But now the old industrial pillars of furniture, clothing and electrical goods are struggling, Beijing is looking to its “new productive forces”: solar panels, lithium batteries and electric cars.
“We are exporting to the UK, Belgium, Germany, mostly European countries, but also to Africa, Australia, South America, North America and also South East Asia,” salesperson Yan Mu says as he shows off the company’s storage batteries.
His is one of the stalls at an exhibition held by hundreds of green energy storage companies in a refurbished and repurposed steel plant on the edge of Beijing.
Joe Biden suggested his war hero uncle may have met a grisly end among flesh-eating savages after his plane went down over Papua New Guinea in World War II.
The president said there were ‘a lot of cannibals at the time’ in the area where his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan’s plane crashed in the 1940s – and his remains were never located.
However, Biden’s account was inconsistent with Pentagon records which showed the plane was not ‘shot down’ as he said.
MILWAUKEE – A new Marquette Law School Poll survey of Wisconsin finds Republican former President Donald Trump supported by 51% of registered voters and Democratic President Joe Biden by 49%. Among likely voters also, Trump is the choice of 51% and Biden of 49%.
In the U.S. Senate race, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is supported by 52% and Republican challenger Eric Hovde by 47% among registered voters. Among likely voters, the race is a tie, with 50% for both Baldwin and Hovde.
What was supposed to be a time of celebration for Asna Tabassum – the University of Southern California’s 2024 valedictorian – has turned to disappointment after the university denied her the chance to give a speech at commencement over security concerns.
“Over the past several days, discussion relating to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor,” USC Provost Andrew Guzman said in an online campus-wide letter. “The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.”
Tabassum, a first-generation South Asian-American Muslim, would have delivered her speech at the graduation ceremony on May 10.
[…]
USC student advocacy group Trojans for Israel accused Tabassum of sharing a link in the bio of her Instagram page that calls Zionism “a racist settler-colonial ideology” and advocates for the “complete abolishment” of Israel, it wrote in a social media post.
Although nobody is really talking, it seems clear that Tabassum is an antisemitic bigot and USC is worried about protests at graduation. I can understand that USC wants to preserve the graduation as an event to be enjoyed by all of the graduates. It’s not about this one person. Graduation is about hundreds of graduates and their families celebrating their achievement. They don’t deserve to have their day ruined by a circus.
On the other hand, Tabaddum earned the privilege to speak. One would hope that she has the class to keep her speech to traditional topics and not delve into world politics. One would hope.
Were it me, I would let her speak and beef up security with a wide security perimeter to keep any protests at a distance. I would also insist that her speech be approved in advance. Sure, she could go off script, but hopefully they can instill in her the responsibility to make the day about her classmates and not about her.
Good for the Republicans. They put forth a reasonable bill to deal with this and Evers vetoed it. Evers has proven to be untrustworthy in negotiations and is just grandstanding now. His legacy of refusing to come to the table and negotiate in good faith is biting him in the butt. Good.
The moves are the latest twist in the ongoing stalemate between Evers and the Legislature over the best way to combat PFAS chemicals that have polluted groundwater in communities across the state. Evers and Republicans have both said that fighting the chemicals is a priority, but they haven’t been able to come together on what to do about it.
Evers invoked a rarely used power and called a meeting of the Republican-led Legislature’s budget committee, urging it to release the funding that was previously approved in the state budget. But Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee did not show up, with the GOP co-chairs calling Evers’ move “blatant political game-playing.
”Although no Republicans came, Evers made a previously unannounced appearance in the Capitol hearing room and joined three Democratic lawmakers in blasting the GOP inaction.
“The Republicans are missing in action on this,” Evers said. “This is one they whiffed on, big time.”
[…]
Sen. Howard Marklein and Rep. Mark Born, the Republican committee co-chairs, said in a letter delivered to Evers on Friday that although the governor can call a meeting of the budget committee, he can’t actually require it to meet or take action. The committee will not meet, they said.
“We are disappointed in your disregard for a co-equal branch of government, as well as the legislative process,” Born and Marklein wrote to Evers.
