Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will speak on the UW-Madison campus later this month about the issues aired in his PBS documentary, “African American Lives.” The series shows how African Americans are using genealogy and genetic science to understand their history.
An appeals court decision that said UW-Madison must fund religious activities for student groups will stand, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the university?s appeal on Monday. In September 2010, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the university violated the First Amendment by refusing to fund some events for the student group Badger Catholic involving prayer, worship and proselytizing.
There will be no more sleeping on the state Capitol grounds by protesters, and the organizers of any new march or rally at the Capitol will need to get a permit. The Capitol Police issued a statement Monday saying the administrative code prohibits camping on the state Capitol grounds, so effective Monday, March 7, camping will not be permitted.
The leader of the 14 Senate Democrats in Wisconsin who fled to Illinois wrote to Gov. Scott Walker Monday morning to request an in-person meeting near the border between the states.
Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller, D-Monona, wrote to Walker and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, to ask them “to meet, in-person, as soon as possible to resume discussions on how we reach a bipartisan solution to our differences” on the collective bargaining and budget repair bill controversy.
Dear Editor: I need to know a lot more about the idea of separating the UW-Madison from the rest of the UW System and having an entirely separate board that will apparently be controlled by the governor. As an alumnus who actually graduated from the UW-Madison, I have a serious reservation about putting control of the UW-Madison into the hands of someone who did not. This governor has shown that he cannot be trusted and it seems likely that any deals with him are likely to contain traps to allow him to advance an agenda that would put an end to sifting and winnowing.
Madison-based TomoTherapy is being sold to Accuray in a deal valued at about $277 million, it was announced Monday. The companies signed a definitive agreement that calls for Accuray to buy TomoTherapy for $4.80 per share in cash and stock. The companies said the transaction will create a premier radiation oncology company.
(TomoTherapy was a university-based start-up company co-founded by UW-Madison researchers Rock Mackie and Paul Reckwerdt.)
TomoTherapy was
….Many of the students who enroll in our master?s program and serve us as teaching assistants are from diverse working class backgrounds and are struggling to make ends meet and stay in school right now. Like the UW-Madison, in general, the department of Afro-American studies relies on the high-quality performance of our teaching assistants.
It is with dismay and disappointment, therefore, that we greet Gov. Scott Walker?s plan to deny collective bargaining rights to Wisconsin?s public employees. This will certainly have a detrimental effect on these students? welfare and a negative impact on their ability to maintain the superior service that they currently render to the hundreds of undergraduates who take our courses.
Late last fall, when Don Gray was helping plan a conference in Madison this month on the impact of the Peace Corps in Africa – an event honoring the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps – an interesting thing happened.
Gray and his wife, Joan, were compelled to return to Malawi, the African country where they first served some 45 years ago.
It is hard to know who is pulling the strings on the Walker/Fitzgerald puppet show, but someone other than Gov. Scott Walker and Family Fitzgerald has cooked up a radical agenda that just doesn?t seem like a ?Wisconsin idea.?
I would really like to know who drafted the manifesto. Seems more like the Koch brothers and the CATO Institute than Lee Dreyfus, Warren Knowles or Mike Ellis.It just doesn?t seem like it fits the definition of this ?special place? called Wisconsin as Bob La Follette described us. It isn?t John Muir, Aldo Leopold or John Bascom.
….Let us join together and declare they do not have the right to dispose of the great state university of Wisconsin. This is not a power plant ? it is the font of ideas and dreams. It is us. The real stakeholders are the people of this state and students of the future. Not David Koch.
UW-Madison students who live in Sellery Hall now have the (dubious?) honor of living in one of the top party dorms in the country, according to a new survey.
A suspected drunken driver got into deeper trouble early Friday morning when he allegedly tried to wrestle a Taser away from a UW-Madison police officer trying to make the OWI arrest.
The University of Wisconsin women?s basketball season of high aspirations ended with a thud on Thursday.The Badgers dug themselves a big hole early and could never climb all the way out as they suffered a shocking 63-56 loss to No. 11 seed Illinois in the opening round of the Big Ten tournament.
