The Capital Times, Madison, April 20
Eugene Kane had a righteous capacity for outrage
“You have to wonder what the governor has been smoking,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer Eugene Kane wrote in a classic column on former Gov. Scott Walker in 2014. “With a razor-thin lead over his Democratic challenger, Gov. Scott Walker apparently decided to up the ante by proposing the ‘Pee in a Cup Challenge’ for Wisconsin residents on public assistance.”
Kane was objecting to another example of Walker’s manifest cruelty: a proposal to force Wisconsinites who receive public assistance - including food stamps and unemployment insurance - to take drug tests.
Kane, who died last week at age 63, had a righteous capacity for outrage. He never hid his fury when politicians treated the most vulnerable people in Wisconsin as pawns in their electoral games. And he let rip when Walker and his ghoulish legislative allies - Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau - engaged in political stunts that were so obviously unnecessary and so obviously cruel.
“With no compelling facts to suggest drug testing is a paramount issue for voters, Walker once again is following the lead of other extreme right-wing governors who back questionable policies straight from the conservative playbook written by wealthy corporate donors,” wrote Kane, who did not hesitate to point out, “it’s undeniable that the overwhelming perception is that many Republican policies such as voter ID, restricting voting hours and drug testing for public aid recipients are aimed at punishing African-Americans, most of whom turned out for President Barack Obama.”
Yet, Kane brought so much more than righteous indignation to the Wisconsin debate. He was such an agile, and good-humored writer that he knew exactly how to expose and upend the foulest figures in the state’s political firmament. The columnist well understood Walker’s intention - to rally his mean-spirited supporters with a crude appeal that would help him secure the 2014 win that would serve as a launch pad for a 2016 Republican presidential run. Kane knew Walker, an ill-equipped and ill-informed political charlatan, would wither under scrutiny from the national media. So he closed that column with a perfect sting.
Noting that Walker was “giving his supporters more of the political red meat they crave - just another way to build credibility with his right-wing base for a possible run for the presidency in 2016,” Kane concluded, “If Walker is really considering a run, I can’t help but wonder if the right people are being asked to take drug tests.”
Walker’s delusional bid for the 2016 GOP nomination crashed and burned within weeks of its launch. As usual, Kane got the story right - and told it with a combination of wit and wisdom that Wisconsinites will sorely miss.
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Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, April 19
Pandemic has silver lining for learning
Online learning, with students and teachers collaborating on digital platforms, has been optional for the last decade at most public schools.
Not anymore.
With the coronavirus pandemic forcing K-12 schools and colleges to close their buildings and campuses to avoid spreading a potentially deadly disease, using distance technology to educate students is now required.
The abrupt yet necessary transition has been uncomfortable for those who cling to the traditional learning model of students seated in a classroom listening to a teacher.
But the demand for learning from home is forcing students, educators and parents across Wisconsin to dive head-first into the digital world. And in the long run, this should move our education systems forward.
Across society, in fact, workers in countless professions and fields are quickly having to adopt technologies they had avoided or didn’t know existed. How many people used Zoom video conferences before the governor issued a stay-at-home order to avoid the virus? Raise your hands. Anyone?
Our State Journal editorial board just started meeting and podcasting on Zoom, rather than relying on clumsy conference calls.
It’s a new world, and we all need to be open and flexible so distance technology can benefit and improve what we do.
Many Madison schools already were using Google Classroom to submit homework and do projects. But the district had to dramatically expand its online offerings to more than 25,000 students in a matter of weeks. It wasn’t always smooth. Some students and staff have struggled to engage. Some families don’t have fast or any internet. The digital divide could exacerbate achievement gaps.
But classes are proceeding - with many of us impressed by what’s been possible, and how quickly our children can adapt and advance.
UW-Madison, which already incorporated technology into traditional classrooms, converted thousands of courses to online-only in just a week.
“In my world,” said Richard Halverson, a UW-Madison education professor, “there’s a lot of sadness and apprehension. But I’m looking at an emergence of an entirely new form of literacy for teachers and learners - technology-enabled learning literacy, which is kind of remarkable. It might be the next revolution in how we think about education.”
Halverson studies technology in education and wrote the 2018 book “Rethinking education in the age of technology” with Allan Collins.
Nobody, of course, wanted a pandemic to threaten people’s lives and stall our economy. But a silver lining to these difficult times could be the way the virus, in limiting our movement, has forced us to adopt - not just dabble with - technologies that were here all along. It’s a big opportunity. Distance technology can customize our learning and help us be more efficient and effective in the global economy.
