With our economic and financial crises deepening, government insiders reportedly are debating whether we need to restore some regulation — or not. Given the state of things, we can expect further woes and no regulation.
Why have regulation when JPMorgan can gobble up Bear Stearns for peanuts, with the backstage encouragement and acquiescence of the Federal Reserve Board?
(Stanley Kutler is a UW-Madison professor emeritus of history and law.)
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race has attracted the attention of the Wall Street Journal, which admonishes Justice Louis Butler and other court members for making the state an unfriendly environment for business, potentially depressing business activity and discouraging investment in the state.
Over the years that I have studied the patterns and effects of civil litigation, I have never encountered any direct evidence of this, nor evidence that actual Wisconsin businesspeople (as opposed to their lobbyist spokesmen) are despairing about the state’s civil justice system.
(Marc Galanter is a professor emeritus at the UW Law School)
One of my favorite people of all time, longtime Menominee Indian leader and Wisconsin political activist Ada Deer, stopped by the office the other day just to say “hi” and bring me up to date on what she’s up to these days.
Ada, the first member of the Menominee Nation to graduate from the UW-Madison, officially “retired” last year frher job as director of American Indian studies at her alma mater, a job she assumed after serving in Bill Clinton’s administration as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
….She’s now 72, but hasn’t slowed down a bit. In fact, she’s taken up a new cause: Wisconsin’s overburdened prison system, which is consuming so much of the state’s resources.
At one point during a legendary career of producing Hollywood movies that had titles like “Some Like It Hot,” “West Side Story” and “In the Heat of the Night,” Walter Mirisch was elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
That meant Mirisch hired the producer of the annual Academy Awards show and also handled various behind-the-scenes tasks, one of which, in 1974, involved trying to convince Katharine Hepburn to appear on the program to present an award to her friend, the producer Lawrence Weingarten.
If you think the big fight between the Big Ten Network and the cable TV industry is the pits for fans of college basketball, take a look at this.
The NFL Network, which is also at an impasse with the cable companies here and elsewhere, has been clamping down on churches that have been holding football viewing parties in their basements to raise a few bucks to help fund their activities.
….The NFL isn’t alone in its audacity, however. Before the start of last fall’s football season, newspaper advertising departments got a letter from the UW-Madison’s trademark licensing director, Cindy Van Matre.
At the risk of being told to move to Chicago if that’s how I like my elections, Wisconsin’s much-maligned 2007 state Supreme Court election was not as bad as many observers claim.
OMAHA, Neb. â?? It’s the kind of irony that is reserved for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
The University of Wisconsin, a team devoid of stars, was sent to a city that, for one week anyway, is teeming with headliners. Despite being the highest seed â?? a No. 3 â?? in its NCAA pod, UW is being overshadowed by O.J. Mayo of USC and Michael Beasley of Kansas State, freshman scoring sensations and soon-to-be NBA lottery picks.
Well, what good is the University of Wisconsin anyway? Why do we pour in so much money and what did we ever get in return? In 2003-2004, the UW was ranked No. 3 in the nation for total research expenditures among U.S. public universities. In 2005-2006 alone, we spent $703 million on research, of which $454 million came from federal grants. It is easy for politicians to attack the university or these funds as excessive and the benefits of these investments are often understated. The university’s discoveries and innovations have stimulated the economy and have resulted in miraculous treatments of deadly diseases. Let’s look at some of the things they have done.
Bernie Siegel was a Miami lawyer in 2002 when a cult-like organization known as the Raellians claimed to have cloned a human baby. Siegel filed a motion in a Broward County on behalf of the “baby,” suspecting all along it didnâ??t exist, and helped to expose a dangerous hoax. He soon founded the Genetics Policy Institute and became a global advocate for stem-cell research based on science versus science fiction.
INDIANAPOLIS — In the end, it probably won’t make any difference for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team.
Still, it has to hurt when a team — indeed, an entire conference — is snubbed by the NCAA tournament selection committee.
INDIANAPOLIS â?? With just more than 6 minutes left in its Big Ten Conference tournament semifinal against Michigan State on Saturday at Conseco Fieldhouse, the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team was down 10 and on its last legs.
A key demographic is missing from the city ‘s recently-completed economic development plan — the young leaders, entrepreneurs, professionals and creatives of the Madison area. By not adequately addressing this demographic ‘s potential and needs, the city is squandering one of its most competitive advantages.
