So - it's not official yet, but I'm excited.  Drinking Liberally will soon be coming to Eau Claire. We're still hashing out the paperwork and venue details, but I'm at the moment pretty sure the first DL in Eau Claire will be on Wed. July 10.  More details coming soon, but this will be a great place to go and have a drink and talk to fellow progressives and liberals and lions and tigers and bears!

Mark your calendar.

University of Wisconsin's Governance Must be Questioned by the Higher Learning Commission of North Central Association!

In the May/June of “Today's Campus” educational consultants Dennis Cariello and David Lewis outlined current changes in university accreditation expectations by regional accrediting agencies in order to assure quality outcomes. They point out that institutional governance has taken center stage in several recent accreditation decisions. Their examples include a recent action by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) that placed the University of Virginia on warning because of the aborted attempt to fire the president. More importantly, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association, (who accredit the University of Wisconsin) has these following criteria for continued accreditation:

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel used page one of its Sunday edition to feature an interesting political comparison between Wisconsin under conservative Republican hegemony and Minnesota under progressive Democratic control. You can go to the URL below and read it yourself, but the takeaway is right here: Somehow, in comparing the two states and analyzing how they've become this way and what contrary policy directions they're taking, the article makes not a sentence's worth of effort to compare outcomes. Is Minnesota doing better or is Wisconsin, and why? Wouldn't that be the most important set of facts for readers? Not at the MJS, apparently. Or maybe the paper is planning a followup.

[PSSST: Since the MJS won't tell you, we will. Minnesota is doing better than Wisconsin; a lot better, in fact, despite tax hikes and other progressive moves that if done here would make Walker Republicans begin speaking in tongues, if they already weren't.]

Greedy States – Moral States

ALEC's finger prints continue to be all over Wisconsin's Republican Bills. Walker and his team continue to carry water for ALEC and will do so no matter how much it harms the citizens of Wisconsin. All of the economic legislation in this and the past Republican controlled legislature are implementing the goals outlined in ALEC's Rich State Poor State annual document. We can review the ALEC Economic Competitiveness Index to see the tune our Republicans are marching to. This index is based upon 15 variables, as follows;

1. The highest marginal personal tax rate. There is no concern for the tax rates at the bottom or in the middle, only at the top. This is because the few at the top have successfully purchased our politicians.