Wisconsin Will Raise Public School Funding For the Next 400 Years (bbc.com) 125
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has used his partial veto power to make a creative line-item change to the state budget, securing increased funding for public schools until 2425 instead of 2025. The BBC reports: Republicans have reacted with fury to what they call "an unprecedented brand-new way to screw the taxpayer." The move could however be undone by a legal challenge or future governor. It is the latest tussle between Mr Evers, a former public school teacher who narrowly won re-election last year, and a Republican-controlled state legislature that has often blocked his agenda. Their original budget proposal had raised the amount local school districts could generate via property taxes, by $325 per student, for the next two school years.
But Wisconsin allows its governors to alter certain pieces of legislation by striking words and numbers as they see fit before signing them into law - what is known as partial veto power. Both Democrats and Republicans have flexed their partial veto authority for years, with Mr Evers' Republican predecessor once deploying it to extend a state program's deadline by one thousand years.
This week, before he signed the biennial state budget into law, the governor altered language that applied the $325 increase to the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, vetoing a hyphen and a "20" to instead make the end date 2425. He also used his power to remove proposed tax cuts for the state's wealthiest taxpayers and protect some 180 diversity, equity and inclusion jobs Republicans wanted to cut at the public University of Wisconsin.
But Wisconsin allows its governors to alter certain pieces of legislation by striking words and numbers as they see fit before signing them into law - what is known as partial veto power. Both Democrats and Republicans have flexed their partial veto authority for years, with Mr Evers' Republican predecessor once deploying it to extend a state program's deadline by one thousand years.
This week, before he signed the biennial state budget into law, the governor altered language that applied the $325 increase to the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, vetoing a hyphen and a "20" to instead make the end date 2425. He also used his power to remove proposed tax cuts for the state's wealthiest taxpayers and protect some 180 diversity, equity and inclusion jobs Republicans wanted to cut at the public University of Wisconsin.
A message, but easily adressed. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a strong political message, but little more.
The new law was going to be for two years, and it passed.
The courts can change it back to 2 years. The next legislature can change it. The next governor can change it.
It's really only gullible people who would think the state's education budget is now set in stone for four centuries. Sadly, there are plenty of gullible people and clickbait-writing reporters, but really that's bound to make the political message that much bigger.
Re:A message, but easily adressed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Both Democrats and Republicans have flexed their partial veto authority for years, with Mr Evers' Republican predecessor once deploying it to extend a state programme's deadline by one thousand years.
Sounds like the current republicans are just mad that Evers is smarter than they are.
And also it's downright weird that they would freak out over this, unless they realize it's actually a popular thing to do because the electorate thinks restoring funding to public schools is worth doing in the long term and not just for a tiny "just in time to cause problems the next election cycle" period?
And it's not like republican-leaning areas are even required to do the increase. Districts are just allowed to increase the property tax generation routed to public schools, under the law.Their original budget proposal had raised the amount local school districts could generate via property taxes, by $325 (£250) per student, for the next two school years.
Re:A message, but easily adressed. (Score:5, Interesting)
And also it's downright weird that they would freak out over this, ...
Not too weird because to change it Republicans would be the ones seen reducing school funding. Not a good look.
Re:A message, but easily adressed. (Score:5, Insightful)
They love reducing school funding. Like increasing their per diem while getting rid of school breakfast. https://newrepublic.com/post/1... [newrepublic.com]
The party that supposedly protects children.
Re: A message, but easily adressed. (Score:5, Insightful)
The anonymous coward brings up another good point: they are the nanny state. They dictate your medical care without medical training nor knowledge of the situation, they dictate education despite not being trained as educators nor knowing the details of the child, and otherwise work to eliminate self-determination and claim it is freedom.
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After just one year they'll have the support they are looking for. This is a big hike to property taxes year over year. Not to mention the finally acknowledged as illegal DEI programs that should have been cut.
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Not too weird because to change it Republicans would be the ones seen reducing school funding. Not a good look.
They do that all the time and they're proud of it.
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We should probably stop viewing the public school funding issue as a republican versus democrat thing. I've found rural republicans (here in Texas anyway) are pretty supportive of public school funding and terrified of, especially, plans for vouchers. They are fully aware, as apparently their urban and suburban counterparts are not, that vouchers will hollow out the only schools they will ever have access to. Wealthy republicans want this. they can afford the elite private schools with tuitions on the level
Re:A message, but easily adressed. (Score:4, Insightful)
it's a Wisconsin thing (Score:2)
many other states have "line item veto", but the Wisconsin form in all it's silliness is unique, afaik.
