, perhaps, "Why do we have a Supreme Court anyway?"

This was not the attitude ten years ago.

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Jake Curtis Commentary - Doesn't the National GOP Get It?

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:03:42 -0500

While there are certainly many casual political observers outside Wisconsin who remain unfamiliar with Congressman Paul Ryan and his Roadmap for America’s Future, Version 2.0, I’m convinced a majority of Wisconsin’s political junkies have already reserved tickets and hotel rooms for January 21, 2013, to witness the swearing-in of Vice President-elect Paul Ryan. And I admit I’m as guilty as anybody - well, my good friend Christian Schneider might be taking the Paul Ryan watch to another level.

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David Dodenhoff, PhD. Commentary - We're Number What?

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:04:58 -0500

Those of you who read my occasional commentaries know that I grew up in Arizona, went to school in California, and now live in Texas. To be frank, my personal geography makes it challenging to comment insightfully about what’s going on in Wisconsin. Sometimes, though, the distance is a blessing -and not just during the eight-month Wisconsin winter. No, sometimes being from somewhere else helps me see things that Wisconsinites themselves may not see as clearly.

One of those things is Wisconsin pride. In my home state of Arizona, we claim no distinction in being from Arizona, nor do we believe that there’s anything special about us or where we live. If you insult Arizona, we just shrug it off (unless you’re from New York City, in which case we simply say, "Scoreboard."). After all, a huge number of us, including my family, moved to Arizona from elsewhere, and have deeper roots in those places than in the Grand Canyon State.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Is Greatness in Wisconsin's Rear View Mirror? Or Can Reform Get us Back on the Road?

Thu, 5 Aug 2010 11:05:57 -0500

Those of us fortunate enough to live in Wisconsin know that ours is a special state. Ask people who have moved away from the state and you will never hear, "I’m lucky to be out of that place." No, even those who have relocated to other states maintain a connection with Wisconsin. There is a pride in having been a cheesehead.

Wisconsin has a quirkiness that we find endearing. We are a hard-working lot, yet we don’t shrink from our hops-infused social heritage. We are farmers, factory workers, teachers and who take pride in being home to one of the nation’s truly great academic institutions. Ask about the appeal of Wisconsin and people quickly point to the quality of life enjoyed here, though they might not be able to put their finger on exactly what they mean by "quality of life."

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Thinking Outside the Box: Ten Ways for Wisconsin Government to Raise More Revenue

Tue, 3 Aug 2010 11:46:57 -0500

So, as you know, the state has a $2.7 billion deficit to fill.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker says he’s going to make state employees pay for a part of their own pensions as part of his deficit reduction plan. Democrat Tom Barrett’s plan to make up the deficit amounts to forcing people to ask for their health care benefits more politely. And Republican Mark Neumann’s budget plan is to have super-intelligent dolphins invent a time machine, travel back in history, and befriend the Founding Fathers. Having learned the ways and customs of Madison and Hamilton, the Founding Dolphins would return to modern time and take full control of state government based on the original framers’ intent.

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Jen Limbach Commentary: Crazy Idea - A Market for Pharmaceutical Waste Treatment

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:36:27 -0500

There is something in the water. And it is affecting the people. It’s attacking their brains, and it’s changing them. This mysterious pollutant is not the infamous biological warfare chemical "Trixie" from the 1973 film "The Crazies", nor was it leaked by the government. Rather it is a host of chemical components that individuals have allowed to slip into the water supply. An alarming amount of pharmaceutical contaminants are currently being found in our drinking water.

Medical residue from everything from antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers, tranquilizers, heart medications, infection fighters, and hormones has been discovered from tests of drinking water around the country. This poses serious concerns both from an environmental and a public health perspective. The classic studies of the feminized frogs and amphibians, thought to be more sensitive to aquatic pollutants, have revealed that the cause of the problem has been pharmaceutical residue, largely from contraceptives containing high amounts of hormones.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Remember What Kessler and Curley Did to Joe Wall - And the Law.

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:49:06 -0500

Joan Kessler, already in her mid-60s, was just re-elected to a six-year term on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.
Her colleague, longtime Court of Appeals Judge Patricia Curley, is not slated to face voters until the spring of 2014 - at which time she will be 67.

If either one of them ever stands for re-election again, many Wisconsinites will likely have forgotten the truth about the so-called "Baby Mama Drama."

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WI Magazine: Rebel Without a Pause: Our reporter spends 48 hectic hours with rising GOP star Paul Ryan. Just how far can his reform plans take him? - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:26:07 -0500

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan is a verbal machine gun. Silence is the only thing he attacks with more ferocity than government-run health care. But when the topic turns to him, he hesitates.

"Being recognized in public isn’t something I ever really wanted," Ryan says to me as he takes a sip from his Singha beer. We’re at Washington D.C.’s Talay Thai restaurant, which Ryan can see from his Capitol office window. "It’s really weird to have someone write about your life - it just seems so boring to me," he says as he picks at his plate of drunken noodles.

"I’m not trying to sell myself as a star," he says. I note that we could wallpaper the Capitol with the portraits of representatives whose names will never cross the lips of another human being. Ryan says he can only handle 10% of the 50-to-60 press inquiries he receives each day. So why is he getting so much attention?

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WI Magazine: Exclusive Web Extra: Rebel Without a Pause: Behind the Scenes with Paul Ryan - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:24:03 -0500

Here at WPRI, we seem to be writing about Paul Ryan a lot. People are probably starting to wonder if our acronym stands for the "Wisconsin Paul Ryan Institute."

But much like Ron Burgundy, Ryan is kind of a big deal. People know him. (I was unable to determine whether his apartment smells of rich mahogany.) So I was enlisted to write a lengthy article about his life in Washington, D.C. - which required me to make a trip out there in May to follow him around.

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WI Magazine: UW-Madison's Diversity Problem: It isn’t racial, but intellectual. The Havens Center’s leftist tilt is a troublesome example. - by David Blaska

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:21:48 -0500

Remember Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war stalker of President George W. Bush?

The poor lady’s 15 minutes of fame expired a good two years ago when even Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama kept his distance. Yet, here she was this past April primed to speak on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus when the Memorial Union realized that no proper university group was sponsoring the event.

Up to the plate, at the 11th hour, stepped the Havens Center to offer its sponsorship.

The Havens Center? In its account of the Sheehan snafu, The Capital Times described the Havens Center as "dedicated to promoting critical intellectual reflection and exchange, both within the academy as well as between it and the broader society."

That naive puffery from Madison’s self-proclaimed progressive voice was too much even for UW student Jack Craver, a liberal who blogs for Isthmus, the Madison weekly.

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WI Magazine: The Great Train Robbery:Hold on to your wallet: The state's big federal grant is anything but free - by Patrick McIlheran

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:20:18 -0500

Business, it is said, clamors to zip by train between Milwaukee and Madison. Business, we’re told, needs high-speed rail and its $810 million in federal funding to get it built.

Well, not all business. You have to figure John Meier is an exception.

Officially, Meier says his family’s company, Badger Coaches, is willing to work with any new entrants into its bread-and-butter market. One must surmise the unspoken phrase: ...even if that includes a state-sponsored, richly subsidized train that’s meant to squash me.

The train, say backers, will offer a fast, convenient alternative to driving between Madison and Milwaukee.

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WI Magazine: Fresh Take on Urban Schooling:Teach for America finds success in training nontraditional teachers like Tom Schalmo - by Sunny Schubert

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:18:58 -0500

It is just minutes before the bell rings to end Tom Schalmo’s eighth-grade reading class at Milwaukee’s Burbank Elementary School, and the first-year teacher is trying hard to keep the 29 kids in his room focused.

He is reviewing the answers to a test on the book Holes by Louis Sachar. But a warm breeze floats through the window, carrying the sounds of kids on the playground three stories below. Schalmo’s students are restless, and he has to tell them to "Sit down" repeatedly. He does it firmly, without saying "Please," and without raising his voice.

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WI Magazine: Consider the Humble Candidates: Who cares if they grew up eating dirt sandwiches? - by Christian Schneider

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:15:35 -0500

In an online ad, Republican congressional candidate Dan Kapanke wants you to know he’s a real guy. "Having been born and raised on a dairy farm, I have a pretty good idea of what Wisconsin people value," says Democrat Ron Kind’s challenger for the 8th District seat.

While it’s a nice sentiment, it’s meaningless. Growing up on a dairy farm doesn’t teach anyone anything I value. It teaches a person to milk cows and shovel manure.

This is perhaps the most annoying aspect of campaign commercials by candidates of both parties - the "I’m from humble beginnings" talking point.

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WI Magazine: Presidential Deafness: Obama champions dialogue but fails to listen - by Rick Esenberg

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:13:18 -0500

Recently, a liberal friend suggested that I read President Obama’s "nuanced and thoughtful defense of government" at the University of Michigan’s recent commencement ceremony. I bit and found it instructive, although not in the way in which my friend intended.

The president’s point of departure is a question posed to him by a kindergartener in Virginia: "Are people being nice?"

No, the president responded, they most certainly are not. While allowing that politics has never been a beanbag, he reprises his earlier observations about why the benighted "cling to God and guns."

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WI Magazine: Milwaukee's School Experiment Shows Promise - by Patrick Wolf

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:11:49 -0500

On a rainy May morning in 2008, my research team assembled at the Italian Community Center in downtown Milwaukee for focus-group sessions with the parents of students enrolled in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

After a long morning of listening to parents vent about the aspects of their children’s schools that disappointed them, the tone of the meeting suddenly changed when we concluded with an "open mike" session.

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WI Magazine: Dispatches - by Charles J. Sykes

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:10:14 -0500

April, as T.S. Eliot reminded us, is the cruelest month, and this year it was especially cruel to incumbent politicians (although one suspects November will be even crueler). It was also hard on the nation’s wallet. For only the third time in the last 30 years, the federal government ran a deficit in the month when Americans file their tax returns, bleeding $82.7 billion in red ink. The national debt passed $13 trillion, and Europe’s debt crisis gave us a glimpse of what bloated pensions and unsustainable entitlements will do to our fiscal future.

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WI Magazine: Editor's Note - By Charles J. Sykes

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:08:51 -0500

For a rising political star, Paul Ryan remains a remarkably lonely political figure. For years, under both Democrats and Republicans, he has warned about the need to avert a fiscal meltdown, but even though his detailed "Roadmap" for restraining government spending was widely praised, it was embraced by very few.

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WI Magazine: Justice Decried: Discord has split the Wisconsin Supreme Court, damaging its productivity and reputation for fairness - by Mike Nichols:

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:42:44 -0500

Using bitingly personal language, the seven justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court spent much of the current term arguing over, among other things, when and whether they could be forced out of cases before the court.

Given how few cases have actually been resolved as the term winds toward its August end, skeptics might ask a different question: When might they actually consider a few?
As both ideological and deeply personal disputes become increasingly public, the court’s members are issuing fewer opinions than any other Wisconsin Supreme Court in decades, according to their own statistics. The opinions they are working on, moreover, appear destined for release in a spastic flurry at the very end of the term.

Meanwhile, a long-term trend continues unabated: Fewer and fewer citizens feel it’s worthwhile to even petition the high court for justice.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Is the Term "American Consumerism" Redundant?

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:55:06 -0500

We want it all; four words that define America. What is remarkable is that, for 234 years we have been able to attain and obtain pretty much everything we set our sights on.

Increased life expectancy, check. Ever rising living standard, check. Avarice, hedonism, religiosity - check, check and check. America has amassed a long list of accumulation and accomplishment.

The fact that it is never enough is part of our charm as Americans; we want it all. For example, we have a health care system that is the envy of the world. We think nothing of replacing a hip or a heart valve so we can continue to play tennis on Tuesday and Saturday. Yet many of us cannot sleep soundly knowing that about 10% of Americans can only get health care by visiting an emergency room. The rest of us can’t sleep because of the cost of health insurance.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Cutting to a Broader Truth

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:13:46 -0500

The street that Mr. T. Quiles lives on with his family on the west side of Milwaukee literally dead-ends into the playground of Luther Burbank School.

There is only one other house between Quiles' home, where Mr. Quiles was cutting his grass the other day, and the Burbank schoolyard. Some teachers heading to the elementary school in the morning have to walk further from their cars in the parking lot across S. 61 St., it appears, than his kids would have to walk from their own front door - those teachers who still have jobs, that is.

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Jo Egelhoff Commentary: It's All About the Dues

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:34:48 -0500

Members of the state’s newest public employee union are not really public employees at all - quite the trick.

And pretty slick. As in 17 other states (so far), independent Wisconsin service workers, paid with state or federal dollars, were just too tempting a target for the unions to pass up.

In Wisconsin, it’s the Wisconsin Quality Home Care Authority, hatched out of pixie dust in the 2009-2011 state budget. Details of the virgin birth are here. The stated goal for the newly formed QHCA is to provide a "forum for efforts to increase the number of individual home care providers in the state and improve quality of care."

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Annette Talis Commentary: Sometimes a Government Grant Application is Just Another Government Grant Application

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:24:21 -0500

Public school parents in Wisconsin were advised this week to rest easier this summer knowing the public schools their children will attend in the fall may be a little better because Gov. Jim Doyle, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers and representatives of education organizations "sat in a room" this spring. After Wisconsin’s initial application for federal "Race to the Top" funds was rejected, a comprehensive school-reform agenda was released June 1 as a revised application to earn $250 million of the second-round grant funds.

The Race grant application was described by Doyle - standing in Milwaukee alongside Evers and Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) - as "a blueprint" for change.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The 2010 WPRI Yearbook (Or, why WPRI roolz and your think tank droolz.)

Mon, 7 Jun 2010 15:54:17 -0500

Yearbooks provide an important service. They allow us to prove that mullets were once an acceptable hairstyle. They make us feel as if we’ve matured since the days when we used Pink Floyd lyrics as our senior quotes. Their existence proves that shortly before I entered high school, my school actually had a "smoking court" where students were welcome to go choke down a heater between classes.

Most importantly, yearbooks allow us to look back at one year in history as a snapshot in time. We here at WPRI thought it might be worthwhile to look back at 2009-10 Wisconsin legislative session and mark our successes for future generations. And to also remind me that my boss routinely holds me over the toilet by my ankles and flushes my head in it. (Commonly referred to in high school parlance as a "swirlie.")

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Wisconsin - Whistling Past the Graveyard

Thu, 3 Jun 2010 11:55:05 -0500

The other day I found myself poking through the WPRI archives. I couldn’t help but reflect on how very different Wisconsin is today than in 1987when WPRI was founded. This is a very different state than it was in the mid-1980s. In so many ways, it was better then. We have watched somewhat passively as the foundations of our quality of life have gradually eroded.

Like the boy whistling past the graveyard, we have tried to reassure ourselves that things in Wisconsin are all right. Yet there are big, daunting problems undermining our economy and our quality of life.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Spencer Black Should Give His Angels Their Due - by Mike Nichols

Mon, 24 May 2010 10:18:17 -0500

Spencer Black owes us at least $18,000.

And that doesn’t include interest. With interest, I figure the retiring pol from Madison owes us more like $35,000.

He’s got it, too.

Black has $145,000 in his campaign account (about the same amount of money, rumor coincidentally has it, it would have cost each man, woman and child in Wisconsin if he had actually succeeded in passing all the legislation he proposed over the years.)

In the 26 years in the legislature he spent building up the sum, he noted recently, he never once took a campaign contribution from a Political Action Committee, a lobbyist or anyone from out of state. Instead he took a lot of money from, for example, Forest County Potawatomi Tribal Chairman Harold "Gus" Frank, people who made their living off the state, and us -- taxpayers.

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Jo Egelhoff Commentary: Need More Union Members? Legislate Them

Tue, 18 May 2010 16:21:39 -0500

How to increase union membership among non-government workers? Legislate it - and include it as a non-fiscal policy item in your state’s massive budget bill.

Just what the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and its supporters did in 2008. And just what the SEIU did in earlier years, first establishing a pilot referral program in Dane County.

The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign provides the "follow-the-money" history: In 2002, four SEIU locals made over $750,000 in independent expenditures, mostly on behalf of Dem primary candidate (and not coincidentally, Dane County Executive) Kathleen Falk. Eight SEIU locals inside and outside Wisconsin contributed another $190,000+, with "most of the contributions" going to Falk.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Education Reform in Wisconsin Cannot Penetrate a Thick Padding of Insulation

Thu, 13 May 2010 10:50:19 -0500

Thanks largely to the efforts of President Obama, more Americans are paying attention to education reform. In Wisconsin, many people were forced out of their comfort zone (we are pleased about ranking either #1 or #2 in ACT scores) when the Obama administration snubbed our request for federal "Race to the Top" money.

Just as the public is coming to understand the vulnerability of the Wisconsin economy, they are beginning to see the vulnerability of our K-12 school system. Dropouts are up, test scores are down, and we have never spent more on education. Increasingly, people are beginning to demand more performance from their education dollar.

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Jake Curtis Commentary: A Bold Step for a New Conservative Generation

Mon, 10 May 2010 10:54:48 -0500

I recently attended a downtown Milwaukee event which featured Congressman Paul Ryan. The 40-year old congressman from Wisconsin’s 1st District has been one of the leading voices in the rebirth of conservatism both here in Wisconsin and nationally.

Mr. Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future is often cited as the most substantive and comprehensive conservative plan currently in circulation, even garnering praise from President Obama. Christian Schneider makes one of the most persuasive arguments for a 2012 Ryan presidential campaign. But heaping additional praise on Mr. Ryan is not the point of this commentary.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: How Eric Davis Can Save America

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:01:51 -0500

1987 was a big year for the Cincinnati Reds’ athletic young star Eric Davis. The graceful, lithe outfielder was coming off a breakout season in which he hit 27 home runs and stole 80 bases. He was a combination of power and speed the league hadn’t seen in some time (and wouldn’t see for at least one more year, when a skinny rookie named Barry Bonds would make his debut.) In their 1987 season preview, Sports Illustrated called Davis "the Michael Jordan of baseball."

It just so happened that Eric Davis’ emergence coincided with the explosion of the baseball card industry in the late 1980s. Baseball cards had been around in some form for over a century; but a variety of factors (most notably the loosening of the Topps card company’s monopoly on card production) propelled baseball card trading into a lucrative investment opportunity for kids and adults alike. By 1987, a Don Mattingly rookie card, issued only three years earlier, could fetch $90. After his historic 49 home run rookie season, Mark McGwire’s 1985 Topps Olympic rookie card shot up to 30 bucks apiece.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: The Bad Teacher Protection Racket - How State Law Keeps Us From Knowing Who Can Teach Our Kids

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:02:14 -0500

Legislators trying to help save a generation of Milwaukee children from lives of poverty and unemployment want to add a new law to the books in Madison this week.

They should, if they want to make a real difference, also delete one.

Part of the new education bill passed by the Senate the other day, and now being considered by the Assembly, calls for rigorous, annual teacher performance evaluations – something that many districts all across America already supposedly administer.

But not really.

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Jo Egelhoff Commentary: Are Wisconsin Republicans Being Rolled?

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:48:50 -0500

It has come to be known as "The Colorado Model" - take some pretty big bucks, divvy them up among a few sleepy, local races and voila, the Dems - and very liberal Dems at that - control a state’s legislature. Faster than the speed of kryptonite - or something like that.

A bevy of researchers have noted the stealth spread of multi-multi-millionaire, gay activist Coloradan Tim Gill’s money, pals, more money - and influence.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: There's Joy in Giving - Or Maybe at Least a Job

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:41:21 -0500

Increasing numbers of people are clamoring for publicly funded campaigns.

They forget that, in Wisconsin, we’ve had them forever.
I don’t refer here to that little box on your tax form that allows you to funnel a buck to the Wisconsin Election Campaign Fund. I refer to the age-old practice of political tithing.

Private-sector folks might have to tithe to their churches. Government employees, if they realize what’s good for them, also have to kick back some of their taxpayer-funded salaries to the political deities who hand out the jobs and promotions - and take them away.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: School Choice Deserves the Red Carpet Treatment

Wed, 7 Apr 2010 20:29:28 -0500

I generally have a great deal of sympathy for regular schmoes who look inordinately like famous people. Through no fault of their own, they walk through life being judged on what they are not (the famous person), rather than what they are (a working stiff that is sick of being told he looks like Jim from "The Office.")

Imagine if you were the guy who works at Kinko’s who looks sort of like Matt Damon. (Trust me, this is going somewhere.) People don’t notice that you may be better looking than your average guy - they only judge you on how far you fall short of looking like Jason Bourne. (After all, if you looked exactly like Matt Damon, you probably wouldn’t be working at Kinko’s. Staples, maybe - but certainly not Kinko’s.)

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George Lightbourn Commentary: An Open Letter to Marty Beil

Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:52:50 -0500

Dear Marty,

I’ve been thinking about your reaction to the WPRI study on public pensions. You said, "Public employees tend to be paid less than people doing similar work in the private sector. Public employees have traditionally taken lower wages today in exchange for better retirement security tomorrow."

You further maintained that this is a good deal for taxpayers. "This helps taxpayers because public employees save money by contributing to retirement funds instead of paying higher salaries because, unlike wages, retirement contributions aren’t subject to federal Social Security taxes."

Fair enough. Maybe you have a point. We here at WPRI wondered if that message was understood by the public, so we asked them. In our recent poll, we asked:

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Wisconsin - The Repeal Deal

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:11:51 -0500

The ink had not yet dried on the final letter "a" of "Barack Obama" before Republicans began calling for repeal of the massive national health care reorganization bill the president had just signed into law. This seems to be a politically shrewd move for the national GOP, as public opinion polls routinely show widespread opposition to the bill.

Leading the call for repeal is someone who had been one of the bill’s fiercest critics in the months leading up to its passage - newly minted national star Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. In 2010, only Lady Gaga has rivaled Ryan in terms of national media exposure (and it appears that her only talent is her uncanny ability to avoid wearing pants in public.)

Ryan has smartly re-framed the health care repeal movement, urging lawmakers to "repeal and replace" the recently enacted law. He rightly recognizes the need for Republicans to push actual ideas, rather than being cast in their usual role as nattering nabobs of negativity. In fact, Ryan can be credited as the single reason the GOP at the national level is no longer seen merely as the "party of no." (Although just saying no to this health care bill may prove to be a political gold mine for Republicans.)

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Some Free Advice for Felons

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:03:49 -0500

I have a little free advice for felons interested in working a lucrative scam with the assistance of an increasingly tight-lipped, if not increasingly tight-fisted, federal government.
Open a small convenience store and ask the Food and Nutrition Service to let you sell stuff through the gigantic $50 billion-a-year Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program I wrote about in the most recent edition of Wisconsin Interest.

It is true that if you are a crook, you’re not supposed to be able to do this. Federal regulations state that the FNS must deny the application of any retailer with a conviction for, among other things, embezzlement, theft, forgery, receiving stolen property or obstruction – and for a good reason. Small retail stores are notorious for trafficking SNAP benefits, or what used to be known as food stamps before the advent of electronic, taxpayer-funded debit cards.

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WI Magazine: Dead Idea Walking: Poor strategy, muddled efforts and strong opposition killed the Doyle-Barrett plan to overhaul Milwaukee's crisis-ridden schools - by Alan J. Borsuk

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:34:41 -0500

It was an off-the-record conversation early last summer with a major figure in education politics in Wisconsin. I suggested that if a serious move was made to put the Milwaukee Public Schools under mayoral control, the outcome would be decided by a few specific people.

"Gwen Moore?" the source suggested.

No, but what an interesting thought. And it pointed to several key reasons that the proposal, when it came a couple months later from Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, faltered from the start, never picked up momentum, and soon became a dead idea walking.

When Moore, the popular congresswoman who is influential among Milwaukee's African Americans, promptly came out against mayoral control, her decision pointed to three major flaws in the Doyle-Barrett plan:

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WI Magazine: Getting Ahead: Eight steps to reinvigorate the ravaged Wisconsin economy after a decade of decline - by Thomas Hefty and John Torinus Jr.

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:32:34 -0500

In the July 2009 issue of Wisconsin Interest, we wrote that Wisconsin had fallen behind in the race to create jobs and raise family incomes. We found that the Doyle years were a decade of economic disappointments. The state failed to create new jobs while descending to Alabama-level wages.

By 2008, Wisconsin ranked 47th among states in five-year personal income growth. Our job growth was less than half that of neighboring Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota. And this was before the recession, which left the state reeling from job losses almost 20% greater than the national average. By December 2009, Wisconsin had lost a stunning 176,700 jobs-a 6.1% decline in the workforce-over the previous two years.
Since our July report, there has been mostly bad news. Forbes dropped Wisconsin to 48th in its 2010 business ranking of the states. The Pew Center on the States named Wisconsin one of the 10 worst states for fiscal stability, as it connected the dots between the state's dismal economic performance and the huge revenue gap in the state budget.

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WI Magazine: When "A" Stands for "Average:" Students at the UW-Madison School of Education receive sky-high grades. How smart is that? By Marc Eisen

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:31:12 -0500

Lake Wobegon has nothing on the UW-Madison School of Education. All of the children in Garrison Keillor's fictional Minnesota town are "above average." Well, in the School of Education they're all A students.

The 1,400 or so kids in the teacher-training department soared to a dizzying 3.91 grade point average on a four-point scale in the spring 2009 semester.

This was par for the course, so to speak. The eight departments in Education (see below) had an aggregate 3.69 grade point average, next to Pharmacy the highest among the UW's schools. Scrolling through the Registrar's online grade records is a discombobulating experience, if you hold to an old-school belief that average kids get C's and only the really high performers score A's.

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WI Magazine: Youthful Indiscretions: Our Politicians are Both Juvenile and Delinquent - By Christian Schneider

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:29:20 -0500

The ubiquitous television commercial plays nonstop, making it the aural wallpaper of our lives: Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" remixed over modern beats, reminds us that the fountain of youth can be found in a sweet carbonated beverage.

It's not the first marketing campaign to promise us eternal youth, and it won't be the last. In fact, as we get older, commercials sell us on being even younger-in 10 years, Pepsi is probably going to promise me I can enjoy life once again as a fetus.

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WI Magazine: "Debts No Honest Man Can Pay:" Paul Ryan, unlike the president, acts like a grownup in facing the entitlement tsunami - By Richard Esenberg

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:28:04 -0500

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama invoked great crises in American history like Bull Run and Omaha Beach. He referred to the stock market's crash on Black Tuesday and that Bloody Sunday in 1965 when civil rights marchers were brutally beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

On all these occasions, we were tested and compelled to "answer the call of history." The president sees a similar challenge before us today.

He's right. But it's not clear that he understands why.

