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Wisconsin: Court Overturns Scott Walker’s Anti-Union Law

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2024 //
8

Good news in Wisconsin! A local court overturned a notorious piece of anti-union legislation that was passed in 2011, at the instance of then-Governor Scott Walker. At the time, union protestors encircled the Statehouse to protest. Walker was unmoved. He celebrated the defeat of the state’s unions (excluding police and firefighters).

The Guardian writes:

As the labor movement braces for a second Trump term, union members and their leaders are celebrating a major victory over a controversial law that stripped public sector unions of collective bargaining rights.

In response to a lawsuit alleging that a notorious law passed by the former Republican governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker in 2011 is unconstitutional, a county judge ruled on Monday that more than 60 sections of the law and several sections of a follow-up law in 2015, Act 55, are unconstitutional.

Walker called the decision “brazen political activism at its worst” and Republicans plan an appeal.

Thousands protested the introduction of the law, which crippled unions’ funding and powers. Following the passage of Act 10, several Republican-dominated states pushed to pass similar legislation, including Florida which passed a similar law in May 2023 targeting public sector unions, and Iowa, which passed legislation that took away collective bargaining rights from many state employees in 2017.

Act 10 stripped collective bargaining rights from thousands of state employees in Wisconsin, limiting their ability to bargain solely on wage increases that cannot exceed inflation. It also forced public sector labor unions to annually vote, with a majority of members participating and voting, to maintain certification.

“We were kind of just demonized, not just teachers, but public sector workers in general,” said John Havlicek, a high school Spanish teacher in La Crosse, Wisconsin and former president of the La Crosse Education Association which represents teachers in the school district. “Teachers don’t go into it for the money but I also have groceries to buy and bills to pay and stuff like that. A lot of public sector workers, in my experience teachers, really felt like we were being scapegoated. It was really bad.”

The act has had a significant impact on union membership, pay and benefits. In 2010 Wisconsin had a union density rate of 15.1%. That number dropped to 8.4% in 2023.

The law also forced public sector workers to pay more for healthcare and retirement benefits, resulting in around an 8.5% decrease in their pay for workers making $50,000 a year.

An April 2024 report by the Wisconsin department of public instruction found teacher pay had declined from 2010 to 2022 by nearly 20% and about four out of every 10 first year teachers either leave the state or the profession after six years.

Public school funding also drastically declined in Wisconsin after Act 10 was enacted. Per pupil spending in Wisconsin out paced the national average by around $1,100 per student in 2011 and was $327 per pupil lower than the national average in 2021.

The verdict could be overturned on appeal. Stay tuned.

Categories Unions, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Wisconsin: Dane County Judge Overturns Notorious Act 10!

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2024 //
5

Thirteen years ago, Republican Governor Scott Walker and the legislature of Wisconsin enacted Act 10, which banned collective bargaining for public employees, except for public safety employees. Teachers, social workers, and other public employees were outraged. They encircled the State Capitol for days. Walker became a star, and his sponsors, the Koch brothers, were happy.

But today, Act 10 was declared unconstitutional. Time will tell whether the decision is upheld.

A Dane County judge on Monday sent ripples through Wisconsin’s political landscape, overturning a 13-year-old law that banned most collective bargaining among public employees, consequently decimating the size and power of employee unions and turning then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker into a nationally known political figure.

But there’s been a revival of hope in Wisconsin:

The effort to overturn Act 10 began in November 2023 when several unions representing public employees filed the lawsuit, citing a “dire situation” in workplaces with issues including low pay, staffing shortages and poor working conditions. 

In July,  Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost ruled provisions of Act 10 unconstitutional and denied a motion filed by the Republican-controlled Legislature to dismiss the case.

The lawsuit argued the 2011 law violated equal protection guarantees in the Wisconsin Constitution by dividing public employees into two classes: “general” and “public safety” employees. Public safety employees are exempt from the collective bargaining limitations imposed on “general” public employees.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Jonathan V. Last on Biden’s Graceful Farewell

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2024 //
93

Jonathan V. Last posted two videos of President Biden speaking. One took place in April 2023, when he spoke in his ancestral hometown of Ballina in County Mayo, Ireland. He received an ecstatic welcome from the locals. Biden’s voice was strong and clear. He was vigorous and joyful. He was not senile then, he’s not senile now. But he has aged.

Last wrote:

I’ll always remember Joe Biden in Ballina. 

