Milwaukee News Buzz
Plale can’t recall ever turning down money
Bay View blogger Jason Haas has a good summary of the debate Thursday between State Sen. Jeff Plale and Milwaukee County Sup. Chris Larson, who are in a heated Democratic primary campaign for Plale's seat. Here's my favorite question and answer. The parenthetical comments are Haas's.
Give an example of when you have turned down a campaign contribution because you didn’t agree with the contributor. This question went to Plale, who struggled to remember having refused or returned a donation. After a very long, awkward pause, he changed the subject to campaign finance in general, claiming that “donations don’t have an impact on me; people do.” (Fact check that!) He mentioned the special interest groups who’ve been “flooding” our mailboxes with anti-Larson and anti-Plale pieces. He claimed that “five dollar and ten dollar donations from people who I know can’t afford it have a big impact on me.” (I strongly disagree with that assertion.) Larson stated that in contrast to his opponent, he takes no corporate or lobbyist contributions. He cited the prospect of huge corporate contributions that the recent Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision has made possible. Larson was able to specify a contribution that he returned: a person he (and I) went to school with at UWM who had worked to remove funding for the UWM Women’s Resource Center and LGBT Center sent him a check, and he (Larson) returned the check. The would-be contributor was quite offended at this, but Larson stood by his principles and refused the donation.
The true conservative in the Lt. Governor race
Don’t buy the commercials from Brett Davis, anyone with Google can see that his true history is as a RINO. From being the only Republican to vote for Doyle’s budget that stole $200 million from the Patients Compensation Fund, which was declared unconstitutional. He did this days after getting a $4 million soy bean crusher for his district, which he calls “true compromise.” Or the fact that he wrote the legislation that forces us to use ethanol. He talks about cutting taxes, but fails to mention that he raised cigarette taxes $1 per pack, car registration fees have gone up from from $20 to $75, property taxes went up 3.5%, UW schools have gone up UW schools 7% to 25%, truck registration fees went up 30%, for a grand total of $763.2 million in tax & fee increases.
Brett Davis talks a good game, the the fact is, he’s a RINO, vote for the true Conservative, Rebecca Kleefisch.
Hotels add amenities to increase business
Faced with a terrible economy, Milwaukee’s hotels are looking for any gimmicks that might draw more customers. Business sagged badly in 2009 but has, surprisingly, rebounded for the first half of 2010. Hotels are trying everything from artist-in-residence programs to free concerts and free fitness classes in hopes of drawing more customers.
While hotels do not provide data on bookings, it’s possible to measure relative changes in revenue through the room tax collected by the Wisconsin Center District, owner and operator of the Frontier Airlines Center, U.S. Cellular Arena and the Milwaukee Theatre. The district collects a 9 percent city tax and a 2 percent county tax for Milwaukee hotel rooms, and revenue decreased 18 percent between 2008 and 2009. The hotel industry was hit hard in 2009 as many Americans opted for a “stay-cation” over pricey trips, and business travel was put on hold.
Hotel Metro's rooftop zen garden (photo by adrian palomo)
Similar figures come from the city’s tourism bureau, Visit Milwaukee, which reports that tourism spending in the Greater Milwaukee area decreased from $2.6 to $2.3 billion between 2008 and 2009, while the amount spent on hotels dropped from $316 million to $270 million.
The big surprise is room tax revenue for 2010, which has already increased 18 percent for the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2009. Frank Gimbel, Milwaukee attorney and chairperson of the Wisconsin Center District, attributes this increase to hard-working personnel at Visit Milwaukee and collaboration between the convention and hospitality properties. The massive success of the Broadway hit “Wicked” and the surplus of summer festivals probably hasn’t hurt, either.
Visit Milwaukee has no figures yet for 2010. But Milwaukee’s biggest hotel operator, Marcus Corporation, has seen increases in business for 2010 that are slightly better than the U.S. industry average, company officials say. By contrast, Marcus saw a decline in revenue of 6 percent in 2009, dropping to $84.2 million from $89.5 million in 2009.
