http://newiprogressive.com/images/stories/S5/constitutional-convention-s5.jpgOur founders saw public education as basic to cultivating the moral and civic virtues needed for people to exercise their rights and duties as citizens. But over the years, this mission has been lost, putting democracy itself at risk.

How the Foxconn giveaway will shape the political environment and test candidates in the Governor's race, Paul Ryan’s fake town hall with CNN, and more...

MILWAUKEE - We take a sneak peak at the developing 2018 governor's race. We discuss how issues like the Foxconn giveaway will shape the political environment and test candidates. Robert updates us on on the growing public opposition to the Foxconn deal, including 3 news events held by Citizen Action Organizing Cooperative in Eau Claire, Wausau, and Appleton.

Jorna reviews Paul Ryan’s fake town hall with CNN that was not open to the public. Also, GOP Sen. Tom Tiffany is threatening Wisconsin’s mining moratorium and Citizen Action is hosting a forum featuring 2018 Supreme Court candidates Rebecca Dallet and Tim Burns in Milwaukee on Thursday, September 14th @ 6pm.

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Fair district maps campaign, Foxconn, state party fundraising, and more...

MADISON - After Charlottesville, and Donald Trump’s reprehensible responses to it, more and more people are becoming aware of how fragile our democracy is.

Last Sunday, I went up to Stoddard, Wisconsin, to give a talk to the Vernon County Democrats on this subject, and I noted that democracy is not doing too well under Scott Walker, either. But I also laid out reasons for hope, as you’ll see here:

Our democracy is hanging by a thread

Tonight, I’m going up to Shell Lake, near Spooner, to give a similar talk to the new group, Indivisible of Northwestern Wisconsin. And I’d be happy to give a talk in your community, too, so just send me an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . I know there’s a hunger for this discussion.

While watching the news on Monday, I saw that Walker got some UW doctors to front for him and Foxconn. We found out who the doctors were, and some were donors to Walker:

Walker flanked by donors at UW Hospital to promote Foxconn

And in one of our periodic postings, we noted that Republicans in Wisconsin are far outraising their Democratic counterparts so far this year:

Wisconsin GOP outraises Dems 3 to 1 in the first six months of 2017

I mentioned that I’m not losing hope. Here’s one reason: The tremendous momentum in Wisconsin for adopting fair voting maps – for ending gerrymandering in Wisconsin once and for all. The momentum picked up speed in just the last two weeks:

Three more counties on board for Fair Maps!

It’s this activism for democracy at the grassroots, which the media tends to ignore, that will bring us through the Age of Trump and the Age of Walker.

Of that, I am sure.

Best,

Matt Rothschild

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If you’d like to support the urgent work we do here at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, please send us a tax-deductible donation by clicking here.

We have a poisoned political culture that glorifies greed, dooming us to a government that works for a wealthy and well-connected few at everyone else’s expense.

ALTOONA, WI - Wisconsin is up to its eyeballs in problems. Our state has lost its way. It is becoming a shadow of its former self. Same goes for the country as a whole.

The problems vary from place to place. Go to Trempealeau County and you see hills and bluffs disappearing and hear fears expressed over the effects of breathing the fine dust that hangs in the air or drinking water that has turned an amber color. In the Central Sands region you see lakes and streams drying up because a few are being allowed to drill high-capacity wells and hog all the water. In Kewaunee County you are told about massive industrial feedlots and how a third of private wells have been poisoned and you see someone turn on a water tap and what comes out of the faucet is brown and smells like cow manure. A few counties away parents are frightened about what old lead pipes in their community’s water system might be doing to their children.

Somewhere else you run into young Millennials buried under a mountain of student debt. One owes $30,000. Another $80,000. A third carries over $100,000 in debt. All of them wonder how they are going to dig out of the hole they are in. All of them wonder when — or if — they will ever be able to buy a car or make a down payment on a house. Another place you meet a farmer who now is expected to file payroll taxes online but has no Internet access out on the farm.

At the next stop everyone is talking about the criminal justice system and racial profiling and mass incarceration. And how impossible it is to make ends meet earning the minimum wage. Then you meet some former factory workers who used to make $25 an hour working on an assembly line but could only find work paying $11 or $12 an hour after the plant closed. Their standard of living has been cut in half. They find little comfort in the news that the state’s unemployment rate is coming down some. They can find a job. What’s next to impossible to find is work that keeps them in the middle class.

Down the road a piece are town officials agonizing over a decision to tear up paved roads and go back to gravel because they can’t afford to maintain the pavement and keep filling all the potholes. Next you arrive in a community where the townspeople are resigned to their local school closing. They know how that school is a hub of local activity, and they know losing it will be a death sentence for their town.

