Labor and progressive leaders are planning a march on State Street Wednesday night in support of the Democratic candidate for governor, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett. The Unity March, organized by We Are Wisconsin, will begin with singing by the Solidarity Singers on the UW-Madison Library Mall at 6 p.m.
Political observers say Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett?s Democratic gubernatorial primary win hands Mahlon Mitchell his best shot at ousting Republican Rebecca Kleefisch from the lieutenant governor?s office. “It seems to me a Barrett-Mitchell ticket is more balanced,” says UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden. “They come from different parts of the state. One is from Milwaukee and one is from Dane County. And Barrett has sometimes disagreed with the unions on key issues, whereas Mitchell is a union representative. So they have both sides of the divide.”
….According to Charles Franklin, a UW-Madison political scientist who is currently a visiting professor at Marquette University Law School, lieutenant governor candidates and name recognition don’t typically go hand-in-hand. “I think it’s conceivable that people go into June knowing very little about the lieutenant governor’s part of the ballot,” he says. “But you have party as a guide, so that seems not to matter very much.”
Among the sweeping changes made to Wisconsin?s political landscape over the last year was the choice to make voting more difficult under the guise of preventing voter fraud. The voter identification requirement of Act 23 has been widely debated and is now suspended by judicial order. The reason for this suspension is that the law was unfair to the 220,000 or so adult state residents without a driver?s license, who are disproportionately poor, elderly and minority. Receiving less attention was the alteration in our residency requirement, which changed from 10 days to 28 days.
As the flagship college in the state, the University of Wisconsin-Madison holds a special place in education. Well, at least it?s supposed to. And it does, to some extent, but not in the same way that it used to.
The genetics comparison was made possible by tissue that had been collected by a postdoctoral geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Stacie Robinson has taken data sets of deer from the north and two areas in southern Wisconsin.
Katherine Cramer Walsh, a UW-Madison political science professor, said Walker?s jobs pledge, and any retreat from it, ?certainly seems to be a point of vulnerability? for his campaign. ?The economy is the issue and it was a very blatant claim.? But Walsh isn?t sure how much it will matter, given that this jobs pledge may have fallen from public awareness and few voters ?have not made up their mind about Walker.?
Quoted: Political scientist Charles Franklin.
The four Democrats vying for a shot at unseating Republican Gov. Scott Walker in a recall election are set to clash in a debate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tom Barrett, Kathleen Falk, Kathleen Vinehout and Doug La Follette all are expected to appear at a Wisconsin Public Television debate Friday evening. The debate will mark final go-round between all four candidates ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
A poll released Wednesday by the Marquette Law School offers a glimpse of just how divisive politics has become in the state. According to the poll, nearly one-third, or 29 percent of respondents, say they have stopped talking to someone about politics due to disagreements over the recall of the governor. There?s no baseline for that figure — pollster Charles Franklin says the question has never been asked before on a survey — but he argues the 29 percent figure is probably ?up from the norm.?
BALSAM LAKE ? ABC for Rural Health and community partners received a $449,000 federal grant to support a mental health benefits counseling project in western Wisconsin.
A year ago, thousands of UW-Madison students, faculty, and staff marched to the Capitol to oppose Gov. Scott Walker?s radical attempts to destroy Wisconsin?s 50-year tradition of collective bargaining. Today, the Governor faces a recall, and a federal court has struck down some of the most onerous parts of Act 10. Yet UW-Madison may be on the verge of realizing the Governor?s anti-worker vision on campus.
Katherine Walsh is an associate professor of political science at UW-Madison. Since 2007 she has gathered information about how the state perceives the university. Walsh?s research, published in her paper ?The Distance from Public Institutions of Higher Education,? has exposed a rift between Wisconsinites and the university and the university?s failure to live up to the high expectations of the Wisconsin idea. By taking an innovative approach to the problems Walsh has highlighted, Wisconsin could join the forefront of the national conversation on how to restructure higher education.
Out-of-town University of Wisconsin students may face troubles in the recall elections this summer after the implementation of new rules for voting this month.
Madison police are reaching out to college students across the upper Midwest with a heads-up about the tighter guidelines for Saturday?s Mifflin Street Block Party. Spokesman Joel DeSpain told Madison.com a dozen emails were sent on Monday to college campus newspapers.”We want our out-of-town visitors to know the protocol we are expecting this year,” DeSpain said. “We need to do things differently this year to make sure everybody stays safe.” A quick check Tuesday morning of campus newspapers receiving the email showed none had posted the information online.