The InterContinental, the youngest and hippest of Marcus’ properties, presents the free concert series, “Underground at the InterContinental” every Friday night from 8:30 to 10 p.m. with local and emerging talent to lure in non-hotel guests. They’ve also started offering free indoor bocce ball every Tuesday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., allowing friendly rivals or corporate teams to compete.
In addition, The InterContinental recently added two “Pink Rooms” that philanthropy-minded guests can reserve with a portion of the proceeds from each stay benefitting the local nonprofit ABCD: After Breast Cancer Diagnosis. Guests have the opportunity to leave their stories on the Pink Room blog, that will also track how much money the rooms have generated for ABCD; expectations are that they will generate anywhere from $8,000 to $10,000 per year. Intercontinental is the only hotel in the U.S. to offer these types of rooms year-round.
The historic Pfister Hotel, another Marcus hotel, is in its second year of the Artist in Residence Program that puts local artists at work and their artwork on display in the first-floor gallery/studio space. The Pfister also hosts Fishnet Fridays in its 24th floor cocktail lounge Blu every Friday evening with Sinatra-esque crooners. Ladies in fishnets and gentlemen in fedoras receive half-price martinis all night.
a pink room at the intercontinental hotel
The Ambassador Hotel has created full-service packages like Beer, Brats and Baseball and Get Your Motor Runnin’ to showcase Milwaukee’s iconic sports attractions. The arts are also a draw. “Many of our arts-loving guests take advantage of the ‘Show Before the Show’ package so they can enjoy dinner and transportation, not having to worry about the hassle of parking downtown,” says Lori Ferman, director of sales and marketing.
The Astor Hotel will be focused on fitness and wellness this fall, offering zumba classes, cardio boot camp and lighter fare on its menu. And the Aloft Hotel, open since December, stresses amenities dedicated to the business traveler and families. Complimentary programs such as Camp Aloft keep kids busy, allowing adults to truly enjoy their vacation. Aloft also accommodates pets under 40 pounds with a separate dog/cat bed, treats and toys.
Hotel Metro offers a 7th floor indoor/outdoor bar and patio that is open to the public Friday and Saturday when it is not booked for private events and offers a fireplace, waterfall, garden and best of all, spectacular views of the city. “Zen on Seven continues to be a big draw,” says General Manager Sue Kinas Kinas. The boutique hotel also recently hired John Chitko, former co-owner and chef of Yaffa Restaurant and Lounge and Byron’s Beer Garden, as executive chef to reinvent the menu and offer food/wine pairings.
Marcus officials believe their added offerings are paying off. Cassy Scrima, area director of marketing for Marcus, boasts, “The response we’ve gotten about our specialty events from the public is fantastic.” The response, she adds, bodes well for “additional guests and continued growth throughout 2010.”
Tough times for managers
A career website that tracks hiring in the country’s 30 largest metropolitan areas says the hiring of management positions in Milwaukee dropped more in August than in any of the other cities – it was down by 13 percent for the month.
The website, CareerCast.com, assembles the statistics by combing through postings for management-level positions. It counts the numbers of postings and then looks through them, it says, to calculate totals for the “number of real, relevant jobs that exist in each geography.”
(photo by adrian palomo)
Nationally, management hiring dropped 4.6 percent between July and August. For the last year, however, since August 2009, hiring is up 22.5 percent, according to one of the website’s reports. But it provides no annual statistic for Milwaukee.
Pat O’Brien, executive director at the Milwaukee 7 economic development organization, says he hasn’t picked up on a major shift in management hiring in the area in recent months, however, he notes, “It’s still a difficult job market. We’re very manufacturing-oriented.”
CareerCast.com found slightly less than half as many job openings last month as in August 2007. The website uses that year, the first it conducted the studies, as a stand-in for pre-recession conditions.
