This just speaks volumes about the state of our state under Gov. Scott Walker.



While I understand that Gov. Walker’s decision to cut $300 million in funding from the UW system is not tied to his decision to borrow $220 million to help build a basketball arena for the billionaire owners of the Milwaukee Bucks, it says something about Gov. Walker’s skewed priorities that he’d borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for a basketball stadium at a time when the state is cutting hundreds of millions in dollars of funding from the University of Wisconsin system.

The UW System had asked for an increase in funding of $95 million over the next two years — money that it argued was needed given that Walker was calling for another two-year tuition freeze. Walker is going forward with the tuition freeze but is calling for the $300 million cut in exchange for something university leaders have wanted for years: more independence.

UW System President Ray Cross said he supported the structural changes, but he would work to reduce the budget cut. "It's going to be a very significant challenge," he said of the cuts. "It's not something we look forward to."

...

University officials, along with both Democrats and Republicans, have been wary, voicing concerns before Walker released details of his plan.

Under Walker's proposal this year, the Legislature would have no ability to stop the university from raising tuition as much as it wants starting in 2017. Before the most recent two-year tuition freeze, tuition had gone up 5.5% each of the previous six years. That was the most allowed by a law that would no longer be in effect under Walker's plan.

Scuba,

The CIA leadership continues to make headlines, but for all the wrong reasons.

Too often, they have stepped on our Constitutional principles. That includes violating the privacy rights of American citizens and hacking U.S. Senate computers in the midst of an investigation of the CIA.

It’s time to hold its leadership accountable. Sign our petition and let them hear you today!

Make no mistake: The CIA does important work to keep us safe here at home and around the globe. But they can’t have free reign to do as they please without any check on their authority.

This is why I’ve led the fight for rock-solid, continuous oversight of their work to keep the agency in line with our Constitution and the law.

Now, it’s time for the CIA leadership to respect the Constitutional limits of their authority, and we’re calling for Director John Brennan to keep the CIA in check. Add your name today and help us lead the charge!

So far, leaders in the CIA have refused to get on board and take responsibility. Let’s make them hear us!


Ron Wyden

President Obama’s visit to India was an exercise in cynicism. To serve U.S. corporate and strategic interests, he ignored the problematic record of his host, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The roots of Modi and his party, the BJP, lie in an organization called the RSS.

“The RSS was founded in direct imitation of European fascist movements, and like its 1930s fascist models, it still makes much of daily parading in khaki drill and the giving of militaristic salutes,” wrote British journalist William Dalrymple in the New Statesman last summer. “The RSS sees this as an attempt to create a corps of dedicated paramilitary zealots who, so the theory goes, will form the basis of a revival of a golden age of national strength and racial purity. The BJP was founded as the political wing of the RSS, and most senior BJP figures have an RSS background.”

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The visit paid off dividends on this front. The United States and India “agreed to a ten-year framework for defense ties and struck deals on cooperation that included joint production of drone aircraft and equipment for Lockheed Martin Corp's C-130 military transport plane,” Reuters reports.

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Another issue on which Obama nudged India is nuclear energy. President Bush signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with previous Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but a major stumbling block had been India’s unwillingness to cap liability for U.S. firms in the event of a disaster. An understanding between the two sides seems to bode well for U.S. corporations (and ill for the Indian people).

“After Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Barack Obama issued a joint statement on Sunday, giving the broad outline of the discussions and agreement reached between the two countries, India’s foreign secretary, Sujatha Singh, said: ‘The nuclear deal is done. We have reached an understanding on liability,’ ” reports Down to Earth, an Indian environmental publication. “After the sealing of agreement by the leaders, private firms will now negotiate the modalities, say officials.”

Both GE and Westinghouse have already been given land in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh to begin construction of reactors.

Over the course of the 11 ½ hour hearing, only one person spoke in favor of the measure: Rep. Thiesfeldt himself. American Federation for Children lobbyist Scott Jensen and School Choice Wisconsin lobbyist Jim Bender spoke "for information purposes only," since neither they nor their organizations appeared to be legally registered as lobbyists in the State of Wisconsin at the time of the hearing. They both argued that private and religious schools receiving public voucher money should not have to be measured by the same standards nor face the same consequences for failing to meet those different standards as public schools.

Public schools advocate Heather DuBois Bourneane called out Jensen and Bender on their claims that voucher schools have produced “pockets of success.” “We all know what pockets of success are full of – money!” She went on, “If we’re serious about creating successful schools, lets fund them at rates that provide equitable opportunities for success for every single student in the state. Period. This is not a complex idea.”

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"You use the failures you have engineered to justify an exclusionary education system. That is as transparent as it is dishonest," said retired teacher Sheila Plotkin. “It is immoral to turn our children into cash cows for your campaign donors!”

Milwaukee Public Schools’ new Superintendent Dr. Darienne Driver worked in Philadelphia during the roll out of the charter school takeover of public schools there. Rep. Knudson noted that portions of AB1 were modeled after that “turn around” concept of closing public schools and re-opening them as private charters. He asked if she would recommend that model for Wisconsin. “The initial optics—buildings are fixed up, uniforms are there, there’s a lot of excitement around the Promise Academies and the Renaissance Schools—but then when you talk about progress and change over time, it’s still not there,” Driver replied. She recommended that the committee look critically at similar “turn around” projects in other states, “But I think to be fair you should start here with the people doing the work and that doesn’t seem to have happened.”

Scott Walker has told so many tall tales, that he can not keep them straight. This weekend he clarified one of them for us. At one point, Mr. Walker was whining that the people who dared to oppose him were actually all from out of Wisconsin.

