Quoted: Ross Milton, an assistant professor at La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the pass-through provision is “still a hotly debated topic among tax policy people.”
“I think these pass-through provisions have been criticized because much of the benefit of them goes to very high income and/or high wealth households,” Milton said. “And presumably the Johnson family is a high-income household.”
Noted: I started as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in September 2021, and instantly I found the men’s water polo team to be of my homes on campus. I have never been the fastest swimmer or the highest scorer on the team, and most of the guys are at least half a foot taller than me. But I love this sport and I love my team to pieces, whether it is the exhilaration of setting up my teammates up for a great goal or joking with them on the pool deck. I wouldn’t trade them for the world. They accept me as their teammate
Unfolding like a political thriller, American Experience: Taken Hostage is a riveting four-hour, two-part documentary film about the Iran hostage crisis, when 52 American diplomats, Marines and civilians were taken hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979.
Ahead of its premiere, PBS Wisconsin spoke with writer, producer, director and University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Robert Stone about the film.
Quoted: Prior to the Great Recession, University of Wisconsin-Madison applied economics professor and community development specialist Steven Deller said there was a typical “flow” of new houses being developed.
Construction of new housing “plummeted” after the housing bubble burst in 2008 and never came back, Deller said.
He said many of the developers in the starter home market were crushed during the Great Recession, banks have become hesitant to make loans for starter home developments and the cost of building materials continues to rise.
“The economics are just not in favor of building those starter homes,” he said. “And that’s where a lot of communities are really struggling because the developers that they do have that are interested are saying, ‘I just can’t make it pencil out.'”
Quoted: Administrators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are also coming up with ways to solve the current training problem, but they’re also beginning to worry about future recruitment.
Dr. Laura Jacques, an assistant professor and the director of medical student education at UW-Madison’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said the repercussions could be felt for years.
“I’m worried that we’re going to have a challenging time recruiting the best residents to our program because of these concerns, and not just for obstetrics and gynecology, but for all types of medicine,” she said.
Quoted: Julie Underwood, former dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Education, said the proposal would require a massive amount of money to fund while also meeting constitutional obligations to provide adequate public school education.
“If you take the 133,000 students that are in private schools right now and give them vouchers, and you run two parallel structures, I don’t know how the Legislature would would manage to fund that,” Underwood said. “And if they further reduce the amount of funding giving to schools at this time, I really think that we’re going to go below the standard that the Wisconsin Supreme Court set.”
In one of her first public appearances since being diagnosed with cancer this summer, former University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank received recognition from another Big Ten school with a room named in her honor.
Jim Leonhard, preparing for his fourth game as Wisconsin’s interim head football coach, didn’t duck the questions.
Have you concluded you are capable of handling the responsibilities that come with leading the program as full-time head coach and do you want the job?
Or, do you still have questions you need answered?
“I know I’m capable,” Leonhard, who turned 40 last week, said Monday during his weekly news conference. “It’s been really exciting for me to see the response of the coaches, of the players. It has been exciting to see certain little changes you’ve made and the buy-in of the messaging and the play on the field.
Autonomous flying drones could deliver life-saving defibrillators to people experiencing cardiac arrest, says a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who’s been involved in the research.
Ambulances aren’t always fast enough, especially in rural areas where an automated external defibrillator, or AED, isn’t available.
Survival rates drop by as much as 10% for each minute that passes without treatment, according to Justin Boutilier, an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering and co-author of several medical journal articles on the use of drones to deliver AEDs.
Noted: The state’s two other OB-GYN residency programs − at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, and Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee − are vulnerable as well.
An Aurora spokesperson said Thursday the hospital also plans to send OB-GYN residents out of state, though they would not provide specifics of the arrangement. A UW doctor said they are in the process of determining a course of action.
“We are committed to following the ACGME mandates of training our residents and putting out well-trained obstetrician gynecologists,” said Dr. Laura Jacques, an assistant professor and academic specialist in obstetrics and gynecology. “We are actively exploring options.”
The University of Wisconsin-Wisconsin Police Department released statistics of the citations they handed down on the game day Saturday.