Over that three year period, Milwaukee had the tenth worst decline in manager job openings. Only nine other cities (out of the 30) declined further: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Louisville, Ky., Tampa, Fla., Memphis, Detroit and Riverside, Calif., in descending order. This is the first time Milwaukee, which usually hangs around the middle of the rankings, has fallen into the bottom ten.
Hiring of management remains strongest on the coasts. Washington D.C. leads the pack (it’s actually hiring 77 percent more managers than three years ago). It’s followed by Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Cleveland and Dallas.
In locales such as Milwaukee, the website says, hiring is likely to improve this fall “if the job market experiences its traditional surge in September and October.”
The CareerCast.com results come not long after a report by the Institute for Supply Management economic research group indicating the city’s manufacturing sector fell seven points on the ISM Index from 66 to 59 between July and August as the national index rose from 55.5 to 56.3.
Despite the drop, ISM still finds that Milwaukee’s manufacturing sector is growing (higher than 50 means growth) and at a faster rate than nationally. Enough such growth and manufacturers might need more managers, too.
Talk up high-speed rail, Tom!
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine was in Milwaukee to meet with some Wisconsin Democrats (including Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who’s running for governor) and for the opening of a new south side campaign office.
In a chat with NewsBuzz, the former Virginia governor said Barrett should be vocal in supporting the stimulus-funded high-speed rail link proposed to link Milwaukee and Madison, which Kaine called “a job creator and a platform for economic success.”
tim kaine
Barrett’s leading Republican opponent, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, opposes the line, arguing it puts the state on the hook for millions in yearly operating costs ($7 million a year, state officials estimate, though they hope to snag a federal subsidy to pay for much of it). He’s promised to kill the project if elected.
Walker said in response to Kaine’s visit on Thursday, “Jim Doyle, Tom Barrett and their cronies are clearly not listening to the people of Wisconsin. Wisconsin families don’t want to spend $810 million (on a) boondoggle train and neither do I.”
Kaine also criticized a Walker ad that began running statewide on Sunday showing Walker wearing boxing gloves and promising to “go the distance” against Barrett, who was severely injured in a 2009 attack as he attempted to intervene on behalf of a woman and child being threatened outside the Wisconsin State Fair.
The ad caused a small outcry earlier this week, but Walker denied it was intended to refer to the assault on Barrett. Kaine said, “I just wondered, was there no adult supervision over the editing process? … It would be hard to imagine the guys putting the ad together weren’t aware of (the attack).”
But campaign spokeswoman Jill Bader took up a fighting stance on Thursday in responding to Kaine’s jab. “Tom Barrett is desperately trying to distract from his barrage of shrill, negative, nasty campaigning,” she said. “Our campaign is prepared to fight back against the incessant attacks by Tom Barrett and his cronies straight through election day.”
scott walker
Wisconsin’s two most prominent races, Walker versus Barrett and the struggle between Democratic U.S. Senator Russ Feingold and Republican challenger Ron Johnson, are both close ones, Kaine admits. In July, Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling gave Feingold a slim 46-45 lead. Late last month, Rasmussen Reports (often accused of being right-leaning) gave Johnson a 47-46 lead.
Asked if Johnson’s success in his first political campaign is surprising national observers, Kaine said simply, “People are very aware that it’s close.”
Democrats are facing tough races around the country. Earlier this week, a Gallup poll found GOP candidates are leading Republican ones, nationally, by 10 points (51-41). National polling guru Nate Silver (who blogs for The New York Times) says the poll is probably an outlier, but a telling one.
“No non-Internet survey has shown the Democrats with a lead larger than 1 point on the generic ballot for over a month now, whereas their worst results of late seem to put them in the range of 10 points to 11 points behind,” he says. Silver splits the difference, arguing Democrats are most likely trailing by about 5 percent.
Court of appeals endorses mediocrity
Good news for those of us who don’t excel at what we do. A new court of appeals decision has ruled that a history of mediocre union representation, although aggravating for a union member, doesn’t constitute unfair representation – much to the disappointment of the teacher’s aide who sued.
