It's time for all Olympic sponsors to publicly affirm that discrimination doesn't belong in the Olympic movement.

Support Olympic Principle 6 by speaking out against Russia's anti-gay laws.


BREAKING: An Olympics security officer tackled and detained a young man who held up a rainbow flag and ducked under the rope during the Olympic torch relay in Voronezh, Russia.

Corporate sponsors have the most to lose right now as their global Olympic ads roll out. Will you join in and sign the petition to get them to finally speak out against Russia's anti-gay laws?

Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, called the property tax cut “exciting.” “That’s fantastic,” he said. “It’s significant.”

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said he briefed members of his caucus on the plan, and they were supportive. “I feel very confident that the Assembly Republican position is going to be pretty closely aligned with the governor’s plan,” Vos said.

But Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, said in his conversations with about 200 constituents over the past week since the surplus was announced, he hasn’t heard anyone clamoring for more tax cuts.

“‘Don’t you see through these election year tricks? We just want you to balance the budget,’” Schultz said in summarizing what he’s heard from voters. “I’m looking for a serious plan to get rid of the structural deficit.”

Scuba,

I've been living in Rep. Ron Kind's district for a few years now. I've even voted to re-elect him twice. So when I saw his letter to his fellow members of Congress extolling the virtues of fast tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP, it caught my attention -- and the rumor that he might co-sponsor it makes me furious.

Wisconsin is already struggling with high unemployment -- the last thing we need is another, even more devastating version of NAFTA to push good jobs overseas and depress American wages even further. The people who will be hit hardest by another bad trade deal are the manufacturing workers and farmers who make up much of our population here. And if Congress gives the President "fast track authority" on this massive agreement, we will never even get to have a public debate -- it will pass without scrutiny, before we even know what all is in it.

Like many of my friends and neighbors, I voted for Ron Kind because I thought he would be a strong Democratic voice in the House. We sent him to Washington to defend Wisconsin's working families, not to rubber stamp secret trade deals that would hurt our state. We deserve better -- and we need to let Kind know that we won't forget about Fast Track and TPP in November.

Call Rep. Ron Kind now at 715-831-9214 and tell him that Fast Track and the TPP are wrong for Wisconsin -- and for our country. Click here to report back.

In his letter, Kind says that big trade agreements like NAFTA and the TPP "make sense strategically and economically." But for who? The Economic Policy Institute says that America has lost nearly 700,000 jobs to Mexico since NAFTA was ratified. That might make sense to Kind's corporate donors who get to pay their workers rock-bottom wages now, but it sure doesn't make sense to the hard-working Wisconsinites Kind was elected to represent.

The secrecy, the corporate cronyism, the avoidance of important democratic checks and balances -- everything about this deal reminds me of the nonsense we have seen from Wisconsin Republicans in recent years. We've come to expect it from them. But I refuse to accept it from a Democrat elected to represent a solidly blue district.

Tell Ron Kind: stop acting like a Republican! Call him at 715-831-9214 today and ask him to stand up for his constituents and oppose Fast Track and the TPP now - then click here and tell us how it went.

Thank you for taking action,

- Karli

Karli Wallace, Campaign Organizer
Democracy for America

The stated goal of Assembly Bill 611 is to permit “an employer other than the state or a local governmental unit (private employer) to provide compensatory time off in lieu of overtime compensation.” In other words, Assembly Bill 611 would allow private employers to provide paid time off instead of paying employees overtime for hours worked above and beyond the standard 40 hour workweek. At face value, that may seem fairly benign, but a deeper look at Assembly Bill 611 revealed this little nugget (emphasis added):

5. An employer shall pay any monetary compensation provided under subd. 1., 202., 3., or 4. at the regular rate of pay of the employee at the time the compensatory time was earned.

What that means (unless I’m totally reading it wrong) is that if employees are given compensatory time under this new legislation and they end up not using that compensatory time, they’d be able to get a payout at their regular rate of pay as opposed to getting a payout at the overtime rate of time and a half. No doubt Republicans supporting Assembly Bill 611 will tout it as yet another example of how they’re giving employees more “freedom” and “flexibility,” but there’s a very real (and very negative) cost associated with Assembly Bill 611, which clearly benefits employers more than it benefits employees.

Given Rep. Kleefisch’s involvement in Assembly Bill 611, one can only wonder how much of the drafting of the legislation he outsourced to an interested third party – right-wing Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce comes to mind as one group that would be interested in changing Wisconsin’s overtime laws to benefit employers.

