Mary Burke Addresses Trek Outsourcing 99.5% of Their Bikes: "Trek Does What it Can to Manufacture Bikes Here"

Trek public relations manager Eric Bjorling says that out of the appoximately 1.5 million bicycles the company produces annually, about 10,000 are made in the United States. However, according to statistics from the National Association of Bicycle Dealers (NABD), because 99% of the bicycles sold in the United States are made in either China (93%) or Taiwan (6%), Trek does the have dubious distinction of being the leading manufacturer of "Made in USA" bicycles.

And, while most don't brag about being the cream of the sour milk, Democratic candidate Mary Burke does just that:
"It is the largest manufacturer of bicycles in the United States, it employs more people than any other bicycle company in the United States, so there's nearly 1,000 employees right here in Wisconsin and over the last 20 years the payroll has nearly doubled. So I think Trek works very hard to keep employment in Wisconsin."

Burke adds, "Trek does what it can to manufacture bikes here" and that bicycles "are a very competative industry," echoing Trek's public statements that they have outsourced simply to survive as a company. She also repeats the standard line that if Americans were willing to pay more for the product, they would produce bikes in the United Staes: "If there was a greater emphasis by consumers to buy American goods, I think that would also make sure that American manufacturers' products were able to garner a higher price that would reflect the increased cost,"

For a variety of reasons, including heavy self-protection, bike shops haven't experienced the price falling trends like the non-bike shop sector. Trek and other medium to high end brands sell for the same price or more than they did before the drive to move to cheap Chinese labor. For example, Trek 520 is one of Trek's best known bikes that is been around almost as long as Trek has-- since the early '80s. In 1983, the Trek 520 sold for $318 which, adjusted for inflation to today's dollars, would be $903. Today, the Trek 520 actually sells for more than it did then, $1,490. The main difference is that in 1983, the Trek 520 was made in the USA and in 2013 it's made in China.

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Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield, author of the new book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, has flown three space missions, including 144 days on the International Space Station. Hadfield talks about life in zero gravity, his one fear while in orbit, and how he went from test pilot to astronaut.

Watch a revised version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," recorded by Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station:

Common Core standards debate heats up over payments by John Birch group

Leaders of the American Opinion Foundation, an independent nonprofit associated with the Wisconsin-based society, say they paid for about $5,500 worth of travel expenses for five Common Core State Standards critics to speak at the hearings in Fond du Lac, Eau Claire and Wausau this month. They said local citizens raised the money.

The latest select Assembly and Senate committees to re-examine the standards were spearheaded by Republicans, but many saw them as agenda-driven from the start because the highest-ranking education lawmakers in the state — Senate Education Chair Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) and Assembly Education Chair Steve Kestell (R-Elkhart Lake) — declined to participate.

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Other Democrats on the House and Senate panels criticized the compensation of speakers. "What's new here is the clear attempt to hide who they are representing and who is paying their way," Tim Cullen (D-Janesville) said in an interview Thursday. "The direction of the committee is clearly biased, but that's exactly why I want to stay on it," he said

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The out-of-state Common Core critics who received travel and lodging compensation were: Sandra Stotsky, a retired professor from the University of Arkansas; James Milgram, emeritus professor at Stanford University; Gary Thompson of the Early Life Child Psychology and Education Center; Ze'ev Wurman, a former U.S. Department of Education official in the George W. Bush administration; and Ted Rebarber, the CEO and founder of AccountabilityWorks, a nonprofit education group.

Campaign created by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who is fighting every day to protect our earned benefits and is the founder of the Defending Social Security Caucus.

No grand bargain in exchange for cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

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Billionaires like the Koch Brothers, Pete Peterson, Stanley Druckenmiller and others are leading the charge to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

If they succeed, millions of senior citizens, working families, disabled veterans and children will suffer. We must not allow that to happen.

If you listen to that 40 second long YouTube video embedded above, you’ll hear visiting exert Dr. James Milgram – who is from California – stammer about how he doesn’t know who has paid for his passage to the Common Core hearing held in Eau Claire, Wisconsin October 23rd. Right. Later in the hearing it’s revealed that the America Opinion Foundation (AOF), which is an arm of the John Birch Society is close to the John Birch Society, paid his way.

Rep. Sinicki’s letter of resignation from this committee, which I located this morning on Blogging Blue, explains the bigger picture:

This letter is sent to you to tender my resignation from the Assembly Select Committee on Common Core Standards (SCCCS). While I respect my fellow Democrats’ stamina in remaining on the Committee, I believe it is time for me to end an association with what is sadly a deeply biased hearing process, not an objective policy review.
It has become painfully clear that this committee and its activities are occurring at the behest of interested parties outside of this Legislature, and even this state. I believe that this SCCCS is primarily a roadshow, in conjunction with the Republican National Committee (RNC) and its April 2013 resolution, to distract from that party’s recent national failures. The general criticisms of the Common Core Standards here in Wisconsin echo the extreme statements coming out of the RNC, which is a campaign organization, and other Republican sources in Washington, D.C. and around the country.