A man who police say is a chronic trespasser was arrested again Wednesday morning when he was found hiding in a basement laundry room of an apartment building on the near west side, Madison police reported. Duardo Smith, 43, no permanent address, was arrested for criminal trespass to a dwelling at 8:34 a.m. Wednesday in the multi-unit apartment building on North Randall Street, police said.
….Court records show Smith has been arrested 20 times since 2008 for criminal trespass to property, unauthorized presence, being in a building after closing hour, trespass to land and violating restricted use of student centers or unions.
A judge?s ruling that the public must have open access to the State Capitol opens the door for more people to get into the building on Friday, but it won?t be without limits, the state announced.
Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch issued access procedures Friday morning after Dane County Circuit Judge John Albert ordered on Thursday that the Capitol be cleared at night and that the access restrictions were too strict and must be relaxed.
If you like burning fossil fuels – hey, aren?t those Koch brothers in the pipeline business? – then you?ll love Gov. Walker?s proposed budget. The 1,345-pager takes a whack at scores of environmental efforts, from nixing the state Office of Energy Independence to actually encouraging state vehicles to use more gasoline.
Seriously, you can?t make this stuff up. And with pump prices marching toward $4 a gallon, you wonder if any thought went into the long-term fiscal impacts.
Any politician who still thinks it?s a keen idea to go after the collective bargaining rights of public employees ought to come over to Ohio. You know the old saying: As Ohio goes, so goes the nation. It doesn?t take much of a stroll through the Buckeye State to see that somebody sorely underestimated regular Americans? fondness for the freedoms of regular Americans.
Sen. Glenn Grothman is hoping to introduce legislation that would guarantee those from the private sector have a much stronger voice in how the state?s 16 Wisconsin Technical College System districts operate. A draft of the legislation, which is being circulated by the Republican from West Bend, mandates that six of the nine members appointed to each college?s district board be “business persons.”
Tucked in Gov. Scott Walker?s state budget among the big ticket items that will hit the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College systems in big ways, is a small line item that is not likely to save the state much money but will have a big impact on the state?s immigrants, advocates for the community say.
The budget would repeal a year-old provision that allows undocumented students who have lived in the state for several years to pay resident tuition, instead of the more expensive non-resident tuition.
Nothing is certain but death and taxes. Oh, and a jump in tuition when state funding for public higher education is slashed.
Under Gov. Scott Walker?s 2011-13 biennial budget proposal released Tuesday, UW-Madison and the UW System each will see state aid slashed by $125 million over the next two years.
“The size of the cut is really sobering,” says UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin.
Wisconsin is certainly facing some significant budget challenges but its public worker pension system isn?t one of them. With current assets of nearly $80 billion, the Wisconsin Retirement System WRS is the ninth-largest public pension fund in the U.S. and by all accounts one of the most solvent.
Karen A. Rulland, age 70, passed away on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011, at UW Hospital in Madison. She worked for the University of Wisconsin Chemistry Department until she retired in 2000.
Add support for the arts to the list of items getting slashed under Gov. Walker?s proposed budget. The budget unveiled Tuesday calls for a 68 percent cut in state funding for the Wisconsin Arts Board while rolling the agency into the Department of Tourism.
Walker also wants to eliminate the Percent for Arts Program, which provides $500,000 annually for public art in new state buildings. Among the projects funded by the Percent for Arts program is the “Nails Tails” sculpture in front of Camp Randall Stadium.
MADISON, Wis. — A Dane County judge has ordered Wisconsin officials to open the Capitol to all members of the public during normal business hours….According to court records, Judge Daniel Moeser has issued a temporary restraining order to reopen the Capitol until a trial court can schedule a hearing. The order says the building must be open to the public during business hours and when “governmental matters, such as hearings, listening sessions, or court arguments are being conducted.”
MADISON, Wis. — Universities around the state will be forced to take a big hit, if Gov. Scott Walker?s proposed 2011-2013 budget is enacted. A source who has been briefed on the document said that Walker?s budget proposal calls for the University of Wisconsin System to take a $250 million cut, with half of the money coming from the UW-Madison.
Three members of the University of Wisconsin women?s basketball team have received All-Big Ten Conference recognition.
