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UW-Madison Efforts to Improve Racial Climate Commendable

Posted by Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Martha Laning
Democratic Party of Wisconsin, Martha Laning
Martha Laning is the Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
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on Monday, 05 September 2016
in Wisconsin

buckyMADISON - I applaud the efforts by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to make their campus more inclusive. They are taking the appropriate steps to ensure every student, regardless of the color of their skin, is treated fairly at UW-Madison.

As our flagship university, it speaks volumes that UW-Madison's leadership is listening to the student body's call to create an environment that reflects and respects the backgrounds of everyone. I applaud the university leadership, the student leadership, and activists for working together to improve and strengthen UW-Madison.

We live in a world made of people from all walks of life and backgrounds. It is important that students' educational climate reflects the multicultural and diverse world they will join after leaving collegiate life. The investment UW-Madison is making better prepares our young students for this transition.

As a mother who has a child attending UW-Madison, I am grateful the school is taking the appropriate steps to ensure she receives an education in the most inclusive environment possible.

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Looking for Answers About Medicaid

Posted by Kathleen Vinehout, State Senator 31st District
Kathleen Vinehout, State Senator 31st District
Kathleen Vinehout of Alma is an educator, business woman, and farmer who is now
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on Monday, 05 September 2016
in Wisconsin

disability-old-windowSpending on Wisconsin’s Medicaid Program, which provides health care for low-income families, is going up. Where is the money going? Is health care really costing that much more?


MADISON - Medicaid is the joint federal-state program that pays hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and other health professionals to provide care for low-income families, including frail elderly persons and individuals with disabilities. It has been the fastest growing part of the state budget.

What’s going on with Medicaid spending? Where is the money going? Is health care really costing that much more?

We pondered these questions at a recent gathering of regional health administrators in La Crosse. I shared budget numbers from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

The state budget is growing – it’s $7.5 billion more than a half-dozen years ago – with health accounting for about $3 billion of the increase.

But the number of people served by the state’s programs grew by only 20,000. Did each new person really cost the state $12,500 a month?

Why are costs increasing so fast at a time when the number served by the state has slowed?

After the presentation, a local health administrator said to me, “I wonder what happened to all the money. The hospitals haven’t seen a raise in a long time. I don’t think the doctors have either.” I can add from many conversations with local administrators, nursing homes haven’t seen much of a raise either.

Just where did the money go?

In 2011, an audit by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) shed some light on the Medicaid program. Auditors found the Department of Health Services (DHS) spent 40% of administration on contracts with private companies to manage the state’s programs. In four years, those contract dollars increased 73%. Almost 1,100 full-time private company employees are working under just one of those contracts.

Auditors reported contract amendments to private companies running Medicaid were made without legislative authorization and without budgeted appropriations. The contracts were no bid and were not reported to DHS’ own purchasers, accountants or procurement managers.

Contract dollars have also increased over the years. For example, in fiscal years 2016-17, private companies getting paid to administer Medicaid reaped a 30% increase or $120 million more than the prior budget.

Most astounding, auditors found DHS could not answer basic questions about how much each “subprogram” (i.e., BadgerCare, SeniorCare, Family Care) cost taxpayers.

“If my CFO [chief financial officer] couldn’t tell me how much we were spending, he would be fired on the spot,” one hospital administrator told our group.

Others had similar reactions. “What you are asking from DHS is what we do every day,” one told me. “We are constantly doing the math to see how to deliver better service at a lower cost.”

Getting health programs running properly benefits all of us. Money going directly to well-run health service means people stay healthy and are more productive. Money spent on no bid health contracts to companies who can’t help the state answer basic management questions – like what are we spending the money on – is money that can’t buy roads, teachers or nurses.

Wise management means looking at all options for funding. Using federal money to cover health costs frees up state dollars for other investments.

For example, expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act would cover an additional 83,000 people and save almost $400 million state dollars in the next budget.

This is money that could be spent on roads, teachers, or nurses.

Lawmakers need to ask detailed questions about health care – just like every other program. The department needs to start providing detailed answers. Let’s begin with “Where did the money go?”

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Blue Jean Nation "How Democrats might escape from exile"

Posted by Mike McCabe, Blue Jean Nation
Mike McCabe, Blue Jean Nation
Mike McCabe is the founder and president of Blue Jean Nation and author of Blue
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on Sunday, 04 September 2016
in Wisconsin

trump-rncToday’s Republican Party seems bound and determined to implode. For you Democrats, there is no shortage of opportunity. Are you up for it?


ALTOONA, WI - Now here’s a telling measure of how weird our political system has gotten. The Republican Party is more unpopular than it’s been in nearly 25 years and is turning more people off with each passing day, yet the GOP is undeniably the majority party in this country.

Republicans control Congress. They control two-thirds of statehouses across America. Here in Wisconsin, they control a majority of congressional seats, both houses of the state legislature, the governor’s office and the state Supreme Court.

Elections don’t lie. As much as voters dislike the Republicans, they’ve repeatedly shown they’d rather have Republicans running the government than Democrats.

