Not long after, the longtime federal employee was out of a job.
Now, Klym is being recognized as Whistleblower of the Year by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
The “Opees,” as they are known, recognize extraordinary achievement in the cause of open government.
See full coverage of Sunshine Week next week at Watchdog.org.
Award recipients include two citizens, two journalists, one fired government worker and “one small but gutsy Wisconsin newspaper.”
“Now, more than ever, protecting Wisconsin’s traditions of open government depends on the courage and initiative of individuals,” Bill Lueders, council president, said in a statement. “We saw a good deal of that in 2016.”
Klym is one of the key whistleblowers and sources featured in Wisconsin Watchdog’s investigative series, “Deadly Delays.” Klym first reported allegations of misconduct inside the Milwaukee Office of Disability Adjudication and Review. He brought to light long delays of Social Security disability claim decisions in Wisconsin and Michigan ODAR facilities.
Of Klym, the Freedom of Information Council stated:
“This federal employee, a longtime senior legal assistant for the administrative law judges who grant or deny Social Security benefits, blew the whistle on what Watchdog.org, which reported his story, called “incompetence, misconduct and long case delays” at a Milwaukee disability office. Klym was allegedly subjected to additional work assignments, unreasonable deadlines and unjustified suspensions; in August, he was fired. “Absolutely. I am being punished because I am a whistleblower,” he said at the time. Now he’s being honored for it.
Klym is humble about the recognition.
“I was just doing my job,” the 16-year Social Security Administration employee said when contacted Wednesday.
It is the job, the duty, of federal government employees to report waste, fraud, and abuse when they see it. It is also the law that whistleblowers be protected. Several SSA employees who have gone public with allegations of misconduct have not been protected.
Opee Award winners include:
— John Krueger, an Appleton parent who joined with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty in suing the Appleton Area School District for not letting him attend meetings of a committee formed in response to his curricula-related concerns. That case is now being decided by the state Supreme Court.
— Lance Fena, a Milton School District resident, asserted his right to make a video recording at a school board meeting, as the law expressly allows. The board not only backed down after initially adjourning to avoid being filmed, it subsequently began live-streaming its proceedings.
— The New Richmond News won the Media Openness award.
“It took more than three years, but this small newspaper in St. Croix County won its case challenging wholesale records redactions by law enforcement agencies all around the state. A state appeals court in May affirmed that local officials were overreacting to a 2012 federal court ruling in the amount of driver-license related information they have been withholding. Issues remain, but the New Richmond News brought a measure of clarity to what had been chaos,” the council notes.
This is the 11th year that awards have been given.
The winners will be invited to receive their awards at the seventh annual Wisconsin Watchdog Awards Dinner in Madison on March 30. The event is presented jointly by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council and the Madison Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
M.D. Kittle is bureau chief for Wisconsin Watchdog and First Amendment reporter for Watchdog.org. Contact him at email@example.com.
WAUKESHA, Wis. — The Wisconsin Senate voted 18-15 Tuesday to amend the state constitution to get rid of the state treasurer position.
For an amendment to be successful, it has to pass each chamber of the state Legislature in consecutive sessions and then be approved by the voters in a referendum. If the amendment passes in the state Assembly as it did last session, voters will decide in a referendum in the spring 2018 election the fate of the state treasurer position.
The Assembly is expected to act on the amendment Thursday.
“There won’t be another election for state treasurer if this is successful,” State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk said in an interview Tuesday after the vote.
Adamczyk was elected in November 2014 on a promise to eliminate the position whose duties have gradually been stripped away and given to other agencies.
“I’m very optimistic,” Adamczyk said about Thursday’s vote. “We should have plenty of votes.”
Two Republicans, Sens. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, and Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, voted with the Democrats to keep the position.
”I have concerns with eliminating a constitutional office that has the potential to be an effective, impartial watchdog on budgetary matters,” Kapenga said in a statement after the vote. “My preference would be to strengthen the position, versus eliminate it.”
That echoed what Democrats were saying during the floor debate on the constitutional amendment.
“The state treasurer used to do something,” said state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton. “The legislature in the past has taken away the duties. That doesn’t make the office obsolete by any means.”
State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, said the Legislature should “fix” the state treasurer position rather than abolish it.
“Let’s make some decisions on what this role should be,” Vinehout said. “Let’s make it real and let’s protect the people’s money.”
However, Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, said the position of state treasurer no longer serves a purpose, saying that the duties are now performed by the Department of Administration and the Department of Revenue.
“The one remaining duty of this office is sitting on the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands,” Feyen said. “This resolution transfers that seat to the lieutenant governor who is also publicly elected, a constitutional officer, therefore upholding the will of our founding fathers that citizens elect those that manage public lands.”
During the debate, Erpenbach said Adamczyk would be rewarded after the state treasurer position is eliminated.
“I have no doubt that our current state treasurer is going to get a great state job somewhere out of this after this office is eliminated,” Erpenbach said. “And if I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m wrong, but my guess is he’s got a pretty soft landing place to go to that the taxpayers are going to pay for.”
Erpenbach’s office did not respond to a request for additional comment about a job. However, Adamczyk denied that he’s been promised any job after the state treasurer position is eliminated.
“I have no cushy job lined up from anyone, so I have no idea what he’s referring to,” Adamczyk said.
As for restoring the duties to the office, Adamczyk said the movement has been in the opposite direction since the 1990s, “even before Governor Walker, including Governor Doyle, including Governor Thompson.”
“Nothing has been brought over and given to this office. Things have been taken away,” Adamczyk said. “ … It wasn’t meant to be punitive. The duties mesh well with other agencies.”
Adamczyk gave the example of the responsibility of handling unclaimed property, which is now handled by the Department of Revenue. Adamczyk said it’s an administrative job, not a political one. If it’s not being handled correctly, the person running it can be fired rather than waiting for the next election.
Former state Treasurer Jack Voight, reached Tuesday afternoon, was very upset with the news the state Senate voted to eliminate the office. Voight served from 1995 until 2007. He narrowly lost re-election in 2006 to Dawn Marie Sass, a Boston Store clerk and AFSCME union activist.
“Oh, God,” Voight said when contacted with the news. “I plan to fight this to the bitter end saying they have abandoned the checks and balances put in place by our state constitutional committee back in 1848.”
Voight said opponents of the amendment will make the case to the public to undo “the injustice” done by the Senate vote. “This isn’t over yet,” Voight said.
Voight also said this was about controlling the money at the Common School Fund, which is controlled by the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. The current members are the state attorney general, the Wisconsin secretary of state and the state treasurer. The amendment would replace the state treasurer on the board with the lieutenant governor.
“Then they’ll attack [Secretary of State] Doug LaFollette and move another Walker appointee or department head of some sort,” Voight said. “So then they’ll control the money.”
Voight said the money will then be sent to private, even parochial, schools instead of to public schools.
Adamczyk disagreed with Voight that the money could ever be spent that way.
“It has to go to K-12 public schools. It’s in the state constitution,” Adamczyk said. “Anyone that serves on the board, whether it’s the lieutenant governor or the attorney general, they’re going to want to do their fiduciary job to make sure the fund is managed well to make money to give back to the schools.”
James Wigderson reports for Wisconsin Watchdog. Contact him at firstname.lastname@example.org and follow him on Twitter @jwigderson.
MADISON, Wis. — There can be a high price for being a federal agency whistleblower.
Machelle Keller says she can testify to that. Perhaps one day she will in a court of law.
Keller, lead case technician at the scandal-plagued Madison Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, has seen her health deteriorate rapidly over the past year. And her physical downhill slide, she says, began after she did what she is duty bound to do as a federal employee: Report waste, fraud, and abuse in her agency.
“I’m so tired of it. I don’t know how much more I can take,” the Social Security Administration employee told Wisconsin Watchdog Tuesday.
Keller finds herself in an awful predicament these days. If she leaves, as she believes her managers at the Madison office and SSA administrators would love her to do, Keller may regain her health but lose her livelihood. If she stays, she fears the constant bullying and harassment she says she has been subjected to just might kill her.
Her health care provider seems to agree.
“[Keller’s] migraines used to be relatively infrequent and manageable. However, within the last year, migraines have increased dramatically in frequency,” wrote Laura Ozkan, a physician assistant certified at Dean & St. Mary’s Outpatient Center-Neurological Institute, Madison.
In the Feb. 28 letter on behalf of her patient, Ozkan noted that Keller has identified workplace harassment as the source of her stress. The PA recommends Keller stop working until a federal investigation into alleged ODAR misconduct and whistleblower retaliation is complete and all harassment issues are resolved.
SSA administrators have yet to budge on the request, although they have given Keller special accommodation to work from home. No matter, the whistleblower said. She claims she continues to be harassed and bulled via phone, email and instant messenger. Her managers have continued to strip her of duties, she said, despite exemplary performance — including Keller’s 11 good conduct awards in six years.
In an email late last month, Keller said medical professionals told her she has been having “mini strokes” precipitated by the debilitating migraines she suffers. Her physician warned her that, should the larger vessels in her brain close off during a migraine, Keller could sustain a “major stroke.”
“I was told to stop all work stress, my question to you is, how can that be done?” she wrote. “I could die if one of the larger vessels in my brain decide it is going to close, or be a vegetable where I may have to be spoon fed by someone.
