Dan Cornelius is a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Outreach Specialist and Deputy Director of the Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center in the UW Law School. He is a 2009 alumnus of the Wisconsin Law School.
Quoted: The consolidation of farms seen across agriculture is a big part of why the state has fewer licensed dairy producers, according to Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“In many cases when farms sell out, most of their cows may go to other dairy farms. And so the remaining farms have gotten a little bit larger,” Stephenson said.
Stephenson said in 2005, the average herd size in Wisconsin was 82 cows per farm, and in 2020, that average climbed to 177 cows per farm. In other words, the average more than doubled over 15 years.
If life had gone as planned, Maria Alice Lima Freitas would be in medical school, inspired by the career of her father, a surgeon who practiced in Brazil. But instead of changing careers, the 49-year-old therapist retired from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Researchers in Wisconsin continue to study the spread of black-legged “deer” ticks and the long-term impact of Lyme disease. In a recent presentation, Susan Paskewitz, a medical entomologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said ticks have “invaded our state entirely” and, as the climate warms, are marching into Canada.
Xia Lee, a tick biologist in Paskewitz’s lab, has studied the insects for more than a decade. Lee says Lyme-bearing ticks “are always born uninfected,” but they pick up infections as they feed on animal hosts.
Lee notes that Wisconsin never got the proper recognition as the site of the first case of the disease.
“We like to joke about it and say that Wisconsin was actually the first state where Lyme disease was detected,” he says, “but we never got the glory for naming (it).”
Quoted: Over the past three decades, Susan Paskewitz, a medical entomologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has documented the growing prevalence of ticks in Wisconsin.
Paskewitz found that deer ticks, also called black-legged ticks, have moved steadily from northwest to southwest, and then into the central and eventually slowly into the eastern and southern Wisconsin.
“They invaded our state entirely,” Paskewitz said in a 2021 Wednesday Nite @ The Lab episode. She said the regeneration of forests decimated by logging in the early 1900s and rebounding of the deer population are the main drivers in Wisconsin. Paskewitz said warming temperatures caused by climate change are expected to lengthen the tick season and accelerate their northward march into Canada.
For Maddy Rauls, teaching is a family business.
The fourth grade bilingual English language arts teacher in Waunakee has several aunts who are teachers, and her dad was her high school’s chemistry teacher.
When she started school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in September 2017, a career in teaching was on her radar, especially because she loved babysitting and working with kids at summer school. When she liked the education classes she took her first couple of years, that sealed the deal.
A bipartisan bill to create a nitrogen optimization pilot program to aid farmers in reducing nitrogen pollution passed the state Senate Tuesday and will now head to Gov. Tony Evers’ desk. The measure, SB-677 creates a commercial nitrogen optimization pilot program and provides crop insurance premium rebates for planting cover crops, which farmers may use to improve soil health. The bill also creates a new state hydrogeologist position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison extension, tasked with aiding local communities in tackling areas with high concentrations of contamination.
Wisconsin Watch has been named a finalist in 12 categories in the Milwaukee Press Club’s 2021 Excellence in Journalism contest.
Whether the entries won gold, silver or bronze will be announced in May. Three of the awards are shared with news partners and one award is shared with students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Legislation passed includes a bill that would force UW System schools to use objective criteria for admissions. The measure would outlaw criteria based on race, national origin or religion. The bill’s supporters say UW’s current criteria is subjective and opaque, leaving the public no way to determine what standards an applicant must meet to be accepted. System officials say they don’t test applicants on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. The Senate passed the measure 18-13. The Assembly approved it in February. It now goes to the governor.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor and redistricting expert Rob Yablon said while it’s not especially likely, he “would not be surprised at all” if the U.S. Supreme Court decides to hear the Legislature’s appeal in some form.
“This is an area of law that is in flux right now,” Yablon said. “The approach that the Wisconsin Supreme Court majority took is essentially in line with the way that these claims have been handled for the last few decades, but the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled interest recently in revisiting some of that case law.”
