According to a new study by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Marc Levine, since 2010 the number of low-wage occupations in Wisconsin increased while the number of middle-wage occupations actually shrunk.

Low-wage-occupation jobs bounced back in the recovery, rising by about 130,000 from 2010 to 2013. During that same period, middle-wage occupations lost 16,000 jobs.

“Since 2010, the recovery has been extraordinarily heavily weighted — all of the net growth in Wisconsin has been in the low-wage category,” Levine said.

Some of that growth is from newly created low-wage jobs. But the lion’s share has come from middle-wage occupations dropping into the lowest tier as their pay fell in inflation-adjusted terms.

A vote for Burke is far more than a vote against Walker. She is one of the strongest, most promising candidates running anywhere in the nation this year. Even Walker apologists have acknowledged how unique and qualified Burke is to lead the state.

In addition to holding a Harvard MBA, she’s a successful businesswoman with deep international experience. She established — from the ground up — European operations for Trek Bicycle Corp. Those operations have grown from $3 million to $50 million in revenue.

Burke understands how business operates. She knows how to balance a real-world budget and she understands the challenges facing the entrepreneurs and start-up companies that are the only hope for Wisconsin’s future.

While college-dropout Walker has repeatedly sold out the interests of Wisconsinites to cultivate politically useful relationships with uber wealthy donors, Burke is financially independent. While he has higher political aspirations, Burke simply wants to be governor because she believes — correctly, in our opinion — that she has the skills and commitment to turn the state’s lagging economy around while restoring its progressive tradition of governing in a way that serves everyone, not just the rich and politically connected.

Kelly Rindfleisch, his deputy chief of staff, convicted of illegal campaign activity. Tim Russell, his next chief of staff, sentenced to two years in prison for stealing more than $20,000 from a nonprofit group that Walker assigned him to lead.

Darlene Wink, convicted of engaging in campaign work for Walker's 2010 campaign. Kevin Kavanaugh, convicted of embezzling $51,000 in donations to military veterans' families.

Bill Gardner, sentenced to two years' probation, admitting he violated campaign finance laws by laundering tens of thousands of dollars for Walker's first gubernatorial campaign.

In all, 15 felony indictments for six people — plea bargaining resulted in a total of eight felony and two misdemeanor convictions. Walker denies knowledge of these crimes. Really? Then what is his present staff up to?

If he were a Democrat, the Republicans would be screaming these facts in a hundred commercials paid for by Walker's rich out-of-state bosses. All who "stand with Scott Walker" should be ashamed.

"This is a story of war profiteering, personal ambition, bureaucratic turf wars, absence of accountability and, always, secrecy."

James Risen’s ‘Pay Any Price’

In “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,” James Risen holds up a mirror to the United States in the 13 years since 9/11, and what it reveals is not a pretty sight. Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-­winning reporter at The New York Times, documents the emergence of a “homeland ­security-industrial complex” more pervasive and more pernicious than the “military-industrial complex” Dwight Eisenhower warned against. With the power and passion of Zola’s “J’Accuse,” he chronicles the abandonment of America’s cherished open society in a never-satiated search for security from an ill-defined threat.

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With the well-honed skills of an investigative reporter, Risen takes us through the way $20 billion was sent to Iraq with little or no oversight and without any clear direction on how it should be spent. Most of this money was flown from East Rutherford, N.J., in bricks of $100 bills. Pallets of cash were distributed at will. Today $11.7 billion remains unaccounted for. Much of it made its way into private bank accounts; apparently about $2 billion is hidden in Lebanon. (I can’t help thinking what $20 billion, or even the missing $11.7 billion, would do for homelessness and for schools in America’s most blighted urban areas.)

We see how, in the post-9/11 era, a panic-stricken Congress threw cash at the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., at a rate so fast they had trouble spending it. Of course there were many volunteers eager to help them. A Pentagon report found that in the decade after 9/11, the Defense Department gave more than $400 billion to contractors who had been sanctioned in actions involving $1 million or more in fraud. One of the most extraordinary stories is that of a failed gambler, Dennis Montgomery, who managed to fool the C.I.A. into believing that he had devised a means for decoding Qaeda messages. The C.I.A. proved itself more gullible than the executives of both Hollywood and Las Vegas, who declined to invest in his technology. The combination of the code of secrecy, turf warfare among bureaucrats and personal ambition ensured that Montgomery’s claims went untested and made their way up through the intelligence ranks to the Oval Office. Even after he was exposed, the C.I.A. pretended it had never been involved, the Pentagon kept working with him and the Justice Department tried to prevent any information about the scheme from becoming public.

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Then there is the role of the psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in justifying torture, as well as the pusillanimity of the American Psychological Association in providing cover. Not to mention the wholesale violation of the right to privacy by the N.S.A. But there are uplifting stories of tenacious heroes too, ordinary people like Diane Roark and Steven Coughlin, who tried, and generally failed, to get others to do the right thing.

His story on foreign policy: Regarding military action against ISIS and how to pay for it, “I’ve always believed in budgeting that these wars should be paid for within our budgets so that we actually cut spending that is not necessary – let’s go get corporate welfare.”

