Walker re-appears...as the same petty partisan we knew him to be

Our Fair Governor emerged from hiding late this week to talk to the media about his loss in a bid for a third term, and the plans that his fellow WisGOPs have floated which would prevent successor Tony Evers from being able to do the same things Scott Walker could.

2 days after claiming he stayed quiet in the name of “civility”, Walker showed on Thursday he was still the same scummy, partisan lowlife that he’s been for all of his 25 years of grifting off of Wisconsin taxpayers. Not only did he indicate he was fine with taking away some powers from Gov-elect Evers, but Scotty came up with a typically lame excuse for doing so.

Walker acknowledged the changes being considered could give lawmakers more appointees to boards for the state Building Commission and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. — which would dilute the influence of the governor’s appointees to those boards.

“Most of what’s likely to come up between now and Jan. 7 is more of a reflection of codifying the practice that we’ve had in the past,” Walker said.

What the hell is he talking about? Walker and WisGOP have consolidated power into the Governor’s Office and his lackeys at the Department of Administration for the last 8 years. The only way you “codify” that is by allowing Evers also take advantage of that consolidation of power, and appoint his own people to those boards.

What WisGOP (and apparently Walker) want to do is the OPPOSITE of codifying what was done in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. They want to make Evers operate under different rules than Walker did, with less direct power and oversight to mold these organizations as he sees fit.

Sorry Tony, only I get to do these things.

We can debate whether de-centralizing some of these powers would be a good or bad thing (it was sickening how the WisGOP Legislature allowed Walker to grab so much control over the last 8 years). But that should be done after Evers takes office, because perhaps Tony will propose some “good government” reforms that should be put in place as well. The fact that WisGOP isn’t asking for Evers’ input reveals this to be a brazen power play.

And the power play got even more blatant and disgusting Thursday, when GOP Legislative leaders said they wanted to move Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential primary for reasons that had nothing to do with the presidential race.

Republicans for a year have been concerned about the 2020 state Supreme Court race because it will be held alongside Wisconsin's presidential primary — when Democratic turnout is expected to far outpace Republican turnout because Democrats will be deciding who in their party will challenge President Donald Trump.

That turnout imbalance could spell trouble for Justice Daniel Kelly, whom Walker appointed to the high court in 2016.

Legislative leaders have been discussing moving the April 2020 primary, possibly to March of that year. No decisions have been made on whether to advance the plan, according to four Republicans familiar with the discussions …

Moving the presidential primary would tack on costs for taxpayers. Clerks would need to hold three elections that spring — a February primary for Supreme Court and local elections, an April general election for those races and the presidential primary.

But as we’ve seen with redistricting and lawsuits against settled laws like the ACA and marriage equality, when has running up taxpayer costs for partisan politics stopped WisGOP before?

Cut from the same scuzzy cloth.

I also can’t let go of this line of bunk from Governor Dropout that appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal’s summary of his word salad.

Walker said Thursday that he finds it odd that a nonpartisan election, such as the Supreme Court election, would be held on the same date as a partisan election, such as the presidential primary.

Oh, that’s news to you, Scotty? Because it’s no different than it was in 2016, when appointed Walker/GOP hack Rebecca Bradley won her Supreme Court race against JoAnn Kloppenburg on the same day that voters in both parties chose Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz in the presidential primary.

I didn’t recall your concern back then, likely because AM talk radio goosed up enough sheep so that 100,000 more people voted in the GOP primary than the Dem one, which helped Bigoted Becky win a 10-year term. And by the way, why do you guys care so much about rigging elections for “Justice”? Afraid of what an honest judge that’s not owned by WMC, the Federalist Society and other right-wing oligarchs might find?

This statement from our soon-to-be ex-Governor was also rich.

Walker also suggested the changes he and lawmakers adopted the last eight years may have left them with little more to do.

“We’ve been such reformers, I may have reformed myself out of a job,” Walker said.

Oh, “reformed your way out a job”? Is that what you call 7 straight years of bottom-half job growth (including 42nd in the US over the last 12 months measured), underfunded schools that are closing and/or in need of continual referenda, a massive increase in both Scott-holes AND wheel taxes to fix those Scott-holes, and unprecedented corporate welfare and corruption?