When it comes to protesters in Madison, "almost all" are now from outside of Wisconsin.
— Scott Walker on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 in a secretly-recorded prank telephone call

He was very generously given a false rating on this, but we now know where he was coming from. Walker actually was correct about Wisconsin being infiltrated with out of state people trying to influence the WI elections, he just had the candidate wrong. The people from out of state were coming to help Scott Walker.

This from his latest "Freedom Summit" presidential campaign stop:

SO MANY OF YOU HELPED US OUT LAST FALL WHEN WE ARE -- WERE FACING A TOUGH ELECTION. PEOPLE WERE MAKING PHONE CALLS IN MY STATE. YOU KNOCKED ON DOORS. YOU CAME OVER TO MISSISSIPPI AND HELP US KNOCK ON DOORS AND HELP THE CAMPAIGN ALONG THE WAY. I WANT TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH WE APPRECIATE THAT. I THOUGHT OF YOU HERE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE STATE AND AROUND THE COUNTRY, HELPED US OUT FINANCIALLY AS WELL. THAT MADE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. WE HAD TO TAKE ON THE BIG GOVERNMENT UNION BOSSES IN WASHINGTON. I WANT TO THANK YOU BECAUSE THE RETURN WE HAVE PEOPLE NOW IN IOWA, AND IN ALL 50 STATES, WHO HELPED US OUT. A WOMAN IN WATERLOO HELPED US OUT THREE TIMES. WE ARE PEOPLE HERE IN DES MOINES AND ALL ACROSS THE STATE THAT SAID WE WILL PUT UP A -- SOME OF OUR MONEY. I WANT TO SAY THANK YOU. MOST OF ALL, THANK YOU BECAUSE SO MANY OF YOU HERE AND ACROSS THE STATE IN THIS COUNTRY PRAYED FOR US. I HAVE TO TELL YOU, ON BEHALF OF MY WIFE AND I, AND MY SONS, WE COULD FEEL THOSE PRAYERS. IN THE DARKEST OF DAYS, I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT MADE

But remember, Gov. Walker’s fiscally responsible!

To keep the state doing what it does now through mid-2017, Gov. Scott Walker and lawmakers have to come up with $928 million in spending cuts or tax increases, according to estimates released Friday by the Legislature’s budget office.

The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau found that to continue current operations, state officials have to find $283 million this year plus another $648 million over the following two-year budget beginning July 1.

The shortfall in the state’s main account becomes even larger — more than $2 billion — in the unlikely event elected officials seek to provide all of the added spending requested by agencies through June 2017 and the additional tax cuts promised by Walker in his successful re-election campaign last year.

A Police Chief Turned Pastor, Working to Heal the Nation’s Racial Rifts



NORTH LAKE, Wis. — In the days leading up to Christmas, the aging pastor of a small Episcopal church set amid the glacial hills here began to write a parable. It came neither from Scripture nor from yuletide tradition, but rather from the priest’s very different earlier life. The Rev. David Couper, 77, recalled the predawn hours of a March day nearly a quarter-century ago. A fire had broken out at a housing project in Madison, Wis., where he was the chief of police. A police sergeant, hearing about the blaze from a 911 dispatcher, jauntily sang of the apartment complex, “Sommerset Circle is burning down.”

Five black children, the oldest 9 and the youngest 20 months, died in the fire, and revelations about the sergeant’s song prompted protests against the seeming racial insensitivity of the Madison police and fire departments. There were demands that the sergeant be fired, or at least punished beyond the five-day suspension that Mr. Couper meted out.

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When Mr. Couper recounted the events last month in his blog, he did so in the aftermath of the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice at the hands of police officers, and in recognition of a vast chasm between law enforcement officers and minority populations. And he did so as a police veteran and a minister who has devoted both parts of his career to closing that rift.

“In order to restore trust between police and the communities they serve, our nation’s police must collectively apologize,” he wrote. “It is what we need today to begin to heal the relationships between blacks and police. It is the only way to move past events of Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland and the residual effects we all have inherited from slavery, Jim Crow, and pernicious and residual racial discrimination.”

Tim Russell is back, baby!



After two years in the slammer, the mastermind behind the criminal scheme to steal taxpayer dollars to fund Scott Walker's 2010 gubernatorial campaign is no longer prisoner #00597584.

And this isn't the old sourpuss who went into prison* two years ago No, this is Tim Russell version 2.0-- complete with a cocky smile that seems to be letting all the various players in Wisconsin politics know that he's ready to resume his place as Walker's Karl Rove.

* A cushy minimum security facility on the shores of Lake Winnebago where he was able to leave during the day to go to work for a wealthy Walker donor.

Why does Scott Walker want to dumb down Wisconsin’s teachers?

Those interested in becoming a teacher in Wisconsin could soon be able to rely more on their own life experiences, rather than going through the process the state currently requires to obtain a teaching license.
Part of a Workforce Readiness Imitative Governor Scott Walker announced Thursday morning includes a proposal that “Creates alternative pathways to allow a candidate with real life experience to pass a competency test to gain a teacher license.” A spokesperson for the governor said it would be up to the Department of Public Instruction to determine what that competency test would look like.

The concept is raising some concerns among state education officials. DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said in a statement, “The critical need for Wisconsin educators at this very moment is an increase in respect and support for their profession. You need more than textbook knowledge to be the kind of teacher that connects with students and helps all kids learn. Like a skilled surgeon or a master electrician, high-quality teaching requires both skills and content knowledge.”

McCarthy also pointed out that finding qualified teachers is about more than just making it easier to become licensed in the state. “Increasing the number of licensed teachers only addresses one side of the equation when it comes to finding and retaining the best teachers. People with skills and training in areas of like CTE and STEM fetch competitive salaries in other employment sectors which our current teacher salaries cannot always match.”