During the Purdue Game, UWPD said they ejected 43 people, with 24 of them being students.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Gender and Sexuality Campus Center (GSCC) works to support and foster community among UW’s trans and queer students. The organization planned a day-long community-building event and trans film festival on Oct. 24, the same time as conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s talk at Memorial Union. GSCC organized several other initiatives throughout the fall to support LBGTQ+ students on campus.
UW-Madison police reported that 43 people were ejected from Camp Randall Stadium and 20 people were arrested during Saturday’s game between the Badgers and Purdue.
Of the 43 people ejected, 24 were UW students, and of the 20 arrested, 12 were UW students, police said in a statement detailing the numbers.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) announced the monetary amount it will contribute to research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the 2022-23 academic year last week. A total of $130 million will be used to support its programs.
The potential for adults returning to school to reach goals of obtaining degrees and knowledge is often most affected by external factors that can make everyday life and returning to academics a difficult balance. The UW Odyssey Project is a remedy to that problem, and over their 20 years working to bring adults to higher education, they have gone the extra mile every time.
The Odyssey Project started in 2002 and quickly started changing lives. Acting as an avenue for adults to return to higher education through the resources and knowledge that run throughout UW-Madison has allowed the Odyssey Project to serve a plethora of people each year to achieve their academic, career, and personal goals. A celebration at the UW-Memorial Union was only fitting.
Multiple landmarks on the UW-Madison campus — including Memorial Union — were seemingly vandalized overnight with messages protesting a conservative commentator who was set to speak on campus Monday night.
Hospitals across the nation are experiencing a surge in respiratory illnesses among children.
And hospitals in Wisconsin aren’t immune.
University of Wisconsin assistant professor of adult and pediatric infectious disease Dr. Joseph McBride says practitioners are “without a doubt” seeing higher numbers of respiratory issues in children. He specifically points to “respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.”
“RSV is a common seasonal virus that pediatricians, healthcare providers, young parents and families are well aware of year-in and year-out,” McBride says. “What’s interesting about RSV is that in the setting of COVID and all the mask use, it kind of threw off our normal seasonality of it. Usually it’s pretty predictable each year starting toward the end of fall, in to the winter during our normal cough-and-cold season that we would see spikes in RSV.”
Quoted: “They vote for the Democrats. And it’s been pretty consistent,” said Marquez, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in Chicano and Latino studies.
“The Democrats have to have a good strategy for reaching out to Latino voters. They have to make contact on the ground. They have to convince them that the election is important, that their vote matters, and that they should go to all of this trouble to get out and vote for a party that oftentimes doesn’t deliver,” he said.
UW-Madison is celebrating homecoming and starting off the weekend strong with their beloved parade.
NBC15′s John Stofflet reported live from the parade and talked to the owners of a Bucky Wagon, a reconstructed fire engine.
A coalition of private universities in Wisconsin is canceling classes for students on election day as part of an effort to boost voter turnout. We talk about the “Why Bother, Wisconsin?” campaign, and hear why they want other universities to join them.
It’s Homecoming Week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Badger Band is getting ready for its annual parade performance.
News 3 Now photojournalist Sydney Martin caught up with the band as they ran through one of their final practices before the event.
The tenth “Fill the Hill” fundraiser at the University of Wisconsin-Madison brought in more than $421,000 for various campus initiatives.
Morning rounds at the animal hospital on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus start at 8 a.m. sharp. That means the days begin around dawn for veterinary medicine students in their fourth and final year of school, when clinical rotations largely replace classwork.
Quoted: Some studies have shown more than 60% of the inflation Americans are feeling today can be directly attributed to the supply chain shortages of last year, said Mark Copelovitch, a political science and public affairs professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Second is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is a major exporter of grain and Russia is a major supplier of oil, so wartime disruptions and U.S sanctions on Russia have contributed to rising food and gas prices.
Stimulus spending has also been a factor.
“The other part of the inflation is the demand side, especially when we were all sitting home, spending out stimulus checks when we could not go out (during the pandemic),” Copelovitch said.
Quoted: Patrick Remington, a former epidemiologist for the CDC and director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said COVID-19 vaccines have turned out to not be as effective as initially hoped but “the one aspect that every scientist agrees is that this is one of the safest vaccines ever produced, if not the safest vaccine.”