The digital classroom has its limits and won’t replace teachers or school buildings. Face-to-face human interaction is still best.
But the COVID-19 crisis is pushing the education world to embrace virtual learning, and the rest of society to communicate in new ways, all of which should improve our collective knowledge over time.
Halverson said he’s wondered for years when technology would become just everyday tools for learning, “and it looks like right now - the spring of 2020.”
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The Journal Times of Racine, April 19
Election Commission failed Wisconsin voters
Two and a half weeks ago, we warned that the April 7 spring election was a mess and said it would only get worse before election day.
Sure enough, it did.
We argued at the time that, in the face of the spread of the coronavirus across the state, the election should be postponed. We urged Gov. Tony Evers and Republican leaders in the state Senate and Assembly to take that action before it was too late.
Evers had already proposed going to all-mail ballots, but Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said that was a “careless and reckless” suggestion that would not have been logistically possible for the election clerks across the state to accomplish.
On the day before the election, Evers postponed the vote, but state Republicans went to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to get Evers’ executive order quashed, which it promptly did.
Even as that was going on, a fight was developing over extending the deadline for mail-in absentee ballots. After a federal court judge noted it may be “ill-advised” for in-person voting because of the coronavirus, he ruled in favor of granting a one-week extension to send in mail-in ballots to April 13. That, too, was met with a court challenge by state Republicans and a quick appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court which denied the extension and issued a ruling saying mail-in ballots must be “postmarked” by April 7 and received within a week.
Election Day came and went on schedule. There was a massive increase in mail-in voting, but the in-person voting was fairly quiet and orderly at the polls, except for Milwaukee, which had only five polling places open instead of the usual 180 because of a shortage of poll workers and Green Bay, which also reduced its number of polling sites.
But the mess was not over. The Supreme Court ruling that mail-in ballots had to be postmarked by Tuesday, April 7 triggered another fight between the partisan members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
The problem? Not all mailed-in ballots bore postmarks. Mailings with a permit meter or pre-canceled stamp for postage aren’t required to get cancellation marks; some postmarks were smudged or unclear and others carried a cancellation mark with only “April, 2020” on them. Compound that with the issue of ballots that may have been in the possession of the Post Office on Tuesday - either in a mailbox or a bin - but not processed until April 8.
The Elections Commission with its three Democrat appointees and three Republican appointees on Friday after the election did what it has done often: it deadlocked 3-3 on giving instruction to local election clerks.
The only instruction it gave to the 1,850 municipalities around the state and their canvass boards was: “Each municipality must determine whether the ballot was postmarked timely.”
In other words: You’re on your own.
As we said it’s not the first time the WEC has deadlocked. It did so famously last year when the commission deadlocked (yes, 3-3) on a proposal by Republicans to purge more than 200,000 voters from the state rolls. That case is still bubbling through the courts with the voter purge denied in the most recent ruling.
That’s not the kind of direction we should be getting from the Wisconsin Election Commission. Deadlocks and partisan infighting undercut the commission’s duty to support and give guidance to election clerks across the state.
As one election clerk put it last week, “I don’t want to throw the Elections Commission under the bus, but if their job is to interpret the rules and they’re not doing it, something has to change. If they’re going to deadlock in a 3-3 tie and throw the onus back to us, we’ll do the best we can. But it can be frustrating when you ask the experts for an answer and they can’t give us one.”
We would suggest adding a tie-breaker member to the six-person commission. Maybe someone chosen at random from the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association - someone with skin in the game, some expertise - but not necessarily a political ax to grind like the partisan appointees.
The commission’s gridlock on the postmark issue means that each clerk and canvass board will have to make its own decision - and potentially defend their actions on why some postmarked ballots were accepted and others were not. Yes, that might end up in court.
Those decisions will vary across the state, where they should be uniform.
According to news reports last week, Milwaukee received 380 ballots with unclear postmarks. The elections commission there voted to accept all ballots with questionable postmarks.
In the City of Racine, City Clerk Tara Coolidge said they rejected 88 ballots because they did not have an April 7 postmark. The city was still receiving ballots by mail on Tuesday. Caledonia Village Clerk Karie Pope said the village received 24 ballots postmarked April 8, which were rejected.
Those rejected ballots loomed large as a $1 billion, 30-year school referendum which passed by a five-vote margin was challenged with a recount, which took place Saturday.
We deserve better than this from Elections Commission members who put party power over the needs of Wisconsin’s citizens.
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