His record: Ryan was a staunch supporter of the over $2 trillion Iraq war that is expected to cost $6 trillion once completely paid for. Despite talking tough against corporate welfare, Ryan’s 2013 proposed budget called for a decade’s worth of tax breaks to oil and natural gas companies totaling $40 billion.

His story on the environment: Regarding conservation, “As a person who chaired the Sportsman’s Caucus for a number of years, we have to be conservationists. That’s I fight for things like wetland restoration, conservation reserve programs…”

His record: Ryan has voted for legislation allowing people to fill wetlands without public notice or environmental review. Despite his appeal to sportsmen, Ryan voted for H.R. 1505, legislation that would “force the American people to surrender their right to hunt, fish, and camp on public lands so that federal agents could have unprecedented new policing authority.” Ryan’s League of Conservation Voters scorecard is 13 percent.

His story on equal pay: Regarding pay inequity, Ryan says that “Equal pay should come with equal work.” and “If people are being discriminated against we should prosecute with the full force of the law.”

His record: Ryan voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which toughens victims’ ability to get justice for unfair paychecks.

1. The Bible doesn’t answer all — or even most — of our questions.
Many of our questions, even some of the more pressing questions we face daily, aren’t answered in the Bible. The Christian Bible isn’t an answer book but a story of how Jesus answers for us the biggest question of all: what God is like.

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3. The Bible isn’t a sourcebook for fighting culture wars.
The Bible isn’t a club we use to gain political power or a way of forcing secular culture to obey our rules. America is not God’s country and the Bible isn’t its constitution. Stop it.

4. The Bible doesn’t guarantee “success in life.”
Don’t listen to those T.V. preachers. The Bible isn’t a step-by-step guide to success, as if buried there are deep secrets for being happy, healthy, and rich. It is a book that shows what dying to self and surrendering to God are about. The Bible crushes our egos.

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6. The Bible invites debate.
An extremely important lesson for Christians to learn from Judaism is that the Bible invites debate. In fact, it can’t avoid it, given how open it is to multiple interpretations. Winning Bible feuds with others, getting to the right answer, isn’t the end goal. The back-and forth with the Bible, and with God, is where deeper faith is found.

Audit discovers massive mismanagement problems and millions of lost dollars at Scott Walker's job-creation agency

Gov. Scott Walker’s semi-private job creation agency does not have documentation justifying its spending on expenses and grants, according to a report released Sept. 19.

The Legislative Audit Bureau’s report examined the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s finances over fiscal years 2011-12 and 2012-13. Auditors found the agency’s spending on administrative expenses such as salary, marketing and travel grew from $11.2 million in the first year to $15.1 million in the second.

Auditors reviewed 223 non-payroll administrative expenditures and found instances where the spending wasn’t adequately documented to show what spending occurred, whether it was reasonable or whether it was approved. Some expenditures should have been recorded in different accounts or weren’t recorded consistently with similar types of spending. For example, $50,000 spent under a grant agreement was recorded as a services expenditure, the report said.

Spending on grants to businesses, economic development organizations and local governments grew from $14.7 million to $15.2 million during the time period, the report said. Auditors reviewed 44 grant expenditures and discovered errors in processing and that some supporting documentation wasn’t adequate. For instance, documentation for two grant expenditures didn’t include disbursement requests WEDC had approved.

In the 2011 - 2013 budget, Governor Walker cut a state record $800 million in direct state spending on public education and mandated new limits on local school districts that left many schools scrambling just to fund their operations for the next school year. [1]

In addition to his historic cuts in direct school aid, Walker also cut the base revenue per pupil for each school district by 5.5% in Fiscal Year 2012. Over the biennium that translates into $800 million in lost revenue authority from prior statute for the state’s 424 school districts. [2]

The budget also eliminated several revenue limit exemptions such as school nursing, pupil transportation, safety equipment and funds for school security officers. In addition, it reduced nearly all categorical aids by 10 percent, in addition to eliminating some programs outright. [3]

In 2012, Wisconsin led the nation in cuts to education spending per-pupil. [4]

At a time when most Americans agree that the country has too much power in too few hands, the world’s two wealthiest men are only six seats away from seizing the Senate and consolidating their current control of the House. The result could be a full “Koch Congress” that further rigs the rules in their favor.

Libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch have a combined net worth four times that of well-known Democratic donor George Soros, and one hundred times that of Tom Steyer. This summer, participants in the Kochs’ secret billionaires’ summit pledged to raise $500 million to take the Senate in 2014 midterm elections. After four decades of funding front groups and an elaborate ideology they call “economic freedom,” the Kochs embody today’s emerging American oligarchy. No one else can even compare.

At risk are the rights of all Americans, especially women, workers, voters, veterans, as well as the protection of our rapidly warming Earth, since the Kochs’ end game is to defend their carbon based wealth by continuing to pollute politics and the planet for free. In all the noise of this election season, there has been little discussion of the fact that two billionaire brothers are about to have “power of the purse” over the world’s wealthiest nation.

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A full Koch Congress would weaken voting rights, minimum wage, pay equity, carbon regulations, and many other basic protections the American people have fought for, and won.