Don’t flatter yourself, Scotty. You earned your rejection on November 6. And the garbage you tried shelling out on Thursday shows that have learned nothing from it except to double down and spin and grift some more.

The way Walker and his fellow WisGOPs are acting in the wake of a clear statewide rebuke means they need to be exiled from any power at the Capitol for all of the 2020s. It’s going to be a long road back to restore Wisconsin from the Banana Republic(an) place it has become under GOP rule, and it’s clear that WisGOPs will not be partners in that restoration. Gov-elect Evers better realize that, too.

More job losses in October. Maybe a new, less crooked Guv can make us "open for business"

Even though Scott Walker has less than 8 weeks left in his Reign of Error, it still doesn’t mean there isn’t more data coming in to judge his record as Governor. This includes the most recent Wisconsin jobs report, which was released on Thursday.

In brief, seasonally adjusted estimates show:

• Place of Residence Data: Wisconsin's preliminary seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in October remained unchanged at 3 percent. This was the 9th straight month that the state's unemployment rate stood at 3 percent or less. Earlier in 2018, Wisconsin's achieved its lowest unemployment rate in the history of the state, 2.8 percent. Wisconsin's labor force participation rate was 68.4 percent, more than five percentage points higher than the national rate of 62.9 percent.

• Place of Work Data: From October 2017 to October 2018, Wisconsin added 32,000 private sector jobs and 20,000 manufacturing jobs. Both increases were deemed as statistically significant by BLS. Since 2010, Wisconsin has added 53,700 manufacturing jobs and 32,400 construction jobs.

Notice what’s not mentioned? The actual jobs numbers for October. And even though there’s no campaign left to complement, Scott Walker’s DWD is still working as a PR outlet. Because they don’t want people to see these numbers.

The unemployment rate stayed at 3.0%, but it wasn’t because of any kind of job growth. Instead, it was because Wisconsin lost both people working and those available for work in October.

Household survey, October 2018 Wisconsin
Employed -6,700
Labor Force -6,700
“Unemployed” 0

Payrolls also reflected this decline, both in October, and in the revisions for the prior month.

October 2018 jobs, Wisconsin
All jobs -3,500
Private sector jobs -1,600

Sept 2018 revisions, Wisconsin
All jobs -3,000 (-4,100 total)
Private sector jobs +1,300 (+400 total)

Put this together with private sector losses in August, and the record of the last 3 months is bad.

Aug 2018 – Oct 2018 jobs, Wisconsin
All jobs -6,000
Private sector jobs -1,900

These new numbers mean that right on the eve of last week’s election, the Walker jobs gap was around 155,000, and we were STILL below 250,000 private sector jobs since Walker took office – 4 years later that Scotty claimed we would get there.

Speaking of our Fair Governor, how fitting that this jobs report comes out on the same day that Walker came out of hiding to ask for one last corporate handout before he leaves office.

There is no long-term solution other than the bill that will save these jobs. Leadership requires action and failure to act will lead to losing hundreds of really good paying jobs at Kimberly Clark.

— Governor Walker (@GovWalker) November 15, 2018

Yes, because after 8 years of underperformance, the last thing we need is for you to hang one more economic albatross around the necks of Wisconsinites on your way out the door.

Sorry Scotty, you failed us enough over the years, which goes a long way towards explaining why you’re searching for your first real adult job these days.

Interest rates up + US deficit up + inflation up (for now) = not a good situation

Yesterday had the release of the first US Treasury Statement of the new fiscal year, and it produced a nice round number that headline writers could easily lead with.

The U.S. recorded a $100.5 billion budget deficit in October, an increase of about 60 percent from a year earlier, as spending grew twice as fast as revenue.

The deficit widened from $63.2 billion in the same month last year, the department said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. October marks the start of the U.S. fiscal year.

Receipts totaled $252.7 billion last month, up 7 percent from a year earlier, while outlays climbed 18 percent to $353.2 billion, according to the department.

Some of this is a bit misleading, because payments were a little screwy in September due to the 30th (and the end of the Federal Fiscal Year) happening on a Sunday. If you dig into the Congressional Budget Office’s Monthly Budget Review for October, it shows the effects of this calendar trick.