“I think it’s very worrisome that any politician would view information that is not scientifically sound or that maybe comes from a conspiracy theory,” he said. “I would be very concerned if that information resonates with their base, because then we’ll have policy that is being determined not by science and evidence but by superstition and by conspiracy, and that should be concerning for everybody.”
Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, who served as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and has endorsed Michels, promoted COVID-19 vaccines to college students while he was president of the University of Wisconsin System during the coronavirus pandemic but did not mandate them.
Thompson said Friday he hadn’t seen Michels’ comments on the CDC and COVID-19 vaccines because he has been traveling out of state. He said spreading rumors about COVID-19 vaccine mandates is a bad idea.
“This rumor now about CDC requiring children being vaccinated should not be spread,” Thompson said.
VIDEO: Dr. Nicholas Kuehnel, a pediatric emergency medicine physician from UW Health, has ways for parents and families to focus on safety this Halloween
Quoted: “When COVID came about, there were a lot of interventions that happened — masking, social distancing and lots of places closed,” said Dr. Dan Shirley, UW Health’s medical director for infection prevention. “Those same interventions that prevent COVID also prevented the flu.”
Overall enrollment across Wisconsin colleges and universities fell around 3 percent this fall, according to preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Researchers say national enrollment declines have slowed to pre-pandemic, but they were surprised by the lack of a rebound.
Noted: The milk would be turned into powder and used in infant formula manufactured at an FDA-licensed facility in Billings, Montana, according to Linardakis.
He and Esselman were preparing FDA-required clinical studies for the formula, at University of Wisconsin-Madison, when COVID-19 shut down the research.
The UW-Madison Police Department (UWPD) is investigating after private photos and a video of UW volleyball student-athletes were shared publicly without their consent.
UW Athletics issued a statement Wednesday saying the private photos and video were never intended to be shared publicly and are now being circulated digitally.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison athletics department said “private photos and videos” of volleyball student-athletes are circulating the internet.
According to the athletic department, the photos were not intended to be shared. The exact content of what was in those photos and videos was not specified.
Noted: More than 2,150 people have taken the Main Street Agenda survey. Overall, the future of democracy is the No. 1 concern followed by climate change and abortion. The survey is not a scientific poll, and its results cannot be generalized to the entire population of Wisconsin, but the responses do provide a snapshot of what’s on the minds of voters this fall.
As part of the collaboration of Wisconsin Public Radio, the La Follette School of Public Affairs at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Ideas Lab, we’ve held two events in Milwaukee as well as town halls in Pewaukee and Green Bay. The final event will be Nov. 1 in Wausau.
Quoted: Ross Milton is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs. He said the study offers a clear picture of the state’s tax levels.
“There’s a sense among many people that Wisconsin is a high-tax state, and that we should change that,” he said. “This report reflects the fact that Wisconsin is really a moderate tax state.”
Milton said states that relied heavily on hospitality and tourism taxes during the pandemic may have fared worse due to closures and stay-at-home orders. But Wisconsin relies heavily on property taxes, which remained relatively stable at that time.
As the demand for nurses grows across Wisconsin, nursing education programs are struggling to churn out enough graduates — but not for lack of applicants. Instead, schools are facing dwindling numbers of faculty and limited classroom space, forcing them to turn away prospective students.
Quoted: Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said tight labor markets and the COVID-19 pandemic have put more power in the hands of workers.
“I think workers feel like they learned something about their value during the pandemic, and they don’t see that honored,” Dresser said. “And so, I think that you see workers stepping up more for that reason.”
Following recessions in 2001 and 2007, she said unions made concessions to companies during negotiations as they faced threats of shuttering plants when the manufacturing sector contracted.
“The dynamics there were about firms threatening to shut plants or move production without concessions, (telling workers), ‘If you don’t concede this, we’ll just move,'” Dresser said. “It was a credible threat. A lot of plants did move.”
Quoted: Keith Findley, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, said the state set up the timeline of the events and established the identity of the driver. But he’s not sure what Brooks will do to present his case, as he hasn’t given his opening statement yet. His defense is set to begin with that.
“It’s really hard to anticipate what he’s going to do because I don’t have any idea of what his theory of defense is or what kind of claims he’s going to make,” Findley said.