[…]
Evers said in his veto message that he objected to the bill because it would limit the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ authority to hold polluters liable. But Wimberger, the bill’s sponsor, said Evers wants to create a “slush fund” for the DNR and not protect landowners not responsible for pollution from possible costly enforcement actions.
According to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, 60.2% of the 103 proposed school referendums in Wisconsin passed this April. That is down from the 80.1% that passed in 2022 and 85.6% that passed in 2020. That last time that support for school referendums had this little support was in the wake of the Great Recession.
[…]
The core issue facing the West Bend School District is a decline in enrollment. After peaking about 10 years ago, enrollment has been steadily declining and is projected to continue to decline for the foreseeable future. It is a pervasive demographic trend throughout Wisconsin. According to the district’s figures, enrollment declined 18.6% over the past 10 years and will be down almost 40% off peak in another 10 years. The result is that the district has far too much physical space for far too few students. The district needs to right-size its physical footprint to match reality.
First, we must dispel the notion that any school district needs more money to shrink. When a business sees a downturn, they close stores and reduce staff. Nobody gives a business more money to get smaller. School districts do not need more money to get smaller either.
They can close and sell facilities, move and reduce staff, and change bus routes at no additional cost to taxpayers.
Voters must not allow “declining enrollment” to be conflated with “need more money.”
[…]
According to Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction data, in 2011-2012, the West Bend School District spent $82.5 million to educate 7,010 children (DPI uses a three-year rolling average for student count, so actual student count is a bit lower), or $11,763 per child. In 20212022, they spent $121.9 million to educate 6,491 students, or $18,779 per child. That is a 59.6% increase in per-student spending in just ten years. Yes, inflation has been part of that story in the past four years, but not even that accounts for such an increase in spending.
Where did all of that money go? Clearly it did not go to updating facilities or they would not be about to ask for more money in a referendum. According to ACT and other test scores tracked by the DPI, educational performance has been flat or declining. The district spent a fair amount paying off old debt from previous referendums. The district also abandoned a proposed merit pay system for staff in 2020. It is difficult to justify that much additional spending in a district with declining enrollment while failing to properly manage the district’s facilities.
CHICAGO — Pro-Palestinian protestors took to the streets of Downtown Chicago on Monday afternoon, shutting down a road in the area as they called for an end to the war in Gaza.
Protestors blocked and flooded a portion of West Adams Street before the group encountered a large number of police officers who prevented them from crossing South Clark Street.
[…]
The demonstration comes only hours after 40 protesters were taken into custody after another group shut down all lanes of outbound Interstate I-190, causing significant delays for drivers headed toward O’Hare International Airport.
Attorneys with Wisconsin’s largest business lobbying group asked the state Supreme Court on Monday to strike down Democratic Gov. Tony Evers‘ use of a partial veto to lock in a school funding increase for the next 400 years.
The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center filed the petition on behalf of two taxpayers. It will be up to the liberal-controlled Supreme Court to decide whether to hear the case before it goes through lower courts, which is where cases typically start.
At issue is a partial veto Evers made of the state budget in July that increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
[…]
“The law is clear,” said WMC Litigation Center Deputy Director Nathan Kane in a statement. “Voters and their elected legislators are the ones empowered to increases taxes, no one else.”
Biden didn’t mention cost, nor did his economists, but outsiders Thursday pegged the price of this gift to 30 million borrowers at about $85 billion for the new parts of the scheme, or about $560 billion if you include previously announced plans. For scale, that’s about what the government spent on Medicaid this year.
This money isn’t imaginary. Repayment is expected by the federal government, the sum budgeted as incoming money to offset planned spending. To the extent it doesn’t show up, it can’t offset anything. The government, where spending already outran income by more than $1,064 billion in just the past six months, will add it to the $34,581 billion it already owes — that’s about $103,000 for every woman, man and babe in arms.
That will be paid, somehow and someday, much of it by the other 300 million Americans who aren’t blessed by Biden’s magnanimity. Most of them didn’t go to college, and of those who did, many didn’t borrow or didn’t borrow much. More than a third of students who earned a bachelor’s degree in 2019-20, according to the latest figures from The College Board, had no student debt. Only a quarter had more than $30,000. This thrift and prudence will be rewarded by having to pick up the burdens incurred by others.
