Scott Walker proposes expanding the school voucher program beyond Milwaukee and Racine...

... to 9 new districts, including — gasp! — Madison.

Here's what Walker said last night in his budget speech:

For communities where some schools fail to meet expectations, we include an expansion of the parental choice program in this budget. Since wealthy families have a choice because they can pay to send their children to a private school, we give low income and middle class families an opportunity to also choose a viable alternative for their sons and daughters.

Interestingly, some communities have both high-performing schools, as well as some that fail to meet expectations. Green Bay is a good example. Keller Elementary in Green Bay is a school where more than 70 percent of students are economically disadvantaged, yet Keller Elementary exceeds expectations. In this budget, schools like this will be eligible for a performance reward. At the same time, in that same district, there are other schools that fail to meet expectations. Other districts like Madison, Beloit, Sheboygan, and West Allis/West Milwaukee have similar situations.

People in Madison like to think we have fabulous public schools, so it's rough seeing Madison grouped with those other places. And of course, people in Madison tend to loathe Governor Walker. Obviously, the liberal viewpoint is that if there's a problem with the public schools, more money should be given to those public schools, not diverted into private schools. Here's the discussion in the forum over at the Isthmus, where liberal Madisonians tend to talk amongst themselves (and where Meade injects a bit of the kind of diversity they don't celebrate). I love the way the separation-of-church-and-state topic is playing out. First:

Does it bother you that taxpayer money will be spent for sectarian religious instruction?

Someone else:

If my kid went to a school with overcrowded classrooms and wasn't getting the attention he or she needed for whatever reason, I wouldn't hesitate sending him to a Catholic school if I could for free. Would you? Would you put up with a crappy classroom just because you didn't want your kid to take a half-hour of Bible study each day? I don't know many parents who would in a similar situation....

A third person (boldface added):

I don't think anybody's really upset about vouchers to send kids to Catholic schools. The Catholic schools can't take many more kids, but they are run by local parishes and nuns with good intentions and without a profit motive. It's not foremost a constitutional issue but a quality one. We're upset about a bunch of profit-motive business types setting up private schools to make money for themselves by providing services that work poorly and exploit public funding the same way the University of Phoenix does with adult students. Why anybody thinks replacing so-called overpaid teachers with overpaid executives is an improvement beats me. And that's exactly what we'll get if we don't guard against it at every turn.

The lefties really hate business! Meade provides the comic pushback. Quoting "bunch of profit-motive business types":

But enough about the teachers' unions. School choice is coming to Madison. Choice is good.

Lady Gaga, deposed.

Law office. Litigation. That kind of deposed. She wasn't deposed from her position as Queen of the Universe. She maintains that, or so she maintained in the deposition.

“She’s just — she thinks she’s just like the queen of the universe,” Gaga said about the former personal assistant who is suing her (seeking overtime pay).  “And, you know what, she didn’t want to be a slave to one, because in my work and what I do, I’m the queen of the universe every day.”

[Jennifer] O’Neill says she put in 7,168 hours of unpaid overtime... and is owed more than $393,000, plus damages.

... Gaga said none of her employees get paid overtime, adding that O’Neill “knew exactly what she was getting into, and she knew there was no overtime, and I never paid her overtime the first time I hired her, so why would she be paid overtime the second time? This whole case is bulls--t, and you know it.... I’m quite wonderful to everybody that works for me, and I am completely aghast to what a disgusting human being that you have become to sue me like this.... Because she slept in Egyptian cotton sheets every night, in five-star hotels, on private planes, eating caviar, partying with [photographer] Terry Richardson all night, wearing my clothes, asking YSL [Yves Saint Laurent] to send her free shoes without my permission, using my YSL discount without my permission.”

