Madison WI

I guess this is now an annual occurrence. Just lamenting how in my brief life that climate change has become a daily reality and it isn't getting better any time soon.

Interested in Housing Cooperatives? Come to the MACHA Summer Social. Thursday, July 24, 6-10pm at Hypatia Co-op (411 N. Pinckney St).

If anyone is interest in learning non-violent peacekeeping skills for events or direct action campaigns, Madison Friends Meeting (Quakers) is hosting a workshop on Sunday, September 14. A dinner and community building time will follow the training.

Holy crap, Woodman's roof caved in. 😲

The 2024 State Street Pedestrian Mall project was popular and led to increased activity on that stretch of State Street during the summer months, according to a report on the experiment(opens in a new window) adopted by the Common Council during its March 25, 2025, meeting. The first year of this experiment is leading City staff to evaluate a longer-term program while keeping or bringing back some of the elements of last year’s experiment.

We have several city alder elections, as well as the state supreme court race.

This past week, I saw a car near the stadium with a vanity plate with this on it, and I can't stop wondering about the backstory. I guess it could be a sports player or fan referring to the 4th OT in a game. If it's supposed to read "forethought," the owner probably could have used some. Anyway, I guess the censors at WisDOT aren't clued into, or don't care about, Millennial slang.

This is why the April 1st election for Supreme Court is so critical. We need to have fair district maps to have a hope of getting a Legislature that will share the state surplus with cities instead of sitting on it. It's a Republican strategy to deliberately withhold shared revenue from Madison in order to force their agenda down our throats, like they did in Milwaukee, that led to the recent referendum to increase property taxes. (They've also withheld payments for municipal services that Madison has already provided to state buildings.) If Congress removes this tax exemption, too, we'll be doubly-squeezed.

Everybody knows that a traffic jam is the result of too many cars on the road. Real-life experience says that the only way that ever works to ease traffic congestion is to have fewer cars on the road. New York switched on congestion tolling earlier this year, flawed as it is, and lo, fewer cars on the road means fewer traffic jams!

So of course the new administration wants to cancel transit projects. Is this stupid, malicious, or both?

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A group backed by billionaire Elon Musk is behind a set of deceptive attack ads and text messages targeting voters just weeks ahead of the election for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, employing a battleground state strategy it used last year against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

I've heard tales of deceptive mailings coming in, too. Has anybody here received one?

Great list of upcoming events in Madison. The list gets updated continually , but is a pretty short time frame to plan ahead.

Just thought I would add a few links here to see if there is any activity. I think that the upcoming election is something that is very important for the direction of our state.

The candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court will face off on April 1. Access to reproductive choice hangs in the balance.

President Donald Trump’s issuance of 1,500 pardons for Jan. 6 rioters has become a minefield for many conservatives.

Possession of handguns by minors is illegal under federal law. But rifles and shotguns, in Wisconsin, are a different story.

Channel 3000 Coverage

As of 1:50pm CST: 5 are dead, 5 more injured and the shooter is dead (not counted in the fatality count)

Absolutely unbelievable that this crap has come to Madison.

I saw Madison in this article immediately. I hear a lot of local residents try to deny the fact that we have an acute housing shortage, opposing new construction projects on the grounds that they require tearing down ~~dilapidated dumps~~"affordable housing," which displaces lower-income residents, as if building new market-rate apartments causes wealthier people to move here. Here's the reality:

Alex Horowitz: We're short on all homes. Full stop. There just aren't enough of them. And that means that existing homes are getting bid up because we see high income households competing with low income households for the same residences since just not enough are getting built.

We're a growing city with a healthy economy. People keep moving here, and as they do, housing is like a game of musical chairs, except seats go to those with more money. The Common Council and mayor are trying to do something about it.

Horowitz: So restrictive zoning is the primary culprit. It's made it hard to build homes in the areas where there are jobs. And so that has created an immense housing shortage. And each home is getting bid up, whether it's a rental or whether it's a home to buy.

Restrictive zoning. It makes building new housing illegal in most of the city. The West Area Plan is an incremental step forward on this issue, but of course, change is scary enough to turn people into bullies, literally shouting abuse at city staffers in public meetings. Let's hope that they're tough enough, and wise enough, to keep pushing it forward, because:

Horowitz: [...] And we certainly see some local elected officials and some residents concerned about changes in their community, even though the evidence suggests that allowing more homes is mostly beneficial by improving affordability and reducing homelessness.