Election follow-up. NE Wisconsin wins it for Walker

I’m still in disappointment over last night, both on the size of Gov Walker’s win (by 5.7% as we stand right now), and because of the GOP expanding their majorities in the State Legislature. Barring any John Doe indictments or the state’s fiscal crisis expanding in the next 2 months, things are going to get really scary around here.

But I wanted to backtrack from my pre-election post, and see how the preliminary election returns in the Governor’s race measures up to what I was looking at on Monday’s preview story.

I first wanted to look at the 19 counties that voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, but also voted for Governor Walker in 2010 and 2012. I said Mary Burke had to win back a sizable amount of these counties to win. Let’s see how it shaped up.

Walker-Obama Counties that voted for Burke
Sauk
Vernon

That’s it, the other 17 counties stayed with Walker. Many in the central and western parts of the state didn’t stay with him by much (Burke was within 5% in Grant, Jackson, and Lafayette Counties), and there were some inroads made by Burke in western Wisconsin. But it wasn’t enough to take those light-blue legislative seats back, and she ended up losing by nearly 15,000 votes between the higher-population Obama counties of Racine and Winnebago (more on Winnebago and the Fox Cities area in a bit). Here's a look at the statewide map, with the darker shading showing a bigger victory for a certain candidate.



Burke won three of the five Obama counties that Walker had won once (Columbia, Crawford, and Green) but shockingly lost Kenosha County. Trempealeau County also stayed with Walker, with Scotty getting 52.4% of the vote there, just above his statewide total. I said on Monday Burke had to win all five of those counties, she didn’t, and you see the result.

The other thing I looked at was to see which counties swung the most between 2012’s recall election, and the 2012 presidential election. And what I said on Monday was

If Walker cannot recover at least 10 points of these swings tomorrow night, he's in big trouble.

Well, let’s go to the numbers, starting with 10 counties that swung the most from those two elections in 2012.

Swings between 2012 Presidential election and 2014 Gov election
Lafayette- Dem +15.4 to GOP +3.3 (18.7 swing)
Trempealeau- Dem +14.1 to GOP +6.0 (20.1)
Manitowoc- GOP +2.8 to GOP +24.9 (22.1)
Buffalo- Dem +2.9 to GOP +16.4 (19.3)
Richland- Dem +16.1 to GOP +1.7 (17.8)
Forest- Dem +5.4 to GOP +15.1 (20.5)
Kewaunee- GOP +5.4 to GOP +25.5 (20.1)
Jackson- Dem +15.0 GOP +2.6 (17.6)
Crawford- Dem +20.0 to Dem +2.8 (17.2)
Shawano- GOP +10.0 to GOP +30.9 (20.9)

I also mentioned that the larger-population counties of Brown, Marathon, Outagamie, and Sheboygan were key counties to see if Walker could get these areas to snap back towards the Republicans from the relatively close outcomes of the Obama-Romney election. And boy did they ever snap back into dark red.

Brown- GOP +1.8 to GOP +17.6 (15.8)
Marathon- GOP +6.1 to GOP +23.5 (17.4)
Outagamie- GOP +1.8 to GOP +20.1 (18.3)
Sheboygan- GOP +8.8 to GOP +27.3 (18.5)

These four counties are either in the 920 area code and/or along Highway 29, and that swingy part of the state is what ultimately won the election for Walker (something accurately broken down by Andy at Wisconsin Soapbox in past posts). Western Wisconsin actually came back to the Dems some in this election, and Burke ended winning 14 counties in the western 2/3 of the state- which is often enough to make the race around a 50-50 proposition. But in the eastern 1/3 of the state, she won exactly 1 county- Milwaukee. And she only won Milwaukee by less than 100,000 votes, which isn’t close to what Barack Obama ran up in the two presidential elections (Obama won in Milwaukee County by over 170,000 in 2008 and by 177,500 in 2012). Even Tom Barrett won Milwaukee County by 107,000 during the recall election in 2012. The Dems were hoping for much more of a gap than the 98,500 Burke won by in the 414 last night.

I could go on and on as to why I think this is, but no sense heaping on the depression at this time. But what there is no doubt about is that Scott Walker’s victory last night is almost entirely due to his big-time showing in eastern Wisconsin, and that many of these areas are places that Barack Obama was at least competitive in (Obama even won several of these counties during his and the Dems’ 2008 landslide in Wisconsin). Wisconsin Dems need to figure out why this is so.