The government recorded a deficit of $98 billion in October, CBO estimates, about $35 billion more than the shortfall recorded in the same month last year. A shift in the timing of payments affected the deficit in October 2017; if not for that shift, the deficit last month would have been $9 billion less than it was in October 2017.

And sure, the October 2017 numbers were also goofy due to weekends, but you get the idea. While the toplines are bad, we’re not likely to have a 40% increase year-over-year in the deficit for the entire 2019 Federal Fiscal Year.

But the deficit certainly is continuing to go up, and bond investor Jeff Gundlach notes that our rising budget deficit is outrunning the increase in the economy caused by deficit spending. He notes that this is making interest rates rise to keep pumping the money out and to slow down the economy.

“When the deficit goes up, it’s stimulative to the economy. That’s good in the short term, but it’s borrowing from the future,” he said.

On the chart, the blue line represents the Fed funds rate and the red line is the deficit. During the early 2000s, the red line and the blue line moved in the same direction. To put it another way, when the blue line goes down, the means the Fed cut rates, and the deficit expanded. Part of that can explained by a lousy economy that lowers tax receipts and increases government outlays, but there’s also generally some stimulus in there to help the economy pull out of that recession. The red line goes up during good a good economy because the deficit is supposed to shrink. The red line going up changed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis when deficits shrank while rates remained low.

“When the Fed started raising rates, very strangely, the deficit started rising because, of course, of the policies put in place in the aftermath and prior to the election. Now we see we are raising rates again while the deficit as a percentage of GDP is rising.”

Because our deficit keeps going up in a time of economic growth, Gundlach says the US economy is heading toward a self-perpetuating cycle where the rising interest rates themselves also increase the deficit by increasing the cost required to pay off bondholders.

“If you look at the screen of the yield curve today, the yield curve, it basically has a three-handle across the board and so those bonds, when they mature, will have to be replaced unless we have a budget surplus, which obviously is not the trend presently with higher cost debt. And so we’ll have yet another perhaps $150 billion or so of interest expense five years from now if interest rates are raised along in sync with the Fed’s stated plan to continue to hike rates pretty much at a quarterly rate.”...

“This is not a good situation,” Gundlach said, before adding, “It seems like we’re on a suicide mission by increasing our debt and increasing the cost of that debt simultaneously. I’m quite sure this is going to be an issue that’s going to be important within 5 years at the absolute maximum.”

One thing that could stop these increases in interest rates is if inflation gets held in check, as that would hold down the real rate of interest, which hasn’t changed all that much in the last 2 years because year-over-year inflation has doubled from 1 to 2.5% over the last 2 years.

Speaking of inflation, we just got a report today on the October Consumer Price Index. While that report showed a slightly-hot 0.3% price increase for last month, that included a 3% increase in gasoline that has sharply reversed since then (if you’ve gone to the gas station recently, you’ve likely noticed). Because that 0.3% monthly rate does not seem like something that will continue in the near future, maybe the concern about raising interest rates high due to keep up with rising inflation might subside in the near future.

Also in that CPI report, it showed food prices already have been dropping (down 0.1% in October), partially due to the surplus of products that are being kept in the country due to the Trump Trade Wars. That’s not good news for farmers (as evidenced by the 1,100 dairy farms that have gone under in Wisconsin since the end of 2016), but combine that with the decline that’s starting to happen with gasoline, and it likely will mean flat if not negative inflation for the coming months.

Of course, our deficit will still be putting upward pressure on rates, since we have to get more of our debt sold, as bond trader Gundlach noted this week, and that doesn’t seem likely to go away any time soon. And I wouldn’t count on massive economic growth to reduce that deficit, not in a time of sub-4% unemployment and real hourly wages declining in October (granted, it was only down 0.1% and 12-month real growth was up to 0.7%. Party hats!).

Which makes me wonder when the second shoe drops, and it’s not just crops and now oil and gasoline that have overproduction problems that deflate prices, destroy profits, and lead to layoffs. Logic tells me it’s sooner than later, and when it hits, we won’t have much fiscal flexibility to get out of it without a lot of pain.

Baldwin/Walker counties - what does that tell us?

