Milwaukee goes after truant parents:
As part of an intensified effort to cope with the problem of truancy in Milwaukee, police will begin Monday to arrest parents of truant children. District Attorney E. Michael McCann called it “a new tactic” in the fight against truancy.
By John Diedrich, Sarah Carr and Derrick Nunnally
Monthly Archives: March 2004
Senators Stocks Beat the Market by 12 Percent
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Senators beat market by 12%
Corporate insiders beat the market by 5%
Typical US Household underperformed the market by 1.45%
“The results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors,” says the author of the report, Professor Alan Ziobrowski of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.
From the Financial Times….
Ice Climbing VR Scene – Extraordinary
Ignacio Ferrando Margelm shares a stunning Quicktime VR scene from a recent ice climbing expedition (I don’t know where this was shot)
He shared this note: “The wheather was fine to do this (max temperature -8:C) but not for my foot fingers…. I wait 2 hours in place and lost some sensibility…”
VT’s Bernie Sanders on US Drug Prices
“Say what you want about Bernie Sanders, but he?is using the Web correctly.? He has a great Web site dedicated to drug price reform.? Here is a comparison between US and Canadian prices on 50 commonly used drugs.? The upshot of a study his team put together is:”
… that the average prices that senior citizens in Vermont must pay are 81% higher than the average prices that Canadian consumers must pay and 112% higher than the average prices that Mexican consumers must pay.
From John Robb
Your Rights: Wisconsin Joins Matrix
Even as states retreat from participating in a controversial interstate antiterrorism database that holds billions of records of ordinary Americans’ activities, Wisconsin has decided to join the program.
The head of Wisconsin’s division of criminal investigation, James R. Warren, signed on to join the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or Matrix, on Feb. 11, said Tom Berlinger, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which runs the program.
With access to the Matrix database, Wisconsin law enforcement officials can look up vast amounts of personal information culled from government and commercial databases. The information includes driver’s license pictures, addresses, professional licenses, names of neighbors and relatives, and even domain-name registration filings and hunting licenses.
Officers also get access to information derived from Seisint’s proprietary database, which includes voter rolls, property records, website registrations, civil and criminal court records, phone number directories and financial filings.
From Wired News…..
Learn more about Matrix: Google | Teoma | All the Web | Yahoo Search
Let Governor Doyle, your senators and representatives know how you feel about this initiative. You should also support the EFF.
Madison Schools Budget – 10m Gap
Lee Sensenbrenner writes:
“The shortfall is caused by costs – mostly tied to staff contracts – that have increased faster than state law allows school districts to tax, officials said. It’s a phenomenon that’s been repeated since 1994, and assistant superintendent Roger Price predicted that the district will face $6 million to $7 million shortfalls every year.”
Great to see this article online; this morning’s Wisconsin State Journal interview with School Board Candidates Shwaw Vang & Sam Johnson is not…. [Ed: it’s 2004, is it not?]
This is a real opportunity for the board & community to start developing alternative sources of revenue – other than the property tax.
Learn more about the April 6, 2004 election & school board candidates here.
Vote!
Taxpayer Bill of Rights?
Wisconsin Senate Bill 477 otherwise known as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, would cut the inflationary spending increase school districts are allowed under state-set revenue limits from $241 per pupil to $120 in the 2004-’05 school year and to $100 in subsequent years.
This article’s premise that spending more money increases quality does not always hold. My brief interactions with candidates, the board and interested observers indicates that state & federal mandates (not always fully funded), services beyond the core educational programs, along with rising administrative costs are driving spending increases.
Wisconsin, like other states, needs to consider additional sources of education dollars. Residents are largely tired of ever growing property taxes. [Editor: how about auto license fees or sales tax changes]
Wisconsin Property Tax Information: Teoma All the Web Yahoo Search Google
Madison School Board Site Updates
I’ve added several items to my site for the April 6, 2004 Madison School Board Election:
- Interview with Sam Johnson (2.4MB MP3, video/transcript on the way)
- Madison Teachers, Inc. Candidate Survey [48K pdf] Interesting reading. MTI Site
- MP3’s from the recent Candidate Forums, including opening and closing statements.
This initiative was inspired by Dave Winer, Glenn Reynolds, Doc Searls, Jeff Jarvis, Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen and many others….
School Lunch Food Fighter: Alice Waters
School lunch has been a hot topic for many Madison parents. Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters has another approach….
Alice Waters is taking her message of eating healthfully, organically and locally to middle schoolers in their lunchrooms. If she builds a better sloppy Joe, will they eat it? By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
Saying no to Tivo
The Personal Video Recorder (PVR) Tivo has garnered many fans (though it’s far from a runaway winner).
Some bloggers wonder why Tivo has not been a big hit. Doc Searls nails it…