Category: Opinion

Budget cuts are flying around mercilessly these days. Madison is facing a 13-percent budget cut in Scott Walker?s proposed budget bill and needs to find ways to absorb those costs without just passing them on to students. Public authority status, included in the budget, is one proposal aiming to do just that, but Chancellor Biddy Martin is looking for other cost-reductions as well. This week, the administration announced a contract with Huron Consulting Group to look for ways to improve efficiency on campus and save the university money.

The Wisconsin Idea Partnership is a win-win for all UW campuses and all UW students. It maintains public ownership and accountability and promotes a synergistic approach in which all campuses work together to revitalize the state?s economy.

We hope that legislators will recognize that the whole is sometimes greater than the sum of its parts – a truism that certainly applies to one of the nation?s great public university systems. [A column by regents Charles Pruitt and Michael Spector].

There have been a number of recent opinion articles in support of giving the University of Wisconsin-Madison more freedom to run its own affairs and allowing it to become more independent of the state.

Now that a Wisconsin judge has temporarily blocked a state law that would strip public employee unions of most collective bargaining rights, it?s worth stepping back to place these events in larger historical context.

So now, Gov. Scott Walker is Tailgunner Joe McCarthy come back to life. Truly, the shamelessness of today?s Left knows no limits — or history! Yet, this is how a tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison stretches logic and ignores facts to further his political agenda, by slandering Scott Walker and his supporters as McCarthyites.

WASHINGTON ? “We?re broke.” You can practically break a search engine if you start looking around the Internet for those words. They?re used repeatedly with reference to our local, state and federal governments, almost always to make a case for slashing programs ? and lately to go after public employee unions. The phrase is designed to create a sense of crisis that justifies rapid and radical actions before citizens have a chance to debate the consequences. Just one problem: We?re not broke.

March 16 is the 260th anniversary of James Madison?s birth, and to mark it the American Society of News Editors and other groups, including the Society of Professional Journalists, celebrate Sunshine Week. Sunshine Week promotes the importance of freedom of information and open government at all levels. A proposed proclamation submitted to the governor reads in part, ?an open and accessible government is vital to establishing and maintaining the people?s trust and confidence in their government and in the government?s ability to effectively serve its citizens.? The proclamation further calls for all state deliberative bodies and their committees to be open to the public. This is especially important now as the governor is creating the new public-private Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation to replace the Department of Commerce, splitting UW-Madison from the University of Wisconsin System and backing a statewide board to grant school charters.

What a difference 100 years make. While 2011 finds Wisconsin government embroiled in what seems to be eternal chaos, with our governor pitting the rich against the poor, it also marks the 100th anniversary of what is still known as the most productive and progressive legislative session in the history of Wisconsin, if not the nation.

….Our state was seen as championing honest government while expanding democracy and promoting what became known as the ?Wisconsin Idea,? a partnership between our great university and the citizens of Wisconsin.

When it comes to improving public understanding of tax policy, nothing has been more troubling than the deeply flawed coverage of the Wisconsin state employees? fight over collective bargaining.

The long-range question now becomes: Will this eventually break the historical ties that the people of Wisconsin have with UW-Madison? One of our System chancellors said that spinning off Madison meant the “flagship was sailing away.” More likely it will be a drift away over the years. It will still be a great school. But will it still be the state?s school?

If you have any doubt that now is the time for the New Badger Partnership, turn to the Wisconsin Idea.

At UW-Whitewater, every student, faculty and staff member is part of a community. Likewise, UW-Whitewater is a member of a greater family: the UW System.

The recent buzz about UW-Madison?s possible separation from the UW System has generated significant negative reactions. In a move that has been seen by some as an attempt by Gov. Scott Walker to politicize public education, it is not surprising that students and staff are outraged.

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?”

What began as an effort to seek more flexibility and autonomy for public higher education in Wisconsin is quickly turning into an ugly spat between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the other campuses in the UW System.

The University of Wisconsin System is a source of pride, a pathway to opportunity and an engine of economic growth for all of Wisconsin. We must work together to preserve those strengths, so that every campus can help our state thrive in challenging times.

Here?s a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn?t Cairo after all. Maybe it?s Baghdad ? specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.

There is a kernel of truth in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker?s claim of a “budget shortfall” of $137 million. But Walker, a Republican, failed to tell the state that less than two weeks into his term as governor, he, with his swollen Republican majorities in the Wisconsin legislature, pushed through $117 million in tax breaks for business allies of the GOP. There is your crisis.

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.)

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.

For about a week, tens of thousands of men, women and children have been gathering at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, protesting Gov. Scott Walker?s “budget repair” bill. Besides requiring sharp increases in employee contributions to pension and health insurance benefits, the bill strips most of the state?s public sector unions of almost all their collective bargaining rights.

If Walker?s bill passes, and salaries and benefits continue to be slashed by local governments with no negotiations necessary, it will be the most effective teachers, the best managers and the most successful university professors who will be the first to leave their jobs for the private sector.

Students in my class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison voted unanimously not to have class this week. They did so to support and participate in the protests that are happening a few blocks down the street at the state Capitol.

The protests come in reaction to Gov. Scott Walker?s proposal to fix the state budget by increasing the amount of money that public employees contribute toward their pension and health-care premiums. The bill would also strip those employees – including nurses, bus drivers and teachers – of their collective bargaining rights. The bill is an outright attack on unions and the public sector. [A column by UW-Madison English and American Studies professor Russ Castronovo].

Perhaps it?s the most trivial issue to consider in the matter of separating the University of Wisconsin-Madison from all the rest of the University of Wisconsin system, but, just curious, who gets to keep the UW name?

Gov. Scott Walker?s apparently going to propose the split-up, but it?s clear he?s simply granting what UW-Madison has been asking for. Madison feels its constrained by state rules and appears not to want to be tied to the rest of the system.

The Madison campus apparently wants to secede from the University of Wisconsin System, becoming a more privatized hybrid – still sucking up tax dollars, just fewer.

Let?s be clear what we?re talking about here: UW-Madison essentially as an independent, elite school, even if this would be done under “public authority status.” Everyone else – continuing with the Civil War analogy – becoming, well, Alabama (apologies to Alabamans).

Now is the time for the University of Wisconsin-Madison to forge a new partnership with the state to strengthen its position as an educator, job-creator and a pre-eminent research institution. To ensure its vitality in the 21st century, the university needs more flexibility to be effective so that it will remain an economic engine that can help lead our state out of its economic dilemma. [A column by Milwaukee business executives and UW-Madison graduates Jon Hammes and Sheldon Lubar].

In the past two weeks, we have gotten used to hearing the phrase “Day of Rage” applied to cities across the Arab Middle East. Today, it was hard not to draw an analogy between those cities and Madison, WI. Not that anyone resisted the metaphor particularly: Congressman Ryan said, “it?s like Cairo has moved to Madison” while protesters carried sign reading “Walker like an Egyptian.” 30,000 protesters, that is, who filled all the floors of the Capitol building and the entire city square that surrounds it. Glenn Beck says the Madison protests are part of the same “spread of evil” that has gripped the Middle East. Uh huh.

?I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment,? shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt as he surveyed the crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican governor?s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights.

Neuenfeldt is not alone. As a seventh-generation Wisconsinite, I have never been prouder of my state.