I wanted to give a quick note about this alleged result from the exit polls made during last week's elections in Wisconsin.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? Outside of the fact that they are likely very low-info, I was curious to see which counties in the state voted for both Baldwin and Walker to see if there was a geographic area. And it largely seems to be in many of the benchmark "swing" areas of the state.

Baldwin vs Vukmir, US Senate

Evers vs Walker, Wis Governor

Baldwin/Walker counties
Northeast
Brown- Baldwin +2.9%, Walker +8.4% (11.3% difference Dem vs GOP)
Outagamie- Baldwin +0.3%, Walker +10.9% (11.2% difference)
Winnebago- Baldwin +6.5%, Walker +3.6% (10.1% difference)
Door- Baldwin +11.5%, Walker +2.3% (13.8% difference)

West
Trempealeau- Baldwin +3.2%, Walker +10.1% (13.3% difference)
Jackson Baldwin +9.5%, Walker +5.2% (14.7% difference)
Dunn Baldwin +6.1%, Walker +3.2% (9.3% difference)
Pierce Baldwin +5.5%, Walker +3.1% (8.6% difference)

South
Racine Baldwin +4.8%, Walker +4.9% (9.7% difference)
Lafayette Baldwin +10.7%, Walker +2.8% (13.5% difference)

I don't live in one of these ticket-splitting areas (my home county went for Baldwin and Evers by 50%+), but any theories beyond low-info stuff as to why this may have happened. It also indicates to me that if Walker was tied to Trump and ALEC like Vukmir was (and like how Walker was tying HIMSELF to), he likely would have lost by more.

PS- Here's the first of what will likely be a few intetesting Wisconsin vote maps from J. Miles Coleman of Decision Desk HQ.

Last week, Gov. Scott Walker (R) lost in his 4th #WIGov race. Here's where he did best each time. In Madison & Milwaukee, he hit his strongest #s in 2010. In most counties, his best margins were in the 2012 recall. While he lost, some northern counties liked him most this year. pic.twitter.com/8WVdxKT4G7

— J. Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman) November 14, 2018

While the nation laughs at the Fox-con, here comes Foxconn 2 tomorrow

As the rest of the nation noted the massive subsidies coming to Amazon from its new East Coast headquarters in Northern Virginia and New York City, the inevitable comparisons to Wisconsin’s own “business development” boondoogle came up.

Has no one learned anything from the FoxConn debacle in Wisconsin?

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 13, 2018

Compared to Wisconsin's outrageous subsidy to Foxconn, this Amazon one is not bad.

WI is giving Foxconn $3 billion dollars for 13k jobs paying $54k/avg per year. $230k per job.

Amazon is giving $573m for 25k jobs paying $150k/avg per year. $23k per job.

Literally 90% less. https://t.co/IjbK5RtyFO

— Land Johnston (@LandJohnston) November 13, 2018

...Here's another way to think about the scale of Walker's Folly. Foxconn would have to create 100,000 jobs to match the $48K per job ratio. https://t.co/2nkuu2f0ct

— Lign in drerd un bakn beygl (@gnarlytrombone) November 13, 2018

But even people from all corners are saying “don’t be like Wisconsin and Foxconn”, the Joint Finance Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing tomorrow on a proposed incentives package to keep a Kimberly-Clark plant open near Appleton – aka “Foxconn 2”.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s writeup of the plan reiterates that the Kimberly-Clark package mirrors the one given to Foxconn, in that it will pay Kimberly-Clark cash in the form of a refundable tax credit if they keep people employed at their plants.

PPMC Payroll Tax Credit. A certified claimant could claim a refundable income or franchise tax credit equal to 17% of the eligible payroll for the taxable year for full-time employees employed by the claimant. "Eligible Payroll" would mean the amount of state payroll that is attributable to wages paid by the claimant to full-time employees, but would not include the amount of wages paid to any full-time employee that exceeds $100,000. A "full-time employee" would mean an individual who is employed at either of the two specified manufacturing facilities in a job for which the annual pay is at least $30,000 and who is offered retirement, health, and other benefits that are equivalent to the retirement, health, and other benefits offered to an individual who is required to work at least 2,080 hours per year. "State payroll" would mean the amount of payroll apportioned to this state as determined under the old corporate apportionment statutes. …