Regina Millner of Madison and John Behling of Eau Claire begin seven-year terms on the UW Board of Regents on Tuesday.
Quoted: Charles Franklin, pollster and visiting professor at Marquette University
ASHWAUBENON ? If Brad Toll and Ken Wachter get their way, the WIAA will have an easy decision to make in a few years. Toll, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Green Bay & the Lakeshore Convention & Visitors Bureau, and Wachter, who has the same title but with PMI Entertainment Group, are two of the leading players in the saga that over the past five months has pitted the state?s oldest community against its most political, caused debate and resulted in harsh criticism of the WIAA, UW-Madison Athletic Department and Madison city leaders.
In a speaker panel as part of an outreach symposium addressing the challenges facing the Wisconsin Idea, interim Chancellor David Ward and former Chancellor John Wiley spoke about the future of the program and the university.
Who could have predicted at this time last year that Wisconsin would experience the nation?s largest percentage decrease in employment over this 12-month period? Um … actually, UW-Madison economist Steven Deller could have. And did. Last March, Deller, a professor of applied economics, studied the ripple effects of Gov. Scott Walker?s budget-repair bill and two-year budget proposal.
Wisconsin is doing a good job of providing a safety net for the state?s most vulnerable people, according to the fourth annual Wisconsin Poverty Report released this week. The study, conducted by UW-Madison?s Institute for Research on Poverty, is designed to measure poverty rates more accurately than the official federal numbers that are compiled using only pretax cash income figures.
?There?s no doubt we?d all like to see more people working and less dependent on government to help them not be poor,? says Tim Smeeding, the lead investigator for the study and the director of the Institute for Research on Poverty. ?And if the economy recovers and employment picks up, that is what we?ll see. But for now we?re doing a real good job of holding the line at the bottom end and Wisconsinites should be very proud about these results. These programs work. Government works.?
Wisconsin?s hoop dreams came halfway home Tuesday. The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association agreed to keep the state boys high school basketball tournament at the Kohl Center in Madison where it belongs. It was a smart and exciting decision after months of doubt and testy exchanges between officials at the WIAA and UW-Madison, which traditionally hosts the state championships.
Despite a recession that caused an economic slump in the state from 2009 to 2010, Wisconsin?s poverty rate actually dropped, according to a new UW-Madison study. A report released Wednesday by the Institute for Research on Poverty notes that Wisconsin?s poverty rate fell from 11.1 percent to 10.3 percent, a drop made possible by safety-net public benefits programs including food stamps, tax credits and subsidized child care.
A recent study by the University of Wisconsin System shows that new student transfers into or within the system are at the highest level in a decade.
The WIAA?s decision on the state basketball tournaments was met with mixed emotions on Tuesday, but it shouldn?t be.
Poverty in Wisconsin actually dropped during the recession and its aftermath, surprising University of Wisconsin researchers who credit safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits.
The WIAA voted Tuesday to split up the boys and girls state basketball tournaments and have the girls play at the Resch Center in Green Bay, at least through 2014.
A tradition nearly 100 years old will continue as the WIAA has agreed to keep the boys basketball tournament in Madison through 2020. The girls tournament will spend 2013 and 2014 in Green Bay.
Madison officials cheered the WIAA?s decision Tuesday to keep the state high school boys basketball tournament in the state capital through 2020 and expressed hope the girls tournament would return after leaving for Green Bay for two years.
Lab testing in Wisconsin has confirmed salmonella contamination in recalled yellowfin tuna and in a spicy tuna roll. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene at UW-Madison found salmonella in samples that matched the DNA fingerprint of the outbreak.
….This notion of a disconnect between Wisconsinites and the state’s flagship institution of higher education may surprise some within the campus community, but those sentiments are broad-based and very real, according to a study released last month by UW-Madison political scientist Kathy Cramer Walsh. The paper gives an eye-opening account of state residents’ “pervasive sense of distance from UW-Madison,” and reveals a “widespread sense that the state’s flagship university is inattentive to the concerns of members of the public at large.”
