Author: Syndicated

The foreclosure crisis that accompanied the Great Recession had an unexpected consequence in Milwaukee County: It exacerbated political inequity. A study conducted by researchers at UW-Milwaukee and Marquette University found that county homeowners facing foreclosure or those who had lost their homes during the economic downturn were less likely to go to the polls in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. These local results echo a national trend documented by other studies that indicate economic adversity negatively impacts people’s voting behavior. In fact, the study not only found a decline in voting at the level of individual homeowners, but also...

Foxconn’s vaunted Wisconsin facilities, backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, have so far amounted to “a bunch of empty buildings and a lot of questions,” an investigation indicates. A Milwaukee “innovation center,” intended to staff 500 workers and realize Foxconn’s “AI 8K+5G vision,” was found with unused conference rooms and minimal staff as recently as mid-March, according to The Verge. Some of the people refused to talk to the press, while others wouldn’t confirm or deny their employer. Permit applications have been made for about $60,000 in renovations, but mostly for three floors being temporarily occupied a financial services...

Some people have an exaggerated notion of their knowledge and intelligence, while others fear they are faking it. This happened in Pittsburg in 1995. A man walked into a bank and robbed it at gunpoint in broad daylight. He wasn’t wearing a mask or any other disguise. In fact, he was so confident that he even looked at the security camera and smiled. He then held up another bank at gunpoint. When arrested, he was very surprised. “But I wore the juice,” he told the police. The man, it seems, was under the impression that if he rubbed lemon...

The proposal aims “to show the absurdity when a woman tries to regulate a man’s body” as anti-choice legislation regulates women’s bodies. In a direct rebuke to laws designed to take away a woman’s right to control her own body, Democratic Georgia state Representative Dar’shun Kendrick has proposed new “Testicular Bill of Rights” legislation that would, among other things, require men to get permission from their sexual partners before obtaining erectile dysfunction medication and institute a 24-hour “waiting period” for men who want to buy porn or sex toys. The legislative proposal comes in response to HB 481, a...

There is new momentum around the National Popular Vote movement, where states will award Electoral College votes to elect the president based on which candidate has won the most votes nationwide, instead of today’s state-by-state winner-take-all system. The reform is based on states joining an interstate compact, a legally binding vehicle where states make agreements among themselves despite a national federal government. In this case, states, which the U.S. Constitution empowers to oversee its Electoral College process, agree to award their presidential votes to the national popular vote winner. As of early 2019, the project was two-thirds of the...

The economic disparities between residents of Milwaukee’s central city and other parts of the metropolitan area are well known. The suburbs, in particular, show lower rates of poverty and incarceration and higher income, education and home-ownership than many parts of the central city. That is especially true for one zip code. For many, 53206 has become a metaphor for the challenges facing inner-city residents, especially residents of color. The areas high incarceration rate and low employment rate have attracted national and international reporting. A recently released study spanning 17 years tries to quantify, what it terms, the “ecosystem of...