“I am now in the very petrified/scared stage. I cannot afford to be off of work, yet I cannot afford to lose my life but I have to provide for my family. If I do not work I lose my home, car etc.. so I have no choice.”
A spokesman for SSA’s Chicago-based Region 5 headquarters, which oversees Wisconsin ODAR operations, did not return a request for comment. He has previously said that the federal agency cannot discuss personnel issues. He also has assured the Social Security Administration takes seriously allegations of misconduct and retaliation against whistleblowers.
Keller and her fellow ODAR whistleblowers tend to disagree.
The Madison office has for months been the center of a widespread federal investigation into allegations of “corruption and cover-up.”
As Wisconsin Watchdog first reported in its series, “Deadly Delays,” an investigation by the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General found the Madison hearing office director gambled at a local casino on the taxpayer’s dime, and another manager attended a Green Bay Packers game while on the clock.
The investigation report also states that hiring decisions were largely unchecked, leaving the management official, Hearing Office Director Laura Hodorowicz, free to populate the office with friends and family members of current employees, increasing perceptions of favoritism and diminishing both employee morale and focus on the agency’s public service mission.
The report specifies various abuses:
Federal investigators also confirmed what whistleblowers had reported, that Administrative Law Judge John Pleuss wrote sexually and racially inappropriate comments about claimants in his case notes. The investigation found “no evidence of any systemic biases in written decisions involving protected groups,” as has been alleged, but whistleblowers contend otherwise. Some attorneys representing disability claimants have sought appeals of Pleuss’ cases.
Whistleblowers in the Madison ODAR hearing office experienced adverse treatment after making whistleblower disclosures, according to the report, but the Social Security Administration has denied any retaliation.
The OIG concluded that, “while we did not substantiate any clear instances of reprisal against [the whistleblowers], who disclosed the malfeasance in the Madison (Hearing Office) at great personal risk, we note that both of them were held to strict interpretations of all agency policies, while other favored employees … were not.”
Peter Fox, a Madison attorney representing Keller and fellow whistleblower Deborah Holland in their legal battles with the federal agency, said his clients’ experiences underscore “the life of the whistleblower is a lonely one and often a very treacherous road.”
“Machelle’s condition has been exacerbated by bringing these situations to light,” Fox said. “This continues to be a significant obstacle for her.”
“Effective Speak Up Arrangements for Whistleblowers” notes how those who speak up are demonized and characterized as mentally ill or liars.
“The study of 25 workers who revealed wrongdoing in organizations such as banks and healthcare found that whistleblowers lost their job either by being pressured out of the organization or being dismissed,” wrote Karen Higginbottom, a human resources freelance writer, in a recent column for Forbes.
“If they did stay they suffered retaliation through bullying, demotion, isolation or harassment while some were forced by their company to take mental health counselling. Many did crack under pressure, suffering mental illness through depression, panic attacks or developed drinking problems,” Higginbottom added.
Holland, who had up until August served as a group supervisor at the Madison ODAR, was removed from her office by guards and stripped of her management position. She remains with SSA, doing special project work for Region 5. Holland, too, has a record of exemplary service to the federal agency. Whistleblower Ron Klym, a senior case technician at the Milwaukee Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, was fired a couple of months after he went public with allegations of office misconduct, including claimant due process issues.
Several other SSA whistleblowers from Michigan, Illinois, California and elsewhere have reported being retaliated against for exposing waste, fraud, and abuse in their offices.
Wisconsin U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, and Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, have warned the Social Security Administration not to retaliate against whistleblowers, people who are supposed to be protected under federal law. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Johnson, in June opened an inquiry into the misconduct and retaliation allegations.
Fox said he is pursuing “every recourse” he can to bring justice to his whistleblower clients.
Keller is doubtful justice will ever come.
“I’m a high-faith person. I pray every day. I live by the idea that good is supposed to prevail over evil, but it’s not in this case,” she said. “Am I 100 percent right? No, I do things wrong. But I don’t deserve this. My family doesn’t deserve this.”
M.D. Kittle is bureau chief for Wisconsin Watchdog and First Amendment reporter for Watchdog.org. Contact him at email@example.com
By State Rep. Adam Jarchow
I screwed up and I’m sorry. When’s the last time you heard that from a politician? Let me say it again. I screwed up and I’m sorry.
Last session, in his budget, Gov. Scott Walker proposed adding 102 new auditors to the state Department of Revenue. I didn’t like the proposal, nor did many of my colleagues in the Legislature. A number of us tried to remove it from the budget. When that failed, to our discredit, we went along with it. We shouldn’t have.
It didn’t take me long to recognize the mistake I had made, and when I did, I authored a bill to begin to reverse it. Unfortunately, the bill went nowhere.
As a result of this mistake, a number of Wisconsin’s small businesses have been subjected to audits. For these small businesses, audits are terrifying, time consuming and expensive. They are also the functional equivalent of a government shakedown. You see, most small businesses operate above-board. They do their best, but no one is perfect. This is particularly true when you have an awful tax code like ours. It’s riddled with exemptions, credits, inconsistencies and ambiguities. Even CPAs make mistakes.
Nearly every time a business is audited, it’s no surprise the auditor finds something. And when they do, it’s usually after wasting weeks of a small business’ time and resources. After being put through this, the business owners just want it over. So even if they believe the auditor is wrong, they are unlikely to spend the time and significant resources on attorneys and CPAs necessary to fight the government. Instead, they just pay.
Amazingly, this surrender is what the government is counting on. The state budget actually depends on each new auditor bringing in significant revenue each year. I suspect that’s part of the reason why the governor’s current budget proposes adding another 46 new auditors (combined with last session, this would amount to 148 total new auditors). It’s estimated that each of the 46 new auditors would bring in around $695,000 each year of this biennium ($64 million total). In my opinion, that’s the wrong way to balance the budget.
However, we can fix this. Instead of 46 new auditors at DOR to shake down hard-working small business owners, we should authorize 46 new auditors or inspectors general to audit every part of every state agency. As the DOT audit showed, incompetent agencies are wasting billions of dollars. So instead of harassing hard-working small business owners to generate revenue, we can find significantly more money by closely scrutinizing agency budgets.
I will not repeat my past mistake. I will not vote for any budget that authorizes even a single new auditor, and [I] would be hard pressed to vote for one that doesn’t begin to fix the mistake we made in the last budget. In the next few days, I will offer a budget motion to delete the 102 auditors authorized in the last budget and amend the current proposal so that the 46 auditors are hired to examine state agencies instead of small businesses.
State Rep. Adam Jarchow, R-Balsam Lake, represents Wisconsin’s 28th Assembly District.
MADISON, Wis. — In the wake of revelations of agency waste and incompetence, a state lawmaker wants to install an inspector general inside the troubled state Department of Transportation.
State Sen. David Craig, R-Town of Vernon, on Tuesday circulated a bill creating the inspector general post to provide more oversight to an agency under fire for significantly underestimating the price tag for current and completed highway projects.
The Legislative Audit Bureau found the department failed to fully account for inflation and underestimated cost projections for 16 major highway projects by about $3.1 billion.
A total of 363 DOT contracts between 2006 and 2015 — about 16 percent of the total — received only one bid each, according to the audit. That accounts for $1.1 billion in projects and untold millions of dollars in added costs.
“And we know that when there’s no competition, it drives up the price dramatically,” Eric Bott, Wisconsin state director of Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Prosperity Foundation said last month.
Under the bill, the DOT inspector general would be appointed to six-year term by the state auditor, and serve at the direction of the audit bureau and the Legislature.
“Placing an investigator inside the DOT will ensure that legislators play a more active role in rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and inefficiency in government. The latest audit of the DOT made clear we need a proactive oversight arm within this agency,” the senator said in a press release.
The inspector general would be funded from existing DOT appropriations, Craig said. The IG would provide annual reports to the audit bureau and legislative standing committees.
Unlike the federal IG system in which inspector generals ultimately report to the secretaries of the agencies they oversee, Craig’s bill calls for the state inspector to be independent from the agency she audits.
“This legislation is an important reform to increase legislative oversight in state government and root out bad practices within the DOT,” Craig said. “The information gathered and reported by the Inspector General will help our efforts to realize substantial savings to taxpayers.”
At a hearing last month, newly appointed DOT Secretary David Ross noted that the most monumental task he faces is restoring the public’s trust in an agency that has abused it.
“The (Interstate) I-39/90 and U.S. Highway 12/18 junction in Madison, the audit noted that the Beltline interchange costs were not included in the I-39/90 cost estimate listed in the TPC (total project cost) report,” Ross said. “Costs for this interchange are dependent on the ongoing environmental process, but the recent estimate put the full costs in the range of $550 million not included in the TPC.”
“How is it if we’re going to build confidence with you as an agency and miss $550 million in a report,” Ross asked lawmakers. “You’re going to have no trust in the numbers we give you, the data we give you, with which you have to make those very, very important decisions in allocating resources in the transportation system.”
Last week, it was announced the DOT has curtailed its study of a potential expansion of interstate highways between Madison and tourism hot spot Wisconsin Dells.
“The cancellation of these studies makes sense for us at this time,” Transportation spokeswoman Patty Mayers told the Wisconsin State Journal. “The primary focus now is to improve, maintain and preserve what we have.”
