I just filled out the Wisconsin Union employee survey designed to determine what to do with all the money from the infamous "black boxes" atop every food service counter at the union. I voted for the two least terrible options -- a "Deposit on Wiscard" and "Raising the Minimum Wage" (the union wage is a whole dollar lower than University Housing pay). Or rather, I rated both those options as "Very Interested In," while putting "Very Uninterested In" next to the other options of "Employee BBQ/Party," "A Trip to Wisconsin Dells," and perhaps most comical, "A Small Gift (mug/t-shirt)." For those of you who don't work at the union, these kind offers of day trips and burgers do not come from the charitable benevolence of the Union administration, rather, they come straight from the pockets of the increasingly demoralized employees. After the embarassing scandal at the Rathskeller the union decided to fully enforce a "no-tip" policy, a decision that no doubt infuriated and impoverished many student and non-student employees alike. Employees are now forbidden from making more than the $7 and change an hour because of a few employees who took advantage of their positions. To prevent generous customers pleased with the service they've received from showing their gratitude to their servers, the union has placed black locked boxes with coin slots next to cash registers to trick patrons into giving their money to a supervised pizza party instead of an individual's well-deserved tuition/beer fund. The Union is the central attraction for out-of-towners in Madison, and it's host to thousands of customers who can afford to tip and want to. The terrace is essentially the most popular bar in Madison -- the majority of customers are not students looking to trade a tip for a free beer, but non-students who look to tip their servers the same way they would anywhere else. That the Union has rashly done away with what is standard practice in American service sector is a cynical move that will ultimately prove harmful for worker morale, customer satisfaction, and eventually the union revenue.

So far, McCain and Obama have spent over $3.24 million in Wisconsin, putting us behind only five other states -- Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Virginia. Moreover, Wisconsin is host to four of the top 20 campaign media markets, with Milwaukee, Green Bay, Madison and La Crosse. It is telling that La Crosse received more TV spots than Milwaukee. Full spending summary here.

A year ago, amid protests from Madison community members that the town was experiencing an outbreak of crime, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz handed the police department the keys to 30 shiny, new officers. And because of this bold step, a new police staffing study claims the Madison Police Department can finally address quality of life complaints. But one has to wonder if it makes sense to employ 30 cops to get cats out of trees and ticket drunk students. Among the complains put forth by the city were a lack of police attention to "loitering, loud parties, unattended children, gangs, public drunkenness and drug dealing," according to a Wisconsin State Journal article. If I didn't know better, I'd say there was some sort of college campus near Madison. Although gangs are more fit for Puerto Rican musicals. In a town where the police force has a hard time solving the few murders it sees every year, loitering and loud parties should be the least of it's issues. It's a misconception that the police force is out to get the students. Busting up a party only creates an unnecessary amount of paperwork for an officer and has a tendency to tick off a few Neanderthal-type fraternity members. That's not to say officers turn their head the other way when it comes to campus crime, but they have a realistic understanding of how a college operates. But with the new officers working in concentrated areas from 3 AM to 8 AM, as the staffing report indicates, they are predisposed to spend more time dealing with minor crime instead of the front-page variety. It's not to say that increased law enforcement is a bad idea, but the city of Madison isn't getting enough bang for it's buck. If we're going to beef up the men in blue, let's expect results beyond taking care of the "public drunkenness problem." Because as I stumble home some Saturday night, I want to think someone is out there protecting me from getting assaulted, not testing my backwards alphabet.

The media has been in a frenzy about the recent ad campaign launched by T. Boone Pickens, an octegenarian billionaire oil man who has asserted that drilling for more oil will do "nothing to lower gas prices."

Pickens is proposing an ambitious energy plan in which he invests $10 billion to construct "the largest wind farm in West Texas," which would in turn make available additional natural gas that could supposedly replace foreign oil as the driving force in the U.S. economy.

Pickens not only calls for an alternative plan to oil drilling, but calls the Republican rhetoric on the issue "completely misleading."

The irony of an oil man-turned-environmentalist is perhaps not the greatest irony of Pickens' transformation. In 2004 Pickens made his mark on the presidential race by funneling $3 million into the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign.