This extremism about common standards, not to mention public education in general, seems to emanate from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. And in turn, they have attracted another extreme and very rich ally in the national John Birch Society (JBS), which is conveniently headquartered here in Wisconsin. Each of the SCCCS’s informational hearings have featured speakers suggested to the SCCCS chairs by the JBS, and whose travel expenses from distant parts of the country have been paid for by the American Opinion Foundation (AOF), a proud arm of the Birch Society. On Wisconsin Eye video of the Eau Claire SCCCS hearing, these invited speakers from other states say, bizarrely, that they don’t know who it was that called and invited them but that, upon arrival, they were handed expense checks issued by AOF (which they then show the committee members). In the meantime, actual Wisconsin educators who have attended the hearings on their own initiative have often been turned away from testifying due to the bulk of attention and time being reserved for invited speakers.

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I cannot in good conscience sit on a committee that has involved the most extreme national interest groups on education in planning and executing official Legislative hearings, all the while completely ignoring the voices of my district. At such time in the future that the Committees decide to start paying attention to the experiences of and often overwhelming support of Common Core standards of the actual teachers, administrators and people of Wisconsin, I would be glad to participate.

Scott Walker: “God was sending me a clear message to not do things for personal glory or fame”

I present for your reading eyes an excerpt from Scott Walker’s upcoming book which I have lifted from an article by Weigel in Slate. In this passage, Walker is describing how God spoke to him after he fell for Ian Murphy’s prank “David Koch” call:

“Only later did I realize that God had a plan for me with that episode,” writes Walker. After his press conference, he picked up his daily devotional and saw the title for Feb. 23: The power of humility, the burden of pride.

“I looked up and said, ‘I hear you, Lord,’” writes Walker. “God was sending me a clear message to not do things for personal glory or fame. It was a turning point that helped me in future challenges, helped me stay focused on the people I was elected to serve, and reminded me of God’s abundant grace and the paramount need to stay humble.”

[this next paragraph is from Weigel]
Providence gets a starring role in Walker’s memoir. Where he travels, ordinary citizens tell him to buck up. An airport worker who hands him a piece of paper reading “Isaiah 54:17,” which Walker quickly checks on his phone: “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.” A floor manager for a TV show confides to Walker that “she and her kids got down on their knees every night and prayed for me and my family.

Racism In White Americans Linked To Gun Ownership And Gun Control Opposition


A new study of symbolic racism among white American voters yielded strong links between latent biases toward blacks and increased favor of gun ownership and oppositions toward gun control.

Published in the journal PLoS One, the study used voter data of white Americans that, after accounting for political ideology, income, and education, still revealed startling connections between racism and gun ownership. For every one point increase in symbolic racism — measured on a five-point scale — the chance someone had a gun in the home rose by 50 percent, and the chance the respondent supported policies that allowed people to carry concealed guns rose by 28 percent.

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Part of the answer is simply freedom. Americans whose family is steeped in the traditions of southern conservatism tend to enjoy exercising their second amendment Constitutional right. Another is irrationality, or an ignorance of the facts. Gun ownership often proceeds under the assumption that one will be attacked. So people buy guns fearing someone else will use one on them, despite the supposed closeness of people inhabiting gun-heavy regions.

The present study also found associations in their data between opposition to gun controls and conservatism, anti-government sentiment, party identification, and being from a southern state. Even controlling for these factors, the team found racism associated with gun control opposition and gun ownership.

Rep. Chris Taylor: In ALEC's underworld, democracy is a burden

Entrance to the 40th anniversary conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council was tightly controlled. But I had become a member, paid the $575 registration fee, and produced the required identification. For two days in August, I submerged myself in the ALEC underworld. Though I had witnessed the ALEC agenda in our own state, from the attack on workers’ rights and gutting of fair employment laws to the promulgation of right-to-kill bills, I was simultaneously horrified and fascinated by the extent of ALEC’s infestation of American policy decisions.

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And after 40 years, ALEC is a well-oiled, effective machine. In the area of tort reform, 200 ALEC-inspired model bills have already limited corporate responsibility to injured people. In a workshop entitled “A Sensible Lawsuit System,” legislators were admonished to “take back” their power from the courts by limiting judicial power, stalling asbestos litigation until injured parties die, and shielding corporations from liability for defective products.

Privatizing education is also a top ALEC priority. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, in 2013, there were 139 ALEC bills to fund private and religious schools with taxpayer money introduced throughout the nation. At the Education Task Force meeting, Scott Jensen, a pro-voucher lobbyist for the American Federation for Children and former Wisconsin Assembly speaker, boasted that with 20 states now funding some form of private school K-12 vouchers, the question is when states will adopt private voucher schemes, not if.

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ALEC has another Achilles' heel. An ALEC think tank member solicited my opinion on a convoluted constitutional amendment strategy to require congressional approval of federal regulations. I replied that I didn’t think this issue would inspire the American people to amend the U.S. Constitution. He stated with Republican domination in so many states, and corporate money that would surely flow, the consent of the people is not needed. In ALEC nation, people are irrelevant and democracy a burden, which is exactly what ALEC model bills reflect.