ALL ARTICLES

  By Jeff Bryant Back to Our Future (10/11/7) With less than a year in office, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is already having the narrative of her impact on the nation’s public schools recast from someone with the power to“single-handedly decimate our public education system” to someone who is capable of only incremental change or who is completely ineffectual altogether. Don’t believe this shift in the storyline. First, consider how many times media reports trumpeting efforts by the President Trump administration to act more responsibly have quickly changed, within days or even hours, to news reports of the continued fecklessness of the White House….

Forward To Your Town Board Officials Your Local Government Is Threatened In A Secretive Hearing Being Held Tuesday, October 17th. There is a bill proposed that attacks local government ability to make land use decisions and the public’s ability to influence these decisions. SB387/AB479 will render most of the conditional use permit provisions in your town and county zoning ordinances useless. They relegate public opinion in the conditional use permit process to an afterthought that cannot by itself be used as part of the decision making process. This effort also upsets over a century worth of Supreme Court precedent and will…

    By Robert Reich RobertReich.org (10/14/17) Last week, Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview with the New York Times that Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.” Corker said he was concerned about Trump. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation,” Corker said, adding that “the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here … the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous…

  By Jessie Opoien The Capital Times (9/28/17) State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, a Democratic candidate for governor, says she doesn’t believe people will find anything objectionable in a character reference letter she wrote for a legislative attorney found guilty of possession of child pornography. The Alma Democrat was one of about a dozen people who wrote character reference letters for David L. Lovell, a former Legislative Council attorney who was found guilty in June of five Class D felony counts of child pornography possession. Vinehout was the only sitting legislator to write in Lovell’s support. “My mother taught me to hate…

  By Ed Treleven & Matthew DeFour The Wisconsin State Journal (10/12/17) The former executive director of the state Democratic Party could face a first-degree reckless homicide charge for the drug overdose death last month of a woman at his home in Fitchburg, according to a search warrant filed this week. The search warrant, filed on Monday but not made available until Tuesday, states that Jason T. Sidener, 42, told Fitchburg police that he took the 30-year-old woman to St. Mary’s Hospital’s emergency room on Sept. 12 after waking up that morning to find her “breathing really weird,” suspecting that she…

  By Constance Grady Vox (10/3/17) One of the recurring ideas of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, is that he hates being asked to offer white people hope of a better future in which America might become a post-racial utopia. But when Coates appeared on The Late Show Monday night, Stephen Colbert asked him to offer that hope — and appeared to be almost offended when Coates refused. “I’m not asking you to make shit up,” Colbert interjected. “I’m asking if you personally see any evidence for change in America.” “But I would have to make shit up to…

  By Arelis R. Hernández, Samantha Schmidt, Avi Selk & William Wan The Washington Post (9/30/17) SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — When Hurricane Maria destroyed the infrastructure of Puerto Rico, it turned the mayor of its capital city into a spokeswoman for a stranded people. Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto told the world of the “horror” she was seeing as she waded through San Juan’s flooded streets. And the desperation on the island, parts of which may remain without power for months. Until then, Cruz had not been a well-known politician outside the island. Cruz worked nearly nonstop on the ground — walking the capital’s…

  Mark, you are WAY too kind to him. [Sen. John McCain Gives A Classy Interview On 60 Minutes, 9/28/17] See: John McCain: Make-Believe Maverick: A closer look at the life and career of the candidate reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty Kelvin Rodolfo Westby, WI (Editor’s Reply: The article Kelvin references raises a lot of good points and important history about Sen. John McCain’s history and is well worth the time. – Mark L. Taylor)