10 cows at UW research farm die of neglect; Worker resigns, researcher loses privileges (AP)
Capital Times
Author: jnweaver
Old Rennebohm not historic enough?
Capital Times
A proposal to give landmark status to the former Rennebohm’s drugstore at University and Randall avenues came in for tough sledding before the Madison Landmarks Commission.
The building at 1353 University Ave., built in 1925, is one of several in a run-down former commercial strip that would be demolished to make way for the first phase of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Discovery. Construction is tentatively scheduled to begin later this year.
Wiley: Cloning bill blocks research
Capital Times
A bill to make human cloning a crime in Wisconsin is nothing more than a “back-door attempt to criminalize embryonic stem cell research,” UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley says.
“That’s the only reason I can think of for banning a tool that could be used for good or for ill,” Wiley told state lawmakers on Monday.
Jacquelyn Freund: Availability of morning-after pill is vital for UW students
Capital Times
Dear Editor: I do not believe our elected officials understand the importance of the availability of emergency contraception to University of Wisconsin students.
If women become pregnant because they were unable to use the morning-after pill, they will most likely seek surgical abortions. Those few who don’t have abortions might leave college, and possibly the state.
UW Credit Union to build new Monroe St. branch
Capital Times
UW Credit Union announced plans to build a 3,800-square-foot branch office to replace its branch at 1433 Monroe St. The new building will be built on the southwest corner of the site of the existing branch in space used as overflow parking.
The credit union has reached a proposed agreement to sell the existing building, along with about half of the parcel, to the University of Wisconsin.
Sen. Lena Taylor: The good, bad, ugly of the GOP budget
Capital Times
The bad – UW, W-2:
Republicans cut $90 million from the University of Wisconsin System’s base budget, reduced the number of faculty and forced layoffs of other staff at our 26 academic institutions. Even worse, over $13 million was slashed from student financial aid, jeopardizing access to UW schools for thousands of middle-class families….
Doyle names members of biobased consortium
Capital Times
Gov. Jim Doyle has announced the members of the Consortium on Biobased Industry, which is charged with preparing a roadmap over the next year on how to best support the development of biobased products and energy in Wisconsin.
“In Wisconsin, we may not have oil fields,” Doyle said Friday. “But we can grow our own biobased resources. We will use these resources to produce renewable energy and value-added products, and reduce our dependence on oil.”
UW-Madison professors Charles Hill and Michael Sussman were among those appointed by the governor.
Civil service fete protested, lauded
Capital Times
Wisconsin’s civil service system – which was created to keep state jobs out of the hands of partisan political hacks – turned 100 on Friday with two very different celebrations.
Outside the state Capitol, about 50 state workers protested what they claim is a growing trend of eliminating civil service jobs and replacing them with contract workers and limited-term employees.
….Inside the Capitol, Doyle marked the anniversary by recognizing more than 150 top-notch state workers. Doyle praised the workers for helping the state get through its worst financial crisis without major cuts in basic services to Wisconsin citizens.
Doyle queries leave of UW administrator (AP)
Capital Times
Gov. Jim Doyle called on University of Wisconsin-Madison officials on Friday to explain why a top administrator was allowed to collect his salary while on paid personal leave for seven months.
Paul Barrows, vice chancellor of student affairs, has been on leave since early November while continuing to earn his full annual salary of $191,749, covering his time away with accrued sick time and vacation days.
Four months into the leave, he applied for a job at the University of Texas at Austin. Just this week, he withdrew his name for a list of finalists for an administrative job there.
Man hikes 600 miles for cancer research
Capital Times
WAUSAU (AP) – A Madison man walking around the state to support a new University of Wisconsin-Madison cancer research building took a break in Wausau over the weekend before embarking on the second half of his journey.
Ron Reschke left his home in Madison on April 29 and since then has traveled more than 600 miles, stopping in La Crosse, Eau Claire, Ashland, Rhinelander and Merrill.
Bill angers stem cell scientists (AP)
Capital Times
Anyone caught cloning a human being in Wisconsin could face up to a decade in prison and a million dollars in forfeitures under a Republican bill that outraged stem cell scientists fear could handcuff their work in the state.
The measure would ban cloning to create babies. It also would outlaw so-called therapeutic cloning, a term for cloning human embryos for research such as extracting stem cells. Embryos are destroyed after taking out the cells.