More than any other generation, young people today are entrepreneurs. To meet the small business owners, the tenants of UW Research Park and other key entrepreneurs in Madison is to meet an under-40 demographic. There is ample opportunity to provide dynamic support for young entrepreneurs and the talent coming out of UW-Madison. Young entrepreneurs are a powerful determinant of the city ‘s future economy. They cannot be an afterthought.
UW-Madison Athletic Director Barry Alvarez recently handed assistant AD Justin Doherty a copy of a letter he received from Bud Lea, the well-known former sports columnist and editor for the Milwaukee Sentinel.
In it, Lea described an experience he had during one of last month ‘s numerous snowstorms. He ‘d had chest pains and breathing problems and ended up being taken from his doctor’s office in Glendale to Columbia St. Mary ‘s/Ozaukee Hospital in Mequon.
There’s no one alive today who was around to witness the birth of Wisconsin’s dairy and cranberry industries in the late 1800s or the state’s rise as a manufacturing power in roughly the same era. But a new page in Wisconsin’s history of commerce is being written in our time – the emergence of stem cell medicine.
We released a set of five baseline reports on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program last month, the first new studies of the voucher program using individual student data since 1995. Since then, many stories and commentaries have been published. Some of those contained inaccurate, incomplete or misleading information. [A column co-authored by John Witte, professor of political science and public affairs at UW-Madison]
INDIANAPOLIS â?? Somewhere between the two-month Big Ten Conference grind and the survive-and-advance march through the NCAA men’s basketball tournament rests the conference tournament.
In the Big Ten, as in many conferences, it rests uneasily.
Experience is the word du jour in this political season. The debate over experience cuts two ways — it is, of course, a politician’s, not a historian’s, argument.
John McCain and Hillary Clinton have used it as a major talking point in support of their own candidacies and to build a case against Barack Obama. But presidential history attaches little importance to experience; it is strikingly absent in the historical credentials of our most honored presidents.
Certainly, inexperience blighted some recent presidencies, including those of John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and, more memorably, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
(Stanley Kutler is a retired history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This column originally appeared on truthdig.com.)
Thirty-nine students attend my Tuesday and Thursday, 2 p.m. American Literature seminar. Our classroom is the first one you see on the left, as you enter the unlocked humanities building.
If a psychotic gunman were searching for a tight cluster of multiple bodies – an easy target for either seeking revenge, casting out demons, achieving immortality, or whatever else his perverse purpose happens to be – he would find my classroom door wide open.
Who knew an evolutionary biologist had rock-star drawing power?
OK, he ‘s not Hannah Montana, but evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ‘ visit to the UW-Madison campus this week blew off the charts for a Distinguished Lecture series event.
At a recent open forum soliciting input on the design of the new Union South, one of the architects posed a seemingly simple question: â??What makes a place uniquely Wisconsin?â? Initially, I thought it would be an easy question to answer.
Dates and venues for the WIAA state girls’ and boys’ basketball tournaments have become confusing.
Clearly, no one is at fault here. The WIAA and University of Wisconsin in Madison have formed a very workable partnership.
The WIAA is doing its best as it tries to conduct state basketball tournaments at the best possible sites. But at state basketball tournament time, the University of Wisconsin still has to prioritize its hockey, wrestling and men’s and women’s basketball programs, including possible postseason events.
When Bo Ryan was coaching four NCAA Division III champions at UW-Platteville in the 1990s, his best teams had a balanced offense, an impenetrable defense, a total willingness to buy into his system and a one-for-all, all-for-one attitude that created an industrial-strength bond in the locker room and on the court.
Big Ten champs, Big Ten champs, they began chanting with less than 4 minutes left.
Make that outright Big Ten champs.
“One team stands alone, and thats the team in that locker room, and it feels pretty good,” UW coach Bo Ryan said when it was over Saturday, the 65-52 victory against Northwestern that closed the deal for the Badgers.
….Sen. Hillary Clinton talks of her “experience,” Sen. Barack Obama offers “hope,” Sen. John McCain promises “economy” and to capture Osama bin Laden. Each very much wants to be president of the United States.
Who knows? Their thin words might or might not yet deliver a leader to restore our standing and image abroad, to stimulate economic recovery, to spurn torture, to respect the separation of powers, to rein in the malevolent growth of the American empire, and begin to heal the conflicts and divisions that have haunted us for the past quarter-century and more.
They should consider Franklin Roosevelt as a worthy model to emulate.
(Stanley Kutler is a UW-Madison professor emeritus of history)
Now that they’re here, it’s fair to ask the question. How in the world did they get here?
Here, of course, is the Big Ten Conference championship.
