8 Bad Rankings Where State Leads
For worst repaired roads, small farm bankruptcies and six other categories.
Governor Scott Walker. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
Gov. Scott Walker is spending a lot of our money to lure workers here, and data show why:
Wisconsin has landed on the ‘moving-out’ Top 10 list.
For the record, Wisconsin was not on the 2017 list.
Also for the record:
* Wisconsin public defenders are paid the least in the country – – $40 an hour – – a rate unchanged since 1995 when it was reduced from $50.
* We’re ranked 32nd in job growth, down from 29th, with falling average wages, data show:
It also continues a trend of Wisconsin being ranked in the bottom half of states for job growth. Wisconsin hasn’t ranked higher than 27th for any 12 month period over the last four-plus years.
* We’re ranked #1 in escalating opioid ER admissions:
Emergency room visits for suspected opioid overdoses increased 109 percent in Wisconsin from July 2016 to September 2017, the highest spike among 16 states closely tracked, federal health officials said Tuesday.
* And #1 in small farm bankruptcies:
Federal court data shows the Western District of Wisconsin had the highest number of Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies in the nation in 2017, and that’s only a glimpse into the problem since Chapter 12 is a relatively rare tool used in bankruptcies.
* By one measurement, we are #12 among the states with wells out of compliance with federal health codes, a ranking not surprising given the massive and documented well-water contamination in NE Wisconsin.
* Wisconsin is second in worst-repaired roads. The decline is persistent.
* And we’re last in entrepreneurial activity.
Oh, but the state is a leader in recent state handouts, environmental exemptions, clean air and water disregard, etc..
Quite a record for Gov. Walker’s reelection campaign.
James Rowen, a former journalist and mayoral staffer in Milwaukee and Madison, writes a regular blog, The Political Environment.
Op-Ed
-
Why Vote for MPS Funding Referendum
Mar 30th, 2024 by Nehemiah Edwards
-
Wisconsin’s Very Own Rudy Giuliani Should Not Oversee Judicial Ethics
Mar 25th, 2024 by Richard Niess
-
Voting at Wisconsin’s Universities Isn’t Easy
Mar 17th, 2024 by Nicole Laudolff
No surprise to anyone paying attention the last 8 years. Career Politician Scott Walker and republicans have turned Wisconsin into a toilet bowl for their mega-rich corporate donors all while mooching off the Big Government their entire lives, like Walker has for 28 straight years now. It’s easy to pretend to be blamrle the working class and the poor for everything in the name of being a small government, business minded republican when you have never run a business and have been mooching off the Big Government for your entire life! Walker has great taxpayer subsidized sakary, healthcare, benefits and public housing! Shouldn’t we require Career Politician Scott Walker and all republican charlatans to pee in a cup for us for their lavish, taxpayer subsidized lifestyles, just as they require the working poor in the state to do for mere food? For all we know these lifelong republican Big Government moochers could all be drunkards or druggies?! So it only makes sense we test them, the most powerful people in the state, regularly and randomly. If Walker and republicans don’t agree…
Well what do they have to hide?
Dump Walker 2018
Free Wisconsin!
WoW counties and Fox Vslley still blindly voting for him so they can “own the libs”. Nothing else, ok, guns and the unborn, matters…
” Wisconsin public defenders are paid the least in the country – – $40 an hour – – a rate unchanged since 1995 when it was reduced from $50.”
That is the rate for private lawyers, not public defenders. Public defenders get salaries, pensions, health insurance, vacation and sick leave and parking! Real lawyers contracted by the public defender’s office get none of these things.
Matt, public defenders ARE real lawyers.