The bill also would ban a practice called parthenogenesis, in which a female egg cell is stimulated to divide without fertilizing it.
Editorial: Patients lose to politics
Capital Times
The state Assembly once again put politics above patients’ medical needs when members voted almost entirely along party lines Tuesday in favor of the so-called “conscience protection” bill, AB 207.
The legislation would allow health professionals, without fear of repercussion, to refuse to participate in procedures such as extracting embryonic stem cells for research or removing a feeding tube, if the action conflicts with their moral or religious beliefs.
Kutler: Bush buffaloes sources, many in media
Capital Times
Emeritus professor of history and law Stanley Kutler is quoted.
Doug Moe: Labor of love heads to print
Capital Times
ANYONE WHO knows Walter Rideout, the esteemed emeritus professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has to smile upon opening the new Fall 2005 catalog from the University of Wisconsin Press.
Rob Zaleski: Deep Throat mania annoys Kutler
Capital Times
Stanley Kutler has long been amazed by the public’s fascination with “Deep Throat,” the – until recently – anonymous shadowy figure who three decades ago helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein bring down the Nixon White House.
Amazed and more than a little annoyed, the renowned (UW) Madison historian acknowledged with a chuckle this week.
More game times set for UW football
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Badgers’ season opener against Bowling Green at Camp Randall Stadium will be played Sept. 3 at 11 a.m. and will be televised on ESPN. Wisconsin’s home game against Temple on Sept. 10 will be played at 11 a.m. and broadcast on ESPN Plus and ESPNU.
UW-Madison official to return after seven-month paid leave (AP)
A University of Wisconsin-Madison administrator is to return to work Monday after a seven-month paid personal leave triggered in part by stress over a failed relationship with a graduate student, university officials say.
Pill ban at UW moves ahead
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The state Assembly late Thursday narrowly passed a bill that would prohibit University of Wisconsin System health clinics from advertising, prescribing or dispensing the morning-after pill to students.
Alan Puckett: Note to John Gard: UW degree leaving
Capital Times
Dear Editor: After witnessing Rep. John Gard’s fight against unmarried partner benefits for state employees and the depredations he seems bent on perpetrating on the University of Wisconsin System, I want to let him know that I’m taking my UW Ph.D. to New Mexico, where my new state job includes health care coverage for my unmarried partner.
Thanks for the great education.
Alan Puckett, Madison
Early blacks helped shape Wisconsin, historians say
Capital Times
Black people have been a part of the Wisconsin story since the beginning, and groups gathered this week to celebrate that story in preparation for Madison’s annual Juneteenth celebration on Saturday.
….(Elizabeth Harris) Hodge grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Madison, a time when African Americans faced little overt racism, she said. Friends have told her she grew up in a utopia, she said.
“But I did not have an African-American teacher until I went to the University of Wisconsin,” said Hodge, who became Madison’s first black TV news reporter in the early 1970s.
Panel unanimously rejects beer keg limit proposal
Capital Times
Ald. Paul Skidmore’s proposal to restrict the sale of beer kegs in Madison has gone flat.
After Ald. Mike Verveer suggested that the Alcohol License and Review Committee move on Wednesday night to “more important things,” the membership unanimously voted to defeat the proposal, which would limit people to buying two kegs and have them first sign an oath, among other restrictions.
State may ‘just say no’ to financial aid
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Wisconsin university students convicted of selling or possessing drugs would be barred from receiving state financial aid and academic scholarships under a bill introduced in a state Senate committee on Wednesday.
Museum chairman expected to resign
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Jennifer Noyes, a former auditor with the state Legislative Audit Bureau who is a researcher at an institute for research on poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was named to a five-member panel appointed to oversee the Milwaukee Public Museum’s finances. The panel was appointed as part of a deal reached Monday between the museum, the county and banks. Under it, the county will guarantee up to $9 million in loans to the museum, provided the independent panel oversees their use. The panel also will monitor the museum’s budget.
Charles W. Nason: Republicans’ budget policies make them traitors to UW
Capital Times
How can the Republican members of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee sleep at night – these users, manipulators, and traitors who are destroying our once proud University of Wisconsin System? How is it that they have lost their moral compass and feel compelled to dismantle one of this state’s greatest assets?