Turmoil in Wisconsin’s transportation department has made for interesting political bedfellows, as Democrats and Assembly Republican leadership find themselves on the same page, pushing “revenue enhancers” such as gas tax proposals to help fill an approximately $1 billion “shortfall.”
Gov. Scott Walker has made it clear that he’s not interested in raising fees and taxes without corresponding budget cuts elsewhere, and Senate Republican leadership doesn’t sound crazy about tax hikes, either, in a state with one of the highest gas taxes in the country.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and his legislative lieutenants have been hammering home their opposition to Walker’s transportation budget proposal, which allocates $6.1 billion for the DOT.
Expect delays ahead, tweeted state Rep. Jim Steineke, the Assembly’s majority leader.
“Current plan for DOT: major proj delays, no new projects for decades & we still have to borrow $500 million to get there,” the Kaukauna Republican declared in a tweet Monday.
There’s a lot of transportation tension going around, with a lot more Wisconsin road builder campaign money at stake.
Walker’s budget plan, while not nearly enough to appease the road builder lobby and their lawmakers, does include the highest level of transportation general aids ever. Fiscal hawks agree there’s too much borrowing in Walker’s transportation budget, but they note that bonding for highway construction is down 41 percent, the lowest level since the 2001-03 budget.
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin could become the 30th state to pass a resolution calling for a constitutional convention, on path to a federal balanced budget amendment.
Kapenga’s bill calls for Wisconsin’s involvement in a states convention to discuss an amendment requiring the federal government, like 49 of the states including Wisconsin, to operate under a balanced budget.
“We’re excited about it. We’ve got a good list of cosponsors, so it looks pretty good for this resolution to go through,” the Delafield Republican told Wisconsin Watchdog last week in an interview on the Vicki McKenna Show, on NewsTalk 1130 in Milwaukee.
Kapenga also is introducing a Delegate Act and a Rules Resolution. The Delegate Act places certain restrictions on Wisconsin’s Delegates at the convention, while the Rules Resolution asserts that the Wisconsin Legislature prefers to convene a convention for proposing amendment language under a predesignated draft set of rules, according to a statement issued last week.
Wyoming late last month became the 29th state to pass an Article V resolution on a balanced budget amendment, according to the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force. The number, however, includes Texas, which approved the measure decades ago, according to The Associated Press.
The Texas Senate last month approved a call for a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit federal power through a suite of changes, including a balanced budget rule and term limits, the AP reported.
“Under Article V of the Constitution, adding an amendment requires a two-thirds congressional vote and then ratification by three-fourths of states, or 38. That brought the country all 27 constitutional amendments,” AP reported.
“Because it’s hard to imagine Congress making itself less powerful, a second option is two-thirds of the states, or 34, requesting a national convention to draft amendments. Any amendments would subsequently have to be ratified by at least 38 states.”
Texas’ current campaign for a convention under Republican leadership goes beyond a balanced budget amendment pushed by some Article 5 proponents.
Supporters of a pure balanced budget amendment argue that the federal debt, quickly approaching $20 trillion, is now the greatest single risk to the United States.
“When I bring this forward, we’re not saying that everything else is a bad idea, but I have to deal with the political realities,” Kapenga said. “This is what people can rally around and I can get the votes on.”
“Now there are other things, like reducing federal powers in other areas. I fully agree with that and I think most people do,” the senator said. “But because we haven’t done this in the history of our nation before, people are a little more comfortable saying let’s go through a single subject first to make sure we understand how it works and get some comfort around it.”
Some conservatives are calling for a wider convention, laying out a suite of amendment items including congressional term limits, among other ideas. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said such amendments would correct “Washington’s refusal to place restrictions on itself.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pushed at least nine constitutional amendments aimed at empowering a Tenth Amendment, which states’ rights advocates say has been grossly diminished by federal overreach.
While a balanced budget amendment sounds good to fiscal conservatives tired of out-of-control federal spending, others are concerned about a runaway convention.
Opponents of Citizens United would like to see a constitutional amendment “correcting” the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 campaign finance decision that opened up spending thresholds for corporations in the name of freedom of speech.
“On the left, a group founded by liberal TV host Cenk Uygur is pushing a convention aimed at overturning the Supreme Court’s hated Citizens United decision and declaring that from now on corporations should stop having rights, or at least not a right to spend money spreading political opinions,” Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute wrote last year in an opinion piece for the Daily Beast.
Some worry of a “runaway” Article V convention in which delegates start moving into myriad areas and end up messing with the rarely amended Constitution. The late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia thought such a convention is a dangerously bad idea, saying, “I certainly would not want a constitutional convention. Whoa! Who knows what would come out of it?”
Proponents like Kapenga are hoping that a federal balanced budget amendment is the result of this important safeguard of our founders’ sacred road map to republican government.
“It’s amazing when you look at the wisdom they had in what is the best form of government,” the senator said. “This is the balance of federalism that we have to make sure we remember, as government, it’s the powers that were not specifically enumerated in the Constitution are supposed to be under the states.”
“All of us know that the federal power has significantly overreached what it should have and that’s why we are in trouble right now,” Kapenga added. “What we are saying as states is, “Listen, this is what the founders wanted us to do. They wanted us to ensure this release valve or this checks-and-balance system is working.”
M.D. Kittle is bureau chief for Wisconsin Watchdog and First Amendment reporter for Watchdog.org. Contact him at firstname.lastname@example.org
The story highlighted the apparent struggle of a “Vietnam veteran” and a “concerned citizen” who was told to beat it by the Oshkosh Republican’s staff.
CBS 58 noted Good’s “persistence” in making hundreds of phone calls attempting to get through to Johnson regarding his concerns about Republicans’ drive to repeal and replace Obamacare and the cabinet selections of President Donald Trump. At the bottom of the story, a Johnson spokesperson states that “very infrequently a pattern of inappropriate behavior emerges that crosses the bounds of decency and requires action to ensure the well being of visitors to the office and staff.”
Good’s conduct, according to a Milwaukee Journal Politifact report, seemed to cross the line of constituent concern into obsession and harassment.
Good’s story followed a faulty declaration by the liberal group Citizen Action Wisconsin that people who come to our actions get a “cease and desist letter.” The Milwaukee-based nonprofit, which is part of the #Resist Trump movement driven by left-wing groups nationwide, used Good’s letter to suggest that Johnson is barring a long line of constituents from contacting the senator and his staff.
Politifact reported as much on Friday.
“What we found is that the posting by Citizen Action of Wisconsin — which claimed that ‘people who come to’ the group’s actions ‘get a “cease and desist” letter’ from Johnson’s office — is overly broad and misleading,” the report states.
“Despite the broadness of the claim, the group produced a cease-and-desist letter written to only one person who it says has been involved in Citizen Action initiatives such as preserving the Affordable Care Act.”
But why let the facts get in the way of a dark and phony narrative about Republican senators refusing to talk to their liberal constituents.
As Politifact notes, Johnson’s office issued the cease-and-desist letter after a barrage of daily phone calls from Good and after seeking the advice of Capitol police.
In an interview Friday with Wisconsin Watchdog, Good acknowledged that he repeatedly has tried to contact Johnson’s office since the November elections. He kept calling, he said, because he kept getting a recording or the phone continued to ring.
He claims that he did not seek out the liberal group. Instead, he told a “group of citizens and constituents” that meet weekly outside Johnson’s Milwaukee constituent services office about the cease-and-desist letter. They “may have” passed it along to Citizen Action.
Kevin Kane, organizing director for Citizen Action, told Politifact Good “has been involved in recent months in the group’s initiatives, including visits to Johnson’s office in an effort to preserve the Affordable Care Act. Kane said he has observed Good as being persistent but respectful.”
Johnson’s staff described Good’s behavior in recent months as harassing and threatening to the senator’s aides. They said they did all they could to address the constituent’s concerns.
Citizen Action leaped at the opportunity to highlight the letter and push the faulty narrative that Good was among many constituents barred from their democratic right to question their representatives.
While liberal groups and media accounts eagerly noted Good’s military service and portrayed him as a “concerned citizen,” they left out his criminal conviction of sexual assault in 2001. Perhaps that did not fit the narrative.
Johnson’s staff told Politifact that the senator’s office has sent as many as five cease-and-desist letters since Johnson took office in January 2011. The letter to Good was the first since the November election.
Good still is free to send letters to Johnson’s office and, apparently, to attend telephonic town halls.
“I participate in Sen. Johnson’s town hall meeting,” he told Wisconsin Watchdog. “There was one yesterday. I listened to the town hall.” He did not ask a question.
So much for the constituent totally locked out of communication with his representative.
M.D. Kittle is bureau chief for Wisconsin Watchdog and First Amendment reporter for Watchdog.org. Contact him at email@example.com
A case that could ultimately change the rules on forced unionization in America had its day in court this week, and is perhaps bound for the U.S. Supreme Court for a defining decision on free speech and unions.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit on Wednesday heard oral arguments in the case of two Illinois state government employees challenging the constitutionality of forced union dues.
A district court earlier dismissed the case, Janus v. AFSCME, which specifically deals with the First Amendment rights of public employees who wish to opt out of their unions, and the fairness of a union’s “monopoly” right to speak for individuals.