“Opening statements are not evidence, so whatever he asserts in there, he’ll have to back it up with evidence,” he said.
Noted: During a September campaign stop at a coffee shop near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, the college Democrats who came out to support Evers were well aware of his vetoes. Several said they were worried about the dramatic changes that could be in store for state government if Evers were to lose.
“I think in a democracy, you need balancing voices,” said Rianna Mukherjee, a senior at the UW-Madison majoring in political science. “Our Republican Legislature doesn’t balance voices.”
“Without a Democrat as governor … I’m concerned that Republicans will have too much control,” said Elliot Petroff, a sophomore studying political science. “We need to be able to veto things and there’s no other opposition that can do it right now.”
Some students mentioned specific bills Evers vetoed, including some that would have restricted abortions prior to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down Roe v. Wade. Grant Hall, a sophomore studying computer science and data science, referenced the election bills.
“I fear that if he is not reelected, voting rights in Wisconsin will take a major hit,” Hall said. “I think those bills would pass pretty easily, and that’s terrifying.”
Quoted: “To get standing, you have to prove that you’re harmed by these actions and so to prove that you’ve been harmed by canceling a loan is a really hard needle to thread,” UW-Madison professor Nick Hillman explained.
Hillman says the lawsuits are attacking the forgiveness plan from all sorts of angles to clear the legal standing hurdle and more lawsuits are expected to come now that the application process is officially open.
Out of the three that are currently still awaiting a court decision, Hillman thinks the one filed jointly by six states has the best chance to undo the forgiveness.
Jennifer Angus is a professor of design studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. About 22 years ago, she moved to the city, bringing with her a passion for insects and art.
“I got into it when I was doing research in northern Thailand on tribal minority dress, and I came across a garment that was embellished with these hard outside wings that are known as elytra,” said Angus.
Noted: These issues are important to Wisconsin voters ahead of the Nov. 8 elections. In a summer Marquette University Law School poll, 66% of respondents said they see water quality issues as a statewide concern. A survey conducted late last year by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs found 63% of respondents said state government should be doing more to combat climate change, including 27% of Republican respondents.
Quoted: Simeon Alder, a visiting assistant professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he thinks new ideas “are the fundamental engine of growth.”
“To get these extra ideas, you just need more and more people as sort of a general result,” he explained.
Quoted: “Becoming acquainted with a place’s supernatural beings, and becoming a transmitter of a place’s supernatural lore … is a way of further weaving ourselves into the stories of a place, and proclaiming our own belonging within it,” said Lowell Brower, a lecturer in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Folklore program, where he teaches, among other courses, “The Supernatural in the Modern World.”
Noted: Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) are an extremely common plant grown all over the U.S. They show off unique flowers that are heart-shaped and white, pink, or red depending on the cultivar, notes the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This easy-to-grow plant thrives on its own with little human intervention. It will grow happily in shady gardens beneath large trees as long as the soil is well-draining.
Senator Ron Johnson and Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes faced off Thursday night during the TMJ4 Senate Debate. The debate was broadcast across the state and the country.
At UW-Madison, the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership hosted a debate watch party for students. About two dozen students showed up and were engaged for the entire debate.
Former Journal Times Editor Peter D. Fox is among distinguished industry leaders who will be inducted into the Wisconsin Newspaper Hall of Fame by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation on Thursday, Nov. 10, at The Madison Club, 5 E. Wilson St.
As an undergraduate attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fox served as a part-time copy editor for the Wisconsin State Journal, joining the paper full time during graduate school.
Quoted: “I think it’s fear about the other side winning. Democrats are so eager to have Ron Johnson out of office. They have seen him move in a more radical direction and in favor of the kind of style of governing that Trump was engaged in,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Barnes is, I think, raising concern among Republicans who don’t want to see what they view as a radical agenda come to Washington.”
Noted: Escaping life on the family farm, he took that interest with him to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a Goldwater Republican who could happily mingle with radicals on marches for civil rights. He majored in history and stayed on for a law degree.
Quoted: David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told us by email that it’s not uncommon for a candidate to shift positions after winning a primary or so close to a general election.
“Michels clearly has switched his position on abortion, saying that he would sign a bill with exceptions for rape and incest (after previously saying he did not support exceptions),” Canon said. “We are seeing this all over the country with candidates moving more to the center for the general election.”