Noted: Peterangelo added that he is working with a graduate student from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a study that compares Milwaukee to cities of similar size and demographics across the country in the hopes of learning how they have addressed housing disparities. He hopes to have that new report ready by summer.
A UW System initiative will provide incentives to twice as many student health care workers with additional funding from the Wisconsin Partnership Program.
This UW School of Medicine and Public Health program is providing $500,000 for the effort, doubling the total funding for the incentive program that was announced in December 2021. The state Department of Health Services provided the initial funds.
Here’s what guests on the March 4, 2022 episode had to say about the split decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopting maps submitted by Gov. Evers, Gableman’s 2020 election report and February 2022 statewide polling on elections and issues.
Agenda includes a bill that would force UW System schools to use objective criteria for admissions. The measure would outlaw criteria based on race, national origin or religion. The bill’s supporters say UW’s current criteria is subjective and opaque, leaving the public no way to determine what standards an applicant must meet to be accepted. System officials say they don’t test applicants on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion.
Noted: Methane is considered a greenhouse gas because it traps infrared radiation in the atmosphere and raises air temperatures. Livestock farming represents about 30% of the methane emissions produced from human activities in the U.S., with beef and dairy cattle as the major contributors, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
As Wisconsin farms prepare for the upcoming growing season, some producers are having a hard time finding enough workers.
Claire Strader is an organic vegetable educator for FairShare CSA Coalition and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension in Dane County. Last fall, she started hearing from farmers who were worried about a potential labor shortage.
“They knew that they were going to be losing workers from their farms because those workers were telling them that as they were moving on to other opportunities,” Strader said. “Those farmers, in particular vegetable farmers, were telling us that they were in a crisis looking for workers.”
The School of Education’s “Teacher Pledge” will run through the 2025-26 school year, one year longer than what was initially envisioned as a five-year program, officials announced Tuesday. The entirely donor-funded initiative forgives some or all of students’ loans after they teach in a Wisconsin school for four years. Those working in what the state Department of Public Instruction defines as a high-need district or subject area fulfill their obligation in three years.
Quoted: “The government has to provide more resources, if we’re going to ensure that everybody has their basic needs met during this transition time, and it’s wonderful to see people in the community coming together,” said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “But that’s not going to solve the problem for everybody.”
The legal clinic is helping evacuees file for asylum and training attorneys to represent them in that process — positions that are in short supply. Barbato and other immigration experts fear some people will fall through bureaucratic cracks unless the federal government takes action to stabilize the system.
University of Wisconsin-Madison instructors will be able to recommend their students continue wearing face masks after a campus mask mandate expires March 12. But despite concerns about immunocompromised or otherwise at-risk staff, faculty are being told to masking will now come down to personal choice.
UW-Madison announced on Feb. 16 that it will lift its mask mandate when spring break starts March 12.
Quoted: Andrea Bill, assistant director of the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which analyzes state traffic data, said people in all regions of the state are speeding more.
Researchers first tracked an increase in speeding when the pandemic shutdowns in early 2020 caused dramatic reductions in the number of cars on the road. By mid-2021, Bill said, volume in Wisconsin was nearly back to pre-pandemic levels — but average speeds hadn’t come down.
“What I thought would happen was that when the traffic came back to normal, we would see the speeds go back down to where they were before 2020,” Bill said. “And we did not see that in 2021.”
Noted: Scientists say the last two decades have been the warmest on record in Wisconsin. Among them is Steve Vavrus, a senior scientist with the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“No season has been immune to the warming trend,” he said. “Winter has warmed the most. That has been true in the past, and it’s expected to be true in the future.”
Noted: Holsey made the remarks during the annual State of the Tribes address before the state Legislature on Tuesday afternoon, hours before state lawmakers passed a bill that would effectively bar University of Wisconsin System instructors from teaching systemic racism. Gov. Tony Evers is expected to veto the bill.
