Feingold on a Possible US Constitutional Convention: “You’d Better Worry About It”

A national constitutional convention? An overhaul of American government that would bar the federal government from involvement in many issues, such as civil rights and environment? Might seem far-fetched.

“It’s not far-fetched,” Russ Feingold, a former Democratic US senator from Wisconsin, said Tuesday, August 30, 2022, during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program in the Lubar Center at Eckstein Hall. There are groups working hard to make such a convention come to pass and to gut the federal government as we know it, Feingold said.

Feingold, now president of the American Constitution Society, and Peter Prindiville, a non-resident fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center and an attorney in Washington, D.C., have co-authored a book, officially released the day of the program, titled, The Constitution in Jeopardy:  An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About It.

“We’re here to say it’s happening and you’d better worry about it,” Feingold said. “This isn’t January 6. This is legal.”

Continue ReadingFeingold on a Possible US Constitutional Convention: “You’d Better Worry About It”

A Decade (Plus) for the Marquette Law School Poll

We communicate about the Marquette Law School Poll in any number of ways, including posts on this blog, Tweets from the official MULawPoll Twitter account and that of poll director Charles Franklin, and occasional articles in the Marquette Lawyer magazine (from 2012 to this past year). Marquette’s Office of University Relations (OUR) also issues releases. While these are ordinarily drawn from the poll’s homepage, OUR has issued its own announcement, noting the tenth anniversary of the poll. In light of the poll’s prominence and success, we post below for interested readers the University’s press release, which is also available here.

Marquette University Law Poll marking 10 years of polling in 2022

MILWAUKEE — The Marquette University Law School Poll is celebrating 10 years of polling, having released its first survey of Wisconsin voters on Jan. 25, 2012. Over the ensuing decade, the Marquette Law Poll has become recognized across the spectrum as “the gold standard in Wisconsin politics.”

The Marquette Law School Poll was established to be the most extensive polling project in Wisconsin history, with a full commitment to being an independent effort with no agenda except to reliably find out as much as is possible about public opinion in Wisconsin and to make that information publicly available. The poll is entirely funded by aggregated small donations to the Law School’s Annual Fund.

“The goal of the Marquette Law School Poll is to provide a balanced and detailed understanding of how voters on all sides view and respond to the issues of the 2012 campaigns,” wrote Joseph D. Kearney, dean of Marquette Law School, in announcing the polling project in November 2011. “With the national attention that Wisconsin will receive in 2012 and Marquette Law School’s growing reputation as a premier neutral site for debate and civil discourse on matters affecting the region and points beyond … there can be little doubt that the time, place, and people are right for the Marquette Law School Poll.”

The premise of Wisconsin’s important role in national politics was correct, and the decision to create the Marquette Law School Poll was even prescient, as the state has been a central battleground on the national level in each presidential election since. This has made the Marquette Law Poll a key instrument in measuring public opinion in the state come Election Day and a resource of national attention.

Since January 2012, the Marquette Law School Poll has recorded:

  • Responses from over 60,000 Wisconsin voters
  • Polling involving over 1,200 unique questions
  • Favorability of 112 political figures, including 70 measures of favorability for Sen. Tammy Baldwin, 56 measures for Sen. Ron Johnson, and 50 for former Gov. Scott Walker. Favorability and approval were also recorded for President Joe Biden and Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump in each poll during their respective time in office.
  • The Marquette Law Poll is nearing 400 unique issue questions on marijuana legalization, gun control, public schools, COVID-19, deer hunting, farm ownership, climate change, healthcare, and a host of other policy topics.
Continue ReadingA Decade (Plus) for the Marquette Law School Poll

The uneven recovery of Milwaukee’s economy since the COVID-19 pandemic began

Over the past 27 months, the U.S. economy underwent incredible shifts. The shutdown beginning in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was the swiftest and most deliberate slowdown of economic activity on record. In response, the federal government issued an unprecedented level of fiscal stimulus. Thus far, about $6 trillion has been disbursed through legislative or administrative action. This comes on top of nearly $5 trillion of federal reserve stimulus.

Despite initial concerns of a lengthy recession, the economic recovery began swiftly. Officially, the 2020 recession is the shortest in American history. That said, the recovery has been uneven. In much of the country, unemployment rates remain higher now than in 2019.

In an effort to sort through Milwaukee’s experience of both the shutdown and the recovery, Mike Gousha and I have a new article out today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as part of our Milwaukee Area Project and the Lubar Center’s long running collaboration with the newspaper. It is accompanied by another article by business reporter Corri Hess.

As you might imagine, a great deal more research went into this project than appears in the final article. I’ve written a longer report, “Milwaukee’s economy during the pandemic: Fewer jobs, more businesses,” which can be downloaded here. (Open the HTML document with the web browser of your choice). The report contains detailed tables and analysis using federal, state, and local datasets to explore changes to Milwaukee’s businesses and employees over the past several years.

The picture that emerges defies a simple summary. Some parts of the economy are doing well. Many sectors have seen a net increase in new businesses compared to before the pandemic. But most industries (with a few notable exceptions) still employ fewer people than in 2019. Despite the national narrative of a tight labor market, the Bureau of Labor Statistics still estimates the city of Milwaukee’s unemployment rate to be higher than at this time three years ago. At the same time, the size of the fiscal stimulus delivered in cash to Milwaukeeans is remarkable–outstripping the loss in total wages paid by Milwaukee employers during 2020 several times over.

For the most part, stimulus programs are finished, and concerns over inflation have taken center stage. Still, the best statistics available show more unemployed people in Milwaukee currently than in 2019. As federal policymakers shift their focus from stimulus to inflation-fighting, the effect on Milwaukee’s economy is hard to predict. In some important ways, the recovery is still incomplete.

Continue ReadingThe uneven recovery of Milwaukee’s economy since the COVID-19 pandemic began