Author: Syndicated

Wisconsinites went to the polls on November 6 in droves. The final results of the election however did not fully reflect the will of the people. There were five statewide races: Governor with Lt. Governor on the same ticket, U.S. Senator, Attorney General, Treasurer, and Secretary of State. Democrats won all five races, the first time that has happened since 1982. Democrats had unmistakable victories at the statewide level. When looking down the ballot, the results tell a very different story. US Congress Wisconsin has eight Congressional seats, all of which were up for election for the midterms. Going...

The hundreds of thousands of African Americans who served in the U.S. Army during World War I and returned home as heroes soon faced many more battles over their equality in American society. While they were celebrated in the streets of New York, they also soon encountered a wave of hatred and violence. Chad Williams, the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Chair in History and the author of “Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era,” discussed the aftermath of World War I for black people in America. Q: How were black soldiers received in...

Foxconn may transfer engineers from China to staff its under-construction facility in Wisconsin due to a lack of appropriate skilled labor in the area, with Apple’s assembly partner keen to meet employment targets in order to retain $3 billion in state and local incentives. Foxconn is producing a major LCD plant in Mount Pleasant, with the facility expected to be a major job creation opportunity, as well as a way to bring more manufacturing to the United States. While work on the plant is ongoing, it is suggested there may be some issues staffing the operation once it is...

America continues to be in a state of civil war. Not just a civil war, but the civil war. In the first round, back in the 1860s, the Confederacy lost. Yet, now the Confederacy is temporarily on top. The United States remains one country divided by two cultures. From the start, the US has been a battleground of two competing visions. America’s founding credo was that “all men are created equal.” Yet, the founding reality was that white males were far more equal than everyone else. White men owned slaves, denied the vote to women, and took the lands...

Back in 2015, the University of Wisconsin successfully convinced a court that Apple’s A-series chips infringed on a patent for a method of boosting the efficiency of integrated circuits. The iPhone maker was subsequently ordered to pay damages. But Apple appealed, with a two-prong defense, and has now succeeded in getting the judgement reversed. Apple was originally facing a bill as high as $862M for infringement of the patent. A jury subsequently awarded a lower sum of $234M after the judge ruled that Apple’s infringement was inadvertent rather than willful. The sum was subsequently almost doubled to $506M on...

Zealots relish destruction. It satisfies some primal urge to annihilate. And like a smug anarchist, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has smashed a progressive state political tradition, generations in the making, with evangelical self-assurance. Political writer and Wisconsin native Dan Kaufman documents Walker’s rise to ignominy in his book The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics. Lest the grandiose subtitle deter you, Kaufman delivers a highly readable, thoroughly engrossing report on how conservative activists and corporate lobbyists are using the Badger State as an incubator for a radical demolition...