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WI Magazine Guest Column: A Parent's Education: The foibles of progressive schooling prompt a search for a better alternative - by Warren Kozak

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:26:21 -0500

Here's how my formal education began: On a September morning in 1957, my mother and I walked the block and a half to 53rd Street School on Milwaukee's northwest side. We went to the school office, she filled out some forms, said goodbye and "see you at lunch." Here was another Kozak for the Milwaukee Public Schools to educate.

There was, of course, no choice, which made the entire process much simpler. Since we weren't Catholic, the parochial alternative wasn't an option, and if there were any private schools in Milwaukee at the time (there was one), I'm sure my parents never considered it.

There was good reason for my parents' carefree attitude. The public school system in Milwaukee circa 1957 was first-rate. The teachers were committed professionals. The curriculum had not changed appreciably since my parents' day. They were satisfied with their experience and found the public schools perfectly adequate for their children.

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WI Magazine: Dispatches - Winter Madness - By Charles J. Sykes

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:25:11 -0500

Even for a normally frigid region like ours, this was still the season of our discontent. Abetted by the dysfunctional politics of Illinois, the Asian carp continued their inexorable assault on the Great Lakes, and we learned that Wisconsin had lost 163,000 jobs in the Great Recession.

And, amid the winter gloom, comes word from Madison that the highest-paid city employee is a hard-working municipal bus driver named James Nelson, who pulled in $159,258 in 2009, including $109,892 in overtime. And as the new decade dawned, the state celebrated the dubious distinction of having, for the first time in its history, more souls working in government than in manufacturing.

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WI Magazine: Editor's Note - The Takeover Takedown - By Charles J. Sykes

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:23:45 -0500

Even in a year of notable failures-from the stimulus to health care reform-the collapse of efforts to reform the Milwaukee Public Schools stands out as an epic flop. As veteran education reporter Alan J. Borsuk writes in our cover story, the stars seemingly were aligned for a mayoral takeover of the dysfunctional system.

"[Y]ou had the president of the United States, the secretary of education, the governor of Wisconsin and the mayor of Milwaukee-all Democrats-coming down firmly for what they wanted to see happen in the Democratic-controlled Wisconsin Legislature.

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WI Magazine: Fraud... Who Cares? The State's FoodShare program feeds 700,000 - and appears utterly unconcerned about cheaters - by Mike Nichols

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:14:37 -0500

Peggy Sullivan was given a government-issued debit card to buy groceries in Wisconsin at the same time she was collecting the same public assistance benefit in South Carolina-a modest scam that earned the 38-year-old more than $1,000.

Angela Bain, a 20-year-old Milwaukee woman, had $43 left on a taxpayer-funded "Quest" card when she sold it to somebody else for $20.

Forty-eight-year-old Kathleen Parr falsely claimed that her son lived with her in Pewaukee for eight months when he was actually living with his father in Mukwonago-a lie worth about $1,400 in federal food money.

Each woman committed her crime back in 2002 or 2003, and each was convicted of public assistance fraud. Sullivan and Parr ended up with felonies, Bain with a misdemeanor.

They were also guilty of bad timing. Each ran her scam back when Wisconsin's FoodShare program was a mere fraction of its current size-and when the state devoted far more money to detecting fraud.

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Sunny Schubert Commentary: Double Checking Facts - A Lost Art

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:14:40 -0500

There’s an old adage that used to be beaten into every journalism student’s head: "If your mother says she loves you, check it."

Also: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

I sure wish my fellow conservatives would learn this, before they squander their political capital by sounding dumb.

There are a lot of conservatives out there who seem willing to believe anything they hear or read, no matter how ridiculous, about the Evil Left-Wing Obama Administration and Their Eco-Terrorist America-Hating Femi-Nazi Friends.
Of course, I’m just judging by the stuff that ends up in my e-mail inbox.

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The WPRI March 2010 Poll of Public Opinion: Likely Wisconsin Voters Pessimistic About State's Direction, Signaling Close Races

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:12:36 -0500

Although Wisconsinites are pessimistic about the direction of both the state and the country and remain anxious about the economic situation, there are some green shoots of optimism in public attitudes, according to a Wisconsin Policy Research Institute poll of likely Wisconsin voters.

A majority of Wisconsinites - 57 percent -- say the state is on the wrong track while 34 percent say the state is headed in the right direction. Similar to nationwide surveys, Wisconsinites are more pessimistic about the direction of the country with 62 percent saying the country is on the wrong track.

Read the Poll:

George Lightbourn Commentary: WPRI Pension Study Hits a Nerve

Thu, 4 Mar 2010 09:45:56 -0600

Wow. I never imagined that an actuary could create such a stir. But since we at the WPRI published a study prepared by Joan Gucciardi, a respected actuary, there has been a steady stream of invective coming out of Madison. We actually shouldn’t be surprised since the study dealt with the third rail of government; public pensions.

Some of the reaction to our study has been thoughtful, some has been intemperate. I have to say that overall I am mystified by the reaction from my former colleagues. They can only be diagnosed as turning a rather indifferent ear to Wisconsin taxpayers.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Why Congress is Wigging Out

Wed, 3 Mar 2010 06:47:29 -0600

When men start to go bald, they basically have two options: they can man up, accept their fate and buy an expensive car, or they can try wearing a ridiculous toupee.

(I guess a third option is to get hair plugs - like they do in the Hair Club for Men. I love their ads, because they promise that I can go jet-skiing with my new hair - which is awesome, because I didn't know how to jet ski before.)*

The thought process behind men wearing wigs is fascinating. They recognize that it looks ridiculous - there isn’t a person they pass on the street that doesn’t go "whoa - look at that rug!" But they do the internal calculus and determine that the fact they’re obviously wearing a toupee is preferable to the horrors of seeing the top of their scalp.

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WPRI Report: The Imbalance Between Public and Private Pensions in Wisconsin

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:06:12 -0600

The recent fiscal challenges facing Wisconsin state and local governments have caused a serious reevaluation of all aspects of , nearly all public employees participate in the same government spending. Yet, little attention has been given to the cost of providing pensions to public employees. In Wisconsin pension system: the Wisconsin retirement system. In 2007 (the last year for which data is available) contributions to public pensions required $1.3 billion in taxpayer support.

This report is an initial attempt to highlight public employee pensions. We compared pension benefits across all salary ranges. Specifically, this report looks at public pensions in the context of pensions available to employees in the private sector. Of course, public sector employment differs from private sector employment in a number of ways. This study only examines differences in pensions between public and private sector employers. This is not intended to be a comprehensive comparison of compensation and benefits. It does not examine salaries or other benefits such as health insurance for workers or retirees. Only through such a comprehensive evaluation could an assessment be made as to the relative strengths and weaknesses of the public and private sector compensation.

This report highlights significant differences between public and private pensions in Wisconsin. Public employee pensions are marked by stability and provide employees with certainty in their retirement. The few changes that have been made to the WRS in recent years have served to enhance the benefits to employees. In addition, any review of the WRS must highlight the fact that nearly all of the contributions to the system are made by the employer. Overall, employees contribute less than one percent of the cost of their retirement.

Read Full Report

Mike Nichols Commentary: We're in Rare Air - Or So You'd Think

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:00:42 -0600

I’ve changed my mind.

I think everyone should support the governor’s big global warming bill that would cost us untold thousands of jobs.
With one, tiny caveat.

All decreases in temperature resulting from the new, hugely expensive initiatives in the bill must be reserved for Wisconsin’s atmosphere, and our atmosphere alone. If any of our new air leaks over to, say, South Beloit, Ill. or Stillwater, Minn., I can’t, in good conscience, support anything else in the bill either.

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WPRI EXCLUSIVE: A Second Wisconsin Early Release Inmate Back in Custody

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:50:14 -0600

A second early release inmate from Milwaukee County was arrested Sunday, WPRI has learned. Robert L. Morris is the second inmate to land back in custody within two months of his early release from the state prison system.

Eight of those first 22 released inmates were from Milwaukee County. That’s a 25 percent recidivism rate for Milwaukee County early release inmates in less than 2 months.

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WPRI EXCLUSIVE: One of the State's First Early Release Prisoners Already Back in Custody - By Jessica McBride

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:02:15 -0600

One of the first state prison inmates released early - a 12-time Milwaukee felon named Derrick Parnell - is already back in custody, less than two months after his release, WPRI has learned. Furthermore, it’s his second arrest since being released, although the first was for an invalid warrant.

According to the records division of the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, Parnell - who was released Jan. 5 by Corrections as part of the first wave of early release inmates -- has been in custody at the facility since Feb. 10 on a Corrections hold for allegedly violating his supervision. The facility records office would not provide details of the allegations. As of Friday, Parnell was still in custody there.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Are All "Special Interests" Created Equal?

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:52:30 -0600

"There are no political phenomena except group phenomena."

-Arthur F. Bentley, 1908

Americans all agree - there is no more vulgar term in politics than the label "special interest." "Special interests" are blamed for all the worst government failures - the economy, health care costs, rising fuel prices, Joe Biden’s hair plugs.

So what is a "special interest?" Generally speaking, it’s a group of people to which we don’t belong, lobbying government to do something that we don’t like. (Groups that we are members of and with which we are aligned are generally glowingly referred to as "grassroots organizations," or "advocacy groups.")

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David Dodenhoff, Ph.D. Commentary: Government Doing What Government Does - The Case of Food Stamps in Wisconsin

Tue, 9 Feb 2010 07:51:27 -0600

The federal food stamp program - the proper name of which is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP - is an important element of the social safety net. For families and individuals that have fallen on hard times, SNAP provides an electronic benefits transfer card that works just like cash at most grocery stores. SNAP benefits can be used to purchase food items for consumption at home, and may not be used for such things as alcohol, tobacco, non-food items, and hot/prepared foods.

Knowing only this much, what would you guess happened to SNAP expenditures in Wisconsin between 2008 and 2009? Here are your choices: (1) they increased a lot; (2) they stayed more or less the same; (3) they decreased a little. Remember, SNAP is a program for low-income individuals and families.

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Jake Curtis Commentary: The Key to Ensuring Public Safety - Prioritization

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 09:06:51 -0600

In this heated political climate, calls for limiting spending and lowering taxes are gaining more and more traction. This is something conservatives should obviously be pleased with. One need look no further than the recent electoral success of conservative gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia in the fall and the recent Scott Brown victory in blue Massachusetts in January. But even with all this evidence of a changing political climate, President Obama and other liberals in Washington ignore reality - evidenced by the $3.69 trillion 2011 Federal Budget Proposal.

Unfortunately, it is no better at the state level. Wisconsin Democrats continue to pass outrageous budgets that raise spending to obscene levels. And the idea of prioritization is not even on liberals' radars. The Wisconsin budget passed last summer increases spending by 6.2% while cutting funding for district attorneys by 8.1%.

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WPRI Special Report: Back on the Street - The Media Thinks that Wisconsin is Letting "Nonviolent" Offenders Out of Prison - How Did They Get it So Wrong? By Jessica McBride

Wed, 3 Feb 2010 09:01:53 -0600

Many in the media have cast 2009’s sentencing reforms as early release for "non-violent offenders." However, the changes actually give violent felons - including homicide offenders - multiple new chances to get out of prison early and to shorten their state supervision in the community.

Felons who beat up or point guns at cops or who cause a death while fleeing an officer? They can get time shaved off their sentences now. So can those who batter judges, witnesses, and jurors. Those who cause mayhem or subject someone to false imprisonment? Some stalkers? They can get time off too.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Revenge of the Nerd - Why Paul Ryan can be our Next President

Mon, 1 Feb 2010 06:36:48 -0600

In the 1995 movie "The American President," Michael Douglas plays Andrew Shepherd, a U.S. President who proudly hails from Wisconsin. In the movie, President Shepherd must choose between supporting a gun control bill and a "pollution reduction bill," which happens to be the pet cause of his environmental lobbyist girlfriend. (This plot contrivance is only slightly less plausible than Massachusetts voters replacing Ted Kennedy with a Republican best known for showing Cosmopolitan Magazine readers the contents of his underpants.)

Clearly, the idea of a Wisconsin president seems calming to people. For filmmakers, having a character hail from the Dairy State is intended to show that they’re imbued with a common sense wholesomeness - to the nation, Wisconsin folks are grounded, salt-of-the-earth types. (My friends from other states still believe that roads in Wisconsin are only passable via tractor.)

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WPRI Special Report: Back on the Street: Does the State Know What Kind of Criminals They Are Sending Back Into our Neighborhoods?

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:27:29 -0600

In previous installments of this ongoing report, WPRI has documented the backgrounds of some of the supposed "nonviolent" criminals being let out of prison pursuant to a law change by the Wisconsin Governor and Legislature in 2009. A closer look at many of these criminals sheds more light on who may being coming back to a neighborhood near you.

One of the inmates released early by the Department of Corrections, Robert Morris, has a violent and weapons criminal history, including convictions for endangering safety by conduct regardless of life, battery, and firearm possession, a WPRI review of circuit court files found.

Just one year ago, Corrections argued to keep him incarcerated, noting, "Confinement in a structured correctional setting is necessary to protect the community from further criminal behavior by the offender." He’d already had his supervision revoked 6 times and been incarcerated 9 times.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Who Was John Galt? Fittingly, a Wisconsinite.

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:10:23 -0600

"Who is John Galt?" Ayn Rand famously asked in the opening line of Atlas Shrugged.

Rand - the "one thinker, one person" Janesville Congressman Paul Ryan, among others, has credited with sparking his interest in politics - spilled much of her 1,168-page tome on the answer. And millions of readers have pondered the question ever since she posed it some 60 years ago.

Too few have noted a basic biographical fact.

John Galt was a Wisconsinite.

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Sunny Schubert Commentary: Beware of Government's Death Ray

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:34:41 -0600

I was having coffee with friends recently when an off-hand comment about politics triggered one of my frequent tirades about how politicians simply cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

When I stopped to catch my breath, one of my friends leaned forward and patted my hand and said "Now you know why the rest of us don’t pay attention to politics."

Ever since, I’ve been thinking about the scene in "Men In Black" where Kay, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is explaining to Jay, played by Will Smith, why they don’t evacuate New York every time another alien disaster looms.

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WPRI Special Report: Back on the Street: Under a New Law, Bureaucrats Can Decide to Cut Life Sentences Short - By Jessica McBride

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:35:28 -0600

A little-publicized provision that changes how Wisconsin treats elderly inmates (defined as age 60 or older) could offer some of our state's most high-profile criminals an early release, according to a WPRI review of the new sentencing law. Under a provision tucked into the budget last year, offenders serving life sentences may now petition for early release based on their age, as opposed to terminal sickness. Furthermore, the power to grant release is vested with a new unelected board, rather than with the court system. Now, bureaucrats are allowed to supercede the authority of judges.

These new provisions could create new uncertainty for victims in some of the state's most high-profile cases, including those involving the killers of law enforcement officers or even cases like that of Steven Avery.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: America - The World's Most Charitable Nation

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:53:47 -0600

Last week I joined millions of Americans in writing a check to help to the Haitians. Natural disasters have a way of bringing out the best in Americans. We open our pocketbooks and purses and we give. If we have the means, we write large checks. If we don’t have the means, we give small amounts. Both wealthy and poor instinctively give, and that makes the U.S. quite different from anywhere else on earth.

Studies have documented our how exceptional is our willingness to open our wallets to charity. One survey by CFA (the Charities Aid Foundation) noted that the U.S. gives more than double the amount given by the next closest developed country, the U.K. Their yardstick was not simply dollars given, but dollars given as a percent of GDP. The CFA survey study placed American giving at 1.67% of GDP. U.K. giving amounted to .73% of GDP. Our friends the French were dead last among the nations listed giving a miserly .14% of GDP. By that measure, we are twelve times as charitable as the French.

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WPRI Special Report: Back on the Street: Wisconsin is Starting to Let Criminals Out of Prison Early - Are they "Nonviolent?" - By Jessica McBride

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:36:50 -0600

The state Department of Corrections announced the early release of twenty-two inmates last week - the first Wisconsin prisoners let out under 2009’s sweeping sentencing modifications. In 15 of those cases, or nearly 70 percent of cases, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute has found elected judges had previously denied the inmates’ early release.

But the sentencing changes approved by the state Legislature now mean judges don’t always get to decide anymore – the Department of Corrections can release some felons on its own. And the WPRI review shows that, in most of the cases of the first inmates released under the changes, elected judges would have kept them behind bars.

In several cases, prosecutors also had objected to the inmates’ release. In the remaining cases, judges were never petitioned by the inmates for release, and in one case the judge simply said the sentencing court no longer had authority to decide.

The first inmate released was convicted of homicide in Milwaukee County and released for health reasons. Others released include a fifth offense drunk driver, a repeat burglar, a cocaine dealer, and thieves.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: The Best Government Comes in Small Packages

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:11:13 -0600

Last week, Republican Gubernatorial candidate Mark Neumann announced his support for "good government proposals" that include placing restrictions on individual campaign contributions to elected state officials, limiting the number of years a person can serve in office, and allowing California style ballot initiatives in Wisconsin.

Neumann says these measures are needed to restore our faith and trust in government.

I disagree.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: Trust: The New Wedge Issue?

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:09:57 -0600

A picture at the top of the Drudge Report earlier this week showed President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid standing in front of huge banners declaring: “Honest Leadership: Open Government.”

Honest, of course, with the exception of the various payoffs, tradeoffs, and bribes for votes on health care; and open except for the fact that it’s all being done in secret, behind closed doors.

At least you have to give them points for chutzpah, if not for subtlety. After campaigning on the explicit promise that the health care negotiations would be a model of transparency, with all of the talks broadcast on CSPAN, no less, Democrats now apparently calculate that (a) the public suffers from amnesia, or (b) campaign promises don’t really matter.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Broken Windows, Broken Government

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:20:57 -0600

What separates the smart from the not so smart is often the ability to see linkages the rest of us cannot see. In the public policy arena, we tend not to search out linkages, but linkages are powerful in the government setting. One of my favorite examples is the work of the Manhattan Institute in 1992. They set out to find what New York City residents thought about their quality of life. New Yorkers, never a shy bunch, gave them an earful. New Yorkers found their city to be an uncomfortable place to live.

The Manhattan Institute analysis found something profound - that ordinary people don’t like disorder in their lives, be it graffiti to crumbling sidewalks to dangerous subways. George Kelling - a Milwaukee native - understood the systemic import of what the New Yorkers were saying. Kelling put the pieces together. He saw that the acceptance of smaller disorder enables more profound disorder, including crime.

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WPRI Report: Wisconsin's State Budget Outlook: The Worst is Yet to Come - By Richard Chandler

Fri, 8 Jan 2010 11:18:42 -0600

Wisconsin state government did not solve its budget problem. As this report shows, Wisconsin’s next governor will enter office facing a $2.2 billion shortfall. Since there are no prospects for additional federal stimulus funding, this shortfall poses a more serious challenge than the one facing the governor and the Legislature last budget. The estimated $2.2 billion shortfall is based on an estimate of normal revenue growth (3.2% per year) and "normal" spending increases for a handful of state programs. Thousands of spending programs would see zero growth.

The severe recession that started in 2008 made the process of passing Wisconsin’s 2009-11 state budget painful and difficult. Most people know that the state addressed its well-publicized potential general fund budget deficit by increasing taxes and fees, slowing spending increases in some areas and reducing spending in others, and taking other steps such as transferring money to the general fund from other funds.
What many people don’t realize is that the biggest single contribution toward solving the state’s budget problems came from a massive infusion of federal stimulus funds. One-time federal funds available to the state through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided $2.2 billion in funding for programs such as Medical Assistance and school aids, which are traditionally funded with state general purpose revenues. This was actually a bigger factor in balancing the 2009-11 state general fund budget than the $1.1 billion in tax and fee increases or any other single measure.

Read the Full Report

Christian Schneider Commentary: Rhetoric on Steroids: When Political Posturing Gets to be Too Much, We Should Look at Ourselves in the Mirror

Mon, 4 Jan 2010 09:52:09 -0600

March of 2003 was a busy time in America. The U.S. had just sent troops into Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein and his regime. Wisconsin had just elected a new governor, who had recently introduced a bill to close a $3.2 billion budget deficit. The Neverland Ranch became a crime scene.

Wisconsin State Senator Judy Robson had other things on her mind, however. Robson was figuring out a way to keep creepy, lonely men ogling women at health clubs.

Earlier in 2003, health club owner Charles Swayne of LaCrosse filed a lawsuit against Curves for Women, a health club meant exclusively for females. Swayne argued that limiting a health club to one gender was illegal sex discrimination, and should be stopped. Several Wisconsin state legislators disagreed, and introduced a bill explicitly allowing single-sex clubs. (And thereby angering the much-sought-after "swarthy, leering old man" lobby.)

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Sunny Schubert Commentary: Federal Pool Laws Go Off the Deep End

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:12:02 -0600

Despite the effort of government at all levels to protect us from ourselves, it fails utterly to protect us from the Law of Unintended Consquences.

Take the Virginia Graeme Baker Act, for example. This federal law is designed to prevent swimming pool users from getting sucked into pool drains.

Trial lawyer (and former Democratic Party presidential hopeful) John Edwards made his bones on a suction entrapment personal-injury case: a gruesome 1993 incident in which a child was disemboweled by the suction from a drain in a wading pool. Other children had apparently removed the pool’s drain cover just moments before the accident happened. The drain and its cover had been manufactured by Sta-Rite Industries of Delevan, Wis., which was found negligent to the tune of $25 million- the largest tort verdict in North Carolina at the time.

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WPRI Report: A Critical Element of Reform of Milwaukee Public Schools: The Escalating Cost of Retiree Health Insurance, by Don Bezruki

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:41:09 -0600

The cost of health insurance for retirees has become a heavy burden for the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) budget and will worsen significantly in the next few years. MPS currently has a pay-as-you-go policy of funding retiree health insurance benefits, which will cost approximately $70 million in 2009 and grow to over $130.8 million, or 20% of payroll costs, by 2016. These costs are a major contributor to MPS’s fringe benefits rate of 68.7%, the highest among 33 peer institutions in the Midwest.

The unfunded liability for these health care costs, i.e., the estimated costs of future health care insurance benefits for retirees that MPS has promised to pay but has not set aside money for, now stands at $2.6 billion, more than double the district’s entire annual operating budget. These costs will ultimately be borne by Milwaukee taxpayers, and, because of the state school funding formula, taxpayers statewide.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Newest Judge Has Little Faith in Justice

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:33:56 -0600

Shortly after Gov. Jim Doyle handed Gary Sherman an early Christmas gift and made him a member of the District IV Court of Appeals, the state representative made a promise.

"I will never forget that the business of courts is trying to solve the real problems of real people," said the Democratic politician from Port Wing.

I, for one, have a feeling Rep. Sherman intends to solve all sorts of problems - unfortunately.

Judges, to borrow the famous words of Chief U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, are supposed to accept "a certain humility." They are, as Roberts put it, "servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them."

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Value - The New Reality for Government

Tue, 8 Dec 2009 09:57:36 -0600

They’re at it again. The folks at the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future are popping Champaign corks over a tiny change in a speech Tom Barrett gave. It seems that at that last minute Barrett changed his mind (imagine that). Rather than saying, "Our families and businesses want state tax increases to stop," as the speech was originally written, Barrett said, "Our families and businesses want fair taxes." Some people become giddy at the thought of fair taxes.

"Fair taxes" has become the new euphemism for higher taxes. Further, when someone champions "fair taxes," they are actually using the code words for higher taxes - which someone else will have to pay. It makes them feel good to parade the streets wearing in a fair taxes sandwich sign. However, if they’d look around they would see that the public isn’t buying it. The public is no longer a willing combatant in the class warfare that these aging Bolsheviks want to wage.

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David Dodenhoff, Ph.D. Commentary - Down With Sobriety Checkpoints

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:25:15 -0600

When I moved to Austin, Texas in 2008, I was in for a few rude surprises.

First, it’s not possible to move here and "become" a Texan, any more than it would be possible for Dick Cheney to move to Paris and become a Frenchman.

Second, Austin is a royal blue island in the otherwise scarlet sea of Texas. Tell someone in Austin that you voted for John McCain, and they’re likely to say, "What? Why?," as if you’d announced you were moving to Oklahoma.

Third, whatever you may have heard, you may not drive around Texas with an open container of booze riding shotgun. No, for that you have to go to Wisconsin.

Zing!

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Wisconsin Has Gone Stale

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:16:45 -0600

As a state, we have gone stale. If we were a novelist, we’d say we have writer’s block. If we were a baseball pitcher, we’d have a tired arm. The edginess that we once had, it’s gone. Somehow we’ve let ourselves lapse into a funk. No matter the problem or even the crisis, we find ourselves resigned to the way things are.

Take our economy. Since the 1970s our manufacturers could no longer do what they once did; provide bushels of good-paying jobs. We’ve talked about changing our economy, moving in a new direction, but we’ve never done anything bold. So we’ve watched as our share of the U.S. economy has gone to other places. We celebrate small victories like a few weeks ago when the Department of Commerce celebrated the 17 jobs coming to River Falls.

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WI Magazine: The Doyle Disappointment: It's no surprise that conservatives have a long list of Doyle's failures. Now we find that even liberals shake their heads over the missed opportunities. - By Marc Eisen

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:16:37 -0600

Judy Wilcox is a stalwart Madison liberal. She did a stint in the Peace Corps, serving in Gambia; put in 12 years on the Dane County Board representing a district where anarchists probably outnumber Republicans; and she retired from state service in November 2008 after 20 years of working on programs first for the disabled and then the homeless.

Wilcox's background makes it all the more surprising when she names the worst governor she worked for: Jim Doyle. A Democrat? "I found it much easier to work with Gov. Thompson," she says. A Republican? Yup.

"I had several sessions personally with Gov. Thompson. He would call people into his office, sit them down and say, 'Lets try to figure this out'," she recalls. "I always got along with him very well."

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WI Magazine: Crime Comes to a Pleasant Madison Neighborhood - By David Blaska

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:15:02 -0600

I live in a lovely neighborhood.

We greet each other as we walk our dogs, pooper scoopers in hand. We mow our lawns, paint our houses, and keep the noise down. Like Mom taught us, we’re considerate of one another.

But some of my neighbors’ neighbors, a few blocks south of me here on the leafy southwest side of Madison, 10 miles south of the Capitol, don’t have it so good.

Crime is up 30% in the last three years. Home values have declined at twice to three times the average citywide drop. There are more deadbolt-locked doors, high fences, and fierce dogs.

These streets don’t look mean. Mature trees shade the neighborhoods-Greentree, Orchard Ridge, Meadowood, Prairie Hills, Maple Prairie, Park Ridge. Here and there one can still see the original foursquare farmhouses, somewhat incongruent amid the ranch-style homes built between the 1950s and the 1970s. Church spires are the only features to rise above the tree canopy.