One sure loser in Wisconsin- the Journal-Sentinel

Even before the polls close, I can already tell you who one big loser is in this Wisconsin election cycle. Here’s yet another excellent post from Dom Noth explaining why the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has destroyed any bit of credibility it may have had as a legitimate source of poltical news with its one-sided act from this campaign for governor.

Noth points out how the J-S threw all sense of journalistic integrity to the wind by relaying the attempted right-wing smear job on Mary Burke by Scott Walker ally Gary Ellerman, who just happens to head up the Jefferson County GOP. Noth says the J-S grossly failed to responsibly check the source, realize its bias, and follow up with other acts of verification to see if any of the racist Mr. Ellerman’s accusations might be true.

And Noth thinks the decision to play things this way has everything to do with the cynical corporate desires at Journal Communications.

…Other journalists now think JS broke with standard journalism practice to preserve their flagship role among E.W. Scripps newspapers. They don't follow the money but it sure is all about money. What does an outstate company care about a new governor who only wants to do the grit hard work of making Wisconsin better? Keeping Walker alive would put JS and his pretenses of national office in the headlines and sell more papers.

So it’s not just me saying this rush without evidence – and burying that it was without evidence -- was irresponsible journalism,or crass indecent attacks on a candidate and un-American to the sense of fair play. Editorials and new endorsement of Burke from unexpected corners are becoming a stampede and even more establishment outlets tell me they would be blasting away at JS except for their own “try not to think of green elephants” rule – they don’t want to repeat dirty tricks even in excoriating dirty tricks so close to an election.

Noth adds that the Milwaukee media’s kid-gloves treatment of Walker makes him the candidate who the people don’t know enough about, not Burke. To further this point, Noth says he could have made up accusations that Walker had firsthand knowledge of the doings involved in the activities that led to the numerous convictions in the John Doe case, or some “new info” about the still-mysterious circumstances surrounding Walker leaving Marquette University. Those charges would be more believable than what Walker’s allies said about Burke, but the J-S would never have gone ahead and printed those on the top of Page 1, as they did with the attack from the fired former Trek employee who just happens to head up the Jefferson County GOP, and is literally Standing with Walker in photos. The obvious double-standard is killing the Journal-Sentinel among those in the know.

…If this had been attempted as a last minute smear of Walker, both his friends in media and journalists who know the rules would have refused to play along or even evoke the lame excuse that it’s out there in crazy land so they have to repeat.

JS pounded the biggest nail it could find into its own coffin. The former employer I once admired is shredding its reputation as it trims down its veteran staff and ponders selling its legendary home. (as part of a new Bucks arena, while continuing to “objectively” report on the team. No conflict there, noooo).

Smell a rat abandoning a sinking ship? That compels responsible citizens to search for other sources truer to the rules of objectivity and opinion and more open about their purpose. Whether just independent, community oriented or roundedly liberal, or defiantly alternative, they are all looking more honest today. And this may be why there are now so many of them, many using former JS employees as disgusted as I am.

Here’s another Milwaukee journalist who hasn’t treated Scott Walker with kid gloves laying the wood to the J-S. Lisa Kaiser’s writings at the Shepherd Express have been required reading if you’ve been wanting the real story about how all of these often-complicated strands tie together in the Wisconsin GOP, right-wing media, and the oligarch dark money machine that props up Walker. The day after the smear was printed in the paper, and as the J-S was trying to take back their mistake with a lame after-the-fact editorial, Kaiser slammed the paper and especially “investigative reporter” Dan Bice for being a disgusting pro-Walker mouthpiece, and echoed Noth’s charges that corporate concerns and sensationalism was taking precedence at the J-S, instead of using actual judgment and performing responsible journalism.

First of all, the tip came from Wisconsin Reporter, the pro-Walker “watchdog” something or another that is funded by the Bradley Foundation, headed by Walker’s campaign chair, Michael Grebe.

Secondly, Wisconsin Reporter isn’t reliable, nor are its sources on this smear. If Bice is getting his tips from Wisconsin Reporter, then he needs to rethink his whole career.

Next, a disgruntled ex-employee is never a reliable source. Nor is a source who is a Republican Party official who ran as a fake Democrat in the recalls.

