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Editorial: Trick, treat, pepper spray

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

It is safe to say that, in most communities in Wisconsin, Halloween is a time of fun and celebration, of ghosts and goblins and scary movies and trick-or-treating. That is how it is in Madison, too. But it has also become something else, something uglier. Madison police took prompt, strong action over the weekend in an attempt to prevent trouble. Unfortunately, they caused some trouble of their own. And efforts to anticipate problems and keep them from happening were not as vigorous as they could have been.

Guidelines Aim to Ease Accounting Costs for Small Companies

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New York Times

A committee of accounting experts published new guidance yesterday that it hopes will reduce the cost for small companies to document that their internal financial controls are adequate.

“It was important for us to demonstrate how smaller public companies can implement effective internal control in a different manner than do their larger counterparts,” said Larry E. Rittenberg, the chairman of the group, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, and an accounting professor at the University of Wisconsin.

More ventures than capital in state

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s abysmal record of venture funding activity continued in the third quarter, and state companies are on their way to having their worst year in a decade for raising venture capital.

Just three state companies – all in the Madison area – raised a total of $9.68 million, according to the MoneyTree Survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association.

Pepper spray clears State St.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

For the fourth year in a row, the annual Halloween celebration on State St. ended with police unleashing pepper spray on the crowd. But in a departure from previous years, police didn’t wait for revelers to turn violent before taking action.

Will it be party or pillage?

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Capital Times

Josh Rupert is going to be Elmo for Halloween. And Elmo does not riot….He’ll hit the town on Friday night, but on Saturday, Rupert says he plans to “stay far away from State Street.”

“It’s not my type of environment. It’s just too packed,” said Rupert, a fifth-year senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Last year, I got caught in the middle of what happened. I felt out of place. I got tear-gassed.”

Meanwhile, Ben Karp, a sophomore from Mankato, Minn., said he is looking forward to staying downtown “till the riots.”

….”It’s just fun. It’s a good time. Fires in the street. Tear gas and everything,” Karp said, adding he intended to watch, not participate.

UW-Madison officials are hoping more students fall into Elmo’s camp.

Doug Moe: On the matter of gray matter …

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Capital Times

LATELY I have had the brain on the brain.

Instead of fretting about the Packers, or the fact winter is coming, I have been thinking about the brain. Odd, I realize. But I have called on my own semi-functional brain to deduce a few reasons why this may be so….

(Professor Richard Davidson is mentioned in this column, along with professor emeritus Wally Welker, internationally recognized as a researcher in the brain morphology of mammals.)

John Edwards: ‘Opportunity Rocks’ against poverty

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Capital Times

Poverty is the great moral issue facing America today, former U.S. senator and 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards told a crowd of UW-Madison students.

The country is hungry for a big issue – a cause, a calling – it can get involved in, Edwards told about 500 people Wednesday afternoon at the Wisconsin Union Theater.

….”Americans are looking for something moral and just. Something other than this mess in Iraq we are engaged in,” he said to overwhelming applause.

“They need a champion. That champion is you,” Edwards said, noting that college students have spurred major change in the past, from civil rights to the Vietnam anti-war movement to helping topple the apartheid system in South Africa.

Cops’ Halloween message is ‘move along, folks’

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Capital Times

Madison police officials think they may have the solution for the Halloween chaos that has plagued the city for the past three years: keep the crowd moving, right up to the end.

Police Chief Noble Wray said Wednesday that police plan to aggressively keep crowds from stagnating in the 500 and 600 blocks of State Street, where problems have resulted in a riotous end to the annual Halloween bash for the last three years, last year culminating in a small bonfire and a pepper spray assault.

Big firms, big tab for state

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s Medicaid program spends an estimated $46 million a year to provide health care coverage to workers for some of the state’s largest employers, including the University of Wisconsin System, according to a report to be released today by a Madison consumer advocacy group.

WISC-TV Editorial: UW Business School – Doing Well & Doing Good

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WISC-TV 3

10/24/05

Madison has a ways to go to live up to its full potential as model city for business philanthropy. We need to say for fear that we rest on the laurels on those shining examples of corporate citizenship we are so fortunate to have in our midst. But we have enough to give hope to the goal of creating such a model city. And right in the middle of the effort we are again reminded is the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business.