It was nighttime. America’s last great Irish pol was visiting the county of his forebears. A bunch of local Irish notables gave boring remarks in front of an ancient stone church. There was a minute of restless silence. Then the music hit. 

Suddenly the Dropkick Murphys are blaring from the speakers. Lasers and lights cut through the evening mist.

And Joe Biden strides out in a black longcoat like a damn WWE star to the single biggest pop I’ve seen in politics.

Absolute legend.

That was 15 months ago. Only 15 months ago.

The President Biden we saw last night was a different man. We can all see the physical changes. But where the Biden in Ballina was exuberant, sharing a once-in-a-lifetime moment of pure joy, the Biden of last night was doing something different and infinitely more important. He was teaching his country a lesson.

It was, on the surface, a valedictory speech with boilerplate about what his administration accomplished. But under the hood, the important stuff wasn’t so much a valediction as a homily. He was talking directly to Americans not about the job he’d done, but about our jobs going forward.

Two sections are worth clipping and saving.

The first was the part where Biden explained why he stepped aside:

When you elected me to this office, I promised to always level with you, to tell you the truth. And the truth, the sacred cause of this country, is larger than any one of us. Those of us who [cherish] that cause cherish it so much. The cause of American democracy itself. We must unite to protect it.

In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor. I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.

So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation. I know there was a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.

I submit to you that no other president in our lifetimes would have believed that he was replaceable. None of those guys could have even countenanced the idea that the country might be better served if he passed the torch.

Biden’s humility in this act is so unique that we risk overlooking it and failing to appreciate how singular and extraordinary it is.

Categories Biden, Character, Health, Walker, Scott

A Great Day for Democracy in Wisconsin!!!

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2023 //
15

The Koch brothers funded the Republican takeover of Wisconsin in 2010 and the election of Scott Walker as governor. Walker quickly cracked down on unions and stripped them of their rights. He pushed vouchers. He attacked Wisconsin’s great public university system. Meanwhile, the Republican legislature gerrymandered the state to guarantee control of the legislature. The state is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, but Republicans control both houses of the legislature.

That is why many observers considered the election of a new State Supreme Court to be the most important election in the nation. After the retirement of a Republican justice, the Court was split 3-3.

A liberal—Janet Protasiewicz—ran against a conservative—Dan Kelly. The liberal won. This means that the Court will have a Democratic majority.

The two biggest issues likely to be resolved by the Court are abortion rights and gerrymandering. The new Court now has the votes to restore abortion rights that were withdrawn by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision. It is likely that a lawsuit will challenge the deeply unfair gerrymandering of the state, and the new majority is sure to insist on a fair reapportionment.

A great day for democracy!

Categories Dark Money, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Freedom, Unions, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Heather Cox Richardson: Tomorrow’s Vote Offers Chance to Curb Wisconsin GOP’s War on Democracy

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2023 //
10

Heather Cox Richardson is a historian who writes on today’s issues with a critical lens. Here, she analyzes a very important election in Wisconsin that is key in reversing an unfairly gerrymandered state map and restoring abortion rights.

A key fight over democracy is currently taking place in Wisconsin. On April 4, voters in the state will choose a new judge for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. That judge will determine the seven-person court’s majority, a majority that will either uphold or possibly strike down the state’s gerrymandered voting maps that are so heavily weighted toward Republicans as to make it virtually impossible for Democrats to win control of the legislature.

Political scientists judge Wisconsin to be the most gerrymandered state in the country. The state is divided pretty evenly between Democrats and Republicans, although the Democrats have won 13 of the past 16 statewide elections. But despite the state’s relatively even political split, the current district maps are so heavily tilted for Republicans that Democrats have to win the statewide vote by 12 points just to get a majority in the assembly: 50 of the 99 seats. Republicans, though, can win a majority with just 44% of the vote.

The process of changing Wisconsin into a stronghold of Republican power began in the 2010 elections, when Republicans launched Operation REDMAP to take over state legislatures before the redistricting process based on the 2010 census began. That year, the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch pumped money into Wisconsin. Along with a strong talk radio media ecosystem, they helped to elect Governor Scott Walker to curb the power of public sector unions, which they blamed for what they considered excessive state spending.

The election of Governor Walker and a Republican legislature began the process of taking control of the state. Using granular voting data and sophisticated mapping software, the Republicans gerrymandered the state so severely that they retained control of the assembly going forward even though Democrats won significantly more votes.