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WI Magazine: Anatomy of a Failed Idea - By Mike Nichols and Christian Schneider

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:12:50 -0600

Long before he became a prominent, well-paid lobbyist skilled in influencing lawmakers and helping direct big contributions to their campaign funds, Marty Schreiber was the acting governor of Wisconsin. He was also the person who, on Oct. 11, 1977, signed into law what was then known as Assembly Bill 664.

Only 38 at the time, the young governor was unabashedly giddy as he praised the legislation setting up the new Wisconsin Election Campaign Fund.

The new system of taxpayer-financed campaigns, he gushed in a letter to legislators, was "the most significant political reform measure implemented in Wisconsin since the Progressive reforms of the turn of the century."

Supported by a $1 check-off on state tax forms, the fund was meant to supplant campaign donations to candidates from political action committees, ensure those of modest means had money to run and prompt "more competitive races."

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WI Magazine: What Does Youth Want? - By Alan Borsuk

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:11:17 -0600

The loser now will be later to win, the noted social commentator Bob Dylan predicted in 1964 in his generation-defining "The Times They Are A-changin."

In Wisconsin, both Republicans and gay rights activists can take encouragement from those words.

And both can be encouraged by the results of a statewide public opinion poll conducted in September for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute by the UW-Madison Political Science Department.

Less than a year after Barack Obama won Wisconsin in the 2008 presidential race by 17 points and Democrats captured the state Assembly after 14 years of Republican control, favorable opinions on Obama have softened, and the political affiliation of the poll respondents suggests a modest swing to the Republicans.

Furthermore, while younger voters voted heavily for Obama and Democrats in 2008, the WPRI poll shows little substantial difference among younger, middle-aged and older voters on party affiliation. Democrats continued to draw more favorable responses than Republicans, but the results suggest Republicans are gaining ground.

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WI Magazine: Rebel With a Cause: Virtual schools, viewed skeptically by the educational establishment, have a champion in this veteran teacher. - By Sunny Schubert

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:09:21 -0600

Kathy Hennings starts her day like any other Wisconsin public school teacher: She’s up, coiffed, appropriately dressed and ready to go.

And then she starts her commute: down the hall in her Cedarburg home from the kitchen to her office. She sits down in front of a bank of two linked computers, and starts going through the 20-plus emails she receives each day from the parents of her students.

Then she and her students settle down for another day of learning "21st-century style" in the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, one of 14 Internet-based online charter schools in Wisconsin.

Hennings has 75 students: 30 first-graders and 45 second-graders. They live in rural areas, villages, towns and big cities all across Wisconsin, from Superior to Stevens Point, from Hudson to Milwaukee.
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WI Magazine: "Mommy, What Does a Union Member Look Like?" - By Christian Schneider

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:07:38 -0600

The stereotype of the typical union member is time-tested. Union Man is a pot-bellied factory worker or tradesman making a good living despite never having graduated college. He wears an old flannel shirt and muddy work boots. And much like the Catholic Church hierarchy, in which the bigger your hat, the greater your importance, union status is conferred on those with the largest mustaches.

Union Man believes in the strength of numbers - that the security of his job depends on the security of his colleagues’ jobs, even if he knows he works harder than they do. He’s suspicious of people who make more money than he does, and Union Man thinks "the rich" aren’t paying their "fair share."

As such, Union Man supports Democratic candidates with both his union dues and his vote. And he isn’t afraid to vote against his best interests if it means sticking it to management.

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WI Magazine: How Teachers Learn to be Radicals:They look to MPS's Robert Peterson and his social justice political agenda. - by Sol Stern

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:05:26 -0600

Imagine you are a parent with a child in fifth grade in an inner-city public school. One day your child comes home and reports that the teacher taught a lesson in class about the evils of U.S. military intervention in Latin America.
You also learn that after school the teacher took the children to a rally protesting U.S. military aid to the Contras, who were then opposing the Marxist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

The children made placards with slogans such as:

"Let them run their land!" "Help Central America, dont kill them." "Give the Nicaraguans their freedom."

Your child reports that the teacher encouraged the students to write about their day of protest in the class magazine and had high praise for the child who wrote the following description of the rally:

"On a rainy Tuesday in April some of the students from our class went to protest against the contras. The people in Central America are poor and bombed on their heads."

A fantasy? An invention of some conspiracy-minded right-wing organization? Not at all. It happened exactly as described at a bilingual Milwaukee public school called La Escuela Fratney. The teacher who took the fifth-graders to the protest rally and indoctrinated them in international leftist politics is Robert Peterson.

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WI Magazine: Limited Government For a Reason: Conservatives know that American genius flows from the bottom up rather than the top down - by Richard Esenberg

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:03:20 -0600

Reaction to the adulation and almost millennial expectations for Barack Obama might be seen as a political Rorschach test. It's not that Obama kitsch-the chanting schoolchildren and prostrating celebrities kissing their biceps in support of the president-presages the rise of a cult of personality. Americans are blessed with a healthy irreverence for politicians that, God willing, will always restrain our commitment to charismatic leaders and secular saviors.

What is critical, I think, is your visceral reaction to schoolchildren taught songs evocative of a soteriological presidency in which Obama plays the role of Messiah ("He said Red, Yellow, Black or White/All are equal in his sight"). It's your immediate impression of an iconography reminiscent of Socialist Realism-red, white and blue lithographs of The Leader gazing into the future with sorrow at what he has inherited and a hope anchored firmly in himself.

If you're a conservative, you find it creepy.

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WI Magazine: Autumnal Follies - By Charles J. Sykes

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:02:14 -0600

As John Keats would have appreciated, autumn in Wisconsin is a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness; it is, unfortunately, also the season when Wisconsin legislators, weary from the task of taxing and spending, turn to the minutiae of the bored politician.

Solons spent their time on a resolution that urged us to refrain from calling the swine flu..."swine flu," lest we offend the porcine community, and on urgent legislation to permit NFL team buses to blow through red lights on their way to Lambeau Field, lest linebackers suffer the indignity of waiting among the unwashed of Ashwaubenon.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Judges Might Want to Revise Opinion on Campaign Finance

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:17:43 -0600

There are currently a few excellent ways to achieve your dream of becoming a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice: find an old case that can be used to paint your opponent as an admiring benefactor of criminals and perverts - and, if that doesn’t work, make one up; hope an incumbent justice dies or resigns and the governor remembers all the favors you’ve done him; marry a Ziegler.
Less effective: run a real campaign and talk about the issues.

Those last couple strategies are, granted, nearly impossible. Candidates for Supreme Court - for good reason - are not supposed to join political parties, comment on any case or issue likely to come before the court or personally solicit contributions.

No wonder almost all of them have, essentially, asked our legislators for tax dollars to run their campaigns - and, if Gov. Doyle really does sign the so-called Impartial Justice Act - might just get them.

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WPRI Report: The Economics of Climate Change Proposals in Wisconsin - by By David G. Tuerck, Ph.D., Paul Bachman, MSIE, Sarah Glassman, MSEP, Michael Head, MSEP

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:15:57 -0600

In April 2007, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle signed Executive Order 191 establishing the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming (GTF). The Task Force brings together members of the business, industry, government and environmental consulting communities to create a plan of action for the state of Wisconsin that addresses issues related to climate change.

Gov. Doyle commissioned the Task Force to identify actionable public policies that will reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while ensuring that the state remains competitive in the global economy. Pursuant to the goals established in Executive Order 191, the Task Force on Global Warming will advise the governor on current and prospective opportunities that will potentially grow the state’s economy through creating new jobs and utilizing alternative fuels in the state’s energy and transportation sectors.2

The Task Force’s final report to the governor, entitled "Wisconsin’s Strategy for Reducing Global Warming," was released in July 2008. In the report, the GTF recommends that the state reduce GHG emissions to 2005 levels by 2014, 22% below 2005 levels by 2022, and 75% below 2005 levels by 2050.3 Based on the materials that have been made available, the Task Force is considering GHG emission mitigation options similar to those recently recommended in other states.

Read the Full Report

Christian Schneider Commentary: You Paid for This: In Dire Economic Times, Wisconsin Lawmakers Spend Millions to Improve their Public Image

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:44:34 -0600

Recently, WPRI issued a report on term limits (authored by yours truly) that made the point that incumbent legislators are extremely difficult to oust from office, given the advantages they grant themselves in office.

One of the most challenging aspects of running a legislative campaign as a non-incumbent is trying to get your message to the voters. Doing so takes raising money, and paying out tens of thousands of dollars in printing and mailing costs to get your literature to citizens of the district.

Fortunately for incumbents, they have no problem delivering campaign materials to the voters. Because the voters pay for it.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Barrett Needs to Choose Between MPS and the Governor's Mansion

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 08:15:37 -0600

Tom Barrett is a politician, but he has never impressed me as a media-hog. He seemed to almost shy away from the cameras after his run-in with a thug outside the State Fair. So he must be bemused to find himself as the leading man on Wisconsin’s political and policy stage. He has the president pressing him to run for governor. He is also at the center of the most significant educational reform in the history of Milwaukee. Am I the only one who sees the significant link between his flirtation with the governor’s race and his move to support a mayoral takeover of Milwaukee Public Schools?

Barrett says the takeover is not about him. It is. A mayoral takeover is not some abstract concept. It is about flesh-and-blood characters. It is about Barrett, just as it was about Bloomberg in New York and Daley in Chicago when they took over failing school systems there. It is about a mayor assuming accountability.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Wisconsin's Own W

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:28:44 -0500

Mike Tate, Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, must have choked on his arugula last Wednesday when Governor Doyle told the world he was having second thoughts about retiring. Did anyone hear support for our governor’s second thoughts? No. Doyle’s decision not to run has sunk in with both pale and dark blue Democrats be they union organizers or limousine liberals. It took them about five minutes to realize the damage Doyle had done to the Democratic brand in Wisconsin.

True, Doyle never lost an election. Also true, however, is that he never had coattails and frankly, never saw himself as the standard bearer for the party. He is a politician whose passion seems to be looking out for number one. Whereas Tommy Thompson was known for trumpeting, "Isn’t it great to be a Republican," Doyle never returned the favor for Democrats.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: How to Court an Independent Voter

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:23:31 -0500

They’ve been called everything from uninformed to uninspired to famously fickle. Ideologues on both the left and the right think of them as the wafflers and the Sybils of Wisconsin politics. Dave Obey, the Democratic congressman, suggested last year they are just plain dumb. Or at least disinterested.

"Independents are by their very nature the people who have the least depth and exposure to what the candidates are doing and saying," Obey opined back in February of 2008. "That’s why they’re independents."

Actually, we now know, that’s not why at all.

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WPRI Report: The Case for Term Limits in Wisconsin - By Christian Schneider

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:21:46 -0500

Each year, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute conducts a citizen survey that gauges the public’s feelings towards their elected officials. In December 2007, only 10% of the individuals polled said they thought state elected officials represent the interests of the voters. By contrast, 85% said elected officials take care of either "their own interests" or "special interests" first.

Perhaps it is this deep distrust in their state legislators that compels large majorities of Wisconsinites to favor placing term limits on their elected officials. According to the WPRI poll, 72% of respondents favored term limits, while only 22% opposed them. There was no demographic group in the state that did not strongly favor some sort of term limits on Wisconsin elected officials.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: Jim Doyle - Want to Get Away?

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:20:23 -0500

A topic of this winter’s political hot stove league: could Jim Doyle have survived his summer and fall of discontent?

By the time the governor pulled the plug on his re-election and jetted off on yet another foreign trade mission, his poll numbers were already subterranean. He carried the considerable baggage of higher taxes and fees, prisoner releases, insurance mandates, ongoing budget deficits and unpopular decisions on domestic partnerships, concealed carry and voter ID.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Wisconsin's Own "Public Option"

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:13:52 -0500

It’s a given that both sides of the health care debate feel that they have the high road when it comes to compassion. But the goal shouldn’t be to confuse mere action with progress. Lawmakers would be best to heed Robert Frost’s admonition that it is more important to "do good well."

At the center of the debate is the idea of a "public option:" a government-run health program that liberals say would merely compete with private plans for customers.

Conservatives counter that historically, when a generous government plan is instituted, private businesses tend to scale back or even drop their health plans, so their employees can save them money by going on the public plan. As a result, taxpayer funded health programs grow much faster than originally anticipated, quickly driving governments into the red.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Wanted - Wisconsin Strongman

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:58:57 -0500

For reasons clear only to himself, Jim Doyle waited until the waning hours of his governorship to put his mark on state government. Now he’s hastily knitting together his version of a strong executive: one that dominates state finance (the last budget is all his whether he claims it or not), one that seeks to change the governance of Milwaukee schools for the first time since statehood and one that resists sharing power over the Department of Natural Resources.

In Doyle’s quest for a strong executive, I’m squarely with him; better late than never. Remember, the bed that the current governor makes will be the bed that the next governor will have to lie in.

Like it or not, Wisconsin is in decline. We’d like to believe the bucolic picture of Wisconsin we grew up with, one where agriculture dominates the economy, where our schools are the envy of the nation and where people are clamoring to live. That picture no longer exists.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Dear Mr. Axelrod:

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:27:16 -0500

Following is an open letter to White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod and his wife Susan. Mr. Axelrod has been a strong advocate of President Obama’s plan to implement a government run health care plan paid for with federal tax dollars.

The Axelrods were recently featured in a Newsweek article discussing their battle to find an acceptable treatment for their daughter’s chronic condition.

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Axelrod,

Thank you for sharing the story of your family’s struggle with Epilepsy in the April 20th edition of Newsweek, "The Mystery of Epilepsy. Why We Must Find a Cure," and for dedicating time and energy to educating the public and public policy makers about this very serious and dangerous condition.
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Mike Nichols Commentary: Exactly Why Do We Elect the State Treasurer, Anyway?

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:25:24 -0500

I heard someone tell the tale this week of how George Smathers ran his campaign against U.S. Sen. Claude Pepper in Florida in 1950.

"Do you know that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert?" Time magazine quoted Smathers as saying during the race. "Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy."

Smathers, of course, won.

The story, in slightly truncated form, was recounted Wednesday by Ralph Adam Fine, one of the judges presiding over the disciplinary case filed against Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. Fine was trying to elicit some reaction from lawyers on what exactly can be considered a falsity during a campaign, what is merely misleading and what is simply a truth that people misinterpret.

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David Dodenhoff, Ph.D. Commentary: Welfare in Wisconsin: Still Not a Bad Deal

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:02:26 -0500

If you think everything is bigger in Texas, you’ve never been on welfare. Here, a family of three qualifies for a maximum monthly benefit of $250. Add a few hundred dollars per month for food stamps, and you’re still below the $673 in cash assistance that the same family would receive through Wisconsin Works, or W-2.

How can this be? Under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, states are allowed to define "temporary," "assistance," and "needy" more or less as they see fit. This has resulted in significant differences among states.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Why We Should Be Queasy About a State Takeover of MPS

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:00:25 -0500

When I first learned that Governor Doyle and Mayor Barrett were thinking of a mayoral takeover of MPS I couldn’t bring myself to elation. Yes, MPS needs a thorough shakeup, but are these the fellows to do it? After nearly eight years in office, the governor and mayor are just now awakening to the crisis in MPS.

Here is what is at the root of my misgiving:

1. Their motivation seems not to be reform but money. America is suddenly awash in federal stimulus money including barrels of money for schools. It is this money that finally got the attention of the governor and the mayor, not the dismal performance of MPS. Otherwise they would have taken up the cause of reform years ago. Nothing else has really changed.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: OPK, OPM - Other People's Kids, Other People's Money

Tue, 8 Sep 2009 14:58:16 -0500

With her 7,600 square-foot mansion, complete with indoor basketball court and swimming pool, Latasha Jackson has become the public face of fraud and waste in Wisconsin’s program of subsidized day care, known as Wisconsin Shares. According to the Journal-Sentinel, Jackson raked in nearly $3 million in taxpayer cash since she got into the day care business in 1999.

But a more appropriate symbol of the system’s dysfunction may be Carolyn Lockett.

In late July, Lockett was sentenced to a year in the Milwaukee House of Correction for forgetting to take a four month old baby out of a day care van. The child, Seiaires McHenry died while sitting in an SUV parked outside the Kuddle Kare Day Kare. A few weeks earlier, another day care worker, Precious Marney, was sentenced to prison for leaving another 4-month old to die in a day care van in Milwaukee’s central city.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Tom Barrett Perfect the Art of the Sharp-Edged Watermelon

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:54:41 -0500

I asked John Norquist this week how come he never ran for governor. I asked because back when I covered City Hall in Milwaukee, back before Tom Barrett was the occupant mulling over a bid for higher office, there was always talk of John Norquist running for governor.

Norquist had a tremendous talent for not answering questions. But he answered this one.

Iowa.

It was Norquist, he reminded me this week, who famously said that, without Milwaukee, Wisconsin would be Iowa.
It was a great line for a mayor of Wisconsin’s biggest city, so trenchant that five years after he left office and moved to Chicago, lots of Wisconsinites still remember it - and not just Milwaukeeans. Lots of outstate residents (where there really are a lot of silos) would never forget it either -which was Norquist’s problem.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Mercury Marine - Where Was Our Governor?

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:32:08 -0500

We form impressions of people by watching them and observing what they do. The longer we watch them, the better we feel we know them. Some people we like and some we do not.

How do they carry themselves? What do they look like? What do they say and how do they say it? Our impression tells us whether or not they are our kind of people. This explains Wisconsin’s love affair with Brett Favre, Gorman Thomas, and in politics, Tommy Thompson.

For a career politician Tommy had an innate ability to connect with all kinds of people. They didn’t need a subscription to the Financial Times to feel that Tommy had a handle on the economy and he’d make smart decisions for Wisconsin workers. He was a guy who swam in deep political waters who people continued to see as one of us.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Governor Doyle's Successors: Who Got the Gravy?

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 01:19:29 -0500

So by now, you’ve heard the big news of the weekend. I hit my first career home run in my softball league, and the new season of Mad Men started.

Oh, and there’s the other minor news - apparently, Wisconsin will have a new governor in 2010. (Yawn.)

For months, political observers had been wondering whether Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle was going to run for a third term. It now appears that he is not. As much as Republicans hate to hear it, Doyle will go down as one of the most successful politicians in state history, at least from an electoral perspective. He went 5 for 5 in statewide races, and never lost an election for anything at any time.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: For Much of Government, Elections Don't Really Matter

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:23:21 -0500

We have all heard the mantra about how elections matter, especially since last November. Well it is true that for many high visibility issues such as health care, taxes or public borrowing, elections truly do make a difference. However for most government programs, elections really make very little difference.

For hundreds of programs within the bowels of the state and federal agencies the wheels of government churn on without a hint of slowing down, speeding up or changing direction. The electorate would be astonished to learn that most of that enormous enterprise called government falls into this category.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Does Pedro Colon Drink?

Wed, 5 Aug 2009 09:37:21 -0500

By January of 2011, Wisconsin cops will be required to collect data on drivers they pull over so that somebody somewhere can use it to determine precisely how racist they are.

Or, to use the more recent euphemism, how "stupid: they are.
That is not a reference to - or a shot at - the vernacular of our president. President Obama, of course, said he regretted suggesting Cambridge police officers who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr."acted stupidly," and I believe him. And anyway, the president had both the professor and Sgt. James Crowley over for a beer and that was a smart thing. Even smarter, he made Joe Biden drink the non-alcoholic stuff because, as everyone knows, the last thing Joe Biden needs to get him blathering is alcohol.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The Power of the Pen - and Why Property Taxes Might Not Be So Bad

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:01:05 -0500

See that pen on your desk? Right over there, by the stapler.
As it turns out, that pen is one of the most powerful instruments you can own. The U.S Constitution was written with a pen. Lincoln freed the slaves with a pen. Most importantly, some girl in middle school probably broke your heart when she used a pen to check the "NO" box in response to your sweaty "Do you like me?" query.

In fact, while Wisconsin state government-related interest groups spend millions of dollars on lobbyists to influence lawmakers, that pen on your desk is the most influential implement in state government. It is the entire reason we structure our Wisconsin state and local governments in the manner we do.

Wisconsin residents pay all kinds of taxes. They pay income taxes (which are usually automatically deducted from their paycheck) or sales taxes (which are automatically added to their purchase), or corporate taxes (which are passed through in the form of higher prices.) Yet with all the billions of dollars in taxes Wisconsin citizens pay, one particular levy stands alone in its repugnance. It is the property tax.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Tony Evers' Moment of Truth

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:05:11 -0500

Dear Tony,

Congratulations on your election as Wisconsin’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. Ever since your election I have been reassuring my more conservative colleagues - skeptics all - that Tony Evers is up to the task of reforming education. "Sure he had the support of WEAC but the Tony Evers I’ve known and watched will be his own man," I told them.

So it was no surprise that waiting for me Saturday morning was an email from a doubter. "Obama and Duncan have $4.3 billion burning a hole in their pocket for states that are serious about reforming education. Wisconsin isn’t one of them. Let’s see what your Tony Evers does now."

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WPRI Report: Stopping the Revolving Door: Reform of Community Corrections in Wisconsin - By Kate Mize, J.D.

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:38:56 -0500

Like many states, Wisconsin is about to reduce its prison population through an early-release initiative as part of a strategy to address a state budget shortfall. While the details of the early-release plan are being finalized, it is expected that up to 3,000 inmates will be released from prison. Wisconsin currently houses 22,212 inmates in its state prisons. In addition, there are 71,407 offenders on either probation or parole. Unless changes are made in Wisconsin’s approach to probation and parole, it is likely that recidivism will offset any long-term savings.

Wisconsin’s criminal justice system is marked by a pronounced cycle of crime followed by incarceration followed by parole followed by repeated crime. Several statistics provide evidence of the revolving-door nature of the criminal justice system. In Wisconsin, 38.2% of offenders released from incarceration are convicted of a fresh crime within three years. Many of the offenders being incarcerated are on parole. In Wisconsin, approximately 25% of prison admissions were for offenders under active community corrections supervision at the time of their current offense. While the public likes to think that parole leads to rehabilitation, only 46% of the offenders leaving parole in Wisconsin in 2007 did so due to successful completion of their parole.

Read the Full Study:

James Wigderson Commentary: State Limits on Virtual Schools Prompt Outcry

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:23:23 -0500

For parents like Deana Sheppard and Kathleen Seipel, the uncertainty is excruciating as they try to plan for school this fall. They have children on the waiting list for the state’s 14 virtual schools. Will they get in...or not?

That waiting list is the product of the new enrollment cap of 5,250 online students, insisted upon by Gov. Jim Doyle, as part of the political compromise engineered by the Legislature last year. The compromise kept the publicly run online schools open after the state’s largest teachers union won a lawsuit challenging state funding of the virtual schools.

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Sunny Schubert Commentary: What Were We Talking About, Again?

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:50:40 -0500

Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin! Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle, can’t the liberals talk about anything else?
I have lots of liberal friends - living in Madison, I’d be awfully lonely if I didn’t! - and they are consumed by the mystery of Sarah Palin.

It’s like Ann Coulter put it: "People who hate her guts feel she's really let them down by resigning - She's like the ex-girlfriend they're SO over, never want to see again, have already forgotten about -- really, it's O-ver -- but they just can't stop talking about her."

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WI Magazine: Wisconsin Flunks its Economics Test During the Doyle years, the state failed to create new jobs while descending to Alabama-level wages - By Thomas Hefty and John Torinus, Jr.

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:08:59 -0500

Our state motto is "Forward," but Wisconsin is falling behind in the economic race to create jobs and raise family incomes.

As we’ll show here, Wisconsin is lagging its own economic performance of the 1990s and losing ground to other states - especially to other upper Midwest states like Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. It is even failing to meet its own goals - established in 1997 with much fanfare by a blue ribbon commission - for ramping up the state economy.

Although our political and media leaders ignore these failings, Wisconsin residents intuitively understand how our economic anemia has sapped their incomes and diminished their opportunities.

Since 2005, Wisconsin has experienced growing out-migration. Our citizens have voted with their feet, moving to states where they foresee a better future.

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WI Magazine: Summit Meeting: GOP hopefuls meet for first time, critique Jim Doyle’s tenure, make their cases to be governor - By Charles J. Sykes and Marc Eisen

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:07:04 -0500

Scott Walker got in first; Mark Neumann just made it official.

Walker, a former Republican legislator who has been elected county executive three times in heavily Democratic Milwaukee County announced earlier this year that he is running for governor in 2010. Neumann, who served two terms in Congress (from 1995 to 1999) and has since run a successful home building business, The Neumann Companies, jumped into the race on July 1.

Incumbent Jim Doyle has been elected twice, but in mid-June a national Democratic pollster reported that Doyle’s approval rating had fallen to 34%, even in a sample of voters who gave high marks to other Democrats, including President Obama. Not surprisingly, the 2010 contest is expected to be one of the most hotly contested in the country, and Republicans now appear poised to have a lively primary contest among two widely known conservatives.

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WI Magazine: Walker vs. Neumann? A primary battle would likely strengthen - not weaken - the GOP’s chances - By Kenneth R. Lamke

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:05:25 -0500

The prospect of a primary contest between Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and former Congressman Mark Neumann for the Republican nomination for governor in 2010 greatly enhances the GOP’s chances of defeating Gov. Jim Doyle next year.

At least the historical record of the past 45 years of Wisconsin elections leads to that conclusion.

Each of the six times that incumbent governors or U.S. senators were defeated since 1962 occurred when the nominee of the out party emerged from a contested primary rather than having the nomination handed to him by running unopposed in the primary.

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WI Magazine: MATC's Reality Moment. Last fall, the tech board happily endorsed super-sized staff salaries and benefits. Will the recession end the party? - By Mike Nichols

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:04:01 -0500

Casually convening in their boardroom late on the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the Milwaukee Area Technical College board appeared blissfully unconcerned with all that was amiss in the outside world.

Earlier that week, Lehman Brothers had stunned Wall Street by declaring the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history; then the federal government had bailed out insurance behemoth AIG and engineered a fire sale of Merrill Lynch. The stock market was gyrating wildly.

MATC budget officials had known since spring that the economy was deteriorating. Now, it was imploding. Credit markets were seizing up. Pension funds were plummeting.

Many Americans were both flummoxed and fearful - but not the MATC board as it gathered at 4:30 p.m. for one of the most important meetings in years. And one that would last less than four minutes.

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WI Magazine: Party of One. Conservative Democrat Bob Ziegelbauer scores a breakthrough on health care, but finds few allies - By Sunny Schubert

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:01:57 -0500

Most days state Rep. Bob Ziegelbauer (D-Manitowoc) finds himself shunned by fellow Democrats and treated like a freak of nature by Republicans.

