Uppitywis Blogs

Robert Reich is here to help you understand better ways to talk to Uncle Bob at Christmas dinner. We all seem to have an Uncle Bob - though most of the time he's taller than this. Enjoy.

Seniors React: Don’t Take My Home Phone Away! By Senator Kathleen Vinehout   “I was furious,” said Cindy from Chippewa Falls. “I wouldn’t have stayed on the phone this long with this dinky cell phone.” She just found out state law allowed phone companies to dump their landline customers.   Cindy waited 40 minutes on her “dinky cell phone” to join a telephone town hall meeting with 7,373 other seniors.   AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) hosted the town hall. I was the guest senator. We joined forces to promote my “Home Phone” bill – Senate Bill 240. The bill would return

I've for some time now had a copy of this calendar. I have to believe that any Uppity person in your family would love to have one o f these -- good for a laugh and for some serious thought about what's happened in our state over the last few years. There's more information (and a place to order) at the Few Publishing web site. I think you'll have fun. Here's a sample:

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Well, we don't know, really, because the State of Wisconsin Public Records Board apparently did a lousy job keeping records on itself.

Minutes of the board's August 24 meeting are without detail or an accounting of votes on an motion -- illegally ignored in the board's public meeting notice -- that effectively limits access to selected public documents by citizens, journalists and others.

Just as important as what they were thinking: WHO ARE THEY? That we know more about, and what we know suggests the board's move -- widely seen by open records experts nationally as anti

December 9, 2015     What to Do About Those Pesky Unwanted Calls By Senator Kathleen Vinehout   “I’ve been getting a lot of calls from blocked and private numbers,” Pat from rural Hixton told me. “We called the phone company and asked them to stop those calls, but I’m not sure what else we can do”. Pat told me many of the calls asked her to change her credit cards to a “better deal”.    Pat couldn’t remember the last time she signed up for Wisconsin’s No Call List. “It was a while ago,” she said.   The No Call List protects people from unwanted calls and texts. Frequently these calls come from

Take a quick trip over to http://jebbush.com - see where life takes you.

Shouldda registered ALL those domain names, I guess.

He's going to be president one way or another if he can find a way.

By the way --- anybody notice that The Donald now wants to ban all Muslims from immigrating?

This sort of thing is the reason I have not been blogging lately - the  truth is  too depressing.

Let's talk about terror. It's the new black. The president spoke about it last night, and it seems to be overwhelming Americans. One one hand, I want to remind everyone that the odds of being injured in a terrorist attack are still lower than the odds of being injured by many more common hazards in life. It's been said that we are so bad at judging relative risks that we will be afraid of being killed by a terrorist, so we light up another cigarette.

Still,  I am seeing terror a lot of places where others  apparently don't. I'm going to be exploring that topic for a while now, but let's start

Changes for Work and Workers In the “Gig Economy” By Senator Kathleen Vinehout   “If my company followed the rules, they couldn’t survive,” my niece Becky told me as we traveled home from our “Small Business Saturday” shopping trip.   Small retail businesses are owned by local folks and regularly use local workers. The money we spend in our local communities usually stays local.   But in this changing economy, sometimes your small business is not local. Sometimes the company is not even American.   Becky works for a small company that makes “apps” for use on computers or mobile devices.   The company is

                             Enjoying Thanksgiving on the Farm By Senator Kathleen Vinehout   Tundra Swans arrived Friday.   These magnificent birds spend a brief time in Buffalo County on their way from the tundra of Canada and Alaska to their wintering grounds on the East Coast.   The brilliant, white birds with a 6 1/2’ wingspan are migrants through our valley. They love the swamps and back waters. And when they gather they are very social.   The swans love to converse. I listened to their excited chatter sitting in my deer blind in the early dawn hours. They sounded like enthusiastic teenagers.   Swan

Phoney Christian, Scott Walker, celebrates Christmas Season by doing the opposite of what was done for Mary and Joseph.  

Wisconsin Report Card Provides Info on Progress, Problems

By

Senator Kathleen Vinehout

 

“My son’s grades improved at report card time,” Mari told me. Her son struggled in school for many years. “We had a great teacher conference. He got mostly Bs and Cs – which was an improvement.”