As Ari Berman explained in Mother Jones, Republicans used that power to take away the bargaining rights of public sector unions in order to defund and demoralize one of the Democratic Party’s core constituencies. Berman quotes right-wing strategist Grover Norquist, who wrote that the Wisconsin policies were a national model. “If Act 10 is enacted in a dozen more states, the modern Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics…. It’s that big a deal.” The assembly also passed at least 33 new laws during the Walker years to change election procedures and make it harder to vote.

When Democrat Tony Evers won election as governor in 2018, Democrats won all four statewide races. They also won 53% of the votes for state assembly—203,000 more votes than the Republicans did—but because of gerrymandering, the Democrats got just 36% of the seats in the legislature. The Republicans there immediately held a lame duck session and stripped powers from Evers and Democratic attorney general Josh Kaul. Then they passed new laws to restrict voting rights. The legislature went on to block Evers’s appointees and block his legislative priorities, like healthcare, schools, and roads.

Polls showed that voters opposed the lame duck session by a margin of almost 2 to 1, and by 2020, 82% of Wisconsin voters had passed referenda calling for fair district maps.

But when it came time to redistrict after the 2020 census, the Republican-dominated legislature carved up the state into an even more pro-Republican map than it had put into place before. Ultimately, the new maps gave Republicans 63 out of 99 seats in the assembly and 22 out of 23 in the state senate. They came within two assembly seats of having a supermajority that would enable them to override any vetoes by the governor, essentially nullifying him, although Evers had been reelected by 53.5% of the vote (a large margin for Wisconsin).

With gerrymandered districts virtually guaranteeing their reelection, Republicans are insulated from popular opinion. In the 2021–2022 session, they ignored the governor, refusing to confirm Evers’s appointees and going nearly 300 days without passing a single bill. They also ignored popular measures, refusing to let 98% of Democratic bills even be heard and refusing to address gun safety issues—although 81% of Wisconsinites wanted background checks for gun sales—or abortion rights, even though 83% of Wisconsin residents wanted at least some abortion rights protected after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last June put back into effect a law from 1849.

This radicalized Wisconsin assembly also mattered nationally when it became a centerpiece of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Nearly 75% of the Republicans in it worked to cast doubt on that election. After an audit turned up “absolutely no evidence of election fraud”—according to a Wisconsin judge—they tried to take control of elections away from a bipartisan commission and turn it over to the legislature they control. Senator Ron Johnson led the effort, calling for Republicans to take control of the elections because, he said, Democrats can’t be expected to “follow the rules.” In the 2022 election, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor, Tim Michels, promised, “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”

Their effort failed only because they fell two seats shy of the supermajority they needed.

By shaping the state maps and limiting the power of Democratic constituencies, Republicans have also taken control of the state supreme court, which sides with the Republican lawmakers’ attempts to cement their own power. Now voters have the chance to shift the makeup of that court. Doing so would make it possible that new challenges to the gerrymandered maps would succeed, returning fairness to the electoral system.

Wisconsin journalist Dan Shafer, who writes The Recombobulation Area, is following the race closely. His coverage reveals how the candidates’ framing of the election mirrors a larger debate about democracy. Theoretically, the election is nonpartisan, but Republicans paid former state supreme court justice Dan Kelly $120,000 to consult on Trump’s false elector scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and he was on the payroll of the Republican National Committee until last December. In 2012 he defended the Republicans’ gerrymandered maps in court.

For her part, Milwaukee County judge Janet Protasiewicz has made it clear she opposes the gerrymandered maps. “Let’s be clear here: The maps are rigged. Absolutely positively rigged,” she said in a candidates’ forum in January. “They do not reflect the people in the state. They do not reflect accurate representation, either in the State Assembly or the State Senate. They are rigged, period. I don’t think it would sell to any reasonable person that the maps are fair.”

Shafer notes that supreme court terms are for ten years, so if the court does not shift in this election, it, along with the gerrymandered maps, will remain in place “for the foreseeable future.” The race ultimately comes down to checks and balances, he says. The court has not checked the legislature, which has entrenched one-party rule in Wisconsin.

“This isn’t to say the maps should be redrawn to instead benefit Democrats,” Shafer continues. “Far from it. It’s about fairness. Some years Democrats will win a majority, other years Republicans will win a majority. If one party isn’t doing their job, voters should be able to do something about it. It’s about crafting a system that reflects the people of Wisconsin and can be responsive to the state’s voters. We don’t have that right now. And that has to be the goal.”