On Wednesday, the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership presented Lang with its inaugural Tommy G. Thompson Distinguished Public Leadership Award, an accolade presented to individuals who have “committed themselves to public service, worked tirelessly to advance sound public policy, and exhibited virtuous leadership.”
An amended version of the bill clarifies that it only applies to federal money accepted by the governor on behalf of the state and not initial allocations provided to departments. The amended resolution also maintains the UW-System Board of Regents’ authority to accept and allocate federal funding without legislative approval. The amended resolution heads back to the Senate for concurrence.
Wisconsin senators held a marathon session Tuesday, passing measures that would fund a replacement for a troubled youth prison, restrict government safety net programs, limit the ability of the University of Wisconsin System to teach about diversity and race, and call for a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution.
A Republican-backed bill that would limit criteria University of Wisconsin campuses can consider in admissions is swiftly making its way through the state Legislature, despite warnings from UW officials that it would result in more students being denied.
Noted: A number of the day’s bills were directed specifically toward the operations of the University of Wisconsin and state technical college systems.
Those bills that passed include:
Quoted: Heather Schlesser is an agriculture educator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of Extension in Marathon County. She said the state has seen many producers transition out of dairy farming, which requires a lot of land for growing feed.
“They were transitioning out of dairy, making that decision to retire because they’re getting older. Or maybe they’re still younger, but they’re switching into beef production,” Schlesser said. “You can only do that for so long before you’re like, ‘You know what, I really don’t need this land. I don’t want to deal with the renters anymore. There’s no one new coming on the farm.’ And then they’re just deciding to sell it off.”
The Legislature’s budget committee voted unanimously Tuesday to advance companion bills that would provide up to $1.4 million per year to help farmers keep fertilizer on their fields and out of lakes, rivers and groundwater, and fund a new position within the University of Wisconsin System to monitor groundwater quality.
Republican legislators set their sights on the University of Wisconsin System on Tuesday, passing bills that are likely headed for vetoes but that will give the GOP talking points on the campaign trail heading into the November election.
The wide-ranging bills the Assembly approved include a proposal by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, AB 884, that would specify that if any University of Wisconsin System institution requires a course in diversity or ethnic studies, students could instead complete a course on the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. That bill passed the Assembly 60-34 and Senate 21-12 along party lines.
Intentional conversations around farm succession and developing future plans for the farm provides a better chance of transition success. University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension will provide resources during the webinars to assist families in transition discussions and planning for the future.
Quoted: America’s Dairyland continues to set the bar high, and some of the credit can go to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research, which just added a cheese cave and copper vats to continue helping cheesemakers develop recipes and grow.
“This is part of our new building,” said Andy Johnson, who also holds the role of program coordinator for the Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker program. “Outside of Europe, the ripening caves, there is nothing like it particularly for research and development. We have 10 different ripening rooms or aging caves, each with their own controlled environment. We’ll be able to make any style of cheese.”
Republican legislators are setting their sights on the University of Wisconsin System, scheduling votes Tuesday on contentious bills that look destined for vetoes but will give the GOP talking points on the campaign trail heading into the November election.
The state Legislature plans to vote Tuesday on more than a dozen education bills that form a key plank of the Republican midterm election strategy: eliminating courses on racism and diversity, expanding private school vouchers and giving parents more control over their students’ education.
Quoted: But John Gross of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School told the Kenosha News this month that Wisconsin is moving in a different direction from other states eliminating or restricting the use of bail.
“They’re not seeing spikes in recidivism, their costs are down and public safety is at the same level, but more people are out on the street,” he said. “And so I feel like Wisconsin is bucking the trend here.”
Noted: The sturgeon in Lake Winnebago and connecting waterways are unique; according to John Lyons, a fish biologist with the University of Wisconsin Madison, the lake sturgeon population within Lake Winnebago is the single largest population of lake sturgeon in the world.