Any change in the number of employees retained by Kimberly-Clark Corporation and average earnings of those employees would affect the estimated 15-year total for refundable PPMC payroll tax credits. For example, based upon recent media reports, it is anticipated that 500 employees with average annual earnings of $70,000 may be retained at one facility (1050 Cold Spring Road) specified under the bill. Assuming that WEDC entered into a contract with Kimberly-Clark Corporation that allowed the company to cease operations at one of the facilities so long as 500 employees were retained at the other facility, it is estimated that PPMC payroll credits would increase GPR expenditures by $6.0 million annually over a 15-year period, totaling $89.3 million (assuming employment levels remain at 500 with annual earnings of $70,000 over the 15-year period).

The fiscal notes submitted by WEDC and DOR did not indicate any significant capital expenditures that might occur at either of the two facilities. However, any significant capital expenditures that might be authorized under a contract between the company and WEDC would be eligible for refundable PPMC capital expenditure credits of up to 15% of such expenditures, and certain expenditures eligible for the capital expenditure credits would also be exempt from state and local sales and use tax.

Oh? So this Kimberly-Clark bailout could cost us MORE than $6 mil a year for 15 years if they choose to put in more machines or fix up their facility at a later time? Well, do we have any way to get our money back if K-C doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain?

Clawback Provisions. WEDC would be required to revoke a PPMC certification if the business does any of the following: (a) supplies false or misleading information to obtain credits; (b) leaves the state to conduct substantially the same business outside the state; (c) ceases operations in the state and does not renew operation of the business or a similar business in the state within 12 months; (d) fails to retain at least 93% of its full-time employees at the two specified facilities who were identified as being such employees in the base year, as determined by WEDC; or (e) fails to retain at least 93% of its employees employed in a full-time capacity in this state, but not at the two specified facilities, who were identified as being such employees in the base year, as determined by WEDC. In addition, WEDC could require a business to repay any PPMCs the business claims for a year in which it failed to maintain employment levels or a significant capital investment in property required by contract between WEDC and the business.

I can’t tell if this means they have to keep 93% of their employees that they claimed to WEDC when they wanted to get their tax credits in a given year, or if it means they have to keep at least 465 jobs open for all 15 years. Seems like an important item to get right.

But let’s be real and ask "why are we thinking of doing this in the first place?" Kimberly-Clark already got a massive tax write-off from the state in the form of the M&A “Big Giveaway”, so their state taxes are near-zero. They also got help from the GOP Tax Scam in DC, which the company themselves said was a reason for these proposed layoffs in the first place, because it gave them enough fiscal flexibility to restructure and “allocate significant capital to shareholders”.

More, more more?

Kimberly-Clark also apparently has received concessions from the workers’ unions at the plants if they do stay open. How much more help do they need…or deserve? Instead, why aren’t we giving incentives to allow all papermakers in the state to modernize and become more energy efficient? That’s what was in a bill proposed by Fox Valley Dems earlier this year, and it seems like a much better plan than giving away tens of millions of dollars to one company.

Given that there weren’t enough votes in the State Senate to pass this Kimberly-Clark bailout before the election, I’m not sure what’s going to change now that a new governor is coming into power within 8 weeks, as what incentive do Dems have to back any more Walker jobs schemes when Scotty is heading out the door?

With the next budget tough enough as it is, and the original Fox-con looks worse by the day, there are a lot of better sources to use tax dollars on than for a greedy corporation that already is getting a ton of breaks. But let’s see what the public hearing has to offer anyway, because it might be a good preview of how things are going to run (or not run) in these next 2 years of split power in Wisconsin government. The circus is back at the Big Top in Madison, folks!

Add cranberries to dairy when it comes to Wisconsin ag woes

Wisconsin farmers are undergoing some of the toughest times of any in the nation right now, particularly in 2 types of products that the state is well-known for – cranberries and dairy.