The release of Walsh’s report is especially timely today, as UW-Madison is in the midst of celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Wisconsin Idea ? the principle that the teaching and research taking place at the university should be felt beyond the borders of campus. “That’s the big, sad story of the paper ? we are putting so much effort on campus into promoting the Wisconsin Idea and reviving it and aligning it with our work, and yet it’s kind of invisible to a lot of people in this state,” says Walsh.
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association was in a sharing mood on Tuesday. The 11-person Board of Control unanimously approved the recommendations made by WIAA Executive Director Dave Anderson to move the girls state basketball tournament to the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon in 2013 and 2014, while keeping the boys state tournament at the Kohl Center in Madison through at least 2020.
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Board of Control?s decision Tuesday to keep the boys state basketball tournament in Madison, but hold the next two girls tournaments at the Resch Center, although a disappointment to tourism officials here, was inevitable.
Several months ago, attorneys general from 49 states settled with five of the country?s largest banks in regarding to allegations of foreclosure abuse.
Madison or Green Bay? The WIAA Board of Control is expected to deliver that much-anticipated answer Tuesday afternoon when it considers final proposals from the two cities and announces which of them will host for the WIAA state basketball tournaments in 2013 and beyond.
Despite large cuts to the state?s education budget, Gov. Scott Walker reinstated a program to give merit raises and pay adjustments to University of Wisconsin employees and other state workers, according to a report from the Associated Press on Friday.
It is the little building project that could. For more than 10 years, the UW-Madison School of Nursing building has gone through a strange and twisting odyssey as politicians and officials flip-flopped about the fate of the project. It was placed at the top of priority lists, then taken off completely; it was slipped into a state budget in the middle of the night, then pulled out just as slyly. But finally, on Saturday, school officials and Gov. Scott Walker broke ground on the $52 million building.
Hugh Ambrose describes the seven-year production process for ?The Pacific? as ?a personal journey,? which he will relate in Madison on May 3 as keynote speaker for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Foundation?s annual gala at the Monona Terrace and Convention Center.
John Hall, a graduate of Palmyra-Eagle High School and West Point who holds the military history chair at UW-Madison that was endowed by Stephen Ambrose shortly before his death, said both versions of ?The Pacific? do a good job of not sanitizing ?the theater of The Good War that starts to test and strain the word ?good?? due to the tactics of mutual annihilation.
Dear Editor: As a newly accepted elementary education major to the UW-Madison School of Education, I am very troubled by the direction Gov. Scott Walker is leading public education in Wisconsin.
Quoted: Andy Feldman, who also teaches public management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s La Follette School of Public Affairs.
While state employees have seen their paychecks dwindle as they shell out more for health care and pension benefits, some Department of Justice employees were handed merit pay bonuses last month. WKOW-TV/Channel 27 reporter Tony Galli reported the bonuses on his blog last week after obtaining records showing $289,629 in payouts to 93 DOJ staffers. That?s an average of $3,114 each.
Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, revealed her economic plan if elected to the governor?s seat Tuesday, which involves increasing funding to the University of Wisconsin System, a day after many contenders for the Democratic nomination promised to repeal tax cuts supported by Gov. Scott Walker.
Forensics students, cover your ears: The speech coming from your bus driver trying to drive through Madison on Friday could be a bit colorful. Thousands of high school students from all corners of Wisconsin will be coming to UW-Madison on Friday and Saturday for the 118th annual Wisconsin Speech Festival.
Students will likely not need to show a valid form of identification when at a polling place or registering to vote absentee for the recall elections May 8 and June 5.
It took mere seconds for a bull to kill Avoca farmer Alfred Albrecht….Unpredictable and lethally powerful, dairy and beef bulls have been killing farmers for centuries. Since 2000, bulls have killed at least 19 people in Wisconsin, according to a report by UW-Madison agriculture safety expert Cheryl Skjolaas. No other kind of animal has killed more than four people in the state during that span, the report said.
With a gubernatorial recall election still two months away, the campaign for Gov. Scott Walker released two attack advertisements Thursday focusing on the job records of Democratic gubernatorial candidates Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.
A proposal to relocate the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions to an office building in Middleton is being decried by state and local officials as a needless expense and contrary to a state policy that urges keeping agencies in central Madison. The DOA’s office space request stated a preference for three non-central locations: on Madison’s Far East Side near the American Center office complex; on the West Side near the University of Wisconsin Research Park; and a far west area that includes parts of Middleton.