“One of the most powerful political forces in Wisconsin and certainly in Illinois are government unions … They generally have the loudest voice,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Not only do they have the loudest voice but they’ve been granted tremendous privilege to be the sole spokesman, the monopoly bargaining agent for all government employees. And that means they can compel you to accept them as your ‘voice.’”
The Illinois employee plaintiffs are being represented, free of cost, by the Right to Work Foundation and the Illinois Policy Institute’s Liberty Justice Center, free-market organizations that oppose compulsory union dues and membership.
Under a 1977 Supreme Court decision, unions are not allowed to use membership fees to pay for “explicitly political” activities, but they can demand “fair share” fees connected to collective bargaining.
The lawsuit notes some 6,600 of the state’s 46,000-plus employees are forced to make so-called “fair share” payments to unions rather than pay union dues. Fair Share deductions are to go only to essential union representation activities, not political purposes.
The plaintiffs argue that everything a union does, not just overt political activity, involves government redress.
“They [unions] are in a unique position in between taxpayers and elected officials to help to determine how tax money is spent, how government sets priorities, how school districts are run, lots of things that involve ‘necessary government services,’” Mix told Wisconsin Watchdog Wednesday in an interview on the Vicki McKenna Show.
“So the notion that somehow their speech is elevated, no matter what it is … that speech is political by nature because it’s redressing the government,” he said.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said the court hearing represents a “renewed effort by corporate and special interest groups to upend the longstanding rights of people who work in public service … to come together.”
“It would be shameful to see the Circuit Court of Appeals decide the case in favor of wealthy special interests and put the working families and communities at risk,” Saunders said in a statement earlier this week.
What’s a shame, right-to-work advocates say, is to force people to be in unions against their will, at the peril of their jobs.
Some observers say Janus v. AFSCME is the “new Friedrichs case.”
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association took on the broader issues of mandatory union dues, political speech and association. Following oral arguments in January 2016, it appeared clear that the U.S. Supreme Court would narrowly side with right-to-work advocates in updating the 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.
A few weeks later, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died. Scalia had been a deciding vote against unions in previous similar cases. His passing resulted in a 4-4 tie, with the automatic affirmation of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding unions’ right to take fees. The famously liberal court made headlines recently for blocking President Donald Trump’s immigration ban executive order.
Mix believes the 7th Circuit also will stand with Abood, the defining case on union dues thus far, and that will trigger a petition for review before the high court, perhaps as early as October and with a new conservative judge replacing Scalia.
Mix said Wisconsin, which became the 25th right-to-work state in 2015, has led the charge on both sides of the public-sector union battle. The Badger State in 1959 became the first state in the nation to recognize public employee collective bargaining rights. In 2011, with the passage of Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10, Wisconsin reined in the power public sector unions.
“That started the debate all over again about what the implications and ramifications of [forced unionization in the public sector] had been,” Mix said.
WAUKESHA, WIS. – Wisconsin’s State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk wants to give taxpayers an $8 million break in the cost of doing their jobs. That’s the amount the state collects beyond what it needs to administer occupational licenses in Wisconsin.
Over the last five fiscal years, the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services has given to the state’s general fund an average of nearly $8.5 million annually, according to figures from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The money is collected for the purpose of administering occupational licenses, but the state uses the excess revenue in the budget.
“This is an agency that is supposed to be run on fees to pay for what they’re doing, which is regulating these professions,” Adamczyk told Wisconsin Watchdog. “But they shouldn’t be taking in more money and then putting it in the general fund, because then it’s a tax at that point.”
A study last year by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, or WILL, showed a 34 percent increase in the last 20 years of people in Wisconsin holding occupational licenses, to 370,000 in 2016. The number of license types grew from 90 in 1996 to 166 in 2016.
The economic impact of state licenses is $1.9 billion in higher consumer costs in Wisconsin, according to the study. There are 31,634 fewer jobs in Wisconsin as a result.
“I think the Legislature can either figure out a better job of which ones can be reduced individually because they’re not as necessary,” Adamczyk said. “You could also do an across-the-board cut of, let’s say, 25 percent.”
Adamczyk gave the example of cosmetologists in Wisconsin and how much revenue their licenses generate for the state.
“There are 16,000 of them in the state. So 16,000 of these men and women are writing checks to the the DSPS every two years for $82, and it’s like, why?” Adamczyk said. “You cut it 25 percent, it would save each person $20. I’m sure these people wouldn’t mind having $20 in their pockets.”
Collin Roth of WILL said the money going into the general fund is proof that occupational license reform is necessary.
“The information that state Treasurer Adamczyk highlights reveals an uncomfortable truth about licensing fees,” Roth said. “They don’t simply serve as revenue source to run a regulatory agency but as a piggy bank for state government.”
“Whether a focus is applied to licenses, fees, or burdensome training requirements, tackling occupational licensure reform ought to be a priority for a legislature concerned with expanding opportunity,” Roth said.
Gov. Scott Walker has made occupational license reform part of his proposed welfare reform package. A “sunrise review” would analyze whether the license is the least restrictive means to address a public health or safety concern. A “sunset council” would look at existing occupational licenses to see if they’re necessary for public safety. Both would also examine the extent the license would create a barrier to new workers in that field.
Walker has also proposed giving teachers lifetime teaching licenses in the state as an inducement to keep teachers in the profession. Despite a possible teacher shortage in the future, State Superintendent Tony Evers was described by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as being “wary” of the proposal.
“As we attempt to address the educator shortage in Wisconsin, we cannot lose sight of how important it is for all kids to be taught by a highly qualified educator,” Evers said. “Like many licensed professionals, a big part of keeping current includes some form of continuing education.”
Adamczyk said he also supports lifetime teaching licenses, and could see lifetime licenses for other professions as well.
“Just give them the license,” Adamczyk said. “I’m for that for a lot of these things.”
“This is something that hits all corners of the state,” Adamczyk said. “These are regular, everyday people that pay bills, that run businesses, that are self-insured and work in a small business. It’s ultimately a lot of money that they don’t need to be paying.”
James Wigderson reports for Wisconsin Watchdog. Contact him at firstname.lastname@example.org and follow him on Twitter @jwigderson.
Honl wants to know what the La Crosse Democrat or his staff said to Jason Simcakoski during a phone call to Kind’s D.C. office in November 2013, about nine months before the Marine veteran died of a “toxic cocktail” of painkillers and other drugs at the medical center.
In May, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released a stinging report titled, “The Systematic Failures and Preventable Tragedies at the Tomah VA Medical Center.” The report described a “culture of fear” at the government-run hospital known as “Candyland” because of reported staff practices of overprescribing opioids. Dr. David Houlihan, the former head of the medical center who was commonly referred to as the “Candy Man” by patients and whistleblowers, was fired in November 2015. Last month a state agency stripped him of his medical license in Wisconsin.
At a May 31 hearing on the committee’s findings, Kind refused to answer Wisconsin Watchdog’s questions about the call.
“Contact my office,” Kind curtly said.
“But congressman, you are right here,” a Wisconsin Watchdog reporter responded.
Kind hastily left the conference room of the Cranberry Country Lodge in Tomah following the committee hearing.
A day later, the congressman told another news organization that his office would “conduct a thorough review” of its files.
“I can’t imagine that if someone, anyone called my office, gave their name and asked for help, then a case file would have been started immediately,” Kind told the La Crosse Tribune.
He released a follow-up statement asserting that his office doesn’t have a record of Simcakoski’s call. The congressman’s statement said the office has “strict protocol to handle every call in an appropriate way” and that its process “ensures that when constituents provide their name and contact information, and have concerns, those concerns are addressed.”
“If Jason had called our office to ask for help, we would have immediately opened a casework file and asked him to sign a Privacy Release Form in order to work on his case, as we have with almost 2,000 veterans’ cases since 2011,” the statement said. “If he had provided information, we would have flagged it and sent to the authorities, like we did when we sent the VA Inspector General an anonymous letter we received in 2011. Lastly, if he in any way sounded distressed we would have asked for his contact information and taken immediate action to reach out to the proper authorities.”
But the call records in the report’s source notes clearly indicate Simcakoski called Kind’s office and the call lasted 7 minutes, 39 seconds. Just as the records show the veteran, on the same morning, called the VA police in Tomah, and made an 8-minute call to the FBI field office in La Crosse. The FBI has declined to comment.
“Jason himself, according to the family and the congressional report, was basically a whistleblower,” Honl said in an interview Wednesday with Wisconsin Watchdog on the Vicki McKenna Show. “He was calling the FBI, he was calling the VA police, he was calling lots of other places to try to get some attention to the drug diversion at the facility. And in the mix of that was an 8-minute call to Ron Kind’s Washington D.C. office.”
Kind’s office did forward an anonymous complaint about the hospital to the VA Inspector General in 2011, but the congressman did not follow up.
Kind and former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Middleton, have been accused of not acting on allegations of misconduct. An official for the union that represents many of the employees at Tomah originally said she had sent “hand-delivered” memos to Kind and Feingold in 2009, but later walked back those statements.
Kind and Feingold said their offices had no record of the memo.
The memo battle became a heated campaign issue last year in a Senate election campaign that saw U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, beat Feingold.