The Democratic establishment shows little willingness to change and little openness to outside advice. In all likelihood this will fall on deaf ears, but here goes anyway. Democrats, you won’t likely find your way out of the political wilderness unless you:

  • Stop trying to shame voters into backing candidates that wide swaths of the population find unappealing with scare tactics about what disaster will befall us if the latest ever-more-extreme Republican wins and how the catastrophe will be all their fault if they don’t vote Democratic. Only saying the other side is worse is an admission that your side is bad. Aspire to thrill voters instead.
  • Stop blaming voters for your defeats with the lame excuse that they are voting against their own best interests. Figure out how they see their interests and make them a better offer. Voters can be persuaded to realign. FDR turned a whole bunch of Republicans into Democrats, and Reagan turned a bunch of Democrats into Republicans. If you are consistently falling short of 50% in elections, that’s not the voters’ fault. It’s on the losing party to do something different to become more appealing to more people.
  • Stop using the vast Republican spin machine as an excuse for repeated losses. Of course opponents go to great lengths to badmouth you. Always have and always will. You can’t control that. Focus on what you can control.
  • Focus less on policies that benefit a particular constituency and more on programs with universal reach where everyone pays and everyone benefits. Wisconsin Democrats staked the last several elections on bargaining rights for a small minority of the state’s workers in just one sector of the economy, and lost decisively. This kind of strategy reinforces the image of a party devoted to benefiting favored interests and also makes the party vulnerable to divide-and-conquer tactics that were indeed successfully employed by Republican opponents.
  • Think long and hard about the fact that lower-income white working-class voters, especially those living in small towns and rural areas, used to support Democrats but most no longer do. There’s no shortage of clues about why they now prefer the Republicans. In those clues is a call to think bigger, to start doing things for blue-collar workers the Republicans won’t. Rebuilding governing majorities depends on it.
  • Try to become more than a confederation of interest groups, confined to their own issue silos, operating largely in isolation and sometimes even working at cross purposes. Doing this requires agreeing on and then expressing overarching values that knit these interests together. Republicans do a far better job staying focused on bedrock values while Democrats concentrate on issues and try to persuade people with a torrent of facts while not being willing or able to confidently describe a coherent underlying world view.

And then if and when voters decide to trust Democrats with power, you need to actually do what you say you believe in. No more hand-wringing about how acting boldly could cost you the next election. Doing little or nothing when given the opportunity to steer the ship of state has cost you way more elections than decisive action ever has.

Today’s Republican Party seems bound and determined to implode. Democrats, there is no shortage of opportunity for your party. There also is no shortage of doubt that you will take advantage of the opening.

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Wisconsin Manufacturing Wages Declining

Posted by Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Robert Kraig
Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Robert Kraig
Robert Kraig is Executive Director, Citizen Action of Wisconsin, 221 S. 2nd St.,
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on Thursday, 01 September 2016
in Wisconsin

manufacturingGreen Bay Manufacturing Wages Down by $2,197, Appleton by $1,971. Janesville-Beloit area leads march to the bottom with $6,555 decline since 2015.


STATEWIDE - Leading into Labor Day 2016, Citizen Action of Wisconsin released data today which shows dramatically declining wages for Wisconsin manufacturing workers in every metro area.

Citizen Action was joined on a media call this morning by State Senator Dave Hansen, WI AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Stephanie Bloomingdale, State Representative LaTanya Johnson, and State Representative Evan Goyke. (audio recording here).

Earlier this week, Citizen Action of Wisconsin showed that the outsourcing Wisconsin jobs is continuing at an alarming rate.

Another impact of rigged global trade and state economic development programs shown dramatically in the data released today is shrinking wages for jobs that remain in Wisconsin.

“Labor Day weekend is a good time to focus on the fact that when Wisconsin workers are forced to compete with low wage countries, where the right to form unions is brutally suppressed, the jobs that stay here pay less and less,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin looked at the latest federal data, and found a startling decline in manufacturing wages in every Wisconsin metro area. Real wages (adjusted for inflation) are going down for manufacturing workers in every Wisconsin metro area. On average, annual wages declined $1,430 between 2010 and 2015.

Annual Average Wages for Manufacturing/Production Workers in Major Wisconsin Metropolitan Areas

Metro

2010

2015

Change since 2015

Wisconsin, Statewide

$37,880

$36,450

-$1,430

Appleton

$39,993

$38,022

-$1,971

Eau Claire

$34,688

$33,301

-$1,387

Fond du Lac

$34,960

$34,840

-$120

Green Bay

$38,452

$36,254

-$2,197

Janesville-Beloit

$41,853

$35,298

-$6,555

La Crosse-Onalaska

$36,275

$35,339

-$936

Madison

$38,089

$35,589

-$2,500

Milwaukee-Waukesha

$39,517

$38,480

-$1,037

Oshkosh-Neenah

$40,719

$37,378

-$3,341

Racine

$37,590

$35,880

-$1,710

Sheboygan

$39,472

$38,355

-$1,117

Wausau

$38,044

$35,693

-$2,351

(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, inflation adjusted annual average wages in 2015 dollars)

“Declining wages may be good for multinational corporations who have no loyalty to any country, but they are a disaster for Wisconsin’s economy,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “Declining wages damage small business because workers have less to spend at the local grocery store, supper club, coffee shop, and dry cleaner. The result is less employment, and a further drag on local economies.”