Chic Young: Lower drinking age would be bad idea

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Capital Times

Dear Editor: As Halloween approaches, Madison is again likely to see another demonstration of what a bad idea it would be to lower the age for legal alcohol consumption to match the legal age for military service.

Military service involves training that aims at increasing a person’s degree of responsibility for their actions – whether with weapons or among comrades. This is the exact opposite of the effect alcohol has on human behavior.

Bill to limit governor’s veto power passes its first step in state Senate

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Capital Times

The state Senate took a first step Tuesday toward a constitutional amendment that would prevent a Wisconsin governor from making some partial vetoes.

The vote on the resolution was 23-10, with some Democrats – including Sens. Fred Risser of Madison and Mark Miller of Monona – joining Republicans in voting for adoption.

The bill will now be considered by the Assembly, which is also dominated by Republicans and is expected to approve it, because many Republicans have been upset by the changes Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle made to the state budget with his veto pen.

Woman charged in slaying of 88-year-old

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Capital Times

MONROE (AP) – A 23-year-old woman was charged Tuesday with killing an 88-year-old woman and taking about $50,000 from her.

Mary A. Sidoff of rural Monticello was charged in Green County Circuit Court with first-degree intentional homicide, hiding a corpse and theft. A $100,000 cash bond was set by Judge James Beer.

….A sheriff’s department report that accompanied the complaint said Sidoff told authorities she first met Sturzenegger in September when the elderly woman was a patient at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison and she was working as a nurse’s assistant.

Maidas to appear at peace event Thursday; campus vigil tonight

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Capital Times

Ray Maida and Chris Maida will speak in Madison Thursday at an event sponsored by Military Families for Peace.

Ray is the father and Chris is the brother of Mark Maida, an Army sergeant from Madison who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in May. Chris is an Iraq war veteran.

Since Mark’s death, the family has become increasingly critical and outspoken about the war in Iraq. The family’s story was featured on “Nightline” earlier this month.

Alvarez going out with best job ever

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

With four games left, Barry Alvarez is approaching his best job ever with the Badgers, which is saying something for the only Big Ten coach to win three Rose Bowls. Even if Wisconsin finishes the regular season 9-3, it would be infinitely better than last year’s 9-3, when Alvarez had much more talent and then made the mistake of saying UW had overachieved when it was done.

Pantries here need more than food

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Capital Times

Can you imagine spending a day without toilet paper and soap?

Most of us take these items for granted. Not so for needy families. They are lucky to get a bar of soap and two rolls of toilet paper from area pantries, where personal care items are in short supply.

That’s why Eileen Newman, a volunteer with the Middleton Outreach Ministry Food Pantry, is organizing a personal care items drive Nov. 1-13. During the drive, donation bins will be located at 33 locations (including the Morgridge Center on the UW-Madison campus).

Editorial: Investigating ‘travelgate’

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Capital Times

The latest Wisconsin Policy Research Institute poll tells us that Wisconsinites are rapidly losing confidence in their elected officials. In a state that once enjoyed a national reputation for clean politics, only 9 percent of those surveyed thought that the standard for ethics in state government was improving while 46 percent thought it was declining.

Even more disheartening were the answers to the question about whose interests elected officials serve. Only 6 percent of those surveyed thought that elected officials represented their interests.

The citizens of Wisconsin have reason to be concerned. Consider the growing controversy surrounding the awarding of a three-year contract – worth up to $240,000 annually – to make travel arrangements for the state.

State bioscience industry gains

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Capital Times

Bioscience is one of the fastest growing industries in Wisconsin, a new report maintains, although it has a long way to go to surpass manufacturing, agriculture and tourism as the state’s top industry.

The report, Bioscience Wisconsin 2006, issued by the Wisconsin Association for Biomedical Research & Education, measures economic growth in bioscience research, development and industry in the state.

UW MBA 16th for social, enviro teaching

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Capital Times

The UW-Madison School of Business has been ranked among the world’s top schools for its MBA offerings in social and environmental issues.

