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Get the latest news and research from Badger Institute
- Superior coal terminal is latest victim of declining Great Lakes shipments
- Lead paint: The 50-year saga continues
- U.S. House defangs federal protection of gray wolves in Wisconsin
- Marquette poll finds 80 percent of Americans trust government ‘only some of the time’ or ‘never’
- Legislature balks as Evers demands millions for more food aid bureaucrats
- Two-thirds of Americans under 30 say people can’t be trusted, Marquette poll finds
- Working folks get short shrift while city funds vanity streetcar
- Majority of Wisconsin kids fall short in math as legislators consider fix
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A legislative committee formed to study falling enrollment across the University of Wisconsin System could recommend putting an end to what’s left of a tottering two-year branch campus system.
Many Wisconsin independents and conservatives were hoodwinked this week into voting against the two constitutional amendments that together would have given legislators shared responsibility with the governor over big buckets of federal spending.
If everything works out as under-promised, Microsoft will make the biggest single technology investment ever in the state of Wisconsin — a transformative infusion of billions of dollars to develop more than 1,500 acres in Racine County.
When it comes to UW-Madison faculty in social sciences and the humanities, the odds of finding a Republican donor are just 1 in 530.
While heat pumps can be cheaper than gas-powered furnaces, they add an average of more than $2,000 a year to a new Wisconsin home’s heating bill, according to a Badger Institute study.
Wisconsin will need to build 200,000 housing units by 2030 to accommodate all the people who want to live and work here. Sheboygan County is a microcosm of the problem — but on the forefront of a possible solution.
According to a new report, Milwaukee County is a place where economic mobility fell sharply for kids born between 1978 and 1992.
The average potency of cannabis products – illegal and legal – is higher today than it was in past decades both domestically and abroad. The current data and research available do not conclusively indicate that such trends are driven by cannabis legalization, but there is initial evidence indicating that part of this trend is being driven by consumer preference for more potent forms of cannabis which appear to be more readily available in legal markets.
Specialized docket wins bipartisan support but faces a changed Supreme Court Advocates for a business court system operating since 2017…
Glover was living in Racine in 1854, two years after he escaped slavery in Missouri, when a bounty-hunting posse found him and dragged him off to Milwaukee’s jail, intending to return him to bondage.
Passing the amendments would give Wisconsin’s 33 state Senators and 99 state Assembly members, elected by you, a say in where huge sums of federal money go. It doesn’t get much more democratic than that.
Demand for legal cannabis products is elastic, so states must consider this fact when setting tax rates. If taxes are set too high, legalization will not deter users from exiting legacy illegal markets.
A small group of enthusiasts would like to put Milwaukee at the forefront of historical preservation of postmodern architecture. Or at least help a downtown developer get a tax break.
Data centers chug electricity like undergrads drink beer, and the advent of artificial intelligence — which uses, we’re told, about 10 times the electricity as conventional searches — makes power demand soar.
After a year-long disenrollment, there are still 163,221 more people on Medicaid in Wisconsin than there were before the start of the pandemic, at a cost to taxpayers of at least $50 million a year.
There is a crisis in Wisconsin higher education, brought about by costs and demographics. There are, however, ways for colleges to adapt, overcome and improve — if they’re willing to take advantage of technology and the brainpower already in-house.
Passage of the controversial $252 million Milwaukee Public Schools referendum means hundreds of other districts statewide will get less aid. Madison, Waukesha and Racine school districts could lose $2 million or more in one year, Appleton and West Bend between $1 million and $2 million, and New Berlin, Fond du Lac, Green Bay and Mukwonago at least $760,000, according to calculations made by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
“Below basic” becomes “developing.” “Basic” becomes “approaching.” “Proficient” becomes “meeting.” Tellingly, the category of “advanced,” the result no one wants to hide, stays the same.
“We could do so much better but we’re not right now because the universities are one-sided and need to have more people to engage in a robust dialogue over what it is that we should be doing. We just don’t have that right now, and I think, as a consequence, we’re suffering, our students are suffering, the taxpayers are suffering, and the long-term success of universities is suffering.”
Sociologist Brad Wilcox is telling young people to marry because it will make them happier. “People who embrace the core values and virtues associated with marriage are more likely to flourish both in marriage and in life.”

