This is the new home of old Uppity Wisconsin blog posts

Smoke clears, recount to begin Thursday

As you will see in the Storify article below, a lot happened yesterday RE: the recount. Please follow the links in the Storify for external documents. 

The Stein campaign made a wire transfer to the state of 3.5 million dollars shortly before the deadline.  An interesting sidelight is that somehow when tallying the estimates of all of the counties, a mistake was made, and the Stein campaign was invoiced for 3.5 million when it should have been 3.9 million.  My guess is that the esitmates were probably high (if I were a county clerk I would have decided to err on the high side rather than the

4:30 PM

The presidential recount in Wisconsin all boils down to 4:30 PM. 4:30 today is when the payment to the state is due to have the recount proceed. It's also the time that the hearing will take place in Madison to decide if the counties will be forced to do hand recounts of all ballots.

The list of estimated costs from the different counties also lists whether they intend to count all ballots by hand - it appears this is about a half and half mix. It's possible that a full hand recount will increase the cost of the recount, which the Stein campaign is already complaining about as being too high.

The Best Idea for a Bill Comes from You!

By Senator Kathleen Vinehout

“Where do you get ideas for bills?” a woman at a café recently asked me.

“The best ideas for bills come from people like you,” I told her 

December begins a brief time of calm in the Capitol. But behind the scenes, lawmakers are working on new legislation. In the next few weeks I will be drafting bills to introduce in January. I am looking for your ideas!

Lawmakers will open the 103rd session of the Wisconsin Legislature on January 3rd. On that day, and for perhaps the next fifteen months, legislators will introduce roughly 1,800 bills or proposals.

Many of my best

The Wisconsin Recount - where we stand

Update - It appears the Stein campaign is going to sue to demand hand recounts of all ballots:

Since two recount petitions were filed for a Wisconsin recount of the presidental election, procedures for the recount are now under way. County clerks around the state are currently providing cost estimates for their recount efforts, and must provide both a cost and the method that will be used to recount optical scan ballots by the close of business today. 

The method issue is important. Current state law allows the different counties to select whether they will count the optical scan ballots by hand

Recount petitions received by Wisconsin Elections Commission

Recount petitions for the presidental election were received today by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, both from the Jill Stein campaign and from the De La Fuente campaign.  They were filed with a few hours to spare. The petitions and supporting documents are now up on the Elections Commission web site, which has been under a lot of strain this afternoon due to interest in the petitions. 

http://elections.wi.gov/node/4436

Personally I believe it's really unlikely that the recount will turn up anything beyond the normal distribution of slight clerical errors -- but the recount in Wisconsin is

School Budget Proposal Brings Needed Relief

Senator Kathleen Vinehout   “Over the past four years, we have seen an increased reliance on referenda to keep the lights on,” State Superintendent Tony Evers announced as he released his school budget proposal.   “Around the state, local communities took the lead on funding reform through the ballot box, but the state has to be a good partner and do our share to help small town schools.”   Indeed. This year, Wisconsinites passed a record number of school referenda.   In the recent election, 82% of school referenda passed. Over the last four years, citizens in more than half of Wisconsin’s school

EPA Water Listening Session in Eau Claire

On Tuesday Nov. 15 approximately 300 people attended the EPA listening session at Chippewa Valley Technical College. The session was set up for the Administrator of US EPA’s Region V, Robert Kaplan to listen to citizens testifying about water quality in the state and to help determine if the EPA should take over the oversight of Wisconsin's compliance to the Clean Water Act. Wisconsin's DNR has been shrunk in size, and water quality enforcement has become much less of a priority, as the DNR is often not following its own rules or enforcing the law consistently. This is a (rather long) video of

Let's break the gerrymander. Here's how.

  Wisconsin is under one-party rule and it will remain that way under the current gerrymandered legislative districts.

  There are many districts now where it is pointless for the dems to put up a candidate. It is like leading a lamb to slaughter. 

  Instead the Democratic Party should perhaps think about taking the fight to the Republicans on their own turf and run primary candidates, listing themselves as Republicans and abandoning the inter-party contest altogether. The ersatz candidate would not need to hide his or her party background.  They would need however to have a populist message

Back to the Woods

By Senator Kathleen Vinehout   “See that scrape?” Lisa pointed to a large area of bare dirt. “That’s not made by a tractor tire.”   “And look at the branches above,” she said. “They are all broken. The buck was standing here pawing his hooves and tossing his head.”   We were on the edge of one of our hay fields, just where the field dropped into a ravine. I could see over several pastures and fields to the northwest and through the woods to my neighbor’s pasture in the southeast – a commanding spot.   Lisa and I were tracking a big ten-point buck. I saw him many times - even running after a doe right

Here's How We Beat Those Frackers

Organize a bit more. That's it, with the corollary that we ought to consider supporting those involved in organizing. We do that we're home.

Some details include extirpating the DNC pukes and replacing the lot with the like of Rep. Keith Ellison, (D-Minnesota), and hiring some folks and paying them a lot of money to reach out to the white, Christian, racist puke vote

Democratic Underground Hacked

So - in case you have been not paying attention due to a stupor of post-election depression, the popular lefty forum site Democratic Underground was badly hacked on election night and remains more or less down. It's believed that some user information may have been accessed during the hack. The site admins believe that password information was comparatively safe since the passwords were hashed in the site database.  I wouldn't put a lot of faith in that, so if you happened to have a password on Democratic Underground that you were re-using on other sites 

a:. Stop doing that

b. you probably

The Mic and liberal talk radio gone from Madison

I will have rather a lot more to say about the political revolution that took place on Tuesday as time goes on, but I think one of the great ironies is that at the same time  that Donald Trump was elected president, liberal talk radio disappeared in Madison. The MIC, 92.1, is apparently going to be changing format. This is not a huge surprise in a lot of ways since I Heart Radio (formerly Clearchannel) has not been a big sympathizer for lefty causes. Still the timing is interesting. Nobody really knows what they are changing to, and apparently the current plan is to play Christmas music until

Joining Hands and Respecting Differences

Senator Kathleen Vinehout   “We try very hard to not have political discussions at our family gatherings,” my friend told me over dinner.   “How sad,” I replied. This comment – one I’ve heard many times in past months – stood in sharp contrast to the enthusiastic spirit of community I felt the night before.   I joined many neighbors in celebrating the release of a new album of local music. The accomplishment is a collaboration of three local musicians – Yata, Sinz and Orfield - in a delightful compilation entitled Dancing in the Light.   The crowd was enthusiastic, clapping in time with the music. One

So - the time has come

It's time to vote. This election leaves us with real choices - Please, let's not hear the "both parties are the same" argument. All the way through the ticket we have people from both of the major parties who genuinely are different. 

I'm not going to re-hash the presidential race, as I am sure you are all tired of hearing about it. I know I am. Let's just say that you have a choice tomorrow that will influence the direction of the country for years to come, from treatment of the environment, our behavior toward immigrants, and perhaps most clearly, who will be on the supreme court for many

Think of the things we can do

If we had a Republican in the White House, a Republican majority in the house, and a Republican majority in the United States Senate, think of the things we can do.

Scott Walker last night during Donald Trump''s appearance in Eau Claire.

Frankly I have thought of little else for the past year. We might very quickly move from having a completely incapacitated government to a completely demonical one, laying the groundwork for regression in the US for decades to come. Imagine a more conservative Supreme Court for at least  a generation, continual suppression of voting rights, mass deportation