OPINIONS
Democracy in Action
This past week, with a few exceptions, citizens in more than 1,200 towns marched to community centers and town halls to take part in a Wisconsin political tradition, the annual town electors meeting.
Contempt for the law continues in Oneida County
Oneida County supervisors just don't get it, at least most of them, and we are beginning to believe they never will.What they don't get is that they are not above the law.
Southern highways, northern poverty
We noticed a little item in our political digest this week about a proposed expansion of the I-94 East-West corridor in Milwaukee, specifically a call by the Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin to widen the highway.
The time is right now
As we have written about in past editions, a wave of autism is sweeping the nation and the world. It is, in a word, an epidemic, and to call it anything less would be dishonest.
Oops! They did it again
Well that didn't take long.Just a month after undergoing open-meetings law training - at the last county board meeting in fact - the Oneida County Board of Supervisors has violated the open meetings law, as The River News reports today.
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Sunshine Week: At a crossroads
This year, as we assess the state of open government in Wisconsin and across the nation, we find ourselves not the least bit optimistic about government officials but most optimistic about the people.
Beneath the sheets at the Oneida County sheriff's department
Some might consider our reporting of an affair between two Oneida County sheriff's department officers to be a bit tawdry, but what's tawdry is not the reporting but the behavior.
Call your legislators to support transparency
A few weeks ago, Gov. Scott Walker launched a new attack on government transparency in Wisconsin, using his proposed state budget to try to eliminate requirements that most public notices be published in newspapers.
The good-old-boy game is getting old
This past Tuesday, the good old boys of Oneida County again staged a game of theatrics, staged to dupe the public about just how open and transparent they are, or want to be.
Patrick Durkin and the Ostrich Effect, Part II
In the last column, we showed how Patrick Durkin, the outdoors writer who has proclaimed as tinfoil hatters anyone who questions DNR numbers showing last year's gun-buck harvest to have increased by 30 percent, used red herrings and inept statistical calculations to make his case for the DNR numbers.
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Patrick Durkin and the Ostrich Effect
Did you know that, if you question what the government tells you, if you don't willingly drink the Kool-Aid, you are a tinfoil hatter?Yep, it's true, at least apparently in the eyes of Patrick Durkin, an outdoors writer whose columns are published widely in Wisconsin. After many in the Northwoods …
Occupational licensing reforms are long overdue
In his upcoming budget proposal, Gov. Scott Walker is proposing to establish a series of sunrise and sunset review commissions that would analyze proposed and existing occupational licenses to see if they are needed, or if they are too restrictive, and we think it is a good proposal that is …
In Oneida County, all hands on deck
As local lawsuits go, the sheer magnitude of the civil suit filed by former resident Linda Harding against Oneida County officials is jaw-dropping.
Inauguration Day
Friday, Donald Trump is being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, and we should take the time to pause and mark it together as fellow citizens of the greatest country on Earth.
Good chief, bad policy
We've all seen the routine in movies where there is a friendly cop and a badgering cop, but in Minocqua this routine is called something else. Here, we don't say, 'Good cop, bad cop,' we call it 'good chief, bad policy.'
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