The problems vary widely from place to place. But they all grow from the same taproot, a poisoned political culture that glorifies greed, dooming us to a government that works for a wealthy and well-connected few at everyone else’s expense and an economy that benefits a privileged few and leaves so many behind. The issue is inequality, both political and economic. The problem is privilege, both political and economic.

Solving the many problems plaguing Wisconsin and America depends on remedying the one behind them all.

— Mike McCabe

There is real desperation here, because our job growth has trailed the National average 22 straight quarters, but that doesn’t mean we need to give away the farm. We can do better.

MADISON - Every single elected official is interested and willing to help businesses build and create family supporting jobs here in Wisconsin. That’s because our job growth has trailed the National average 22 straight quarters, every single quarter since Governor Walker created the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC). There is real desperation, because there is real need. But that doesn’t mean we need to give away the farm (literally) for the big fish that falls into our lap. We can work hard and build the businesses we have with investments in education and training, infrastructure, and our assets as a state like the environment.

We all love Wisconsin because it is such a beautiful area to live, raise a family, and retire. Every corner of our state has pristine natural areas we all use for recreation, hunting and other leisure activities. Sacrificing those natural areas as a part of the FOXCONN deal is foolish. Directly putting our water, air and environment at risk is bad public policy. The “give away our environment” attitude with this deal also opens the door to exempt future economic development deals from environmental approval rules and is simply unacceptable. We have dozens of examples of Wisconsin businesses that have grown and flourished without dumping waste and diverting streams and sacrificing Great Lakes waters.

Next we need to examine the deal. Is it really the best we could get for our taxpayer investment or does it reflect the political desperation some leaders feel because of their own failures? Any taxpayer funded investment should demonstrate the best return on investment we can get, build family supporting jobs to replace the union living wage manufacturing jobs we have lost, and have real recovery claw backs if the business packs up and moves or if they automate and eliminate jobs in the process. Governor Walker and WEDC do not have an awesome track record with recovery when companies outsource jobs and the potential replacement of supported jobs with automation is a brave new world for all of us.

The deal does have benchmarks before funds are released which is good, but lacks claw backs if jobs are outsourced or automated – the new Assembly version is just the same. Claw backs require businesses to pay back taxpayer costs if the business fails to keep the contract. Wisconsin needs to be able to at least try to take on FOXCONN if they damage our environment and our economy. FOXCONN is not a Wisconsin company building their future here. They are a Taiwanese company looking to avoid President Trump’s tariff threats and we are just the state with the best deal for them.

We cannot let the relentless pursuit of jobs take away what makes Wisconsin our home. We can do better.

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If you would like more information on FOXCONN and special session Senate Bill 1 contact my office at 608-266-6670 or  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Martha Laning speaks out on hate, Nazis, and Charlottesville.

MADISON - There is only one side.

The deadly violence that shattered the peace of Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend marks a dark time in our country.

These acts of hate—carried out by white supremacists and neo-Nazis—show a blatant and heartbreaking prejudice, on display for the world to see.

President Trump refused to denounce these groups for days, while Democrats and Republicans united to send a crystal-clear message: there is no place in America for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, bigotry or the KKK.

But there is more for us to do. In these trying times, we must also reject policies that enable systemic repression. We must fight to protect voting rights. We must fight to protect unions. We must fight to protect quality housing and education.

We will not allow hate to prevail, or toxic acts of fanatical violence—or systemic injustice—to hold back America’s promise of equality, liberty, and justice for all.

Thank you for standing with us at this decisive moment.

Martha Laning
Chair, The Democratic Party of Wisconsin

MADISON - We just posted a piece that explores whether Foxconn failed to register as a lobbyist in a timely fashion, which I thought might interest you:

Did Foxconn violate state lobby law?

The Foxconn bill, by the way, also includes some corporate welfare to a Milwaukee company whose executives gave Gov. Walker $7,500 over the last several years:

Foxconn corporate welfare bill includes $10M giveaway for Fiserv

Speaking of Walker, this week he signed a bill that could jeopardize our health and safety. It’s called the REINS law, and you should check out the praise that a major Koch Brothers group lavished on Walker for signing it:

Walker approves WMC, Koch-backed anti-regulation bill

In the interest of transparency, several Democratic lawmakers are asking Attorney General Brad Schimel to let us all know how much his office has been spending on pet lawsuits of the conservative movement nationally:

Dem lawmakers want DOJ to disclose civil case costs

And also in the interest of transparency, we brought to light some of the biggest donors – Republican and Democratic alike – to so-called 527 groups in the last six months. See who is throwing the most money around:

Wisconsin contributors gave $2M+ to electioneering groups

I hope your summer is going well, despite the nuclear cloud!*

Best,

Matt Rothschild
Executive Director
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

MADISON, WI – Senator Mark Miller (D-Monona) offered the weekly Democratic radio address today.