"People are feeling like they have less in their pockets, and this data proves they are right," said Stephanie Bloomingdale, Secretary Treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. “When families are not able to put that kind of money into their pocket, the whole community suffers. Smaller paychecks not only impact the immediate family but the entire local economy."

"What would you do with an extra $1,034? That's the difference in Milwaukee for a manufacturing worker's wages from 2010 to now," said State Representative Evan Goyke. “Think of the places in your community you would spend that money, and the economic impact of taking that money out of the local economy.”

“We're seeing the state lead the way in a bad way, leading at having the largest drop in the middle class of all states, and the worst place to raise an African American child," said State Representative LaTonya Johnson. "We've seen communities lose manufacturing jobs, and go from middle class economics to places where families are forced to do without the basics.”

"We in the Legislature can and should make sure that the hard earned tax dollars of Wisconsin workers don't get funneled to companies that turn around and outsource Wisconsin jobs," said Senator Dave Hansen. "The bill we brought forth last session would ban companies that outsource jobs from receiving any state tax break, loan or grant for 5 years."

This data also directly challenges Governor Walker’s constant assertion that a co-called “skills gap” is the cause of Wisconsin’s economic woes. If manufacturers were really having problems finding skilled manufacturing workers, they would be raising wages, not lowering them.

The decline is further proof we need to stop rigging the economy by scrapping bad trade deals which stack the deck against workers and economic development policies that reward companies engaged in outsourcing and lowering the wages of their workers. Wisconsin needs bold new strategies to re-rig the economy in favor of workers.

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Drinking Water in Madison Tainted

Posted by John N. Powers, Wittenberg
John N. Powers, Wittenberg
John N. Powers, Wittenberg, a Vietnam Veteran, has his Bachelor's and Master's d
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on Thursday, 01 September 2016
in Wisconsin

clean-drinking-waterWe have problems with our drinking water around the State and muddled thinking with our legislators in Madison. What can be done?


WITTENBERG, WI - You have seen the newspaper articles about Wisconsin’s water problems. How in 2009 high level of viruses were found in city water around the state and our legislators required testing and treatment of those water supplies. In 2011 legislators repealed that requirement.

In 2010 regulations were designed to reduce phosphorus in our waters. In 2011 legislators began fighting those regulations and eventually allowed compliance to be pushed back twenty years.

In 2014 molybdenum was found in twenty percent of private wells tested in the south east part of the state. The closer the wells were to recycled coal ash sites the higher the concentration. The DNR said the evidence was not strong enough to make any link.

Unsafe nitrate levels have been found in the drinking water of 94,000 homes in Wisconsin. Legislators created a compensation fund for those contaminated wells-but only if the well supplied drinking water for cattle, not children. The EPA says two thirds of the municipal and wastewater treatment plants and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in Wisconsin operate with expired discharge permits. One third of the wells in Kewaunee County have tested unsafe for drinking water. And while all this has been happening our DNR has issued citations in only four percent of the water pollution cases considered serious enough to warrant such citations. These problems have been making headlines in our newspapers on a regular basis.

What is not being discussed is the problem with contaminated drinking water in Madison, especially in the capitol building. That contamination seems to have started about the time our legislators repealed the requirement for testing and treatment of city water supplies. First it was decided our teachers were responsible for all of the state’s economic woes and had to be punished. Then hundreds of millions were cut from state aid to public schools and the university system. At the same a tax credit was created that reduced business owners state income tax to zero, a credit that required no job creation and will reduce state income by about $2 billion over the next ten years. Another law as passed that prohibited local school districts from making up their losses by raising their property taxes. Finally, the school voucher program was expanded and the decision made to completely remove the cap on the program in ten years. It was also decided to give more tax dollars per pupil to private schools than to public schools and to give parents of those private school students a $10,000 tax credit.

No logical thinking person would deliberately harm one of the nation’s finest public school systems this way on purpose. No one elected to represent the people of this state would deliberately turn against them this way. Wisconsin’s most important resource is her children and the future they represent. No one would deliberately take steps to harm that future. There can only be one explanation for the decisions coming from the capitol building that are destroying our schools. The drinking water is contaminated.

What can be done? Our attorney general and our Department of Natural Resources say they have no authority to protect our state’s water. No help there. After hours of research I have found an old remedy that was first used in 1845. Folk wisdom says not only can this remedy solve water contamination problems but many others as well. The steps involved are almost like an exorcism. On the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November people around the state must gather together in specific locations during specific hours of the day and mark pieces of paper with an X. If enough of those people do this correctly the water in Madison will be clean once again.

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