Honl said his personal campaign to call out Kind was rekindled recently after reading that the 10-term congressman hasn’t ruled out a run for governor in 2018. The whistleblower said that would be “an absolute travesty.”
“The governor is responsible for the National Guard in the state and I just can’t imagine that someone who turned the other way while veterans are being abused and died would be responsible to veterans and active duty,” Honl said.
Kind’s office did not return a request for comment Wednesday.
WAUKESHA, Wis. – A new study by a Milwaukee-based research organization promises the most comprehensive look at statewide student test scores for voucher, charter and public schools.
The study, Apples to Apples, released on Wednesday, shows charter schools and private school voucher programs doing better at educating students than public schools in Wisconsin.
Will Flanders, education research director for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty said students in Milwaukee’s private school voucher program performed significantly better than their public school peers when controlling for socioeconomic status.
“We looked at both math and English, two of the most important subjects in school, in predicting success later in life,” Flanders said. “We see significantly higher rates of proficiency in both subjects.”
To make the comparison, WILL used data from the statewide Forward Exam and ACT results and adjusted for students’ socioeconomic status to give the “apples to apples” comparison. The Forward Exam is an annual statewide assessment of student proficiency in English language arts, social studies and math.
“We were able to take advantage of new data on all schools regardless of sector, their socioeconomic status makeup, and we were able to take advantage of the new mandates that everyone has to take the ACT,” said CJ Szafir, WILL’s vice president for policy.
In addition to the better performance on the exams by students in Milwaukee’s voucher schools, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, or MPCP, the study found charter schools that were independent of Milwaukee Public Schools outperforming traditional public schools, too, by as much as 10 percent in both subjects.
The study also looked at the religious affiliation of schools in the voucher program.
“We looked at Lutheran and Catholic schools and those schools really are the driver of the positive effect of the MPCP,” Flanders said. “Both of those sectors outperformed traditional public schools by a significant amount.”
“The other choice schools not affiliated with these two churches are statistically indistinguishable,” Flanders said. “Their performance is about the same as traditional public schools.”
Flanders said the study also looked at the two authorizers, the University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee and the city of Milwaukee, for independent charter schools in Milwaukee.
“We see that UWM charters significantly outperform traditional public schools,” Flanders said. “Whereas the charter that have been authorized by the city are indistinguishable from traditional public schools.”
Szafir said that the result speaks well of UW-Milwaukee and the charter authorizer there. However, he said the difference may also be the result of attitudes in Milwaukee toward charter schools.
“The city of Milwaukee Common Council has been very hostile towards charter schools,” Szafir said.
MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver has said she would like MPS to be the sole authorizer of charter schools in Milwaukee. Flanders said the study showed that may not produce the best outcomes for students.
“Instrumentality charter schools authorized by MPS generally look no different than MPS schools,” Flanders said. The independent charter schools that have more freedom are the ones doing well, according to Flanders.
Flanders said the study did not limit the comparisons to choice or charter schools to public schools. The study also looked at citywide specialty public schools, which are touted as successes by MPS.
“Once we account for race and economic status, the performance of those schools is no different than the average neighborhood school,” Flanders said. “The reason we think that’s the case is because the only sector in Milwaukee where we do see evidence of ‘creaming,’ schools with a different racial and demographic makeup than the average school, is in these citywide specialty schools.”
“Those schools are significantly more white than the average school in Milwaukee and there are significantly less numbers of students from low-income backgrounds,” Flanders said. He said the screening of students for these schools may lead to the higher scores these schools have before race and socioeconomic status are taken into account.
Flanders said when race and socioeconomic status are taken into account, voucher and charter schools outperform the citywide specialty schools.
“Because the driver in those citywide specialty schools is more economic background and race,” Flanders said. “Whereas the driver in the choice program and the charter schools is something they are potentially doing in those schools.”
The study also did a statewide comparison of voucher students with those in traditional public schools, combining the voucher students in the Racine Parental Choice Program and the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program to give a large enough statistical sample. The study found that again the students in the two private school voucher programs did significantly better than their public school peers on the ACT test.
“On the Forward Exam we did not find a significant difference,” Flanders said. “As the program continues to grow and there are more kids in the program with more years in the program with more buy-in from private schools around the state, we might see those numbers change.”
James Wigderson reports for Wisconsin Watchdog. Contact him at email@example.com and follow him on Twitter @jwigderson.
MADISON, Wis. — It seems like an organic grassroots movement fueled by righteous indignation.
Yeah, a lot of that is one big phony political show, written by former aides to congressional Democrats and produced by some of the wealthiest liberal activists in the land.
And the mainstream media is eating it up.
In Wisconsin, this “grassroots” movement last month got all up in U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner’s face at a town hall in Pewaukee. The Menomonee Falls Republican, a nearly 40-year member of Congress, was forced to repeatedly pound his gavel, imploring his hostile political opponents to “be respectful.”
“We had eight years where our side did not win the election. I don’t think we saw the type of bitterness and divisiveness that we’re seeing now,” Sensenbrenner told the crowd.
In Madison, liberals packed an “empty chair” town hall event for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson.
“Participants posed questions to an unoccupied chair with a sign saying ‘Reserved for Senator Ron Johnson,’” at Madison’s First Congregational United Church of Christ, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
Adam Wood, one of the event’s organizers, told the newspaper the meeting wasn’t meant to be a “Democratic take down of a Republican senator,” but an opportunity for voters to voice their concerns to the Oshkosh Republican.
But the campaign is indeed meant to be a “Democratic take down” of Republicans and President Donald Trump.
Just read the manual.
Smarting from the historic beating they took in an election that served as a repudiation of the big government policies of President Barack Obama, the Democratic Party and its wealthy liberal sugar daddies have laid out a very clear plan to take down Trump and the Republican majority in Congress.
It’s called “Indivisible, A Practical Guide For Resisting The Trump Agenda.” Parenthetically it should be titled, “How to Regain Liberal Power in an America That Has Grown Tired of Liberals.”
Indivisible was conjured up by former Democrat congressional staffers. In it, they “reveal best practices for making Congress listen.”
What the guide is really about is disruption, protest, #Resistance and, above all, making sure a liberally pliant and friendly mainstream media covers every last second of the political show.
The Indivisible “team” isn’t hiding its plans to manufacture a political movement, even if it has been less than frank about its ultra-liberal funding sources.
“Since this guide went live as a Google Doc, we’ve received an overwhelming flood of messages from people all over the country working to resist the Trump agenda,” the activists write. “We’re thrilled and humbled by the energy and passion of this growing movement.”
The constituent outrage moments that have played out in Wisconsin and nationally before the cameras can be found in the guide.
In their “Missing Members or Congress Action Plan,” former congressional staff “explain how to make your Members of Congress more accessible.”
“Where on earth has your Member of Congress gone? Something strange has been happening in the last month or so: Members of Congress (MoCs) from all over the country are going missing,” the guide states.
“They’re still turning up for votes on Capitol Hill, and they’re still meeting with lobbyists and friendly audiences back home – but their public event schedules are mysteriously blank. Odd.”
It’s all happening for a very simple reason, the Indivisible team asserts. Congressional reps “do not want to look weak or unpopular — and they know that Trump’s agenda is very, very unpopular.”
That, of course, is a very simple explanation from a liberal point of view. In many conservative congressional districts, Trump’s agenda is wildly popular. It is, after all, why the conservative constituents in these districts voted for the Republican. It’s why blue state Wisconsin turned presidential red for the first time since 1984. Those who are resisting Trump are in the minority in these places, although you might not know that from the press coverage.
And perhaps Republican congressional members don’t care for the organized nastiness that has greeted them at scheduled constituent events, just as Democrats didn’t care for such behavior during the Tea Party movement in the opening years of Obama’s tenure.
The Indivisible folks know that their narrative lives only if it is picked up by local and national news organizations. That’s why the guide places a premium on media outreach.
Partners in promotion
“It’s pretty easy for MoCs to ignore one or even a few dozen people. It is impossible to ignore a small group that’s also getting local media coverage viewed by thousands,” the guide notes. “This is also why videos, pictures, and stories of your actions are so important — local media loves this stuff.”
It encourages activists to “research on Google News what local reporters have written about your” members of Congress … and “build relationships” with those reporters.
But what if congressional members don’t respond to the goading of liberal activists?
Well, Indivisible has that covered under Step 3: If your MOC Isn’t Responding, It’s Time to Go Public.
“MoCs don’t want a bad YouTube moment, but they also don’t want to look like they’re ignoring their constituents. So, your next step is to draw attention to the fact that your MoC has gone into hiding,” the guide states.
“We demand that Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) make himself available to his constituents through publicized town halls and listening sessions during Congress’s upcoming state work periods: Feb 20 – Feb 24; Mar 16 – Mar 17; and Apr 10 – Apr 21,” Eastman’s petition states.
On the petition site, she notes that organizers delivered the petition in person to the senator’s office on Feb. 15.
Eastman is a communications specialist for the Wisconsin Energy Institute, the “collaborative home of energy research and education on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.” It is a taxpayer-funded fortress of the Climate Change agenda.
Eastman did not return Wisconsin Watchdog’s requests for comment. It appears that one of the emails she sent to petition supporters was written during her working hours at the institute, although it is not clear whether she did so on taxpayer time.