Mike Eisenga, the guy who allegedly tried to cheat his kids out of child support payments by buying off the husband of Wisconsin Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, State Rep. Joel Kleefisch, could be in much deeper trouble with the Government Accountability Board for contributions he allegedly made in his wife's name without her knowledge or consent.

According to campaign finance records kept by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, donations were made by Eisenga's wife, Clare, on four different occasions to Republican candidates-- three to Joel Kleefisch's assembly campaigns and one to Mark Green's gubernatorial campaign. Each of these contributions came only after Mike Eisenga had already reached his maximum individual contribution limit.

Michael Collins, the attorney for Mike Eisenga's former wife, Clare Hawthorne, said in an email, that his client, "had no knowledge of the contributions." He added, "it never occurred to her, until I found that contributions had been made in her name, that Michael would do that or had done that." Collins also says that Hawthorne is liberal in her political leanings and would have never consented to a contribution being made in her name to Republican candidates.

...

Richard Bohringer, a campaign auditor for the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, said in an email that is in violation Section11.24(1) of the Wisconsin Statutes for a husband or wife to give to political campaign in the name of their spouse, without the consent of the donor spouse.

''Over the last 30 odd years, Democrats have moved to the right and the right has moved into the mental hospital. So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby... That's the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers and civil war re-enactors who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans and who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist? He's not even a liberal.'' —Bill Maher

Wednesday, February 5th – Community Forum: 7-8:30



Our next forum will be on the timely issue of public education and is entitled “Fighting for the Soul of Public Education”. We are VERY fortunate to have Barbara Miner as our guest speaker. Ms. Miner is an award winning author and has recently published Lessons from the Heartland, A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City. Ms. Miner is also the former managing editor of Rethinking Schools.

Ms. Miner’s presentation on February 5th will look at current education controversies facing Wisconsin, in particular private school vouchers and privately run charters. She will also explore the vital role of public education in defending our country’s democratic ideals. The current movement towards increasing private charter and voucher schools in Wisconsin makes this a timely and crucial event to attend. Please invite your friends and family to this important event.

Benjy Hansen-Bundy, writing at Mother Jones, reports on a very disturbing trend coming to the United States - predatory lenders targeting teachers who are trying to keep sufficient supplies in their classrooms.

Evidently, the $1.6 billion that K-12 teachers already spend out of pocket on school supplies just isn't cutting it. Thankfully, the Silver State Schools Credit Union of Las Vegas, Nevada, now offers loans specifically for K-12 teachers who are struggling to scrape together the classroom essentials on their hemorrhaging budgets, Sociological Images reported.

"If you're a K-12 teacher in the state of Nevada, you know that keeping the classroom supply cabinet fully-stocked can be costly," reads the email SSSCU sent to its members. "To help you purchase the materials you need beyond what the school's budget may provide we've created a low-interest Classroom Supply Loan especially for you."

Our discussion of Richards’ candidacy began with the customary, “Why did you decide to run for Attorney General?” question. Richards answered that he decided to run for Attorney General because he believes, “Wisconsin needs a strong leader in the Attorney General’s office who can fight to keep us safe and also stand up for the values that have always made Wisconsin great, like equal protection under the law, protection for our environment, standing up for voting rights, and making sure that people have access to decent healthcare.”

Richards also said that it was his belief that over the past few years the Attorney General’s office has neglected or even fought against the values he cited, and he also offered Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s leading role in the fight to exempt the legislature from open meetings laws as proof. Richards was clear he values clean and open government, and he cited the fact that he drafted an amendment to the State Constitution to reverse that decision. “I want to make sure we apply all the laws equally and fairly, but especially laws that have to do with clean and open government,” Richards added.

...

When asked what his top priority would be if elected Attorney General, Richards said public safety would be his top priority if elected, noting his track record of “getting things done” on the issue of public safety. To that end, Richards said he would work to ensure front line prosecutors have the resources they need to do their jobs, and he cited his long record as a legislator of working with prosecutors to give them the tools they need to keep our communities safe. As he continued, Richards also said he’d work as Attorney General to combat two epidemics in Wisconsin – heroin and human trafficking.

Another priority Richards said he’d focus on if elected Attorney General would be to keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them. Richards noted he authored a bill in the legislature that would require background checks for all gun purchases, and he noted that such universal background checks are widely supported.