Generally, such vetoes allow the reduction of amounts, and removal of items from a budget.
Wisconsin, though, used language that has been interpreted to allow "vetoing" individual words and letters!
To the point that the veto of the word "not", flat out reversing the meaning of the law, has been upheld.
It's not just other countries; the rest of the US laughs at them, too.
hawk
It's Soo much more than that (Score:2)
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Or they can wait a year for the property tax hikes to hit and not only toss him out but win every seat campaigning on fixing what he did. Nevermind that they actually did authorized it for a couple years, nobody is going to pay attention to that when this guy extended a few centuries.
Since the DEI measures violate civil rights he essentially is violating civil rights by vetoing the removal of that staff.
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The audacity of wanting children to have a better education.
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The audacity of wanting children to have a better education.
Some love the poorly educated [qz.com]. They're easier to fool.
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Others just want to program children.
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No, those are parents. Like it or not having a child is currently the closest you can get to cloning yourself and raising it the closest you can get to transferring yourself into the new body, each parent has a 50% stake but collectively a kid is 100% a cutting from the parental tree. It's their own flesh, they have the right and duty to program it until it reaches the age of majority and autonomy passes to the spawn. They are also the only parties with any skin in the game both literally and figuratively w
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More money doesn't magically make for a better education. Pretty much any high school graduate is more than qualified to teach kids up to high school, with the notable exception of a very slight bump to math majors there is no correlation between teaching certificates/degrees and student outcomes. The only thing that makes a difference is experience and even that levels off after about 4 years.
In other words, if you toss in burger flippers with slightly better than avg IQs (to offset the heavy weighting at
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More money doesn't magically make for a better education.
Saw a chart the other day. We've something like tripled inflation-adjusted per-student primary education spending in the US over the last 40 years. Test scores have not budged. Clearly more money isn't the solution.
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So what is the solution, less money?
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So what is the solution, less money?
Good question. IMHO, more competition and less state involvement. I am cautiously optimistic vouchers and school choice ("fund students not systems") may bear fruit. But given the immense money and influence of the state-education-teacher's union complex, I'm not betting my paycheck on it.
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"I am cautiously optimistic vouchers and school choice ("fund students not systems") may bear fruit. But given the immense money and influence of the state-education-teacher's union complex, I'm not betting my paycheck on it."
Oh I don't know. They've been successful in lobbying to exclude homeschoolers from these programs so far. Personally I think they should just use property tax deductions rather than vouchers. It really adds insult to injury when a homeowner is forced to pay all these increases for scho
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Oh I don't know. They've been successful in lobbying to exclude homeschoolers from these programs so far.
That's why the caution.
Personally I think they should just use property tax deductions rather than vouchers. It really adds insult to injury when a homeowner is forced to pay all these increases for schools they don't even use and then has to go out of pocket for all the educational expenses of their children on top of that.
Sure but that's not my favorite approach. I don't see how that works out for people who have kids but don't own homes. It's something reasonable people can debate and disagree on.
Personally, I prefer to think of "how to raise taxes" and "how to spend taxes" as separate issues. I don't like tying them together, as in "we tax A and the revenue is used to fund B." It makes it complicated, there a pathological corner cases, and there's no reason to expect the revenue and expenses to match
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"I don't see how that works out for people who have kids but don't own homes."
People who don't own homes don't need the deduction because they aren't paying anything to begin with. Though I suppose a passthrough deduction could be applied and a rent reduction negotiated.
"That decouples education funding from address and that's a win."
Not really. Associating the address with education expense isn't akin to artificial budget entries but rather determining how much you can spend based on the balance of your ch
Re: A message, but easily adressed. (Score:2)
You need to sit down and spend some quality time reviewing your local school district budget... Based on your math, each teacher in a classroom gets $500K/year (25 x $20K), guess how much of that never leaves the Administration building?
Parochial schools can educate students for about one-third of that amount ($7k), the difference is no teacher unions and no bloated administration.
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You need to sit down and spend some quality time reviewing your local school district budget...
OMG, I tried at one point and I thought compilers were complicated. There's a zillion funding sources, each one with strings attached as to what it can pay for. The budget is this enormous matrix saying 5% of this fund and 19% of that one go to fund this line item.
The most eye-opening and funny rant I've seen on this was by Tom McClintock, then a California state senator, written around 2005. I found it on reason.com [reason.org] but it's lost all its formatting. I'm copying it here to fix it (although I don't know if t
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"Give parents the money they pay in taxes for schools back in vouchers for a private school of their choosing."
