Category: Experts Guide

One of those O.C. activists was Carolina Sarmiento, a community studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who sits on the board of El Centro Cultural de México. The Santa Ana nonprofit uses music and art classes to organize residents around issues such as gentrification and cultural identity, and it also puts together one of the biggest Día de los Muertos commemorations in Southern California.

“There were few foundations that would allow us to do the work we do, the way we do, and the endowment allowed us to do that,” Sarmiento said. She credits Ross with “leading the conversation in philanthropy on how to gift responsibly in a way that they’re not co-opting social movements but letting community-based groups lead.”

“I think all of these non-major party candidates are quickly shrinking away (in voter support),” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Historically, union leaders have been closely aligned with the Democratic Party, said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But the modern rank-and-file members, much like those at Local 180 in Racine, are more split, Burden said.

“There’s a little bit of a gap, I would say, between where unions as organizations stand relative to the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris, and where average union voters are,” he said.

For those who are able to seize the moment, the attention can serve as a type of political currency to open doors and build credibility within the Democratic Party, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor Michael Wagner.

“Politicians are ambitious. Politicians who are local leaders in places where there’s a national convention have an opportunity to parlay that ambition into some dollars, into some connections. But it’s not a silver bullet to the next step up the political rung,” Wagner said.

Steven Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Fed increased interest rates to slow the economy and bring inflation down — and it looks like it’s working.

“They wanted to put the brakes on the economy,” Deller said. “They didn’t want to slam the brakes. That’s what happened in the early 1980s (when) inflation was so out of control.”

Kasey Keeler, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to discuss the reports.

Keeler teaches civil society and community studies as well as American Indian and Indigenous Studies. She is also an enrolled tribal citizen of the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians and Citizen Potawatomi.

Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center attributed the success of donations to Wikler.

“Under Ben Wikler, the state Democratic Party has become one of the most prolific parties for fundraising in the country,” Burden said of the state party’s chairman. “During the height of the pandemic, he organized online events featuring celebrities and other notable figures to attract interest and donations from across the country. Protasiewicz is now benefitting from the national network of donors that has built up since 2020.”

“Turnout is going to be quite uneven across the state, just depending on whether there’s something of interest that’s really got voters’ attention or not. That unevenness is probably going to determine whether these issues end up passing or not,” said Barry Buden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center. “These are big choices made by a relatively small number of folks.”

Cary Bloodworth, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor, told Public Investigator that she hasn’t seen a blanket policy for juvenile records like this one before.

However, she said there are some advantages to such policies, like maintaining a minor’s privacy. The goal of the juvenile justice system is focused on rehabilitation, she said, rather than punishment.

State law provides an exception for news organizations that request law enforcement records about children and youth for “the purpose of reporting the news,” as long as they do not publish their identities.

Almost no one will cast a vote because of a celebrity endorsement alone, according to Michael Wagner, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But he said endorsements serve other purposes, like energizing blocks of voters, earning free media attention and shaping a narrative about the campaign.

“When the stories are about Kamala Harris being Brat and Tim Walz Midwestern dad memes, they aren’t about the things that candidates would rather not answer questions about on the campaign trail,” Wagner said.

When Tracey Holloway studied Madison’s air quality last year under a contract for Madison Gas and Electric, she walked away surprised that “transportation and coal-fired power plants weren’t a bigger part of the pie.”

Holloway is a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of energy analysis and policy, and a science advisor to Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. The mayor announced the installation of the new monitors on July 22.

Allison Prasch, a political rhetoric scholar from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thinks Walz’s approach to policy might be refreshing for voters turned off by the extremes.

“Walz has an ability to speak to voters in such a way that it brings the focus back to what we might call kitchen table issues — cost of child care, grocery budget, thinking about health care — and I think that that has a way of connecting with voters who understandably are exhausted by this looming, never-ending cycle of existential crisis,” Prasch said.

“I think Democrats have had a messaging problem,” said UW-Madison political rhetoric scholar Allison Prasch. “There is this narrative that ‘we know what’s best for you,’ and if you vote for (former President) Donald Trump, you’re stupid or you don’t pay attention. And that’s just incorrect, and the more that you communicate that to voters, the more they won’t want to listen to you.”

Richard J. Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, notes that even modest amounts of meditation—under 10 hours of practice in beginners—can change brain plasticity. But he cautions against commercializing the jhanas prematurely. “People saying this benefits them is all well and good, but without real scientific evidence, we have no idea,” he says. “Anyone trying to monetize this should raise red flags.”

“The idea that we’re breaking heat records, having record floods — this is all consistent with what scientists have been projecting for decades. But the terminology is still what we used in the 1900s: ‘natural disasters,'” said Tracey Holloway, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a member of Science Moms. “We’re building terminology that captures the reality of what’s happening.”

Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Walz was “mostly likely to have a positive electoral impact in Wisconsin” out of the final handful of candidates Harris had considered. He said Walz “conveys more of a working-class background” that could appeal to rural voters around the Midwest.

“He is best positioned to relate to Wisconsin voters and will be a familiar figure to people who live in northwest Wisconsin and are within the Twin Cities media market,” said Burden, who is also director of UW’s Elections Research Center.

“There’s very little authority behind these positions,” said Richard C. Keller, a historian of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wrote a book about extreme heat in Europe. “They can issue recommendations, they can help establish policy, but they’re going to have a very hard time enforcing those policies.”

WRN’s Bob Hague spoke with University of Wisconsin Political Science Professor Yoshiko Herrera about the risks for Americans in Russia, and the complex negotiations leading the release of American and European hostages in exchange for Russian criminals.