Interesting that Gaga would put herself through the stress of 6 hours of testifying like this. You'd think she'd pay $393,000 to make O'Neill go away. It' was a job where O'Neill on call round the clock, apparently, but only working in spurts, unpacking luggage, going down to the drugstore, whatever it was the star wouldn't — or couldn't —  do for herself. If you read the whole article at the link, you'll see that O'Neill worked so closely with Gaga that she seems to have gotten the idea of herself as the star's friend and assumed various privileges — the second bed on the private plane, the extra pillows, etc.

This seems to have led to the split. Perhaps O'Neill, fired and forced to think of herself as a mere employee, went legal, seeking an employee's compensation. This relationship should have been managed for Gaga by someone else. Another kind of personal assistant.

But Gaga doesn't sound like she has good business sense about what she is doing. If you've got tons of money and you spend it being "quite wonderful to everybody" as you travel, how do you extract professional work from them? They are supposed to adore you in exchange for your beneficence? If they lose the job, they're not going to love you, and you've got so much money, you're a target for a lawsuit. Why didn't she see that coming?

"President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel..."

"... a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday."

The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions....

Obama claims he acted properly in the case of the NLRB appointments because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. But the three-judge panel ruled that the Senate technically stayed in session when it was gaveled in and out every few days for so-called “pro forma” sessions.

GOP lawmakers used the tactic — as Democrats have in the past as well — to specifically to prevent the president from using his recess power....

The Supreme Court is likely to take this case, which, if it is not reversed, will invalidate all the decisions the NLRB has made going back more than a year and that going forward, there is no quorum for it to decide any cases. 

7th Circuit upholds Gov. Walker's much-protested collective bargaining legislation.

"The district court invalidated Act 10's recertification and payroll deduction provisions, but upheld the statute's limitation on collective bargaining. We now uphold Act 10 in its entirety."

Voting to uphold the law in its entirety were Judges Joel M. Flaum and William J. Bauer. Flaum wrote the opinion.

Judge David F. Hamilton dissented in part, saying he believed part of the collective bargaining law violated the First Amendment. Hamilton argued the state could not bar some unions from having their dues deducted from paychecks while it allowed police and fire unions to do so.

ADDED: Here's the opinion PDF.

AND: The panel said it's well-settled that "use of the state’s payroll systems to collect union dues is a state subsidy of speech that requires only viewpoint neutrality." The law didn't target any particular viewpoints. It subsidized the speech of public safety unions but not other public employee unions, and the unions had argued that the speech of the groups that were subsidized would be more favorable to the party that supported the legislation and so Act 10 wasn't genuinely viewpoint neutral, but only the dissenting judge agreed.

"Carpenters' union protests Madison businesses; refuses to back up claims."

"On two occasions, two people at two separate NCSRCC offices have sworn emphatically that a phone call would be returned that day or the next, but no calls ever materialized. Someone named 'Tony' from the union once left a voicemail, but then never answered a returned call."

I've seen the 3 guys holding up the sign out by Hilldale shopping center. Twice I tried to read the sign to figure out which place they had a beef with. I assumed it was the steakhouse, which was the place they were closest to, but I couldn't read the name of the place at the bottom of the sign, because the men were letting the sign droop. Now I see their target was Lululemon Athletica, a shop with some nice-looking athletic-wear. Makes me want to run over there and buy some toasty tech tights.

Forbes, ranking the "Best States for Business," finds "a clear separation between right-to-work states and those that are not."

"All but one of the top 10 states have right-to-work laws on the books (No. 5 Colorado is the exception). Of the bottom 10 states, No. 46 Mississippi is the only right-to-work state."

"A really important moment for this movement against unpaid internships."

The Charlie Rose show settles with interns who claimed they should have received minimum wage.

"The First Amendment affords a publisher - not a reporter - absolute authority to shape a newspaper's content."

Says a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to the dismay of AlterNet:

Rather than uphold their rights both to unionize and to speak out against bad editorial practices, the federal court instead said their dismissals were protected by the publisher's First Amendment Rights to print whatever she wanted.

