Once again, State Senator Glenn Grothman, the asocial Teapublican from West Bend, has put his foot into it. In his latest escapade of Grothmann has joined forces with State Representative Mark Born to announce that they don't think you need a day off of work and plan to outlaw weekends:

Wisconsin manufacturing and retail workers could volunteer to work seven days straight without a day off under a bill two Republican lawmakers are circulating on behalf of the state’s largest business group.

The bill promises to ratchet up tensions between the GOP and Democrats and their organized labor allies, who are still stinging after Republicans passed Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to strip most public workers of nearly all their union rights in 2011.

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Current Wisconsin law requires employers who own or operate factories or stores to give workers at least 24 consecutive hours off every seven days.

On Wednesday, Mary Burke is supposed to be having a slew of "house parties," but not in the traditional sense. Instead of going to a person's house, she is expecting people to gather in their homes or the homes of friends to hear her on a phone conference. Part of the email announcing this:

Winning this race will take the support of thousands of Wisconsinites just like you. House Parties will be happening across the state on January 15th and Mary Burke will be conference calling in. So we'd like to invite you to hear from Mary about her commitment to Wisconsin, why she's running, and how she will work every day to restore Wisconsin values and create jobs and opportunity for everyone.

I don't know, but to me that's not getting me excited. In fact, the cynical side of me is willing to bet that the message is prerecorded. While I'm not a fan of Kathleen Vinehout either, at least she was going out to meet people all over the state until her accident. I also find it peculiar that in the metro Milwaukee area there is apparently only one house party.

The Dems better figure out something quick or it will be getting very ugly in this state.

Bill Nye Science Guy debates angry conservative climate change denier guy Marc Morano on CNN (this was last month, but still worth watching).

Nye is his usual peaceful self. The conservative guy is kind of a loudmouth bully right out of the gate. I suspect it’s something in the food.

As Nye notes, Morano’s facts are from another planet. He argues a lot like a religious right nut, in fact. Talking very fast and making sure he “quotes” a lot of “facts” from a lot of seemingly prestigious institutions. The problem, as Nye points out, is that the guys “facts” simply aren’t true. But, like the religious right, he manages (hopes to, at least) confuse less-informed viewers into thinking maybe he’s right, since he has some many quotable “facts.”

Ezra Klein, a columnist at The Washington Post, is puzzled (or at least says he is; I suspect he understands it perfectly) by Republican hypocrisy over health care. For many years the G.O.P. has advocated for things that are supposed to bring the magic of the marketplace and individual incentives to health care: higher deductibles to give people "skin in the game"; competition among private insurers via exchanges (competition that would include reducing costs by limiting networks); and, of course, for cuts in Medicare, the insurance program for older Americans. Now the G.O.P. is complaining bitterly that some Affordable Health Care Act policies have high deductibles, that the law relies on the horror of insurance exchanges, that some networks are limited and that there will be cuts to Medicare.

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What underlies this phenomenon, which commentator Jonathan Chait calls the "Heritage uncertainty principle"? He described it thus in New York magazine: "Conservative health-care-policy ideas reside in an uncertain state of quasi-existence. You can describe the policies in the abstract, sometimes even in detail, but any attempt to reproduce them in physical form will cause such proposals to disappear instantly. It's not so much an issue of 'hypocrisy,' as Klein frames it, as a deeper metaphysical question of whether conservative health-care policies actually exist. The question should be posed to better-trained philosophical minds than my own. I would posit that conservative health-care policies do not exist in any real form. Call it the 'Heritage Uncertainty Principle.'"

Well, actually it's pretty simple. The purpose of most health care reform is to help the unfortunate - people with pre-existing conditions, people who don't get insurance through their jobs, people who just don't earn enough to afford insurance. Cost control is also part of the picture, but not the dominant part. And what we're seeing right now seems to confirm a point some of us have been making for a long time: controlling costs and expanding access are complementary targets, because politicians can't sell things like cost-saving measures and limits on deductibility of premiums unless they're part of a larger scheme to make the system fairer and more comprehensive.

And here's the thing: Republicans don't want to help the unfortunate. They'll propound health-care ideas that will, they claim, help those with pre-existing conditions and so on - but those aren't really proposals. They're diversionary tactics designed to stall real health reform. Hence the rage of the right. Here they were, with a whole raft of ideas they could throw out like chaff to confuse enemy radar, to divert and confuse any attempt to actually provide insurance to the uninsured. And those dastardly Democrats have gone ahead and actually incorporated those ideas into real reform.

Not since the Gilded Age has money dominated American politics as it does today. Untold millions move through political action committees and their steroidal siblings, super PACs, through opaque nonprofit groups run out of PO boxes, much of it intended to keep average voters in the dark about who is influencing their elections. And as the 2014 election year begins, with control of the House of Representatives, the US Senate and 38 governorships at stake, you can expect ever more of this campaign cash — secret and not — flooding into local, state and federal races.

As the “dark money” reporter for Mother Jones, it’s my job to shine as much light on this cash bonanza as I can. I do this using every tool and trick at my disposal: databases, experts, plugged-in sources and good old-fashioned door knocking. Here are four easy-to-use tips for following the money in your state — and throwing some sunlight on the mega-donors trying to sway your elections.

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Warning: State campaign finance websites can be clunky and hard to navigate. (I’m looking at you, Iowa.) Worry not! In many states, there’s a watchdog organization or public interest group that can decipher your state’s campaign data and help you find what it is you’re looking for. In my own reporting, I’ve leaned heavily on experts such as Rich Robinson at the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, Mike McCabe at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and Andrew Wheat at Texans for Public Justice. These sherpas, as I like to call them, know your state’s campaign finance data forward and backward, and they’re an invaluable resource when trying to track down hard-to-find information in a hurry.



Your state’s campaign finance records stop being helpful when it comes to “dark money.” That’s the unlimited cash raised and spent by anonymously funded nonprofits. You know the ones, generically named American Crossroads or Priorities USA. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, nonprofits have pumped record sums of dark money into federal elections, more than $300 million of it during the 2012 campaign season alone. But there are still ways to figure out who’s siphoning secret money into your state. If there is a specific nonprofit you’re looking into, you can access its annual tax filings on the website of the National Center for Charitable Statistics. These tax forms lag significantly — nonprofits could wait until as late as November 2013 to release their 2012 filings — but they offer valuable information about a dark-money group’s past fundraising and spending and who is on its staff and board of directors.