Search Results for: BID

Investigation finds Trump officials gave millions in COVID-19 response contracts to unproven companies

Investigation finds Trump officials gave millions in COVID-19 response contracts to unproven companies

Posted by | Apr 17, 2021 |

A top adviser to former President Donald Trump pressured agency officials to reward politically connected or otherwise untested companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts as part of a chaotic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the early findings of an inquiry led by House Democrats. Peter Navarro, who served as Trump’s deputy assistant and trade adviser, essentially verbally awarded a $96 million deal for respirators to a company with White House connections. Later, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency were pressured to sign the contract after the fact, according to correspondence obtained by congressional...

Read More
Wisconsin gets Federal aid to repair deteriorating roads but still lacks long-term funding solution

Wisconsin gets Federal aid to repair deteriorating roads but still lacks long-term funding solution

Posted by | Apr 15, 2021 |

An influx of pandemic-related federal aid to state and local governments is helping clear a backlog of needed road improvement projects in Wisconsin. In 2020, the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card gave Wisconsin roads a letter grade of D+. The state Department of Transportation recently announced a COVID-19 relief plan passed by Congress in late 2020 will allow the state to complete 42 highway projects valued at nearly $150 million in the next two years. “The funding was able to fill in for the lost revenues we had (in 2020) because of gas tax revenues being...

Read More
Derek Chauvin’s trial stirs questions about the legal, moral, and political legitimacy of any verdict

Derek Chauvin’s trial stirs questions about the legal, moral, and political legitimacy of any verdict

Posted by | Apr 14, 2021

By Lewis R. Gordon, Professor of Philosophy, University of Connecticut There is a difference between enforcing the law and being the law. The world is now witnessing another in a long history of struggles for racial justice in which this distinction may be ignored. Derek Chauvin, a 45-year-old White former Minneapolis police officer, is on trial for third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man. There are three questions I find important to consider as the trial unfolds. These questions address the legal, moral, and political legitimacy of...

Read More
414 (New) Day 2021: Original poem by Dasha Kelly Hamilton invites Milwaukee to move 414WARD

414 (New) Day 2021: Original poem by Dasha Kelly Hamilton invites Milwaukee to move 414WARD

Posted by | Apr 14, 2021 |

Imagine MKE and Milwaukee Downtown BID #21 released an inspirational video set to a newly commissioned poem by city and state poet laureate Dasha Kelly Hamilton, in celebration of 414 Day 2021. The video produced by Samer Ghani celebrates the city, and its arts and culture community. The visuals shared vignettes of the ways Milwaukee’s artists have continued to create, while being stuck at home during the pandemic. The efforts also point to the reemerge of performances on stages familiar and new in the coming months. “This past year brought staggering loss to our city and our world. As...

Read More
Under the Dome: Why a coalition of obstructionists fuel a Culture War to feed their agenda

Under the Dome: Why a coalition of obstructionists fuel a Culture War to feed their agenda

Posted by | Apr 13, 2021

You can tell when Republicans are in trouble: they start throwing gunpowder on the fires of the culture wars. At the end of March, Republicans who control the Michigan State House and Senate passed a law requiring the state to inform recipients of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine that it was developed using fetal stem cells. As a result, the state health department had to update their website to say: “The Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine has been produced by growing the virus in fetal cells during vaccine development and manufacturing. Even though fetal cells are used to...

Read More
None Dare Call It Treason: Why there has been so little public discussion on the events of January 6

None Dare Call It Treason: Why there has been so little public discussion on the events of January 6

Posted by | Apr 13, 2021

During Donald Trump’s presidency, the UC Davis law professor Carlton Larson spent a lot of time on the phone telling journalists: “It’s not treason.” Trump’s behavior towards Russia: not treason. All the FBI investigations Trump labeled as treason: also not treason. Then came the 6 January attack on the Capitol by hundreds of Trump supporters. That was treason according to the founding fathers, Larson wrote in an op-ed the next day. But in the three months since 6 January, however, there has been little public discussion of “treason” as the framework for understanding what happened, Larson said. “Everything was...

Read More

Knezelism