Karen Bishop, a teacher’s aide with Milwaukee Public Schools, was fired in early 2004 after a “history of absences” and after she allegedly pushed a disabled student who was 20 years old but functioned at a two-year-old level. Representatives of her union, Service Employees International Union Local No. 150, went to bat for her, but as the months-long grievance process dragged on, she began to doubt their resolve.
Bishop refused two offers from MPS to return to work without back pay and eventually appealed to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. After hearing conflicting testimony on whether Bishop had acted to protect herself from the student, a state hearing examiner ordered MPS to reinstate her and give her back pay. MPS submitted to the order.
All this gave credence to her other complaint, that SEIU had fallen down on the job in representing her. The state hearing examiner disagreed and ruled against Bishop, but in reviewing the examiner’s decision, WERC’s three commissioners agreed with Bishop and reversed the examiner’s decision. Milwaukee County Circuit Court also sided with Bishop and upheld WERC’s reversal.
Ah, but the court of appeals had more sympathy for the less-than-excellent union representatives. The court agreed that SEIU failed to return Bishop’s call for several months during the first half of 2005, failed to push MPS to be more responsive to her complaint and failed to tell her that union representatives were pessimistic her grievance would succeed.
“While more frequent or detailed communication would certainly have been appreciated, Bishop has failed to show how she was prejudiced by SEIU’s infrequent communication or by SEIU’s failure to seek a faster decision from MPS,” the court concluded.
The court cited case law supporting its position that a series of “actions” by a union that might have been better performed can’t be lumped together to demonstrate unfair representation. Wisconsin law grants wide deference to unions, the opinion says, quoting a past decision that “courts should not substitute their judgment for that of the union, even if, with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that (the) union could have made a better call.”
WisDOT Delivers The Marquette Interchange On Time, Under Budget, And Below Par
The fancy-shamncy Marquette Interchange, touted by the state as being finished on time and under budget, has cracks and a fundamental design flaw on one ramp so severe that it's closed for emergency repairs.
What was the project built to - - a 30-year design standard? Fifty years? I really do forget, but the hype was endless.
The Wisconsin DOT in SE Wisconsin has had a lot of these problems:
A big section of the Hoan Bridge slipped and buckled a few years ago; smaller pieces are still falling - - into nets.
And there were those emergency repairs to three bridges in the Zoo Interchange earlier this year - - so should we think that when WisDOT gets around to spending $2.3 billion on that project, and the $1.9 billion in the I-94 North-South leg from Milwaukee to the Illinois state line that the government-road-builder complex will deliver us anything close to the new and rebuilt lands, bridges and ramps with shelf lives as promised?
All these so-called freeway (not so-free) improvements were sold to the public as safety upgrades, with the added lanes - - 127 miles total - - as mere throw-ins.
We knew going in that all that concrete would need repairs down the road, but after such a short period - - two years to be found unsafe?
As with the collapse at Milwaukee County's O'Donnell Park, this is hardly a confidence builder in government officials and inspectors who supervise well-paid contractors for jobs apparently not well done.
A new Barrett Bypass, this time, on the newly constructed Marquette Interchange!
BadgerBlogger’s Rawson Schaller isn’t able to post this, but he’s passing some very interesting information along to me. The paper is reporting:
I-43 onramp closed; DOT to hold 7 p.m. news conference
The Wisconsin Ave. on-ramp to southbound I-43 in the Marquette Interchange is closed. A state Department of Transportation news conference is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.
The DOT is advising motorists to take 11th St. southbound to Tory Hill Road/Michigan Ave., turn left on Tory Hill/Michigan and continue eastbound to Michigan Ave. to N. 2nd St., turn right onto N. 2nd St. to the I-43 SB/I-94 eastbound entrance ramp.
Rawson has passed along this photo showing that the ramp has already been closed, click for full size.
Rawson also passed along some interesting information from an inside source, the ramp has a design flaw and the ramp will be closed for 6 to 16 weeks. The firm being blamed for this mess is HNTB, and they will reportedly be absorbing all costs associated with fixing the flaw. It is also believed that this will call into question the rest of the construction, and the fact that Governor Doyle was pushing for redesign work to reduce costs.
