Talking About Schools

Kristin Kubisiak has an article about the West Bend Schools in which I am quoted.  I have a correction.

Unemployment in West Bend is high — about 14 per- cent — and the community is hurting, Robinson said.

Unemployment is down a bit, but it’s still in the double-digits.  11% I think?  I’ll look it up later. 

“It’s important we talk about these things,” Robinson said. “Local government affects our lives and spends our money. If we really want to focus on improving our lives through the government, it’s at the local level where we can make an impact. I’m glad we have a good discussion. It gets heated now and then but ultimately we all want the same things — we just have different ideas about how to get there.”

Twelve Years

Wow.  Twelve years ago today I woke up, got dressed, and got married.  Still feels like a dream…

Happy Anniversary, Wendy. 

Bike Madness

Mexican Investigators Go Missing

Brazen.

A lead investigator and another official looking into the massacre of 72 migrants whose bodies were found this week in northern Mexico are missing, President Felipe Calderon said Friday.

Calderon, who was giving a speech on drug violence, initially said the body of one of the men had been found. But he was handed a note few minutes later and corrected himself, saying the investigator was missing but there was no information about his death.

Mexican media reported Friday morning that two bodies had been found and that one of them belonged to the investigator.

Businesses Adjusting

Some bad news for Wisconsin.

GE Healthcare confirmed Friday morning it will move some of the manufacturing operations at its Tower Avenue facility in Milwaukee to sites in El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico.

The move will result in the layoff of about 29 employees, according to a letter the company sent to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. The layoffs won’t happen before October 25, and are currently not scheduled to begin until about Jan. 1, the letter said.

And...

Harley-Davidson Inc. may move its Milwaukee manufacturing to a plant in Kansas City, Mo., if the company cannot reach an agreement with its labor unions here, a company spokesman confirmed Friday.

The decision will depend on the outcome of negotiations that are taking place with the United Steelworkers of America and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Harley-Davidson has said its goal is to cut millions of dollars in costs from its Wisconsin operations that employ about 2,000 people.

Accounting Gimmick Called Illegal

Good.

As part of its plan to do that, the state Department of Health Services is proposing delaying $127 million in payments to health vendors such as HMOs that are supposed to be made in May or June 2011, during the current two-year budget. Instead, the state would push those costs into the future and pay the providers in the next two-year budget, starting in July 2011. But if the state doesn’t delay the payments, it could have to find new money or cuts to keep those costs from being added to the health programs’ shortfall.

Delaying payments has been a frequent tactic to help balance past budgets approved by Legislatures and governors. But if lawmakers don’t approve this latest delay of payments, the Legislative Audit Bureau believes it would run counter to state law, according to the new report.

Tiger Cub Found Among Stuffed Animals

Yikes.

A two-month-old tiger cub has been found sedated and hidden among stuffed toy tigers in a woman’s luggage at Bangkok’s airport, the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic has said.

MJS Campaigns for Barrett

Well, the MJS has outdone itself in trying to smear Walker, but let’s take a closer look. 

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker inaccurately described the state’s health care program for the poor this week - saying it was originally a temporary program when in fact it never was.

Walker, a Republican running for governor, in a debate Wednesday also said the program, called BadgerCare Plus, faces “all kinds of fraud and abuse,” but rampant fraud has not been identified.

and Walker’s excuse…

Walker said he improperly described BadgerCare Plus because candidates have to give short answers in debates. He said Thursday he opposed Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s slight loosening of time limits on Wisconsin Works, or W-2, the state’s welfare-to-work program. He said he believed allowing people to receive benefits longer had the effect of keeping people on BadgerCare Plus longer, and that was the point he was trying to make in the debate.

It’s a pretty lame excuse, but let’s get real… government welfare programs, including BadgerCare Plus, have a long history of fraud and abuse.  It’s not exactly a stretch.  The fact that “fraud has not been identified” means that nobody is looking.  Again… finding fraud in a government handout program is not hard if one is willing to look. 

The MJS has long since past any sense of notion that they are unbiased observers.  It’s rather shameless. 

If anything, this is closer to a true criticism:

Former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, Walker’s opponent in the Sept. 14 Republican primary, said he wanted to take $810 million meant for a high-speed rail line from Milwaukee to Madison and use the money for tax cuts. But that money has been earmarked by Congress for rail and state officials have repeatedly said if Wisconsin doesn’t take the money it will go to another state for its rail projects.

Death of a Sales Tax

This serves as a lesson...