Many of those who benefit, in the meantime, are relatively old and affluent. Biden would cancel debts for borrowers who’ve been repaying for 20 years or more — so, people at least in their 40s. According to federal numbers, it’s borrowers 35 to 49 years old who owe the most — in Wisconsin, about 39% of the $23 billion in student debt outstanding here. This fits with how much of student debt comes from professional degrees, such as those in law, medicine or dentistry: 72% of those getting such a degree owe $50,000 or more. But it means that relief is going to people who’ve had years to ramp up their careers or who are in high-earning professions.
DENVER (AP) — Colorado’s Democratic-controlled House on Sunday passed a bill that would ban the sale and transfer of semiautomatic firearms, a major step for the legislation after roughly the same bill was swiftly killed by Democrats last year.
The bill, which passed on a 35-27 vote, is now on its way to the Democratic-led state Senate. If it passes there, it could bring Colorado in line with 10 other states — including California, New York and Illinois — that have prohibitions on semiautomatic guns.
For the first time ever, Iran has carried out strikes against Israeli territory.
In the middle of Saturday night, air raid alerts went off in Israel, residents were urged to seek shelter while explosions were heard as air defences were activated.
Interceptions lit up the night sky in several places across the country, while many drones and missiles were shot down by Israel’s allies before they reached Israeli territory.
At least nine countries were involved in the military escalation – with projectiles fired from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen and downed by Israel, the US, the UK and France as well as Jordan.
The laser was originally expected to be operational by 2032, but new reforms intended to speed up government procurement of weapons mean that it will now be ready five years earlier.
WAUKESHA, Wis. — A judge ruled the woman accused of nearly killing her friend 10 years ago to appease the fictional character Slender Man will not be released back into the community. The judge said Morgan Geyser will remain in a mental health institution and continue to get treatment. This comes as the second day of a hearing to see if Geyser could get a conditional release, wrapped up.
DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford Motor is lowering the starting prices of some all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup trucks as it prepares to resume shipping the vehicles after quality issues.
[…]
The cost reductions are the latest electric vehicle price changes for the broader automotive industry amid slower-than-expected consumer adoption. Ford’s cuts come three months after it adjusted Lightning prices, including increasing some model prices.
Auto insurance costs have been on the rise for some time, growing every month as part of the index since December 2021. Since then, costs have increased by 45.8%, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, auto insurance remains a small portion of the CPI, with a 2.85% weighting.
The uptick comes on top of historically high prices for new and used vehicles since the coronavirus pandemic. It’s also become increasingly more expensive to repair vehicles due to supply chain shortages, mechanic wage increases and additional technologies in vehicles such as microprocessors, cameras and other sensors — all of which contribute to higher vehicle and insurance costs.
The Biden administration on Thursday announced they are closing what is often known as the “gun show loophole,” by tightening up the definition of what it means to be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has just implemented a change in the federal register language, which was previously more specific to who was selling guns, and the agency did it in accordance with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was passed in 2022.
[…]
Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who helped negotiate the bill said he and Senator Tom Tillis plan to introduce a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act to overturn, what a spokesperson for Cornyn called an “unconstitutional rule” and a spokesperson said the two already have other Senate Republicans signed on in support.
“The administration is acting lawlessly here, and the vast majority of this rule has nothing to do with the BSCA. Of course, this rule has been on the administration’s wish list for many years despite Congress rejecting these provisions repeatedly,” a Cornyn spokesperson said.
There is no doubt as to the intent of Congress when the people who wrote the law are calling Biden out.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley announced Thursday she would step down at the end of her term next spring, putting liberals’ majority on the pivotal swing state’s highest bench at stake.
The April 2025 election to replace Bradley promises to be an expensive and bitter race and will likely feature many of the same momentous issues — like abortion rights and redistricting — that defined a 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race that ultimately gave liberals their first majority on the bench in 15 years.
In a statement, Bradley, 73, said she would not run for a fourth 10-year term on the court, saying it was a good time to bring “fresh perspectives to the court.”
