2011 Feb 19 - Headline News

Raging Wisconsin



Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has put a sensible proposal on the table
to improve his state’s alarming fiscal situation — and the Democrats,
who are largely to blame for it, have run for the hills.
Calling to mind a maneuver that Democrats in the Texas legislature
pulled a few years back, Wisconsin’s Democrats have fled the capitol,
and in some instances have fled the state, in order to subvert the very
democratic process from which their irony-immune party derives its name.
And the exquisitely temperate ladies and gentlemen who were just the
day before yesterday lecturing us about the allegedly corrosive tone of
conservative political discourse are parading through the mean streets
of Madison waving placards bearing the name and likeness of Adolf
Hitler, and denouncing Governor Walker as a Nazi.
Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist government murdered some 6
million Jews and waged a bloodthirsty war for world domination under a
“Thousand-Year Reich.” Governor Walker has proposed that government
employees in Wisconsin pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their insurance
premiums, which in the minds of Wisconsin Democrats apparently amounts
to more or less the same thing. President Obama, himself fresh off
lecturing the nation about its tone, chimed in with a predictably
tin-eared characterization of this modest initiative as an “assault.”
Wisconsin faces a $3.6 billion budget shortfall over the next two years
and an immediate shortfall of some $137 million. Like most state
governments, Wisconsin spends a very large part of its discretionary
budget on compensation for government employees, and it is inevitable
that the indefensibly inflated pay of the bureaucratic estate will come
under the gaze of the budget-balancers.
Governor Walker’s plan addresses both the immediate problems of
health-care and pension costs and the fundamental cause of those
problems: laws that give the government employees’ unions expansive,
extortionate powers. He proposes to curtail the collective-bargaining
authority of government employees’ unions other than those representing
police and firemen, leaving intact their power to negotiate over wages
but putting pensions and health-care subsidies behind a fiscal firewall.
Many other states have similar arrangements. If the plan passes,
Wisconsin’s government workers will be treated a bit more like
private-sector workers in that they will be asked to contribute a tiny
bit more to their own health-care and retirement costs. One suspects
that many in Wisconsin’s struggling private sector would be very happy
to pay only 12.6 percent of their own health-insurance costs, but, under
the iron fist of Wisconsin’s purportedly Hitleresque Republicans, even
this modest measure comes with a sweetener: no layoffs or furloughs for
government workers. One suspects that many in Wisconsin’s struggling
private sector also would be very happy to have government-guaranteed
job security — with a fat, government-guaranteed pension at the end of
it, no less.
Wisconsin Democrats (and their media surrogates) blame the problems on
the state’s recent establishment of health-savings accounts and tax
revenue lost through credits to businesses that relocate to the state or
create new jobs there. And while those programs do have an impact on
tax revenue, that line of criticism only makes sense if one assumes that
the public-sector unions have a prior claim on both private and public
money in Wisconsin. Such thinking is, of course, a fundamental part of
the problem at hand.
[continued.....]http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/260114/raging-wisconsin-editors

Fake Doctors’ Notes Being Handed Out at Wisconsin Gov. Union Rally




[Madison, WI] As tens of thousands of public employees skipped work
this week to attend protest rallies outside the Wisconsin State Capitol,
many wondered if they would face any disciplinary action for unexcused
absences.

On Saturday, a group of men and women in lab coats purporting to be
doctors were handing out medical excuse notes, without examining the
‘patients.’

“I asked this doctor what he was doing and he told me they were
handing out excuses to people who were feeling sick due to emotional,
mental or financial distress,” said Christian Hartsock. “They never
performed an exam–he asked me how I was feeling today and I said I’m
from California and I’m not used to the cold, so he handed me a note.”
Another woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said they were handing out excuses like they were leaflets.
“I asked if they were handing out doctors’ excuses and a guy said yes
and asked me if I needed one,” she said. “When I told them I needed one
for February 16 and 17th, he wondered if I wanted to come back here for
the protests next week.”

What happened next?

“I said, ‘sure,’ and I received a doctor’s note for the 16th through the 25th of February, without a medical exam.”

The notes read

Feb 19, 2011
Patient’s name______
Date of birth ____/_____/_____
To Whom it May Concern:

This is confirm I have seen and evaluated the above named patient.
Please excuse from work/school due to a medical condition from
____/____/____ through ____/____/____


Please contact me at badgerdoctors@gmail.com if additional information is needed. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Physician Signature:
Physician Name
WI license number

Based on an examination of the signature and medical license number provided, one of the men handing out these notes was purporting to be James H Shropshire MD, a Clinical Associate Professor at the University Wisconsin Madison.
At this time, MacIver News Service is attempting to contact Dr. Shropshire to see if indeed he was the one handing out the notes on the Capitol Square.

SOURCE of article:
http://maciverinstitute.com/2011/02/fake-doctors-notes-being-handed-out-at-wisconsin-gov-union-rally/

----------------------------------------------------

Based on an examination of the signature and medical license number
provided, one of the men handing out these notes was purporting to be
James H Shropshire MD, a Clinical Associate Professor at the University
Wisconsin Madison.

James H Shropshire MD
5001 Monona Dr, Monona, WI 53716
(608) 222-8779

----------------------------------------------------

Ahhhhh... Dr. James H. Shropshire is connected to Service-Learning in Global Health

[can anyone pronounce NWO??]

Social
Justice Issues in Slovakia: An Interdisciplinary Service- Learning
Travel Course by Sarah Meredith Livingston; Associate Professor, Arts
and Visual Design/Women’s and Gender Studies, UW-Green Bay and Angie
Bauer-Dantoin; Associate Professor, Human Biology / Women’s and Gender
Studies, UW-
Green Bay

The Family Planning Committee of Lingira, Uganda by Shelly Lev-Er, Nursing Student; Co-Director of EDGE
Project - Empowerment Through Development and Gender Equality

The Gundersen Lutheran Experience: Building a Global Health Partnership
Program by Roseann Netzer, MS, RN, PMHCNS-BC, APNP; Evidence-based
Practice Coordinator & Global Health Coordinator, Gundersen Lutheran
Medical Center, La Crosse, WI

Maka Pads: A Sustainable and Affordable Approach to Sanitary Pads by Moona Arabkhazaeli, student;
UW-Madison and Nahiris Bahamon, student; UW-Madison

Education and Service at the Hillside Clinic - Belize by Jim Shropshire, MD; Clinical
Associate Professor, Dept. of Family Medicine; Hillside Health Care
International Board of Directors

VIDEO: http://videos.med.wisc.edu/videos/15643