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On the day of the recall primary election, Democratic candidates Kathleen Falk and Tom Barrett both made stops at the UW-Madison campus, shaking hands, telling them about the election, and encouraging students to vote.

And Wisconsinites did vote, not quite reaching 30 percent statewide, and 41 percent in the city of Madison, reaching the highest turnout for a partisan primary since 1952. But by the end of the night, when all the votes were tallied, it was clear that students, who were instrumental in the start of the union protests last February, had not turned out for the primary. Campus wards had the lowest turnout in the entire city, and ward 56, whose residents vote at Gordon Commons, had the lowest: just under 7 percent turned out. Other campus wards had turnout ranging from 8 percent at Memorial Library, to the low- and mid-teens at Porchlight, the Lowell Center, the Doyle Administration Building, and Fire Station #1 on Dayton Street. Student-heavy neighborhoods off campus tended to fare better, with 25 percent reported at the Gates of Heaven Synagogue on East Gorham, and 26 percent in the Brittingham neighborhood. Eagle Heights, the campus graduate student neighborhood, had 28 percent turnout.

“Turnout numbers were much lower than we expected,” said District 8 Alder Scott Resnik, who represents the UW-Madison campus on the Madison Common Council. On the other hand, he said, it’s always been difficult to get out the student vote, especially in non-presidential years.

“We always think we know where the record low turnouts are at, and then a new election disappoints us,” he said. “That’s pretty much been the trend over the last eight years.”

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Fred Risser was one of the 14 Democratic state senators who left Wisconsin when Scott Walker dropped his budget bomb last year. He turned 85 earlier this month, and I was happy to be able to sign his nomination papers at the Wednesday Farmers' Market for another run this fall. Fred Risser has never lost an election. First elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in 1956, he is the longest-serving state legislator not only in Wisconsin history, but in U.S. history as well.

If you are a fan of the Maibock style of beer, you must feel a certain pressure to enjoy one in the month of May. Brewmaster Pat Keller follows the annual spring ritual with the timely release of his version of Maibock at the Great Dane in Fitchburg. “I'd make this beer all the time if they'd let me, but then it wouldn't be so special,” says Keller. Maibock just went on tap in Fitchburg and the downtown Great Dane.

The City of Madison will announce the completion of the WisconSUN Solar Project on May 21st at 11:30am at Union Cab, 2458 Pennsylvania …

Revised job numbers apparently show that Wisconsin gained about 30,000 jobs since Scott Walker took office. And it gets worse for Tom Barrett, because Walker can legitimately claim that he is responsible for every one of those jobs. A closer look at the numbers shows that they were all created at Ian's Pizza during the Capitol protests.

On Monday, May 21, 2012, Robinson Brothers Environmental will be removing the pedestrian bridge spanning the 200 block on N. Lake Street. This will …

Absentee voting in the City Clerk's Office begins Monday, May 21. The Madison City Clerk's Office will offer the following extended hours for …

Don't say bon voyage to Bon Appetit owner Greg Johnson just yet, but there will a new face at 805 Williamson St. starting May 21: Chef Anne-Marie Lalande, better known as Nanou, who hails from Provence, France.

Over a dozen Madison businesses have pledged their support to sponsor the June 6-7, 2012 Madison Cooperative Business Conference. The conference, …

Before his opening set for San Francisco rocker Ty Segall last Wednesday at the High Noon Saloon, it might not have occurred to anyone that Trin Tran works really well in a larger setting.

"Republican In Name Only" or "RINO." As far as I can tell, it's a term coined by anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist. It describes a Republican who's insufficiently ideologically pure. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered a RINO, despite being a darling of the right immediately after winning his office. Likewise, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown was a Tea Party hero for a bit -- before revealing himself to be less insane than they'd all hoped he would be. Republicans like to talk about the power of the individual and individualism, but the truth is that they hate individualism with a passion. If you're not 100% ideologically pure right down the line, you're a RINO -- these "individuals" must be ideological clones of one another. No independent thought or actual individuality is allowed.

If the right weren't so enamored of embattled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker right now, they'd notice he's talking like a RINO.

Associated Press:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Thursday he's not afraid to lose the historic recall election he faces in less than three weeks, but if he wins he intends to govern in a more inclusive, consensus-building way.

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Walker, the 44-year-old son of a preacher, hasn't wavered during his tumultuous 16 months in office, refusing to back down on an anti-union bill that sparked massive demonstrations, made Wisconsin the center of a national debate over worker rights and spurred the recall.

But more than a year after he signed the law eliminating most public workers' collective bargaining rights, the Republican governor told The Associated Press he doesn't want to go through that acrimony again and intends to govern in a way that includes winning buy-in from more people at the outset. He cited as an example education reforms he got passed last year with support from the state superintendent and other educators who opposed him on the union rights bill.
"Defiant" isn't the word I'd use to describe this. I'd go with "chastened." Walker's centrist tone may reflect political reality; his overreach has cost his party the state senate through recalls and attrition, so shift to the center or accomplish nothing. Either way, this is most definitely RINO talk. Compromise? Consensus? Burn the witch!

Good thing the base only reads Breitbart, Drudge, and Hot Air -- or they'd find out about this heresy to wingnut doctrine.

But there may be more to it than acceptance of reality. Last night, state Democratic chairman Mike Tate said that the party's internal polling shows a race much closer to a tie than the public polling released recently. And at least one of the public polls seems to be somewhat flawed in their sampling method.

Many in Wisconsin are shocked that Tom Barrett somehow went from being up by a point to being down by six points in a span of only two weeks. Have voters suddenly taken a sharp disliking to Tom Barrett? No.

