FTP -- the "file transfer protocol" -- is a long-supplanted Unix tool for transferring files between computers, once standard but now considered to be too insecure to use; so it's alarming that it's running on the voting information systems that will be used in elections in Wisconsin and Kentucky tomorrow. Read the rest
When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker announced a $3 billion corporate welfare plan for a new Foxconn plant in his state, Foxconn watchers warned that the company had a long history of breaking its new factory promises after sucking up billions in taxpayer dollars. Read the rest
There are three drawbridges within walking distance of my home here in Alameda, California. I have often wondered if anyone has ignored the warning gates and tried to go over the bridge.
In Wisconsin, one cyclist did just that. And it was caught by the state's Department of Transportation surveillance camera. On the Fourth of July, on the Racine Street Bridge in Menasha, a 37-year-old woman maneuvered around the flashing barriers. She soon fell, bike and all, into the crack where the road and bridge meet. It's pretty freaky to watch. It made me gasp!
Thankfully, she didn't get crushed by the bridge. According to reports, she only sustained minor facial injuries. She has been cited for failure to obey a traffic signal, according to KRON.
Last July, Wisconsin's far-right state government declared victory for its "free market" agenda when it announced that it would transfer $3,000,000,000 in taxpayer-funded corporate welfare to Foxconn, in order to tempt the company to open a factory in the state -- despite the company's long history of broken promises and outright lies about the jobs and spending in other places that had welcomed it in. Read the rest
House Speaker Paul Ryan, an asshole, is quitting his job. Read the rest
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker -- whose reign has been haunted by scandal and propped up by out-of-state dark money -- has announced that he will not call special elections to fill seats in the Wisconsin legislature, following on from Democratic upsets in state Republican strongholds. Read the rest
Paul Ryan says his tax plan will be great for the poorest and most vulnerable people in America, and he tweeted a hypothetical to help you understand how that works: "Meet Cindy: a single mom, making $30,000 per year, who hopes to one day get beyond living paycheck to paycheck. With a $700 increase in her tax refund each year under our tax bill, Cindy can start saving for her future." Read the rest
In 2008 and 2012, Wisconsin ranked second in the USA for voter turnout; in 2016, following the enactment of a series of racist voter-suppression tactics, the voter turnout was the worst it had been since 2000. Read the rest
Foxconn has wrung a promise of $3 billion in corporate welfare from the state of Wisconsin, but even that is no guarantee that it will open a factory there, even if it swears up and down that this is in the cards. Read the rest
The recent trumpist trumpeting about the plans of Chinese manufacturer Foxconn to open a manufacturing facility in Wisconsin omitted a few key details -- like the fact that Foxconn is being given a sweetheart tax-break that's topped up with 15 years' worth of guarantees of up to $200m/year in cash subsidies at taxpayer expense -- a record-setting taxpayer subsidy that exceeds the previous Wisconsin record-holder by a factor of fifty. Read the rest
Randy Bryce wants to challenge Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan for the First District of Wisconsin, where Ryan beat his most recent Democratic challenger by 35 points. Read the rest
Reason Magazine's C.J. Ciaramella filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI for the Bureau's file on TSR, the company that E Gary Gygax founded when he created Dungeons and Dragons (now a division of Hasbro). Read the rest
Last fall, I wrote about the strange case of Minnesota governor Mark Dayton, a left-wing billionaire heir to the Target fortune who came to power and reversed his Republican predecessors' Reagonomic idiocy, instead raising taxes on rich people, increasing public spending, and creating shared prosperity for the people of Minnesota. Read the rest
Senator Ron Johnson [R-WI/Twitter/email/DC office (202) 224-5323] is one of the many Republican lawmakers who've chosen not to meet with their own constituents during the Congressional recess; Earl Good, a Vietnam veteran and Milwaukee constituent who called Johnson's office hundreds of times because the Senator won't meet with the people he represents has now been sent a cease-and-desist letter threatening legal retaliation if he doesn't stop contacting his elected official. Read the rest
Scott Nelles is a Wisconsin sculptor who works in cast brass and aluminum, making beautiful, whimsical pieces with a strong science fictional flare tinged with strealined dieselpunk. Read the rest
Prior to the election of the business-worshipping, union-busting, climate denying Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, the state's Department of Natural Resources website was a rich trove of information about climate change -- as you'd expect from a state with a lot of fresh water, where resource extraction played an important part in the economy. Read the rest
University of Michigan prof J Alex Halderman (previously) is one of America's top experts on voting machine security (see this, for example), and he's issued a joint statement with voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz to the Clinton campaign, advising them to ask for a recount of the Wisconsin votes. Read the rest