I’ll first talk about the cranberries, which is a major crop in central and western Wisconsin in particular, and media mentioned over the weekend that many cranberries are going to be dumped and/or put in storage to get prices up. That’s a big deal in Wisconsin, since our state produces 60% of the US’s cranberries, and because there are still a lot of berries from 2017 that have yet to be used.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of the tart fruit could be used as fertilizer or animal feed. Some of the glut could be donated to charities or sold overseas to keep it out of the U.S. marketplace.

“Basically, they’re going to destroy 25 percent of the crop,” said Paul Mitchell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison agricultural economist.

It’s something the growers, themselves, requested from the USDA through what’s called “volume regulation,” a rarely used federal order to deal with an oversupply of fruit.

This might not all go on the shelves

Like many other agricultural products in the US, the problems of low prices and oversupply have been made worse by the Trump Trade Wars and improved foreign competition.

China slapped a 40 percent tariff on American cranberries this year, up from 25 percent, according to growers.

“And even if Trump hadn’t screwed around with tariffs, some of these issues would still be there because the rest of the world is getting better at producing as well,” Mitchell said.

Canada and Chile, for example, have ramped up cranberry production with large, highly efficient bogs and improved varieties of fruit.

Cranberries are part of the list of products that the Trump Administration are subsidizing, but the $32.8 million that will be paid by Uncle Sam for nutrition programs is a fraction of what soybeans or even pistachios will get.

Wisconsin’s dairy farmers also continue to struggle against the economic problems of overproduction and plunging prices. After a minor rally at the end of October, prices have fallen again in November, with futures down more than 10% for dairy products over the last 2 months.

On top of the awful outlook, newly-updated statistics from the US Department of Agriculture show that 87 more dairy farms closed in Wisconsin in October, which is the most for one month in 7 ½ years. The new monthly total also means that 660 farms have closed in the last 12 months in the state, and more than 1,100 since the end of 2016.

We are in a full-fledged crisis and new Dem leaders like Gov-elect Tony Evers and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul need to reverse the Walker and Schimel policies that deregulated factory farms and encouraged the type of overproduction that are driving out dairy producers, and causing cranberries to rot in storage.

And sorry Big Ag, but that probably requires stronger regulation and taxation against those of you who have acted in a way that has hurt the little guys in Wisconsin. And it needs to happen soon, or else there won’t be any little guys left.

Evers can stop the bleeding at UW. But is it already too late?

Among the many reasons I’m happy over the election of Tony Evers as governor of Wisconsin is that he has a chance to stop and reverse the damage that Scott Walker and his hand-picked Board of Regents has done to our University of Wisconsin System over the last 8 years.

The Wisconsin State Journal mentioned today that Evers will get the opportunity to put a majority of his appointees onto the Board. You can bet that a man with 3 degrees from UW-Madison that is currently the Superintendent of Schools in the state will be more interested in helping the UW compared to a Dropout Governor that frequently derided “Madison liberals” and academics.

Over Evers’ four-year term that begins Jan. 7, he will replace at least 10 of the 18 seats on the Board of Regents, but a handful of circumstances — an election win by a fellow board member [Congressman-elect Brian Steil], a vacancy already on the board and what happens with his own seat on the board as state superintendent of public instruction — could mean Evers may appoint an even greater number of people sympathetic to his higher education platform. It could also mean Walker may move quickly to fill those seats, one that has set a record-breaking long vacancy at nearly 11 months.

As the state’s schools chief, Evers automatically holds a seat on the board. S. Mark Tyler, the Wisconsin Technical College System Board president, also serves as an “ex-officio” member of the board by the nature of his position.

But every other Regent on the 18-member board is appointed by the governor. Fourteen seats, all currently held by Walker appointees, serve staggered, seven-year terms. The two other Regents are students selected by the governor to serve two-year terms.

He won't get to finish this job.

To get an idea of the approach that Walker’s appointees had, let me remind you of what Board President John Behling said in late 2015, as the Regents voted to eradicate tenure. Behling claimed that academia should be more like the corporate world that cranks out widgets.

Tenure may be the standard in higher education, but it is out of step with reality for most workers in other sectors. They can lose their jobs for a wide variety of reasons without recourse. This disconnect has led many to see tenure as simply a "job for life," a scenario in which faculty members keep their jobs even if their departments are eliminated or their performance is lacking.

