December 2019

It’s become fashionable these days to chastise people for their charity. The critiques, which have accusatory titles and acerbic adjectives galore, spread like wildfire on social media. They allege that people who do charitable work are doing it wrong, or doing it for the wrong reasons.

The specific nature of the charges varies, but the idea is always the same; that holiday giving is a fraud, and the love people suddenly feel for one another is a fraud, as well. Each article asserts that people are all greedy, and those who appear to help others only  do so in their own self-interest. 

MIDDLETON–Tucked away in the basement of the Harbor Athletic Wellness building on the corner of Allen and Century Boulevards is the state’s only free specialty care medical clinic, BSP (Benevolent Specialists Project) Clinic.

The clinic was the brainchild of three physicians who saw an unfulfilled need for specialty medical services back in 2001. BSP, a mostly volunteer organization with only a handful of paid employees, partners with hospitals, clinics, the UW-Madison and AmeriCorps VISTA to provide a variety of services to patients. 

Patients are referred to the clinic by free clinics around the state. BSP Clinic is available to uninsured adults through the clinics. “We have over 30 clinics in the state that refer patients to us,” said Chris Mullen, program development director and AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer. “About 60 percent of them come from Dane County.”

Voter suppression can take on many forms.

Last week in a story about Max Prestigiacomo running for Madison City Council, voter suppression came up because of Wisconsin voter ID laws, which make it difficult for students to cast votes. That is because many students retain the ID or driver’s license in their hometown when they go to school out of state, and Wisconsin requires that you have a Wisconsin ID.

The district Max is running in is mostly students at UW-Madison. This has contributed to lower student voter turnout in the past. And one of the things that he said he would like to see is voting rights for anyone in the City of Madison over 18.

Just days after I wrote the story about Max, a judge in Port Washington also did his best to suppress voting. The circuit court judge, Paul Malloy ordered that more than 230,000 voters be removed from the state’s registered voter list, according a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

MIDDLETON–Middleton Plan Commissioner Kurt Paulsen announced his bid for mayor on Dec. 10. 

“A lot of people have asked me to run for mayor based on my leadership on equity and sustainability,” Paulsen said in an interview last week.

Affordable housing is one of the four priorities Paulsen would tackle as mayor. He serves as a member of the Workforce Housing Committee and said, “People who work in Middleton can’t afford to live in Middleton. A lot of teachers who work here can’t afford to live here.

“We need a greater variety of housing in the city. As chair of the workforce housing committee, I led the effort to develop our strategy and goal of 295 affordable units before 2020, and we’re about to reach that goal!” Paulsen continued. He said there is a lack of smaller houses, and said it is the “missing middle.”