Political Heat

Concealed carry on school grounds makes little sense, given its failure to deter crime elsewhere in WI so far Perhaps because of their big electoral wins in November, several voices on the right are now calling for an even stronger conservative agenda, including even more loosening of gun laws in the state of Wisconsin. Among them is Owen Robinson of Boots and Sabers , who is advocating for concealed carry to be legal on school grounds across the state. He recently wrote in the West Bend Daily News : There is no rational justification for continuing banning guns on school grounds… Despite the dire warnings of opponents of the Second Amendment, Wisconsin has not turned into the Wild West and neither has any other state that permits concealed carry. Of course, the notion that Wisconsin must turn into the “Wild West” in order for something to be seen as a failure is utterly preposterous. Concealed carry itself was sold on the idea that it would deter crime in Wisconsin. It has...

Latest release demonstrates the worst second quarter jobs report yet under Walker’s administration Wisconsin’s jobs report for the second quarter of 2016 came out last week, detailing how many actual jobs were created from June of 2015 to June of 2016. The numbers are not that inspiring . The state added 25,656 private sector jobs during that time period, a rate of growth of about 1.04 percent. The current rate of jobs growth pales in comparison when compared to the previous governor’s last budget. Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, passed his last budget in 2009. Since budgets in Wisconsin are two years in length, his last budget lasted until June of 2011 -- six months into Gov. Scott Walker’s first term in office. In the final year of Doyle’s last budget (from June 2010 to June 2011) Wisconsin created 39,909 jobs, a 1.7 percent rate of private sector jobs growth. The latest jobs report, then, demonstrates a 40 percent slowdown in jobs creation since Doyle's budget expired . W...

So-called “conventional wisdom” about the effects of changing to a popular vote vs. keeping the Electoral College are veritably false It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to change his position on the Electoral College. Just days after the election this year, Trump had implied he preferred abolishing the Electoral College in favor of a popular vote system selecting the president. In prior years, Trump expressed the same distaste for the current system. After winning last week, Trump  told 60 Minutes’s Lesley Stahl , “I’m not going to change my mind just because I won. I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win.” But earlier this week, Trump did change his mind... ...and suggested he’d have an easier time campaigning under an alternative, popular vote model: The argument Trump is making here is a common one made by defenders of the Electoral College, tha...

A migration of less than two percent of Clinton voters to the Midwest would have won her the race Here is a quick little note about the absurdity of the Electoral College. If just 1.8 percent of Hillary Clinton voters from the state of California -- less than one in every fifty voters who cast a ballot in her favor -- had instead moved to one of three states just thirty days earlier , we could have seen a Clinton victory over Donald Trump. Wisconsin’s ten electoral votes would have required an additional 27,000 votes from California in her favor. Michigan would have required an additional 12,000 votes. And in Pennsylvania, Clinton would have needed 68,000 of those additional California votes votes to win. That’s 110,000 ballots that Clinton actually had, but that she needed in three different states. Had the voters in California -- again, just 1.8 percent of the total she won there -- lived in those three states instead, she would have won the presidency. But simply becau...

We must condemn racism, whether invisible or overt, before it becomes normalized in our communities You would like to think that these reports of racial-based graffiti can’t happen in your town. When they do, it’s terrifying. In my hometown of Monona, Wisconsin, incidents of graffiti came to the attention of some residents who went to a small playground in the community of under 8,000. From the social media site Nextdoor , an eyewitness account: Someone has tagged a bunch of swastika's and "Trump" signs with a sharpie in multiple locations on the nice playground gear in Oneida Park. Pretty sad seeing our children play here. When my son told me about it, I went and tried to clean it off but the product I was using wasn't the right tool for the job. Might go back later with a stronger cleaner. Please keep an eye out. Anybody know who you'd report this to for proper cleanup? I myself, living not far from where the incidents in question happened, had to se...

Arguments in favor of preserving the Electoral College are flawed I’ve already said a bit on the Electoral College this week in my most previous post, after it was revealed that more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump for president. But because Trump won more Electoral College votes, he technically won the election. Image via USA.gov My commentary in that post was not meant to imply that Trump should be denied the presidency; both he and Clinton were playing by the same set of rules before the election took place. But I do fear that future elections could play out the same way, and that it’s necessary to get rid of the outdated method of selecting -- rather than electing -- our president. Another bit of commentary, taking the opposite view, caught my eye this afternoon. Jonathan Krause , Programming and News Director of radio station WOSH in the Fox Valley region of Wisconsin, felt that the preservation of the Electoral College was necessary. On his...

Your vote matters less than other people's votes across the country -- and that's a system we should no longer endorse I could dissect and examine the reasons why Hillary Clinton lost what should have been an easy, by all means winnable election against Donald Trump. But I don’t think it’s necessary for me to do so -- thousands of commentators have already lamented the results of the election, and I want to take a look at it from a different angle. Namely, that Hillary Clinton didn’t lose at all. She lost the Electoral College, to be sure, but she won a majority of support among voters across the nation. Clinton outperformed Trump among the electorate by more than 300,000 votes (at the time of this posting). That’s a small number, to be sure, especially when you consider that hundreds of millions of Americans voted. But it’s a number that shouldn’t be ignored nonetheless. Yet because the rules state that our president gets selected by the Electoral College -- a syste...

A vote for Ron Johnson is a vote for irrational thinking; Feingold brings intelligence to the Senate Image via RussFeingold.com The race for the White House is taking center-stage, and all signs are pointing towards a win for Hillary Clinton. But even if Clinton defeats Donald Trump, she’s going to need a change in Congress to get her agenda passed. Several Senate seats across the country are competitive, and FiveThirtyEight.com is presently predicting a 60 percent chance that the Senate will flip over to Democratic Party control . That will allow a President Clinton the chance to push some of her agenda, and give her some leverage when dealing with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. It will also allow her an easier path to filling her appointments within her cabinet and on various federal courts. But she’ll need every senate victory she can get on Tuesday night. One of those competitive seats is right here in the Badger State, between incumbent Sen. Ron Joh...

Governor’s attempts to convince voters to oppose Hillary pushes more toward her Scott Walker has been taking to Twitter during the last few weeks of the campaign. OK, that’s not news -- the Republican Governor of Wisconsin has always been a fan of social media, though he has often been ridiculed for some of his more “interesting” tweets . But his recent presence on the social media site has been snarkier than usual. Take his recent tweet earlier this week about former Sen. Russ Feingold’s support of the Affordable Care Act. Thanks, Sen. Feingold: "Rates for Obamacare plans jump in Wisconsin” #WISen https://t.co/32kNeFi84u pic.twitter.com/5ox9QYGGgw — Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) November 1, 2016 Walker’s snarkiness is effective here, but it misses the broader point. The Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” has done a lot more good than harm for the country. Yes, premiums have gone up. But Russ Feingold has recognized that problem, and has promised to work with bo...