Capitol Police kept more than 1,000 protestors at bay Monday, locking down the statehouse and allowing only a few dozen inside to meet with lawmakers. Officials with the Department of Administration said they closed the Capitol to help with the cleaning of the building and could not open the doors to the public because some protestors inside the rotunda refused to limit their activities to the ground floor.
State Capitol access will be limited again Tuesday. The only entrance open to the public will be the King Street doors, according to a Monday night memo from Assembly Sergeant-at-Arms Anne Tonnon Byers.
“Members of the public wishing to attend scheduled hearings will be given a badge and escorted by my staff to the appropriate committee room,” her memo reads.
Gov. Scott Walker said in a television interview that there still is hope all of the campuses across the University of Wisconsin System could be granted some long-sought freedoms and flexibilities from state oversight.
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said the two weeks of protests in the state capital haven?t swayed his resolve to eliminate collective bargaining rights for most public employees.
Leaders of Wisconsin?s largest public workers? unions have capitulated to Walker?s demands for their members to cover more of their pension and health care benefits to help close Wisconsin?s budget deficit. But Walker said Sunday on NBC?s “Meet the Press” that stripping the workers of collective bargaining rights is necessary to give the state the flexibility to get its finances in order.
No additional demonstrators will be allowed into the state Capitol until those currently in the building comply with police directives. Department of Administration officials say some protesters who refused to leave Sunday night have ignored orders to remain on the ground floor of the Capitol. Until those protesters comply, no other demonstrators will be allowed into the building. Officials say crowd sizes may be adjusted throughout the day to prepare for Gov. Scott Walker?s Tuesday afternoon budget address.
After a man on the roof of Van Hise Hall was talked out of committing suicide, school officials are urging troubled students and others to ask for help. The incident was reported at 4:06 p.m. Friday, according to a release from the UW-Madison police department. Campus officers were assisted by the city police and fire departments and other university officials in talking to the man, so he got off the roof and was taken to get medical attention.
The state Capitol has historically remained open to the people of Wisconsin — officially when the Legislature is in session, and practically when Wisconsinites have wanted to rally, assemble and petition for the redress of grievances.
The legislators who have voted to change long-established rules and approaches have done so for the wrong reasons. They act as fools or political stooges, not as representatives of the people of Wisconsin. And they should be challenged, as they are assaulting the very core of our democratic practice.
An e-mail arrived the other day from a longtime friend and Wisconsin native who lives in Washington state.
Its contents:”What the hell is going on back there? I am so embarrassed by the actions of the governor. Any sense of how it will get resolved?”
The confrontation between labor and politics at the Wisconsin Capitol was just starting as workers in Egypt who left their jobs and took to the streets toppled a government, and it wasn?t long before activists in Madison began invoking the spirit of that uprising. “Fight like an Egyptian” emerged one cry as picket signs cheering the people?s revolt half a world away were raised in protests on the Capitol Square.
Thousands have thronged the Capitol daily since large scale demonstrations began Feb. 14. Madison school teachers called in sick for several days to protest and on Feb. 21, the Madison-based South Central Federation of Labor took the unprecedented step of endorsing a general strike among its 45,000 members if Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill is made law.
LA CROSSE, Wis. — Faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse have voted overwhelmingly to join a union. Thursday?s vote was 249-37 in favor of union representation through AFT-Wisconsin, a statewide labor federation affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers. The UW-La Crosse unit numbers 328.
Ever since massive demonstrations began breaking out at the Capitol last week, police and protesters have maintained a convivial relationship. Now it?s about to get downright cozy. On Friday, the head of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association called on the governor to keep the Capitol open to overnight campers, and even urged members to join them.
In nearly two hours in front of the UW Board of Regents, UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin made the case for splitting UW-Madison from the rest of the University of Wisconsin System, arguing it gives the university tools for maintaining quality amid deep budget cuts.
“I believe the biggest risk to UW-Madison is a 15 percent cut, a tuition cap, and no new tools,” Martin said. “I don?t know how you deal with that without being devastated.”
There were no fireworks and only a handful of tense moments Friday morning during a special meeting of the UW System?s Board of Regents to discuss UW-Madison?s possible split from the system.
“We want and need an open and frank discussion about a big new idea and one that has the potential to significantly change higher education in Wisconsin,” Charles Pruitt, the president of the Board of Regents, said in opening remarks.