HNTB is also a huge Doyle donor…
More details to follow, Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Frank Busalacchi is holding a press conference as I post this.
Dave Westlake now defeated: Murdoch paper
The low cost of injustice
The wrongful imprisonment of Green Bay’s Cody Vandenberg for 15 years on a recently overturned conviction of robbery and attempted homicide was one of the worst such cases in state history. Even if prosecutors decide against retrying or appealing the case, however, Vandenberg is unlikely to collect much in reparations, because Wisconsin’s compensation program for exonerated convicts is badly underfunded.
A shrinking minority of states, 23, offers no compensation program at all for people wrongfully imprisoned. In Wisconsin, after proving their innocence before the Wisconsin Claims Board, a panel of state officials representing the Governor, state Legislature, Department of Administration and Department of Justice, exonerated convicts can receive up to $5,000 a year. Total compensation is capped at $25,000.
(illustration by adrian palomo)
“It’s miserable. It’s the lowest compensation amount of any state in the nation and the second-lowest cap in the country,” says Keith Findley, a UW-Madison law professor and co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, a program at the university providing legal aid to people who may have been wrongfully convicted.
Findley is part of Vandenberg’s defense team. Facing a total of 80 years in prison, the now 45-year-old man was released on Tuesday after a court of appeals decision reversed his conviction in Brown County Circuit Court and concluded “he is entitled to a new trial in the interest of justice.” Vandenberg had been convicted of the 1996 robbery and stabbing of a Bellevue man. But Vandenberg’s alleged getaway driver, Larry Pearson, has since confessed to the crime – most recently under oath in Brown County Circuit Court in a hearing for post-conviction relief requested by the defense.
Pearson and Vandenberg were coworkers at a local repair shop. During Vandenberg’s trial in 1996, Pearson testified as part of his own plea deal but didn’t implicate Vandenberg. Pearson instead claimed the stabbing wounds were inflicted by a third man, a stranger he had met at a bar.
At the trial, the prosecution argued Pearson was trying to cover for his friend Vandenberg by making up the story about “the stranger” and called to the stand a man who had spent time in jail with Pearson. The fellow inmate said Pearson told varying accounts of what happened on the night in question, including one version where Vandenberg was the stabber. But the key piece of evidence, according to the appeals court, was the stabbing victim’s identification of Vandenberg. He and Vandenberg looked similar – but Vandenberg had a beard at the time.
cody vandenberg
To the jury, it sounded like convincing evidence. But a series of wrongful convictions have led judges across the country to treat identifications of defendants with skepticism. “Eyewitness misidentification is now the single greatest source of wrongful convictions in the United States, and is responsible for more wrongful convictions than all other causes combined,” the Wisconsin Supreme Court noted in 2005.
The appeals court wrote that the victim’s identification of Vandenberg was the key to the prosecution’s case, a key that looked a little rusty in light of new evidence provided by the defense that the victim was intoxicated during the attack with a blood alcohol content of .22. Prosecutors lacked “any physical evidence tying Vandenberg to the scene,” the opinion says. Yet Pearson’s bloody shoe-print was found inside the trailer.
Pearson, it turns out, actually confessed to his defense attorney at the time he was guilty of the stabbing – but the lawyer, because of attorney-client privilege, was unable to reveal the confession.
Vandenberg’s first appeal failed. Filed after his trial, it was based not on Pearson’s confession, unknown to him at the time, but on his contention that his defense attorney didn’t present evidence establishing an alibi for him.
Released from custody on Tuesday, Vandenberg will remain under house arrest until he returns to court on Sept. 28 to learn if prosecutors will retry his case in light of Pearson’s confession or challenge the appeals court decision before the Supreme Court.