“My decision has not come lightly. It is made after careful consideration and reflection. I know I can do the job and do it well. I know I can win re-election should I run, but it’s just time to pass the torch,” wrote Bradley, who was elected to the technically nonpartisan court in 1995.
There are some interesting plans. The root cause, of course, is that the West Bend Schools District’s enrollment has collapsed and looks to continue to decline for the foreseeable future. The story is happening across the nation and is a demographic trend with which everyone is grappling.
For the moment, I will put aside my frustration that this district has seen these enrollment numbers for 10 years and did nothing. Small changes made along the way are preferable to massive changes after there is crisis.
The plans on the table are to close a couple of buildings, build a big new school in Jackson, upgrade some buildings, yadda yadda yadda. Same old stuff. It’s all designed to create a package that is attractive enough to enough voters to get them so pass an expensive referendum so that a lot of people will get paid and the school leaders get to pretend that they accomplished something.
Spoiler alert… it is very, very inexpensive to just close buildings, sell them (you can even sell them cheap to prioritize getting them off the taxpayers’ books instead of getting a windfall), and move kids to ample available space in the rest of the district. You don’t need to spend tens of millions of dollars shrink your physical footprint to adjust to fewer customers. No business on earth does that.
Ouch. It’s frustrating that the media continues to push the notion that the Federal Reserve is the only entity that has a lever to manage inflation without even mentioning the root cause of inflation – massive government spending. As long as Biden continues to spend, inflation will continue. It really is that simple. If you want to pull inflation back, start ending government programs and reduce spending.
A hotter-than-expected consumer price index report rattled Wall Street Wednesday, but markets are buzzing about an even more specific prices gauge contained within the data — the so-called supercore inflation reading.
Along with the overall inflation measure, economists also look at the core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, to find the true trend. The supercore gauge, which also excludes shelter and rent costs from its services reading, takes it even a step further. Fed officials say it is useful in the current climate as they see elevated housing inflation as a temporary problem and not as good a measure of underlying prices.
Supercore accelerated to a 4.8% pace year over year in March, the highest in 11 months.
[…]
Further complicating the backdrop is a dwindling consumer savings rate and higher borrowing costs which make the central bank more likely to keep monetary policy restrictive “until something breaks,” Fitzpatrick said.
The Fed will have a hard time bringing down inflation with more rate hikes because the current drivers are stickier and not as sensitive to tighter monetary policy, he cautioned.
My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part.
Gov. Tony Evers has called on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to allow election drop boxes throughout Wisconsin. It is telling that he is not proposing legislation to allow drop boxes, but is, instead, calling on his activist allies on the High Court to impose drop boxes by judicial fiat. There are two separate questions regarding this issue. Is it legal? Is it a good idea? Let us start with the first question.
During the 2020 election during the pandemic, the Wisconsin Elections Commission gave guidance for local election officials to use drop boxes to collect absentee ballots. Most likely, they gave this guidance at the behest of local officials trying to grapple with running an election during a pandemic when many people were not comfortable going out in public. While the WEC’s and local officials’ motives to use absentee ballot drop boxes may have been benign, it was not legal.
Wisconsin’s election laws are extensive and prescribe how elections are to be held, who can vote, what identification is needed, how ballots are to be secured, and how absentee ballots are to be handled. Despite the lengthy statutes setting how elections are to be conducted, they are silent on the topic of drop boxes. The law neither allows them nor forbids them.
The laws do, however, provide detailed rules on how to manage absentee ballots. The fact legislatures of the past under Republican and Democrat control wrote these laws without mentioning drop boxes is important. Drop boxes have been used in other states for years, but prior legislatures decided not to include their use in Wisconsin’s statutes. This is why, in the ruling issued by the Wisconsin Supreme Court less than two years ago, Justice Hagedorn wrote: “We conclude WEC’s staff erred by authorizing a voting mechanism not authorized by law. The memos created a ballot drop box scheme entirely absent from Wisconsin’s election code. The legislature’s ‘carefully regulated’ procedures for absentee voting do not permit voting via ballot drop boxes.”
