Uppitywis Blogs

Oral arguments are being heard today at the U.S. Supreme Court in the Gill v. Whitford case. I hear you asking yourself "why do I care?".

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing political boundaries with the intention of influencing the outcome of elections. This happens all the time, and has eventually over the years become accepted legally. However, as with many things in Wisconsin, the last few years have seen this practice being carried to an extreme. The Supreme Court has in the past indicated that they might be willing to hear an argument against gerrymandering of districts if there was

Imagine you are with your loved one who is in the hospital. Night comes. You prepare to leave, gently kissing your loved one “good night”.

As you walk down the corridor and into the hospital parking lot, you might wonder how your loved one will feel in the morning. Will things be better, worse or stay the same?

One thing you don’t worry about is the quality of care provided to your loved one because the nurses working the night shift are licensed by the state.

Nurses and other professionals follow “standards of care” that are spelled out in their education and clinical training. They follow

Today -- 6:05 PM -- register here

https://video.teleforumonline.com/video/streaming.php?client=16458/v2

I just finished watching the live coverage of the Wisconsin Elections Commission meeting this morning. At the tail end of the meeting the commission distributed an email they had just received from Homeland Security stating that the previous report from Friday that Election Commission web sites had been scanned by the Russians was actually incorrect, but that the scanning had been of the Department of Workforce Development site. Apparently there was some mixup of IP addresses of the servers. We will have more information on this when it becomes available. 

I'm a little dumbfounded. If this is

On Friday Homeland Security notified the Wisconsin Elections Commission that a Russian entity attempted to hack the Wisconsin voter registration system during the 2016 election. Although DHS announced in July that 21 states had been subject to attempted attacks, it was assumed that Wisconsin was not one of those states, since the Elections Commission had not been notified specifically. It turns out that DHS has been very quiet about details. At this point we don't really know anything except  that there was some scanning activity of the SVRS system by some Russian actor.

This could mean almost

By Senator Kathleen Vinehout

“Policy is who pays, who doesn’t pay and where the money gets spent,” said the President of the NAACP in a recent speech.

Policy making was center stage at the State Capitol when the long delayed $76 billion two-year state budget was rushed to passage just days after a majority of lawmakers voted to give a Taiwan billionaire $3 billion in state subsidies.

Budgets are about choices. Budget writers this year chose to leave major problems for the next budget writers.

Education is the most important job state government does. For years, lawmakers on both sides of the

As you are probably aware, Fighting Bob Fest was on the road this year, with events in Madison, Milwaukee, and La Crosse. I attended the La Crosse event, partly representing Uppity Wisconsin, Wis.Community, and the Citizen Action Western Wisconsin Organizing Co-op. 

As always, the speeches were great, and with a little more local flavor in a lot of cases this time around. Jim Hightower was, unfortunately, not able to make it due to a family crisis. 

There will be more pictures and news over the next few days as I look through the pictures. In the meantime I will leave you with a brief video of

I've been doing some clean-up on Uppity Wisconsin.  This is largely in preparation for moving all of the Uppity Wisconsin blogs from here to their new home at Wis.community . Over the years (10 of them, hard to believe) we've accumulated quite a few people as users on the site who have never contributed content - many of them created accounts and then never logged in.  I've deleted all of those user accounts today, so if you have never posted to the site or even asked about posting to the site, your account has been deleted. I hope to get the site moved some time before Oct. 1.  Things will

September 13, 2017

Trying to understand last minute deals taking away local powers

By Senator Kathleen Vinehout

A last-minute budget amendment has folks in Western Wisconsin very worried.

Locals have spent seven years negotiating with large sand mines to reach agreements that

allow neighbors and mines to co-exist. In some cases, locals decided certain sensitive and

tourist areas needed protection from mines.

All the careful negotiations appear poised to go out the window in a strangely evolving

budget deal that seems to affect quarries – or, as we often know them, gravel pits.

First, in full disclosure

As pointed out before, there will be Fighting Bob Fest events in Milwaukee and La Crosse on Saturday.  Uppity Wisconsin, Wis.Community, and perhaps the Citizen Action Western Wisconsin Organizing Co-op will be there, probably all at one table.  Come say hello! Details in the calendar.

“For an adult with a family who has to pay for food, clothing, and a place to live, and be able to pay for a car, the minimum wage is clearly not high enough,” wrote Bethany of Eleva-Strum High School.

Wisconsin was one of the first states to enact a Living Wage. The law gave authority for determining a living wage to an Industrial Commission made up of a balance of employers, employees and the public. The year was 1913.

