Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers Threatens to Veto Republicans’ Shared Revenue Plan

Republican leadership is blasting Governor Tony Evers for threatening to kill a bill that would boost state shared revenue and bail out financially troubled Milwaukee. 

The liberal governor, however, isn’t the only critic of the legislation that pours hundreds of millions of dollars of new taxpayer revenue into Badger State towns, villages, cities and counties. 

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Commentary: Brown County’s $30 Million Taxpayer Loan for Broadband Expansion Deserves Closer Scrutiny

Brown County residents may be aware of a proposed broadband expansion project in their area. What they may not be aware of is the potential cost of this project – “$27.2 million loan at 4 percent interest to be repaid over 30 years,” as reported by the Green Bay Press Gazette. This should raise some eyebrows. Not only does Brown County receive service from multiple broadband providers, but there are additional projects on the horizon and federal broadband funding that is expected to flow into the state.

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DFL Party Chair Appointed to Minnesota Arts Board That Gives Out Taxpayer Dollars

The chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) is now sitting on a state government board that hands out taxpayer-funded arts and culture grants.

On Monday, Ken Martin was appointed as a member of the State Arts Board by Gov. Tim Walz. Martin occupies the seat previously held by Sean Dowse, former mayor of Red Wing in southeast Minnesota, who recently resigned from the post.

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Taxpayer-Funded Critical Race Theory Training Program Draws Criticism

Young girl in pink long sleeve writing

Critics are questioning a taxpayer-funded program that trains students in critical race theory.

The backlash comes after The Center Square uncovered federal grant documents from the Department of Education that showed the federal government has awarded millions of dollars to a program that trains future educators in critical race theory.

Experts said the program disproves claims that critical race theory is not being pushed at K-12 schools.

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The ‘New’ Ninth Circuit Court Rules Trump Admin Stripping Funding From Abortion Clinics Is Constitutional

Fetus on Health

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the Trump administration can continue stripping federal funding from clinics that offer abortions.

The court upheld the Trump administration’s June 2019 declaration that taxpayer-funded clinics must stop referring women for abortions or be stripped of their Title X funding.

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Susan Gingrich Commentary: Imagine a Candidate

Tennesse Star

  By Susan Gingrich Can a person not born with a silver spoon in their mouth or with acquired great wealth be elected governor in Tennessee in 2018? Someone whose primary concern really is the taxpayers and all the citizens of Tennessee. An honest, truthful, God fearing person who loves family first and fellow Tennesseans next. Someone who worries about the physical security of people living in our state more than the financial security of big business. Could such a person be the conservative version of Bernie Sanders, generating a visceral and massive following from people fed up with Nashville and all the politicking as usual. Could the rightfully so, distrustful and cynical electorate believe, just one more time, that a candidate could make a difference in the lives of their families and in their small businesses? That a governor could actually be interested in what is really best for them, one who would share power with the people instead of concentrating on his legacy, raising money for the next election, and schmoozing with rich and powerful allies. An  official who that once elected didn’t treat taxpayers as irrelevant and invisible. Such an individual would not be the favorite of…

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Clarksville Municipal Broadband Provider CDE Lightband, With Taxpayer Losses Topping $75 Million, Suffers More Outages

Tennessee Star

By Chris Butler CDE Lightband of Clarksville, the municipal broadband outlet that cost taxpayers $75 million, has had an outage, yet again, as of Wednesday. The municipal broadband service has had several outages over the past three years, inspiring a public uproar and raising questions about the grandiose claims made by city officials when they approved the network more than a decade ago. CDE officials said on their Facebook page Wednesday that an outage had occurred and that “engineers are working to resolve as quickly as possible.” Angry CDE customers, however, responded to that post with the following comments: CDE Lightband was supposed to provide local businesses with faster and more reliable web connections than private-sector providers AT&T and Charter, which serve the city of 142,000 that straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. Voters gave CDE Lightband the go-ahead in a referendum 11 years ago. One major outage occurred on April Fool’s Day one year. CDE Lightband has 15,000 customers, with packages ranging from $44.95 to $249.95 per month, according to CDE’s website. – – – Reprinted with permission TennesseeWatchdog.org      

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AUDIT: Dickson County Workers Duped by Phishing Scheme for $60,000 in Taxpayer Cash

Tennessee Star

A thief duplicated an email address belonging to Dickson County’s director of schools and then duped the school system’s staff into wiring $20,000 in taxpayer money, an audit says. Someone pulled the same stunt with the Dickson County Mayor’s Office a few days later, in April of last year, according to Tennessee Comptroller Justin Wilson’s audit, which was released this week. Auditors called it a phishing scheme. No one at the county mayor’s office immediately returned a request for comment Tuesday. Director of Schools Danny Weeks told Tennessee Watchdog that law enforcement agencies, including members of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, have yet to catch the culprit. “Last I heard, Dickson County law enforcement thought it was someone from outside the country,” Weeks said, adding what happened was “a perfect storm of events coming together from someone with crafty and evil intentions.” “I was out of town the day it happened, and it was the last thing that happened on a Friday afternoon. My business manager assumed she got an email from her boss, and you do what your boss asks you to do. If it were something that happened on a normal day in the office, she would have…

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