Making a claim of innocenceIf they decide to do neither, Vandenberg can petition the Claims Board for compensation, but in doing so he faces a months-long process whereby he must prove his innocence with “clear and convincing” evidence. “For many truly innocent people, that’s a burden that’s difficult to meet. How do you prove a negative?” says Findley.
Wisconsin law also requires exonerated convicts to prove they didn’t contribute to their conviction in some way through a false confession or some other means. This violates the national Innocence Project’s guidelines for state compensation programs. “This denies justice to those who were coerced, explicitly or implicitly, into confessing or pleading guilty to crimes it was proven they did not commit,” the guidelines say.
Some states provide immediate assistance to exonerated prisoners for housing, psychological counseling, medical aid, job training or other needs, none of which are provided by Wisconsin. “They have nothing as they walk out of prison,” says Mary Delaney, a Madison attorney and member of the Wisconsin Exoneree Network.
Wrongful imprisonment, she says, “is extraordinarily traumatic. A lot of people become agoraphobic and don’t feel like they can rejoin the community.” Long gaps in their employment history are difficult to explain to prospective employers – who may have also seen the charges filed against them on the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access website.
Delaney says quite a few people are denied compensation because they can’t prove their innocence to the Claims Board. Findley says most of the Wisconsin Innocence Project’s clients have not received compensation, either because they were denied or never pursued benefits. The group has lobbied the state Legislature to expand the benefits and make them easier to obtain.
Still, some people wrongly incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons have received the full compensation allowed. One Oak Creek man, Chaunte Ott, released in 2009 after 12 years in prison when DNA evidence cleared him of a rape and murder conviction, received the full $25,000 in an April Claims Board meeting.
Robert Lee Stinson of Milwaukee, also released last year after DNA evidence cleared him of murder charges, spent 23 years in prison. He’s still in the process of seeking compensation.
Texas offers some of the most generous benefits, up to $80,000 a year for life, even though the state is known for its tough criminal justice system and use of the death penalty. People wrongfully imprisoned in the federal system can receive up to $50,000 a year for each year of incarceration or up to $100,000 a year if they spent time on death row.
States have created compensation programs because lawsuits against states for wrongful imprisonment are notoriously difficult. Federal civil rights lawsuits require the former convict to prove the state intentionally incarcerated him or her without due cause.
Coalition wants to reduce diesel fumes
A coalition that includes trucking interests claims to have built broad support for a state ban on commercial truck idling, one that would reduce exhaust from delivery trucks or tractor trailers left running for hours at a time. More than 20 states have already passed similar restrictions, which sometimes carry hefty fines for violations.
The Wisconsin Clean Diesel Coalition announced earlier this week that the Wisconsin Motor Carriers Association, the state’s trucking industry trade group, supports such a ban, which would likely include some exceptions, including one for cold weather. Other supporters include the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association, a group that lobbies to improve the state’s transportation infrastructure, and the American Lung Association.
In recent years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has promoted the bans. High diesel prices have made trucking companies more receptive to them. Trucks often idle while unloading or while drivers sleep to avoid frequent “cold starts” in the winter (which are more taxing on engine components) or to power cab heaters or electronics.
The large diesel engines, however, produce far more energy than is needed to power the heaters, televisions or other cab amenities during an overnight stay. Many companies are adding alternative power sources. They include extra, smaller diesel engines that can be turned on during the night, battery systems that recharge during the day and specialized hook-ups to external power sources.
The Coalition says the ban being considered would prohibit idling around schools, daycare centers, senior centers and hospitals to protect vulnerable populations from exhaust. It’s also calling for increased grants for truckers to add the alternative power sources.
A state Department of Commerce program created in 2006 offers such grants, though it’s currently relying on stimulus funding and no longer receives state funding. Its website says the matching grants have helped install more than 1,100 “idle reduction devices” in commercial trucks.
In 2009, the Hilldale Shopping Center near Madison became one of the first shopping malls in the country to ban idling by trucks waiting in its loading bay or parking lot.
