Free Republic

Customer demand for new equipment is keeping production lines so busy at Stoughton Trailers that the company plans to hire 150 more employees to keep up. Ron Jake, marketing manager for the Stoughton-based designer and manufacturer of semitruck trailers, said Friday that recently secured large orders from new customers are behind the need for more workers. The company needs people for all of its operations from professional positions to crews to assemble trailers. He said hiring will be done gradually over the next several months. “We’ve grown 15 percent when you compare 2016 with 2015, and we’re on pace to...

<p>Chicago - Police captured a Wisconsin man early on Friday, ending an intense manhunt launched after he allegedly robbed a gun shop and sent an anti-government manifesto to US President Donald Trump.</p> <p>Joseph Jakubowski, 32, was arrested without incident on a farm in the midwestern state of Wisconsin, the Rock County Sheriff's Office said.</p>

MADISON (WKOW) -- Just months after losing his bid to return to the U.S. Senate, Middleton Democrat Russ Feingold is starting a new political organization with a stated goal of abolishing the U.S. Electoral College. Feingold announced the creation of LegitAction Wednesday in a press release, calling it "an organization committed to restoring our country’s democratic legitimacy." Under that premise, LegitAction will "focus on four central pillars of our democracy." - Protecting the Right to Vote - Reforming our campaign finance system- Empowering the national popular vote by abolishing the Electoral College- Protecting the independence and credibility of the Supreme...

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two University of Wisconsin-Madison employees who were denied insurance coverage for gender reassignment surgery. The Wisconsin Group Insurance Board had allowed for the coverage back in July based on a provision in the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare), but (reluctantly) agreed to eliminate it at the behest of the state Department of Justice beginning on February 1.

Broan-NuTone, a Hartford-based manufacturer of residential ventilation and air quality products, plans to add 60 employees at its headquarters. The company will hold a career fair from 8-11 a.m. on Saturday, April 8, at its headquarters at 926 W. State St. in Hartford. “Due to growth in the sector, Broan is looking to fill a wide variety of positions,” the company said in a news release. “With 60 jobs now available, the career fair is an opportunity for perspective employees to meet one-on-one with the manufacturing and distribution teams and hiring managers for on-site interviews and plant tours. Broan offers...

Fed up with people speeding in your neighborhood? If you live in Menomonie, Wisconsin, there’s a new effort you can be a part of to get drivers to slow down. The Menomonie Police Department recently introduced a new program inviting citizens to help identify speeding vehicles and report them to the police. The program is called “Traffic Tamers.” After completing training with the police department, volunteers can check out radar units to conduct their own speed watches in their neighborhood. The volunteers, called “tamers,” work in pairs. One runs the radar unit to record the speed of the vehicle, while...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/23/gummy-bear-maker-haribo-open-kenosha-plant-400-jobs/99538412/

RACINE -- A Racine, Wisconsin family says their principal accused their child of selling sex toys at school. The 12-year-old girl's father has been trying to clear his daughter's name ever since she was suspended for three days from Trinity Lutheran School on Geneva Street in Racine. Parents may recognize the toy in question. They are called "water snake wigglies." The girl claims she had permission from a teacher to sell the children's toys.

One day in late spring in the early days of the George W. Bush administration, FDA inspectors visited the headquarters of Sargento cheese in Plymouth, Wisconsin—a routine visit as part of the federal government's efforts to ensure the safety of the food we eat. The inspectors took samples of cheese to test for bacteria. Sargento conducted tests on cheese from the same lot. A week later, the results from both sets of tests were in—the cheese was bacteria-free. Sargento, having gotten the all-clear from the government, shipped the cheese to stores across the country. Two months later, however, the FDA...

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) paid Hillary Clinton's campaign lawyer $90,000 for crisis control following a Veteran Affairs facility scandal that engulfed the senator and her staff. Baldwin, who was first elected to the Senate in 2012, was the only member of Congress from Wisconsin to receive an official federal government inspector general report warning of the over-prescription of narcotics given to veterans at the Tomah VA facility in her state. The abuses at the facility ultimately led to the death of a Marine.A memo was first circulated in 2009 warning of the dangerous amounts of narcotics prescribed to veterans...