Which is just fine by him.

"I guess I don’t feel a real affinity for either group," says the 57-year-old lawmaker. "I’m carving out my own spot, my own little island but there’s a nice little breeze on my island," he adds with a laugh.

But he will not abandon his independent stance, which admirers call "principled" and detractors dismiss as "his way or the highway."

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WI Magazine: GenNext GOP: Dubbed a future leader, Paul Ryan already shapes the Washington debate - By Stephen F. Hayes

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:12 -0500

Shortly after 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 27, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan walked into a private room at Charlie Palmer’s steakhouse - an upscale restaurant one block from the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

It was exactly one week since Barack Obama had been inaugurated, and some of the country’s most influential political journalists had turned out to hear Ryan. The political director for ABC News, CNN’s vice president for Washington programming, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, the executive producer for NBC’s "Meet the Press" - about a dozen in all.

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WI Magazine: Bring on the Stats Nerds: State government needs a good dose of sabermetrics - By Christian Schneider

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:58:29 -0500

"The Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun is the best young hitter in the major leagues."

Utter such a sentiment among casual baseball fans, and you’re likely to get some nods of agreement. Braun, after all, had the second most home runs in baseball history after two seasons, ahead of legends like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Babe Ruth.

Make a claim to Braun’s greatness over at the Baseball Prospectus website, however, and you may need to put on a helmet to absorb the punishment you’ll likely take.

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WI Magazine: Under Fire: How Should Conservatives Respond to a Hostile Liberal Takeover? - By Richard Esenberg

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:56:02 -0500

In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter described what he called the "the paranoid style" in American politics "an affliction most often associated with the right." It consisted, in his view, of "angry minds" indulged in "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." The politically paranoid believe themselves to be faced with "totally evil and totally unappeasable" opponents who must "be totally eliminated."

Hofstadter conceded that the paranoia he thought he could see was not limited to the right, and perhaps he can be excused from the assumption that it is conservatives who most often demonize the other. No one had heard of the netroots. Michael Moore was 10 years old. Howard Dean was still prepping at St. George’s.

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WI Magazine: Racine Dispatch: Railroaded! Commuter train boosters pull a fast one on the public - by Deb Jordahl

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:54:27 -0500

Never give up; three simple words that have become the battle cry of commuter rail enthusiasts here in southeastern Wisconsin. And while there’s nothing simple about constructing, maintaining and operating commuter rail, its child’s play compared to selling a weary public on the virtues of building a new system on our dime and in our backyard.

Pro-rail forces have been trying for decades to convince us that we need commuter rail. Their plan has undergone more cosmetic surgery than Joan Rivers. The latest makeover calls for a 33-mile system running from Milwaukee through Racine to Kenosha and connecting with the Illinois METRA system to downtown Chicago. The planners dream of 14 workday roundtrips and start-up costs - pick a number! - of supposedly $198 million. Frustrated but never defeated, our community leaders know that the general public simply cannot be trusted to make the right decision when it comes to this investment in mass betterment.

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WI Magazine: Madison Dispatch: ‘Diversity’ takes an odd turn: Vietnam-born alder targets crime, gets blasted from the left - By David Blaska

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:52:21 -0500

Madison’s infamous liberalism is so doctrinaire that the only member of a racial minority on the 20-member Madison Common Council can be accused of racism most foul.

Her accuser is former four-term alder Brenda Konkel, she of the blond hair and pink politics. Konkel told her 750 "friends" on Facebook that Ald. Thuy Pham-Remmele, a refugee from Vietnam, a retired educator, and the first Asian-American elected to the council, is "racist." Pham-Remmele’s sin? Speaking about the city’s growing crime and deteriorating quality-of-life issues frankly, without tap-dancing to the peculiar metronome of PC-speak.

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WI Magazine: Editor's Note - Big Ideas... And the Epic Disconnect - By Charles J. Sykes

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:51:00 -0500

The job-killing tax and fee increases in the new state budget were bad enough. But even worse was the epic disconnect between what was happening in Madison and the economy in the rest of the state.

The $3 billion tax hike will hit an economy that has already shed more than 133,000 jobs (almost all of them in the private sector) in the last year. The state’s job loss was the biggest in more than a half a century, but Gov. Doyle prepared to sign a budget that raised taxes on virtually every aspect of the state’s economy, especially business.

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WI Magazine: Letters to the Editor

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:49:31 -0500

The New Look, William Allen White, and St. Marcus

George Lightbourn Commentary: This Will Raise the Hair on the Back of Your Neck

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 09:31:47 -0500

In the course of any week there is an avalanche of studies that cross my desk. A few are important, most are predictable. Last month I came across two reports that should be required reading for governors, legislators, parents and voters of every stripe. Both of these well-documented, finely crafted studies should raise the hair on the back of your neck. They did mine.

The first study was authored by McKinsey and Company, the global management consulting outfit that has built a large practice examining education systems around the globe. This particular study looked at the how the achievement gaps in U.S. schools are affecting America’s economic well-being. It begins with the ominous declaration that, "The extent to which a society utilizes its human potential is among the chief determinants of its prosperity." The analysts at McKinsey note that there are enormous shortfalls in academic achievement which impose heavy consequences on America’s quality of life.

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Dale Kooyenga Commentary: We Tried This Before, and it Didn't Work

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 09:53:11 -0500

As the US implements the transformation of General Motors into "Government Motors," and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) raise government investment and entanglement in the private sector to historic new levels, the question on everyone’s mind is "will it work?" Oddly enough, clues to the answer of that question may come from an unexpected place: Iraq.

Several months ago I completed my one year tour of duty in Iraq. Although trained as a Military Intelligence Officer, I was quickly reassigned and appointed as the 4th Infantry Division’s Economic Officer in Charge. My primary responsibility was to create jobs and assess the overall business climate in Baghdad.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: America's Newest Pastime - Blissful Ignorance

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:20:43 -0500

Bonds. Sosa. McGwire. A-Rod. Manny. Clemens. All names that just years ago were exalted as American heroes, each having re-written baseball’s record books. Now every one wallows in shame, having been exposed as a cheater.

In doing so, each one of these players has stolen something. They’ve stolen records from our most revered heroes like Hank Aaron. They’ve stolen millions of dollars, having been paid enormous contracts based on numbers they didn’t earn. And they’ve stolen championship rings from other, more deserving players.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: America’s New Economic Model: All the Style and Power of a Yugo

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:45:58 -0500

I recall as a young boy anxiously awaiting the time every autumn when America’s car companies unveiled their new models. That was an era when style ruled the automotive world; a bold new design could literally make or break a car company.

Now Washington has unveiled a new model for America, an economic model. This new model, a bold departure from our old economic model, is not getting rave reviews. Let’s examine why that is.
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Nathaniel Inglis Steinfeld Commentary: The Wisconsin Budget Process: a Newcomer’s Story

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:19:47 -0500

After working for the federal government in Washington, DC for two years, I was excited to move back to the Midwest. Returning to study public policy and law, I specifically came to learn more about state’s rights from the practical, decent state of Wisconsin. This past year I kept a close eye on state news, even more so as the biennial budget process began. How does Wisconsin make the biennial budget? What does the final budget look like?

The Legislative Reference Bureau seems like a better place to start than the federal level Schoolhouse Rock tutorial. The process of creating the Wisconsin budget is fairly simple - it follows the general legislative process, except in this case the process begins with the Governor.

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Steven Pigeon Commentary: What is Doyle's "Middle Class?"

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:49:46 -0500

Throughout the Wisconsin State budget process Governor Doyle and Democrat members of the State Assembly and Senate have insisted that their various budget proposals will not harm Wisconsin’s middle class. With no consistent definition of what it means to be "middle class," we can use the state budget to help us learn who is in Governor Doyle’s middle class by discovering who is not harmed by the Wisconsin state budget.

To be in Governor Doyle’s middle class you have to make less than $225,000 as an individual or $300,000 as a couple. If you make more than this you are obviously a member of Wisconsin’s "rich" and Doyle has created a new tax bracket just for people like you. Capital gains and property taxes are also raised in the State Budget but this, according to Wisconsin Democrats, will not impact the middle class.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: McCallum's Last Laugh

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:55:29 -0500

They called him a nitwit. A moron. A boob. A lightweight. And that was just his supporters.

Seven years ago, Scott McCallum walked out of the Capitol a defeated man. After serving 14 years as Tommy Thompson’s Lieutenant Governor, McCallum finally got his chance to run the state as Governor for two years, beginning in 2000. During his brief tenure, he presided over a mild recession that forced him to make choices which euthanized his chances at re-election. What McCallum did to fix the deficit, however, provides a stark contrast to the current administration’s budgeting practices, and serves as a warning to future politicians that back up their words with action.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Separating Wisconsin Democrats From Obama

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:13:42 -0500

The state budget being assembled in Madison is revealing some serious flaws in Wisconsin Democrats - flaws that, in the minds of most people, will separate them from President Obama. It won’t take long for people to figure out that the only thing these Madison politicians share with the President is the D behind their name.

It is interesting that the President has chosen today to come to Wisconsin for a town meeting. President Obama has a unique ability to articulate a vision, a plan. Much to the chagrin of conservatives, this master politician has shown the ability to transcend politics. Like Reagan, Obama gives the public, especially the coveted coven of independents, a sense that he is working from a core set of principles. Most would say that he is a man of character.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: Just What Are They Thinking?

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 17:35:28 -0500

Here’s the most interesting political question of the year: why do Jim Doyle and the Democrats think they can get away with this budget?

The package rolling toward final approval is a grotesque fiscal, economic and political monster that not even a mother could love. Besides a few notable payoffs to favored special interests like the trial lawyers and the teachers union, it is a collection of uglies: massive tax and fee increases during a recession; slashes in law enforcement while releasing hundreds of felons from prison; gutting welfare reform; and tens of millions of dollars of pork, all cooked up behind closed doors and voted on in the middle of the night.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Government's Billion Dollar Word

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 07:42:30 -0500

In the world of linguistics, words actually mean things. In many cases, tacking one qualifying word on to another can completely change the meaning of the original word being used. For instance, everyone enjoys a juicy apple. But one would be hard pressed to find someone that enjoys a "horse apple" in the same way. We often associate "wind" with a cool, gentle breeze. But if someone "breaks wind," it’s liable to clear out your dinner party. If someone offers you "water," they might think you’re thirsty. If someone offers you "waterboarding," then you should immediately begin digging a getaway tunnel.

Even state government has its own language that often employs such qualifiers to its own benefit. Under the Wisconsin Constitution, the state may not run a "deficit," meaning the books have to be balanced on a cash-in, cash-out basis. Yet the state continually runs a "structural deficit," meaning its government merely pushes off much of its spending into future fiscal years, leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab down the road. In the case of the 2009-2011 budget, Governor Doyle’s acceptance of the word "structural" is worth about a billion and a half dollars to the taxpayer.

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Mike Nichols Commentary: Pedro Colón made some startling accusations this week.

Thu, 28 May 2009 11:43:01 -0500

Pedro Colón made some startling accusations this week.

I didn’t see it reported anywhere, but he did.

During a Joint Finance Committee discussion of whether to make police collect data on the race of people they pull over, the state representative essentially accused a broad array of suburban cops of being racists, of closing off their communities and even locking people up for five days for simply having a beer.

"It doesn’t happen in Milwaukee to tell you the truth," said the Milwaukee Democrat of minorities being singled out by police. "This may be revealing but most officers in Milwaukee have gotten over it. You just don’t make stupid stops. And you know it seems to exist primarily in the suburbs, I mean at least to the Latino community. I don’t know how it is in the African-American community but all the guys complain. It’s all Greenfield, Greendale, you know, the northern suburbs. And you can bet that you are going to be stopped. And that’s just the way it is, this unwritten rule. After a certain hour nobody gets to come in. We all know what the rule is. We all know these guys are getting stopped. And God forbid that they might have a beer on the way there because then they are going to be in prison or jail for five days."

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Annette Talis Commentary: Meet the Have Nots: John and Elizabeth Edwards

Thu, 21 May 2009 18:49:35 -0500

Why is anyone surprised or confused by the latest twist in John and Elizabeth Edwards’ public life? Weren’t we all assigned F. Scott Fitzgerald in high school? Why didn’t we expect them to make a few bucks selling intimate details of their marriage? Money has been central to the Edwardses’ definition of the good life in America - their American Dream. To the Edwardses, it now seems, resilience means coming out ahead on the financial balance sheet at the expense of just about any other measure of success.

Edwards didn’t need to be poor to fight for the poor, but describing a large group of Americans as "have nots" in the face of his own personal and ethical impoverishment now exposes his politics as patronizing and exploitive. Donning blue jeans and work shirt to portray his 12-month, life-of-leisure tan as the rough-hewn complexion of a working man, Edwards never really fit his own story.

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WPRI Report: Value Added Testing: Improving State Testing and Teacher Compensation in Wisconsin by Mark C. Schug Ph.D. and M. Scott Niederjohn Ph.D.

Mon, 18 May 2009 08:39:51 -0500

This is the second of two reports on Wisconsin’s state testing program published by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. The first report, "Mandated K-12 Testing in Wisconsin: A System in Need of Reform" detailed that Wisconsin’s current testing requirement has been a target of national criticism. That report recommended that Wisconsin’s testing regime be replaced or significantly modified.

This companion report, "Value-Added Testing: Improving State Testing and Teacher Compensation in Wisconsin" describes what improvements should be made in student testing. New developments in testing have emerged and are now coming into widespread use across the nation. These new testing approaches not only could serve as a basis for changing state-required tests, but they could also pave the way to improvements in how Wisconsin’s teachers are compensated. These changes would have important implications for the teaching profession.

Read the Full Report

George Lightbourn Commentary: Naivete and the State Budget

Thu, 14 May 2009 11:54:48 -0500

In the six years since the last recession, WPRI has published a series of studies that have put the state budget process under a microscope. Over the years we have identified several structural flaws that have been eating away at the state’s fiscal foundation. We have also stepped up to the plate and offered a series of specific recommendations as to what should be done to strengthen the budget process.

We’re pretty sure that not one of our recommendations has been adopted. We’re told that we’re naïve; that the Governor and Legislature are too politically astute to administer the medicine we prescribe.

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Ben Artz Commentary: Milwaukee's Poor Performance

Mon, 11 May 2009 10:13:58 -0500

Private employment is a good indicator of how a local economy is performing. It provides an indication of business growth and confidence in a particular geographic area, forming strong expectations that drive future economic success.

Unfortunately, Milwaukee’s private employment growth is dismal and is one of the worst among the nation’s 50 biggest cities. According to a recent report by UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Economic Development that uses public data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Milwaukee’s private employment has been precipitously declining since 2000. In fact, Milwaukee has lost 10%, or roughly 27,000 private sector jobs, and is ranked 47th out of the 50 biggest cities and 17th out of the 20 biggest "frost belt" cities. For this reason Milwaukee is considered as having one of the worst economies in the Midwest and as such, the entire country.

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WPRI Podcast: Doyle Eases W-2 Burden - for State, Not Clients, with David Dodenhoff, Ph.D.

Thu, 7 May 2009 11:16:48 -0500

Fifteen years ago, Wisconsin had welfare, and everyone hated it. It was essentially a giant check-writing machine. Something for nothing. A dead end.

When Wisconsin Works, or W-2, replaced welfare in the mid-1990s, it was hailed as a social policy revolution. But now, a mere decade and a half later, Gov. Jim Doyle has quietly launched a counterrevolution. His proposals for reforming W-2 constitute a step back in time, back toward the era of welfare.

Read and Listen Here

Christian Schneider Commentary: Cross Your Fingers and Root For the Worst?

Mon, 4 May 2009 13:51:58 -0500

It was exactly at 1:11 PM on the afternoon of April 5, 2002 that State Senator Rod Moen wrote his own political obituary. On the floor of the Senate, Moen had offered an amendment to the 2002 budget adjustment bill that would have allowed a company in his district, Ashley Furniture, to fill in 13 acres of adjacent wetlands in order to expand their plant. Despite Moen’s own party controlling the Senate, his amendment failed, capping off what some considered a half-hearted effort on his part to keep jobs in his district. (A bill granting the wetlands exemption had passed the full Assembly nearly six months earlier, and Moen was never able to get it to the floor of the Senate.)

Fed up with state environmental regulation, Ashley announced on June 29th that it would be expanding in Ecru, Mississippi - costing Western Wisconsin 500 jobs. On July 3rd, the budget adjustment bill passed, with Moen’s provision included. But it was too little, too late. Moen’s provision was irrelevant, as the decision to move had already been made.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: America’s Original Environmentalist: Aunt Edna Marie

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:50:08 -0500

Green is no longer just a mixture of blue and yellow. Green has come to define huge swatches of America’s policy and political landscape.

They never really say it, but the people behind America’s green movement would have us believe that we have sinned. Our extravagant consumption and unrelenting devotion to self-interest has led to a day of reckoning. The air in our major cities is befouled and "the scientific community" has discovered that we are jeopardizing the entire planet.

With the zeal of a revivalist preacher they tell us that our cars are too big, our houses are too warm in the winter and too cool in the summer. They’ve made us aware that very time we turn on a light switch we cause more crud to belch out of some distant smokestack.
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WPRI Report: Mandated K-12 Testing in Wisconsin: A System in Need of Reform. by Mark C. Schug, Ph.D. and M. Scott Niederjohn, Ph.D.

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:23:27 -0500

The purpose of state standards and state-mandated testing is to increase academic achievement. Does Wisconsin’s elaborate system of testing advance this goal? From every quarter the answer is a clear no. That is the consensus of independent, third-party evaluators. Wisconsin’s massive testing program has come under fire from the U.S. Department of Education which said that Wisconsin testing failed to adequately evaluate the content laid out in the state’s own standards. Further, a joint report issued by the independent Fordham Institute and the Northwest Evaluation Association performed a detailed evaluation of testing in every state and ranked Wisconsin 42nd in the nation. The Fordham Institute gave Wisconsin’s testing a grade of "D-minus."

Perhaps even more troublesome is that many Wisconsin school districts find the testing system inadequate. Over 68% of Wisconsin school districts that responded to a survey said they purchase additional testing to do what the state testing is supposed to do. These districts are well ahead of the state in understanding the importance of timely, rigorous testing.

Read the Report...

Mike Nichols Commentary: Democrats and Pension Perks

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:02:16 -0500

People used to collect stamps in their spare time. Or coins. Grow tomatoes, maybe. I have three kids so my hobbies are cleaning up stuff, overcooking hamburgers, yelling a lot, coaching soccer, helping with spelling homework and trying hard to avoid the math.

Oh, I also spend a lot of time being a chump because - although I figure I put in at least three hours and ten minutes per day doing these things - I don’t get paid and I don’t receive a pension. That is why I think I’ll apply immediately for a job as a janitor or cafeteria worker or teachers’ aide in one of Wisconsin’s public schools.

These jobs are sweet gigs because right now such folks only have to work 600 hours a year (an average of three hours and ten minutes per day for 190 days) to qualify for a taxpayer-financed pension. Not, apparently however, sweet enough.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: Doyle Guts a HOG

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:34:43 -0500

Who will be Jim Doyle’s Kimberly Clark?

During the 1980s, Kimberly Clark’s CEO Darwin Smith moved Kimberly-Clark’s worldwide headquarters to Texas because of Wisconsin’s hostile business climate. Smith’s complaints and the company’s dramatic departure focused attention on then-Governor Tony Earl’s decision to raise taxes during a recession and precipitated Earl’s defeat in 1986.

Flash forward two and half decades: Doyle is pushing massive tax increases during a recession, but despite complaints from the business community, it has yet to come up rallying point, a face, or a company that symbolizes the current crisis.

Maybe it will be Harley Davidson.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The Power of "Hello"

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:10:38 -0500

Working in a drug store in high school wasn’t ideal, but it was a job. All my friends worked at cooler places at the mall - Orange Julius, the Gap, etc. I was stuck dealing with old ladies who needed my advice on what kind of enema to use (I told them that I preferred Fleet) and stocking the birth control aisle, wondering what apocalyptic chain of events would have to occur for me to actually need one of these mysterious products.

Despite my overall distaste for the job, my boss at the pharmacy taught me something important that I have carried throughout my life:

If you say hello to the customers, they’re much less likely to rob you.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: The Puzzling Politics of School Choice

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:27:24 -0500

I don’t think it would be possible to make things any more confusing for Milwaukee parents. Their children have become political pawns in a political chess match and it will surprise no one to learn that this group of poor, minority parents is being treated quite shabbily.

The politics that these people are caught up in is being run out of the State Capitol. Governor Doyle went out of his way to tuck a decidedly non-fiscal item into his budget that stands to affect all school choice children. Specifically, he added a long list of regulatory requirements that the schools participating in the Milwaukee’s school choice program would have to follow. Governor Doyle’s list of regulations is torn directly out of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association play book. After all, MTEA worked hard to deliver a totally Democrat state government and they expect a pay off for their effort. And to the glee of MTEA, Governor Doyle delivered.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Please Hold Your Applause Until the End

Thu, 9 Apr 2009 08:26:51 -0500

Legend has it that way back in 2005, under the leadership of Governor Jim Doyle, the state of Wisconsin could save $200 million, through efficiencies in state contracting - for everything from prison food and travel to consolidation of the state’s email service. Four years later, the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota--- working together to find efficiencies in the same areas ---hope to save $10 million each. Now Governor Doyle only needs to find 500 more ways to save $10 million and he’ll eliminate his $5 billion budget deficit.

Of course, there’s always a bit of a chasm between legend and truth. In the legend of the Doyle ACE initiative, we’ll never know just how wide the chasm is since Doyle dropped the program like a hot potato amid allegations of corruption, agency in-fighting, cost over-runs and one failed computer project after another.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Governor on a Wire: Jim Doyle's Balancing Act

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 11:35:45 -0500

It happens on pretty much a weekly basis now. I get my mutual fund statements in the mail, and stare at them, wondering whether it would be more painful to read them or to use them to give myself papercuts on my eyeballs. My investment statements have gotten so indecent, they’re starting to send them to me wrapped in a discreet paper bag, so my children can’t see them.

If you do venture into a private room and crack one open, your mutual fund’s annual report will say something like this:

"While the fund continued to meet its income objectives for the year, we are disappointed by its total return, which marks the worst fiscal year in its 21-year history. The depth of the recent financial crisis and a recession which will most likely linger throughout the coming year has made this market environment the most challenging in a generation. Our primary goal is to continue growing income for our shareholders. While our projections for the coming fiscal year have given us confidence, we strongly caution that this past year’s growth of income is unlikely to continue, and should not be expected in the future."

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Wisconsin's Transformational Governor

Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:29:13 -0500

Our president fancies himself a transformational president and it’s hard to argue with that. His is a transformational calling that goes well beyond race and politics. His is a transformational calling that will change the face of America: health care, energy, finance, politics. And to the chagrin conservatives, he is changing things.

At the heart of Obama’s transformational government is, well, government. It is a government that decides, a government that decrees, a government that seeks to define the quality of life for all Americans.

Obama has laid out a steep agenda, one that will require help from all quarters. Not only will he need a compliant Congress, he will need the active support from governors, since his ground game will be executed by state government.

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Steven Pigeon Commentary: Wisconsin Dream House

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:26:29 -0500

My fiancé and I have recently decided to take advantage of the current buyers market and purchase our first home. During this process we described to each other what our dream house would be. Realizing that this "dream house" of ours was not affordable we created a smaller list of more affordable features and began our hunt. After hearing about some of the details in Governor Doyle’s budget - realized that Wisconsin is quickly becoming a "Dream House" for many. A place that you wish to live, but simply can not afford.

It is estimated that between the budget repair bill and the proposed budget that the State will increase taxes by $3 billion. These increases would take $3 billion out of the private sector and send a message to businesses and individuals across the country that Wisconsin’s state government sees them as a revenue source and not as an asset.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Observing the Law of Rule

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:01:06 -0500

The summer of my twelfth year, my father dictated to me my summer job: I was going to have to paint the picket fence around our backyard. I had never painted anything before, so I punished him by peppering him with inane questions. "Where do I start?" "What size brush should I use?" And so on. "I don’t care how you do it - just get it done!" he snapped. At least that’s what I think he said, as my ears were ringing from the accompanying smack upside my head.

As it turns out, state law very much follows "dad law." When the legislature passes a law and the governor signs it, it constitutes a directive - "paint the fence." But in many cases, it leaves the minute details up to the state department that will be carrying out the broad new law - "just get it done." Departments accomplish the "I don’t care how you do it" part by passing "rules," which reside comfortably in legal purgatory, somewhere between real laws and complete anarchy.

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Marc Eisen Commentary: As Newspapers Decline, New Voices Rise

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:28:04 -0500

Okay, so you’ve read my story on the increasingly perilous state of Wisconsin’s 32 daily newspapers, published in the newly launched WI Magazine.

Lacking the space in the dead-tree version, let me cite a few news-and-opinion alternatives popping up as newspapers decline.

Jeff Mayers, who launched WisPolitics.com in June 2000, is recognized as the state’s online trailblazer. The former Wisconsin State Journal statehouse reporter has carved out a profitable niche serving political insiders with both paid and free services. With a staff of eight, Mayers’ has created related sites called WisOpinion.com, WisBusiness.com and IowaPolitics.com.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: That Damned Smiley Face

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 09:22:17 -0500

This might be no big deal. Then again...

I’ve had little interaction with Mark Pocan, but my impression of him is generally positive. For most of his legislative career he played the amiable back-bencher, a lefty with whom even some Taft Republicans could work.

Now Mark Pocan has bided his time, has been re-elected five times, and has been active in the Democratic takeover of the Assembly. According to Capitol protocol, Pocan has paid his dues and has thus been rewarded with an appointment to co-chair the Joint Committee on Finance.

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WI Magazine: Editor's Note - Welcome to Our New Digs - By Charles J. Sykes

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:22:14 -0500

Wisconsin Interest first appeared 17 years ago, back in 1992, as the flagship publication of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

That first issue featured articles by former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, author Dinesh D'Souza, Professor John Dilulio, Milwaukee's then-mayor John Norquist and, as it turned out, me. Over the years we covered politics, education, welfare reform, crime, government spending, the media, gambling, heath care, the judiciary and the economy.

But, as you may have noticed, the time has come for a change.

