Browsing: Government Transparency

Excerpts of a speech by Woodson Center President and founder Robert L. Woodson Sr. at the Wisconsin Center.

Like many of my fellow Americans, I just finished watching President Obama speak to the nation about Syria.  These presidential addresses are historic for they link us to our parents’ generation and beyond.

Several years ago while sitting at my desk I received a curious phone call from a Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreporter working on a story about convicted felons working as lobbyists in Madison. 

In New Orleans, through the first Recovery School District in the nation, the percentage of students attending failing schools there has been reduced from 78% to 40%.

You just never know … Tucked away in the very last motion passed by the Joint Finance Committee was an item in which the Legislature evicted the Center for Investigative Journalism from University buildings.

Among the many tales of woe that appeared in the media in the wake of the Wisconsin protests was the…

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a commentary contrasting the tough budget introduced by Governor Walker with the soft, easy on-the-eyes budgets we’ve seen out of Washington.

A funny thing happened on the way to electing yet another big-spending, lawyer-laden, special-interest-loving Legislature last fall: Voters in four…

I hadn’t seen my buddy Ernie in a few months since I had visited him at St. Mary’s.  That day Ernie was sipping ice water through a bent straw looking paler than usual – which is something for a guy who spends his free time either in a tavern or a betting parlor.

There could not have been a sharper contrast between the tension in Madison and the calm in Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Coggs, the new Democratic state representative for the 10th Assembly District in Milwaukee, is against the Voter ID proposal because, she told me today, many poorer residents of her central city district don’t have IDs and would be disenfranchised if one is now required to cast a ballot.

The voters exact vengeance upon the disdainful Democrats. Before the vote on Nov. 2, humorist P.J. O’Rourke quipped that it…

You will have to forgive me, you see I’m in the ideas business and, as such, I have a fair amount of disdain for politics.

State government needs a good dose of sabermetrics. “The Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun is the best young hitter in the…

In 2002, state and local government spending in Wisconsin was 7.7% above the national average while our income level was 2.8% below the national average

An examination of the implementation of competitive contracting and privatization by Wisconsin’s government

Dale Belman, Ph.D. & John Heywood, Ph.D. The setting of public sector compensation should command the attention of all citizens. The level of such compensation helps determine both the competence and efficiency of government services. Too high a level wastes the resources of state and local governments, depriving them of the opportunity to address other