Including homeschool. But rather than vouchers I think we should just use property tax deductions.
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"Republicans believe it's better to teach racism and sexism at home."
The anti-slavery party is opposed to teaching them racism and sexism at all.
Re: A message, but easily adressed. (Score:2)
Allowing property taxes to increase year-after-year is not a proven method for improving education.
A better health care package, higher salary, and more generous pension payments typically do not make tenure-protected teacher better at their job.
Curious, how nanny billions did Wisconsin schools get from the federal government? What have they spent it on n Wisconsin? How much is left? I imagine precious little of those resources went to directly educating children.
Re: A message, but easily adressed. (Score:2)
In exchange for revoking tenure protections, I will happily stop demanding school vouchers.
Right now children are trapped in failing schools, and the teachers are tenure protected. Remove that protection, flush out the bad teachers, and let's start making real changes in public education.
Re: A message, but easily adressed. (Score:2)
He changed the bill to span 402 years, aside from a typo, why?
Yes, it can be changed - I can just hear the Democrats wailing "Republicans don't want to fund education! They don't value our children!". Think it won't happen? Common sense hasn't been part of US politics for a long, long time.
Why do we have the US Department of Education? Seriously - it didn't exist before Jimmy Carter entered the Oval Office. The country got along for almost two centuries (and even put a man on the moon), and where are we now
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The phrase is "rein in". The Dept. of Ed. paid for spelling books and literature in our schools.
Investing in Education is "Screwing the Tax Payer" (Score:5, Insightful)
Only in America could someone be that dumb
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[Investing in Education is "Screwing the Tax Payer"] Only in America could someone be that dumb
The way the governor altered it allows taxes to be increased every year for 400 years and no longer vacates positions at the public university Republicans removed. Both changes affect taxes and budgets in a way the elected legislative branch desired. It's the legislative branch's responsibility to create laws.
It probably is a good idea to fund education for the long term instead of turning it into political fodder every election. The governor doing it single-handedly in this fashion most likely is overreach
Re:Investing in Education is "Screwing the Tax Pay (Score:4, Interesting)
"The governor doing it single-handedly in this fashion most likely is overreaching his authority."
The prior governor - anti-education republican Scott Walker - used this same form of veto to extend a moratorium on school districts installing air conditioning without a public referendum [wpr.org] from a single year to 1000 years. [twitter.com]
I'd rather that school districts be able to fund appropriately, because kids deserve a good education (plus, having a well educated population is important for civic engagement, economic stability, and national security). But it seems that the only way to fix that is to outwit the republicans and then vote them out of office whenever possible.
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Since the veto is in the Wisconsin constitution and the Wisconsin constitution defines/designs the Wisconsin government it doesn't "violate[] the basic design of [Wisconsin] government".
There is an argument to be made though that this veto power may need to be adjusted.
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"The governor doing it single-handedly in this fashion most likely is overreaching his authority."
The prior governor - anti-education republican Scott Walker - used this same form of veto to extend a moratorium on school districts installing air conditioning without a public referendum [wpr.org] from a single year to 1000 years. [twitter.com]
Two wrongs don't make a right. You now have an example of a Republican abusing this form of veto and an example of a Democrat doing the same. Just because the other party did it doesn't make it right.
I'd rather that school districts be able to fund appropriately, because kids deserve a good education (plus, having a well educated population is important for civic engagement, economic stability, and national security). But it seems that the only way to fix that is to outwit the republicans and then vote them out of office whenever possible.
This breaches the separation of powers our Founding Fathers put into the US Constitution. The different branches of government need to maintain a series of checks and balances so none of them becomes too powerful. This reeks of Obama using an executive order to mandate health care when the legislature didn't gi
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You could say the same for computer service techs.
Take a group of individuals and equip them with Internet access and Google and you have a 50-50 chance that they can solve most computer problems.
If you disagree with this statement maybe you should also reevaluate your statement.
Re: Investing in Education is "Screwing the Tax Pa (Score:2)
Both changes affect taxes and budgets in a way the elected legislative branch desired. It's the legislative branch's responsibility to create laws.
No.
The legislature passed a bill that provided for two years of funding increases, the governor altered the bill with his "partial veto" and gave the bill an additional 400 years of defined level funding per student. That is NOT what the legislature approved.
Agree with it or not, but the Governor altered the bill the legislature passed.
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Republicans would be jizzing their pants if this was intended to fight “woke”
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Guess woke has lost it's outrage and DEI is the new hot conservative boogeyman.
