Pro-Walker Marquette poll grossly misweighted

The recent Marquette University poll evaluating the Wisconsin electorate's opinions on Walker and potential Democratic Party candidates was inaccurate. It oversampled self-identified conservatives who support Walker and undersampled liberals and moderates who are likely to vote against him. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's article on the poll was prominently placed on its front page..

The critique of the polls methodology provides a more accurate and corrective snapshot of the upcoming election. Of course, events are unfolding rapidly as this week's disclosures that Walker's top aids were indicted for engaging in illegal campaign activity while working for Walker's re-election illustrates. The disclosures also revealed for the first time that Walker's top lieutenants set up a secret email system designed to evade the state's open records laws.

The blog critiquing the poll is posted here and below:

http://uppitywis.org/blogarticle/recent-pro-walker-poll-grossly-misweighted-when-properly-weighte

Gableman rebuked

Supreme Court Justice Michael Galbleman is sternly rebuked by the New York Times editorial board today: It concludes: "To regain the public’s trust, the court must disqualify him (Gableman) if he does not face up to his impropriety and recuse himself."

The editorial is linked here.     

For-profit colleges under attack for treatment of veterans

Government agencies scrutinize companies for saddling students with significant debt and inadequate degrees

By Gregory Karp, Chicago Tribune reporter

7:00 PM CST, January 22, 2012

For-profit colleges are coming under attack again, this time for allegedly preying on military veterans.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D.-Ill., is scheduled to hold a forum on the issue in Chicago Monday and plans to introduce legislation later in the day that would eliminate the financial incentive for-profit colleges have to recruit veterans aggressively into pricey programs. It would also require schools to get more of their revenue from sources other than the federal government's educational aid programs.

Criticism of for-profit schools has heated up in recent weeks. Last week, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued Westwood College, claiming for-profit colleges mislead students enrolled in its criminal justice program, putting them deep in debt and saddling them with a nearly worthless degree for pursuing careers in Illinois law enforcement.

Earlier this month, shareholders sued Career Education Corp., a large for-profit college operator based in Schaumburg, claiming company officials misled investors about job placement rates for graduates, which led to a scandal and contributed to a lower stock price.

For-profit colleges are being scrutinized by Congress, the U.S. Department of Educationand the Justice Department for saddling students with crushing debt and questionable degrees that don't lead to jobs in their fields of study. Much of their revenue comes from federal grants and loans.

Military veterans are being aggressively recruited, critics claim, because of their lucrative forms of federal aid, such as GI Bill funds and Department of Defense tuition assistance benefits. That aid doesn't count toward the 90-10 rule, which bars for-profit colleges and universities from deriving more than 90 percent of their revenue from the Department of Education's federal student aid programs. The purpose of the rule is to ensure that for-profit schools, many of which are publicly held corporations, are not using taxpayer money as their sole source of revenue.

A Dec. 8 Senate committee report noted that educational benefits from the Veteran's Administration and the Department of Defense received by 20 for-profit education companies between 2006 and 2010 increased 683 percent, to more than a half-billion dollars.

Durbin will propose changing the rule to 85-15, meaning for-profit colleges would be limited to receiving 85 percent of their revenue from federal financial aid. Significantly, it would also count education aid for military personnel toward that 85 percent, eliminating the special incentive for career schools to recruit veterans.

Brian Moran, interim president of the Washington-based Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, which represents for-profits colleges, said in a statement that some legislators "have chosen to erect, rather than break down, the barriers to critical job-training and educational programs for veterans. Sen. Durbin's reported legislation on recruiting will only cut off access for thousands of veterans to the skill-intensive, hands-on programming and intensive job-placement support that veterans transitioning into the workplace need."

Those at American Military University, a provider of online education to active members of the military, contend schools like theirs are wrongfully lumped with schools using questionable tactics.

"No matter how well we're doing and how long we've been honorably serving the military, we get caught up in this because of the broad-brush strokes with this attack on the for-profit industry," said Jim Sweizer, vice president of military programs at American Military University, based in Charles Town, W.Va.

