Motivated by the current (2011) political climate in Wisconsin it seems reasonable to devote some time and effort to comment on issues and some of the hyperbole. So we in the public should do what we can to help focus "journalists" on delineating real facts versus spin. If you accept the spin you do not understand the policy implications.
Making "the open record" disappear ! Walker "seems" to provide political favors of $500,000 via WEDC to political contributors but by chicanery leaves no fingerprints.
We should go back to a 2 year term for governor. Under the original Wisconsin Constitution, governors were elected for a term of two years; in 1967, the constitution was amended to increase the term of office to four years, beginning with the governor elected in the 1970 election.[6] There is no limit to the number of terms a governor may hold. Wikipedia
I remember the "narrative" about efficiency ... but what it really did was take the take the governor's race out of ever coinciding with a "presidential race". Were any of us thinking about that at the time? Warren P. Knowles, a Republican, was governor at the time.
An obscure board overseeing state public records gave so little notice of a move to sharply limit electronic records that it appears to have violated the state's open meetings law, attorneys and open records advocates say.
The changes have already had an impact — they were used by Gov. Scott Walker's administration as a reason not to release records just one day after the action was quietly taken in August by the Public Records Board, which oversees the preservation and handling of government records.
On Aug. 25, the day after the board's vote, the Walker administration denied a records request from a newspaper for text messages, saying officials do not have to retain such "transitory messages."
The texts sought by the Wisconsin State Journal were linked to a $500,000 loan by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to Building Committee Inc., which was promoted by top administration appointees. ....
A state open government watchdog group has filed a complaint alleging an obscure board made changes to the state's records retention policies in August in violation of the state open meetings law.
Are the implications that retirees will not be offered "organized healthcare plans" and it will be each retiree for themselves -- you figure it out even if you are over 80 (or even lesser)! You think your kids will pick up the slack? They will be scrambling for themselves!
11/18/2015 - How to mess up Healthcare even more !
"It gives you more control over plan design," Segal consultant Richard Ward told the insurance board. "I don't think it would impact access. I think it could be done to minimize disruption."
The insurance board, a governor-controlled group that oversees the $1.5 billion health benefit program for public workers, discussed the report Tuesday but isn't scheduled to take action until February.
Segal gets paid no matter how it turns out - right?
How about a performance bond for Segal and "hold harmless assurances" for retirees and employees? In the same report the state healthcare plans run about $1500 million. Do the math: Segal is projecting less than a 3% savings for all this administrative hassle and chaos for people. The savings may never materialize but the chaos will. The end hidden agenda is to cut healthcare coverage and reduce benefits for all citizens in the state.
1/25/2016
WI 1848 Forward:Do you think #JFC can save #ETF " #retirees "? #1% #Walker wants to mess up #Healthcare even more! WI 1848 Forward: #ETF " #retirees "? #1% #HiddenAgenda #Walker wants to mess up #Healthcare even more! #JFC WI 1848 Forward: #ETF " #retirees "? #HiddenAgenda #Walker to mess up #Healthcare each #WRS member out of luck WI 1848 Forward: #ETF " #retirees "? #HiddenAgenda #Walker to mess up #Healthcare even more! The kids will pay $ #Walker WI 1848 Forward: #ETF #retirees ? #HiddenAgenda #Healthcare each #WRS member no more State Plan Choice #WI 1848 Forward:State #healthcare plans > ~ $1500 million. Do the math: less than a 3% savings> chaos for people
When wheelbarrows are filled with useless paper. Commodities historically become the accepted medium of exchange. A stalwart of this basic reality, Alan Greenspan was a full blown laissez faire capitalist. A direct disciple of Ayn Rand’s objectivist fundamental philosophy. He was very close with Rand. Even inviting her to his swearing in to Gerald Ford’s Council of Economic Advisors before eventually becoming The Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. His oversight on tax cuts and Social Security privatization were largely blamed as the catalyst that created the subprime mortgage crisis. ...