The poll numbers have changed because they significantly changed the sample of who they polled. In this poll there are more conservatives and fewer moderates and liberals:

Latest Poll: Conservatives 48%, Moderates: 30%, Liberals: 20%

Poll Two Weeks Ago: Conservatives 43%, Moderates: 32%, Liberals: 22%

According to Marquette's numbers, conservatives favor Walker 72% to 21%, moderates favor Barrett 50% to 43% and liberals favor Barrett 83% to 15%.
So, if we take the fact that Walker's talking all RINO all of a sudden and add the fact that he's getting slaughtered with everyone but conservatives, we start to wonder if maybe Scott's internal polling doesn't look a lot like the state dems'.

-Wisco

[Image credit: Jeff Johnson at toastyaroma.com, via Flickr]


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Rory Stewart:Today, instead of deferring to long practical experience, and deep knowledge of a particular place, managers prefer to implement 'best practice' from somewhere else; they impose theoretical models with less and less understanding of what does not work on the ground; and they justify decisions with abstract metrics, and obscure concepts. And as more and more positions are filled with people with this mentality, there are fewer people, with the confidence, or seniority, to expose the shallowness of this approach. Our culture is beginning to forget what deep knowledge and contact with the ground looked like, or why it mattered.

The solution must be to give power back to people with deep knowledge. But it won't happen through running training courses. You need to force institutions to change their promotion criteria, and put those with knowledge, judgement and experience back at the very top. Some of them might not be ideal managers: they might be less popular with staff, unappealing to stake-holders, more difficult to work with. But they can offer things we have forgotten how to measure: not just long experience, but rigour, a sense of vocation, and unexpected frames of reference. They might have prevented some of our recent mistakes. They could certainly bring more flexible and inventive ways of engaging with the world. And we cannot afford to continue to ignore them.Something to consider in light of Oconomowoc's planned changes.

The Madison Senior Center proudly announces the award winners of An Artful Affair, the Senior Art Show held in May. Artists age 55 and over …

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A trio of outdoor festivals -- Fitchburg Days, Syttende Mai, and WORT Block Party -- proclaim Madison's informal start to summer this weekend. There's just as much fun indoors, with the calendar also including: the latest Adult Swim Night; a "Dancing With the Stars" benefit show; a Fight Me Mixed Martial Arts bout; the Madison Grand Poetry Slam and Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Invitational Poetry Marathon; comedy at the Stand Up Wisconsin, Lezberados: The Three Amigas, and Whose Live Anyway? shows; a reading of Oatesland; performances by Ancora String Quartet; the Record Riot vinyl sale; benefit concerts for Second Harvest Food Bank and Slow Food UW; and, more live music from Lorie Line, Jon Langford ' Skull Orchard, Christina Perri, Xiu Xiu, Pink Lightning, Chris Trapper, Foxy Shazam, VO5, and Alejandro Escovedo.

More Intelligent Life: Professor Claude Steele, of Stanford, studies the effects of performance anxiety on academic tests. He set a group of students consisting of African-Americans and Caucasians a test, telling them it would measure intellectual ability. The African-Americans performed worse than the Caucasians. Steele then gave a separate group the same test, telling them it was just a preparatory drill. The gulf narrowed sharply. The "achievement gap" in us education has complex causes, but one may be that bright African-American students are more likely to feel they are representing their ethnic group, which leads them to overthink. How do you learn to unthink? Dylan believes the creative impulse needs protecting from self-analysis: "As you get older, you get smarter, and that can hinder you...You've got to programme your brain not to think too much." Flann O'Brien said we should be "calculatedly stupid" in order to write. The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment, something that both success and analysis can dull. Experienced athletes and artists often complain that they have lost touch with what made them love what they do in the first place. Thinking about it is a poor substitute.

The DPI released graduation rates last year using both the new and old calculation method for the state and individual school districts, and did the same again this year. An example of the difference between the two calculations: The legacy rate for the most recent data shows Wisconsin's students had a 90.5% graduation rate for 2011, instead of the 87% rate for that class under the new method the federal government considers more accurate. Using the new, stricter method, the data shows Milwaukee Public Schools' graduation rate increased for 2011 to 62.8%., up from 61.1% in 2010. "We have much more work to do, but these numbers - along with ACT score growth and growth in 10th grade state test scores - show that we continue to move in the right direction," MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton said in a statement Thursday. MPS officials on Thursday pointed out that the 1.7 percentage-point increase between the two years for the district was greater than the state four-year graduation rate increase in that time. The state's four-year rate increased 1.3 percentage points, from 85.7% in 2009-'10.Matthew DeFour:The annual report from the Department of Public Instruction released Thursday also showed Madison's four-year graduation rate dipped slightly last year to 73.7 percent. According to the data, 50.1 percent of Madison's black students graduated in four years, up from 48.3 percent in 2010. The white student graduation rate declined about 3.1 percentage points, to 84.1 percent. District officials and education experts said it was unclear what accounted for the changes, and it's difficult to draw any conclusions about Madison's achievement gap from one or two years of data. "You need to be looking over a period of several years that what you're looking at is real change rather than a little blip from one to the other," said Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. The graduation rates of black and white students in Madison have been a major topic of discussion in the city over the past year.Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here. Standing Firm on Grad Rates by Chuck Edwards:Even as the Obama administration is busy dismantling much of NCLB through waivers, it is standing firm on some Bush-era decisions. One of them is to consider high school graduation to be exactly that -- graduating with a regular diploma, even if it takes five or six years for kids with special barriers. For accountability decisions affecting high schools, the Bush administration would not allow states to give schools "graduation" credit for students who obtain a GED or certificate of completion -- only a regular diploma would do. In response to the Obama administration's new "ESEA Flexibility" initiative, states have taken another run at that decision, which was enshrined in last-gasp Bush regulations issued in October 2008.