Town hall tactics
The Indivisible town hall guide also lays out tactics for activists to get the most promotional bang for the buck.
“Post ‘missing’ signs around congressional offices, high traffic areas, (local squares, parks stadiums, etc.) local news stations and newspaper offices,” the guide advises.
In other words, do the mainstream media’s work for them.
CNN, known for its amenable relationship with Democratic candidates, was more than happy to provide coverage, without very little resistance.
The cable news organization had all kinds of fun with the left-wing campaign, and at Republican reps’ expense, in a story last month headlined “Constituents search for ‘missing’ representatives.”
And wouldn’t you know it, the Indivisible guide’s Step 4 calls for “constituents” to hold a town hall of their own, just like the one in Madison, the liberal bastion of the Midwest.
“Book a venue or plan to gather outside a district office. Explore holding your event at a local school, library, or conference or convention center where a space can be obtained for low cost. Find out if basics like chairs and audio equipment are already available at the venue,” the guide states.
The helpful Democrats behind this “grassroots” movement even provide a sample press release to send out to a hungry media. Here’s what it looks like:
EXAMPLE MEDIA ADVISORY
## of [MoC’s Name]’s Constituents to Hold Citizens’ Town Hall to Make Their Voices Heard
After several weeks of hundreds of calls to hold a public town hall event with no response, more than ## of [MoC’s Name]’s constituents will hold a citizens’ town hall to voice their concerns and discuss recent developments in Congress. [MoC Name] has been invited to attend [include more information on what kind of response you’ve gotten].
What: [MoC Name] Constituent Town Hall Who: Name of Your Group
Any notable attendees
Any other public speakers
The folks behind Indivisible (at least the Democrat activists out front) insist that every single person who worked on the guide and website is a “volunteer.”
“We’re doing this in our free time without coordination or support from our employers. Our only goal is to help the real leaders on the ground who are resisting Trump’s agenda on their home turf,” they say.
Many of the group members have ties to the liberal mega donor George Soros, according to the Washington Times.
Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the Capital Research Center, told the Times that at least three of the group’s five principals have direct ties to organizations funded by Soros.
The Daily Signal, citing Vadum’s research, reported:
Ezra Levin, a former staffer for Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and his wife, Leah Greenberg, are the president and vice president of the Indivisible Guide’s board, respectively.
Levin is also associate director of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, an anti-poverty nonprofit. Melissa Bradley, who sits on that group’s board, previously worked for Green for All, a group founded by liberal commentator and former Obama administration official Van Jones. She was appointed as a Soros Justice Fellow through the Open Society Foundations, which Soros founded.
Greenberg previously worked for Humanity United, which is funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute.
The secretary of Indivisible Guide, Angel Padilla, works for the National Immigration Law Center, which is funded by Soros through his Open Society Foundations. And treasurer Matt Traidi is the research team director for the Service Employees International Union, a major donor to and endorser of Democrat politicians, Capital Research Center notes.
Conservatives, however, are pushing back.
Veterans who support Trump and conservative causes turned out in respectable numbers Monday morning at a town hall event in New Richmond hosted by U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wausau.
The Invisible crew promoted their efforts online, advising that a carpool would be leaving for the Duffy event at 7:30 a.m. from the Natural Alternative Food Co-op. Participants were told to wear white T-shirts with their zip codes and a message such as, “Constituent NOT paid protester” printed on them. It’s an important distinction. So many of these events, according to multiple reports, have been populated in part by paid liberal protesters.
The “action calendar” also prepared participants for Duffy’s town hall “tactics,” warning that the lawmaker likes to pack his small venues with Republicans and that he only takes questions from note cards.
Despite the narrative of “missing” representatives and closed-out constituents, many Republican lawmakers continue to hold town hall events, as the myriad lines of communications to their offices remain open to constituents.
Sensenbrenner on Wednesday sent out a press release advising of three town hall meetings this weekend in Delafield, Lake Mills and Juneau.
Duffy said he will keep his promise to hold an in-person town hall meeting in every county of his district every year.
“There were several good discussions on all sorts of issues — and we had lots of opportunities to find common ground,” Duffy said in a press release following the New Richmond event.
“But even when we disagree, we do so without being disagreeable. After attending the town hall today, Cheryl, from Hudson, called our office and said that even though she doesn’t agree with everything I said in the town hall, she was appreciative that we are able to talk these issues out.”
MADISON, Wis. – State anti-fraud initiatives have saved taxpayers more than a quarter-billion dollars over the past six years, according to Gov. Scott Walker.
The Wisconsin Department of Revenue last tax season prevented more than $63 million in fraudulent refunds and tax credits, Walker said in a press release. That’s up more than $5 million from tax year 2015.
The savings statement comes out as the Republican governor proposes a boost in state funding for an expanded tax auditing program that would add 46 revenue agents — an unpopular initiative among members of Wisconsin’s business community.
Since 2011, the Department of Revenue’s identity theft prevention measures have stopped more than $255 million in potential fraud, according to the press release.
“Protecting Wisconsin’s taxpayers is a top priority,” Walker said. “This includes protecting them from waste, fraud, and abuse. I applaud the Department of Revenue for their efforts to safeguard our citizens from fraudulent activity. We will continue to work with them and remain vigilant so we can prevent identity theft and other forms of fraud.”
Among its fraud-fighting initiatives, the agency uses Identity Verification to keep fraudsters from stealing taxpayers’ identities. It requires some taxpayers to take an identity verification quiz, consisting of four multiple choice questions. In some cases, taxpayers are asked to send documentation for verification purposes.
“We are focused on preventing identity theft and protecting taxpayers,” Chandler says in an agency video on the Identity Verification program.
About 7 percent of individuals 16 or older were victims of identity theft in 2014, according to the the latest data available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Taxpayer savings from the Department of Revenue programs have risen sharply in Walker’s tenure, according to the agency. Savings rose from more than $71 million between 2006 and 2010 (during Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration) to $255 million between 2011 and 2016.
Walker’s 2017-19 budget proposal calls for an enhanced Audit 2020 initiative, which would pay for the 46 temporary positions in the Department of Revenue’s auditing team. The Walker administration expects the effort, which focuses on sales and corporate income tax collections, to bring in $64 million over the course of the two-year budget.
Business groups are leery of the initiative, to say the least. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce opposes it outright, concerned that hiring more tax collectors sends the wrong message about Wisconsin’s business climate.
Walker has made the war on government waste, fraud and abuse a top mission during his six years at the helm.
While high-profile instances of waste and fraud in Transportation and Economic Development, among others, have diminished the campaign, the Republican governor’s administration has rolled out scores of initiatives to combat excess and fraudulent taking of taxpayer money.
In October 2011, Walker established the state Department of Health Services Office of the Inspector General.
In March 2016, the OIG reported that it had saved the state tens of millions of dollars.
WAUKESHA, Wis. – Marquette University Professor John McAdams received the Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick Award for Academic Freedom at the Conservative Political Action Conference Ronald Reagan dinner Friday evening. The award was presented by Rick Graber, President of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which supports the award.
McAdams was indefinitely suspended by Marquette after a November 2014 commentary on his blog, The Marquette Warrior, criticized philosophy instructor and graduate student Cheryl Abbate for telling a student she would not allow discussion of viewpoints critical of same-sex marriage in her class.
McAdams, a nationally recognized expert on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, appealed to a faculty committee, saying the academic freedom mentioned in his contract protected his First Amendment right to free speech. The committee issued a report in January 2016 recommending unpaid suspension for McAdams through the fall 2016 semester.
However, Marquette President Michael Lovell added three additional requirements to be met before McAdams can be reinstated. The requirements, listed in a Jan. 12 letter, said McAdams would have to accept the judgment of his peers, commit to the standards of higher education at Marquette, and acknowledge that his blog post was reckless and incompatible with Marquette’s mission. He also is expected to express regret for the alleged harm suffered by Abbate.
Lovell’s actions have landed Marquette University on a list of the Ten Worst Universities for Free Speech, as ranked by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
In a letter last April, McAdams refused to accept the faculty committee’s recommendation and to comply with the additional demands made by Lovell. He is suing the university for breach of contract, claiming the contract with the university guarantees of academic freedom. The case is waiting on a ruling from Milwaukee County Judge David Hansher on competing summary judgment motions from McAdams and the university.
In the meantime, McAdams continues to be suspended and is unable to access the funds in his retirement account.
In a telephone interview Friday morning, McAdams spoke about receiving the award.
Q: Why is this award so important? Why is it so important to your particular cause?
McAdams: Let’s put it this way — it’s nice to know that there’s people who push back against campus political correctness. The fact that I’m willing to be kind of stubborn is good, but the fact that there are other people behind me who will support me is good.
The truth is, what you have with university administrations is a combination. Some of those people are politically correct, but some of them tend to go with the flow. And if the forces that they face are mostly on campus political correctness, they’ll cave to that. If they’re countervailing things like, not only John McAdams who has a blog, but a big foundation like the Bradley Foundation or organizations like Foundation for Individual Rights in Education that will push back, it’s important to have that pressure. Because if there’s no one to push back, administrators are guaranteed to give the political correct on campus whatever they want.