Lastly, the allegation cannot be proven. It occurred more than 20 years ago. All you have is a he said-Trek said story that everyone will talk about but can’t be proven. Typical race-to-the-bottom click-bait.

It’s sad—no, tragic—that the Journal Sentinel’s news coverage is taking this low road going into such an important election. Instead of shining a light on vital issues facing Wisconsin, the Journal Sentinel is fanning the flames of a right-wing smear. This sort of smear, so close to an election, never would have been touched in the past. This certainly isn’t Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism. It’s beneath them, frankly, but maybe they're all worried about keeping their jobs as the new owners clean house.

Regardless of whether the J-S’s boy Scott Walker survives this Election Night with his job intact (and ironically, the smear job may cost him his job, as it really pissed off a lot of people for being so dishonest and scummy), there are a whole lot of J-S writers, editors and executives that deserve to lose theirs after their epic fail over this 2014 campaign. But I suppose they don’t care about putting out a quality product with integrity as long as the money rolls in, right?

NOT ANOTHER DIME

Where might they swing in Wisconsin tomorrow night?

As a preview of tomorrow's election, here are a couple of stats that come to mind that should give indicators of what direction the Governor and AG elections are taking in Wisconsin.

First, I'll give you a list of counties that voted both times for President Barack Obama (in 2008 and 2012), and both times for Scott Walker (in 2010 and the 2012 recall election). This is a pretty good indicator of which counties are swing counties, as Obama won in 2012 with 53% of the state's vote, and Walker won his two elections with 52% and 53% of the state, respectively.

Obama-Walker counties
Adams
Buffalo
Door
Dunn
Forest
Grant
Jackson
Juneau
Lafayette
Lincoln
Marquette
Pepin
Price
Racine
Richland
Sauk
Sawyer
Vernon
Winnebago

The biggest of these counties are Racine and Winnebago (the Oshkosh area), almost all of the others are in rural areas of Wisconsin, mostly in the western part of the state, with some in the central to north-central part of the state. If Mary Burke is winning some of these counties, this means she has a very good chance of winning the election. And if she's winning the southwestern counties like Grant, Lafayette, Sauk, Vernon and Adams, it probably portends well for the Dems in heavilycontested State Senate and Assembly races there as well. Likewise, Walker holding onto these counties probably means he'll win the election, and the GOP may even be strengthening their already massive hold on the State Legislature.

Another group related to this are the counties that Obama won in both 2008 and 2012, but Walker has also won one time in.

Obama won twice, Walker once
Columbia (2010, Walker won)
Crawford (2012, Walker won)
Green (2012, Walker won)
Kenosha (2010, Walker won)
Trempealeau (2012, Walker won)

I think Burke needs to be winning all of these blue-leaning counties in order to be successful. These places are also sites of some of the few contested Assembly and Senate races (not surprisingly).

Lastly, here are the counties that shifted the most between 2012's recall election, and the 2012 presidential election. All shifted to the Dems, as you'd expect from races that went from 53% GOP (in the recall election) to 53% Obama in November. But these places had much larger than a 14-point shift (from GOP +7 to Dem +7) to Team Blue. If Walker cannot recover at least 10 points of these swings tomorrow night, he's in big trouble. And yes, you'll see some repeat names.

Largest swings between Walker 2012 recall and 2012 Presidential election
Lafayette- GOP +14.1 to Dem +15.4 (29.5 swing)
Trempealeau- GOP +14.8 to Dem +14.1 (28.9)
Manitowoc- GOP +28.9 to GOP +2.8 (26.1)
Buffalo- GOP +22.4 to Dem +2.9 (25.3)
Richland- GOP +8.3 to Dem +16.1 (24.4)
Forest- GOP +18.8 to Dem +5.4 (24.2)
Kewaunee- GOP +28.6 to GOP +5.4 (23.2)
Jackson- GOP +8.0 to Dem +15.0 (23.0)
Crawford- GOP +3.0 to Dem +20.0 (23.0)
Shawano- GOP +32.9 to GOP +10.0 (22.9)

Also, I'll add a couple of larger counties that had big swings who will be worth watching- Outagamie (Appleton area) (21.4), Brown (Green Bay) (18.2), Marathon (Wausau) (18.8), and Sheboygan (20.3). Many of these places also have competitive state legislature races that'll go a long way toward determining if the Dems have a shot of taking the Senate and turning the Assembly close to even, and all but Marathion County are also in Wisconsin's 6th Congressional District, where Glenn Grothman and Mark Harris are in a relatively competitive race for an open seat.