Ballot drop boxes are clearly illegal in Wisconsin. With the new leftist majority on the Supreme Court, however, the issue has been challenged again despite the recent ruling on the matter. None of the facts have changed. Only the justices have changed. This is why Governor Evers and his comrades are asking the court to reverse its earlier decision and allow ballot drop boxes without ever proposing legislation to allow them in the statutes.
While clearly illegal at this time, they may be a good idea. It is a subject that can be sincerely debated with good points on both sides. This is what the Legislature is for — for duly elected representatives of the people to debate and vote for laws that that set public policy.
If we are to have ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin, the procedure for how to manage and secure them should be defined by law to ensure consistency and secure elections across the state. They should be monitored in person or by video that is archived. People should not be permitted to insert a ballot into the drop box without first taking a picture of their face in case the ballot is challenged. And only one ballot should be able to be inserted at a time with a minimum 30-second interval between each inserted ballot.
The problem with drop boxes in the current usage — particularly unmonitored ones — is that they are easily susceptible to election fraud. Bad actors can drop hundreds or thousands of fraudulent ballots into drop boxes without the person ever having to identify themselves. It is a gaping hole in our election security. If we are going to have drop boxes, let us do it in a way that maintains secure and fair elections. Wisconsin law dictates how local officials must run elections and manage ballots in every other case. How we might use ballot drop boxes should not be left to the discretion of local election officials.
However, Wisconsin does not need ballot drop boxes. People who are unable or unwilling to vote in person can already mail in their absentee ballots without ever leaving their homes. Wisconsin also has generous inperson early voting times for weeks before an election. Wisconsin’s same day registration even makes it easy to vote if someone forgets to register in advance of the election. There are currently no significant barriers to voting that providing absentee ballot drop boxes would remedy.
The question is, then, why are Governor Evers and his comrades so adamant that Wisconsin allow ballot drop boxes? Evers took to X last week to declare, “Drop box voting is safe and secure. Period.” That is demonstrably false. A quick search reveals hundreds of videos and stories of people shoving dozens or hundreds of ballots at a time into ballot drop boxes throughout America. There is no good, legal reason that anyone should be putting multiple ballots into a drop box. One can deduce that Evers’ rabid support for unsecured ballot drop boxes does not come from honorable intentions.
Sadly, I expect the activist leftist majority on the Supreme Court to reverse the recent, and correct, decision of the court to prohibit drop boxes. Without statutory guidance to govern the use and security of the drop boxes, their yawning invitation to commit election fraud will further undermine confidence that Wisconsin truly has a secure and fair elections.
Jason on Difference Police Response to Protests in TX and CA: “I’ll just leave this here… it’s a perfect summary of any student protests now-a-days. https://nypost.com/2024/04/25/us-news/clueless-columbia-student-at-nyu-rally-why-are-we-protesting/” Apr 25, 21:13
MHMaley on WIAA considers implementing NIL: “I spoke to a HS AD today . He and I were both surprised at the result The WIAA was…” Apr 25, 14:24
jonnyv on WIAA considers implementing NIL: “T. I would rather see a minor league or some sort of professional red-shirting than have students come in for…” Apr 25, 14:05
Merlin on WIAA considers implementing NIL: “Nice to see that the WIAA punted the issue into the future. Nothing is lost by taking the time to…” Apr 25, 13:38
Tuerqas on WIAA considers implementing NIL: “>Just because it’s being done somewhere else already doesn’t mean Wisconsin needs to be an early adopter. Well Merlin, if…” Apr 25, 08:51
Tuerqas on WIAA considers implementing NIL: “>Frankly, I also think that the professional organizations need to eliminate age requirements for their leagues. There is no reason…” Apr 25, 08:02
jonnyv on WIAA considers implementing NIL: “M, the RUMOR (from a family that goes to Lutheran) is that the family was paid 1M for all the…” Apr 24, 16:52
MHMaley on WIAA considers implementing NIL: “NIL WILL pass in Wisconsin .. AD’s are already preparing for what that looks like . I’m looking into the…” Apr 24, 15:48
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