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WI Magazine: Letters to the Editor

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:21:29 -0500

WI Magazine: A Hard Winter, But Spring Brings Hope - By Kenneth R. Lamke

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:19:50 -0500

Milwaukee Dispatch

Besides snow and cold, bad economic news got dumped on Milwaukee almost daily this past winter. Corporate revenue losses and job cuts piled up like dirty snow piles.
Smaller economic flurries also depressed the winter mood. Locally owned Heinemann's Restaurants abruptly shut down after 86 years in business. The Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops chain announced it would close after 82 years. The 16-year-old Hal Leonard Jazz Series at the Pabst Theater ended. The Milwaukee Art Museum, including its high-profile Calatrava wing, said it would open only six days a week this year, not seven. And, at the other end of the culture scale, the Potawatomi Bingo Casino shut down a casual restaurant that had opened only six months earlier.
More little cuts to the culture of Milwaukee, broadly defined, appeared certain to occur throughout 2009.

True, these smaller closings are not the end of the world. The end of the world actually occurred in 1965, when the Milwaukee Braves moved to Atlanta.

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WI Magazine: Can the GOP Strike Again? - By Deb Jordahl

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:18:29 -0500

State Capitol Dispatch

Wisconsin Republicans found solace in November's election results. Despite a Democratic tsunami that gave Barack Obama a whopping 13% percentage-point lead in Wisconsin, Assembly Republicans held their losses to five seats, while their Senate colleagues nearly gained one.

That means Republicans only need to pick up four seats in the Assembly and two seats in the Senate to reclaim majority control in 2010.

While a GOP victory is clearly within striking distance, striking is not the Grand Old Party's strong suit, and since there's no such thing as a bloodless coup in politics, this deficiency represents a serious liability.

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WI Magazine: Have Voters Grown Weary of Kathleen Falk? - By David Blaska

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:16:56 -0500

Dane County Dispatch

In many respects, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk's run for re-election this spring is not so much against conservative Nancy Mistele but the ghost of a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student.

Kathleen FalkBrittany Zimmermann, who was engaged to be married and was studying to be a doctor, was stabbed and strangled in her locked apartment on April 2, in the middle of the day, only six blocks from Falk's office, the Madison Police Department and Falk's 911 emergency communications center.

The 911 Center bungled Zimmermann's plea for help, failed to call her back and sent police on a wild goose chase by misidentifying the source of the dropped call.

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WI Magazine: Doyle Fires Warning Shot at Walker - by Aaron Rodriguez

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:14:51 -0500

Gubernatorial Politics Dispatch:

With the 2010 election season approaching, Gov. Jim Doyle made a sharp preemptive strike against a potential challenger, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. Doyle's secretary of Health Services, Karen Timberlake, announced in February that the state will assume direct control of Milwaukee County's public assistance programs because, she said, Walker's administration has demonstrated a sustained inability to successfully provide services to its poor customers.

If this were true, why didn't the state step up earlier to offer help? Instead of teaming up with Walker to improve the supposedly impaired services, Doyle demonstrated just how politically dangerous it would be for Walker to develop a gubernatorial itch.

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WI Magazine: Who Cares About Voter Fraud? Milwaukee police uncovered a problem, but politicians chose to ignore it - by John Fund

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:13:27 -0500

In February 2008, the Milwaukee Police Department's Special Investigation Unit released a stunning report that should silence skeptics who say vote fraud is not an issue in Wisconsin. The investigators found after an 18-month probe that in 2004 there had been an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of an election in the state of Wisconsin."

Among the problems cited were ineligible voters casting ballots, felons not only voting but working at the polls, transient college students casting improper votes, and homeless voters possibly voting more than once. The report said the problem was compounded by incompetence resulting from abysmal record-keeping and inadequately trained poll workers.

One investigator, after examining Milwaukee's election system, was quoted as saying: "I know I voted in the election, but I can't be certain it counted."

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WI Magazine: Miracle at St. Marcus: On the Frontlines of reform with writer Sunny Schubert

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:11:48 -0500

Henry Tyson shows how urban education can succeed in the right setting.

"I never wanted to be involved in helping the poor. My mother was born in Africa and was always very sympathetic toward the poor and people of other races. But the whole inner-city thing came about during my senior year at Northwestern," says the superintendent of Milwaukee's St. Marcus School.

"I was majoring in Russian, so in the summer of my junior year, I went to Russia. I absolutely hated it - just hated it. So when I got back to school, I realized I had a problem figuring out what to do next," he remembers.

About that time, he was having a discussion with a black friend, "and she basically told me I didn't have a clue what it was like in the inner city. She challenged me to do an ‘Urban Plunge,' which is a program where you spend a week in an inner-city neighborhood.

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WI Magazine: MPS' Parental Enticement Program Spent Freely, Widely But, oh, the questionable expenditures. Now some are banned - By Mike Nichols

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:10:25 -0500

Tax dollars intended to help parents improve their children's academic achievement have for years routinely been spent by Milwaukee public schools on everything from roller skating to bowling to water-park field trips, an investigation by Wisconsin Interest has found.

Thousands of dollars were also spent on fast food, DJs, prizes, gift certificates and other goodies and giveaways. One school spent $556 in parental-involvement money to buy 250 pumpkins. Another spent $686 for a Milwaukee Bucks "Family Night."

Even when a clear academic purpose is evident, there are often questions about excess. Two schools, according to invoice descriptions, spent more than $17,000 to rent hotel and banquet-hall space for student recognition ceremonies.

Research, as well as common sense, has long shown that having engaged and informed parents is one of the most important ways to increase a child's success in school - and in life. Recognizing that, the federal government has funneled "parental involvement" tax dollars to many school districts across the country.

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WI Magazine: What's the Matter With Wisconsin? Begin with disturbing parallels to a classic political screed castigating the anti-business politics of Kansas in 1896 - By Charles J. Sykes

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:08:58 -0500

Last December, the Brookings Institution released a study showing that Wisconsin experienced a net loss of 20,000 people to other states in the last four years. From 2000 to 2004, Wisconsin gained residents from other states; but from 2004 to 2008, Wisconsinites voted with their feet, and the pace of their departure is accelerating.

According to the Census Bureau, Wisconsin is growing at a rate slower than 37 other states. If there had been a high brick wall and not a soul had been admitted or permitted to leave in the last four years, Wisconsin would be tens of thousands of souls better off. In those years, millions of people have been added to the national population, yet instead of gaining a share of this, Wisconsin has apparently been a plague spot, and in the very garden of the world, has lost population.

Not only has she lost population, but Wisconsin has also lost money. Every month in every community sees someone who has a little money pack up and leave the state. This has been going on for years. Money has drained out all that time.

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WI Magazine: Paperless Future? Overtaken by the Web and battered by the recession, Wisconsin's 32 dailies are in a world of hurt - By Marc Eisen

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:07:23 -0500

If you're a deep-pocketed business executive in a flourishing industry, you gather at the richly appointed Fluno Center on the UW-Madison campus for your deep-thought conferences. More modest enterprises and nonprofits send their execs to the UW's shop-worn Pyle Center for their soul-searching. This, of course, was the proper setting for a worried group of newspaper executives on March 28, 2008.

The good news was that they weren't squirreled away in a dining room at Denny's out on the Interstate. Given the parlous state of newspaper economics, this might have made more sense. Their papers might have split the cost of the $5.99 "Grand Slam" breakfast special.

"We're in a time of decline," Stephen Gray of the American Press Institute told the 60 or 70 people present. "It's a time of fear, depression, even despair." Yes, fear, depression, even despair. Nobody was shocked by Gray's words, because everybody knew they were true.

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WI Magazine: Why Conservatives Like Me Are So... Negative - By Christian Schneider

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:05:55 -0500

Wisconsin is in the midst of a health-care crisis. A health-care crisis so serious, in fact, that state government needs to swoop in and seize control of the health insurance system in a way no state has done in the history of our nation.

Luckily for us, this health-care crisis apparently exists nowhere else in the country, which means nobody in any other state would even be tempted to move to Wisconsin to take advantage of the "free" health care offered by Wisconsin's taxpayers.

Such is the logic of Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, who has vowed to re-introduce the $15.2 billion government-run "Healthy Wisconsin" plan this session. In responding to a recent Wisconsin Policy Research Institute report that an estimated 142,000 sick people would indeed move to our state to take advantage of free health care, Decker took a shot at WPRI, saying the institute likes to criticize ideas, but they "never come up with any suggestions."

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Ben Artz Commentary: Has Government Forgotten About The Future?

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:38:15 -0500

The economy has fallen off a cliff. The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet, proclaims this bad news after a rare bad year for his company and a similar year for his personal wealth. Just a week earlier President Obama suggested that we not pay attention to plunging stock prices as they tend to fluctuate wildly and have no real consequence for those who look for long-term gains.

Though they disagree on the significance of the stock market, both Mr. Buffet and President Obama have something in common; they are attempting to look beyond the current crisis into the future.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Thanks a Lot, Governor Doyle

Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:15:38 -0600

It’s tough to be optimistic about the future of our economy these days. This is especially true for free-market conservatives who feel like they’re watching a head-on collision in slow motion and are helpless to stop it. Yet as the economy nose dives and unemployment reaches record levels in Wisconsin, Governor Doyle remains firmly committed to a course of increased taxes and regulations, which is certain to make a bad situation worse.

Governor Doyle says his new budget protects middle class taxpayers and stands up for the people who earn regular paychecks. But even if you believe the Governor is simply righting the ship by making business pay its fair share, a closer reading of the budget, which is littered with increased taxes and fees on working stiffs and punctuated with assaults on their personal freedom, is enough to drive anyone to drink.

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Aaron Rodriguez Commentary: Fighting for the Soul of the Hispanic Community

Mon, 2 Mar 2009 09:36:52 -0600

The GOP has failed the Hispanic community in a number of politically important ways. They have refused to reach out to Hispanics at a grassroots level - a failure that began to surface in the southwestern states during the 2008 election. They have not punctuated the premise that Hispanics and conservatives share many of the same moral precepts - a component vital for a genuine and lasting alliance. And they have failed to address the fabricated image of being the party of and for the rich. If Republicans expect to capture more of the Hispanic vote in future elections, they need to take these problems seriously and resolve them quickly.

According to the 2003 U.S. Census Bureau, the national median income level for Hispanic households was $34,241, about $15,000 less than non-Hispanic households; 21% of Hispanic households fell below poverty level, which was twice the level of non-Hispanic whites; and the uninsured rate for Hispanics was at 32%, about three times the level of non-Hispanic whites. These statistics suggest that the Hispanic community continues to be an underprivileged demographic, a fact that has been exploited by the Democrat Party for decades.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: I Know, I Know - If You Want a Friend, Get a Dog

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:34:29 -0600

Yes I understand, politics is rough and tumble. Again and again I’m told that, "It ain’t beanbag."

Those who are drawn to politics these days seem to be those who just love a good scrap. They’re winners and nothing can make them happier than seeing the other side stumble. Every thought, every hallway conversation, every budget amendment, every bill is an opportunity, not only for them to stretch their policy legs, but also to kick the other fellow in the shins.

I was reminded of this yesterday watching a typical exchange in the Capitol. First, for some mysterious reason Mark Pocan published a letter accusing the Taxpayers Alliance of somehow being a front for business or conservatives or some such shady entities.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: An Apology From the Distant Past

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:48:22 -0600

Dear Person in the Future:

Greetings from the year 2009. As a gesture of goodwill, there are some things we need to discuss.

First, congratulations on the Brewers winning their 3rd World Series in a row, beating the Prince Fielder-led Yankees in seven games. A big atta-boy to Keanu Reeves for winning his first Oscar, playing a gay washed up ex-wrestler who ages backwards. It certainly was the role of a lifetime. I understand that, due to a federal mandate, General Motors is close to developing a car that runs on sunshine and dreams - here’s hoping the technology works out for you. And it’s nice to see that the prophecy is true: everyone actually does eat Dippin’ Dots.

The main purpose of this letter, however, is to issue an apology. Certainly, people in the future are still talking about the economic downturn of 2009, and the effect it had on the state’s finances. Believe it or not, when the economy went bad in 2009, we actually cared more about how government was hurting than how regular people were coping with losing their jobs. (Then again, the most famous woman in America in 2009 was a crazy Angelina Jolie look-a-like who had octuplets, so that might explain some things.)

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Ben Artz Commentary: "Buy American" Will Bury America

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:27:41 -0600

World trade has been demonized in America in the last two decades as manufacturing and simple service jobs have gone overseas to cheaper shores. It is not surprising then that the new congress is signing into law a step toward protectionist trade doctrine. The "Buy American" provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is the first, and hopefully last, hint of protectionism we see from this new government.

The support for trade restrictions of any kind stems from the prevention of cheaper or possibly even better imports from crowding out domestic industry products and their corresponding jobs. This of course is a political cost of the largest magnitude. Thus the support for restricting imports is even stronger in a recessionary economy that is already shedding jobs in large numbers. The same ideology was used during the Great Depression in June of 1930 when the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was signed into law.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: No Manufacturers Needed

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:59:14 -0600

We don’t need no stinkin’ manufacturers in Wisconsin, and we’re getting pretty good at making them disappear.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD), of the 66,300 jobs lost in Wisconsin last year, 26,500 came from the manufacturing sector. That’s nearly 40 percent of all jobs lost, even though manufacturing represents only 20 percent of the workforce. Since 2000, Wisconsin has lost 121,000 of these family-supporting jobs with an average wage of $46,000 a year. That’s like taking all the people in Appleton and La Crosse and stripping away their jobs, their benefits and their futures.

But don’t worry. We’ve got hospitals, utilities, road builders, public schools, the University of Wisconsin System, and plenty of other public employers.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The Forgotten Cheesehead

Mon, 9 Feb 2009 12:23:19 -0600

On Inauguration Day 2009, two old Harvard Law Review editors stood up in front of the U.S. Capitol and raised their right hands. When President-Elect Barack Obama and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts attempted to recite the Oath of Office, they both mixed up their words, unintentionally issuing a binding presidential edict that everyone in America was entitled to a free medium fries at Burger King. (They later re-did the oath the proper way, making Obama officially the President, but leaving Americans fry-less; a questionable trade-off.)

While many constitutional scholars huddled around the issue about whether Roberts and Obama had to re-take the oath, I was more interested in another aspect of their convergence on the podium together: Who has the better job?

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Steven Pigeon Commentary: Obama Moves From "Yes We Can" to "No End in Sight"

Thu, 5 Feb 2009 09:30:34 -0600

Often in difficult times, the American people look to their President for reassurance and guidance. Think for instance of Franklin Roosevelt declaring that the "Only Thing We have to Fear is Fear Itself," Ronald Reagan talking to the nation after the Challenger explosion, or Gerald Ford declaring the United State’s "Long National Nightmare is Over," and most recently, George W Bush addressing the nation after September 11th, 2001. All of these words resulted in a calmer, reassured America and made the country think that though things are tough, that everything will be okay.

Having only studied recessions in a classroom, and never truly experiencing one, I was hoping that our new President would be able to offer great words and sentiment that could calm my fears about my employment, retirement savings, and a potential decrease in future income possibilities. President Obama’s relative gloomy inaugural address in addition to his regular references to the "continuing disaster" that the United States economy is in, clearly tells the American people that President Obama is shirking his "Cheerleader in Chief" responsibilities and is instead is becoming a "Dictator of Doom."

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Stimulus and Politics 101

Tue, 3 Feb 2009 12:51:33 -0600

It is a fact of life in modern-day politics that companies with government contracts tend to participate fully in our political process. In other words, they write checks.

Companies write checks to PACs and make soft money contributions. Their executives and senior managers write checks to candidates. More often than not, their spouses write checks too.

There is nothing necessarily nefarious about all of this political participation. These companies and the people who run them are exercising their Constitutional rights and almost always do so within the rules, which frustrates the good government types who regularly conduct modern-day snipe hunts attempting to link contracts to contributions.

But, it is also an axiom among political fundraisers that government contractors are fertile ground for potential contributors.

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REPORT: The State Budget Deficit: A Self-Inflicted Wound

Tue, 3 Feb 2009 12:29:07 -0600

On November 20th of 2008, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle settled into his seat at a packed Capitol press conference he called to deliver the bad news. Due to the slumping economy, Governor Doyle told the press, Wisconsin faced a $5.4 billion shortfall over the next two fiscal years. In outlining his plan to fix the imbalance, Governor Doyle forcefully stated:

"We have to balance the budget. We are not the federal government. When we are in difficult financial circumstances, we can’t just say, ‘well, that’s alright, let’s just spend more money here, or let’s spend more money there.’ We don’t have that option."

Yet an analysis of state budgeting practices over the past decade shows something much different. In setting the budget for the past several biennia, governors and legislators of both parties have employed several strategies that have allowed the state to spend more money than it takes in. When faced with balancing the budget or spending more taxpayer money, the Governor and Legislature virtually always side with spending as much as possible, leaving future government officials to address any shortfalls.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Turning Green Into Gold

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:21:55 -0600

It is becoming clear that global warming legislation is more about preserving government programs than it is about saving the environment. If you don’t believe me, just ask House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A few weeks ago, Pelosi told Capitol reporters, that climate change legislation was not likely to happen in the coming year. "I'm not sure this year, because I don't know if we'll be ready." But this week the Speaker is singing a different tune, and if you spin the record backwards, you can actually hear Pelosi chanting, "Show me the money."

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David Dodenhoff, Ph.D. Commentary: God Bless Scott Walker, But...

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:34:04 -0600

Getting a state or local politician to refuse federal money is about as easy as getting a raccoon to put down a fish carcass. Recently, though, Milwaukee County executive Scott Walker said "no" to economic stimulus dollars from Washington, D.C. Why? Because those dollars come with strings attached - a local financial contribution in the short run, and the likelihood of complete state/local financial responsibility in the long run. Walker believes that a period of fiscal crisis is exactly the wrong time for Milwaukee County to take on additional financial responsibilities.

He is right, of course, but that won’t stop political opponents from charging that Scott Walker turned his back on millions of "free" federal dollars when Milwaukee County residents were suffering mightily. Thus, Walker has knowingly taken a political risk for no other reason than that it was the right thing to do. This is rare behavior indeed - behavior that deserves recognition and respect.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Spend Less Taxpayer Money, Get Healthier

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:23:21 -0600

Every year in the United States, various levels of government spend trillions of dollars to help treat illnesses. Our government is adept at spending money on the back end to ameliorate the effects of disease. But what if government spending itself was to blame for much of the sickness?

Take, for example, the federal government’s farm subsidy policies, which pump billions of dollars into the production of certain crops - most notably, corn. Between 1995 and 2006, taxpayers have shelled out $56.1 billion in corn subsidies. That’s nearly three times as much as the next two closest subsidies, wheat and cotton. Between 1995 and 2006, Wisconsin farmers have collected $2.4 billion in corn subsidies.

These subsidies have profound effects in many areas, from the environment to our health. Corn subsidies make it profitable for farmers to plant crops in areas that may previously not have been profitable, which encourages the clearing of forest land and natural habitat for farming. The total planted area of corn, at 93.6 million acres, is up 19 percent from last year, to the highest level since 1944.

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Annette Talis Commentary: Wisconsin's Pet Goat: School Finance Reform

Thu, 8 Jan 2009 13:14:55 -0600

Most of us have seen the 2001 footage showing the commander in chief crouched on a small elementary school chair to while the nation was under attack. That day many soccer moms who cast their top-of-the-ticket ballots for better schools were transformed into security moms.

Matt Miller’s article advocating a nationalized education system, "A Modest Proposal to Fix the Schools: First, Kill All the School Boards," published in The Atlantic early last year, gave fits to a few people at the National School Boards Association but largely went unnoticed among its target audience in Washington, D.C. Public education was no longer at the top of the national agenda.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: The Dodgy Thinking Behind the State Budget Bailout

Mon, 5 Jan 2009 12:49:37 -0600

The drama about to be played out in the Wisconsin budget is a small subplot of a larger drama being played out across the country. The story line in this drama is that state government is a blameless victim, caught in a nasty economic cycle. But is that the case?

As contemporary Americans, we have become far too comfortable living beyond our means. It will take time to adjust to our new reality, one defined by limitation and sacrifice.

Of course we should have paid attention to those who were telling us that our prosperity was illegitimate, a mirage. From top to bottom, our economy had an insatiable appetite for spending. Only now are we facing the reality of just how far beyond our means we have been living. We bought more house than we could afford, our car of choice was an SUV when we should have been driving a nice sedan and Silicon Valley has had to work overtime to keep up with our demand for smaller, speedier and trendier technology.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Caroline Kennedy - She's No Russ Feingold

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:25:26 -0600

For the past week, the parlors up and down the Atlantic coast from Washington to the Hamptons have been abuzz with the prospect of Senator Caroline Kennedy. This now middle-aged woman, who represents a link to the nation’s past, has seemingly floated down on gossamer wings to hover above the mud puddle of contemporary American politics.

Were my mother alive, the prospect of seeing JFK’s daughter in public office would put a bounce in her step and a smile on her Irish Catholic face. And there are millions of Americans who, like my mother, need little more than her direct link to Camelot to justify their support for Caroline.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Felons for Thee, Not for Me

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:27:59 -0600

Poor Rod Blagojevich. First, he gets pinched by the feds, and now - after he politely declined an offer to resign his governorship - Illinois legislators are beginning their own investigation into whether he should be impeached. Apparently, the legislature is trying to shake the impression that Illinois is to political corruption what Florida is to flamingoes.

Of course, defending Blagojevich is like defending rabies. However, while we all have a pretty good idea that he was trying to auction off Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, he hasn’t yet been convicted of anything. But that hasn’t slowed the calls for his ouster from legislators looking for political cover. It’s gotten so bad, some Illinois legislators could improve their image by getting their picture taken with George Bush.

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Benjamin Artz Commentary: Milwaukee's Decline Into Regulatory Oblivion

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:01:08 -0600

The industrial revolution showed that entrepreneurial ability and the pursuit of profits were the driving force behind economic growth. Indeed, at that time other areas of the world were as equally advanced as Europe and North America but did not believe as strongly in the protection of private property and profits, and therefore were left behind for the last few centuries. History proves that strict regulatory environments hamper economic growth because entrepreneurial talent is not allowed to fully explore profit-maximization through the most efficient use of available resources.

Oddly enough, strict regulation may not only come from a centralized government or monarchy. In fact, Milwaukee recently demonstrated this in the November election. Rather than let entrepreneurs decide how best to allocate their resources and maximize profits, Milwaukee decided to let voters give it a shot. Somehow the city decided that voters could do a better job running businesses than the owners and when given the chance, they voted in favor of nine extra days of leisure without sacrificing wages. Thus Milwaukee is now a stricter regulatory environment.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: First Fix the State Budget

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 08:38:15 -0600

"Scott McCallum has been spending too much time with his friend Rosy Scenario. That is exactly the kind of wishful thinking and dishonest budgeting that got us into a $2.8 billion hole to begin with." Candidate Jim Doyle in 2001

"Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it." George Sanatayana

It is too bad for Governor Doyle and too bad for Wisconsin that he did not heed this wisdom of Santayana.

The $2.8 billion deficit facing Governor Doyle when he came into office in 2002 has now grown to $5.4 billion. This is a frightening number for all of us. This state budget deficit amounts to $900 for every person in Wisconsin.

Some would have us believe that this deficit is fixable. It is not, at least not without stinging all of Wisconsin with higher taxes and service cuts.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Outsourcing State Government

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 10:50:58 -0600

In the 2008 presidential election, the economy featured prominently among the issues debated by the two candidates. The collapse of the housing sector interjected itself into the campaign, and swung the electorate solidly in favor of eventual winner Barack Obama. Obama was able to sell his message on the economy more ably than John McCain, capably reassuring American workers that their jobs were safe.

One of Obama’s primary economic talking points dealt with the outsourcing of American jobs, and what could be done to prevent it. One of the cornerstones of his economic plan was repealing "tax breaks" to "companies that shipped our jobs overseas." Naturally, workers who already fear for their jobs want to do everything to make sure that job stays on American soil – and in an economy in collapse, that message resonates even more strongly.

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WPRI Poll: Wisconsin Residents Overwhelmingly Oppose Raising Taxes on Businesses

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 08:32:07 -0600

Wisconsin residents oppose raising taxes on business profits by a range of 73% opposing it while only 19% supported raising taxes. These are among the key findings about statewide policy issues from the most recent survey of 600 Wisconsin residents conducted by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Inc. and Diversified Research between November 9 and 10, 2008.

Geographically, the most support for raising taxes came from LaCrosse where 33% of the respondents supported it and Madison where 25% were in agreement. Among Republicans only 10% favored raising taxes on businesses, while 25% of Democrats agreed. Ideologically, 31% of Liberals said they would favor raising taxes on businesses, only 9% of Conservatives agreed with that.

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WPRI Poll: Wisconsin Residents Continue to be Concerned About the Growing Costs of Health Care and Prescription Drugs

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:38:38 -0600

Controlling health care and prescription drug costs continues to be a major concern of Wisconsin residents in terms of the problem that most needs attention from state government. They favor major reforms to the existing health care system but there is very little support for the idea of a state-run insurance system. Wisconsin residents believe that if a government-run health insurance system were set up in Wisconsin, out-of-state people would definitely immigrate to Wisconsin to enroll in the system.

These are among the key findings about statewide policy issues from the most recent survey of 600 Wisconsin residents conducted by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Inc. and Diversified Research between November 9 and 10, 2008.

In our most recent poll 24% of Wisconsin residents identified "Controlling Health Care and Prescription Drug Costs" as the most important issue that needs attention from Wisconsin state government.The health care issue closely trailed improving the state’s economy by just four percentage points.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: A Natural Disaster?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:01:23 -0600

As we head into the consequential New Year, let us ponder for a moment State Senator Bob Jauch (D-Poplar).

For the first time in more than two decades, Democrats now control all the levers of state government, which means that it falls to them to single-handedly solve the state’s massive (and ever-growing) budget hole. There will no bipartisan compromise, no wrangling between a Republican assembly and a Democratic Senate; no deadlocks on Joint Finance; no games of political chicken.

All of the spending - and taxing - decisions will be made by Democrats. Like Bob Jauch.

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WPRI Poll: Opinions About Public Education are Similar to 20 Years Ago

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:30:33 -0600

There are some issues that seemingly never change. Twenty years ago 49% of Wisconsin residents thought they had received a better education in elementary and secondary schools than students today. In 2008, 47% of Wisconsin residents had the same view. Twenty years ago 70% of our residents rated their local schools as excellent or very good. Today, 69% rated their local schools as excellent or good.

Twenty years ago 76% of our residents supported merit pay for teachers; today 77% of our residents support merit pay for teachers. Twenty years ago 58% of our residents thought that discipline in our public schools was too lenient; today 60% hold this view.

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WPRI Poll: Wisconsin Residents are Heavily Invested in the Stock Market

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:28:28 -0600

82% of Wisconsin residents are now invested in the stock market through mutual funds, individual stocks or pension plans. In addition, 71% of our residents now believe that the stock market has a great deal of effect on the United States economy. They also believe that the stock market is a risky investment.