He added: "It's somewhat insulting that they don't give veterans the benefit of the doubt — these are intelligent people — and (they portray them as) being totally duped by a school."

Cuts at Wisconsin universities rank third in nation

Wisconsin’s public universities experienced the third-largest budget cuts in the country this year, according to an annual survey of higher-education funding. These cuts, along with those to K-12 education, the highest per pupil cuts in the nation, will undermine the state's economy and its people's prosperity for years to come.

Public funding for Wisconsin’s public universities dropped 20.9% from $1.46 billion to $1.15 billion, according to the annual Grapevine study, conducted by Illinois State University’s Center for the Study of Higher Education and the State Higher Education Executive Officers.

Nationally, higher education budgets were trimmed 7.6%. New Hampshire had the largest cut, with a funding reduction of 41.3%. Arizona’s cut ranked second at 25.1% and Wisconsin at 20.9%  was third.

The Grapevine figures include the $250 million budget cut for the UW System over two years that was part of the state budget approved last year. It does not include an additional $46.1 million cut announced in October by the Walker administration.

Forty-one states saw some kind of drop in their higher education funding this year. Only s third of states had reductions of 10% or more. An analysis Inside Higher Ed notes that Wisconsin is one of 29 states that’s providing less money to public higher education in the 2011-12 budget year than they did in 2006-07.

Walker's "tools" cost more jobs; austerity does not work

 

Wisconsin lost 3,900 private sector jobs in December according to data released Thursday by the state Department of Workforce Development. In the same month, the United States gained an estimated 212,000 jobs.

 

In the public sector, government agencies at the state level shed jobs last month while city and county employers showed job gains. Losses in the private sector and changes in government staffing left the state with an estimated net loss of 1,700 non-farm jobs for December. .

Wisconsin has lost jobs for six consecutive months and has lost more jobs than any state in the nation since Governor Scott Walker's budget went into effect in July 2011. The graph by the Philadelphia Reserve Board below documents this.

Wisconsin is continuing to hemorrhage jobs because of Governor Walker's one-sided reliance on spending cuts to balance the state budget. That is because demand creates jobs.  Consumers account for almost 70 % of the economy. Yet Walker's budget cuts have caused the demand for goods and services to decline in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin shed more state government jobs than any state in the nation in 2011. When workers lose their jobs, their incomes decline and they buy less. In addition, the disposable incomes of virtually all of Wisconsin's public workers declined as health care premiums increased and pension contributions increased to 5.8% of income. The result a decline in aggregate demand that has caused Wisconsin to shed jobs even as the national economy is adding them.

The lesson of Walker's first year is that you cannot cut your way to job growth and prosperity.

Austerity has been a failure where ever it has been tried. 

In a recent paper for the International Monetary Fund, Laurence Ball, Daniel Leigh and Prakash Loungani look at 173 episodes of fiscal austerity over the past 30 years—with the average deficit cut amounting to 1 percent of GDP. Their verdict? Austerity “lowers incomes in the short term, with wage-earners taking more of a hit than others; it also raises unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment.”

Let's take a quick  look at the unemployment rates in those nations that have responded to budget deficits with austerity. In Ireland the unemployment rate has soared to 14.3%. It would be even higher but tens of thousands have migrated abroad. England's unemployment rate is 8.4%, the highest in sixteen years and Spain's has soared to 22.9%.

As Reuter's reports: "Europe's worsening sovereign debt crisis and governments' tough cost-cutting response appear to be driving the 17-nation currency bloc back into recession following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, while the number of people out of work is rising."

Austerity does not promote growth or job creation. Walker's tools are not working. It is time for a new approach in Wisconsin.

Illinois sues for-profit college

Among the complaints against the for-profit school are poor job-placement rates, high-pressure sales tactics, low graduation rates, excessive profit margins and the burdening of students with crushing debt

By Gregory Karp, Chicago Tribune reporter

12:19 a.m. CST, January 18, 2012

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0118-westwood-20120118,0,4418630,print.story

The Illinois attorney general's office is lashing out at Westwood College, which has four Chicago-area campuses, claiming the institution misleads students enrolled in its criminal justice program, putting them deep in debt and saddling them with a nearly worthless degree for pursuing careers in Illinois law enforcement.