 

Wisconsin recently got its own report card. Our state also got mostly Bs and Cs. Although in several cases, these scores represent benchmarks that are not improving.

 

The report published by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WISTAX) tracks statistics reflecting the economy, education and quality of life in Wisconsin.

 

O

The Assembly is currently in the process of concurrence with the changes in the far-reaching bills the Senate recently passed. Democrats are currently trying to drag out discussion on the bill, while the Republicans are are attempting to cut off debate under Assembly rules. Democrats are attempting to question the outright lies brought out by the Republicans on campaign finance changes.

I've attempted to embed the Wiseye stream here, but it appears not to be working, so please go watch at http://www.wiseye.org/mobile/stream1.aspx

Friday Night in Madison By Senator Kathleen Vinehout   It was Friday night at 5:00 pm.   Most people were leaving work and looking forward to the weekend. Maybe they headed to see friends and family at the fish fry or watch the prep football playoffs.   At that same hour, Senators received details on two very important bills. Legislation that rewrote laws related to elections, campaign finance, lobbying and the ethics of elected officials.   Leaders kept details about changes to the bills secret until the last minute. Details we had not seen; the press had not read; no member of the public had an

The GOP amendments to the infamous GAB bill have been posted and you can read them here and here.  If you are not interested in trying to mix and match all of the pieces, you can read the Legislative Council Memo on the bill. Amendments to the Campaign Finance bill have now been posted here.

Canada and Wisconsin: Friends and Partners By Senator Kathleen Vinehout   Did you know a third of everything Wisconsin sells to the world we sell to Canada? And more visitors come to Wisconsin from Canada than any other country?   Wisconsin recently celebrated Canada Day at the Capitol. We welcomed Canadian Consul General Roy Norton. He brought along a host of facts about Wisconsin’s relationship with Canada.   Many of us think the ideal summer vacation is going north – this summer my husband and son enjoyed a canoe trip in Canada. Fortunately, Canadians like to head south. Wisconsin welcomed over 300

By now we have all seen the vicious takedown of a teen in a South Carolina classroom by a resource officer, an incident apparently prompted by the student’s insistence on texting from her cell phone.

 Setting aside the officer’s reaction, which was totally unjustified, I think it may be an opportune moment to discuss why we allow students to carry cell phones in school.

 Since my retirement I have worked as a substitute teacher at the middle and high school levels and have seen the proliferation of these devices which started out as flip phones and allowed for clumsy texting. Now they carry

I find myself in the really odd position of thinking that the GOP could have made a worse choice. This is what it has come to, when we are settling for the least of a number of evils. I think we can look forward to continued nonsense from the house under Ryan's leadership, and perhaps continuing threats of government shutdown because the Tea Party representatives are grumpy about trivialities. Nonetheless, it probably could have been worse.

Ryan was elected this morning with 236 of the required 218 votes. Let's hope for the best, but I'm not convinced.

  Don’t Kill the Referees By Senator Kathleen Vinehout   “Just do the right thing,” my doctor told me. We were discussing politics. We just finished reviewing the x-rays of my new hip replacement. My doctor wanted to offer a little advice to my colleagues in the Senate.   “People want you to think of them,” he said. “They don’t want you to make decisions on what’s best for the party – whoever’s in power. They want you to make the best decision for the people.   “The problem,” I told him, “is that the interest groups are pulling the parties further and further apart. They don’t want to compromise. It’s

Those of you who are subscribed to our daily newsletter have probably noticed that it has been incredibly silent as of late. It's the joys of trying to produce a news source with no funding, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I finally found the time to do at least a rough workaround to make the newsletter ship out again, so as of Monday those of you on the mailing list should start getting the email every weekday at 7 AM.  If you're not subscribed and would like to, there's a handy signup form on the front page of the site on the right.

I am also working on some performance and caching improvements which you

Dana Wachs and Katrina Shankland discuss the trifecta of horrors passed by the assembly last week.  Still more coming next week.  Halloween was never so frightening.

By the way - I highly recommend Dana's Wachs Talks series on Youtube. Great progressive discussion from a legislative hero (and great neighbor).