Stop UW’s slide
The University of Wisconsin-Madison recently slid two spots in the national rankings for total research funding.
The shift is a troubling indicator for our state’s economic future. While this prestigious flagship university is certainly capable of a rebound, these are signs of things to come and no one should be surprised.
The university has four major funding sources: federal research funding (for which faculty must compete with other major universities nationally), tuition, state support and private donations and gifts. Resident tuition has been frozen for four years and state and federal support has been steadily reduced over the last decade. Private donations and gifts cover only part of the growing gap.
Perennial cuts to major funding sources are never a positive formula for sustainable growth, and UW-Madison is experiencing this firsthand. State funds go directly toward hiring faculty who teach and compete for federal research funding. The relationship is direct and the impact of past cuts is real.
Beyond the slide in national research rankings, 15 departments at UW-Madison have fallen out of top 25 national rankings in the last four years, reflecting the loss of faculty in developing industries such as video gaming and essential professions such as nursing and teacher training. These signs do not bode well for our state and communities unless we change direction.
Universities require systematic, predictable investments that keep pace with inflation. If UW-Madison were a private enterprise, it would be one of Wisconsin's top Fortune 500 companies, bringing more than $1 billion into the state. We cannot afford to lose this engine of growth and skills development.
UW-Madison can return to its former status with a reasonable state investment this budget cycle, a thaw in the tuition freeze and specific investments in high-demand, research areas.
It is important for the public, our elected officials, the Board of Regents and all of us to support our state’s flagship university.
Katharine Lyall President Emeritus University of Wisconsin System
Hopeful signs
I agree with Catherine Rampell’s article, “Global shift to far right worrisome,” on many accounts (Opinions, Dec. 8).
These are very worrisome times. But I think we need to keep our heads. Rampell mentions four recent events that detail an ultraconservative populist wave. A Donald Trump victory and the success of Brexit are obvious signs that she points out. However, her other two examples are less compelling.
If we begin to dissect the referendum in Italy, immediately we see that it is not comparable to Brexit. The Italian people were presented with the option to amend their constitution. A vote against that amendment was considered an anti-establishment vote because the then-prime minister, Matteo Renzi, promised to leave office if the amendment was not passed.
However, Renzi was never elected to his position by the Italian people and the amendment was seen as a way for a non-elected official to consolidate power. Although the “no” vote was championed by some ultraconservative populist parties, it was not an essentially nationalistic referendum like Brexit.
Second, her description of the election in Austria is foreboding when actually the results are very hopeful. This was the second election in Austria. The first occurred on May 22 with the Green Party beating the ultraconservative nationalist party by only 0.6 percentage points. These results were thrown out because of problems with mail-in voting, and a second election took place on Dec. 4. The Austrian people, against all the momentum that Brexit and Trump brought to the nationalistic right, voted for the Green Party with a much wider margin of 7.6 percentage points.
There is no doubt as to an ultraconservative populist wave passing through the world, but it doesn’t help to throw events into that category that don’t belong there or are really signs of its possible weakening.
Tom Grizzle within the walls of a facility he oversees, but his typical refusal to respond to inquiries in a civil fashion are indicative of a long history of his general disdain for the public he serves.
Coincidentally, the president-elect’s incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, has been quoted as stating that Clarke is “someone we definitely want to be involved in the administration at some level” (“Clarke passed over for cabinet,” Dec. 8).
It is not difficult to imagine the response from the citizens of Milwaukee County: “Take him off our hands. Please! He’s all yours.”
Mark Stauffer
Crack down on landlord
I was shocked to read the excellent article in the Dec. 5 issue about one of Milwaukee’s, and perhaps Wisconsin’s, allegedly worst slum landlords, James H. Herrick (“River Hills landlord behind problem properties in city”).
This wealthy “captain of industry” apparently has managed to keep his identity secret while his LLC owes many thousands of dollars in municipal court fines and back property taxes. These penalties are from the allegedly roach- and rat-infested, sewage-laden, heat-lacking, code-violating properties where his hapless renters live. Meanwhile, Herrick enjoys the luxury of living in his $1.1 million mansion in River Hills.
A “high-ranking executive at Robert W. Baird & Co.,” Herrick is using questionable methods to fatten his net worth and he should know better. City officials should crack down on this sad member of the human race. He belongs in jail.
