All the more reason to vote NO!

Thanks to $$$ windfall from State of WI!

State shared revenue numbers are out and it appears the Madison metro school district will get a helluva lot more financial aid than expected. As in $61.3 million — a whopping 62% increase from last year’s $37.9 million! Goobly gobs greater than the statewide average 4.2% increase. In fact, Madison got the 8th biggest increase among the 421 school districts in the state! (Is someone cooking the books at DPI? … Just asking!)

Even more reason today to vote against both MMSD spending referenda! They don’t need it!

Even more reason to vote against both MMSD spending referenda: State government ended its fiscal year with $4.6 billion surplus — over $800 million more than expected.

Good news! Our Vote No yard signs are in! You can get one if I know you. (Beware of saboteurs!)

 My man reports from the field: 

Biking and driving around the Emerald City, there’s a plethora of Harris, Pocan, and Baldwin yard signs, but (in my observation) not a single Trump, Olsen, or Hovde sign. Literally not one, and except for the far east side, I’ve biked most everywhere. It will be interesting to compare vote tallies to lack of signs, (or vehicle stickers for that matter) for Republican candidates. If Republican candidates garner 25% or 30% of the city vote with no visible yard and bumper support, I’d speculate that the “silent minority” in our bastion of liberal free thought and speech is intimidated by peer pressure or fear of vandalism into not displaying their preference. — Brynstane 

→ Jeff Wiegand out of Marshall WI is the only conservative serving on the Dane County Board of Supervisors. Who is Jeff supporting? It’s right here. Me, I say None of the Above!

→ Madison liberal: “Why I am voting NO on Madison’s $22 million funding referendum.”

→ Kamala Harris, of Jamaican and Indian descent, thinks the way to persuade young American black men to vote for her is to give them weed. Barack Obama is harassing “the brothers” that they need to vote for their own by putting a black woman in office. This all seems racist to me. — Erick Woods Erickson

 Sound familiar?

The Atlantic magazine details the carjacking crime wave in the Washington D.C. metro area — and a special task force to crack down on them:

Two of the teens had been arrested for armed carjacking eight months earlier; one was still on probation. This was in keeping with what police had been regularly seeing: the same perpetrators arrested for carjackings again and again, even after getting caught.

[Due to] the changing politics of policing over the past decade, communities all over the country had placed new restraints on police departments’ ability to aggressively pursue criminals. There were good reasons for these reforms—tragic examples of police overreach and outright abuse, especially in predominantly Black neighborhoods, were common. But police say this sudden overhaul had serious unintended consequences: more murders, more carjackings, and more violent crimes of other sorts, most of them in the very communities that the police reforms had ostensibly been aimed at protecting. Among the new limits placed on police in D.C. was an effective ban on high-speed car chases. … 

Kids would say to detectives, “ ‘I’m a juvenile — I’ll be home later today.’ ”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: The bigger give by the State of Wisconsin means there is even less reason to vote the district authority to exceed state revenue caps by $100 million/year into perpetuity (and beyond!). Like we said 10-15-24, MMSD don’t need the money!

Are YOU afraid of signs?