In later years, Kenneth Funmaker founded the Ho-Chunk language program and worked with UW-Madison linguists to develop computer programs to teach the language.
As tuition at UW-Madison has steadily increased over the past decade, access to higher education has declined for qualified lower- and middle-income students.
Better cancer treatment. Smaller, faster computers. Self-cleaning windows, even. This is just a small glimpse into the potential of nanotechnology, a science concerning the manipulation of materials at the molecular level. Sounds like a worthwhile project, right?
The concept and reasoning behind UW-Madisonâ??s new WiscAlert text messaging alert system are well thought out, but the system has flaws that need to be overcome to be a success.
The UW System revealed a new code of conduct Feb. 26 that allows the universities to expand their punishment of students for their off-campus behavior.
In your Feb. 21 article titled “Challenges remain for biotech,” The Capital Times reviewed an interesting talk given at the University of Wisconsin last week by Steve Burrill, a venture capitalist who has created a very successful business focused on biotechnology investments. In the talk, Burrill presented his viewpoints on the biotech industry as an investment.
As a biotechnology industry advocate, scientist, and entrepreneur of over 20 years and as a father to three children, I found the article and Steve’s talk too pessimistic and narrow in scope.
Score another win in the art world for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It is a co-winner of the Best Online Archival Exhibit for a show about book bindings.
Nothing against Cal Poly or its many fine alums — John Madden, “Weird Al” Yankovic and Ozzie Smith to name three — but it’s time to make it a matter of policy the University of Wisconsin not schedule opponents unless they’re an NCAA Division I-A program. …
The state Senate recently passed a bill enabling UW System faculty and academic staff to unionize and attempt to gain benefits through collective bargaining.
Historian Jeremi Suri wrote a column about a plan hatched by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to end the conflict in Vietnam by pretending to launch a nuclear strike on the USSR.
The despondent faces of poor, sickly people in developing nations on our TV screens most nights can seem a world away from the majority of people of Wisconsin. But my work in some of the world’s most impoverished regions confirms that many of the diseases exacting a toll in Madison are decimating countries like Vietnam and Uganda.
One of the chronic diseases I’m most familiar with is diabetes, a condition once considered rare in the developing world. The incidence of diabetes is increasing in almost every corner of the world due to the same risk factors that we see in Western countries: obesity, poor nutrition and physical inactivity. By the year 2025, diabetes is expected to affect some 40 million, with 75 percent of cases occurring in developing countries.
(Linda Baumann is director of global health initiatives and a professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)
When we hear sedition is raging out of control at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, prompting student government to ban free speech on campus, citizens everywhere have a right to be alarmed.
What’s alarming, of course, is the apparent overwhelming ignorance of many of today’s student leaders at UWM about the principles of democracy and the Constitution of the United States.
In January, the Policy, Alternatives, Community and Education Project met to discuss initiatives for the upcoming year. Among the community-based objectives was to conduct rigorous ID checks during the sale of alcohol using electronic ID scanners as a means of curbing underage consumption of alcohol in Madison.
The cute girl in the YouTube video has a crush on Obama.
I know how she feels. I ‘ve had a crush on Bill Clinton.
I already know all the reasons why this is stupid.
In fact, I saw one of those reasons standing in line, waiting to get into the Stock Pavilion on the UW-Madison campus.
SO THERE is this new novel that’s getting picked up by book clubs out in the Pacific Northwest but hardly anybody in Madison, where the author lives, even knows he wrote a book.
Somebody needs to remind Casey Nagy what the celebrated writer/journalist Jimmy Breslin once said: “If you do not blow your own horn, there is no music.”
“I’m not a self-promoter,” Nagy was saying Friday.
The UW System is attempting revise their process for student transcripts. The new system could very well change what getting a â??college educationâ? means.
When you live in Wisconsin, you accept some inherent facts of life. If you donâ??t eat cheese and drink beer, youâ??re going to be looked down upon. Construction companies make all their money during the summer, making your life hell while they repair roads. And most importantly, get used to snow, especially in February.
Wisconsin has an alcohol problem. According to a 2007 report released by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, this state is No. 1 in every type of drinking behavior – teen drinking, heavy drinking, adult drinking and binge drinking. Furthermore, we’ve held that top spot for seven years.
Walking to class yesterday morning was no fun for most University of Wisconsin students who slipped and climbed through messy sidewalks. While it was certainly tempting to silently curse the UW administration as the cold air swept through hats and hoods, it is clear to us that they were justified in keeping classes open until 3:30.