Westwood, a career college owned by Alta College of Denver, is the latest for-profit school to come under scrutiny by regulators and consumer advocates, who claim some for-profit schools overpromise and underdeliver.

Among the complaints are poor job-placement rates, high-pressure sales tactics, low graduation rates, excessive profit margins and the burdening of students with crushing debt, often from taxpayer-backed loans on which students default. Schaumburg-basedCareer Education Corp., for example, is dealing with fallout from a scandal in which some of its schools misrepresented job-placement rates of its graduates.

Westwood has run afoul of regulators in several states, including Texas and Wisconsin.

Illinois is home to four of Westwood's 17 campuses. They are located in Chicago's Loop, nearO'Hare International Airport, Woodridge and Calumet City.

The office of Attorney General Lisa Madigan has been investigating Westwood and plans to file suit against the college Wednesday, sources said. A draft of the suit, obtained by the Tribune, claims students who want to be police officers in Illinois need a degree from a school that is "regionally" accredited. Westwood is not, although it is nationally accredited.

"Many Illinois students who tried to better themselves through a criminal justice education at Westwood now find themselves saddled with more than $50,000 in student loans, and no way to pursue a law enforcement job because their Westwood education was not regionally accredited and therefore was not recognized by other regionally accredited colleges or law enforcement employers, such as the Chicago Police Department, the Illinois State Police and many suburban police departments," the attorney general's office said in the draft of the lawsuit.

The draft suit says that Westwood, through its marketing, "made a variety of misrepresentations and false promises."

A Westwood spokesman issued a statement, saying, "We continue to cooperate with the Illinois (attorney general) to resolve any outstanding issues. We are proud of our legacy of helping students obtain their educational goals. We have hundreds of graduates working in the private and public criminal justice field throughout the state of Illinois."

The company also provided a Westwood College disclosure form that requires students to initial the following statement: "Westwood College is nationally accredited, not regionally accredited, which could have an impact on employment opportunities with some Chicago and surrounding area employers, including the City of Chicago."

Fifteen consumers filed complaints against Westwood with Madigan's office, the draft lawsuit states.

The attorney general's office also objects to the cost of a Westwood degree. Tuition to complete a degree in criminal justice totals $71,610, compared with $12,672 from the College of DuPage, which is regionally accredited and is located less than 10 miles from Westwood's DuPage campus, the suit says. It claims Westwood misled students "about the magnitude of the financial burden associated with obtaining their degrees, engaging in a pattern and practice of downplaying the burdens of student loans they advised students to take out."

The suit asks for, among other things, that all contracts between Westwood and Illinois consumers be rescinded and "that full restitution be made." It also seeks to revoke, forfeit or suspend Westwood's criminal justice program and assess a civil penalty of $50,000 per violation of the state's Consumer Fraud Act.

Westwood said it has more than 13,000 students enrolled in its degree programs, which include business, design, technology, industrial services, justice and health care.

Grothman and Republicans throw children under the bus to protect out of state lead paint companies

Lead paint poisoning is a national public health catastrophe that has irreparably harmed tens of thousands of children.

Lead paint manufacturers knew that lead pigment in paints was a deadly poison as early as the beginning of the Twentieth Century. They even marketed lead free paint to farmers who were concerned that paint with lead in it was poisoning their cows. Yet, the paint manufacturers continued to produce and market lead paint for residential use and refused to warn consumers about its dangers. As a result, tens of thousands of children have suffered brain damage and other cognitive disabilities.

Currently, 173 Wisconsin children, the victims of lead paint poisoning, are suing the producers of lead paint for the severe and permanent injuries they suffered because of the paint companies’ negligence.