The dispute began in 2006, when nearly all the top journalists and editors at the Santa Barbara News-Press quit because the paper's owner and publisher Wendy McCaw was interfering in the editorial content.

If a business employs people to do the work of writing, it gets to direct the work it's paying for. How could it be any other way? I'm only talking about the law — the extent to which courts should interfere. Obviously, there's endless room to criticize newspaper owners who demand biased or bad journalism. That's more speech in the speech marketplace.

"The First Amendment affords a publisher - not a reporter - absolute authority to shape a newspaper's content," Judge Stephen Williams wrote for a three-judge panel.

As the Santa Barbara Independent notes, the court's judges are overwhelmingly conservative — a bias clearly reflected in this ruling.

Clearly! Nonsense.

CORRECTION: I'd mistakenly identified the court as the 9th Circuit. (The events took place in Santa Barbara.)

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker talks with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters for an hour.

The first 10 minutes have Walker saying that he won't pursue right-to-work legislation and that he doesn't want anything that will stir up the the kind of passion and protest we saw here in 2011. This has obvious political value for him, but the main idea is that businesses want calm and certainty. Those who've protested Walker should see that they've successfully inhibited him from taking further steps in the direction they oppose.

"Flight attendants at Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific Airways are threatening to withhold food, alcohol and even smiles..."

"... from passengers during the Christmas holidays over a pay dispute, a union official said Thursday."

"The Republican-led Michigan legislature approved a pair of right-to-work bills..."

"... sending them on for the governor's expected signature, as thousands of union activists continued protesting outside the state capitol."

Passing a right-to-work law in Michigan comes as a deep blow to unions, especially in a state the United Auto Workers union calls home. They see right-to-work as political payback for unions' traditional support for Democrats.

Check out the slide-show at the link, especially the view of the Capitol Rotunda at slide 4. Skimpy compared to the Wisconsin protests of 2011.

Obama says right-to-work laws "have everything to do with politics."

Okay, but which way is that supposed to cut? If it's all political — and not really about what benefits people economically — then which side should we be on? Both parties are doing politics around this issue. That's a good observation. And then....?

"Large numbers of out-of-state protesters are expected to join those from Michigan."

"Plates bearing Florida, Indiana and Ohio license plates were among those in the parking lot of the Michigan AFL-CIO in Lansing this morning."

We covered the pro-union protests here in Madison in 2011. They were just down the street. It's a bit of a drive over to Lansing. 6 hours. Meade could do it. What do you think? You'll have to instigate and incite him.

Twinkies will return... from Mexico.

There's a good chance:

Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo, the world’s largest bread baking firm, which already owns parts of Sara Lee, Entenmann’s and Thomas English Muffins.

Bimbo has already sniffed around the bankruptcy proceedings that have haunted Hostess for a decade, in a bid to further expand its North American portfolio and pad its $4 billion net worth. ...

With US sugar tariffs set artificially high to protect Florida sugar-growing concerns, a non-unionized shop with access to lower-priced sugar in Mexico could be the Twinkie lifeline, economists suggest.

Plus, the brand is getting all this free advertising coming out of the threat of extinction.

Extwinktion.

The end of Twinkies.

What will you eat instead?
	Whipped cream right out of the can.
	Sugar, spooned from the bowl, with a side of cream.
	Stick of butter, dabbed in a pile of sugar.
	Soft white bread, slathered in butter, with sugar sprinkled on top.
pollcode.com free polls

That last poll choice was, in fact, a big favorite in my childhood home. We used the expression "sneaking up on Mommy" to refer making and eating what we called sugar sandwiches. They were good! Feel free to use my recipe. Unfortunately, you won't be able to use Wonder Bread for your soft white bread, because that brand is going down too in The Wreck of the Twinksperus.

7.9%.

Unemployment.

Joe Biden at the debate reminded me of Steve Carrell in "The Office.