And what about our political and business leaders who have been trumpeting a vision that Wisconsin manufacturing jobs lost to China will be replaced by better high-tech and service industry opportunities. Do they think this can be accomplished without providing a world-class educational experience for our Wisconsin young people?
(Charles W. Nason lives in Stevens Point. He is president of the Worzalla Publishing Co. and a graduate of UW-Madison.)
Stratatech receives $922,000 federal grant
Capital Times
Madison-based Stratatech Corp. has received a federal grant of nearly $1 million it will use to work to enhance the ability of its engineered human skin products to promote the healing of chronic wounds.
….Stratatech’s products are based on a patented, unique source of pathogen-free human skin cells identified at the UW-Madison as being able to multiply indefinitely.
Dave Zweifel: Legislators tearing down proud UW
Capital Times
UW-Madison Dean of Students Luoluo Hong wasn’t a voice in the wilderness this week when she announced she’s leaving the university because of Wisconsin’s “lack of commitment” to higher education.
Her frustration over the Legislature’s habit the past several years of balancing the state budget by trimming UW funding is shared by hundreds, if not thousands, of her colleagues here in Madison and around the rest of the UW System.
Health plan would cover all in state
Capital Times
In a rare show of bipartisanship, two state lawmakers and a former top aide to Gov. Jim Doyle are proposing a $13.5 billion-a-year plan that would guarantee health insurance coverage for all Wisconsin residents.
The proposal was unveiled this morning during a hearing before the Assembly Medicaid Reform Committee.
The plan would require all employers – large and small – to pay into a statewide pool run by a new, private nonprofit corporation. The pool would be similar to the state’s unemployment compensation and workers’ compensation funds.
Troubled Luther’s Blues closes its doors
Capital Times
Luther’s Blues, one of Madison’s most prominent live music venues, has given up the ghost.
For four and a half years, Luther’s has hosted a strong lineup of national and local acts. But in recent months the club, 1401 University Ave., has struggled. Employees walked out, creditors say they went unpaid and the phone lines were disconnected for a time.
Then, on Tuesday, Steven Murphy, who owns the building and used to be a partner in the business, closed the doors to the club and the two other businesses in the building.
Approval of job performance by Bush, Congress dipping to new lows (AP)
Quoted: Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Keep working on transfer of UW, tech college credits
La Crosse Tribune
A legislative proposal to allow technical colleges in La Crosse and elsewhere to offer liberal arts classes could be a good idea whose time has not yet come.
State Rep. Jeff Wood, R-Chippewa Falls, has a bill in the Legislature that would allow state technical colleges in La Crosse, Kenosha and Eau Claire to offer two-year liberal arts degrees, whose credits would transfer to University of Wisconsin campuses.
State Assembly OKs moral opt-out bill
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The state Assembly passed a bill Tuesday intended to protect health care and biotechnology workers who object on moral or religious grounds to performing certain procedures.
Overreaction on pill
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Sometimes, good intentions, like good deeds, not only go unrecognized but actually end up causing problems. An example is the decision earlier this year by health officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to advocate the use of emergency contraception for female students on spring break to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
UW group contests patent law changes
Capital Times
Congress should leave the nation’s patent law alone, says the director of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Carl Gulbrandsen is in Washington today to testify on the Patent Act of 2005 before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. Gulbrandsen, who also serves on an advisory committee to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, spoke to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property last week.
In that testimony, he said the proposed legislation “chips away at the value of university patents for the benefit of certain industries and, thereby, diminishes the good that can come from university technology transfer.”
UW official bashes state cuts on way out
Capital Times
University of Wisconsin-Madison Dean of Students Luoluo Hong is leaving for Arizona State University, the UW announced today. In leaving, Hong bashed the state for its budget cuts to higher education.
Fuel costs may spur Metro fare hikes
Capital Times
Facing a $421,00 shortage this year due to unexpectedly high fuel costs and bracing for a budget gap next year estimated at $1.4 million, Madison Metro Transit will consider fare hikes.
Madison Metro’s budget pressures do not come at a time when ridership is declining; rather, the city’s buses are the busiest they’ve been since 1986 but operate with frozen state aid and other government funding sources.