Fearless Sifting has quite the comprehensive discussion of the politics of science funding at the UW. He takes on the William Benedict, of the Cap Times, who asserts the state is the driving force behind research, citing that the state only accounts for 9% of UW's research funds in the life sciences. Meanwhile, Prof. Steven Clark estimates that Wisconsin's commitment of $330 billion to the life sciences is equal to California's annual commitment to just stem cell research. My thoughts: Patrick McEwan -- libertarian? Really? Your opposition to more state spending on the life sciences seems to be based on a practical assesment of the state budget, not on an ideological rejection of public financing of such projects.

Breaking News: Apparently there is a cause in Green Bay greater than the well-being of Brett Favre.

On game days, the field will be powered with energy from Wisconsin Public Service's NatureWise renewable energy program, which produces electricity from wind and biogas sources. About 1.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity will be purchased through the season.

Awesome, but the part that stuck out to this non-science major was this..

The Packers are also encouraging fans to recycle more in the Lambeau Field. Working with Waste Management, additional recycling containers will be placed around the stadium. The team collected around 7 tons of recyclable material per game last season.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have. When I was applying, the lady from the admissions office that talked to us told us that about 2/3 of the applicants were accepted to UW-Madison. The drop is incredible, as only 52% of the Class of 2012 applicants were accepted. Critical Badger is the guy to look to on this issue -- he talks a little about the early acceptance process Madison is adopting, similar to universities like Michigan and the Ivy Leagues.

Well, the party is over. You might as well pack up the futon and find a new college, because the state of Wisconsin just let its fine residents down. Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court wielded both a gavel and the hand of God when it ruled by a 5-2 decision that sex with a dead body is illegal in America's dairy land. Now a reasonable person may ask why this is, but the question is not, "Why can't I snuggle up to a corpse?", it is "Why would any legitimate court system have to waste time on such an obvious issue?" At a time when many are complaining that the American court system is holding too many cards - the U.S. Supreme Court had the audacity to give terrorist suspects their rights - no one looks at how necessary our system is to keep us from ourselves. And our dead grandparents.

Amidst a series of desperate gestures to restore some semblance of leadership to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, allegations continue to swirl around Robert Felner, the almost-Chancellor of that campus. Felner gently laid his candidacy to rest amidst the graveyard of fraudulent intentions after it became known that he was under investigation by the Federal Government for some shady accounting practices during his time at both the University of Louisville and Rhode Island. But beyond making an utter mockery of all his advocates in Wisconsin - the oblivious Search Committee could do nothing but sing his praises - what damage could Felner have done to Parkside?

The answer is far too much. Besides drawing comparisons to Adolf Hitler by faculty members on a Louisville blog (think a Lynyrd Skynyrd-loving Critical Badger), Felner never produced final accounting for 3 million dollars worth of grants from the prestigious Carnegie Foundation during a tenure at the University of Rhode Island. The sorry post-Felner hangover for Rhode Island lies in the fact that, if money was mishandled and a final accounting can never be produced, the school of education at said university can never receive funding from the Carnegie Foundation again.

On July 1st, the UW system issued a press release stating that it would privately investigate its own hiring procedures as a result of the embarrassing revelation that one of the its newly hired chancellors could very well have been a criminal. But the question is persistent - how could the Search Committee for Parkside not know Felner was under a criminal investigation? How could they not have known that he received a vote of no-confidence from the University of Louisville faculty - when all this information was readily available to anyone who simply ASKED AROUND?

But can you really blame them?

Most people would expect a hefty financial return for dealing with the most unpopular members of society. And because our anti-rehabilitation corrections system in Wisconsin leaves little room for reward through helping (the kind that all those naive teachers social workers seek), financial reward is the only way to attract competent individuals to such jobs.

However, this editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal discusses how the system has gotten out of hand, as many prison guards appear to be making hundreds of thousands of dollars on overtime pay. For instance, states the Journal, many prison guards were reported to have called in sick for a shift and then worked the following shift, meaning that they received regular pay for the sick shift and then received 1.5 times the pay for the next shift.

Overtime reform is a touchy issue in politics, with Republicans taking the dishonorable position of trying to abolish it, and Democrats often pandering to unions that see reform of an abused system as a threat to the wealth they have become accustomed to.

Fearless Sifting links to a letter-to-the-editor written by a retiring professor at UW-Oshkosh. The professor laments the legislature's willingness to fund a variety of higher educational initiatives, while doing nothing to deal with UW's underpaid faculty and staff. The legislature has been generous in granting raises to chancellors and making tuition free for veterans. However, as the professor argues, this has been accompanied by rising tuition for all other students and cuts to faculty salaries. As soon as the Critical Badger is back in business, you all can count on regular discussion of this topic, as CB argues for the "private funding" model to keep UW competitive. The first thing to look out for in the upcoming academic year is Biddy Martin's effectiveness at fundraising. Her predecessor, John Wiley, was a prodigious fundraiser, and was quoted as saying that UW had raised at least $1 million everyday during his tenure.