Q: You’re getting an award on a national stage at a prominent gathering of conservatives from all over the country. What does it say that your situation is getting such national attention?
McAdams: A lot of professors have come under fire for doing and saying things that are not politically correct. Not that many have been fired, particularly not that many tenured professors have been fired. In fact, I may be the only one that I know about. I’ve heard of professors saying politically incorrect things taken out of an administrative position, or professors who didn’t have tenure — there was one based at the University of Kansas — not being renewed. So that’s a violation of academic freedom. So my case is fairly unique. It’s kind of an extreme case of trying to fire a professor because of a blog post. It’s a pretty extreme case.
And of course, the fact that it is supposedly a Catholic university, a lot of people actually think that, gosh, at a Catholic university there ought to be an understanding that if you want to speak up in opposition to gay marriage, you’re allowed to do it. And it sort of shocked some people to find that they’re trying to fire me for outing an instructor who said, no, you can’t speak out against gay marriage in my class.
So you put all that together and you’ve got … a kind of important national story.
Q: Do you think this award will have an effect on Marquette?
McAdams: I don’t know. Marquette seems to be absolutely stubborn in wanting to get rid of me. Okay, I’m an academic, so academics always have two equal and opposite theories, right? One theory is that all this attention will mean that, particularly if the summary judgment goes against them, they have an incentive not to appeal it but to settle in a way that’s favorable to me.
The other theory is, the more this becomes a big deal, the madder they get at me, and the more they’re inclined to double down. I guess the bottom line is, I don’t actually know.
Q: Given the national attention, how do you think this is making Marquette University look?
McAdams: It is making them look very bad, particularly because I was standing up for the right of a student, when gay marriage came up in class, to speak in opposition to gay marriage, (to) speak up on behalf of the Catholic Church’s own position.
It would be one thing if the student wanted to speak up in favor of going to the metric system or something. But here is a student (who) wanted to speak in favor of the Catholic Church’s position on gay marriage. He was told he couldn’t, and Marquette really de facto appears to be siding with Cheryl Abbate, appears to be deciding with the instructor who said, no, you can’t say that.
Marquette has done other things that seem to say you can’t approach gay marriage on campus, including an online training session on harassment that says two employees, if they talk to each other in express opposition to gay marriage, and somebody who doesn’t like that overhears them, then those employees could be considered guilty of harassment.
So, it’s somewhat shocking to find that a supposed Catholic university is outlawing people speaking up in favor of the Catholic position. The thing is, it’s not the university simply saying that they’re not going to enforce a particular view they’d be taking themselves. It’s a university enforcing a view opposite to Catholic teaching.
I think that has a lot of resonance, particularly from people who are used to thinking, whoa, they’re Catholic universities and they really are Catholic. In fact, most of the older ones, the bigger ones, are pretty much secular.
Q: To you personally, how do you feel about getting this kind of national attention, this kind of award?
McAdams: It’s nice. It’s nice to know that there are people who are supporting me. And there are some nice perks, like, the Bradley Foundation put me up in the river view suite here. But it turns out it really has a view of the river and really it is a suite. I’m an ordinary professor, so when someone says suite, I think of what a two-star hotel right off the interstate calls a suite. But no, I have a suite at a four-star hotel, so that’s a nice perk. I’m kind of enjoying it.
But quite frankly, I’d much rather just be back at Marquette teaching, blogging, feeling free to say what I want to say in my blog. That would be much better than all the attention I’m getting.
Q: You’re getting an award named after Jeane Kirkpatrick.
McAdams: Yes, she was vilified in academia because she was an anti-communist. Particularly, she said that regimes that are repressive, that are anti-communist and aligned with the US on foreign policy, are better than Communist regimes that are not only more repressive but are anti-American in their foreign policy. That put her at odds with a lot of academics who, to be frank about it, wouldn’t have minded if this or that dictatorship in Latin America was overpowered by communists. So she came in for a lot of flak about that. She was one gutsy lady.
Graber also spoke to Wisconsin Watchdog in a telephone interview about McAdams receiving the award. Before Graber became president of the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation last June, he served on the board for three years. He is a former ambassador to the Czech Republic.
Q: Why is the McAdams case so important?
Graber: As you know, he’s being honored at CPAC as the 2017 winner of the Jeane Kirkpatrick Award. It’s about academic freedom. It’s about freedom of speech. It’s about creating environments on campuses across the country where people are free to express their views, contrary views.
Obviously, it should be done in a civil way, but that freedom is being eroded, and this is a great case of that.
Q: Why is the award so important to the McAdams case? It’s a national award, it’s on a national stage. Do you think this award will help put more pressure on Marquette?
Graber: It’s an annual award, and a committee of people come together every year and review possible candidates. There’s a nomination process and John McAdams was the winner this year. The point of the award this year and every year is to express the importance of First Amendment rights, freedom of speech and academic freedom. Professor McAdams is an example of someone who happens to be in our home town who happens to be in the fight of his academic life right now over an incident.
Marquette will do what Marquette wants to do. It’s an issue that’s important at Marquette, it’s an issue that’s important around the country.
Q: What does it say about the McAdams situation that it is getting such national attention? It’s not just a local issue, but it’s been written about in the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. Why do you think this case resonates so much that it gets such national attention?
Graber: It’s an easily understood facts situation. It’s a case where John McAdams, on his blog, posted about an incident within a class that was not being paid attention to by the administration at Marquette. (It’s) a blatant example of the lack of academic freedom that has plagued our college campuses.
College campuses should be a place where there are open exchanges of ideas, and sometimes controversial ideas. But that should be okay. It seems we’ve evolved in the direction of political correctness, (with) the agendas of the professors taking precedence over the free exchange of ideas
I think both the left and the right are concerned about this. It would be a terrible precedent if Marquette does not reverse course on this.
Q: How do you think how this whole McAdams case is making Marquette University look?
Graber: I’m not sure it’s my place to draw conclusions or opinions on how it makes Marquette look. I don’t think it’s good publicity for Marquette. I think Marquette should cherish and welcome academic freedom (and) free speech on campus, in its classrooms. Part of the reason so many people are commenting on this is to try to slowly make change on our college campuses from what’s happened over, really, decades.
I’m sure it’s an uncomfortable spot for Marquette to be, but Marquette put itself in this spot.
Q: What are you hearing from other people at CPAC about how important these fights over academic freedom are?
Graber: I think it’s a very important issue at CPAC. There’s a lot of energy in the hall, a lot of talk about the opportunity that exists right now to bring some meaningful change. There’s a lot of talk about regulatory reform. There’s a lot of talk about education reform and the opportunities that exist there — a lot of the themes that Bradley focuses on, the things that allow individuals and the nation to flourish. Again: regulatory reform, free enterprise, capitalism, the importance of community and family. All big issues.
In conjunction with all that is one of the hallmarks of our country: and that’s free speech. Academic freedom. It’s all there, and there’s a lot of excitement about it.


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Chinese New Year Angpow Lantern
It’s time to dig out your ang pow packets and make Chinese New Year decorations again because before you know it, Chinese New Year will appear right in front of you :)
Though I’ve always used only angpow packets for my decorations, today’s decor requires one additional item though. We’ll need toilet paper rolls to make this lantern.
Ang pow lantern
I used big toilet paper rolls instead of the normal small ones as this will make a bigger and rounder lantern.
Glue angpow wrapper to cover the TP Roll. I used red craft paper instead coz it’s easier.
For the outer layer, I used only the front part of angpow wrappers. Using a knife, I cut lines, leaving about a cm on both top and bottom of the angpow wrapper.
Stick it to the TP roll. I need 3 pieces of angpow wrapper to cover the entire roll.
Once done, tie a gold string through it so you can hang it. An ornament tail will make this red packet lantern nicer too.
Check out the rest of our Chinese New Year decor collections:
16) Ang Pow Koi Fish
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I am a mother to two boys; Ethan and Ayden and a wife to Darling William. I'm a stay at home mum who blogs to break the monotony of life and to avoid feeling jaded. Would love to get to know all the Super Mommies and Daddies and Babies or Singles out there with the hope that we can learn more from each other. Most of all, I am a happy person, and I hope YOU are too.
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domain: design


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I’m up to 7681 words, which is really not great considering that puts me at about 12 WPM.
That’s awesome! Rewriting can be quite a chore, there’s so much more research to put into it, but that’s still a great word count!
Today I wrote a conversation translated bilaterally in real time by a translator which has to provide multiple potential interpretations when there isn’t enough context, so that was really fun. Extremely slow, but fun!
That sounds so awesome! That’s a very cool concept! And don’t worry about too much information, when I’m reading I generally prefer too much over too little. It means the author loved the project enough to really think about it, and that’s always great 🙂
Does Role-playing count, lol? No words today, likely–other stuff going on that’s more important. (good things).
Other important good things are always fantastic! :)🥰
I had a lot of schoolwork today, so it was hard to clear out time to write, but I managed to meet my word count! (Pretty fast too!) 2111 words in 50 minutes, besides outlining the next chapter.
I’m hitting a slower spot in my manuscript, so it’s getting harder to push through, but this is what NaNo is for, I guess!
Without darkness, there is no light. If there was no nighttime, would the stars be as bright?

