Senator Scott Fitzgerald who is facing a recall effort headed by Lori Compas, held Office Hours in Horicon Wisconsin on December 19, 2011. A brave woman, Lori asks him to apologize for untrue allegations made by him about the Recall Petitioners. She also asks him to condemn the threats and violent behavior by his supporters against the recall petitioners. He declined to do either.
Lori can be reached through RecallFitz.com
-By Ian Millhiser
December 20, 2011- Last week, news broke that conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman received tens of thousands of dollars worth of free legal services from a law firm defending him against charges that he ran a deceptive campaign ad in violation of state ethics law. Wisconsin judicial ethics laws prohibits judges from receiving gifts of any kind from someone who is likely to appear before them.
Job losses and shrinking paychecks are to blame
-By Lisa Kaiser
December 21, 2012- If Wisconsin were on the same job-growth track as the rest of the country, the state would have added 33,800 jobs since April.
Instead, under Gov. Scott Walker's leadership, the state is shedding jobs month after month.
In November, Wisconsin lost 14,600 jobs while the rest of the country added 120,000. In the past five months, Wisconsin has lost 34,900 jobs.
Walker's track record is so bad that the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that Wisconsin is dead last in job creation among the 50 states.
The first-year effects of Walker's policies on public employees—as well as their ripple effects on the state's economy—have been analyzed in a new study from the Institute for Wisconsin's Future (IWF), which found:
-By Marie Diamond
December 7, 2011- In its cover story this week, the National Journal explores a curious phenomenon: while the science supporting climate change has only gotten stronger, the onetime Republican consensus on the issue has fallen apart. The reason, quite simply, is the right-wing polluter Koch Industries and its political front group Americans for Prosperity.
-By John Schmid
December 15, 2011- Wisconsin lost private-sector jobs for the fifth consecutive month in November, the same months that the nation has been adding private-sector jobs, according to a report Thursday from the state Department of Workforce Development.
The state lost an estimated 11,700 private-sector jobs in November from October, the deepest since April 2009, when the nation was in the throes of the recession. The figures are based on a monthly government survey of employers and adjusted to smooth out recurring seasonal factors, such as winter-related slowdowns in construction or holiday hiring by retailers.
The government sector, meanwhile, continued to lose jobs at the city and county level, as it has for much of the past two years. All told, the state lost an estimated 14,600 nonfarm jobs when the losses in the private sector are combined with the losses in the public sector.
-By Luke Johnson
December 12, 2011- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) compared millionaires who create jobs to unicorns Monday on the Senate floor.
"Millionaire job creators are like unicorns," he said, according to The Hill. "They are impossible to find and don't exist."
Reid said that most of the "fictitious millionaire job creators" are "hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers that don't do much hiring."
The Senate has twice rejected paying for the extension of the one-year payroll tax cut with a surtax on millionaires.