My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings » Gap

What’s Inside Of Scott Walker’s Budget Repair Bill

Lisa — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 05:26:46 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

I’m sure that many of you didn’t watch his address on tv (I streamed it over the internet) or have read the 400 page bill that is so full of things that have nothing to do with the budget that is scary. However, I just want highlight some of the key points of his bill. Let me know you think Scott Walker’s Budget Bill will do for Wisconsin:

Counties, municipalities no longer need to have recycling programs, and state aid supporting them is slashed.
Wisconsin Dept of Commerce? Abolished.
Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation will be getting the money instead. And it’s privatized. And I thought I read somewhere that Scott Walker would appoint people to it. (Though I could be wrong with that).
Municipal govts’ aid will be slashed by $96 million in 2012 alone – 12% per municipality on average.
State aid to tech colleges? Cut by $71.5 million. Counties / tech college districts are prohibited from raising taxes to cover the gap.
UW-Madison, UW system slashed by $250 million over two years.
UW-Madison to be spun off from the rest of the UW system with a new board of 21 regents, 11 of whom will be appointed by Walker. (Since those people will need to be paid, I’m not sure how an extra board saves WI money).
UW system schools to be cut by 11% each
UW Hospitals and Clinics: completely defunded.
K-12 Schools:

180 day mandated school year? Gone.
Reading instruction offered by reading specialists? Not anymore.
Charter schools’ teachers no longer need certification. (What this means is that I could come teach your kids in WI. I have them min requirements which is a bachelor’s degree. What I don’t have is teaching experience or even classroom management experience. But in WI, that will be okay).
Milwaukee voucher school program expands to the suburbs, likely increasing the amount of money spent here… money that’s going to privatized schools with little to no oversight or accountability, because the voucher schools will be exempted from test scores that could illustrate whether they actually have a meaningful impact on performance.
Districts are prohibited from closing the funding gap with tax increases
State aid is decreasing to 2003 levels. It’s a 7-8% cut on average on top of the deficits they were already facing.
Grant programs which fund Advanced Placement (AP) courses, school nurses, alcohol & drug abuse prevention, and science/technology/math classes will be ended.

The Employee Trust Funds – which are 100% funded by state employees, not by the state (see the Forbes article) – will be raided to cover the state’s share of employee health insurance premiums. Basically, they will be getting a wage cut, AND their pension fund will be decreased, thus breaking the terms of all previous contracts with the state. (Not sure how that would even be legal).
Dept of Corrections: slashed by $22.7 million in 2011-12, $30 million in 2012-13. Two juvenile prisons will close – juveniles will be consolidated or housed in adult prisons.
$439 million in debt payments is pushed out to future budgets
Medicaid – relied on by the low-income and disabled – slashed by $500 million between 2011-13.
Seniors who want to enroll in the state’s prescription drug plan (SeniorCare) cannot also be enrolled in the federal govt’s Medicare Part D.
Tourism funding is increased (to $12.5 million in 2011-12, $15 million in 2012-13)
$420 million is earmarked for the Zoo interchange project in Milwaukee County

I have to thank my friend Elissa for compiling a lot of these statistics of the bill for me. Walker also wants to repealed a law requiring insurers in Wisconsin to cover birth control when they cover things like Viagra. Also, he is de-funding (along with numerous other health programs) Wisconsin Well Woman, a program that provides free breast and cervical cancer screenings to low income women over 50.

I’m still researching what’s in the 400 pages, but this is a good chunk of it. If you know more of what’s in this bill, let me know in the comments and I’ll include it in this post.

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Gift Card Beware!

Lisa — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:46:29 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

I’ve gotten this same email about five times now, so I wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards around the holidays, you need to be careful that the cards will be honored after the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them from doing this. Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be cautious about:

Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owne d by Talbots)
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores mo re to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stor~s
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Loews to close down some stores
Dillard’s to close some stores

(If any of these stores are wrong, let me know so I can correct it. Snopes has confirmed some of these)

Box Tops & A $50 Giveaway Too!

Lisa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:55:05 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

The school that Madison is going to next year collects Box Tops. If you don’t know what Box Tops is, let me explain. There are a ton of items that you can buy that have the image to the left on the box. You collect these for your local schools, and they get 10 cents for every one you turn in. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when if you can get a bunch of people together, it adds up quickly. Now, the school’s goal is to earn $750 from Box Tops. Last year, they made $536, and I would love for them to meet their goal for this year (even though Madison is not even enrolled yet. I understand that any extra money to the school with benefit her). Now, there are several ways we can do this for our local schools.

First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account. You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code. I personally entered the school and state. From there, you are able to see how your local school is going. Now, how do you increase that number? Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it. They also have a Marketplace. Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace. This works so awesome too! There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school. There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site). All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it. That’s it. Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school. If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).

Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996? Would you like to help raise that number? Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping! To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!). What do you have to do?

Each one of these things will give you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!