A consultant has said Wisconsin could save $42 million a year through self-insurance, in which the state would pay medical benefits for nearly 250,000 state workers and family members directly instead of buying insurance from 17 HMOs. ...
But another consultant said the move might cost $100 million a year. Some legislators and the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans, which represents 12 of the 17 HMOs, said the change could threaten the stability of the state’s regional health care system. Many of the HMOs are owned by providers around the state.
_____________________________________________ @#$%^&* -> October 15/2015 ... Legislature note ... evidently considering dramatically changing the structure of the Wisconsin Group Insurance Board to allow more direct "political interference" in coverage and rate setting for state employees and retirees ... need to find out more!!!??? There was a quick brief note on WPR this morning. This seems to be the latest ....
.... "We're concerned about costs, quality and access," Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, a committee co-chair and one of the chief authors of the bill said during a brief hearing on the proposal. "That's why we want an oversight role."
The Group Health Insurance Program covers tens of thousands of state and local public employees, their spouses and retired public employees. It makes up 14 percent of the entire commercial health insurance market, according to the Wisconsin Association of Health Plans, which represents 12 plans available through the program. A board within the Department of Employee Trust Funds made up of appointees chosen by the governor and attorney general and members of the governor's cabinet run the program.
DETF contracted with Segal Consulting to examine potential changes to the program, including moving to a self-insurance model, in which the state would pay benefits and assume the risk of cost overruns directly rather than the HMOs participating in the program. Segal reported to the board in March that the move could lower administrative expenses, eliminate some fees under the Affordable Care Act and eliminate most of the premium tax, resulting in potential savings of $50 million to $70 million annually.
The agency's previous actuary reported in 2012 that shifting to self-insurance could result in annual savings of $20 million or increased costs of around $100 million or more each year. ...
Sandel gives two reasons for being worried about letting a Market Society come about. I agree with him that we have been letting this happen. One reason has to do with "inequality", e.g., a small group of people have a lot more money or wealth than most, by far the majority, of the people. ...
A bill signed into law last week by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker could make it much harder for the poor and minorities to register to vote in the pivotal swing state just as the 2016 election approaches.
The Republican-backed measure allows Wisconsinites to register to vote online. But voting rights advocates say that step forward is massively outweighed by a provision in the bill whose effect will be to make it nearly impossible to conduct the kind of community voter registration drives that disproportionately help low-income and non-white Wisconsinites to register.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In 2006 with a Democrat as Governor many of these same Republicans (Vos, Fitzwalker) wanted the GAB. Now with the GOP in total control of the governorship and legislature they don't like it.
GOP insists on dismantling the GAB, what many consider a positive national model to keep politics clean(er).
Assembly Republicans Ready To Pass Elections Board, Finance Bills
Governor Has Indicated He Will Sign Both Pieces Of Legislation
Some Wisconsin legislators are fast-tracking an effort to eliminate the Special Registration Deputy program as part of a voter reform proposal.
Currently, Wisconsin law allows help for voters who have moved, changed names or are new to voting by authorizing special registration deputies (SRDs). While voters may register on Election Day or at their clerk’s office, SRDs provide convenience to the voter via community voter registration drives. SRDs are trained by a municipal clerk to assist voters and to submit their registration forms for inclusion in the state’s voter database.
#Immoral #PayToPlay WI 1848 Forward: #NoFingerPrintsWalker did it #GOP -dismantles the #GAB - Give themselves majority oversight - more dark money
"Make no mistake, these changes mean the end of a system that protected taxpayers and employees from waste and cronyism because employment decisions were based on what you know, not who you know," said Badger in a statement. "Gone is a process based on blind testing to find qualified job candidates. Instead, the whole process now will be controlled by subjective judgments made by political appointees directly answerable to the governor." ...
Among the work-based offenses that puts state employees on track to be fired through a progressive-style of discipline include:
Violating the state's work rules, including being disobedient.