Lyons estimates that, in total, there’s a very healthy adult fish population estimating numbers in the thousands. Which is good news for many reasons, he says.
Driving the news: Wisconsin’s Gov. Tony Evers announced in his “State of the State” address this week that he’ll extend the University of Wisconsin’s tuition freeze for another year. The Democratic governor also renewed calls to funnel the state’s budget surplus back to taxpayers, giving every Wisconsin resident a $150 tax rebate.
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson plans to decide by the end of April whether he will run for his old job.
A late entry into the Republican primary would further scramble a race that was disrupted a week ago when state Rep. Timothy Ramthun launched his bid for governor. Thompson said he’d been briefed on the findings of a recent poll and thought his chances were good.
Noted: The report found nitrogen from manure and fertilizer exceeded rates recommended by University of Wisconsin scientists in eight of the nine counties. In four counties, nitrogen from the two sources went more than 50 percent beyond proposed rates, including Kewaunee County where it was applied at nearly double recommended levels. Residents there have long struggled with nitrate contamination of private wells.
Quoted: Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said while low-turnout elections like those held in the spring in Wisconsin often provide greater influence for groups that are organized and for more strident candidates, it can work on both ends of the political spectrum.
“Conservatives have long complained that school tax votes that take place in low-turnout elections are dominated by school employees and parents who disproportionately favor higher spending on education,” Burden said. “At other times, low turnout has favored evangelical Christian candidates who were able to mobilize members of their churches to support them around conservative causes.”
The 26 University of Wisconsin System campuses will begin lifting masking requirements as soon as March 1 and no later than spring break, outgoing System President Tommy Thompson announced Wednesday.
Some students applying to University of Wisconsin System campuses have long wondered whether there’s a minimum GPA or test score they must meet to gain admission, despite UW admissions officers denying there is any hidden threshold.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers announced Tuesday during his State of the State address that he was extending the University of Wisconsin’s long-running tuition freeze for another year.
Evers, who is seeking a second term this November, also touted the billions of dollars of federal stimulus funds he has allocated over the course of the pandemic to businesses and farmers. Adding to that, he announced on Tuesday plans to spend $25 million of those funds to freeze tuition at University of Wisconsin System for two years and another $5 million to expand counseling and provide mental health programs for members of the Wisconsin National Guard.
Evers also announced that he was tapping $25 million in federal pandemic relief money to pay for continuing a tuition freeze at the University of Wisconsin System for another year. The Legislature lifted the tuition freeze for this year, but the UW Board of Regents opted not to raise tuition. Evers is providing funding to pay for the current freeze and another year, the 2022-2023 school year.
The state Senate has passed three Republican-backed bills aimed at preventing Chinese spies from infiltrating University of Wisconsin campuses, moves that opponents called racist and targeting a nonexistent problem.
Evers, who is the 46th Wisconsin Governor, gave his State of the State address at the Feb. 15 joint convention of the Wisconsin Legislature. In his address, Evers announced plans to address rising gas prices, a struggling job market and supply shortages. While Wisconsin families have faced much of the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, Evers said he wanted to account for students in higher education who have been under considerable stress throughout the pandemic.
A new report by the Environmental Working Group and Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA) has found that in nine counties, animal manure is over-applied to farmland, exacerbating rural Wisconsin’s water quality struggles. According to the report, four counties applied manure at more than 50% above the rate recommended by University of Wisconsin researchers to minimize pollution.
Three Republican-backed bills up for a vote Tuesday in the state Senate aim to prevent foreign influence on University of Wisconsin campuses.
John P. Gross is director of the Public Defender Project at the University of Wisconsin School of Law. Lanny Glinberg is director of the Prosecution Project at the law school.
Noted: According to the WEDC, the first round of projects included public-private partnerships to train and attract health care workers throughout rural Wisconsin; develop next-generation advanced manufacturing employees in west-central and southeast Wisconsin; expand affordable, high-quality child care in Door County, Green County, and south-central Wisconsin; create pipelines of young, educated workers in Milwaukee; train construction and skilled craft workers throughout the state; foster a culture of entrepreneurship in Kenosha; and enable incarcerated individuals to earn undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin System.