…(Metro manager Catherine) Debo said two main factors have contributed to stable or increasing ridership. The more recent cause, she said, is the contracts Metro has made with employers to issue employees unlimited ride cards. So far, Metro has contracts with the University of Wisconsin, St. Marys Hospital and University Hospital.
Lake woes from fertilizer called worse (AP)
Capital Times
Farmers’ routine application of chemical fertilizers and manure to the land poses a far greater environmental problem to freshwater lakes than previously thought, potentially polluting the water for hundreds of years, according to new research.
In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a University of Wisconsin-Madison expert blames the buildup largely on industrial agriculture’s excessive use of fertilizer and manure since the 1940s.
The concentration could cause the eutrophication of lakes for centuries as the treated soil slowly washes into lakes and streams, writes Stephen Carpenter, a professor of zoology and a leading expert on freshwater lakes.
Rethinking the mission of technical colleges
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
In a growing debate about higher education reform in Wisconsin, technical colleges are taking their turn to stake out new territory, with a bid to expand their offerings for liberal arts students. A proposal involving colleges based in Kenosha, La Crosse and Eau Claire would change a state law that restricts such schools to vocational education so they do not compete with the University of Wisconsin System.
Lakes could stay soupy for centuries
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher says that it could take hundreds of years, in the best of circumstances, to reverse conditions that have turned countless lakes into bowls of pea soup.
UW dean cites benefits in leaving
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A top administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced Monday that she was leaving her post, citing Wisconsin’s refusal to grant domestic partner benefits to university employees as a major reason.
GOP legislators leave UW worse than they found it (Stevens Point Journal)
How can the Republican members of Wisconsin’s Joint Finance Committee sleep at night … these users, manipulators and traitors who are destroying our once proud University of Wisconsin System? How is it that they have lost their moral compass and feel compelled to dismantle one of this state’s greatest assets?
UW women’s basketball: Anderson to play for U.S. U19 team
Capital Times
In her recent auditions for the United States women’s basketball national teams, Jolene Anderson hasn’t been asked to carry the load the way she does at the University of Wisconsin. But that’s just fine with the sophomore-to-be, whose main goal was simply getting her foot in the door.
Anderson fulfilled that objective Sunday when she was named to the 12-player roster for the U.S. team that will compete at the Under-19 World Championships later this summer.
Joel McNally: GOP’s posturing could be fatal on stem cell research
Capital Times
Even empty political rhetoric can have disastrous consequences. The increasingly phony political posturing over stem cell research has the potential to ruin real lives and to wreck the state’s real economic future.
In his intriguing book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Thomas Frank advanced the idea that Republican politicians who pander to religious extremists on so-called cultural issues don’t really want to win.
According to Frank, Republican strategists are fully aware they can never hope to overcome the U.S. Constitution to outlaw abortion, force prayer in public schools or send people to prison for burning dry goods that happen to be red, white and blue.
Rhonda Christenson: State’s drug savings coming at a cost
Capital Times
Dear Editor: It was with frustration that I read about the amount of money the state has saved with the use of Navitus Health Solutions for prescription drug coverage for state employees. What the article didn’t mention is that many individuals have had to change to entirely different medications in place of ones they have taken for years with benefit. Often the new medication isn’t as effective or has bothersome side effects.
UW football: Stanley suspended for two practices
Capital Times
University of Wisconsin running back Booker Stanley will miss the first two practices of football training camp for his involvement in a fistfight at the Mifflin Street Block Party.
An anonymous university appeals committee ruled Friday that Stanley must sit out the Aug. 10-11 practice sessions. The group may alter Stanley’s suspension if additional information comes to light.
Restoring Memorial Union grandeur
Capital Times
The entrance to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union can hardly be called sweeping or dramatic; but soon it will be.
No, not where the ice cream line is; it’s the union’s original entrance, leading to the second floor Memorial Hall. Restored murals, new marble and better lighting will soon make an arts showcase of what for most people has merely been a couple outside doors and a corridor.
3 Dems rip UW lobbying
Capital Times
Did lackluster lobbying cost the University of Wisconsin System millions of dollars during this year’s budget deliberations? Three veteran Democratic lawmakers believe it did.
The three – Reps. Mark Pocan of Madison and Marlin Schneider of Wisconsin Rapids and Sen. Russ Decker of Schofield – say the UW didn’t do enough to head off potential cuts sought by Republicans.