Appearing intoxicated at work.
Possessing drugs.
Giving false information.
Appearing unkempt or inappropriately dressed. [So Obvious!!!]
The civil service bill, which passed the Assembly in October, would speed up the process for hiring and firing state workers and replace the civil service exam with a more subjective resume-based system.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said he wants his chamber to pass the bill in January. He said the measure wouldn't end civil service — it will only change it. ...
...The plan got hung up over a provision that would protect people from answering questions about their criminal records on initial job applications. Fitzgerald said that issue would be worked out, though he wouldn't say how.
Democrats have said the plan will lead to a state workforce where people are hired and fired based on politics, not merit.
If you are moving quickly can we all see the language of the law as it is and is proposed to change? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cronyism is partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy.
"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" ... Katrina aftermath ... he had a a fine resume!
... On Thursday, Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, and Rep. Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, announced they plan to introduce a bill that would replace civil service exams with resume-based hiring, eliminate seniority protections, standardize performance reviews, centralize hiring and firing decisions from state agencies in the Department of Administration and clearly define offenses that can be grounds for termination. ...
Two Fox Valley Republican legislators are authoring a bill to overhaul the state’s civil service system that covers about 30,000 state employees.
Sen. Roger Roth, of Appleton, and Rep. Jim Steineke, of Kaukauna, said changes need to be made to the civil service system to update and speed up the hiring and firing process outlined in the 110-year-old law. Civil service systems use a merit-based, competitive exam system to hire some public employees rather than having partisan politicians fill the jobs by appointment.
Roth, who helps run family-owned construction, real estate management and investment companies, was first elected to the state Assembly in 2006 and 2008, but chose not to seek reelection to a third, two-year term in 2010. Roth successfully ran for his 19th District Senate seat in 2014 after longtime GOP Sen. Mike Ellis, of Neenah, decided to retire.
Roth raised about $437,000 and spent about $412,000 in his Senate race to defeat Democratic Rep. Penny Bernard Schaber, of Appleton. In addition to candidate spending, outside special interests doled out nearly $1.7 million in the race. About $821,000 in outside electioneering support for Roth came from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business group; the Wisconsin Homeowners Alliance, which is controlled by the Wisconsin Realtors Association; and the First Amendment Alliance Educational Fund, a Virginia-based conservative ideological group.
Roth raised about $340,000 in large individual contributions of $100 or more, and about 76 percent, or $257,000, of it came from outside his Senate district. By interest group, Roth raised most of his large individual and political action committee contributions for his 2014 race from retirees and homemakers, $339,443; health professionals, $38,364; and manufacturers, $37,425.
Steineke, a former realtor and salesman, has been elected to the Assembly since 2010. For his 2014 reelection campaign, Steineke raised and spent about $47,000, or roughly three times more than his Democratic opponent. Only one outside special interest, Wisconsin Right to Life, spent money in the race – $155 to support Steineke.
Steineke raised about $27,000 in large individual contributions of $100 or more, and about 85 percent, or nearly $23,000 of it came from outside of his Assembly district. By interest group, Steineke raised most of his individual and political action committee contributions from health care facilities and services, about $5,900; construction, $3,550; and banking, nearly $3,300.
11/11/2016 I don't doubt plenty of people have trouble, especially in rural areas, paying their property tax bill. That is a problem the "Homestead Tax Credit" was designed to alleviate in Wisconsin - does it need expansion? Many rural areas also lack social infrastructure as well as physical infrastructure. Why would a family with children want to move to or live in a place with no schools and little immediate access to health care. Why would a retired person want to live there either - they may be stuck and getting to a doctor is really a major problem? Why would someone growing up there, spending most of their time beiing bused to school, want to stay there when they can't get a job later; when they can go to a larger community get a job, meet other people their age, and have more of a social life? ___________________________________________________
The great inconsistency of GOP political aims: local control except when we want big (state) government ... and probably extract/secure big money from lobbyists.