Here's something I wrote yesterday under the heading "How would you have reacted to Joe Biden?"

In real life, [t]here are different reactions, depending on how much of a friendship you have and... sometimes you're in a situation where you must maintain your demeanor, despite the other guy's antagonism. For example, in a job interview or a discussion with your boss or maybe when you were a kid and your father was exerting his authority. The VP debate is also, obviously, one of those situations. Imagine if Ryan had given Biden the finger? Ryan is a young man, he had to have been thinking of the various reactions that you'd use in an ordinary social situation, even as he rejected each one and told himself that he had to keep acting as if Biden were not behaving inappropriately.

A discussion with your boss.... It's like on "The Office." The employees are continually repressing their reaction to the boss — Steve Carrel's character Michael Scott. Example:



The boss is having a grand time, and he thinks he's a great guy, and socially, it's utterly dysfunctional, because he gets no proper feedback, because he's the boss. "The Office" has been so extraordinarily popular, I think, because viewers identify so strongly with the employees. Personally, I have difficulty watching the show. I understand the humor, but the identification with the oppressed employees is so strong that it's painful, and since it's the situation of this situation comedy, the pain is chronic.

Here's another "Office" clip:



Key line: "Have you ever been to Scranton Jan?" Scranton! Scranton is Joe Biden's home town!

"My name is Joe Biden and as strange as it sounds, everything important in my life that I’ve learned here in Scranton, I’m serious.... You are the grit, the sinew and the soul of what freedom is all about, sounds corny, but you really are, you are a special group of people, this is a special place and this soul is thick with pride and loyalty."

Picture Michael Scott pestering his employees with a morale-building speech when they just want to get back to work. Back to work... in Scranton... where unemployment is 10%.

Wisconsin state senator Jon Erpenbach tweets the NFL commissioner's phone number...

... because, you know, those damned replacement officials and Jennings caught that ball and offensive pass interference and arrrggghhhh come on people let's harass Roger Goodell.

ADDED: "Twitter Lynch Mob: Let’s kill NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell."

And: "Scott Walker: ‘Return the real refs’; Libs cry hypocrisy over unions, spew venom."

"While Republicans attacked a ruling that overturned parts of the state law limiting collective bargaining, pro-labor Dane County government leaders scrambled to use the court action to extend the lives of its employee unions."

"County administrators were negotiating with workers Wednesday night on contracts that could keep its unions alive through 2015."

"We have a window here, and we're going to take advantage of it," said County Board Chairman Scott McDonell.... As long as the ruling is in force, McDonell said, local governments can negotiate new binding contracts with employee unions. Before Act 10 took effect, the county and the unions signed a three-year pact that ends in 2013 and a one-year deal for 2014.

So they're locking us in for 2015 and beyond?

The meeting is at 7 p.m. tonight in room 201 of the City-County Building here in Madison.

Tommy needs to get some negative ads out there.

Thompson was up 9 points in the polls a month ago, and now he's down 9 points. It's useless to fret about whether the Marquette poll is accurate: How inaccurate can it be? How did it happen? Tammy Baldwin ran negative ads against the once presumptively popular Tommy Thompson, and they obviously worked. Here's the one I've seen on TV most often:



That's an AFSCME Independent Expenditure ad, not Baldwin's own campaign. Here's AFSCME's YouTube page, where you can see the kind of specific, effective material they are putting out in many local campaigns. For example, here's one in the Ohio-16 district, using a very similar attack — a politician went to Washington and got allied with "special interests" — and similar — and better — use of animated graphics to present a simple, clear message.

Tommy must have been thinking that he could cruise to victory, but the old man is getting kicked around.

ADDED: Tommy's campaign tried to go negative, via email to various conservative contacts, just before she did her big DNC speech, but Tommy got burned. Tammy supporters were able to portray this material as lesbian-bashing, and, in fact, that meanness — more than the ads — may be at the root of Tommy's troubles.