These are among the key findings about statewide policy issues from the most recent survey of 600 Wisconsin residents conducted by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Inc. and Diversified Research between November 9 and 10, 2008.

Investment in the stock market continues to grow among Wisconsin residents. In our most recent survey 82% said that they personally or jointly with a spouse have money invested either in mutual funds, individual stocks or pension plans. This is the highest number since we began asking this question in 1971. It has risen from 77% when last asked in 2006. Investment seems to be spread across all demographic groups, but there are some exceptions. The least number of investors would be found in LaCrosse where 69% said they had investments and the City of Milwaukee where 68% said they were invested. The highest areas would be Southeast Wisconsin and Green Bay where 87% of respondents said they were invested in the stock market. Of younger residents (between 18 and 24), 63% said they had investments, while 71% of our senior citizens (65 and older) also had investments.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Let's Keep Wisconsin Workers Working

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:35:38 -0600

There is a simple way to keep thousands of Wisconsin men and women working without adding a dime to the state budget.

These are dark times for many businesses with the construction industry particularly hard hit. Tight credit and cautious developers have combined to halt numerous private building projects. More than five thousand workers have been sent home to wait until things improve. For them this promises to be an anxious holiday season.

At the same time that Wisconsin’s construction industry is suffering, state government continues to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to buy land. This year alone the Governor has given the DNR the green light to borrow $60 million for land buys under the Stewardship program. Created in 1989, the Stewardship program preserves millions of acres of environmentally sensitive lands. DNR now owns 1.4 million acres or 4% of all the land in Wisconsin.

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WPRI Poll: Wisconsin Residents Very Concerned About State's Economy

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:15:33 -0600

Jobs and the economy are the number one concerns in Wisconsin. Residents continue to be disillusioned with the integrity of their state government and political leaders. Wisconsin residents now view the issue of jobs and unemployment as the single biggest problem that state government should be dealing with. In fact their views of the problem of jobs is the highest number we have seen in all the polling we have published going back to January 1988. 31% of Wisconsin residents now believe that unemployment is the single biggest problem in the state. An additional 17% of Wisconsin residents view economic issues as the largest problem facing the state. Combined it means that 48% of Wisconsin residents view jobs, unemployment and the economy as the most critical issues in the state at this time.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Democrats in Wisconsin: Not Going Anywhere?

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:36:45 -0600

Since the November 4th electoral beatdown received by Wisconsin Republicans, state GOP party leaders have been scrambling to offer ways to fix the party. Some say the party has lost its way and needs to be more conservative. Others say the party needs to move to the center to gain new members. My suggestion to adopt a giant lobster with sunglasses as the new party mascot has been largely ignored.

Even if the party were somehow able to get together on a plan of action, the uphill climb is likely more substantial than anyone realizes. If conservatives sit around and wait for the Obama backlash to sweep them into office in 2010, they'll soon be able to hold their state convention in a minivan in Osseo.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Return Justice Abrahamson

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:02:07 -0600

After careful consideration, I have decided to throw my support behind Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson in her bid for reelection.

I can find no compelling argument against giving Justice Abrahamson a fourth ten year term on the court, and I commend her for rejecting those who suggest that a 74 year old incumbent with 30 years of distinguished service should retire instead of committing to serve on the court well into her 80s. I also applaud the Chief Justice for thumbing her nose at the conspiracy theorists who say she’ll retire early into her fourth term, giving Governor Doyle the opportunity to appoint another liberal Justice to the court. Those skeptics do not know the Justice Abrahamson we know.

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James H. Miller Commentary: Recalibrating the Politics of the Midwest

Thu, 6 Nov 2008 15:57:03 -0600

For years we thought the institution with the biggest Big Ten problem was Time Warner. Tuesday night changed all that. In an extraordinary display Barack Obama carried every Big Ten state. All eight of them, even Indiana. The margins in some of the states were truly astounding. These results open up an issue that few in the media have bothered to discuss. How do Republicans come back nationally and especially in the Big Ten? Obama’s victory may change the demographics so that many of the old political formulas become obsolete. In this election, after decades of predictions, young people, Blacks and Latinos came out in large numbers and they overwhelmingly voted for the Democrats. In the Presidential race it was two-to-one. This is not a good sign for aging white Republican politicians.

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Ben Artz Commentary: In Defense of the Free Market

Mon, 3 Nov 2008 13:22:14 -0600

In troubling times, people generally feel the need to appeal to a higher authority for help, guidance and support. Students ask their teachers for mercy when they fail an exam. Children often ask their parents for assistance when they make mistakes. In the same way, America is turning to its parent, the government, for the help it needs to get out of this mess. America needs new guidelines and rules to abide by in order to stay out of trouble. After all, rules are essential to grow healthy and responsible children as well as economies. But too many rules can stunt the growth of a free market economy. All the free market needs is a little guidance and it will still be the best way to allocate resources.

The free market, unhindered by government intervention in most cases, is still the best way to organize production and trade resources. In free markets buyers and sellers interact with each other, efficiently exchanging information about the value of resources to each other. In this way goods and services are sold to those who value them the most while being produced by firms that can do so in the most efficient way.

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Steven Pigeon Commentary: Milwaukee: "Spreading it Around"

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:01:14 -0500

With Wisconsin’s presidential race having been conceded to Senator Obama and his desire to distribute "Joe the Plumber’s" income, Wisconsin’s implicit approval of this economic arrangement has provided the green light for local communities to seek measures that will spread their community’s own income. Specifically, Milwaukee residents will have two opportunities to spread income around on the November 4th ballot.

The first opportunity is to vote in favor of a measure that would mandate City of Milwaukee employers provide 9 paid sick days to full-time employees. The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) has been the most vocal opponent to the ballot measure, bluntly stating that the mandate would be a job killer for the City of Milwaukee. The mandate would also provide businesses an incentive not to expand, or establish a presence in the City of Milwaukee.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Don't Mistake the Medicine for the Disease

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:44:16 -0500

Billion is the new million. Just when we were almost able to wrap our brain around how much a million dollars is, the federal government shifted gears and began tossing around billion. In Washington, a billion dollars used to be a big deal, but no more. Now it’s the norm. The danger is that the federal "illion" lexicon stands to convert serious issues into fantasy.

Take for example, the fact that the federal government closed last year with a $455 billion deficit. Next year we’re told to expect the deficit to be somewhere "close to $700 billion." I personally have no idea what might be close to that fantastic thing, that $700 billion. It’s so large. Maybe there’s someone at Princeton or at NASA who can understand it. It must be like a quark or a black hole.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Having a Gay Time in Milwaukee

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:53:06 -0500

When the new census figures are released, Milwaukee elected officials must cover their eyes. Once a vibrant, populous city, Milwaukee has been hemorrhaging residents for the past decade, as more and more citizens head for the suburbs, taking their jobs and wealth with them. This leaves lower income residents in the city to pick up an increasing share of the double digit tax increases foisted on them annually by barely competent elected officials.

Yet many cities are finding urban revitalization in an unexpected area. Specifically, they are counting on the Love that Dare Not Speak its Name to provide a spark.

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David Dodenhoff, Ph.D. Commentary: Sarah Palin, Tommy Thompson, and the Unexpected Greatness

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:44:23 -0500

Ronald Reagan was a movie star. Barack Obama is a rock star. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, may end up being a shooting star. But if that happens, it won’t be - at least it shouldn’t be - a result of the essential ordinariness of her mind and her education.

I haven’t made a systematic study of this subject, but there seems to be little correlation between IQ, schooling, and executive success. Some of our smartest presidents - Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, for example - will be remembered in large part for a single, massive, protracted exercise in poor judgment (Vietnam, Watergate, and Monica Lewinsky, respectively).

Similarly, presidents with sheepskins from elite institutions - George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy, and Herbert Hoover, come to mind - sometimes have presidencies that make you wonder, "Did that guy cheat on his SATs?"

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: A Double Tsunami

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:40:00 -0500

Brace yourself.

Wisconsin is facing a double tsunami: one fiscal, one political. And we’re not really prepared for either.

The fiscal tsunami warnings went out this went when Governor Doyle said that the weakening economy could blow a $3 billion hole in a state budget already held together with spit, twine and smoke and mirrors.

(Recall that just in May, the state "closed" its $527 million budget deficit by a series of fiscal gimmicks including borrowing more money for transportation.)

Senator Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) was quick to grasp for an historical analogy. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Jauch "compared the new budget crisis to 1983, when a recession caused a major drop in state tax collections."

"Then," recalled the paper, "former Democratic Gov. Tony Earl and legislators were forced to raise the sales tax from 4 cents on every dollar to 5 cents."

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Time for a Change - Not the One You Might Think

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:56:39 -0500

I wonder if they get it. While America has been carpet bombed with bad economic news - credit markets have ceased operating, the stock market is in free-fall, commodities are inexplicably down - most of Wisconsin’s elected leaders have been working the campaign trail. I wonder if they understand the profound change we are undergoing.

Banks are gone, huge insurers have come to government hat-in-hand and some icons of American business are teetering on the brink of their very existence. I cannot recall any time when the nation felt such consternation. The Clinton people had it right in 1991 when they declared, "It’s the economy, stupid." We might not admit it but the economy and the American psyche are one. Those of us with economic security sleep the sleep of angels while those without economic security toss and turn. We should expect a spike in the number of households with the lights on at 3 A.M.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Wisconsin's Bogus Invisible Hand

Wed, 8 Oct 2008 20:33:18 -0500

When Congress voted last week to "bail out" the country’s large investment firms, most representatives had to hold their nose before the vote, and immediately fled the Capitol to avoid detection. Finding a congressperson willing to defend the bill was as likely as finding a Chicago Cub with a World Series ring. But the bill passed, despite the average American’s hesitance to spend their tax dollars to prop up companies that made such terrible business decisions.

Yet here in Wisconsin, on a much smaller scale, we bail companies out on almost a daily basis. Through grants issued by the state Department of Commerce, a select few businesses get taxpayer cash in the name of "economic development" or "worker training." But, in fact, there’s little that’s worse for commerce in this state than the Department of Commerce. For businesses with a sound business model, we reward them with our expendable income. In Wisconsin, for businesses with an unsuccessful business model, we reward them with our tax dollars.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Which Deadly Sin Did Us In?

Mon, 6 Oct 2008 14:13:33 -0500

The general consensus is that greedy Wall Street lenders and speculators combined with lax regulatory oversight, created the perfect storm and caused the mortgage meltdown. While greed certainly was a factor, several other deadly sins were clearly at play.

Greed: The desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual.

John McCain said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were prime culprits in creating the crisis as their greedy executives walked away with millions in bonuses after falsifying accounting reports to overstate earnings and underestimate risks. McCain to his credit, tried more than once to rein in the organizations.

Barack Obama blamed the greedy speculators and Washington lobbyists, "who bought their way into our government." Obama failed to mention the $126,000 in campaign contributions he received from Fannie Mae over the last three years.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: A Very Sad Scandal

Fri, 3 Oct 2008 09:20:39 -0500

Since 1984 I have been following issues in and around Milwaukee Public Schools. That means that, since 1984 I have been searching for who is responsible for the pitiful state of education in Milwaukee. At long last I found the culprit; it is the Milwaukee School Board. That board has proven itself to be self-serving, insular and overtly political.

Their high crime is that this body, entrusted to care for Milwaukee’s children, has been caught stealing money that should have been put into the classrooms of schools throughout the city.

Like the scandals that brought down huge corporations, from Enron to Fannie Mae, the evidence of the crime was assembled by accountants. Last week the WPRI released a report, authored by Christian Schneider, showing that the MPS board has racked up $2.2 billion of unfunded liabilities to pay the health care cost of retired employees.

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David Dodenhoff, Ph.D. Commentary: Hey, Wisconsin - Get Off the Fence

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:42:45 -0500

I live in Texas. Barack Obama’s odds of winning this state are about the same as my odds of marrying Elizabeth Hurley. Or Madeleine Albright. Pretty slim either way. So, if I want to see where the real electoral action is happening, I look elsewhere. I look to places like Wisconsin.

This year, yet again, Wisconsin finds itself in the category of "battleground state." This means that the Badger State could go for either Barack Obama or John McCain.

Knowing this, I have to ask my Wisconsin friends a couple of questions:

1) really?;

2) no, seriously?

It’s not that I think John McCain is anything special. It’s just that I see Barack Obama as almost all downside. For starters, it’s obvious - to me, at least - that Sen. Obama is still figuring out his basic positions and principles on major foreign policy issues.

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REPORT: Government Retiree Health Benefits: Wisconsin's Ticking Time Bomb

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:17:49 -0500

In recent months, local governments across Southeastern Wisconsin have found themselves the subject of criticism on several fronts for the improper use of taxpayer money. An investigative series by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel concluded Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) wasted over $100 million on the Neighborhood Schools Initiative, which intended to build new classrooms in hopes of luring inner city school children to stay close to home for school. A Milwaukee television station uncovered the fact that Milwaukee County was handing out millions of dollars in flood relief money to residents that had no flood damage. In 2003, Milwaukee County famously ousted their county executive after it was found he was directing millions of dollars worth of pension and retirement benefits to his cronies.

Yet despite these very public embarrassments, local governments in Wisconsin face a far greater threat – one that threatens to make these fiscal missteps look like ripples in the pond that will eventually drown their respective budgets.

According to local government annual finance reports, 27 local governments in Wisconsin are saddled with a combined $6 billion unfunded liability to pay for “Other Postemployment Benefits” (OPEB). Often times, as part of their employment packages, local governments offer to pay health benefits for retired employees. Until now, local governments paid what they owed on a year-to-year basis. But new accounting rules require local governments to divulge the level of their long-term benefit liability. And in some cases, the local government OPEB liabilities are stunning – in some cases, dwarfing the government’s total annual budget.

According to our review, the state’s largest total unfunded OPEB liabilities are concentrated in Southeast Wisconsin, headed up by MPS at $2.2 billion. Milwaukee County currently carries a $1.5 billion OPEB liability, with the City of Milwaukee at $806.3 million. The next five highest liabilities all hail from the Southeast: The City of Racine ($314.8 million), Racine County ($253 million), the Kenosha School District ($241.6 million), the Waukesha School District ($195 million), and the Racine Unified School District ($105.7 million).

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The GAB's Slimy Underbelly

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:22:06 -0500

Nearly a decade ago, British provocateur David Icke took a trip to Canada. As he swiped his passport through the scanner at the Vancouver airport, the words "WATCH FOR" appeared on the screen. Security quickly whisked him away to a holding cell.

Icke, a former English football player and BBC sports correspondent, had his career take a remarkable turn in 1991, when he declared himself to be the Son of God on a British talk show. Later, he wrote that he believed the Earth was secretly controlled by an extraterrestrial race of reptiles which, if they consume enough human blood, will enable them to take a human form. In his 1999 book, "The Biggest Secret: The Book that Will Change the World," Icke exposed George H.W. Bush and Hillary Clinton as members of this reptilian ruling class.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Fiscal Meltdown on Wall Street and Pinckney Street

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:33:58 -0500

As this is being written the details are beginning to emerge about the demise of Lehman Bros. and the acquisition of Merrill Lynch for pennies on the dollar. One lesson to take from the downfall of these once vital, invincible financial houses is how fast the balance sheet can deteriorate. And the balance sheets reveal a story of imprudent decision after imprudent decision layered higher than a royal wedding cake.

A series of questionable financial decisions and a rapidly sinking balance sheet - that same phenomenon is happening in Wisconsin government. State finances are precarious, to say the least, and stand to come crashing down just like those venerable Wall Street investment banks. However, the meltdown of Wisconsin state government will actually have more of an impact on most of us. You see, the meltdown of Wisconsin will force a rapid defunding of programs that affect the poor and the young who depend on a helping hand from government. It will also affect every unit of government that receives financial assistance from Madison. And surely our financial meltdown will cause increased taxes, probably at a time when people can least afford it.

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Steven Pigeon Commentary: Presidential Six Shooters

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:33:17 -0500

"If I had any confidence in the President at all I would not be as worried as I am. There are missile explosions in Afghanistan, this better stop pretty soon or otherwise our cowboy president will start shooting off his six shooters."

I wrote these words the evening of September 11th 2001 in a journal I was keeping while studying abroad in Edinburgh Scotland. In reviewing my entire journal entry for that evening it contains the thoughts of a naïve 20 year old who failed to understand the complexity of international affairs and the amount of hate that is placed towards the United States.

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James H. Miller Commentary: McCain Lives

Mon, 8 Sep 2008 08:03:49 -0500

John McCain has a real shot at being elected President. Who would have ever thought? One result from the Republican convention, besides the obvious success of Sarah Palin, is that McCain’s campaign is absolutely at the top of their game. Consider this metamorphosis. Last year John McCain’s campaign was in shambles; he had fired almost the entire staff; was on the verge of a fiscal meltdown; and had almost no shot at the Republican nomination. In fact, McCain’s ascendancy was based more on luck than skill. He was, in a real sense, the last man standing as the potential front-runners simply fell off the cliff. But today his comeback is sparked by a campaign staff that has given him a real shot at winning this election. The one issue his campaign clearly understands, and has become their entire focus, is that if this election is about the economy and George Bush, John McCain loses. They must make this election about Barack Obama and his credentials.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The GOP's Trojan Horse

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 20:02:02 -0500

Recent years in America have seen a languid national Republican Party, which has been struggling to recruit members, formulate a salient message, and win elections. As the war in Iraq has drawn on and the government has grown exponentially in size, voters have avoided the Republican Party like Michael Moore avoids exercise. In winning the party’s nomination for the presidency, Senator John McCain had showed sparks of inspiration, but has largely been wearing the concrete boots of the Bush/Cheney administration.

That may have all changed on Wednesday night, as the Republicans introduced Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to the world. Palin’s speech netted 38 million viewers – just as many as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention six days earlier – a speech that many hailed as the most anticipated in history.

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David Dodenhoff, Ph.D. Commentary: Brett Favre and the Manly Virtues

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:30:45 -0500

So, did you hear about Brett Favre changing his mind about retirement? I’m kidding. Of course you heard. You’ve probably heard so much about it, in fact, that you’re ready to move on. I’m almost ready, too, but not quite.

Truth be told, I’m interested in this more as a personal story than a sports story. That is, I’m interested in what it says about Brett Favre as a man more than I’m interested in the implications for Favre as a player, or the Packers or Jets as teams.

Now, before I write what I’m about to write, let me acknowledge a few things. Brett Favre is incredibly talented and incredibly tough. He deserves his status as a Packer legend. He is handsome, funny, and charming. He wears Wranglers, just like a normal guy.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: A Letter to Biddy Martin

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:33:02 -0500

Dear Chancellor Martin,

Welcome to Wisconsin. You have been offered an opportunity to take on one of the most prestigious positions in all of Wisconsin. In many other venues the chancellor of a large land grant institution is just another CEO dotting the landscape. In Wisconsin, we think the UW-Madison is something special.

The job of chancellor offers numerous rewards, none of which has anything to do with salary or housing. I suspect you sought out this job because of its enormous potential to impact the human condition. The campus you will head has buildings full of faculty and students who have solved or will solve the nastier problems facing us today. We are never surprised by the world-changing improvements made in medicine, physics, business, engineering, sociology, etc. right here in Wisconsin.

The job of Chancellor also offers its share of frustrations. You will undoubtedly grow weary of the constant demands of fund-raising. Worse, you will have to deal with governors and legislators who will be suspicious of your motives and who operate in a world dominated by the need to stand for office every two or four years. That can become messy.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: A Tale of Two Agencies

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 07:11:53 -0500

"It's as if Milwaukee, Wis., had reverted to a state of lethal chaos."

In December 2006, Time magazine painted a horrific picture of a city on the brink of dissolution.

"A Special Olympian is killed for his wallet as he waits for a bus. An 11-year-old girl is gang-raped by as many as 19 men. A woman is strangled, her body found burning in a city-owned garbage cart. Twenty-eight people are shot, four fatally, over a holiday weekend."

While other cities had already experienced a rise in violent crime, Time reported: "Few places have suffered more than Milwaukee..." The numbers were dramatic. In 2005, Milwaukee saw the country's worst rise in murders jump in homicides--up 40%, to 121.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The Fonz Statue: Are Happy Days Here Again?

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:37:29 -0500

On Tuesday of this week, Wisconsin will finally close a shameful chapter in its history by paying tribute to one of our most enduring public figures. We are finally celebrating a Wisconsin resident who put us on the national map - someone who made Milwaukee a fashionable place. Set aside, for a moment, the fact that he remained enthusiastic about high school girls well into his 30’s - the man could start a jukebox with his fist. And thus, we honor The Fonz with his own statue for making Milwaukee "cool" for over a decade.

The Wisconsin landscape is replete with statues. Abraham Lincoln casts a watchful eye over the UW-Madison campus from his perch on Bascom Hill. (Presumably, watching modern students emancipate shots of Jose Cuervo from State Street bar drink specials.) Hans Christian Heg, the highest-ranking Wisconsin soldier killed in the Civil War, was honored in 1926 with a statue outside the Wisconsin Capitol. Certainly more recognizable to Wisconsin residents is Vince Lombardi, immortalized by a statue outside Lambeau Field. Jean Nicolet, credited as being the first white man to set foot in Northeast Wisconsin, is memorialized with a statue in Red Banks. (It is also rumored that after settling near Green Bay, Nicolet was the first man to call for Ted Thompson to be s-canned for running Brett Favre out of town.)

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Questions for People in the Brown Shoes

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:48:13 -0500

Dear Legislative candidate,

Let’s face it; the State Legislature has become the brown shoes of state politics. As the presidential campaign continues to suck nearly all of the oxygen out of the room, you hardy souls have your hands full getting we voters to turn our heads your way, if only for a fleeting moment.

So more often than not, you are reduced to trying to imprint some slogan on our subconscious - "Oh him, isn’t he the one in the turtleneck who wants to lower the gas tax?"

You’d have to agree, we should know a whole lot more about you. After all, you will be spending plenty of time representing us in Madison and might even have a good deal to say about the condition of our roads and the way our schools are financed, among other things.

While we don’t know much about you, we know plenty about the people we have been electing. We know that they’re not very good at passing budgets on time but are quite adept at increasing the state’s debt. We also know that our government runs better when we have intelligent, thoughtful people running it, people who are able to think for themselves and stand by their ideals. We’re pretty sure you fit that description, so you probably won’t mind taking a few minutes away from knocking on doors to answer a few questions.

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Poll: Barack Obama Leads John McCain in the Presidential Race

Thu, 7 Aug 2008 08:20:27 -0500

Senator Barack Obama holds a 44% to 38% lead in Wisconsin over Senator John McCain in the presidential race. Senator Obama leads the race primarily because of a combination of the most important issues on the minds of voters and the impact of President Bush and the voter’s view about the direction of the country. The two issues that voters felt personally were most important to them were the economy and creating jobs (24%), and dealing with the war in Iraq (12%). On these issues Senator Obama had large leads. On the economy, Obama led Senator McCain by a 62% to 20% margin. On dealing with the war in Iraq his lead was 66% to 22%. Another issue that was frequently mentioned was improving education, where Senator Obama’s lead was 73% to 10%.

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Poll: Wisconsin Residents Back the Green Bay Packers - Not Brett Favre

Wed, 6 Aug 2008 08:17:36 -0500

In the ongoing clash between Brett Favre and Green Bay Packer management, the Wisconsin public clearly favors Packer management. By a 60% to 16% margin Wisconsin residents believe that General Manager Ted Thompson and Coach Mike McCarthy are more concerned than Brett Favre and his supporters about the long term future of the Green Bay Packers. In addition, Brett Favre, who over the last several years was by far the most popular individual in the state of Wisconsin, has seen a sharp decline in his favorability among Wisconsin residents. These are key findings of a survey of Wisconsin residents who expect to vote in the November election. The survey was conducted by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute on August 3 and August 4, 2008.

The support for Thompson and McCarthy ran through every major section of the state. In fact, the strongest support came from the City of Milwaukee where 75% of the residents supported them while only 3% favored Favre. In the Green Bay area, Thompson and McCarthy enjoyed 71% support while Favre and his supporters were at only 15%.

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Ben Artz Commentary: Higher Taxes are Inevitable

Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:10:37 -0500

McCain wants to keep Bush’s tax cuts in place while Obama wants to decrease taxes for most but increase taxes for the wealthy. It seems that both candidates are conveniently forgetting the inevitable tide toward higher taxes in the not-so-distant future. Federal government spending made up 5.9% of GDP in 2000 and has risen to over 7% since. Although relatively small by historical standards, the size of the central government will most certainly continue to rise in the coming years for several reasons. And as Federal spending increases, so must taxes.

In the wake of bank and housing bail-outs, tax payers should pay close attention to how large the governmental assistance gets. After all, tax dollars will pay for the excessive sub-prime loans and reckless lending practices that are partly to blame for the current economic turmoil. Furthermore, it is possible the bail-outs are not over as it is not certain the credit crisis has hit bottom yet. Regardless, the government will no doubt spend resources on more financial regulation, further increasing the burden on tax payers.

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James H. Miller Commentary: History Says...Obama

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:15:30 -0500

Could recent Presidential elections provide some insight into the potential winner this November? The election that has an eerie similarity to this year is 1952 - an extremely unpopular sitting President is not on the ballot, the Democratic Party is involved in a very unpopular war in Korea and the economy is in bad shape. The opposing Republicans run a super candidate in Dwight Eisenhower and win in a landslide.

In 1960, the country, beginning to tire of a cold war and a weaker economy, goes in another direction - a young telegenic John Kennedy becomes the second sitting Senator to be elected President in a very, very close race decided by the state of Illinois.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Where Are We Going?

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:01:45 -0500

Those of us raised in Wisconsin know all about the Up North myth. In grade school we overheard fellow students tell of cabins and lunkers and lures. We heard cousins talk about the lakes - there musta been a million of ‘em - and our parents wistfully tell us that someday we’d all pack into the Chevy and just go. Of course they were all talking about Up North, the land of blue skies and clear lakes.

Yep, those of us raised in Wisconsin couldn’t wait to get to that bucolic place, the place with the tent, the campfire, blackened weenies and golden marshmallows. We just love, love, love the outdoors. After all, it’s why we live here, isn’t it?

Apparently not, at least not as much as the Up North myth would have us believe. An article in last week’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted a recent decline in tourism - down 15%-20% for some businesses. Some of the decline can be blamed on soaring gas prices and a general economic malaise. True, our friends and neighbors are more careful with a dollar this summer, yet the decline in state tourism could also be a reflection of the ultimate demise of the Up North myth.