Can you imagine private sector employers being required to fund the "potential 401k" for every person they hired thirty years (their employment horizon) ahead of time ... well it is not quite that bad but almost. It's sort of like what Congress did to make the "USPS" look bad and claim it was inefficient.
WisGOP trying to bankrupt local gov't through pension "reform"
On this Labor Day, there is a looming bill which offers more proof that Scott Walker's union-busting Act 10 was merely one piece of a much larger agenda. There bill is intended to further hamper the benefits and compensation of public employees, and to force local governments into a choice between not having benefits for their employees and decimating public services in order to fairly compensate such employees.
The proposed legislation is Assembly Bill 269, and it is scheduled to be heard by the Assembly's Urban and Local Affairs Committee tomorrow morning. The state's Legislative Reference Bureau explains the bill as follows:
Currently, cities, villages, towns, counties, school districts, and technical college districts (local governments) provide health care benefits for their employees. Some also provide postretirement health care benefits for their employees.
This bill prohibits a local government from providing health care benefits to any employee hired on or after January 1, 2016, for use upon the employee’s retirement, including compensated absences but excluding the implicit rate subsidy, unless the cost of the benefit is fully funded in a segregated account, based on an actuarial study conducted at least once every four years or other method that complies with generally accepted accounting principles. The bill also provides that, if a local government dissolves a segregated account established for the purpose of providing such health care benefits, the local government must provide for the equitable distribution of the proceeds among the beneficiaries.
WI 1848 Forward: Wis #GOP trying to #bankrupt local (#education included) gov't through #pension "reform"
... They are right about one thing: the history of the idea of separating church and state is crucial to understanding the First Amendment. For that amendment did not come from mere intellectual exercise; it emerged in response to historic events. That history also demonstrates that it was no accident that the freedoms of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly and of expressing grievances against the government were linked in the same amendment. Together they represent the essentials of liberty—the right to think as one chooses and to express that thought. ....
“The view of morality as a set of immutable principles, or laws, that are ours to discover ultimately comes from religion. It doesn't really matter whether it is God, human reason, or science that formulates these laws. All of these approaches share a top-down orientation, their chief premise being that humans don't know how to behave and that someone must tell them. But what if morality is created in day-to-day social interaction, not at some abstract mental level? What if it is grounded in the emotions, which most of the time escape the neat categorizations that science is fond of? Since the whole point of my book is to argue a bottom-up approach, I will obviously return to this issue. My views are in line with the way we know the human mind works, with visceral reactions arriving before rationalizations, and also with the way evolution produces behavior. A good place to start is with an acknowledgment of our background as social animals, and how this background predisposes us to treat each other. This approach deserves attention at a time in which even avowed atheists are unable to wean themselves from a semireligious morality, thinking that the world would be a better place if only a white-coated priesthood could take over from the frocked one.”
The Bonobo And The Atheist, Chapter 1 – EARTHLY DELIGHTS, page 23
Frans de Waal (2013)
#Creationism has EVOLVED :) <Adam #Laats - "Surely You're Joking, Mr. #Huckabee Ben #Carson " - #EvoS Who knew? WI 1848 Forward #Morality Roger Williams, America’s #Rebel - Founder of #Providence #Liberty - Check your #DNA #Morality
WI 1848 Forward: #Creationism #EVOLVED - #Morality Bottom UP
#Morality & Righteous #Politicians are Scary -NOT Leaders ( #Trump, #Walker, #Santorum, #Huckabee - My tribe/team is superior #Immoral ) - Faces of #Genocide - WI 1848 Forward
... and Fitzgerald says he was at the table too! How brave :)
Does it really surprise anyone that the GOP WI Legislature know that if you know what they are doing you would throw-up!
Interesting timing - just before the 4th of July (let there be light) and when we are all distracted!