The County Board will decide if it wants to formalize a new policy to allow using county sales tax money to help attract jobgenerating business projects.

[...]

Earlier this week, the County Board’s Executive Committee agreed to a rewrite of the county ordinance regulating the use of sales tax revenue to include its use for specific and approved economic development projects. That proposed ordinance chance now goes to the full County Board for approval on Sept. 14.

  The five-member committee of county supervisors expressed support for adding economic development projects as authorized targets for sales tax revenue.

  Annually, the county sales tax generates more than $8 million, which the ordinance currently restricts for use on capital projects — major facility construction or repairs — debt retirement and property tax levy reduction.

  The revised ordinance, if approved by the board next month, would add “County Board approved economic development projects” into that list of approved uses for sales tax revenues.

The sales tax was originally sold to Washington County taxpayers as a necessary temporary necessity to pay for some significant capital projects.  It originally had a sunset date.  The County Board decided to keep the tax alive after the projects for which it was levied were complete and now just use it for whatever catches their whimsy. 

Lesson: a new tax levied for whatever purpose will never be rescinded. 

ACT Scores Drop at MPS

Maybe if we just spent a little more...

After expanding ACT testing to all high school juniors last year, Milwaukee Public Schools posted its lowest score in five years on the dominant college admissions test, according to data released Thursday.

The district’s average composite score on the ACT fell to 15.8 this year, from 17.2 in 2009. Testing was expanded to 3,846 students in 2010; only 2,332 students took the test in 2009.

Statewide, the average composite ACT score for the Class of 2010 dropped to 22.1 this year, from 22.3 last year. When those scores came out last week, the state Department of Public Instruction partly attributed Wisconsin’s growth in minority participation in ACT testing to MPS’ universal testing program.

At the same time, it also documented a marked drop in average scores by minority students in the state.

Barrett Website Down

Oops!

BarrettforWisconsin.com, the campaign blog for the gubernatorial campaign of Mayor Tom Barrett, briefly was shut down on Thursday morning when the registration for the domain name expired on Wednesday.

The shutdown was first reported on WTMJ-AM (Radio 620).

The site is now back up, presumably because the campaign renewed its registration. A spokesman for the campaign did not return two phone calls and an e-mail requesting comment on the matter.

Sloppy, sloppy. 

Prioritize Spending

I can’t believe I’m going to say this… Gwen Moore is right.

A proposed Milwaukee-to-Kenosha commuter train line has a new nemesis: U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore.

Moore, a Milwaukee Democrat, recently unsuccessfully sought to freeze federal action on the KRM Commuter Link, a $283.5 million rail line that would connect downtown Milwaukee to Kenosha, Racine and the southern suburbs with 15 round trips daily.

Like Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway, Moore says she’s not opposed to commuter rail but believes funding for Milwaukee County’s embattled bus system must come first.

She’s wrong about seeking a “dedicated source of funding” for the buses (read: higher taxes), but certainly the existing buses should be a priority over the future train. 

Losing Jobs

Gee… if only we had more trains to spur job creation. 

In both seasonally adjusted terms as well as un-adjusted terms, the July decline in payrolls in metro Milwaukee was the biggest month-to-month decline among the state’s 12 metro regions tracked by the agency.

With adjustments to smooth out seasonal fluctuations caused by tourism and weather, metro Milwaukee lost 1,500 jobs. Most of the other 11 metro areas were little changed, with seven of the 12 flat or showing seasonally adjusted gains in employment.

Without adjustments, metro Milwaukee lost 5,800. Without adjustments, all 12 regions lost jobs in a month-to-month comparison.

“We do see some deterioration in the number of jobs,” said Abdur Chowdhury, professor and chairman of the economics department at Marquette University.

Golfer Oversleeps

Dumbass.

Furyk overslept Wednesday after his cell phone alarm clock lost power overnight, causing him to be late for his pro-am tee time in The Barclays. That left PGA Tour officials no choice but to disqualify him from the first of four FedEx Cup playoff events.

MI6 Murder in London

Hmmmmm...

A man whose body was found in a bag at the home of a missing MI6 worker in central London may have been murdered two weeks ago, police believe.

The discovery was made in a top-floor flat at Alderney Street, Pimlico, on Monday afternoon.

Police broke into the property after his work colleagues said he had not been seen “for some time”.

A government spokesman said it could not confirm or deny whether individuals worked for the intelligence agencies.

Officers discovered a mobile phone and several mobile phone SIM cards laid out at the flat.