Protesters are not giving up the fight against Gov. Scott Walker?s budget repair bill, with marches and rallies scheduled to continue Friday and Saturday at the State Capitol and on the Capitol Square in Madison. The protests reached a zenith on Thursday, as thousands of people went to 26 rallies and marches in 18 communities across Wisconsin, in what the state AFL-CIO labor organization called the biggest day of demonstrations outside of Madison in the state?s history.
While hundreds of people protested on the sidewalk, a maintenance worker with Urban Land Interests stood Thursday outside the building housing the lobbying offices of Koch Industries, Inc. A security guard stood inside.
“We?re watching out for our tenants,” said the maintenance worker, who declined to be identified. “He is hired by us to keep people out of our building and to protect the privacy of our tenants – not necessarily for Koch, but our tenants in general,” he added, of the security guard. “We can?t have people walking through who don?t belong there.”
Economists continue to sift through Gov. Walker?s budget repair bill, wondering what impact a pay cut for thousands of public workers might have on the local business community. If workers have less disposable income in their pockets, the thinking goes, they?ll have less to spend on furniture, eating out or a new car.
One analysis released Wednesday by a UW-Madison Extension economist suggests that laying off 1,500 state employees, as Walker has threatened, would actually have less negative impact on the economy than subjecting some 350,000 public employees in Wisconsin to a 7.7 percent cut in take-home pay. That pay cut figure is based on employees contributing to their pensions and more to their health insurance.
Quoted: Steven Deller of Extension’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
Gov. Scott Walker?s budget repair bill would bust the budget of the state agency required to administer part of it, while creating a strange and difficult standard for unions to meet in order to continue to exist, said Peter Davis, general counsel for the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.
Walker?s bill would require the commission?s 20-person staff to conduct votes in up to 2,000 state and local government unions each April, Davis said Thursday.
?We would try, but there?s no way we could do it,? Davis said.
You have to admire the public relations savvy. The UW System?s Board of Regents meets Friday and is expected to aggressively question UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin about not telling the regents about a plan to split the Madison campus from the UW System that she had worked on with Gov. Scott Walker.
….Martin and her team must be concerned, because they brought out the biggest possible gun today with former UW chancellor Donna Shalala opining strong support for the breakup in a guest column in the State Journal.
Rep. Steve Nass, a perpetual critic of public higher education in Wisconsin, sent a letter to UW System President Kevin Reilly stating he will oppose Gov. Scott Walker?s plan to separate UW-Madison away from the rest of the system. The Republican from the town of La Grange is chairman of the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee.
Gov. Scott Walker has always dismissed the idea of using segregated funds to help balance the state budget. But buried on page 125 of the budget repair bill is a proposal to take $28 million in reserves from the state?s health insurance/pharmacy fund and spend it in the second half of this year.
MADISON, Wis. — A group of Democratic Assembly members have presented to a top aide of Gov. Scott Walker an alternative plan that would keep collective bargaining rights in place for public workers. The Democrats met Thursday afternoon with Mike Huebsch, secretary of Walker?s Department of Administration. Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said the governor did not meet with the lawmakers.
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray Thursday asked Gov. Scott Walker to explain his “troubling” and “unsettling” statements captured in a secretly recorded phone conversation that he “thought about” planting troublemakers among the thousands of peaceful demonstrators at the Capitol.
While we never attended medical school, we know enough about the human condition to say confidently there are better cures for illness than to drive across the state and mill around in the frigid air for hours or days.The doctors who handed out work excuses to protesters in Madison have some explaining to do.
When they look back on their final Big Ten Conference game at the Kohl Center, Lin Zastrow and Alyssa Karel aren?t likely to dwell on the turnovers or the mid-game fade that threatened to cost them a must-win game against lowly Indiana. No, they?ll remember walking off the floor as winners, thanks to some big plays down the stretch that carried the University of Wisconsin women?s basketball team to a 65-57 victory over the Hoosiers before an announced crowd of 5,182 on Wednesday night.
Kaja Rebane, a UW-Madison graduate student in environmental studies, is one of the leaders of the South Central Wisconsin Move to Amend chapter. The group is dedicated to fighting the U.S. Supreme Court?s January 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which says corporations have free speech rights just like people do and that money spent on political campaigns counts as speech.