What unconstitutional DEI measures has the governor enacted?
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Sigh
Those in America are better informed about our educational system than those outside of it. :| )
( Or those who post in here who aren't even old enough to pay property taxes at all yet
For example, raising those property taxes every year for education sounds great doesn't it ?
Yeah ! Go education !
Until you realize they're going to put the majority of that into building a new Football Stadium, Baseball Field or something equally useless.
( Because the one they built five years ago isn't big enough and the
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That's what school board meetings do -- they give you some say in how it is all done.
Re:Investing in Education is "Screwing the Tax Pay (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, slow down there, dumbfuck.
The partial veto is in the WI constitution, and the voters can and have reeled it in in the past because of abuses not entirely dissimilar to this.
You can't bitch and moan about "separation of powers" when the document which DEFINES THEM, the WI state constitution, gives this power to the governor. Much less can you bitch and moan knowing that voters can and have adjusted this as they see fit.
No matter what constitution you personally feel governs you, it's the WI state constitution which governs the separation of powers in WI. And that says this is fine, and the citizens of the state have modified it more than once to ensure that it does what they want it to do.
Keep your little snowflake tears to yourself.
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The partial veto is in the WI constitution, and the voters can and have reeled it in in the past because of abuses not entirely dissimilar to this.
Good for them. If it were me, I'd be spooling up a campaign to completely eliminate the partial veto because it sounds like no governor can be trusted to use it as intended.
"Politics" from the Greek "poly" meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "blood sucking parasites."
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Good for them. If it were me...
But it's not, so why are you ranting about something that doesn't impact you and which is out of your control?
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But it's not, so why are you ranting about something that doesn't impact you and which is out of your control?
I'm ranting? Gee, I thought the one who first started throwing personal insults was closer to ranting territory. I guess I'm weird that way.
Wisconsin can do whatever they like. It's their state. Knock yer socks off.
What I hope is this is used as an object lesson for other states to be careful what powers you give your executive. I personally wouldn't have imagined a governor could abuse partial veto power this way. If this comes up in my state, California, I'll be sure to use this as an example of why we ne
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I guarantee you smoot loves the legislative branch limiting the power of the D governor, while rubber stamping the R governor's every move.
How much you want to bet? I'll even give you 2:1 odds. It's easy money, right?
No? Dang. I wanted beer money.
I can't think of the last time I voted for any major party candidate when I had a choice. I distrust pretty much every executive these days. They're all too big for their britches and need some serious dope slaps. Legislatures need to grow a pair and assert their authority.
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Executive branch has veto power.
Right. I don't think what the governor did here matches the common conception of a veto. Vetoes typically mean blocking an entire bill, or maybe removing some provisions to reduce the scope of the bill. Most often that's proposed in terms of removing lines from a budget. I doubt I'm telling you anything you don't already know.
What the governor did here was use clever syntax and buggy constitutional provisions to dramatically extend the scope of a bill. I think if you asked the typical person on the street i
this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
and it doesn't matter which party, such an obvious abuse of power to skirt the obvious spirit of both the bill and the power of the office he holds
I'm sure he and sycophant apologists will say how 'good' or 'clever' this is
like the phrase 'Help your uncle, Jack, off his horse' with comma-removal power... in the hands of the self-righteous this becomes a joke instead of a desire to help
now imagine what this guy -- and the other govs -- would do if unchecked
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and it doesn't matter which party, such an obvious abuse of power to skirt the obvious spirit of both the bill and the power of the office he holds
And this is why politicians are less popular than toenail fungus. This was clearly not the intent of allowing partial vetoes. I'm as much of a legal textualist as you'll find but that's just an annoying stunt. Sheesh, I expect the next bill will just be 10,000 repetitions of the alphabet from which the Governor can delete everything which doesn't look like the bill he wanted to write.
Sadly, our intended governmental structure may not help. The theory was legislators would be more loyal to their institution,
Re:this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score:5, Insightful)
and it doesn't matter which party, such an obvious abuse of power to skirt the obvious spirit of both the bill and the power of the office he holds
I'm sure he and sycophant apologists will say how 'good' or 'clever' this is
like the phrase 'Help your uncle, Jack, off his horse' with comma-removal power... in the hands of the self-righteous this becomes a joke instead of a desire to help
now imagine what this guy -- and the other govs -- would do if unchecked
The other factor to consider is that Wisconsin is heavily gerrymandered [wikipedia.org].