Two years earlier, people attending a national conference of the National Consumers’ League in Milwaukee called for a minimum wage. Advocates made a minimum wage the top issue.

F

There was some consternation in progressive circles this year since it appeared that there would only be a kickoff event for Fighting Bob Fest, but no actual fest. 

However, the folks at Our Wisconsin Revolution have teamed up with The Progressive to take Fighting Bob Fest on the road. There will be fests in Milwaukee and in La Crosse this year. Furious planning is still underway, but the events are soon, on Sept. 16 in both cities. 

Speakers this year will include:

Nina Turner,  National president of Our Revolution

Jim Hightower, favorite regular Fighting Bob Fest speaker of The Hightower Lowdown

Ideological groups push de-licensing plan

By

Senator Kathleen Vinehout

“This bill does not allow for public debate...is the public even aware? You’re not allowing the public to have adequate input into this issue,” testified Stephanie Bloomingdale.

Ms. Bloomingdale is the Secretary-Treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. She represented many workers who, along with the rest of us, just found out about bills that set up a process to get rid of occupational licensing.

In Wisconsin, many professions are licensed, such as plumbers, electricians, doctors, lawyers, architects, and teachers. Those folks

A quick video update from Our Wisconsin Revolution on the upcoming FIghting Bobfest events in Madison and La Crosee.  More soon.

“Friends in the Wisconsin Legislature, we beg you: Sign that bad deal with Foxconn,” recently wrote the Chicago Sun Times editorial board. “It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

The Wisconsin Assembly obliged the Chicago newspaper and recently voted 50-39 to approve the Governor’s deal with the Taiwanese company, Foxconn.

But lawmakers were not voting on the deal itself. Contract negotiations are presumably underway. Legislators who voted on the deal did not see the contract, they do not know the details under negotiation, nor will they approve the final negotiated contract.

In essence, they gave

Citizen Action Organizing Co-op of Western Wisconsin recently held a rally and press conference on Foxconn in Eau Claire. This was just before the Assembly voted the Foxconn bill through.  

I apologize for the low sound volume and noise - it was hard to do good sound capture in front of the Chippewa Valley Tech building right next to Clairemont Avenue. 

Foxconn continues to be a bad deal for citizens of Wisconsin, and I would encourage you to contact your state Senator to express your opinion on the bill. 

By

Senator Kathleen Vinehout

“I lost my granddaughter to heroin addiction,” Anita told me. “We’ve lost so many people,” Tena added.

Recently, former Marine Tena Quackenbush and her friends, including Quincy Garvin, Jasime Funmaker, Lori Pettibone, Cindy Ward hosted a gathering to promote and encourage recovery from addiction, especially the scourge of heroin addiction.

Ms. Quackenbush started #StoptheStigma, an organization with a mission to stop the stigma of addiction. She was joined by members of “Natives Against Heroin” in hosting the event.

“Wogixete Wi” was a traditional pow wow. Translated

It's very simple math.

Approximately one-third of Foxconn jobs will be filled by people living in Illinois, which means that one-third of the whopping three billion that Wisconsin taxpayers will be spending will be going toward Illinois residents:  One billion.

It also means that every dime Illinois Foxconn workers earn will be spent and taxed in Illinois-- not Wisconsin.

Therefore, if we give Foxconn the benefit of the doubt and assume that all 13,000 jobs will be filled, that's 4,333 jobs for Illinois without spending a dime.

Dana Wachs has officially announced that he is running for governor. I thought that perhaps Dana was serious about this once he announced that his law firm had merged with another firm, freeing him up to take a leave from his firm. This is now what is happening. Dana would be a great governor, and I find myself in the unaccustomed position of having two people who I count as friends potentially running for governor, and tilting the political center of the state much more seriously toward the left coast.

I am excited to see Dana running, but I find myself a little torn in that I'm not at all

Led by social media such as Facebook, Wisconsin's political culture supports a ready resistance to Foxconn.

On August 4, scholar-activist Allen Ruff created the Facebook group site, Say No to the Fox Con, quickly gathering 150-plus members, expected to balloon to 1,000s by the end of next week as a "clearing house for critical news and views, primarily articles to inform and educate opposition to the construction of a Foxconn factory in Wisconsin. Pieces regarding the impact on the environment, accounts of the firm's operations elsewhere, and analyses of other effects and 'externalities' not offered up by backers."

Gov. Scott Walker has called a for a special legislative session to push the tax-water-sand give-away through in August before citizens begin focusing on the scam, (Fortune), intended in part to reelect Gov. Jobs Failure who counts on Wisconsinites too discouraged to effectively oppose his regime.