Wisconsin was 16th among U.S. business schools and 28th overall in the Beyond Grey Pinstripesranking by the World Resources Institute and the Aspen Institute. The rating measures how well MBA programs equip students with an understanding of the social, environmental and economic perspectives required for business success in a global economy.

Ag colleges shift focus off farms

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Capital Times

ST. PAUL (AP) – It’s not just farm kids in the region’s agriculture colleges anymore.
It’s students like Jillian Rankins from Eau Claire, Wis., a sophomore at the University of Minnesota who hadn’t heard of the FFA future farmers group before she got to college. Her studies are in management and economics, not crops and livestock.

Rankins and her fellow students from urban backgrounds are welcomed by agriculture colleges as they reposition themselves to provide for a world that needs fewer dairy farmers and agronomists and more food scientists, veterinarians and nutritionists.

Animal rights group sues over property

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Capital Times

An animal rights group has filed suit against a Madison property owner, claiming the man is legally obligated to sell them the land. The land is wedged between two University of Wisconsin research facilities in which animal experimentation is conducted. The group wants to put an animal rights museum there.

The Primate Freedom Project, as well as Madison animal rights activist Rick Bogle and Los Angeles retired physician Richard McLellan, sued Roger Charly, claiming they had a contract for an option to buy the property from him.

Editorial: Raise a cheer for the UW

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Capital Times

Welcome, UW alumni, to homecoming 2005. While the big football game between the Badgers and Purdue is the highlight of the weekend, there’s something even bigger that needs to be cheered – the University of Wisconsin-Madison itself.

There have been few times in history when Wisconsin’s world-class university has been under such sustained attack. Its budget has been slashed, its administrators have been pilloried by opportunistic legislators, even some of its renowned research has been threatened by those who would put their unyielding religious beliefs ahead of the promises of science.

So, as you cheer on the football team today, save a little bit of breath for the alma mater. It needs all the support it can get.

UW frosh smart, diverse

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Capital Times

This year’s freshman class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the largest and most diverse in school history, university officials say.

The class also scored high in its test scores and class rankings, the university said.

The school reported 6,142 freshmen, up nearly 9 percent from last year. The freshman class includes 778 minority students, up 8 percent from last fall and 24 percent from 2003.

Children’s health study officially launched

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Local public officials and health care leaders from across the region pledged their cooperation Friday as the National Children’s Study was launched, the largest study ever undertaken to monitor and assess the effects of environment on children.

The Medical College of Wisconsin and the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have received a five-year, $16.2 million contract to lead the Waukesha County portion of the study.

JS Online: Deer move little, despite heavy hunting

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Even in a veritable combat zone, deer in parts of Dane and Iowa counties stick close to home.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher said Friday that she found that deer in a region riddled with chronic wasting disease usually live in a tight home range – a smaller area than she expected.

A trip will bring new opportunities

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A modest arrangement begun two years ago between a Shanghai medical school and two Milwaukee institutions – Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee – took on new promise when the Shanghai partner merged with a top-ranked Chinese institute of technology. Suddenly, Milwaukee had links to a prestigious Chinese incubator of innovation.

State groups already working together to help ward off avian influenza

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Capital Times

State and industry officials are already taking steps to prevent avian influenza.

A work group focusing on preparation and planning includes representatives of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, the Department of Health and Family Services, the Department of Natural Resources, USDA agencies, the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, the UW School of Veterinary Medicine, the State Laboratory of Hygiene and Wisconsin Emergency Management.

Grants offer new hope at UWM

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Jane Bradley Pettit Foundation has given the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee a $2 million gift to help low-income students with children break the cycle of poverty through education.

Proving pundits wrong

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Barry Alvarez was beaming Sunday morning.

“It’s always nice to prove people wrong,” the Wisconsin football coach said during his weekly TV show. “I don’t know if anyone thought we would (clinch) a bowl game in Week 8.”

No one would have been so brazen.

Editorial: No ‘settling’ for a branch campus

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

There should be an immutable bottom line in upcoming discussions between Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Medical School on the matter of a school of public health.