At the Federal level, and for statewide offices like Governor and Justices, they tend to be slightly Democratic [wikipedia.org]. In free elections their state legislature would either be Democratic, or have only a slight GOP majority.
So really what we have here is a legitimately elected branch of the Wisconsin government (the Governor) using an illegitimate means (ridiculous inline veto) to override an illegitimately elected branch of the government (a legislature with a permanent GOP majority regardless of the will of the people).
Still problematic, but less a specific outrage and more a sign of general democratic collapse.
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Re:this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score:5, Interesting)
Gerrymandering is a real problem and we need to do something to address it but both parties love to do it and pretty much all politicians don't want to fix it.
Both parties do it, but one is clearly far worse.
Also, gerrymandering started before the Constitution was written so I'm not sure your hyperbole about a 'general democratic collapse' holds any water.
I can't find a proper peer reviewed study, but it does seem to be getting worse [umbc.edu].
But there are two big issues with gerrymandering:
1) It yields non-competitive districts where the party partisans, rather than the general public, effectively choose the representative.
2) When you have a gerrymandered minority ruling a majority the government loses legitimacy.
Seems like just another histrionic rant from someone who is treating politics like a game.
I'm a Canadian, and I want the US to fix its political system because I seriously think it's headed towards autocracy or even civil war in the next 20-50 years (and I don't want to be next door to that).
Among other things, you currently have one party turning denial of the outcome of the 2020 election into a litmus test, and gerrymandering is one of the things that enables them to nominate those extreme candidates and send them into office.
What happens in 2024 or 2028 when the GOP loses the Presidential election and those legislators decide they're going to change the result like they think should have happened in 2020?
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Don't worry, the Conservatives are taking lessons from the Republican's and Harper is pushing taking lessons from Hungary, I'm sure given the chance, Elections Canada will be defunded and Parliament will directly control the boundaries of ridings.
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I can't find a proper peer reviewed study, but it does seem to be getting worse [umbc.edu].
But there are two big issues with gerrymandering:
1) It yields non-competitive districts where the party partisans, rather than the general public, effectively choose the representative.
2) When you have a gerrymandered minority ruling a majority the government loses legitimacy.
Seems like just another histrionic rant from someone who is treating politics like a game.
I'm a Canadian, and I want the US to fix its political system because I seriously think it's headed towards autocracy or even civil war in the next 20-50 years (and I don't want to be next door to that).
Among other things, you currently have one party turning denial of the outcome of the 2020 election into a litmus test, and gerrymandering is one of the things that enables them to nominate those extreme candidates and send them into office.
What happens in 2024 or 2028 when the GOP loses the Presidential election and those legislators decide they're going to change the result like they think should have happened in 2020?
The partisan tit for tat in general is getting worse, I think it may be partially due to an inflection point around 2008 where the political machine leaned into the internet for data gathering and marketing, and pushed their "non-profit" groups to "shape" social media opinion. That was also the year that the AP changed their rules to remove the requirement to be objective reporters and instead promote subjective "correcting" of the news to make sure readers didn't get the "wrong" opinion from the facts.
In
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But stuff like that - changing voting laws to increase your own party's pool - becomes a dangerous game
So one party does it to reduce the opposition voters that's fine. Someone undoes it and that's a "dangerous game". Bit biased there. Speaking of which:
that results in a fairly balanced split of power passing back and forth between the parties.
Well no. The Republican party are, frankly speaking unpopular. They only get power due to a fucked system which gives them disproportionate amounts of power. As a res
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Well no. The Republican party are, frankly speaking unpopular. They only get power due to a fucked system which gives them disproportionate amounts of power. As a result, instead of appealing to more of the electorate they can simply impose the will of relatively small band of loonies on the majority. In a fair system, the Republicans would need to actually represent voters.
They appeal to a significant portion of the population, it's just not your preferred demographic, and since it's the half of the population that's spread out over 90% of the landmass of the country rather than the smaller dense urban centers you don't like the way the constitution set up our representation. The whole point of the electoral college is to balance the needs of the entire country and not just let a 50.01% majority decide everything, and it was a smart decision that's allowed our union of 50 sm
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They consistently appeal to substantially under half, yet are hugely overrepresented compared to the numbers.
The reason you think the skew is fair is because your think, fundamentally, that people who have less land are worth less. Otherwise it works be irrelevant that they live in small urban centers.
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They consistently appeal to substantially under half, yet are hugely overrepresented compared to the numbers.
The reason you think the skew is fair is because your think, fundamentally, that people who have less land are worth less. Otherwise it works be irrelevant that they live in small urban centers.