Quoted: What’s not good is to be the town that’s only a short ways from a retail hub because people will easily go there instead of shopping locally, according to Steven Deller, a professor and community development specialist with University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension.
“You don’t try to compete head-on with a Walmart because they will chew you up and spit you out,” Deller said. However, businesses can gain customers from being in the same plaza as one of the big chains, or at least near it.
The contracts, which passed the state Assembly and Senate last month, cover the previous and current fiscal year and amount to raises ranging from 1.23% to 1.8%. Similar raises were approved for UW-Madison and University of Wisconsin System tradespeople.
In an emotional farewell speech to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, UW System President and former Gov. Tommy Thompson called on state lawmakers to direct part of a record budget surplus into public universities. He said UW System campuses shouldn’t be considered an expenditure but rather an investment in the future.
In her farewell address to the UW Board of Regents Thursday, Rebecca Blank also took aim at state involvement in campus building projects, criticized some “one-size-fits-all” University of Wisconsin System policies and again called for raising in-state undergraduate tuition.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s outgoing chancellor is warning regents that the state’s bitter political polarization is the greatest threat to the school’s existence.
It was an image of success he had been building for a decade. After graduating with a major in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Lichtenstein had sought like-minded entrepreneurs and went to Silicon Valley, where he met other techno-libertarians, according to his trail of now-defunct websites and businesses identified by Forbes. One of his more notable sites was RonPaulFan.com, which contained a stream of news and support for the one-time Republican presidential candidate who became a famous advocate for cryptocurrency. According to the site’s banner, it was the “#1 source for all Ron Paul news.
Quoted: The rapid growth of the Hispanic population is part of a national trend that demographers cite as a natural increase, growth that’s driven by an established population rather than immigration, said David Egan-Robertson, demographer at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In other words, it’s the result of families like the Villas, Guzmans and Castros deciding to stay in the region and raise the next generation of northeast Wisconsin’s children.
Still, Egan-Robertson acknowledged that one reason for the rise in numbers for the Hispanic population and for other groups is increased participation in the 10-year survey, because of the U.S. Census Bureau’s improved system of gathering the information.
“In some ways, maybe the diverse population was there in 2010, but the way the Census Bureau captured it then, it really wasn’t giving the full scope of the race and population,” Egan-Robertson said. “In 2020 they got their act together and expanded the amount of data they captured.”
Quoted: Menzie Chinn, an economist with the Robert M. LaFollette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is skeptical of the idea that federal pandemic relief spending is the primary cause of recent inflation.
“It’s certainly part of the explanation – but other economies (UK, Euro Area) have also seen an acceleration of inflation,” Chinn says, with higher oil prices, continued supply disruptions and other factors being the main contributors. “One could argue that part of the inflation is due to too little spending, say, on childcare support, which would enable parents to work.”
Mark Copelovitch, a La Follette School political scientist whose work looks at the intersection of economics and politics, says that the ability of the U.S. to finance its debt at virtually no interest shows that the marketplace — essentially, the world’s lenders — isn’t worried about the sustainability of the economy.
On inflation, he considers shortages such as in semiconductors, a key component of cars, or the spike in energy prices, not pandemic relief aid, as leading culprits for rising prices. “Most of what’s driving the inflation is global supply chain issues during a pandemic,” Copelovitch says.
He credits pandemic relief, in the form of direct aid to households as well as other forms of support as well as directly to the state, for preserving incomes, keeping businesses going in the pandemic, and enabling the economy to recover much more quickly than it might have otherwise.
“The reason we have this big surplus now in Wisconsin and elsewhere is because all the other things basically prevented people’s incomes from going down — which meant tax revenue didn’t crater like we worried it was going to,” Copelovitch says.