Dane County Supervisor Brett Hulsey, now running for the State Assembly, proposed idling limits for unincorporated areas of the county in 2008, according to the Wisconsin State Journal, “but the ordinance failed to gain much momentum,” the paper notes. He has since worked on the push to create statewide rules.
Does Marquette have a liberal bias?
A conservative website investigating all of U.S. News and World Report’s top 100 universities for political bias claims to have uncovered it in the only two Wisconsin schools to make the list – Marquette University (ranked 85th by U.S. News) and UW-Madison (ranked 40th). Both have liberal biases, CampusReform.org concludes, but UW-Madison is markedly more lefty.
marquette university
As of Wednesday, the group had investigated 69 of the 100 schools, and declared a liberal bias at all but one of them, Brigham Young University in Hawaii, a conservative haven where 79 percent of faculty political donations during the 2008 election went to Republicans.
At UW-Madison, by contrast, 248 faculty and staff members donated to Democrats in 2008, while only a measly 15 gave to Republicans. Of all the dollars given, the website finds, 97 percent went to Democratic candidates.
The website also found that liberal student groups outnumber conservative ones 25 to 6 at UW-Madison. The website does give the school credit, however, for The Badger Herald, “one of the oldest conservative student newspapers in the U.S.,” it says.
The website, funded by the national conservative group the Leadership Institute (a group that Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation has funded in past years), also takes issue with a requirement that all Madison students take an ethnic studies course.
At Marquette, faculty and staff at the school were more likely to donate to Democrats, but not as likely as their colleagues at UW-Madison. 80 percent of donations went to Democrats, though only 53 percent of political contributions from the Marquette University Board of Trustees went to Democrats, the website notes.
MU conservative student groups outnumber liberal ones four to two. However, staff at its conservative student paper, The Warrior, “have often been targets of malicious messages and egged homes,” the report claims.
The July report, however, makes no mention of President Robert Wild’s decision in May to withdraw an offer for a prominent deanship at the school from a lesbian candidate, Jodi O’Brien of Seattle University.
One conservative Marquette faculty blogger, John McAdams, a political science professor, wrote Tuesday questioning whether the man named to be the university’s next president, Rev. Scott Pilarz from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, would, “if pushed to the wall, as Fr. Wild was in the case of Jodi O’Brien … stand up for the University’s Catholic mission, or cave?”
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Pilarz declined earlier this year to comment on the O’Brien controversy when asked for his opinion on it.
State senator: Fund local roads, not freeways
Work on a proposed $1 billion expansion of Interstate 39-90 running from Madison south to the Illinois border wouldn’t get underway until at least 2015, but state officials are already planning in earnest. That’s prompted State Senator Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) to object to the project. He says the money would be better spent on local roads.
tim carpenter
“We have to rethink relentless freeway expansions made at the expense of our local infrastructure,” he says. The infrastructure in Milwaukee sorely needs the funding. Milwaukee Ald. Bob Bauman, a former transportation consultant, estimates that $200 million would be sufficient to resurface the 21 percent of city streets found to be in “poor condition” by a 2008 audit, according to a February story in Milwaukee Magazine.
Last month, Gov. Jim Doyle asked the Transportation Projects Commission to consider the interstate expansion, which calls for re-surfacing the freeway and adding a lane in each direction. The Commission is a panel of five legislators that makes recommendations to the full legislature on funding for transportation projects.
Development officials in Janesville and Beloit, both of which lie along the route, have created a website, CongestionCorridor.com, to lobby for an expansion of the freeway.
So who’s running the Republican Party of Wisconsin, dumb and dumber?
Someone should tell the Republican Party of Wisconsin that just because wannabe journalist Chuck Sykes says it on his radio show doesn’t make it so: The Wisconsin Republican Party is retracting its blasting of a fundraiser for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because the event never happened.
The state [...]
I really really really want to like Dave Westlake…
I just wish he wouldn’t make it so hard. I have never met Mr. Westlake, and he seems by all accounts to be a very nice person. I also fully respect the campaign he has run(although I dont understand how he can do it), but getting out and meeting people and being willing to [...]