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REPORT: Wisconsin's Minimum Markup Law: Mandated Pain at the Pump - By Christian Schneider

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:14:41 -0500

In the summer of 2008, politicians are scrambling to cobble together plans to hold gas prices down. Tax the oil companies more, some say. Others propose more domestic drilling. Yet despite their disparate solutions, they all recognize that people are fed up with paying over $4.00 a gallon for gas.

But what if it is actually the government keeping gas prices high? What if Wisconsin state government had a law on the books that legally prevented customers from getting a good deal on motor fuel? In fact, that is exactly what Wisconsin’s minimum markup law accomplishes.

In 1939, Wisconsin passed the minimum markup law - or as it formally known, the Unfair Sales Act - which purported to help keep small businesses afloat during the Great Depression. The Act required retailers to mark up their products a certain percentage over their wholesale price. In theory, this was supposed to keep large retailers from undercutting the prices of smaller "mom and pop" stores, which could drive the smaller stores out of business (commonly referred to as "predatory pricing.")

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Is Obama the Hero We "Need?"

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:54:33 -0500

In recent years, the superhero movie genre has undergone a revival. Previously, movies featuring comic book heroes could be counted on for nothing more than some good action and bad tights. But that has all changed. Now the Hulk is a sensitive hero with father issues. Spiderman wrestles with the weight of his own conscience. Iron Man ends up accomplishing the formidable task of saving both the world and Robert Downey Jr.’s drug dealer from bankruptcy. Even a movie like Unbreakable, which doesn’t reveal itself as a superhero movie until late in the film, features superhuman characters with real world problems.

This weekend saw the release of the granddaddy of them all, "The Dark Knight." The second Christian Bale Batman movie has been hailed in some circles as the greatest superhero movie ever made. And while it features people wearing clown makeup blowing stuff up, there are actually some valuable real world lessons interwoven through the script.

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David Dodenhoff, Ph.D. Commentary: A Peek Inside the Conservative Research Factory

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:10:32 -0500

I have been doing think tank work long enough (12 years) to see many of the same scenes play out over and over again. A common one runs roughly as follows:

1. Ostensibly conservative think tank releases study with findings that support ostensibly conservative position on Issue X.

2. Critics say, "What did you think they were going to say? They’re conservatives."

3. Study author says, "Rather than throwing labels around, why don’t we debate the merits of the study?"

4. No such debate takes place, as media outlets have moved on to a story about a confused but plucky family of ducks that has taken up residence in a local public pool.

5. Study author finds a quiet corner in a poorly-lit bar, sips vodka tonics, shakes his fist and shouts frustrated imprecations at no one in particular.

As one who has played the role of the frustrated, vodka-drinking study author many times, let me tell you a few reasons why this predictable sequence of events frustrates me so.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: A Good Day for a Bad Attitude

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:12:22 -0500

I admit it, I have a bad attitude. When I looked in the mirror this morning I saw a guy with a seven day beard who simply doesn’t give a s_ _ _ _.

What brought on this most unbecoming malaise? I can sum it up in one word - vacation. You see, I’m just back from a week away, a week spent with m y brother and sisters and their husbands and wives. Every year for longer than I care to recall, we’ve spent a week together in the summer overlooking the lake (never actually venturing into the water) drinking a bit too much beer, smoking cigars and discussing life.

For those six glorious days we all pay keen attention to the weather forecast, something I never do the rest of the year. As a group we elevate the weather forecast to a place of reverence because golfing is so weather dependent and besides, the evening cocktail hour is so much better when conducted outdoors.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: The Narcissist From Hope

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:29:28 -0500

Sporting a bright pink shirt and beige suit, and resembling an "albino on Spring Break," former U.S. President Bill Clinton took a few moments out of his discussion about Nelson Mandela’s experience as a prisoner of war to assert that all former POW’s are ticking time bombs ready to explode without notice.

"It’s just like if you know anybody who’s ever been a POW for any length of time, you will see you go along for months or maybe even years, and then something will happen and it will trigger all those bad dreams and they will come back, and it may not last 30 seconds," he said.

Clinton added this qualification:

"Every living soul on the planet has some, often highly justified anger. Everybody," Clinton said. "This is a universal lesson that all of us have to keep struggling with in our lives."

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Standing Up For Your Right to Dry

Tue, 8 Jul 2008 10:48:37 -0500

For centuries, all men have really wanted is the opportunity to have some woman look at their underwear. We have devised myriad strategies (jobs, cars, combovers, breath fresheners) in hopes of creating just the right moment for a lovely lady to gaze at our drawers. Fortunately for the men of the world, having people look at your tighty-whiteys could now actually save the planet.

Everyone these days is "going green." Television stations turn off the lights for 30 seconds to convince you that somehow they're being environmentally responsible. Companies throw the "green" tag on things like cleaning products and bottled water, despite their questionable environmental value. However, some businesses have seen millions of dollars in savings by "going green." A young professionals' group in Milwaukee lists a green way of life as one of the top reasons young people would be attracted to a city.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Epic Systems Should Be WMC's Biggest Fan

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 07:31:20 -0500

In an otherwise slow news period, last week Epic Systems, the medical software company, announced that they would no longer do business with companies associated with WMC (Wisconsin’s business organization). It seems that the medical software company didn’t cotton to WMC orchestrating the election of Michael Gableman to the State Supreme Court.

For months Paul Soglin and a few others have been looking for companies to break ranks with WMC. Epic is their poster child. It must have been an easy sale given that Soglin is a former Epic employee.

Still, there is an element of chutzpah in Epic’s move that some WMC members couldn’t help but savor. Here was this esoteric software company flexing its economic muscle, just as companies have done through history.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Handicapping the State Legislature

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:37:40 -0500

Wouldn't it be great if life were a lot more like golf? We'd all benefit from the thrill of competition, we'd learn good sportsmanship, and we'd all get to enjoy the great outdoors on a daily basis. (In my case, I get to enjoy nature more than most, as I'm usually hitting out of a bird's nest.) And best yet, if you're a terrible golfer, you get a "handicap," which levels the playing field by letting you shave strokes off your final score.

(Perhaps most importantly, any situation where it's acceptable to wear plaid pants in public is okay in my book.)

The whole concept of making things fair by allowing for a handicap would be welcome in real life. All your friends would be uglier than you, so you'd look better by comparison. People would only be allowed to talk about books you have read, so you could dazzle them with your insight. You could walk right into your new job, declare yourself a substandard worker, and thus be allowed to do half the work of your colleagues. (One of the ironclad rules of the workplace - never do anything well the first time, because if you do, you'll get stuck doing it forever.)

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David Dodenhoff Commentary: No More Driving While Uneducated

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:26:38 -0500

In a recent report for WPRI (“Moving the Milwaukee Economy Forward”), George Lightbourn and Sammis White noted that Milwaukee’s economic future depends in part on increasing the percentage of high school graduates in the local labor pool. A high school diploma doesn’t open nearly as many doors as a college degree or specialized training, but it has become an entry-level requirement for many jobs. More workers with diplomas means better job prospects for them and greater growth opportunities for employers. This is true not just in Milwaukee, but throughout Wisconsin.

The question is, how can we persuade more Wisconsin youngsters to finish high school? Lightbourn and White acknowledge that "the answer to that question has proven to be very elusive."

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: Environmentalists Jump the Shark

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:39:25 -0500

Some environmentalists are blaming the recent tomato salmonella scare on global climate change.

If this keeps up, global warming will also undoubtedly be blamed for male pattern baldness, gingivitis, navel lint, erectile dysfunction, your uncle’s hemorrhoids, and boring public radio.

Has environmentalism finally "jumped the shark?" Or at least the Al Gore version of Greenism?

This week, the enviros found themselves the butt of jokes and potentially on the wrong side of a red-hot political issue: drilling.

All of this comes as a rude surprise to a movement that has been used to be treated with deference, with its every proclamation and nostrum regarded with solemn respect and acquiescence? We need new low-flush toilets to save the planet? Of course. Replace our light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs? Certainly. Blame climate change for the plight of polar bears? They had the pictures!

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REPORT: Will Healthy Wisconsin Bust the State Budget? - By George Lightbourn and Christian Schneider

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:46:44 -0500

Wisconsin is home to the broadest health care reform proposed anywhere in America. The initiative, dubbed "Healthy Wisconsin" was introduced two times by Democratic leadership in the Wisconsin State Senate during the current legislative session. While unsuccessful to date, they have vowed to bring it back in 2009, when there is a real possibility that Democrats could control both houses of the Legislature. Wisconsin Democrats have explicitly made Healthy Wisconsin the key campaign issue in their attempt to gain full control of the Wisconsin Legislature.We are told by the plan’s advocates that Healthy Wisconsin is simply insurance reform. "We didn’t want it where it was a government-run type of system," said Senator Erpenbach, the chief sponsor. "We wanted to keep it in the private sector."

However, as this report details, Healthy Wisconsin would turn every aspect of the health care system over to state government. Government involvement in health care would not only be likely, it would be required. As with every other aspect of the state budget, the Legislature will have to set the level of payroll tax that supports the plan and establish a global budget for the plan. Further, given that the tax will be by far the largest levied by state government, and that spending on Healthy Wisconsin will exceed the entirety of the state’s general fund budget, it is inevitable that health care finance and spending will be prominent political and campaign issues.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Tim Russert: A Credit to His Profession

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:35:06 -0500

He wasn’t pretty or puffed up. He was a regular guy you couldn’t help but like; so much so, that even my normal (non-political) friends and associates were stunned and saddened by his death.

Tim Russert understood, as any professional political operative or journalist should, that the story must never be about him. Russert was a voracious reader who researched his topics and guests more thoroughly than anyone in the business, but he didn’t talk down to or shout over his guests. He gave them ample time to answer questions and he carefully listened to their responses instead of merely waiting for his next turn to talk. And because Russert was always prepared, he was able to separate the story from the spin.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Wisconsin's Third Party Animals - By Christian Schneider

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:33:58 -0500

On the evening of November 5, 2002, the election results began to roll in. A rainy election day had come to wash away the grime from an often-brutal gubernatorial race in Wisconsin, which had seen the candidates refer to each other as "crooked" and "absolutely disreputable." Incumbent Republican Governor Scott McCallum, who had been in office scarcely two years, faced a strong challenge from long-time Democratic Attorney General Jim Doyle. The race was a crucial turning point for Wisconsin, as it represented the first time in sixteen years iconic Governor Tommy Thompson was not on the ballot.

Merely a year earlier, Republican officials could only have dreamed about Doyle pulling a paltry 45% of the vote on election night. McCallum had suffered in Thompson’s shadow after Tommy had left to be Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush Administration. McCallum, saddled with a large budget deficit, sought to cut spending to local governments to make up the difference. Naturally, local officials, many of them Republicans, appeared all too willing to defenestrate McCallum in favor of the Democrat.

Yet on election night, Doyle’s poor showing did little to cheer up the GOP faithful. While the Democrat had fallen well short of the magic 50% mark, McCallum had pulled in a woeful 41%, losing to Doyle by nearly 66,000 votes. For the first time in sixteen years, Wisconsin would be led by a Democrat - and a long time bitter Thompson foe, at that.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Bad Justice: Don't Blame the Voters for the Ugly Election for the High Court - By Charles J. Sykes

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:31:56 -0500

No sooner had the votes been counted and liberal Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler ousted from the state’s high court than the outrage began.

Bad voters!

Governor Jim Doyle, who had appointed Butler to the high court declared the result a "tragedy," while liberals and their allies in the media immediately embraced voter suppression on a massive scale. Upset by the results, state Representative Fred Kessler (D-Milwaukee) proposed the elimination of elections for justice altogether and the state’s largest newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, embraced his call for disenfranchisement.

"After two campaigns in two years marked by sleazy ads, empty rhetoric and issues often hardly related to the actual work of the court," the paper editorialized, it was time to strip the voters of their say in the selection of judges.

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The Wisconsin Interest: The New WEAC - By George Lightbourn

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:42:42 -0500

Fear the Rottweiler. That toughest of junkyard dogs has been bred to protect, trained to attack. He is a vicious mélange of teeth and sinew that needs little reason to attack. It is what he does.

Such is the image built up around WEAC—the Wisconsin Education Association Council – the rough, tough teachers union that has had its way with governors and legislators. To pick a fight with WEAC is to invite a bloody nose.

But, while few people realize it, that image has faded as surely as a sepia photograph. The junkyard dog image of WEAC is a dated caricature from a bygone day. The reality is quite different. The reality is that the WEAC of today bears little likeness to the WEAC of the past. The reality is that WEAC retains little of the confrontational union that ran the show in the halls of the Capitol in Madison and in school board rooms throughout Wisconsin. The reality is that the WEAC of today looks much less a Rottweiler and much more a Poodle as it pads comfortably among the elites in and around Wisconsin government.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Political Speculators Looking Into the Crystal Ball - By Jeff Mayers

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:40:59 -0500

Another election year. More rampant speculation in the capital city.

While the dust settled on the nasty state Supreme Court race in Spring 2008, the energy among state operatives shifted to the fall elections that will determine partisan control of the state Senate and Assembly, whether Democrat Steve Kagen of Appleton will remain the U.S. representative for the Green Bay area 8th Congressional District, and whether Wisconsin Republicans can break a presidential losing streak stretching back to 1988.

No race for governor or attorney general. Little real competition in the other congressional races. No U.S. Senate race as Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold are firmly and safely in the middle of their six-year terms.

So the big race in the fall of 2008 is the presidential contest. The speculation centered in mid-April on how it would affect those legislative races down the ballot, and perhaps how it would affect the statehouse's most powerful politician, Governor Jim Doyle. On the minds of many insiders: If Barack Obama wins the presidency, will Doyle follow in the footsteps of Democrat Patrick Lucey (1977) and Republican Tommy Thompson (2001) - getting offered, and taking, a job in the new administration, shaking up the status quo?

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The Wisconsin Interest: New MPS Teachers Speak Out on Their Training - By Mark C. Schug and Scott Niederjohn

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:39:13 -0500

When leaders in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and other Wisconsin school districts set about hiring new teachers, where should they look to find the candidates who are most likely to do a good job of improving their students’ academic learning? There are several possibilities. In Wisconsin alone, 32 colleges and universities, public and private, offer training programs leading to initial certification for teaching in the state’s kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) schools. These programs are alike in many ways, since all of them must meet the state’s program-approval standards, but they are by no means identical. They vary in their stated goals, admission standards, curricular emphases, course requirements, and in the profiles of the faculty members who design and conduct the programs. It seems plausible, therefore, that the various programs also would differ in their effectiveness - some outperforming others in producing teachers who know how to improve students’ academic achievement. To the extent that they differ in this respect, it also would seem plausible that school districts would take account of the differences, striving to hire graduates from those programs known for their strong, positive training effects.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Lowering the Bar: How Wisconsin's Biggest Organization for Lawyers is Ruining Their Public Image - By Deb Jordahl

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:36:41 -0500

What’s wrong with lawyer jokes? Lawyers don’t think they’re funny and no one else thinks they’re jokes.

This sentiment was recently echoed by Attorney Douglas Kammer, a candidate for president of the Wisconsin State Bar Association. In a statement to fellow Bar members in March 2008 Kammer wrote:

The bar has lost sight of its mission. In a cloud of vague gabble about the "public interest" the Bar has become an embarrassment to its members.

Decent, honest lawyers are guilty by association. Is the bar going to solve this problem? Not in a pig’s eye! The Bar doesn’t have the will or the tools to even address the issue. Rather they sit in their inverted shot-glass in Madison and aggrandize the other insiders in the club while discussing how to protect the public from - you guessed it - lawyers.

It is a little known fact that Wisconsin lawyers, unlike any other group of professionals except public school teachers, are compelled by state law to pay dues to an association. Kammer is campaigning on a platform to make membership in the State Bar voluntary because he believes it will force the Bar to be more responsive to its members. He cites the fact that the voluntary Bar in Illinois has a 70% participation rate and provides a variety of impressive member services to support his theory.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Finding Funds for Expanding Milwaukee’s Convention Center and Bradley Center - By Mark L. Kass

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:34:02 -0500

If you build it, they will come.

That has long been the rallying cry of proponents of expanding Milwaukee’s convention center, who have been pushing for such a project since the $184 million facility opened in 1998.

But the stark reality is that little progress has been made in the last decade towards Milwaukee getting a bigger convention center. Anytime the project is pushed, it is stalled by a lack support, funding, and political will.

There has also been a significant slowdown in the convention business since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, failed merger talks between the Wisconsin Center District, which oversees the Midwest Airlines Center and the nearby Bradley Center, and the unwillingness of politicians in Madison to push for the additional taxes necessary to make the project a financial reality.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Janesville's Second Line

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:53:36 -0500

Leave it to New Orleans to concoct its own eccentric funeral tradition. Most notable to outsiders is the second line; the parade back from the cemetery full of lively music and dancing.

The Midwest has its own peculiar funeral tradition which was on display in Janesville last week when General Motors announce the demise of the car assembly plant. The Midwestern version of the second line is decidedly angrier than its New Orleans counterpart.

At the Janesville funeral, it was easy to spot those in the first line, those directly affected by the death. They were the men and women with faces unable to disguise the shock of the closing.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: How Jim Doyle Can Save Wisconsin's Republican Party

Mon, 9 Jun 2008 06:34:49 -0500

With the state weary from a long, drawn-out war overseas, one of Wisconsin’s political parties was taking a beating at the polls. The party’s national elected officials had gone to war seven years previously, and voters were demonstrating their displeasure at the ballot box. The party, which had strayed significantly from its traditional values, was a mere afterthought in Wisconsin government, and appeared to be sinking even lower.

Then Jim Doyle showed up to save it. Not the current governor, the other one.

The year was 1948, and Democrats in Wisconsin were foundering. German voters, who had traditionally been Democrats, had fled the party due in large part to Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of war on Germany in 1918. (At the time, many of Wisconsin’s Germans were still foreign born, and had ties to the homeland.) While German Americans in Wisconsin were very much in favor of U.S. involvement in World War II, the war reinforced their desire to stay away from the Democratic Party. The Progressive Party in Wisconsin was nearly extinct, and many of its members were returning to the Republican Party, from whence they came in 1934.

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James H. Miller Commentary: The Texas Two-Step

Thu, 5 Jun 2008 08:24:01 -0500

A phone call is made. Supposedly, a young woman reports that she is an underage teen bride being held against her will at a Mormon compound in Texas. Texas’ child protective services moves immediately. This is a compound of polygamist whites operating in a commune separated from the rest of Texas society. Could bureaucrats be given a better target? They find a local judge who allows them to take all the children away from their parents. It seems to be a tremendous victory for the bureaucrats.

Then things begin to unravel. The so-called underage girl can’t be found. Questions begin to be raised about why all 400 children were removed if this was a case of teenage sexual abuse. Half of the children were under the age of five. If it is about sexual abuse of women, why were the boys taken?

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REPORT: Moving the Milwaukee Economy Forward - By George Lightbourn and Sammis White, Ph.D.

Tue, 3 Jun 2008 08:25:00 -0500

The authors of this report have studied and written about Milwaukee’s economy for a number of years. In this analysis you will find encouragement from many positive steps that already have been taken by business and political leaders to rejuvenate the economy. However, the report also lays bare the deficiencies that still present challenges for the Milwaukee economy.

Milwaukee’s economy is definitely moving in the right direction. However, the region needs to pick up the pace. Efforts to grow Milwaukee’s economy can be likened to a foot race in which Milwaukee entered the race well behind other entrants; it is in the race, but it is still not moving as fast as other contestants. Milwaukee is behind, and each day it is falling further behind in the race toward prosperity.

There has simply not been enough action. To date, the revitalization of Milwaukee’s economy has been marked by caution on a massive scale. Other urban areas have been willing to adopt an economic development strategy, lock arms, and drive through an action plan. Milwaukee has been unwilling to place a bet on a particular strategic direction.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: It Really Isn't Lying - Exactly

Mon, 2 Jun 2008 07:42:26 -0500

We can't put our finger on when it happened, but somewhere along the line our state government developed an allergy to the truth. The allergy must be serious because we’ve looked everywhere and we simply cannot find it.

It seems that our leaders have been spinning an alternate version of the truth for so long that their spin seems almost real. There are a few who still know that prattle is just that – prattle, but their ranks are thinning. Increasing are ranks of those who can understand that our former President actually believed that he did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

For those who need a periodic fix of the truth, here are a few things you won’t hear in the Capitol:

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Ben Artz Commentary: Graduation Rates: MPS vs. Choice

Thu, 29 May 2008 07:46:15 -0500

There is no doubt it is in the interest of every citizen to care about the public school system. Not only do millions of tax dollars funnel into public schools every year but more importantly, graduates create a more stable, functional and successful society. It is for this reason Milwaukee decided to improve its public school system by implementing the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program years ago. This is simply a program that provides a subsidy per student that goes to the school each student chooses to attend. Thus good schools theoretically get more students and therefore more funding while bad schools lose funding and eventually shut down. Basically vouchers create competition among schools, where in the end only the strong schools survive.

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David Dodenhoff Commentary: What Healthy Wisconsin Should Cost (And Almost Certainly Won't)

Thu, 22 May 2008 07:38:34 -0500

Not long ago, I was reading an online exchange between a male dating guru and one of his acolytes. The acolyte described the woman of his dreams: young, athletic, smart, beautiful, Packer fan, etc. The guru assured the acolyte that such women existed, and that he could help the acolyte meet them. The guru also, however, added this discouraging note: "When you meet a woman like that and make clear that you’re interested, the first thing she’s going to ask is, 'What, exactly, do you bring to the table?'"

I have the same question when it comes to Healthy Wisconsin. The state intends to provide universal health care coverage - secure, affordable, high-quality coverage. It sounds like the health care equivalent of the dream girl. Naturally, it’s got me wondering: what, exactly, are Wisconsinites bringing to the table?

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Grand Old Patriarchy: Whither the Republican Women?

Mon, 19 May 2008 07:44:28 -0500

This one’s for the ladies.

On September 10th of 2002, I was in my car on the way to the Peggy Rosenzweig for Senate victory party. Rosenzweig, a moderate Republican incumbent who had spent 20 years in the Legislature, was being challenged in a primary by the more conservative Tom Reynolds, who had previously run for Congress several times. I called ahead to one of her campaign staffers to see how the party was going. "Turn around," he said. "We just lost."

The early 2000s were good to GOP women. In 2002, the majority of Republican state senators in Wisconsin were female. In January of 2003, Mary Panzer became the state’s first female majority leader. Margaret Farrow became the state’s first female Lieutenant Governor in 2001. In 2002, 12 women held Assembly seats. Yet Rosenzweig’s loss was a harbinger of things to come.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: This Could Have Been Wisconsin

Thu, 15 May 2008 16:51:52 -0500

On Thursday, California’s Supreme Court issued a sweeping ruling legalizing gay marriage in the state. The court’s Chief Justice Ron George declared that "... limiting the designation of marriage to a union 'between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute."

The 4-3 ruling invalidated a state law declaring that only marriages between men and women could be legally recognized. That law, known as Proposition 22, had been passed with a 61% majority in 2000. In its ruling the court trumped the electorate, a point singled out by one of the dissenters, Justice Carol Corrigan who wrote:

"In my view, Californians should allow our gay and lesbian neighbors to call their unions marriages. But I, and this court, must acknowledge that a majority of Californians hold a different view, and have explicitly said so by their vote. This court can overrule a vote of the people only if the Constitution compels us to do so. Here, the Constitution does not."

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Fixing the Budget: This is a Test

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:16:33 -0500

It’s now official: both John McCain and Hillary Clinton have been caught with their demagoguery showing. Of course it wasn’t official until the New York Times called it and last week the nation’s paper of record called it.

McCain, the Republican standard bearer and Clinton, the Democratic spear chucker, thought it would be good to, well, you know, give people some money. Exactly how much money, we can’t say since they wanted to pass it out in the form of a gas tax holiday. The more we drive, the more we get.

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REPORT: Why Milwaukee Health Care Costs are High: What to Do About It, By Linda Gorman, PhD.

Thu, 8 May 2008 21:54:26 -0500

The Milwaukee health care market is plagued with unusually high costs. As a result, the cost of health care and health insurance is affecting the bottom line for both businesses and families. The cost of health care is one of the more unattractive elements facing those choosing to live and work in Milwaukee.

How high are Milwaukee’s costs? A GAO estimate pegged Milwaukee health care cost at 27% above the average paid for federal employees around the country. Mercer Health and Benefits found Milwaukee health care costs to be 39% above other areas in the Midwest. A Mercer/Foster Higgins survey placed Milwaukee’s costs at 55% above other Midwest metro areas. Even in the market for individual insurance, coverage is costly. Assurant Inc., a Milwaukee-based insurer, has posted prices for Milwaukee purchasers that exceed what would be expected for this market. By any definition, Milwaukee is an expensive health care market.

Why are costs are so high? This report shows that it has nothing to do with the demographics or even the health risks presented by the population. It is also instructive that the costs associated with the uninsured population have little to do with Milwaukee’s elevated health care costs.

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Steven Pigeon Commentary: Unleashing Wisconsin's Frugality

Thu, 8 May 2008 10:56:48 -0500

Wisconsinites have a reputation of being frugal. Some, like myself, take great pride in this earned reputation. However, for many Wisconsinites frugality has become a necessity in an effort to avoid an increasing tax burden that is being placed upon them by local governments. This is especially the case in Milwaukee.

Recently, Milwaukee Major Tom Barrett has expressed a desire to permanently extend a tax imposed on cell phones, which was used to successfully update 911 call center technologies. This $0.43 monthly tax is set to expire November 30th. It is not the minimal cost of the tax that is upsetting. It is upsetting that local officials are seeking to ignore the original intent of the legislation and extend a tax indefinitely and spend the money for purposes beyond that of the 911 call center. Similarly, there have been rumblings that the Miller Park stadium tax will be extended after the stadium paid off in order to supplement local government spending.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Public Libraries - No Longer Just For the Literate

Mon, 5 May 2008 09:40:31 -0500

Throughout history, government has recognized several important classes of individuals who need help. As American citizens, we approve of a portion of our tax dollars going to help the truly needy. Currently, these groups can be broken up into the following categories:

1. The Poor;
2. The Disabled;
3. The Elderly;
4. People who haven’t seen "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle."

Yes, your tax dollars are going to help those poor souls who are dangerously under-entertained, by subsidizing your neighborhood Free Blockbuster, commonly known as the public library.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Wisconsin State Bar History is Repeating Itself

Thu, 1 May 2008 11:55:28 -0500

It is a little known fact that Wisconsin lawyers, unlike any other group of professionals except public school teachers, are compelled by state law to pay dues to an association.

The Wisconsin bar became mandatory in 1956 and was briefly abolished in 1988 as the result of a lawsuit brought by Attorney Steven Levine of the Public Service Commission. Federal Judge Barbara Crabb entered a declaratory judgment abolishing the mandatory bar. Crabb’s ruling was then reversed on appeal and bar leadership successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to reinstate the mandatory bar in 1992.