Last week, only 2 hours after the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago heard oral arguments about the Constitutionality of these cases, Lance Burri, Senator Glenn Grothman’s aide, directed the Legislative Reference Bureau to introduce legislation that would circumvent the Courts and deny these children their day in court.  Senator Scott Fitzgerald, one of four Senators who is being recalled, is co-sponsoring the bill.

 This legislative maneuver is an outrageous and overt attempt to change the law in midstream so that the six companies responsible for this public health catastrophe can walk away “scott” free while the tax payers of Wisconsin pick-up the tab for cleaning up their mess - - hundreds of millions for special education, environmental inspections, higher rents and unaffordable housing caused by lead paint clean-up costs.

  

Glen Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald and the Wisconsin Republican Party have developed a disturbing pattern of simply changing laws that they find inconvenient.  In this case, they are willing to throw the legal rights of 173 Wisconsin children under the bus to protect six multi-billion dollar companies that do not even deny they produced paint with white lead carbonate in it or that it is harmful to children.

Who is Senator Grothman representing-the people of Wisconsin or multi-billion dollar out of state corporations like Sherwin Williams, DuPont, and BP-Amoco?

 Do the citizens of Wisconsin really want out of state corporations and their silk stocking attorneys writing and rewriting Wisconsin’s laws?

 The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on this bill on Wednesday.

Senator Pam Galloway, another Senator who is being recalled, is also a member of the Judiciary Committee. She is a physician who, like all physicians, has taken an oath to practice medicine ethically.

 Is Senator Galloway loyalty to her Party and out of state corporations so strong that she will ignore the Hippocratic oath? Or will she vote against this unethical bill that sacrifices disabled children on the altar of corporate greed.

 Please contact your legislators who serve on this committee and tell them that you don’t want out of state corporations undermining the rights of Wisconsin citizens.

 Tell them the rights of the Wisconsin people are not for sale.

Attacks on unions are political power play based on lies

The New York Times has a strong editorial against Republican led efforts to eliminate unions and workers protections. It notes that the attack on public sector unions that has now spread to the private sector is based on cynical lies and that the objective of these attacks is to consolidate corporate and Republican control over the nation's economy and politics.

The editorial entitled the Continuing Assault on Unions is reprinted in full below:

Along with their shameful campaign to curb the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers in Wisconsin and Ohio last year, Republicans in statehouses around the country are taking aim at private sector unions.

Twenty-two states, mainly in the South and the West, have long had “right to work” laws forbidding contracts that require workers to pay union dues. After a decade in which business has ignored the issue,

Republicans in more than 10 states over the last year have begun pushing similar laws. Indiana’s Legislature is expected to approve the antiunion legislation as early as next month.

Many Republican leaders are adopting model legislation proposed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national corporate-financed conservative organization that is also assisting the Republican push to require voter identification cards to suppress the vote of minorities, young people and other constituencies that tend to favor the Democratic Party.

There is little doubt that politics is also behind the Republicans’ push for right-to-work laws: they see an opportunity to further weaken unions, which are far more likely to support Democrats — as well as health care reform and a higher minimum wage — by slashing their funding and their donating power.

The G.O.P. and its allies, like the Chamber of Commerce and brethren organizations, are trotting out the charge that unions reduce economic growth and jobs.

It stands to reason that a union will reduce a company’s profits somewhat, by obtaining a higher share for workers. But over the last three decades, economists have found that unionization has a minimal impact on growth and employment in an entire state or country. In fact, six of the 10 states with the highest unemployment have right-to-work laws. North Carolina, a right-to-work state, has a private sector unionization rate of 1.8 percent, the lowest in the nation. It also has the sixth highest unemployment rate: 10 percent.

Unionized workers earn more and get more generous benefits. In 2010, wages of workers in unionized manufacturing companies in Indiana were 16 percent higher than in nonunion plants. One study concluded that the decline in unionization since the 1970s is responsible for one-fifth to one-third of the growth in inequality in this country. Voters, unionized or not, should recognize the new “right to work” push for what it is: bad economics and cynical politics.