Itâ??s easy, and probably necessary, to be critical of Capitol Neighborhoods, Inc.â??s complaints with regard to alcohol-related problems facing the downtown area. The reportâ??s proposed policiesâ??including tax increases on alcohol and increased underage drinking citationsâ??do everything to inflate the stigma that makes drinking attractive to so many students in the first place.
The best way to learn to lead is to do it. Generation Y has been raised to be great team players in everything from school to work to social lives. But for all the hoopla about being on a soccer team where everyone plays, there has been very little focus on leadership for young people. You can address that deficit by taking decision-making positions in college.
For example, Jay Rivera is president of his fraternity at UW-Madison, and he has already learned that a lot of leadership is not all that glamorous: “Being president is definitely teaching me how to be organized and on top of things. “
Since it began in 1996, the event has raised more than $200,000 to support the work of the UW-Madison Habitat for Humanity chapter.
The death of 22-year-old UW-Whitewater student Kelly Nolan was one of the top stories of 2007 to make headlines in the city of Madison. Police revealed that Nolan disappeared one night when friends left her bar hopping on State Street in June 2007. After two weeks of searching, Nolanâ??s body was found in the town of Dunn, Wis.
The fuel that ignited the Wisconsin rumors was director Michael Mann, a UW-Madison alum, visiting the Baraboo National Bank last month — drawn by its vintage appeal (the exterior hasn ‘t been altered much since the 1930s) as a potential filming locale.
Gov. Jim Doyle warned Wisconsin residents that â??challenging days are aheadâ? in his annual State of the State address held at the State Capitol Wednesday. These challenging days are in reference to the national state of economic crisis.
There are a lot of people who would’ve laughed at, derided or otherwise ridiculed the notion that Wisconsin would be No. 11 in the country the year after Alando Tucker left.
No shock here, but Tucker would not be one of them.
With the news that Chancellor John Wiley will step down next September it seems the future of UW-Madison is at a crossroads. In a presentation given to the UW System Board of Regents last Friday, Provost Patrick Farrell said, while UW-Madison has been an extremely successful university, that success is not guaranteed to continue. Farrell is right, but his solutionâ??to increase tuitionâ??is dead wrong.
MIKE EAVES is mad, and he should be.
The UW-Madison men’s hockey team lost a game last weekend when a referee incorrectly disallowed a Badger goal that tied the game at the last second. The referee misinterpreted a video review of the goal, and Denver won the game, 3-2.
….The episode is bad enough that it just may go down as the second most egregious referee’s mistake in the annals of University of Wisconsin athletics. But as bad as it was, the disallowed goal in Denver is a distant second.
It was unsettling that the e-mail addresses, phone numbers and Social Security-based campus ID numbers of more than 200 University of Wisconsin faculty and staff members had been accessible on a campus Internet site. It was even more unsettling that the UW waited more than a month to advise the victims of a breach of their personal security.
It has won five of the last six NCAA titles, nine of its 10 teams were ranked in the top 20 poll just last week and its programs are regularly raided for talent by the NHL.
Many are roommates, although they work divergent day jobs. Dorfman is a clergy assistant at a synagogue, Gronli works for “The Colbert Report, ” Johnson is working on a yet-to-be-announced project for UW-Madison alum Ben Karlin ‘s production company, Gramstrup is in real estate, Klipstein does graphic design and Beiler is a video producer for the New York Times.
Ten years?
You’re kidding me, right?
I could swear it was just last week that I stood on a patch of dirt â?? surrounded by concrete walls, engulfed by the din of construction equipment â?? and tried to envision what the Kohl Center would look like when it was built.
NOW THAT Paul Buhle has returned to Madison, it makes sense that he’s embarked on a new book project titled “Return to Madison,” about more of which in a moment.
First, it should be noted that this is a big day for Buhle, whom my Capital Times colleague John Nichols has called “the pre-eminent scholar of American radicalism” and who for many years has been on the faculty of Brown University in Providence, R.I.
Today is the official publication date of “Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History.” Buhle edited the new book, and more than that, 40 years ago, he lived it, as a member of SDS on campuses in Champaign, Ill., and Madison.
One of the most meaningful, if under-publicized, events associated with the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department is its annual hall of fame induction ceremony.
It takes place on the weekend of the first game of the UW football season at Camp Randall Stadium. The inductees have their plaques unveiled at Kubly Plaza â?? located on the south end of the Camp Randall Memorial Sports Center â?? on Friday and are introduced at halftime the next day.
There are no absolutes about 2008, only educated guesses from people with varying degrees of education.
Here are some from your classic “C-minus” student.