William H. Tishler
Renters aren’t hostages
To the Hall of Shame occupied by incomparably evil landlords Will Sherard and Jesse Hyche are now added the sinister Mohammad Choudry and Elijah Mohammad Rashaed for resisting the predations of government under cover of LLCs.
Proclaims Madison attorney Joseph Boucher, “abusive landlords” hide behind the veil of LLCs to “screw people over” (“Identities kept secret in cat-and-mouse game,” Dec. 4).
But renters are not hostages, and real estate investors have no duty to provide housing to anyone. If properties owned by unscrupulous landlords are unacceptable to Milwaukee renters, some of whom Legal Action of Wisconsin attorney April Hartman describes as “incredibly low-income people,” they are free to lease from other investors.
As the legal noose tightens, the Gang of Four will be unable to evade the punitive costs of government, taking “substandard” properties off the market and the occupants out of their homes. The losers will be impoverished inner city renters, who collectively will pay incrementally higher prices for housing and, at the margin, will be priced out of the rental market entirely.
Milwaukee renters are getting “screwed over” not by scofflaws Choudry et al. but by politicians, bureaucrats, prosecutors, legal pundits and, yes, journalists, each of whom will have a more convincing claim to the moral high ground when they can show us hundreds of properties they offer to “incredibly low-income people” at rental rates at or below the rates charged by the Villains of Milwaukee.
David Doro
Don’t surrender to Twitter
When and how did the fourth estate (written word of the press) surrender its unofficial position as the guardian of reporting in a timely and accurate fashion the daily news to American citizens?
Now it seems that much of the daily news is initially reported via “tweets.” Social media Twitter and its so-called tweets have somehow wrestled the daily news reporting from the fourth estates.
We all know our president-elect gets up early in the morning to tweet his opinions (worthwhile opinions or not). He seems to have his say via Twitter rather than news conferences. Has he put an end to the daily newspaper as the guardian of accurate news for American citizens? Perhaps our president-elect
Not a Christian nation
While I strongly concur with Jarrell Taylor’s distaste for such symbols of hatred and bigotry as the swastika and the Confederate flag, I must take issue with his mistaken belief that the United States is “truly a Christian nation” (“Ban Confederate Flags,” Letters, Dec. 4),
There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution regarding religion — Christian or otherwise — except in regard to freedom of religion as declared in the First Amendment. In fact, John Adams overtly stated that “the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” And Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, who took a quite dim view of religion altogether, observed: “I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded in fables and mythology.”
Wouldn’t it make sense to put aside the ideologies that separate us, that incite unchristian-like hatred and hostility, and, instead, actually mean what we say when we pledge our allegiance to the flag that represents “freedom and justice for all”?
Barbara K. Nevers
Justify election system
Christian Schneider says, “any time Republicans win national elections, liberals select from a variety pack of prepackaged excuses absolving them from electoral disaster” (“It's not money that beat Hillary,” Crossroads, Dec. 4).
The key word here is “electoral.” The so-called “liberal” candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost the election by winning the popular vote over Donald Trump (48% to 46.7%).
I say: Enough of this mockery. Let’s see if the “winner” can justify the system that elected him.
Charles Brizius
GOP leaders and Trump
During the recent presidential campaign, most establishment Republicans distanced themselves from Donald Trump. They wouldn’t appear with him, they wouldn’t endorse him, and some even said they wouldn’t vote for him.
Now they are lining up to shake his hand.
So what about that? Was their opposition to Trump based on strongly held moral principles, principles they have now abandoned, or did they just think he was going to lose and they didn’t want to be associated with his defeat?
Howard Hoffman
No ‘epidemic’ of murders
After reading Michael Rosen’s column contribution to the Dec. 6 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it occurred to me that his essay might be better suited to a smaller paper (“Duffy’s awful false equivalency”).
Among his many outlandish remarks is the assertion that we are seeing “an epidemic of police murders of African-Americans.” Really? Shouldn’t people have to be convicted of murder before they can be called murderers?
Rosen is surely aware that in case after case the police villains in his imaginary “epidemic” of murders have been exonerated. He should accept that our courts are much better qualified to evaluate and decide such matters than is Rosen or the self-indulgent activists he so admires.
John J. Laughlin