Milwaukee must not settle for a branch campus of a renamed School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison. Milwaukee’s government and business leaders, along with the chancellor of UW-Milwaukee, must insist on a free-standing school at UWM.

The man in the middle for city’s alcohol policies

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Capital Times

As Joel Plant knows all too well, rugby and drinking go hand in hand.

Now, two months into his new job as Madison’s first alcohol policy coordinator, Plant says he no longer overindulges. But he says his party days on the rugby team at Marquette University will serve him well in his new post.

“I’ve been there,” says Plant, who just turned 28.

Plant said he will work with bar owners, the city and students and officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to reduce the problems that lead to or result from binge drinking. This includes, but is not limited to, over-capacity taverns, fake IDs, property damage, fights and police calls. The city and UW-Madison are sharing Plant’s salary.

Nicotine on the brain

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Smoking, of course, plays hob with the body. Heart disease, emphysema and various cancers – lung, laryngeal and stomach, to name a few – all have been shown to have tobacco as a cause.

Now researchers are finding that nicotine can also alter the developing brain. A team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports in a recent paper that nicotine can affect the operation of a gene linked to the development of synapses of the maturing adolescent rat brain.

Walker, Green: Rebid travel contract (AP)

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Capital Times

The campaigns of both of Gov. Jim Doyle’s potential Republican opponents in the 2006 election called Friday for the administration to rebid a state contract awarded to a travel agency whose executives donated money to his re-election campaign.

Doyle again rejected the calls to rebid the contract awarded to Glendale-based Adelman Travel Group.

Local, state and federal authorities are investigating the process for awarding the three-year contract to issue airline tickets for state employees. The probe announced Thursday will look into whether $20,000 in donations from Adelman executives played any role in the contract, which could be worth $250,000 a year.

Group sues to buy property for primate cruelty exhibit

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A group trying to open a primate cruelty exhibit near UW-Madison’s primate research labs filed a lawsuit this week demanding that it be allowed to buy property that it says was promised.

But Roger Charly, owner of Budget Bicycles, also promised to sell the property to UW-Madison, which has taken action to accept an option on the land, according to the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, filed in Dane County Circuit Court on Tuesday, former California middle school teacher Rick Bogle of the Primate Freedom Project and retired Los Angeles physician Richard McLellan said they signed a 180-day option to purchase the property at 26 N. Charter St. in May for $675,000 after a series of discussions with Charly.

(10/21/05 Wisconsin State Journal)

$1 million donated for land buy

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Capital Times

The Nature Conservancy of Wisconsin has received the largest cash donation for conservation in state history from Phillips businessman and UW-Madison graduate Bob Cervenka and his wife, Debbie.

The $1 million grant pledge will be used to help purchase and preserve nearly 1,000 acres of lake frontage and wilderness along the Wisconsin-Upper Michigan border in Vilas County. Included are 500 acres of old-growth forest.

The Cervenkas are owners of Phillips Plastics Corp., one of the largest injection molders in the U.S. with annual sales of more than $216 million.

‘Zombies’ to lurch down State St.

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Capital Times

If you’re on State Street on Saturday, look out! A mob of zombies plans to lurch toward the Memorial Union Terrace.

No, they’re not UW students headed to the library. Or even Badger fans trekking to Camp Randall Stadium. They’re zombie-ophiles getting their ghoul on.

….(Maddie) Greene, a 2003 UW-Madison grad who works as a sales and marketing writer for Epic Systems, expects at least 50 people to take part in the event, which will start at 2 p.m. Saturday at the State Capitol and head down State Street before ending at the terrace.

Activists gather for affordable ed

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Capital Times

Activists are gathering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to plan how to fight for affordable higher education.

The Democratizing Education Convention starts today and continues through Sunday. The idea is to bring together the various interest groups and figure out how to all work together, said Ben Manski, one of the organizers.

“The vast majority of those affected by the austerity measures imposed on higher education and by corporatization have not been included in the discussions about solutions. We’re working to build a democracy movement in higher education for the rest of us,” Manski said.