….”For a lot of very smart people, they do a lot of things that aren’t very bright,” said Pocan, a finance committee member whose district includes the UW-Madison.
Division grows in stem cell debate
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
One senator last week called it a “great national debate.” The battle over embryonic stem cell research may not rank with Iraq or the economy as a burning public concern. But it is fast becoming a fixture of the budget and culture wars in Washington, D.C., and state capitals across the country. Soon it may produce the first veto of the Bush presidency. It’s likely to play a role in the 2006 congressional campaigns, and it provides a clear fault line in Wisconsin’s hotly contested race for governor next year.
Benefits of rank system questioned (Waukesha Freeman)
Greater Milwaukee Today
Quoted: Tom Reason, associate director of admissions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Doyle rips Republicans over stem cells
Duluth News
Gov. Jim Doyle blasted Republicans for threatening to pull state funding for stem-cell research and accused them of slashing money for public schools during a speech at the state Democratic convention in Oshkosh Saturday.
Seeking cure for nurse shortage
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A $1.3 million federal grant announced last week is expected to loosen the logjam of nursing wannabes in Wisconsin and could help address nationwide concerns over nursing shortages. The University of Wisconsin System and a partnership of educators, job developers and employers plan to use the money from the U.S. Department of Labor to devise a faster way to encourage more Wisconsin nurses to teach.
Wisconsin will play Michigan at night
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The University of Wisconsin football team will play host to Michigan at either 6 or 6:45 p.m. Sept. 24. The game will be televised by ESPN or ESPN2.
JS Online: They stick with Badgers, if not with each other
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The man and woman are in their 80s. After 57 years of marriage, they decided that’s long enough. They agreed to evenly divide nearly everything accumulated in a lifetime together, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock, savings and insurance policies.
When they came into court this week to make it all final, they needed the judge to decide but one issue:
Who gets the four Badgers football season tickets?
Stanley’s suspension modified
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
University of Wisconsin running back Booker Stanley will miss the first two on-field practices of pre-season camp as punishment for his arrest April 30 at the Mifflin Street Block Party.
UW’s Anderson will represent United States
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Jolene Anderson made the cut and history. On Sunday the University of Wisconsin guard, who will be a sophomore next season, became the second Badger to make a USA Basketball team when she was one of 12 women selected to represent the United States in the FIBA U19 World Championship next month in Tunisia.
Tax-limiting budget advances
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee advanced a two-year state budget Friday that would tightly limit property taxes, cut the gasoline tax by a penny and start to phase out income taxes on Social Security benefits.
Pumping paradox
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Quoted: Jon Keevil, an assistant professor of heart and vascular care at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Education reformers talking; let’s listen
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Our challenges in a knowledge-based economy are coming from all over the world. So, many of our most important leaders are pushing for a more vigorous national approach to education, especially in the technology arena. Many of those important voices are in Wisconsin, and they are not being taken seriously enough. John Wiley, a physicist and chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said, “We are witnessing a systematic dismantling of public higher education in Wisconsin.”
Leaders of both parties blame the other for the UW budget cuts and profess to understand the vital linkage between the university and our economic prosperity. The truth remains that support has dropped sharply over the last two state budgets.
Shouldn’t Wiley’s views be given at least equal weight to those of the politicos?
Big wheel, big pay
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Quoted: Barry Gerhart, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and author of two books on CEO pay.
Trade in old gas cans Saturday
Capital Times
Did you know gasoline evaporating from that old can in your garage puts harmful pollutants into the air?
The Dane County Clean Air Coalition, in partnership with UW-Madison and the city of Madison, will try to put a dent into the old gas can supply Saturday during a gas can exchange at Goodman Park (formerly Franklin Field). The park is at 1402 Wingra Creek Parkway, off Olin Avenue.
Health savings plan stirs fierce debate
Capital Times
A proposal to offer the option of health savings accounts to state employees encountered strong opposition from the Department of Employee Trust Funds at the State Capitol on Thursday.
Federal law authorizes individuals to establish health savings accounts into which they and their employers can make tax-exempt contributions that can be used to pay for certain medical expenses, in exchange for a high deductible health plan. The theory behind it is that individuals who are using their own money will not spend it as freely as they do now.