—

Notes:

https://rpubs.com/jdjohn215/redistricting-plans-submitted-to-scowis

The Recombobulation Area

Wisconsin is the most gerrymandered state in the country. The race for Wisconsin Supreme Court could change that. 

The Recombobulation Area is a six-time TEN-TIME Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication written and published by veteran Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. Learn more about it here…

Read more

12 days ago · 13 likes · Dan Shafer

https://www.wpr.org/daniel-kelly-jill-karofsky-emerge-state-supreme-court-primary
https://www.wpr.org/voting-begins-look-back-fight-over-wisconsins-voter-id-law
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/13/america-is-full-of-democracy-deserts-wisconsin-rivals-congo-on-some-metrics
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/21/chris-larson/yes-majority-wisconsin-jurisdictions-support-nonpa/
It’s Time To Take Back Wisconsin for the Voters
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/wisconsin-supreme-court-primary-janet-protasiewicz
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/29/885096130/federal-court-in-wisconsin-upholds-voting-restrictions-favored-by-republicans

The Recombobulation Area

The race for Wisconsin Supreme Court kicks into gear at WisPolitics forum

The Recombobulation Area is a six-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication written and published by veteran Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. Learn more about it here…

Read more

3 months ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Dan Shafer

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-wisconsin-lawsuits-elections-election-recounts-5b0fc57d521eb6e53ff1f78a695188b5
https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-wisconsin-lawsuits-presidential-16d90c311d35d28b9b5a4024e6fb880c

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Categories Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Equity, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Wisconsin: The Most Important Election of 2023

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2023 //
6

Here is the most important election of 2023: Control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The election is April 4, 2023.

The current Court is 4-3, with a Republican majority. A win by Democrats will reverse the balance and be crucial on issues of abortion, gerrymandering, and schools. It is also a chance to reverse the damage done by Republican Scott Walker.

Charlie Sykes writes in The Bulwark, a site established by Never-Trumpers:

The election that the media has dubbed “the most important election nobody’s ever heard of,” is just weeks away, and has already drawn international attention.

The “Stakes are monstrous,” declared Britain’s Guardian. “Wisconsin judicial race is 2023’s key election.”

Voting is under way in an under-the-radar race that could wind up being the most important election in America this year.

The NYT headlined: “2023’s Biggest, Most Unusual Race Centers on Abortion and Democracy.” Within weeks, the Times reported, “Wisconsin will hold an election that carries bigger policy stakes than any other contest in America in 2023.”

The state’s high court now has a 4-3 conservative majority, but one of the conservative members is retiring, which has created an opening for progressives to flip the high court for the first time in decades.

And everything is on the line: from Act 10, which limited public employee collective bargaining rights, to gerrymandering, abortion, and the way presidential elections are decided.

“If you change control of the Supreme Court from relatively conservative to fairly liberal, that will be a big, big change and that would last for quite a while,” said David T. Prosser Jr., a conservative former justice who retired from the court in 2016.

The contest will almost certainly shatter spending records for a judicial election in any state, and could even double the current most expensive race. Wisconsinites are set to be inundated by a barrage of advertising, turning a typically sleepy spring election into the latest marker in the state’s nonstop political season.

The Wapo reports that the election “will have sweeping consequences, as the court in the coming years is likely to decide whether to uphold the state’s near-total ban on abortion. It also could wade into disputes over gerrymandering and the outcome of the next presidential election.”

The Bulwark’s headline also captured the stakes “Wisconsin Supreme Court Race a Test for Democracy.”

On paper, the contest is non-partisan, but nobody even bothers to pretend anymore. Next Tuesday’s free-for-all primary includes four candidates: two progressives: Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell; and two conservatives: Dan Kelly and Jennifer Dorow.

The conventional wisdom (which is likely correct) is that the primary will set up a contest between left and right. The same conventional wisdom (on both sides of aisle) thinks that Protasiewicz is the strongest progressive candidate, while Dorow — who achieved a sort of media stardom for presiding over a high-profile criminal case — is the most electable conservative. Kelly, who was named to the Court by former Governor Scott Walker at the urging of the Federalist Society, has already lost a statewide election — a rare defeat for an incumbent justice.

**

But now we get to the strangest twist in this high-stakes story: After decades of ignoring or downplaying crucial judicial elections like this one, Democrats and their allies are very much focused on the Wisconsin contest.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin conservatives have chosen this moment to crack up.