Probe targets travel contract, Doyle donations

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Capital Times

State, federal and Dane County law enforcement officials have launched a joint inquiry following media reports that Gov. Jim Doyle received $20,000 in campaign donations from executives of a travel agency around the time it won a state contract.

Doyle, a Democrat, has insisted the donations played no role in Milwaukee-based Adelman Travel Group winning the contract and reiterated it Thursday after the authorities announced their investigation. He said he had nothing to do with the selection process and the firm was picked because it was the cheapest bid, saving taxpayers money.

Doug Moe: Madison cast in ’79 whodunit

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Capital Times

THE DEFENDANT in a decades-old murder with several Madison ties was bound over for trial Wednesday in Ladysmith. Cherie Barnard, 54, will stand trial for being party to the murder of Rob Pfeil, 27, who was shot to death outside his home in rural Ladysmith on Aug. 14, 1979.

The Madison connections include Barnard’s defense attorney, Chris Van Wagner, who was in Ladysmith for the preliminary hearing Wednesday and came away unimpressed with the prosecution’s case. Barnard herself is a UW-Madison Law School graduate.

(An item on Prof. Richard Davidson and the Dalai Lama is also included in Moe’s column, as is a mention of the late Professor James Graaskamp.)

Ethicist frames stem cell debate (Appleton Post Crescent)

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Appleton Post-Crescent

MENASHA � An exchange between two women in a lecture hall Thursday captured the essence of the national debate over embryonic stem cell research.

“I value the existing patient more than anything else,” University of Wisconsin law professor R. Alta Charo, a world-renowned medical ethicist, told Lori Skrober, a mother of four from Hortonville. “You shake your head because you believe something else. That’s the debate we have to have.”

Editorial: Wisconsin’s own Travelgate?

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

On the matter of Wisconsin’s own possible Travelgate, only three things can help stop the erosion of public confidence that this case is likely prompting: a thorough investigation, starting over with new bids and, ultimately, campaign finance reform.

Joyce Harrington: Statue of Ameche would be better

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Capital Times

Dear Editor: Doug Moe, Bob Hunt, etc., are right on! Alan Ameche should have been the “Celebrate the Legacy” statue without a second thought.

Get with it, UW Athletic Department and Wisconsin Arts Board – you are embarrassing the University of Wisconsin, the city of Madison, the state of Wisconsin and yourselves. It’s never too late to say you goofed and you will correct it.

Joyce Harrington, Madison

UW student group aims to defend wage hike vote

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Capital Times

Student government at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is preparing to defend a referendum that would require the university to pay some workers a living wage.

But members of the student government acknowledge the referendum has caused frustration, as students worry that it might knock students out of the decision-making process.

So when exactly can you park?

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Capital Times

….Discerning Monroe Street parkers might be tempted to ask at this point: “If I park at a meter on Monroe Street on a football Saturday a block from Camp Randall and I get a $10 parking ticket for an expired meter, isn’t that better than paying $20 to park in a lot that’s farther away and I have to wait for the rest of the drivers to come back and move their cars before I can get out?”

UW alarmed by surge in detox cases

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Capital Times

UW officials say student drinking is reaching an alarming rate, with the conveyances to detox centers double what they were a year ago.

“The bottom line is this is to the point where we’re seeing students physically endanger their lives,” interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam said.

In the first six weeks of this semester, police took 30 students to detox because of dangerously high levels of intoxication. In the same period last year they conveyed 17, although that number was down from 27 in 2003.

Travel agency bid process protested (AP)

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Capital Times

A travel agency is now questioning why it lost a contract to sell airline tickets to state workers after reports that leaders at the winning company gave $20,000 to the governor’s campaign in the months surrounding the bidding process.

Gov. Jim Doyle and his administration have steadfastly maintained the contract was awarded to Milwaukee-based Adelman Travel Group fairly after the company’s final bid came in $30,000 cheaper.

(CALS Associate Dean Frank Kooistra, a member of the selection committee, is quoted.)

Travel agency questions lost contract (AP)

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Duluth News

A travel agency is now questioning why it lost a contract to sell airline tickets to state workers after reports that leaders at the winning company gave $20,000 to the governor’s campaign in the months surrounding the bidding process.