According to polling Dems are only a couple percent more than Republicans, Independents are actually the majority. You just think your group is more important than it is.
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I understand you have the mental disease where you assume everyone you disagree with must belong to the other tribe. I've got it you can stop telling me.
I'm not talking about registered party members, I'm taking about votes cast. Independent candidates do not in any universe get a majority of the vote.
Republicans are solidly overrepresented given the number of votes cast compared to democrats.
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"In free elections their state legislature would either be Democratic"
In my experience Democrats tend to abuse these claims to pretend that a couple overpopulated cities should completely disenfranchise the rest of the state by denying them representation. Which sort of tosses a wrench in the core concept we are founded on, likeminded people can flee to here, incorporate their own community, and more or less be left alone to live according to their ideas without being subjected to the tyranny of the majorit
Re:this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score:5, Insightful)
"In free elections their state legislature would either be Democratic"
In my experience Democrats tend to abuse these claims to pretend that a couple overpopulated cities should completely disenfranchise the rest of the state by denying them representation.
The converse of that is that those people in "a couple overpopulated cities", end up deprived of political power and end up getting ruled over by the rural and suburban minority.
Which sort of tosses a wrench in the core concept we are founded on, likeminded people can flee to here, incorporate their own community, and more or less be left alone to live according to their ideas without being subjected to the tyranny of the majority.
Even worse is tyranny of the minority, which you're seeing with the anti-abortion bills that are passed even though they are generally opposed by the public in the state.
Though the cities tend to contain a lot of minorities as well... so in disenfranchising them you still end up with a tyranny of the majority after all.
Having proportionate representation in the legislature
You mean disproportionate representation, because that's what you're arguing for.
Meanwhile their representation does nothing to prevent those overpopulated cities let their majority of bodies live as THEY wish by passing legislation within their own cities.
Except GOP legislatures have been passing statewide laws over a number of things, as well as removing authority from those cities.
When you look at alleged Republican gerrymandering it is usually just a balancing of rural and urban populations with a proportionate result.
Actually there's a lot of instances of them doing everything they can to bundle up the Democratic voters into as tight a box as they can, often using race as a proxy.
This tends to favor republicans because essentially states are red states. We are not Europe, only half our population lives in the cities. When you look at Democrats gerrymandering you get all sorts of spiders and other ridiculous districts to racially stereotype every special interest you can imagine and for literally no valid purpose.
I don't have the energy to throw in a bunch of citations... but you have a very weird view of the facts if you think Democrats are the predominantly guilty party there.
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"end up deprived of political power"
Deprived of the power to repress others? They certainly aren't deprived of the right to govern themselves.
"end up getting ruled over by the rural and suburban minority"
That is a false dichotomy. It is not a case of one or the other. Our government is split up so that some positions become dominated by the tyranny of the majority of bodies and others the majority of communities. Ideally this puts the opposing interests in something a stalemate and nobody gets much of anyth
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In my experience Democrats tend to abuse these claims to pretend that a couple overpopulated cities should completely disenfranchise the rest of the state by denying them representation.
Ah yes, the old argument that if people have less land then they simply count for less as people.
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In my experience Democrats tend to abuse these claims to pretend that a couple overpopulated cities should completely disenfranchise the rest of the state by denying them representation.
Land does not vote, people vote. People need representation. A city is not 'overpopulated', it has the population that it has, and that is irrelevant to democracy in any case, since the guiding principle should be "one person, one vote".
That doesn't mean one person's vote should count 5x more because they live in the middle of a district that has nobody in it. Their opinion is not more important because there are fewer people around. Either that district needs to be redrawn to balance the population, or a f
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"Land does not vote, people vote."
The entire half of the people who live on less densely populated land are not reducible to 'land.'
"since the guiding principle should be "one person, one vote"."
No, that should not be the case and it is not how our nation was structured. Other nations in antiquity had that notion and it ends with disaster. There are nods to this notion in our structure but those positions are balanced against others which are structured differently. Within a community it does work this way
Re: this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
The other factor to consider is that Wisconsin is heavily gerrymandered.
EVERY state is "heavily gerrymandered".
Please, take a moment and point me towards a sanely-districted state...
Re: (Score:3)
What century are you living in? 21 US states are sanely-districted by a non-partisan or bi-partisan entity, while 29 US states still choose an unethical process where the winning party ignores the needs of the people in order to focus on their own job security and blocking the losing party from being able to participate in a fair democratic process in the future.