So that's my brief look at which areas will show a swing on Tuesday (or not), which will give a big clue on who might win. As I've mentioned before, when you're looking at the Milwaukee and Madison areas, the percentages don't change all that much (maybe 5% one way or the other), but instead that part of the election equation will hinge on which areas (Dem or GOP) will turn out more than any rapid shift one way or the other.

Get out and make it happen tomorrow, folks. And yes, it is very doable.

Don't just vote at the top of the ballot!

We're down to it being a turnout game for tomorrow's election, since there's not anything that'll develop in the next 27 hours to change a lot of people's minds. And while the East Coast-centric media has been harping on the results in the U.S. Senate and whether or not the Dems or the GOPs will control it, the always-brilliant John Oliver rightfully points out the elections that are probably more important than the Senate- the ones that decide Governor's mansions and state-houses. Plus, the ads are often more entertaining! And yes, our friends at ALEC make an appearance in the last 5 minutes.



Plus state legislatures are incubators for a lot of the goofiest people and sleazy ALEC alums who try to "make it" later on a bigger stage (Scott Walker and Glenn Grothman, to name two). Getting these dingbats out of the Capitol before the become too big for their tiny abilities is an important thing that far too few of us take notice about. It's why it's almost as important that Dems add seats in the Wisconsin State Senate and Assembly tomorrow as it is for Mary Burke and Susan Happ to win their elections (I said ALMOST). Because if you think we've seen bad, bizarre and destructive stuff get passed in the last four years, the next two or four will likely be worse, and make the damage more permanent.

Choose wisely, my friends.

Polls missing lots of Dems that will turn out?

So what are the tea leaves showing 48 hours ahead of Election Day? If you merely looked at the poll numbers, you'd think the GOP has a slight (albeit not insurmountable) advantage, both in their chances for taking control of the U.S. Senate, and in the Wisconsin Governor's election. But past history shows that the Dems may have some unpolled advantages that could lead them to keep the Senate, and have Mary Burke take over as Governor in Wisconsin.

I'll direct you to an in-depth article from the New York Times' Nate Cohn that talks about why Dems are frequently underestimated in polls. Cohn says that one reason is that Hispanic respondents in polls tend to skew Republican, often due to a language barrier being more likely to be an issue among Dem-leaning Hispanics. We've already seen that in evidence with the Marquette Law Poll, where the pro-voter ID Scott Walker allegedly was leading among Hispanic respondents, despite the fact that Wisconsin Hispanics voted over 2-to-1 in favor of President Obama in 2012, and that Burke led 78-15 among Hispanics who had already voted. Granted, the Hispanic population in Wisconsin isn't that big, but if you're missing that demo by 40 points in a poll, even if Hispanics were to make up 5% of the electorate, that still results in a 2-point swing between poll and actual election results. A 2-point swing would give the election to Mary Burke in every poll that has been released in October other than the absurd "likely voter" screen in the Marquette Law Poll from last week.

The other group Dem group that Cohn says is typically undersampled is a group we are very familiar with here in Madison.

Even calling cellphones might not be enough to reach every voter in a state. Not so long ago, a household’s phone number was a reliable guide to its location. But no longer.

Between 10 percent and 12 percent of people with cellphones live in a different state from the one suggested by their telephone number’s area code. Those people are unlikely to be surveyed in statewide polls in the state they live in using random-digit dialing – the method used in most polls sponsored by nonpartisan news media organizations.

Common sense suggests these young, mobile voters lean Democratic. The earliest evidence is also consistent with that hypothesis: Pew Research found that people with telephone numbers that did not match their state leaned Democratic by 14 points, in a new analysis based on 5,003 cellphone respondents, provided to The Upshot. Cellphone users with telephone numbers that matched their location leaned Democratic by only eight points.

Doesn't that sound a whole lot like the thousands of people hired by Epic Systems in Madison over the last few years? If you've been to downtown Madison recently, you can't help but notice the large amount of multi-story apartment complexes being built in and around downtown. A whole lot of the residents of those places are 20-somethings working for Epic, and many of them come from out of the state to do their work. The same applies to many of the researchers and academics at UW-Madison and other universities. If they're from out of state, it is likely their phone number is not a Wisconsin number, and given their education and career choices, I'm guessing there aren't many of them that will be fans of Gov Dropout.