"This is a very serious full-frontal assault on the state’s traditions of open government," said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
Under those changes:
"Deliberative materials" would not be considered public records. Deliberative materials would include "communications, opinions, analyses, briefings, background information, recommendations, suggestions, drafts, correspondence about drafts, and notes, created or prepared in the process of reaching a decision concerning a policy or course of action or in the process of drafting a document or formulating an official communication."
A legislator would have the right to refuse disclosure of a broad swath of communications and records.
All drafting files and records related to reference, drafting and research requests by the Legislative Reference Bureau would be confidential and closed to the public "at all times."
No section of the state's public records law that conflicts with a rule enacted by the Legislature could apply to a record.
The confidentiality requirements placed on nonpartisan legislative service agencies may not be used to prohibit an agency staff member from communicating with a staff member from another similar agency.
From the Cap Times story:
In January 2014, the Wisconsin State Journal used drafting records to report that a controversial bill to allow high-income parents to avoid paying tens of thousands of dollars a year in child support was written with the help of a wealthy donor to the bill’s author, Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc.
Drafting records showed in February that the University of Wisconsin had objected to a proposal in Gov. Scott Walker's budget to scrap the "Wisconsin Idea" from the UW's statutory mission statement.
When I heard/read this talk I thought immediately about Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin. He has been noted several times as saying that the way he would accomplish his political objectives was by "divide and conquer". Divide the unions between private and public. The public unions between police, fire, correction officers, teachers and other state public employee unions.
Scott Walker is the Governor of "Social Dysfunction". See the whole video ... less than 15 minutes to tremendous insight ... read the interactive transcript as you go.
An evolutionary biologist at Purdue Universitynamed William Muir studied chickens.He was interested in productivity --I think it's something that concerns all of us --but it's easy to measure in chickens because you just count the eggs.(Laughter)He wanted to know what could make his chickens more productive,so he devised a beautiful experiment.Chickens live in groups, so first of all, he selected just an average flock,and he let it alone for six generations.But then he created a second groupof the individually most productive chickens --you could call them superchickens --and he put them together in a superflock,and each generation, he selected only the most productive for breeding.
0:56After six generations had passed,what did he find?Well, the first group, the average group, was doing just fine.They were all plump and fully featheredand egg production had increased dramatically.What about the second group?Well, all but three were dead.They'd pecked the rest to death.(Laughter)The individually productive chickens had only achieved their successby suppressing the productivity of the rest. ...
We've thought that success is achieved by picking the superstars,the brightest men, or occasionally women, in the room,and giving them all the resources and all the power.And the result has been just the same as in William Muir's experiment:aggression, dysfunction and waste.If the only way the most productive can be successfulis by suppressing the productivity of the rest,then we badly need to find a better way to workand a richer way to live.
So what is it that makes some groupsobviously more successful and more productive than others?Well, that's the question a team at MIT took to research.They brought in hundreds of volunteers,they put them into groups, and they gave them very hard problems to solve.And what happened was exactly what you'd expect,that some groups were very much more successful than others,but what was really interesting was that the high-achieving groupswere not those where they had one or two peoplewith spectacularly high I.Q.Nor were the most successful groups the ones that had the highestaggregate I.Q.Instead, they had three characteristics, the really successful teams.First of all, they showed high degrees of social sensitivity to each other.This is measured by something called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test.It's broadly considered a test for empathy,and the groups that scored highly on thisdid better.Secondly, the successful groups gave roughly equal time to each other,so that no one voice dominated,but neither were there any passengers.And thirdly, the more successful groupshad more women in them.(Applause)Now, was this because women typically score more highly onthe Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test,so you're getting a doubling down on the empathy quotient?Or was it because they brought a more diverse perspective?We don't really know, but the striking thing about this experimentis that it showed what we know, which is some groups do better than others,but what's key to thatis their social connectedness to each other.
#TED Why it's time to forget the pecking order at work & #society >add in #politics & Scott #Walker #TRUMP #GOP ( #GriftersOnParade ) #Grifters -WI 1848 Forward