….Rebane is also an active member of the Teaching Assistants Association union and protested at the state Capitol for much of last week against Gov. Scott Walker?s budget repair bill, which would strip public employee unions of almost all their bargaining power as well as increase worker contributions for health and retirement benefits.
The crowds and their demeanor on the Capitol Square these past several days have been an inspiration to those who witnessed them. That was evidenced this week by Madison?s city attorney, Mike May.
….?For those with some history with this fair city, as I have, the demonstrations this week were the largest since the Vietnam War. I?d like somebody to recognize that the issues are as important to the populace as they were during that era.
?Today, like all days, but more so than all days, I?m proud to be a Madisonian, and proud to be a public servant.?
Couldn?t have been more well said.
Nine out of 10 researchers believe using animals is “essential” in studies, according to an online poll of nearly 980 biomedical scientists from across the globe conducted by Nature magazine. Of those who participated, 70.3 percent report using animals in experiments. The poll does note some mixed feelings about the issue, with a third of those who work on animals noting they have “ethical concerns” about the role of animals in research, and 16 percent reporting they have “misgivings” about some of their work.
A vote to remove collective bargaining rights from public employees could happen as early as Wednesday night. Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald says he wants to take a vote by the end of the day.
Glenn Fenske, age 68, passed away on Sunday, Feb. 20, 2011, at HospiceCare in Fitchburg following a courageous battle with lung cancer. Glenn was past president of Mendota Gridiron Club and a member of the Director’s Club.
We recognize the rising Wisconsin wave of resistance to corporatization and austerity and call on our fellow Wisconsinites to join it. For more than a century Wisconsin was America?s laboratory of democracy. Big Wisconsin ideas, like barring corporate electioneering, workers? rights protections, and the conservation ethic, have inspired Americans everywhere to push their state governments in a more progressive direction. But Wisconsin is not immune to the forces that often threaten social progress. For every elected official who channels grass-roots energy and calls us to the higher ground, there?s a politician who wants to steer us off the cliff.
For every ?Fighting Bob? La Follette, there?s a ?Tailgunner Joe? McCarthy. Today, Wisconsin?s democratic tradition faces the greatest threat it has ever known.
(Column submitted by Wisconsin Wave, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy and the Liberty Tree Foundation.)
No wonder Gov. Walker was in such a hurry to get his budget repair bill passed. Every day new stuff comes out about it. The labor issues were obvious and got all the attention for a while. But then people started uncovering the fact that the bill would hand the Walker administration sweeping powers to revamp Medicaid with little public and legislative input. Now a third piece of the 144-page bill is making headlines ? a power grab some critics believe could be political payback to the conservative Koch brothers.
The stalemate continued late into the night Tuesday as the state Assembly attempted to work through dozens of amendments proposed by Democrats ? most of them meant to stall the progress of Gov. Scott Walker?s controversial budget repair bill.
In a day that featured increased police presence at the Capitol, a “fireside chat” by the governor and a number of strategic maneuvers by the state Senate, the responsibility of actually moving Walker?s bill forward fell onto the shoulders of Assembly Republicans.
The expanded lobbying effort by the Koch brothers in Wisconsin raises red flags in particular because of a little discussed provision in Walker?s repair bill that would allow Koch Industries and other private companies to purchase state-owned power plants in no-bid contracts.
“It?s curious that the Kochs have apparently expanded their lobbying presence just as Walker was sworn into office and immediately before a budget was unveiled that would allow the executive branch unilateral power to sell off public utilities in this state in no-bid contracts,” says Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy.
MADISON, Wis. — Tuesday will mark the eighth-straight day of rallies and protests at the Wisconsin Capitol, and the battle over barraging rights is gaining international attention. Local and statewide media have been doing most of the coverage of the protests, and it grew late last week to a national audience. And now, people across the world are seeing what?s happening in Madison.
The feud between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and that state?s employees has all of a sudden become ground zero in the battle between efforts by the GOP to shut down unions as they exist and union workers. This pitched battle is clearly a precursor to the 2012 elections, but it is also the latest shot across the bow of union purists who don?t want to give up wages or benefits they have won in negotiations with government and business.