Consumers from Wisconsin are crossing the border to Illinois to stock up on a commodity they can't buy in the Dairy State -- Irish butter.

In an effort to promote affordable living on campus, Associated Students of Madison unanimously voted to approve changes to University Housing and Dining and Culinary Services at a Wednesday meeting. Jeff Novak, director of University Housing, discussed upcoming changes around campus, including a student-led initiative to make campus dining food-stamp accessible. SNAP will be the university’s first attempt to bring food stamps into the dining halls and convenience stores. At the moment, Oregon State University is one of only a few universities to institute a program similar to this, but it has only been implemented in grocery stores on campus....

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) has quietly stepped away from the committee that has oversight over a scandal-plagued Wisconsin Veterans Affairs facility, actions some Republicans see as the Democratic senator running from her past failures on the issue. Baldwin served on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee throughout the 114th Congress but does not appear to be on the committee in the 115th Congress, according to its roster. The committee has oversight over the Tomah VA, a VA facility in Wisconsin that was over-prescribing opiates to patients and saw a Marine die from an overdose.A memo, first circulated in...

<p>MADISON -- A new audit shows huge cost overruns at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, with dozens of projects costing double or triple their original estimates.</p> <p>The Legislative Audit Bureau report finds that estimated costs for 19 major projects completed between 2006 and 2016 were $1.5 billion, double the initial projection. The audit also finds that the estimated costs of 16 ongoing major highway projects have increased by $3.1 billion.</p>

The student government at the University of Wisconsin-Madison adopted a resolution Wednesday demanding the school offer “reparations” in the form of free tuition plus room and board to black students. The student resolution also says SAT scores are being used to uphold white supremacy. From the Associated Press: The Associated Students of Madison said in a resolution that students from suburban high schools are overrepresented and that the consideration of ACT and SAT scores in applications restricts opportunities for the poor and thus upholds “white supremacy.” Race relations have been a contentious issue at the Wisconsin’s flagship campus for months...

Gwendolyn Gillen, a Wisconsin artist whose bronze sculpture of Mary Tyler Moore tossing her hat became a downtown Minneapolis landmark, has died. She was 76. Gillen's daughter, Alessandra Gillen, says her mother died Friday in hospice care at Madison Heights Senior Community in Madison, where she had lived since 2013. Gwendolyn Gillen died two days after Moore died at the age of 80.

A panel of federal judges has ordered the Wisconsin Legislature to redraw legislative boundaries by November, rejecting calls from those challenging the maps to have the judges do the work. The three-judge panel released its decision in the redistricting case Friday. The state is expected to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. State attorneys had asked for the Republican-controlled Legislature to be allowed to draw the maps if the Supreme Court orders them redone. Democrats who sued over the boundaries wanted the judges to do that. …

Immigration officials arrested 16 criminal aliens from Mexico during an enforcement surge in Milwaukee this week, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Of the criminal aliens arrested, two had been previously deported and two had outstanding orders of deportation. All 16 were living in the U.S. illegally and convicted criminals — having committed crimes like assault with a deadly weapon, battery, grand theft auto, drug possession with intent to distribute, drunk driving, and receiving stolen property. According to ICE, the two day surge was the agency’s latest effort to “prioritize the arrest and removal of convicted criminals living illegally in...

Union membership in Wisconsin has declined nearly 40 percent since legislation was passed that gutted collective bargaining for public workers, according to federal data. The percentage of public and private workers who were union members was about 8 percent, or 219,000 people, in 2016, down by 136,000 members from 2010 levels, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The agency’s report shows the percentage of Wisconsin workers in unions is below the national average of 10.7 percent, The State Journal reported. …

The morning after Donald Trump was elected president, Andrea Myklebust’s sheep needed new hay. Distraught by the results from the night before, feeling like this was the first day of a suddenly altered American reality, she walked down the driveway of her farm to meet the man who brings her feed for her flock. Myklebust didn’t know for sure, but she suspected he had voted for Trump, a person she considered odious, dangerous and unqualified for the job he had just won.