Search Results for: BID

Expanding Renewable Energy: Milwaukee Solar Group celebrates its buying program’s most successful year

The City of Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office (ECO) celebrated its most successful year of the Greater Milwaukee solar group purchase program on November 10, with 64 home and business owners installing 421 kilowatts of new solar installations. In partnership with renewable energy non-profit the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA), the group buy program helps greater Milwaukee residents invest in lower-cost solar installations through the power of volume purchasing. A solar group buy occurs when community members use their collective buying power to save on the total cost of going solar. “Milwaukee is committed to addressing the threat of climate...

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Crocodile Tears: Kyle Rittenhouse’s masterclass in victimology deserves an Emmy but not an exoneration

Earlier in the week, a friend texted me this prediction about the outcome of Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial: “Kyle Rittenhouse walks or only [gets convicted] of minor charges and gets probation.” Though my response was glib, I thought it was realistic at the time: “He’ll be convicted. He won’t walk. He may not get as much time as he deserves, but he’s going to jail.” My logic was based on the fact that all of Rittenhouse’s victims were white and that you can’t kill white men in America, even if you’re white yourself, and not face severe consequences. That...

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A Thriving Southern Strategy: Why the public fails to admit Republican “policy” is naked White Supremacy

For Democrats, there are tons of issues on the ballot. Climate change, free college, expanding Medicare, family leave after giving birth, Pre-K education, middle-class tax cut, child tax credit, the minimum wage, the right to unionize, and literally dozens of other less high-profile ways to expand democracy and rebuild our middle class after 40 years of assault by neoliberal Reaganomics. For Republicans there is really only one issue: race. Or, more specifically, maintaining the dominance of white people over every other racial group in America, and the survival of political and economic white supremacy. Forty years ago, Republicans pretended...

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How a “safety net” prevents personal disasters while “rights of citizenship” is a foundation for society

Senator Joe Manchin, echoing the rightwing billionaire’s think-tanks’ PR and every Republican in Congress, recently said his objection to free college for students and eyeglasses for seniors was that such things created an “entitlement society,” a slur that means “a nation of welfare recipients.” In that, he displays a fundamental ignorance about what governments do and how societies work, as well as the difference between what we usually call the “social safety net” and things people should expect simply as a “right of citizenship” in a first-world country. He also misunderstands the difference between expenses and investments. A “social...

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Passage of $1.2T bipartisan infrastructure bill and a recovering economy dispels rightwing fearmongering

In February 2021, the month after President Joe Biden took office, unemployment was 6.3%, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that it would take until the end of 2023 for the nation to reach 4.6% unemployment. In March 2021, Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to stimulate the economy, which had withered during the coronavirus pandemic. The plan extended unemployment benefits and provided stimulus payments to individuals. It increased food stamp benefits and significantly expanded the Child Tax Credit, putting money in parents’ pockets. It provided grants to small business and local, state, and tribal governments....

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What if Tom Brady took a knee? And why Colin Kaepernick is still out of a job after five years

By Jonathan Finn, Professor of Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University The 2021-22 NFL season is underway and Colin Kaepernick is still out of a job. It has been more than five years since he took a knee during the national anthem and in so doing further exposed issues of systemic racism in the NFL. I have been researching and writing about sport and media for several years and I frequently use Kaepernick’s case in my classes. To illuminate the gendered and racialized nature of that case and of the NFL, I ask a hypothetical question: what if Tom Brady...

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