While progressive dollars pour into the state, Republicans have launched a bitter, high-stakes, and often quite personal, civil war that seems designed to take out the candidate who may give them the best chance to hold onto control of the state’s high court…

To finish the article, subscribe to The Bulwark.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, Education Reform, Elections, Republicans, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Nora de la Cour: Wisconsin Is a Battleground for the Future of Public Education

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2022 //
5

Journalist Nora de la Cour describes the dire situation in Wisconsin, where incumbent Governor Tony Evers is in a close race with an election denier/school privatizer, Tim Michels. There are many other states where education is on the ballot. Wisconsin was once known for its great public schools and public universities. Former Governor Scott Walker declared war on both. Twenty-five years ago, the far-right Bradley Foundation funded the voucher movement in Milwaukee, which has spread to other parts of the state and to other states. The Trumpist base of the Republican Party has declared war on public schools, based on lies and fantasies spun by rightwing think tanks.

She begins:

New research finds that market-style education reforms, like those pioneered in Wisconsin decades ago, have devastating consequences for students. This election, Wisconsin and the rest of the nation must choose whether to plow ahead or reverse course.

Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers is neck and neck with his challenger, Trump-endorsed Tim Michels, whose campaign has lauded abortion bans, election denialism, and a beefed up carceral–policestate. Robert Asen, who studies political discourse at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told Jacobin that because education has gotten relatively less airtime, it is “a bit of a stealth issue analogous to [labor law in] Scott Walker’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign,” which didn’t prepare voters for Walker’s vicious attacks on workers. But make no mistake: this election will determine the existential future of K-12 schooling in the state.

Following the now-familiar Chris Rufo playbook, Michels plans to sign a restrictive “parents’ rights” bill and move up the timeline on a universal school choice plan that would destroy what’s left of Wisconsin’s once-great public schools. Formerly the state’s superintendent of public instruction, Evers has pledged to increase school funding and prioritize the public system. In reality, though, even if Evers prevails he’ll at best continue to be “the man of a thousand vetoes,” given that Republican opposition will prevent him from pursuing his agenda. So as Marquette University senior fellow and veteran education reporter Alan Borsuk put it when speaking to Jacobin, this governor’s race amounts to a choice between treading water and veering hard right.

In many ways, Wisconsin blazed a trail for the rest of the country with market-style reforms that increase competition by weakening teachers’ unions and privatizing schools. Decades later, researchers have mapped the devastating impact of these reforms on Wisconsin students. So, as voters across the United States face grave education questions up and down the ballot, it makes sense to look back at what’s happened in the Badger State.

Please open the link and read this important article.

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Higher Education, Privatization, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Study: Weakening Unions Increases Gender Gap in Wages

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2021 //
16

Barbara Biasi, assistant professor of economics at the Yale School of Management, recently published a study that concluded that eliminating unions increases the gender gap in wages.

She looked at data from Wisconsin, before and after Scott Walker eliminated collective bargaining rights in 2011, in his Koch-funded effort to destroy unions.

For every dollar earned by men in the U.S., women earn about 82 cents, according to 2018 census data; this pay gap is even larger for Black and Hispanic women.  Some public schools have avoided the gender wage gap because they follow a strict salary schedule, in which each teacher’s pay is determined based on objective factors such as seniority and academic degrees. But what happens when schools switch to a more flexible pay system?

Barbara Biasi, an assistant professor of economics at Yale SOM, had an opportunity to examine this question when Wisconsin passed Act 10, legislation that essentially weakened the power of teachers’ unions. Afterward, schools had much more latitude in deciding how much to pay teachers.

Five years after union agreements expired, male teachers earned about 1% more per year than female colleagues with similar experience and skills, reported Biasi and her co-author, Heather Sarsons at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The gender gap was even higher among younger teachers.

While 1% might not seem like much, such a gap can substantially affect income in the long run, Biasi says. It “can add up pretty quickly over the course of a person’s career,” she says.

The results suggest that women may start earning less than men when they have to bargain on their own, rather than being supported by a union that negotiates for them. This effect could be seen in many industries as union membership shrinks. “The decline of union power might have an increase in the gender gap in pay as one of the unintended consequences,” Biasi says.

Categories Teachers, Unions, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Wisconsin: Liberals Win Crucial Seat on State Court

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2020 //
14

The crucial election in Wisconsin was not Biden vs. Sanders, but the decisive seat on the state Supreme Court.

