If politics is indeed a war, conservatives have suddenly become the peace-loving flower children of the new generation. Rather than stand and fight against the hostile takeover of the Republican Party by Donald Trump’s corrosive forces, stalwart conservatives are dropping their weapons and high-tailing it from the battlefield.

The GOP tax cuts are not paid for and will add at least $1.5 trillion to the national debt. Worse, all the GOP proposed individual tax cuts (mostly for the wealthy) and corporations add up to about $5.5 trillion. The tax cuts will make America a plutocracy.

A class of parents cued into the performance of their local schools would be far more likely to overcome the problem of governance fragmentation than the alternative solution proposed by Ford.

He’s moving to shift from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources the oversight of controversial, large-scale, water-demanding and manure-producing animal feeding and breeding operations to the more industry-focused Wisconsin Department of Ag, Trade and Consumer Protection, (DATCP), where all sorts of ag and dairy promotion and marketing is centered.

Forget about the skills gap. The overriding concern in Wisconsin and many other states is a “quantity gap,” meaning there simply aren’t enough working-age people to go around – skilled or otherwise.

Those who were here during the 1960s and well into the ’90s remember Durkin as the fireball unionist who got Madison’s firefighters a more sensible workweek and decent wages and then as the fire chief who tore down barriers and conquered prejudices by hiring women and minorities to make our department one of the most diverse fire departments in America.