The student leader of the College Republicans chapter at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse resigned from her post this week after group members scrawled an antisemitic message on a campus sidewalk and promoted it on social media.
UW-La Crosse is at least the second Wisconsin school to be hit with antisemitic messages this school year.
“Sea Grant celebrates a 50-year anniversary this fall. Through the decades, our staff and funded researchers have strived to enhance those Great Lakes’ uses and address conservation challenges, fulfilling a research, education and outreach mission,” writes James Hurley, director of the UW Aquatic Sciences Center.
Quoted: “We know that our needs change from month to month,” said Roberts Crall, who works at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “So one month, it might be that families need a little bit of extra cash to pay for gas and the next month, it might be for rent and the month after that it might be for diapers or school supplies. And so giving people that flexibility to be able to manage their own budget seemed really important and (an) important idea to test.”
City officials are partnering with UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty and the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania to compare outcomes for families getting the payments to those in a control group. Participating households got debit cards to receive the payments, and researchers plan to study how people spent the funds (which will published as broad categories) as well as how the payments affected overall wellbeing, Roberts Crall said.
Quoted: The holdover effect diminishes voters’ power to shape the executive branch when governors don’t have the ability to appoint people who actually serve, said Miriam Seifter, an associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative. And if it becomes a widespread practice, it could affect the responsiveness and accountability of government officials.
“There’s two different things going on here,” she said. “One is the situation where individuals assert the power to stay in office after the term has expired. The other is the Senate refusing to confirm appointees. If either of those things happen in isolation or rarely, neither one is democracy-altering. If these happen systematically and across the board … you would start to see the constraints of gubernatorial power.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison historian on Wednesday won one of the nation’s most prestigious awards, which comes with a no strings attached $800,000 stipend to spend however she sees fit.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named UW-Madison professor Monica Kim, 44, as one of 25 national recipients of the MacArthur fellowship. Also known as the “genius grant,” the awards are given annually to a select group of individuals across a range of disciplines who show exceptional creativity in their work and future ambitions.
Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced a $16 million, statewide investment Wednesday to improve maternal and infant health, especially among people of color.
The funding, largely made possible through the American Rescue Plan Act, will be split between the state health department’s Maternal and Child Health program, the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Healthier Wisconsin Endowment and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. Each entity will receive $5.5 million.
The MCW endowment fund and UW-Madison will use the funding to also support community grants for programs that focus on the social conditions that contribute to racial disparities in Wisconsin’s maternal and infant mortality rates.
Few figures in the conservation world are considered as wise and prophetic as Aldo Leopold.
The former University of Wisconsin-Madison professor helped pioneer the field of wildlife management in the 1930s.
He’s also the author of “A Sand County Almanac,” the 1949 book of essays published after his death that is now revered worldwide for its smart and poetic passages, including on the relationship of humans to the environment.
Quoted: Julie Underwood, former chair of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, served on the Blue Ribbon Commission and is currently pushing for 90% coverage, in her role as president of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools.
“It is a federal mandate to educate all children with disabilities; we have to provide them a free appropriate public education, as we should,” Underwood said. “But when the state stepped back from funding that more and more, it became more and more expensive for local school districts to make good on that promise.”
Noted: One of the major polluters, Sonoda said, is the fossil fuel industry. Across the country, coal-fired and gas power plants make up a third of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2020 University of Wisconsin-Madison study.
According to the UW-Madison study, transitioning to 100 percent clean energy would save $21 billion per year by averting health issues. That change, the study said, would prevent nearly 2,000 premature deaths, 650 respiratory emergency room visits and 34,400 cases of asthma exacerbation each year.
Bascom Hill will soon be covered in loads of plastic lawn flamingos because of the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association’s (WFAA) 10th annual Fill the Hill event.
Erika Meitner recently arrived in Madison as a professor and master of fine arts program director in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s English Department. She’s written six books of poems, and her work frequently appears in anthologies. In her latest collection, Useful Junk, Meitner considers what it means to be a sexual being in a world that often renders women all but invisible. Meitner takes the podium Oct. 15 at the Central Library at 7:30 p.m.