Just discovered that the governor's office sends us press releases on a daily basis. In the midst of a flood of self-congratulatory drabble, there was actually an interesting piece of news. The Wisconsin Secretary of Veterans Affairs is to be deployed to Iraq for a second tour of duty. Colonel John Scocos, a 28 year veteran of the military, ended his first tour in October 2007 and will redeploy in September 2008. While it is probably not abnormal for a VA administrator to be an active duty member of the reserve, you have to wonder how military policy in Washington D.C. would be affected by high ranking members of the bureaucracy being sent into combat. It seems like the highest ranking casualty of the Iraq War in the Bush administration was Scooter Libby, whose downfall GOP insiders mourned as a travesty, with a type of personal pain hardly heard during discussion of the actual Iraq conflict -- the biggest travesty since Vietnam.

Apparently Barack Obama is looking "to set the record straight" on his energy positions. Or at least to show a montage of himself talking to ordinary people, to prove that he's less of a corporate whore than John McCain, although Kyle Szarzynski will probably never be convinced. The new ad, which will be realeased in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio, touts Obama's support of alternative fuels as well as his support of a "$1000 tax-break for the middle class." Nevertheless, real environmentalists consider Obama part of the problem, as he did vote for the Bush administration's energy policy last year and even helped put in place provisions to subsidize the coal industry.

If that headline didn't grab your attention, I don't know what will. The UW-Madison professor who irked more than a few members of the student body and faculty by advancing the theory that the Bush administration orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, has collected 1600 signatures and plans to appear as the Libertarian candidate for Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional district. Barrett will be working to unseat Democratic incumbent Ron Kind. Apparently Barrett already has some extremely prominent supporters. To me, Barrett has proven himself a wacko through his conduct since he first accused Bush for 9/11. For people in the days after 9/11 to question the official story is sensible and responsible. Especially when the Bush administration took the dubious step of connecting the attacks to Iraq. However, the evidence has been thoroughly examined and rejected, yet Barrett and company continue to say they have "no doubt" that Bush was involved. And for what? To mobilize an impassioned but pitifully small minority that the establishment can easily dismiss as extremists? Is Barrett doing anything useful to advance his theory besides running a joke congressional bid? Is he consulting experts and conducting research that could bring non-conspiracy theorists to support "the truth" movement? To me, Barrett isn't that notable aside from his odd transition from academia to publicity-hound politician. There's always crazies running for office, they just usually don't have doctorates. Of course, in Madison we had the privilege to see a PhD-turned-pol set the standards for lunacy in mayoral candidate Will Sandstrom. Read his guest column here -- what grade level would you assess his writing at? I guess we don't expect biochemists to write.

In a scathing editorial directed at the Bush administration's warantless wiretapping program, the Capital Times commends Madison's Rep. Tammy Baldwin for standing up against what she called an attempt to "legislatively amend the 4th amendment." Furthermore, it contrasts her principle with the members who voted in favor of the program, asserting "most members abandoned their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution. And Americans would be well advised to remove the offenders from their positions." Although it is highly unusual for a newspaper to quote a politician at such length, the exception given to Baldwin's eloquent speech against the abadonment of civil liberties, by Democrats and Republicans alike, was poignantly appropriate for the week of the 4th of July.

A great Op-Ed in the New York Times today discusses the importance, or rather, the irrelevance of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Washington D.C.'s ban on handguns. Paul H. Robinson, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that for self-defense, a taser is in almost every instance better than a handgun.

Main Points:

Tasers immediately stun attackers by triggering a muscle spasm, whereas guns must hit the attacker in a certain location, "such as the area between the eyes."

One is only legally allowed to use deadly force (guns) to halt imminent and very serious aggression (rape, murder, kidnapping). Tasers can be used to stop any kind of illegal aggression!

Conclusion:

"As effective less-than-lethal weapons proliferate, the laws of self-defense may ultimately relegate last week's court decision to the status of an odd little opinion, one that works mainly to ensure some special constitutional status for gunpowder technology. Gun collectors will be fond of it, but for most of society, it will have little practical effect."