Re:this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score:5, Informative)
Long-time Wisconsin resident here. Not long ago Scott Walker was a Republican governor and used this same trick. As has basically every governor before him; the line-item veto is not exactly a secret among Wisconsin politicians.
As to what the government would do if unchecked, we don't need to imagine. The Republicans had control of the governorship and both houses of the legislature, as well as a (very) friendly supreme court, back in 2019. They left this power right where it is. (Honestly, I think this was a dumb move; the way the districts are in WI it's much more likely you'll see a Republican legislature and Democratic governor than vice-versa.)
Everyone moans when the line-item veto gets used on their budget, but they keep it as a cudgel for stupid tricks when their governor is in power. At this point, my take is: Politics has rules. Play by the rules or get played. Change the rules if you don't like them and have the power to do so. But don't whine when someone else plays by by the rules in a way you don't like.
Re: (Score:2)
You are right the fiscal repercussions are vastly different.
In one you have to waste money studying if air conditioning is needed and the other one only costs taxpayers money if their local government deems it necessary.
The new law doesn't force any tax increases it just spells out a maximum that they can be increased if school boards choose to.
Re: (Score:2)
"it just spells out a maximum that they can be increased if school boards choose to."
Yup, because when you give people the option to give themselves raises every year they so often reply, "No thanks, we don't even know what to do with all the money we have now."
Re: this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
Years ago this was referred to as the "Frankenstein veto" as it allowed creating new legislation such as this without legislature input. Regardless of political alignment, as a Wisconsin resident I've never liked it and wish it would be removed from the governor's toolbox. Sure it may let you pull stunts like this, but the parts vetoes may have provided positive public benefit and now they are gone.
Now, some may say that the severely gerrymandered districts (I recall that a state that votes roughly 60% Demo
Re: (Score:2)
The legislator could always try to override the veto if it is so bad. 8^)
Re: this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
I don't think it can or the line item veto wouldn't exist. The items were line item vetoed and then the altered bill was immediately signed into law; there is no bill to veto.
Re: (Score:2)
and it doesn't matter which party, such an obvious abuse of power to skirt the obvious spirit of both the bill and the power of the office he holds
I'm sure he and sycophant apologists will say how 'good' or 'clever' this is
Did you miss that his predecessor from another party did the exact same thing first? That's not saying it's right. It's wrong but, as an action, this helps draw attention to just how broken their law on vetoes is.
Re: (Score:2)
The entire point of the power is to let governors fuck with bills.
Yes and no. The intent of line-item or partial vetoes is to let Governors remove items from bills. The typical use case is to let the governor defund a crony provision added to a budget in sleezy back room deal. In fact, think about the term, "veto". Veto power is intended to let the executive block legislative action, not expand it.
That being said, it sounds like the Wisconsin partial-veto legislation was not particularly well thought through. No doubt they thought "what would I want the governor to use th
Overturned in 3... 2...1... (Score:1)
Technically correct (Score:3)
tax foxconn for not building on their land (Score:1)
tax foxconn for not building on their land
Probably a good hedge against inflation. (Score:1)
Just remember (Score:1)
That republicans called public education “screwing the taxpayer”
Re:Just remember (Score:5, Informative)
That republicans called public education "screwing the taxpayer"
It seems education, especially higher education, is a hindrance to Republican power. According to some articles, Democrats seem to attract more people with higher educations than Republicans do. From Elections 2022: The educational divide that helps explain the midterms [politico.com] (and others):
Republicans failed to make significant gains in districts dominated by college-educated white voters — or nonwhite voters without degrees.
-- Democrats control 77% of the U.S.'s most highly educated Congressional districts.
-- Republicans control 64% of districts where the fewest people went to college.
Search: level of education vote democrat or republican [google.com]
Re: Just remember (Score:2)
Please, define "highly educated" - I can't just assume you and I have the same definition.
Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
So, this is nothing special given the Republican outcry would lead you to think. They have used this tactic themselves before. This governer is mearly working on their precident.
Re: (Score:3)
So, this is nothing special given the Republican outcry would lead you to think. They have used this tactic themselves before. This governer is mearly working on their precident.
By that logic they were 'merely working on the Democrats' precedent'. Here is the history -
Governor Patrick Lucey (D, 1973): In an appropriation for $25 million vetoed the digit 2
Governor Patrick Lucey (D, 1975): removed the word "not" in "not less than 50 percent"
Governor Anthony Earl (D, 1983): edited a 121-word, five-sentence paragraph down to a one-sentence, 22-word paragraph to change an appeals process from the courts to the Public Service Commission.