Levine returned to the spotlight again in 2005 when he became the first self-nominating candidate in Bar history to be elected President. Levine’s campaign promised to explore a return to the voluntary bar, but the Board of Governors refused to even place discussion of the mandatory bar on the Board’s agenda.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: A Lesson on the American Dream

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:09:15 -0500

OK, we get it. And more of us are getting it every day. We know that if we are to succeed, it will be due mostly to our own guile and initiative.

We know that if we have to depend on government to make things better, we are only setting ourselves up for disappointment. The reality of the bootstraps economy, once only espoused by libertarians and conservatives, has begun seeping in as the new reality for all Americans.

That is why I read with such interest a book that a friend recently gave me. Scratch Beginnings, as distinctive a book as I’ve read in awhile, is the story of a quest to find out whether the American Dream is still alive.

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Charles J. Sykes Commentary: Portrait of a Boondoggle

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:51:53 -0500

From the beginning, critics sniped that spending $42 million in taxpayer dollars for the "Milwaukee Theater" would be a colossal waste of money. Critics argued that Milwaukee already had enough entertainment venues (The Marcus Center, the Pabst Theater, the Riverside ) and predicted that the new theater - the brainchild of Milwaukee Center District Board Chairman Frank Gimbel -- would be a costly, duplicative white elephant.

They had no idea.

A quick look at the Milwaukee Theater’s 2008 schedule reveals a vast wasteland of empty seats and darkened houses, a boondoggle of astounding proportions, even by Milwaukee ’s free-spending standards. (We are, after all, the home of the multi-billion dollar Deep Tunnel.)

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The Good Ol' Days of Mudslinging

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:02:56 -0500

Coming off another statewide campaign in which candidates and their supporters criticized each other bitterly, the usual calls for reforming our campaign finance system are underway. These "negative" attacks are so disturbing to editorial boards, the state’s two largest papers have actually proposed doing away with Supreme Court elections altogether. Apparently, the best way to protect the peoples’ interest is to make sure they have no say in who governs them.

Yet for all the people that think these races are too "negative," it is instructive to go back and take a historical look at negativity in campaigning. In David Mark’s excellent book "Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning," he details some of the most important races in American History, and the level of animus and dirty campaigning in each.

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James H. Miller Commentary: Appointing Judges a Supremely Bad Idea

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:01:38 -0500

The last year and a half has been a political horror show for liberal elites in Wisconsin. Given the nature of the Bush presidency it seems almost impossible that Republicans could stumble onto the one issue on which they can still win elections - crime. For the left it has been a stunning revelation. A year ago it was Annette Ziegler, then in November, against all odds during a Democratic tsunami, Republican J.B. Van Hollen was elected Attorney General. And now the Wisconsin Supreme Court has gone to the right. The angst and the rage are hardly unexpected. Now, faced with an inability to win judicial elections, the left, aided by the media, has decided to do everything they can to change the rules.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Where Have You Gone, Bob LaFollette?

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:15:23 -0500

It had been a few years since I had heard about Raymond Scheppach, the Executive Director of the National Governors Association. Then last week he wrote an important article published recently by Stateline.org. In the article he set the bar high for governors across the country facing recession-induced budget shortfalls. The non-partisan Scheppach wrote that governors should use this exercise in belt tightening to implement efficiency and restructuring to make government better.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The Government Accountability Board: Growing Like a Weed

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:36:43 -0500

In an effort to strengthen the state’s abysmal record in enforcing election law, the Legislature last year implemented a new board to review campaign activities. The new Government Accountability Board was set up to enforce elections laws and to handle campaign finance reports.

Yet since the new board was implemented, the GAB has seemingly had trouble with the very laws it was intended to enforce. Just this week, the Board had to remove two members who violated the State Constitution by serving on the Board before their terms as judges had expired (even though they had resigned their positions.)

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Ben Artz Commentary: The Wisconsin Wind Turbine Controversy

Mon, 7 Apr 2008 09:49:59 -0500

"Good neighbors don’t host 400 foot wind turbines."

Signs like these are littered across northeast Wisconsin, the windiest part of the state. Residents there are using peer pressure to prevent their neighbors from leasing small plots of land to energy companies who want to erect large wind turbines for generating electricity. These wind turbines have been popping up all over northeast Wisconsin as energy companies strive to meet Wisconsin’s relatively recent renewable energy legislation. By 2015, Wisconsin utility companies are to generate at least 10% of electricity from renewable resources such as water, wood, ethanol and wind. In 2005 the state reached 4.5%, well below the national average of 6.1% at that time. With Wisconsin having to import electricity to meet its energy demands, the generating capacity of wind is starting to be considered as a viable renewable resource.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Supreme Court Plants another Sloppy Wet Kiss on State Trial Bar

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:24:23 -0500

Friday, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court delivered another blow to Wisconsin business and industry. In yet another far reaching 4-3 decision, allegedly written to protect Wisconsin consumers, the court has guaranteed higher costs for business and consumers and higher fees for trial attorneys.

In Stuart v. Weisflog, the court determined that ANY business entity or person providing a home improvement could be sued for twice the amount of damages caused by simple negligence on the part of contractor. Prior to the case, litigants could be awarded double the amount of damages and court costs for damage caused by contractor misrepresentation. Simple contractor negligence did not allow for double damages.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: The Wisconsin Legislature's Putrid Present

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:37:08 -0500

My wife and I used to have a great family dog. He was loving, loyal, and always happy to see me when I came home from work. However, on the rare occasion, he would sneak into the basement and have an "accident." When he did so, he would run and hide behind the couch, knowing how little his rectal gift would be appreciated.

Eerily, my dog’s behavior mirrors the Wisconsin State Legislature’s attempts to pass a budget repair bill to fill in a $652 million hole this biennium. Put simply, the Legislature is pooping in our basement, and looking for a couch to hide behind.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: A Valentine Note from Eliot Spitzer to Jim Doyle

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:16:45 -0500

On February 14, Governor Doyle sat in his downtown Madison office knowing he was faced with a looming budget deficit. This challenge was enough to make even the seasoned, two-term governor tense.

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C. on a day usually set aside for flowers and candy, an unusually relaxed Eliot Spitzer slid into a chair before the House Financial Services Committee. The message the soon-to-be former Governor Spitzer delivered that day was meant, not only for the committee, but for investment bankers and government leaders across America. In effect, he was passing a Valentine note directly to Governor Doyle.

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REPORT: The Economic Impact of Immigration on Green Bay, By David Dodenhoff, Ph.D.

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:36:11 -0500

"Immigration" - these days, few words in American political discourse can incite passions the way this one can. As recently as five years ago, though, immigration was an arcane issue discussed chiefly among a small community of academics, think tank researchers, and government officials. It was never a particularly important subject among American voters, nor to the mainstream media. Because of this, discussions of immigration policy took place largely outside the spotlight of public scrutiny.

Things began to change in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Those attacks revealed how simple it was for enemies of the United States to enter the country legally—to live, work, and travel within the U.S. without fear of apprehension, let alone deportation; and to plan and carry out acts of mass murder with minimal interference.

The government investigations that followed the 9/11 attacks revealed a permissive, and in some ways highly dysfunctional, federal system for regulating immigration. That system was failing—not just at stopping national security threats, but also at the basic function of protecting the country’s borders. Thus, the conversation about immigration soon expanded from national security issues to issues of economic security. What were the costs and consequences of the tide of immigrants, legal and illegal, surging across the country’s southern border? Did anyone know? Even more important, could the government do anything about it?

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Ben Artz Commentary: Riding Out the Oil Bubble

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:34:07 -0500

The United States economy has experienced two massive asset bubbles in recent memory. The first was the dot-com bubble that fueled a seemingly endless economic expansion and filled people’s pockets with money. The second was the housing boom that gave home-owners huge unrealized gains in property values, providing investors with a large amount of equity of which to borrow against. Both of these bubbles felt great when we were in their midst, but hurt immensely when they popped and sent the economy into a tailspin. We suffered a mild recession after the first one and are suffering at least a very weak economy after the second. Believe it or not, we seem to be in the middle of another bubble; but unlike the prior two, this one hurts almost everyone and will aid the same number if it ever bursts.

You may have guessed that I am of course referring to oil. The price for a barrel of oil recently topped $100 when only six years ago its price was a mere $25. There are many good economic reasons for why the price has increased in the past decade, yet there is only one that can explain why it has gone this far. We are in the middle of an asset bubble much like the dot-com stock price bubble and the housing valuation bubble the economy is still suffering from.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Hate George W? You Should Be a Conservative

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:46:16 -0500

There’s an old saying: Republicans get elected saying big government doesn’t work, then go about proving it.

In recent years, America has become a breeding ground for liberals. The Left has used their universal distaste for George W. Bush to recruit new footsoldiers all over America. They've been voting in Democratic primaries at twice the rate of the GOP primaries. They deride the President as a smirking, right-wing buffoon. And that’s probably what it says on his fan mail.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Healthy Wisconsin: A Dog That Just Won't Hunt

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:28:03 -0500

Following through on a promise, the Senate Democrats last week reintroduced their health care plan dubbed Healthy Wisconsin. The plan extends coverage to everyone in Wisconsin, as well as anyone who is thinking of relocating to Wisconsin, and passes the cost along to taxpayers through an impressive, upward spiraling payroll tax.

We are told that if we were fortunate enough to see Healthy Wisconsin enacted, we would have it just as good in Wisconsin as they have in several other nations. One of the countries often cited is New Zealand. You see in New Zealand everyone is covered for a fraction of what health care costs in the U.S.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Electing Judges: Save Us From the Horrors of Democracy

Thu, 6 Mar 2008 07:57:48 -0600

The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court.., the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

- Abraham Lincoln, 1st Inaugural Address

Wisconsin government has been infected by a poisonous presence. Apparently, this corrosive phenomenon is so dangerous, it has prompted one of the largest newspapers in the state to call for a constitutional amendment to eradicate it. And what exactly is so damaging to our democracy?

Well...democracy, actually.

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REPORT: Preparing Effective Teachers for the Milwaukee Public Schools: How Good a Job do Wisconsin Schools of Education Do?

Tue, 4 Mar 2008 06:51:31 -0600

When leaders in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and other Wisconsin school districts set about hiring new teachers, where should they look to find the candidates most likely to do a good job of improving their students’ academic learning? There are several possibilities. In Wisconsin alone 32 colleges and universities, public and private, offer training programs leading to initial certification for teaching in the state’s Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) schools. These programs are alike in many ways, since all of them must meet the state’s program-approval standards, but they are by no means identical. They vary in their stated goals, admission standards, curricular emphases, course requirements, and in the profiles of the faculty members who design and conduct the programs. It seems plausible, therefore, that the various programs also would differ in their effectiveness - some outperforming others in producing teachers who know how to improve students’ academic achievement. To the extent that they differ in this respect, it also would seem plausible that school districts would take account of the differences, striving to hire graduates from those programs known for their strong, positive training effects.

After all, the stakes are high. It matters a great deal who gets hired to teach, especially in large urban school districts like the MPS, which are struggling to improve graduation rates and achievement levels. Notwithstanding the influence of homes and neighborhoods, teacher quality has a powerful effect on students’ academic achievement.

Unfortunately, school districts to date have had no reliable basis for making well-informed judgments about the effectiveness of the many teacher training programs whose graduates they might consider for employment. This study addresses this problem, with special reference to the staffing needs of large urban school districts such as MPS.
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James H. Miller Commentary: The Polling Follies

Mon, 3 Mar 2008 09:41:13 -0600

The day before the Wisconsin primary a number of polls suggested that Hillary Clinton was closing ground fast. One poll showed Hillary Clinton had assumed a 49% to 43% lead. The next day Barack Obama absolutely hammered Hillary Clinton. Obama won by 17 points, which meant that the poll that had showed him losing by 6 points was off by an astonishing 23 points. In this political year the media and the pundits continuously blame pollsters for having bad numbers. The criticisms started after New Hampshire and continued into the results on Super Tuesday. The pollsters answered with the difficulty of polling the primaries, the problem of cell phones, and the fact that turnout figures were hard to predict in a primary election.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Finally, a Politician With the Guts to be For Hope

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:39:09 -0600

Here’s what we know about Barack Obama: He wants change, and he wants hope. The only question seems to be in what order.

Both of these promises are somewhat perplexing. How is being for "change" really a serious position in a presidential campaign? News reports actually refer to some voters as "change" voters - as in, "Barack Obama is winning the ‘change’ voters two to one over Hillary Clinton." One would think merely voting for a new Commander in Chief qualifies one as a "change" voter. There’s probably one guy sitting at home in Nebraska that goes to the polls hoping his vote will keep things exactly the way they are. So when they say Obama is winning the "change" voters, they’re basically saying he’s leading among voters who don’t go into the booth and accidentally vote for George W. Bush.

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The Wisconsin Interest: A Conservative Campus Pushback? Don't Look Now, But there are Conservatives on those Campuses - By Charles J. Sykes

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:34:15 -0600

Conservatives dominate the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s student government.

If you’re surprised to read that, imagine the surprise of UWM’s ever-so politically correct administrators, who now quite unexpectedly find themselves facing a conservative student pushback on issues ranging from free speech to the allocation of millions of dollars in student fees.

The result is a new dynamic on campuses like Milwaukee for students and academics alike. For decades, the leftist sympathies of the student body were simply taken for granted and university administrators became accustomed to treating non-radical student groups as virtually invisible. That’s getting harder.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Making Wisconsin the Health Care Migration Capital - By Rick Esenberg

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:33:03 -0600

There is a school of thought about American federalism holding that the states ought to be the laboratories of democracy. Each state can try its own unique solutions to policy problems and, through this state-by-state experimentation, we will learn what works. Let fifty flowers bloom!

A problem may arise when these "experiments" benefit one part of the population at the expense of another. Because states can’t seal their borders, there is nothing that prevents attracting those who will benefit and chasing away those who will not. When I am handing out free pizza, I’m the most popular guy on the block. When I am collecting to pay the delivery guy, no one is happy to see me.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Milwaukee's Children Deserve a Chance to Be Better - By George Lightbourn

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:32:58 -0600

Janice huddled in the front seat of the car, as close to the passenger window as she could. She made no eye contact with the man driving. They were headed to the address she had given him, the latest address that Janice and her family had called home. This was not home in the Currier and Ives sense. But it was a place Janice could identify when the form required a home address.

Mr. Hamilton, the man behind the wheel, was the principal at Janice’s school. As soon as he got word of the problem Janice had in the classroom he acted. Janice had suffered an asthma attack so severe she had vomited, most of which now clung to her school uniform. Mr. Hamilton knew she needed to get cleaned up because he knew how careful Janice and her sister were about their appearance. Being clean and looking good were important to the sisters and so it was important to this inner-city principal. "These kids have enough working against them," he said, explaining why he thought it so important to take action.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Wisconsin's "Subprime" Budget Planning - By Christian Schneider

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:31:54 -0600

The recession of 2001 exposed a dark secret in the way Wisconsin plans for economic downturns. It doesn’t. Wisconsin is near the bottom in the nation in setting aside money for fiscal emergencies, which makes budgeting during a recession a fiscal high-wire act.

Nearly every state in the U.S. sets aside a portion of their budget in a “rainy day” fund, or mandates a minimum balance to protect themselves from economic downturns. Wisconsin is near the bottom in the nation in both.

As demonstrated in this report, even a mild recession, as was seen in 2001, would cause a budget imbalance of up to $1.4 billion in the Wisconsin’s current biennial budget. Furthermore, the lack of state planning for such a downturn serves as a recipe for more damaging tax increases and detrimental fiscal maneuvers. It appears that despite the pain caused by the last recession, Wisconsin state government has learned nothing. Wisconsin’s budget planning is clearly far from ideal; to use a term which has recently become familiar, it can be fairly characterized as "subprime."

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The Wisconsin Interest: Wisconsin's Schools: Only Pretty Good - By Sunny Schubert

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:30:24 -0600

When it comes to K-12 education, it’s good to be from Wisconsin.

What’s not to love about Wisconsin public schools? Year after year, Badger students post either the highest or the second-highest ACT scores in the nation. We’ve got National Merit Scholars out the wazoo. Governor James Doyle constantly touts the strength of our K-12 school system in trying to lure businesses here: Sure, our taxes may be high, but look what you’re getting for your money!

Milwaukee? Oh yah hey, the Milwaukee public schools are a problem, but the rest of the state is doing just fine. Public opinion polls consistently show that while state residents are worried about what’s going on in other schools and districts, they rate the schools their kids attend as good to excellent.

Except they’re not.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Health Care Reform in Wisconsin: How We Got Here, What We Should and Shouldn't Do - By Leah Vukmir

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:29:07 -0600

Health care reform is an issue on the minds of most Americans. Everyone agrees the rising cost of health care is creating access problems for many Americans. Divergence of opinion arises when deciding how best to solve these problems. Should government step in and completely take over the funding and delivery of health care, or should we free the current health care system from the shackles of government regulations and mandates in order to create a competitive market in an industry that, to date, has not been allowed to operate freely? If we are to be serious about comprehensive health care reform, we must do two things: 1. Understand the historical context and role government has played in the rising cost of health care, and 2. Craft solutions addressing the root problems that have created the call for reform. Above all, we must strive to protect the quality of health care we have come to know in our state. Any health care reform that jeopardizes quality will be detrimental not only to Wisconsin’s citizens but to the economic viability of our state.

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The Wisconsin Interest: Young Republicans: Are There Any Left? - By Steven R. Pigeon

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:28:29 -0600

After the 2006 Wisconsin gubernatorial election, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute’s James Miller asked the simple question, "Who Chose Wisconsin’s Governor?" Miller concluded that it was senior citizens who should be given the credit of reelecting Jim Doyle governor.

Though younger voters (those between the ages of 18-29) were heralded for a high turnout and passionate opposition to the Wisconsin constitutional amendment prohibiting homosexual marriage, ultimately it was the senior citizens that made the difference. This was despite the fact that 191,489 more young voters voted, compared to the 2002 Wisconsin gubernatorial election. This represented a 109% increase in the young voter turnout and 40% of voters in that age bracket.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Rigging the Game Again

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:43:59 -0600

You don’t have to be a lawyer to know when you’re being swindled by one. That’s one benefit of having studied team Doyle’s take no prisoners approach to the acquisition and maintenance of power.

Some of us were knocked back a few feet in the fall of 2006 when we learned that Doyle’s Attorney Mike Maistelman had plotted with State Election Board members to set up Mark Green. When Maistelman stepped in, the State Elections Board was about to vote on a bogus complaint that questioned the transfer of more than $467,000 from Green’s congressional campaign fund to his gubernatorial campaign fund. The transfer of money was approved by the board just 18 months earlier and the SEB approved a similar transfer for Democrat Tom Barrett in 2001.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: By the People... Or To the People

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:40:59 -0600

While most eyes were focused on the tinsel of the presidential primary, the editors of papers throughout Wisconsin found space to tell of the gash the worsening economy has left in the state budget. Bob Lang, the stoic head of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, informed the Legislature and the Governor that the current shortfall stands at $652 million and could get much worse. Unspoken in Lang’s letter was an ominous message; the $652 shortfall will happen even without a recession. If the economy goes into recession, there will be no maybes; the budget picture will get much worse.

Just two weeks previous, Lang had set the deficit at $300 - $400 million. Just a few months ago in the fall when the budget passed the Legislature, everyone was feeling pretty chipper and expected tax receipts to roll into the treasury. What a difference a few months or even a few weeks can mean. As someone who had a front row seat the last time the state budget felt the sting of an economic slowdown, I have to say that this current script seems eerily familiar.

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David Dodenhoff Commentary: What Arizona Thinks of Wisconsin

Thu, 7 Feb 2008 13:48:38 -0600

Though Arizona is my home, I have spent considerable time in Wisconsin. In my first year out of graduate school in 1996, I lived in the Badger State, splitting my time between Madison and Milwaukee. Since then, I have visited Wisconsin many times, both for work and for pleasure.

The Wisconsinites I have met over the years know only a few things about Arizona: the Grand Canyon is big, the Cardinals are bad, and “you must be stealing water from some other state.” The reverse is not true, however. Wisconsin has made a distinct impression on the minds of Arizonans.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: The Presidential Primary: Of Warm Milk and Pillow Talk

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 09:06:52 -0600

In a couple of weeks the traveling medicine show that we call the presidential primary will set up camp in Wisconsin. There is broad agreement that this is one of the most interesting, dynamic races in decades.

What will we be looking for in that one candidate who prevails, not only in the primary, but on into the summer and the fall? Do they need to be right on policy? Do they need to possess velvet lips? How about gender, race, religion, age, what will we look for in that one person to lead the free world?

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Jim Miller Commentary: Our Next President May Not Be in the Race Yet

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:10:13 -0600

Most political pundits thought that after the Super Tuesday primaries next week we would know the identities of the Democratic and Republican nominees for President. That now seems unlikely. One party, or possibly both, may not have a final candidate until this summer’s conventions. It will make for terrific theater and great sport for anyone involved in the political business.

However, the one complication lost in all the recent talk about primary delegates continues to be Mike Bloomberg, the mayor of New York.

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Charlie Sykes Commentary: Who is the Real Enemy Here?

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:04:47 -0600

Some of Milwaukee’s top CEOs are coming under fire from a local business journalist who suggests that their pointed criticism of Milwaukee’s business climate is undermining the area’s marketing efforts.

"Is Milwaukee's biggest enemy its own CEOs?" asked Steve Jagler, the editor of the Small Business Times, who suggested that the business leaders were providing aid and comfort to Denver, in its effort to woo Miller to Colorado.

The five CEOs had participated in a panel discussion titled, "Global Wooing," sponsored by the Public Policy Forum. Their criticism were blunt, specific, and echoed similar comments made by business executives (and brushed off by political leaders) for years.

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Deb Jordahl Commentary: Virtual School Families Should Go to the Mattresses

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:02:29 -0600

Winston Churchill said, "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."

If the families and supporters of Wisconsin’s Virtual Academy study the history of school choice, they will follow Sonny Corleone’s lead and go directly to the mattresses.

Last week more than a thousand WIVA students and parents traveled to Madison to save their school after the teacher’s union and State School Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster sued to have WIVA shut down, kicking three thousand kids from all over the state head-on to the curb. According to the State’s attorney, this remedy was appropriate because the school, which is staffed by certified public school teachers and union members, relied too heavily on parent volunteers to help educate students.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: Of Big Deficits and Short Memories: Welcome to the State Budget

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:00:24 -0600

As it increasingly appears that we have a recession in our future, I am not comforted by our Governor’s insistence that things are just fine. Last week the WPRI published a fine piece done by Christian Schneider that posed the question; how well could the state budget absorb a recession?

The answer is that a recession will blow a $4.2 billion hole in the budget. Schneider’s analysis was based on modeling a rather mild recession, about the magnitude of the downturn we experienced in 2001. You will recall that the 2001 recession so mild that it was over before the economists had actually pronounced it a recession.

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REPORT: Wisconsin's "Subprime" Budget Planning

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:22:55 -0600

In late 2000, Wisconsin state government started to get some bad news. With the economy softening, tax revenues to the state were dropping. Yet there were still bills to pay.

The recession of 2001 exposed a dark secret in the way Wisconsin plans for economic downturns. It doesn’t. Wisconsin is near the bottom in the nation in setting aside money for fiscal emergencies, which makes budgeting during a recession a fiscal high-wire act.

Nearly every state in the U.S. sets aside a portion of their budget in a "rainy day" fund, or mandates a minimum balance to protect themselves from economic downturns. Wisconsin is near the bottom in the nation in both.

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Ben Artz Commentary: Poverty and Inequality

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:20:29 -0600

The economy is always at the core of presidential debates and campaigns. How can we reverse the Dollar’s slide? How can we keep jobs from going overseas? How can we make income in the US more equal across classes? The last question refers to income inequality in America, which by strict standards has increased steadily for over three decades. Simply put, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer. However, it is not that simple.

The most commonly used metric to gauge whether a person is "poor" is called the poverty line. For instance, in 2005 a family of four was considered in poverty if their combined household income was less than $19,971. By this measure, the US Census Bureau estimates that roughly one-third of all children in the Milwaukee School District were living in poverty in 2005.

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Christian Schneider Commentary: Leveling the Presidential Playing Field

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:04:13 -0600

For as long as there have been political campaigns, there have been critics of how those campaigns are financed. Good government groups deride campaigns that raise and spend bucketloads of money, fearing those campaigns have a leg up over their challengers. The more a campaign spends, they argue, the better chance the candidate has at winning an election. Apparently they believe there exists a "magic candidate" who is being held out of office for lack of resources, and they decry the undue influence of money on choosing our elected officials.

Perhaps they should purchase a newspaper.

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George Lightbourn Commentary: The Straight Story: From Iowa to Wisconsin

Mon, 7 Jan 2008 13:04:00 -0600

The results of the Iowa caucus sent a shock wave through the political world and could wind up at the steps of the Capitol in Madison.

Leathered, battle-tested strategists are coping to understand the Obama phenomenon. This fellow from Illinois, whose only significant political accomplishment was backing into a vacant Senate seat, seems to be part Mick Jagger and part Syd Finch. No one quite seems to know what to make of the Senator with the smooth delivery and the rather large ears. He of the vague experience and even more obscure positions on issues has been gaining high marks on his political acumen from all corners including some of the more respected conservative voices.

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REPORT: Wisconsin Speaks 2007: A Survey of Public Opinion

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:28:11 -0600

We have been conducting public opinion surveys of Wisconsin residents since 1987. This survey was conducted on December 2 and December 3, 2007. There has already been a release of some of the major issues covered in this survey.
What makes this particular study so unusual is that for the fourth time we are publishing the unfiltered opinions of Wisconsin residents. Most surveys will ask people about issues. Few, if any, polls besides the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute’s will actually ask the classic survey question on an open-end basis to have respondents describe the most important issue facing Wisconsin. This type of question is asked at the beginning of a poll and is totally unfiltered by any other information. It gives a much more accurate picture of the views and feelings of the respondents.
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Christian Schneider Commentary: The Government Protection Racket

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 08:44:19 -0600

In the late nineteenth century, a cowboy rode into a water-drilling camp in Odessa, Texas. The cowboy immediately demanded some food from the cook, described as a "chinaman." The cook refused, so the cowboy shot him to death. The cowboy went on trial in San Angelo, but the judge freed him on the grounds that there were no laws on the books making it illegal to kill a Chinaman.

It was racial injustice that led Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which required that "citizens of every race and color ... [have] full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property." This new law was immediately followed by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbid states to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

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