Tenure is a critical bedrock of higher education because it ensures faculty have the freedom to express their views and direct their research without being targeted by their university leadership or colleagues. Every major university in this country has a strong tenure policy, and if Wisconsin does not, we will lose standing, we will lose faculty and we will lose the advantages our universities provide our economy.

But we also must have a tenure policy that includes accountability and rewards performance. We need policies that protect faculty from unnecessary pressures but also provide flexibility for our campuses. Our institutions must be able to operate more like modern private and nonprofit sector organizations that, in challenging and often unpredictable times, respond to changing market forces, demographics, trends and demands.

Who makes those decisions, Johnny? Is it a bunch of corporate sleaze who don’t want critical thinking to be developed and inconvenient truths to be discussed? And what happens when those “trends and demands” change in the future, and different skills are needed, and the UW System doesn’t have faculty and programs in place to deal with those changes because “market forces” didn’t want them today?

Behling had a similarly dismissive attitude regarding the end of tenure and the ability to get rid of disfavored academic programs. He claimed “that’s how it would work in the corporate world,” and said it was a good way to deal with the budget constraints imposed by Walker and the WisGOP Legislature.

The public has expressed serious concerns about how tenure is practiced in Wisconsin. In response, the state Legislature and [G]overnor Walker have given the Board of Regents critical tools to update and reform our policies on tenure. Using this new authority, we are proposing a new policy that creates common-sense guidelines for how tenure is practiced at UW System institutions and continues to treat our faculty with respect while making reasonable allowances for accountability.

A common complaint about tenure is that faculty members are not laid off when the programs they teach are discontinued. Our new policy proposal empowers chancellors to discontinue programs as necessary for educational or financial reasons, and, if absolutely necessary, it allows for faculty in those programs to be laid off. This is an important tool for chancellors and the Board of Regents.

Boy are those words prophetic. Since the end of 2015, we have seen UW-Superior suspend 40 programs in the last 4 years, and just last month UW-Oshkosh announced plans to remove adjunct faculty from teaching classes, and put more burdens on full-time faculty.

And this morning, we saw this headline in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “UW-Stevens Point rolls out transformation that would cut 6 humanities degrees, focus on careers”.

Proclaiming the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point no longer can be all things to all people, Chancellor Bernie Patterson on Monday proposed eliminating six humanities majors and transforming the school into “a new kind of regional university” that infuses the liberal arts into career-minded majors.

It’s not known whether the proposed “restructuring around our strengths” model could be a blueprint for retrenching other regional UWs as all campuses face tight budgets, and enrollments generally are stagnant or declining.

Last spring, it appeared the central Wisconsin campus with 7,725 students was headed toward phasing out 13 low-demand humanities majors to reduce its nearly $8 million structural deficit. Students protested, faculty were outraged, and national media headlines suggested Wisconsin was killing the humanities.

The chancellor’s proposal released to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before a campuswide meeting Monday whittles down the cut to six low-demand humanities majors: French, German, history, geology, geography and two degree programs within art (two-dimensional and three-dimensional art).

Because what has history, geology, societies around the world (which is what geography generally studies) or art ever done for the world? Why would anyone want to understand those types of things in their careers and daily lives? #headdesk

You can click here to see how UW-Stevens Point officials are trying to sell this as a "new type of regional university". They claim that arts and humanities will be "base classes" taken as part of the completion of other majors. Now you can believe that this idea is an improvement if you want, but when you have fewer majors in the humanities, you have less of a choice of classes in those subjects, and you have less incentive for professors and other instructors to want to go to or stay at Stevens Point.

This goes right along with the ALEC agenda of "transforming" higher education to fit the needs of business, and was well described and covered in this movie, which included the UW as one of the places where this corporatization was taking place.

You know what I think is a better idea instead of these "transformations"? Get John Behling, UW System President Ray Cross and the rest of this Wrecking Crew off of the Board of Regents and out of System leadership ASAP. And Evers should work to get people in there that care more about the universities and the students than the politicians.

It’s time to get our UW back to being an institution whose agenda improves the quality of life for ALL Wisconsinites, not just the needs of a connected, corporate few. Electing Evers was a good first step, but there's a long way to go after 8 years in Fitzwalkerstan.