Browsing: Viewpoints

Now that choice and independent charter schools are going to be less disadvantaged compared to district schools and to the prevailing cost of educating a kid, donors’ investments can go toward expanding capacity.

Many SNAP recipients avoid healthy foods and spend a large percentage of their benefits on sugary beverages and prepared desserts, according to Angela Rachidi, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and visiting fellow at the Badger Institute.

You know those decals that make your car look like it’s been hit by gunfire?

My family’s car has something like that, only more authentic: a bullet hole in the tailgate.

Social Security already is exempt from income taxes in Wisconsin. Now two Republican legislators are circulating a bill that would virtually eliminate all income taxes on retirees.

It’s telling that Gov. Evers, Sen. Larson and the rest keep using words like “the wealthy” and “rich” to talk about their targets. The Wisconsin income tax is levied not on wealth that people have saved but on income — what they earn. If you say “rich,” with its implications of inheritance or luck, you don’t have to grapple with how taxes take what someone is working for.

Our governor, you likely have heard by now, is the talk of the nation for using his unique veto power to essentially try to lock in tax increases and big spending until sometime close to Armageddon.

Wisconsinites clearly got some wins in the 2023-2025 biennel budget. Now the task at hand is consolidate and expand those moving forward.

A plan passed by Wisconsin’s Joint Finance Committee saves taxpayers $3.5 billion over two years, money that came from them in the first place because they’re currently overtaxed. Gov. Evers would do well to sign off on that plan.

If the vast UW System Diversity, Equity and Inclusion effort — which costs approximately $32 million biennially — is so necessary, why is it such a failure?

Seeing how often Wisconsinites have been told that public school districts are starving, it isn’t surprising that when asked to guess how much tax money districts spent per student, they whiffed. And not by a little. The most common guess was about one-third to one-half of what the Department of Public Instruction says is the real figure.