BELOIT ? Officials unveiled Thursday one of the most expensive highway projects in state history, but it is designed to do more than ease congestion. The $715 million reconstruction and expansion of a 45-mile stretch of Interstate 39-90 between Madison and the Illinois state line will aid state tourism and help create more economic development along the corridor, one of the busiest stretches of highway in the state, officials say.
Cited: A study by the Center for Freight & Infrastructure Research at UW-Madison that found the roadway is responsible for moving $650 million to $800 million worth of commerce each day.
Following presentations on recommendations for increased flexibilities from University of Wisconsin System officials, members of the Special Task Force on UW Restructuring and Operational Flexibilities sparred over the creation of institutional governing boards to oversee UW institutions.
The four Democratic candidates vying to take on Gov. Scott Walker in the June 5 recall election made their pitches for the job before a friendly crowd of local Democrats Wednesday night at the Concourse Hotel in Madison. Each expressed similar views on a host of issues, including support for clean, green job policies, a return to higher state funding for public schools, technical colleges and the University of Wisconsin System, and the restoration of collective bargaining for all state workers.
Most people are familiar with the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene because of its routine but important work testing everything from well water for contaminants to blood samples for alcohol levels. But tucked away in various corners of the laboratory on Madison?s Far East Side are hints of a lesser-known and stranger science. Ice cores from the Greenland ice cap, for example. Scrapings from the walls of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. Air samples from the refectory of Santa Maria Delle Grazie Church in Milan, Italy, home to Da Vinci?s “The Last Supper.” Though they may seem connected, these collections have ended up in Madison because of unique and sought-after research skills for which the state laboratory is internationally known.
UW-Madison graduate students studying the humanities have been leading educational outreach programs at Oakhill Correctional Institution since 2005. Over the past few years, those efforts have centered on a project called “Literature in Life” that has been headed by students from the university?s department of Slavic languages and literature.
The federal student loan program seemed like a great idea back in 1965: Borrow to go to college now, pay it back later when you have a job.
Doctors disciplined by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health faced fines and suspension from leadership positions for writing sick notes to protestors in last February?s collective bargaining demonstrations, according to records obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal last Thursday.
Almost every night for the last six weeks, Lauren Anderson and several friends have gathered at midnight at Faith Community Bible Church in Madison for an informal, self-led communion service. The UW-Madison students break bread together and pray, believing the intense, focused devotional time elicits tangible results, from deeper personal connections to God to greater unity among believers. In the past, the focus of the prayers primarily was on the UW-Madison campus and the spiritual health of its students. This year, due in part to the partisan rancor in the state, the congregation broadened the focus to include the healing of relationships throughout the city and state.
Dear Editor: A recent review of UW-Madison Law Library articles documented that candidates for primary elections who declare they represent one political party while, in fact, they do not, are violating the law. I?d welcome various local candidates who proudly displayed their patriotism recently to step forward again and remind the candidates who attempt to disrupt primary elections: That?s a felony.
Dear Editor: Shame on you, alma mater, shame! Fines of up to $4,000 for faculty who wrote excuses for our ongoing protests ? indeed, UW-Madison! Loss of leadership positions! This is what a friend of mine used to call ?a fearful willowing and shifting!?
Quoted: Charles Franklin, the pollster and visiting professor at Marquette.
Unions in Wisconsin made history by mobilizing the recall against Gov. Scott Walker, but it?s too soon to say whether the state will follow through and kick him to the curb. One thing that could work in his favor: The inability of some of the state?s powerful unions to consolidate behind a Democratic candidate to oppose him. Having come this far, some labor activists now question whether the best way to flex their muscle is to sit out the election altogether.
This is the drama unfolding at the Teaching Assistants Association, which represents graduate students and project assistants from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
During my poly sci days in Madison, I loved Wisconsin?s history as the Progressive state, the home of the Wisconsin Idea, and I can?t bear to see how the Walker/Ryan creature has walked all over that tradition. Please restore Wisconsin to its former glory and get rid of all political imposters who are ruining your future.
Records released Thursday by UW-Madison officials show several UW doctors were docked pay and had duties suspended as punishment for writing sick notes for State Capitol protesters last year without documenting conditions in patient medical records.