domain: literature


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In honor of the day of love I thought what better way to celebrate than to share my top five favorite love stories of all time?
I think like a lot of people, I connect to a story because of its characters, and when that story has a love story that makes me dream of a happy ending, I'm one happy reader.
So here goes.
5. Melanie/Wanderer and Jared/Ian from The Host-
This was by far the strangest love story I've ever read. Melanie loves Jared, Malanie's body is taken over by Wanderer, Jared hates Wanderer, but Ian wants to protect her. Wanderer is lost with Melanie's emotions and feeling spinning around with her own. It was exciting and romantic in a way only a colony of rogue humans could be. I didn't have high expectations for this massive book, but I'm glad it was as long as it was, it left more time for the romance.
4. Sean Kendrick and Puck Connolly from The Scorpio Races-
From the beginning they were supposed to be adversaries. She needed to win the races to save her family home, and he needed to win to keep his beloved water horse. But somehow they still manage to help each other more than either one expected. I could read this book over and over, and over.
3. Mr. Thornton and Margaret Hale from North and South-
Their love, hate, really love relationship caught me from the beginning and dragged me through all the ups and downs. She thinks he's a terrible arrogant person, he accuses her of knowing nothing of the world, she tries to give him the benefit of the doubt, he tries to be the person she thinks he is.
2. Clary and Jace from The Mortal Instruments-
**** (Possible spoiler alert here) ****
Are they perfect for each other? Are they brother and sister? Their love story has so many ups and downs that you wait and wait for the next installment to come out and resolve some of the cliffhangers. They're captivating.
1. Elizabeth and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice-
What couple makes you dream of happy endings? Who's in your favorite love story?

domain: entertainment


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This story is a real clash of cultures. Most commentators are seeing it as a clash between Islamic values and liberal European ones. I see it as an example of a more vicious and intractable sort of clash: the eternal conflict between people who want to cram their values down the throats of others, and the rest of us. It might not be so obvious that this is what is going on because the value being thus crammed is currently mislabeled "liberty."
A man and a woman (henceforth Mr. X and Ms. Y) sought a marriage annulment in a French court. The desire was mutual. They also agreed on the grounds: before the marriage, Y had assured X that she was a virgin, but on the wedding night she admitted that she had lied. (X and Y are both Muslims, he an engineer and she a university student.) The judge granted the annulment on the grounds given: misrepresentation. Thus he was treating the marriage like any other contract: a mutual, conditional, agreement between free individuals.
The decision, as you may know, has enraged a stampeding herd of talking heads. "Ironically," conservatives and feminists are united in their rage at this brave judge. (I'm just kidding about the irony of course. That kind of conservative and that kind of feminist are often working the same side of the street.)
[Disclaimer: I have never had sex with a virgin and intend to avoid doing so for the rest of my life. Why someone would want to have sex with a completely inexperienced partner is literally beyond my comprehension. Obviously, the distance between Mr. X's values and mine is to be measured in light years. In a way, that is my point: how can such different people live together in peace in the same legal system? To see part of the answer, read on!]
What are the talking heads so mad about? The main idea was expressed by the French bureaucrat who said that the court decision "is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women."
This is a very different view of liberty from mine. Clearly what the bureaucrat is thinking is that Ms. Y's liberty should be preserved, though at the expense of Mr. X. Sure, he doesn't want to be stuck in a relationship he entered under false pretenses. He want's the easy exit of annulment rather than the messy one of divorce. But that's just too bad. Ms. Y needs to be protected against the patriarchal double standard value system that says that a bride must be a virgin while a husband need not be.
I would argue that these conservatives and pseudo-feminists are threatening to coerce both Mr. X and Ms. Y. After all, she wants the annulment too. She does not want the slower, more public, and thus more humiliating process of a divorce. And she has said so, eloquently.
More importantly, if the law does not allow annulment on these grounds, it is not treating Ms. Y as a free and responsible adult. Presumably, these "feminists" would not mind allowing an annulment if Mr. X had misrepresented himself in some way that was important to Y. Oh, but that's different. After all, he's a man, and doesn't have to be protected against oppressive value systems that he foolishly has bought into -- that is the position of Ms. Y. Isn't it obvious how this sort of feminism shows contempt for the promises, commitments, and therefore the choices of the woman in this case? She's a woman, so when she promises something, it doesn't count. This is the sort of feminism that women can really do without. Further, Ms. Y has made it clear she does not want the "help" these people. As she told an interviewer, "I don't know who's trying to think in my place. I didn't ask for anything."
The killer premise that underlies this contempt is the idea that true freedom, at least for women, means being protected against oppressive value systems, especially value systems that they accept. To this end, the institution of marriage has to have certain values -- the right values -- built into it. Values like equality.
That of course is the conservative view of marriage as well, but with different values built in. Marriage is between a man and a woman. ... marriage must be egalitarian and non-oppressive ... and in both cases, whether you want it or not.
I say that in a truly free society, marriage would simply be a contract. This would make it infinitely adaptable to different value systems. If you want gay marriage, you can have it. If you want a marriage based on strange, kinky preferences like virginity and chastity, you can build an institution to suit yourself. The possibilities, of course, are considerably wider than that. When we are strong enough to grant such freedom to each other, we will have it ourselves.

domain: sociology


News Article Article pages that do not meet specifications for other Trust Project Type of Work labels and also do not fit within the general news category.
County Police/Mount Kisco
Dec. 22: A man arrived at the Green Street precinct at 6:23 p.m. to report that he had found a dog running in the middle of Lexington Avenue. The man coaxed the dog into his truck and wanted to turn it over to police. As officers prepared to take the dog inside, another man drove up to report that his dog had gotten loose and was missing. The dog and owner were reunited on the spot.
Dec. 23: Police responded to Terrace Place at 12:09 p.m. on a report of a domestic dispute outside a residence. A man reported that a relative was blocking his driveway and refusing to move his car. The matter was resolved and officers left the scene.
Dec. 23: Report of a malfunctioning traffic light at the intersection of Preston Way and North Bedford Road at 12:36 p.m. An electrical contractor was notified and officers directed traffic until the necessary repair was completed several hours later.
Croton-on-Hudson Police Department
Dec. 16: A civilian arrived at police headquarters at 4:36 p.m. reporting that his cell phone was stolen from his vehicle. The reporting party stated he parked his vehicle, which was unlocked, at about 11 a.m. in the rear parking lot of the Grand Street firehouse. The phone was left on the passenger seat when he went inside. He returned to the vehicle and drove off and later realized the phone was missing. The cell phone was a black Apple iPhone 12 with a case.
Dec. 18: Staff at Croton Colonial Restaurant & Diner on South Riverside Avenue reported at 5:46 p.m. that an unknown party stole used cooking oil from the restaurant’s tank. Patrols conducted a preliminary investigation and filed a case report.
North Castle Police Department
Dec. 17: Report of a past larceny at 10:43 a.m. from a complainant’s mailbox on Route 120 involving personal checks. The responding officers reported that information was gathered as a matter of record only at this time as per request of the complainant. A report to follow.
Dec. 19: A Wrights Mill Road resident reported at 7:55 a.m. that a large bobcat just walked thorough her backyard and into her neighbor’s yard. The responding officer reported that the bobcat was gone upon his arrival.
Dec. 20: A caller reported a minor dispute with the Gulf station clerk on North Broadway at 3:47 p.m. He stated that he gave the clerk four $20 dollar bills, then went out to pump his gas. He pumped $49 in gas and went inside to retrieve his change and was only given back $11 instead of $31. The responding officer spoke with all parties involved, including the owner, and reported that the owner agreed to check the register totals at midnight when the shift ends and parties will make contact tomorrow to discuss the findings. Matter adjusted at this time.
Pleasantville Police Department
Dec. 22: A security video showing a vehicle being looted by a group of youngsters was reported to police from a Hobby Street resident. The vehicle, a 2013 Toyota, was unlocked. The larceny is under investigation.
Dec. 23: A complainant arrived at police headquarters to report that fraudulent checks were being deposited in their name. The case is under investigation.
Dec. 23: A village resident reported receiving new credit cards in the mail from Citi Bank. The resident reported they had no accounts with the bank. The matter is under investigation.
Dec. 21: Police are seeking the public’s assistance with an identity theft and grand larceny investigation. Earlier this month a victim reported having lost a wallet in Walmart on East Main Street in Mohegan Lake, and shortly afterward received several fraudulent credit card charges. Investigators were able to obtain security images of a subject believed to have used the victim’s identity to make fraudulent purchases at stores in Cortlandt and Ossining. Anyone with information regarding the possible identity or location of the individual is asked to contact state police at 914-769-2600.
Yorktown Police Department
Dec. 20: Alexander Cardenas, 53, of Ossining, was charged with driving with a suspended license and without insurance at 4:45 p.m. following a two-car accident on Route 100 near Seven Bridges Road.
Dec. 22: Shaina Quinones, 34, of Yorktown, was charged with unsafe passing and aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle at 9:28 a.m. following a crash on Route 6. A routine driver’s license check revealed she was driving with a suspended license.
Dec. 22: A 16-year-old male was charged with juvenile delinquency at 10:13 a.m. after allegedly entering a Crompond Road residence without approval.
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