Cohn mentions that these demographic changes that haven't been caught by pollsters are a big reason why there have been significant misses in statewide elections in states such as Nevada and Colorado. In those states in both 2010 and 2012, Dem support in statewide elections for Senate and President was massively understated, leading to "surprising" results on Election Night, including Harry Reid's and Michael Bennett's victories in Senate elections, and President Obama winning by much more comfortable margins than the polls indicated.

Certainly in Dem-voting Madison, we see evidence of strong voter interest, as early voting is more than 25% above what it was in 2010, despite there being fewer days to early vote in 2014. Here's what the Madison City Clerk reported over the weekend.

The City of Madison has issued 15,590 absentee ballots for the November election, including 8,812 absentee ballots issued to voters in the City Clerk’s Office.

For comparison, the City Clerk’s Office issued 12,121 absentee ballots for the November 2010 election, including 5,550 absentee ballots issued to voters in the Clerk’s Office.

You have to think those Epic-oids that do consulting work out of state during the week are part of that increase in early voting, along with college students at UW-Madison, and state government workers that Walker dropped the bomb on.

Between this and the increasing desperation I sense out of the Republicans (U.S. Sen. (mo)Ron Johnson disgracefully screeching about "voter fraud" is the latest tell that these guys are scared), and I think Burke has a real chance to win this thing. Yes, some of this reflects my hopes that this disastrous era draws to a close, but when you realize that Wisconsin Dems have outperformed the poll averages by 3 points in both the 2010 and 2012 November elections, and when you realize that Burke is likely to lead among the groups that have likely not been captured by polls, and it leaves this race as a pure toss-up that comes down to turnout and voters that haven't revealed who they're backing. I can't think that favors a known, polarizing quantity like Scott Walker. And the absurd last-minute smear Scotty's racist buddy in Jefferson County tried to pull came off to many as a sleazy, Nixon-esque move that could well be backfiring on Walker.

Even if Walker somehow pulls out a 1-3 point win, it'll be much like another Dubya's win in 2004- where too many voters were too weak-minded to pull the trigger on removing the incumbent from office, combined with a frothing-at-the-mouth GOP base and massive propaganda machine allowing the dumber candidate to slip through. And within 6 months, I bet a whole lot of them will end up regretting their vote for the GOP.

Let's not get to that point in Wisconsin. Let's get it right on Tuesday, and get the Dems in office before the place gets FUBARed.

The pictures tell the story on Medicaid expansion

In a story that was oddly downplayed by the Wisconsin media, the New York Times reported on a study from Enroll America, who has been working to sign up people under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), which shows where the uninsured rates have gone down, and not gone down, in the year since the Obamacare exchanges opened up for serving citizens. The same study shows the current uninsured rates for all counties in the country, and offers quite the eye test for how state policies can affect the amount of people enrolled.

Remember that Wisconsin and Indiana are the only states in the upper Midwest that have not expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, and also note that Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas are pretty much the only states in south of the Ohio River and west of Texas that have expanded. And look at which places have the darker colors, which shows that they are lowering the uninsured rate the most.



Whole lot of pale yellow in Wisconsin, isn't there? The county that lowered the uninsured rate the most was Menominee County, from 22% to 15%. And that has little to do with state efforts, as that's where the Menominee Indian Reservation is located, with plenty of federal outreach and agencies to give information on Obamacare. It's also one of the poorest areas of the state, with the highest amount of unemployment.

The same pattern holds for looking at uninsured rates throughout the country for 2014. Remember that Wisconsin was 7th when it came to the lowest amount of uninsured for 2012, at 9.8%. That doesn't look to be the case anymore, as the vast majority of Wisconsin counties have uninsured rates above 10% (the red-voting WOW Counties near Milwaukee are an exception, funny that), and it's not hard to figure out which places took expanded Medicaid, and who didn't.



Feel free to pass along to your friends in advance of Tuesday, and remind them that one candidate that says she will expand Medicaid, and one candidate says he won't. As I said yesterday, choose wisely, my friends.

Two-tier education in Fitzwalkerstan- vouchers win, rural schools lose

As the election nears, we are already seeing the evidence of the damage and money-funneling that the education policy of Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP has done to the state's education system. Two articles this week did a great job of illustrating how things are really working (and not working) when it comes to K-12 education in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan.