Governor Tommy Thompson (R, 1993): introduced the "reduction veto" in which legislatively-appropriated amount was arbitrarily reduced
Governor Scott Walker (R, 2011): crossed out 116 words in a pension-related section of the budget bill
Governor Tony Evers (D, 2023): extends what was supposed to be a two-year temporary funding increase for schools to last over 400 years
Morality and standards of good governance are things that exist outside the little microcosm of R's and D's trying to prove who is worse. It is just plainly objectively obvious that the governor should not be able to change the substantive meaning of legislation especially by "vetoing" specific characters. It's also extremely childish like changes an 'F' to an 'A' on your report card - but in this case then demandi
K-12 is fine, but donâ(TM)t spend on higher e (Score:2)
Not really the problem (Score:1)
The big problem here is not that a governor did something annoying. This is a loophole that seems to allow the governor to rewrite an entire bill without oversight. The US Constitution is very clear on forbidding any government from operating like that.
Regardless of your politics, this is wrong (Score:2)
What next? Allowing the governor to run arbitrary regex on the law? This is tantamount to granting unlimited executive power, and as much as you may want to fund education you should not want this to stand. It's shenanigans, and the fact that it's shenanigans in your favor shouldn't sway you. Next time it'll be against you. Then what?
I think most of us have a reasonable understanding of what a line-item veto should mean, and this is not it. If legislators didn't act so much in bad faith with "riders"
Weird, wild stuff that is real (Score:2)
Wow, this would be a great April Fools story. However, it's real. Here's a writeup of the Wisconsin partial veto [wisconsin.gov]:
the partial veto power allows the governor to strike words, numbers, and punctuation in both appropriation and non-appropriation text
A 1930 amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution created the governor’s partial veto power. The amendment provided that “Appropriation bills may be approved in whole or in part by the governor, and the part approved shall become law.”
In 1990, the voters amended the constitution to provide that “In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill.”
In 2008, the voters again amended the constitution to prohibit the governor from creating “a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill.”
Strictly speaking, the governor can strike out the word "not", thus directly inverting the meaning of a new law. Wow!
This means that a wise legislature should following certain strategies in writing the text of bills, such as using very short sentences and not using the word "not" or any negative modifiers. So, "2023 lasting for two years" instead of writing "2023-24 and 2024-25". Of course,
Won't somebody please think (Score:2)
It's not a problem when the GOP does it.
Please think of the children, unless you have to pay for it.
Re: Won't somebody please think (Score:2)
Are you trying to assert that future legislatures wouldn't increase school funding in the future without this re-write?
Re: (Score:2)
It's dishonest of politicians to demand a program which will be needed for 10 years (see below), last only 2 years: Particularly, when they've demanded other programs last almost forever.
Most people spend 10 up to 17 (kindergarten, senior secondary, university) years in formal education, so a bill that allows an increase for a mere 2 years is either addressing a one-off (extra-ordinary) expense, or an attempt to reduce taxes (that fails in the short-term but succeeds, long-term).
Uh, governor, I hate to inform you.. (Score:2)
180 DEI professionals at one university? (Score:2)
He also used his power to remove proposed tax cuts for the state's wealthiest taxpayers and protect some 180 diversity, equity and inclusion jobs Republicans wanted to cut at the public University of Wisconsin.
That kinda seems like a lot, doesn't it? Granted, the school has 50,000 students, but this is one DEI worker for every 278 students - how big a diversity problem does UW have?
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Are you, or they, talking UW-Madison or the entire UW system? Cause the whole system has 180,000 students.
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Plus there's 40,000 employees too .. so basically the ratio is like 1 DEI worker per 1200 staff and students. I dunno what a DEI worker does and what sort of issues exist so I dunno if that's a low or high number .. but just wanted to clarify the ratio *IF* we're talking the whole UW system.
Re: (Score:2)
That kinda seems like a lot, doesn't it? Granted, the school has 50,000 students, but this is one DEI worker for every 278 students - how big a diversity problem does UW have?
An enormous one. Milwaukee is the most segregated major metro area in the US [businessinsider.com] and Madison would probably take that slot except that it's too small to be considered a major metro area.
The Universities try to do better but at least UW-Madison is really shit at it. The thing about hiring DEI staff is that institutions need to listen to them and changing culture is hard and people don't like doing it. I'm not saying we shouldn't employ DEI experts but I don't know that 180 is too few or too many; all I do know i
He missed a golden opportunity... (Score:2)