The audio file of this week’s address can be found here.

A written transcript of the address is below:

“Hello, I’m Senator Mark Miller with this week’s democratic radio address.

“Governor Walker recently announced a deal to give away billions in taxpayer dollars to the unreliable tech company Foxconn. He is willing to roll-back environmental protections to woo a company known to bail on commitments with other states and countries. Foxconn has a reputation of promising the moon and failing to deliver anything. Statistics show that Foxconn is an extremely unproductive company by American standards and will likely come nowhere near paying the salaries or employment numbers that the GOP is touting, if they follow through at all.

“Fuzzy on the details, Walker has no problem eliminating environmental protections and charging the taxpayers of Wisconsin $1200 per household per job, to bring Foxconn to Wisconsin. This has all the earmarks potentially to be an extremely bad deal for Wisconsin.

“Wisconsin currently has a serious budget problem and we’re looking at the largest budget in state history, yet Walker is offering $3 billion incentive package. Wisconsin doesn’t have $3 billion – so what more gets cut to afford this?

“Additionally, what does a deal like this, full of incentives and exemptions, tell an existing company here in Wisconsin, struggling with payrolls of their own.

“We have been down this road before – promised jobs with the mine in northern Wisconsin. No mine. No jobs. Governor Walker is so desperate after his jobs promise failure, that he is willing to give away the farm without any guarantees. Instead of telling those with legitimate concerns, to go suck lemons – Governor Walker needs to prove that he isn’t getting Wisconsin suckered into being stuck with a lemon..”

http://newiprogressive.com/images/stories/S5/afghanistan-2011x250.jpgA veteran who served in Korea believes too many juveniles in the White House, Congress and the military, are like high school wise guys saying “Nobody can tell me what to do".

Democrats will win again when they show discomfort with the current political culture and all the ladder climbing and nest feathering and back scratching gives way to actual public service and sacrifice for the greater good.

ALTOONA, WI - Over the course of my 57 years, I’ve never seen a time when our public institutions were more disrespected and distrusted. And with good reason. I’ve also never seen a time when government was less responsive to regular people. Over and over, our government is put to work for a privileged few, the wealthy and well-connected. People notice this. They realize their own voices aren’t being heard and their own interests are not being served. That’s a sure recipe for disrespect and distrust of public institutions.

These conditions are especially poisonous to the Democratic Party. The Democrats are widely seen as the party of government. There is reality to that perception. Of the two major parties, it’s the Democrats who most strongly believe that government is essential to a civil society and can have a positive and constructive impact on people’s lives.

But here’s the problem for Democrats. It’s next to impossible to be popular as the party of public institutions at a time when so many people have so little faith in those institutions. People see public officials climbing the ladder, advancing their careers, feathering their own nests. They see those officials exchanging favors, scratching the backs of those who scratch theirs. None of that looks much like public service.

This is why Democrats have been on a decades-long losing streak and are in worse shape as a party than at any point in my lifetime. It’s why Democrats do not control either house of Congress or the White House. And why they are not calling the shots in two-thirds of state capitals, including Wisconsin’s. Being the party of disrespected and distrusted public institutions explains why Democrats have lost more than 1,000 seats in Congress, state legislatures and governor’s offices across the nation just since 2008.

The current political culture celebrates greed. It emphasizes self advancement over the common good. It treats public service as just another opportunity for self dealing. When such a culture flourishes, it’s today’s Republican Party that much more comfortably fits the role of the party of the times we live in. Democrats can say they are concerned for the common good and are acting in the public interest, but when they appear to be operating comfortably within the system as it works today and when they cater to a few constituencies at everyone else’s expense, voters inevitably see them as hypocrites. In a political culture where greed is triumphant and self dealing the norm, Republicans are credited for at least being upfront about their intentions and Democrats are punished for hypocrisy.

Democrats will win again when they show genuine discomfort with the current political culture and the way the system presently functions. Democrats will win again when the political culture is changed, when all the ladder climbing and nest feathering and back scratching gives way to actual public service and actual acts of sacrifice for the greater good. Democrats will win again when today’s me politics becomes tomorrow’s we politics.

And not before.

— Mike McCabe