Let me guide you to an article that slipped out in the Green Bay Press-Gazette on Thursday. It has the unambiguous title of "Rural schools: State funding system "broke," and goes into detail about a panel discussion held in Ashwaubenon where small-school officials in northeastern Wisconsin talked about the struggles they face, and how pro-voucher Walker/WisGOP policies have made it much worse.

Oconto Falls School Administrator Dave Polashek moderated the event, saying that rural schools serve as vital resources in their communities and frequently remain open late at night for people to meet or conduct civic functions.

With state funding cuts, Polashek said, "It's getting more and more difficult to keep those lights on."

Other participants described the difficulty of adjusting to lost state funding, with staff taking on extra duties, working to meet tough standards with fewer resources and relying on aging equipment such as school buses.

Ben Niehaus, administrator of the Goodman-Armstrong Creek School District in Marinette County, said he recently became administrator of the neighboring Florence School District, too, in effort to save money on overhead costs.

Despite such attempts to streamline, Niehaus said both districts are continuing to suffer financially in the face of dwindling state aid.

The growing voucher program has forced taxpayers to subsidize private schools in addition to funding their public school districts, Niehaus said. The arrangement has effectively created two separate school systems without providing adequate resources, he said.

These districts are not growing much (if at all) in student population or local tax base, but the needs to educate their kids are still there, the needs to transport the kids to school are still there, and Act 10's "tools" have already been used up. Maybe cutting the state aids and keeping them below 2007 levels (BEFORE inflation) isn't such a good idea, eh?

On the flip side, Andy at the Wisconsin Soapbox has an excellent rundown about how the statewide expansion of vouchers has worked in the Fond du Lac area. Basically, vouchers have been a boon to Fondy's private schools, serving as an extra (taxpayer-funded) subsidy to teach kids that were already attending these schools. Lots of information in the Soapbox blog comes from this article in the Fond du Lac Reporter, which shows how the voucher system is REALLY working for Fond du Lac St. Mary's Springs and the Winnebago Lutheran Academy, and it's not in the way that those many voucher lobby ads claim it does. The FdL Reporter quotes are in italics.

Okay, so tuition is $5,225 per year (and the school covers the rest by church funds? How much is a voucher worth again for a high schooler? Answer - $7,856. That means at least with every student the school nets from the voucher program, WLA is making $506. When you take out the tuition and look at only the "net" increase and money that the church saves because of the voucher, that's $2,631 PER STUDENT that WLA saves with a voucher every year.

That's not chump change.

All of the voucher freshmen were new students to WLA, the rest were existing students. Total enrollment is 331 students.

"We were guaranteed 10 students, so anything more than that is a bonus for us," Schroeder said.

Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching!

At Springs, 20 choice students were rolled forward from last year, said President Kevin Shaw.

"This year we received 25 additional students, including seven new SMSA students," he said. "Each year we qualified for 10 students but then received more students in the second draw."

So, they in effect just admitted that they only received seven new students out of 25 who are new voucher students. That means 18 students at Springs were already there but now are having the state bankroll the instead of them paying tuition or Springs providing them scholarships.


CHA-CHING!

In other words, not only are these religious schools getting taxpayer dollars with little to no strings attached (a sketchy enough proposition in some circles), but it's more than the cost of tuition, meaning those schools are free to use the extra money for other purposes, including those not related to education. What a deal!

In the meantime, because the amount of state tax dollars that are available are limited, this means that the money going to the voucher schools to teach kids THAT ALREADY WERE AT THE SCHOOL BEFORE THE VOUCHER FUNDS CAME IN is being taken away from other public schools, especially the rural public schools that have little other way to support their education systems. Well, other than levying property taxes in areas that don't have a lot of property to tax, which makes the downward spiral of the schools and the communities they're in accelerate. Which is the exact opposite of what Wisconsin used to pride itself on- having high-level public services that didn't leave small towns out in the cold, and gave students from those communities the base of education to have a fighting chance to make it in the wider, more competitive world once they graduated from high school.

These cracks in our state's education system are already showing up. If the people of this state are foolish enough to re-elect Scott Walker and this GOP legislature on Tuesday, these policies will be turned up to the next level. And those cracks are likely to become "wrecked beyond repair" with another 4 years of this defunding of public education in favor of adding taxpayer dollars to religious schools. So let's not allow that happen, shall we?