Tag: progressive
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(Speaking of Witch Hunts . . . ) Candidate Mary Burke Endures the Trial of the Trail
Though the real news was that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke had just been endorsed by the largest police union in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s online headline said, “Mary Burke stumbles when asked to define plagiarism”. As if the shock of the question caused her to lose her balance, thus betraying her pact with […]
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Anti-War Democrats Begin to Emerge
It turns out there is a slight anti-war reaction emerging in the Democratic Party, for 85 House Democrats said “no, thanks” to President Obama’s request for a formal authorization to train and arm the “good” Syrian rebels in the fight against the Syrian rebels/terrorists, known as ISIS. Given the political risks involved for opposing their fellow Democrat and president […]
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Sharing Some Intellectual Property
Sometimes property can get too intellectual, if you know what I mean. According to Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, one of the state’s rising industries is something called “agricultural tourism.” Says Kleefisch, “Visitors from all over the world are coming to Wisconsin to view our advanced agricultural operations, to learn more about our hybrid biotech seeds, to […]
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Pres. Obama’s 2015 Budget: Less for Great Lakes, more for Prisons and still too much for Defense
There is for the progressively compassionate much to like about Pres. Obama’s newly released federal budget: more for the poor, less for the wealthy for instance. A raise in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. $300 billion to maintain what we have built. Money for full-time child care. Money for immigration reform. No cuts in […]
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Weekend Rebuttal: The War Hawks on Ukraine
Today we can confirm that Russia has sent troops into the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had warned Russia not to invade Ukraine, and Putin decided not to obey. Of course, it doesn’t help our moral, political high ground much that the United States has recently invaded both […]
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Heed Sen. Elizabeth Warren on War’s Civilian Casualties
(Photo by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Community Banks Roundtable) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) It is safe to say that every major war over the last few centuries at least has brought great harm and suffering to innocent civilians (or non-combatants), people, including women and children, who have been killed, wounded, or forced from their homes. […]
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Gov. Walker as Captain Ahab
The Wisconsin conservative spin machine (call it the whitewashing machine) has been rotating wildly today, making itself dizzier than normal, after yesterday’s release of some damaging email records that seem to confirm that Walker, as Milwaukee County Executive, had at least some knowledge of a secret email system that allowed secret and illegal communication between his county office and his […]
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Cesar Chavez, a Living Wage and Bipartisan Tax/Debt Pandering
(By USGov-DOL (USGov-DOL) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) Two apparently radical, left-wing proposals were discussed in Madison last week, one of which is supported, sort of, by our Republican governor and one which is opposed by Milwaukee County’s Democratic County Executive. And what Democratic candidate Mary Burke says she supports are right-wing budget ideas of prioritizing paying down debt and giving much of […]
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A “Farm Bill” that Denies Food to the Poor
(By Sr. Maria Ludgera Haberstroh (Kloster Reute bei Bad Waldsee) Photographer: Horst F. Freudenberger (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons) Because farms grow food, and some Americans need help purchasing food, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), more commonly known as “food stamps”, and farms have been legislatively linked for some time now. But this […]
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Weekend Rebuttal: Gov. Walker’s Tax Surplus Plan is a Gift to the Suburbs
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has a plan for our nearly billion dollar tax surplus: give everyone in the state, even the wealthy, a quite modest tax cut. Which means, in real terms, that the richest in the state, the top 20%, will receive the largest percentage of the tax cut. This will no doubt help the suburbs […]
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Collins & Brooks together again
The published conversations between NY Times columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks are always witty and enlightening, thanks mostly to Collins’ wit and political enlightenment. More mutual debate of this kind would be both more useful and entertaining than the typical monotonous monologues our pundits produce. In their latest tete-a-tete, we learn that the usually […]
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Creating local peace economies
(Photo by Samweller2 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons) How can states like Wisconsin that are now heavily dependent on federal defense spending transition to a more peaceable (and thus sustainable) economy? It’s a good question for the new year, and some local and national organizations (including the WI Network for Peace and Justice, […]
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Friday Rebuttal: Sen. Ron Johnson says U.S. can’t afford sympathy for the unemployed
Here’s Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson talking on Wisconsin Public Radio about why he won’t vote to extend unemployment benefits: “You can always take a look at every one of those spending programs and have a great deal of sympathy and say ‘Yeah, let’s continue to provide those benefits but if we don’t get our fiscal […]
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Milwaukee County should join 140 other enlightened communities and pay a living wage
Milwaukee County supervisors, led by David Bowen, have put forth a “living wage” ordinance for county workers and the employees of certain county contractors and developers that would mandate a reasonable living wage of $12.45 an hour for some 8,000 working people in the Milwaukee area. This modest proposal has been rejected by County Executive Chris Abele […]
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Speaker Boehner ends the “Tea Party”
House Speaker John Boehner finally spoke aloud what we progressives and most of the rest of the nation have been thinking for a while now, “Are you kidding me?” Boehner told off the conservative re-activists behind the “Tea Party”, saying they were “misleading their followers” and that they had “lost all credibility” by denouncing the latest federal budget deal. Boehner […]
The Pacific 