Governor Tony Evers wanted to postpone the election. The Republicans fought him and got his cancelation of the election overturned by the courts.

Republicans blocked mail-in voting because they thought that fears of the virus would suppress turnout and help their candidate. Milwaukee usually has 180 polling places but last Tuesday, only 5 opened.

But the GOP ‘s efforts to protect the conservative judge failed. He lost.

A liberal challenger defeated the conservative incumbent for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a key race at the heart of Democratic accusations that Republicans risked voters’ health and safety by going forward with last week’s elections amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Jill Karofsky beat Daniel Kelly, whom then-Gov. Scott Walker (R) appointed to the state’s high court in 2016.


The contest prompted a rancorous partisan debate over whether to proceed with in-person voting last Tuesday, which Democrats opposed and Republicans supported. It was also hardfought because of potential implications in the November presidential elections, with a judicial decision about whether to purge the state’s voter rolls hanging in the partisan balance of the court.


Gov. Tony Evers (D), state health officials and local election officials had urged the Republican-led state legislature to postpone the election, but lawmakers refused, citing the risk of confusion and widespread vacancies in thousands of municipal seats on the ballot with terms due to expire in April. Democrats accused Republicans of trying to take advantage of the likely low turnout resulting from fear of infection and closed polling locations.

The election featured snaking lines in Milwaukee and Green Bay, the result of mass cancellations by poll workers and the closure of polling locations. In Milwaukee, election officials opened just five voting locations, instead of the typical 180.
“Tonight, not just Jill Zarofsky but democracy prevailed over a politically cynical strategy to weaponize the coronavirus pandemic as a tool of voter supression,” said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party.
Kelly conceded the race shortly after 8:30 p.m. “It has been the highest honor of my career to serve the people of WI on their Supreme Court these past four years,” Kelly said in a statement. “Obviously I had hoped my service would continue for another decade, but tonight’s results make clear that God has a different plan for my future….”

Scott L. Fitzgerald, the Republican majority leader in the Wisconsin Senate, told reporters last year that Kelly would have a “better chance” of winning a new term with lower turnout — a statement that fueled accusations from Democrats as to why Republicans wanted to go forward with last Tuesday’s elections.


But heavy mail-in balloting may have upended assumptions about relative advantage; according to statistics issued Monday by the State Elections Commission, nearly 1.1 million Wisconsites cast ballots that way, nearly as many as total turnout in last year’s Supreme Court race — and more than total turnout in the court races in each of the previous two years…

Republicans entered the election with a 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court, meaning that a Democratic victory would still leave liberals in the minority until 2023, the next time a conservative justice will face voters.
But an ongoing legal battle over a voter roll purge raised the stakes of this year’s election, with implications for November. Kelly recused himself, and conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn sided with voting-rights groups to halt the purge. That left the court deadlocked 3-3, and gave Democrats a shot at stopping the purge, one of their top priorities ahead of the 2020 election.

Categories Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Wisconsin: Did Foxconn Fool Scott Walker?

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2019 //
2

Foxconn is the giant Taiwanese tech company that manufactures electronic products for major tech companies around the world. They are known for poor working conditions and long hours, also for employee suicides on the job. When Scott Walker was governor of Wisconsin, his great coup (or so he thought) was to woo Foxconn to open five “innovation centers” in the state. This was supposed to create jobs. Foxconn won billions in tax breaks and incentives. That was 2017. But not a single innovation center has opened, and according to this article, none is on track to open. While Walker made grandiose plans for Foxconn, he cut the budgets of schools and universities, which is the usual place to spur innovation.

Looks like he was hoaxed.

Electronics manufacturer Foxconn’s promised Wisconsin “innovation centers,” which are to employ hundreds of people in the state if they ever get built, are officially on hold after spending months empty and unused, as the company focuses on meeting revised deadlines on the LCD factory it promised would now open by next year. The news, reported earlier today by Wisconsin Public Radio, is another inexplicable twist in the nearly two-year train wreck that is Foxconn’s US manufacturing plans.

The company originally promised five so-called innovation centers throughout the state would that employ as many as 100 to 200 people each in high-skilled jobs, with the Milwaukee center promising as many as 500. Those jobs were to complement the more than 13,000 jobs Foxconn said its initial Wisconsin electronics manufacturing factory would bring to the US, in exchange for billions in tax breaks and incentives that Governor Scott Walker granted the company back in 2017.

Categories Budget Cuts, Economy, Funding, Hoax, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin
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