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Jan 14, 2025 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — Lorin Robinson, who has deep roots in these parts. He has been studying and writing about global warming for a long time — and he says it’s a done deal, and we’re screwed. His latest book, “Surviving the Warming: Strategies for Americans,” does two key things. It describes in detail why the warming, as he calls it, is going to be a massive catastrophe.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — As we head into stiff political head winds, there is one certainly, however unsettling: We are in the grips of one of the most anti-science eras in modern history. COVID-19 should have taught us that, especially in the U.S., which has 4% of the world’s population but has accounted for 17% of COVID deaths worldwide. We completely underperformed all other so-called wealthy nations in the world. Resistance to or inability to access mRNA vaccines played a big role.
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Nov 20, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — A friend who’s a Menominee Indian sometimes wears a T-shirt with a photo of four rifle-toting indigenous warriors and the words “ORIGINAL HOMELAND SECURITY” and “DEFENDING THE BORDERS SINCE 1492.”The shirt has been around almost since the Department of Homeland Security was formed in 2002, but in the flow of time and events, it’s spot-on right now.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — We take our inspiration when and where we can in these gut-wrenching days. My wife and I found some at an unexpected place: a rest stop overlooking Black Canyon in Arizona. We were traveling from Sedona to the Phoenix airport after a week of hiking and had seen far too many Trump signs along the way. But it at the Sunset Point rest stop we met retired Teamster Steve MacDonald, dressed in a colorful print shirt, shorts and work boots.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — It’s a vexing question, really, why many residents in Wisconsin have voted against their own interests for so long. Take the matter of school aids. Wisconsin went all in on a huge funding increase for voucher schools in the current budget. The bill now exceeds $700 million of taxpayer money, according Legislative Fiscal Bureau numbers. There are now almost 400 private schools in the state, compared to about 2,190 public.
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Oct 8, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — In the dark days of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker's “divide and conquer” years, public institutions were bullied and bruised. Fortunately, the citizens of Wisconsin had enough and put Walker out to pasture, and we survived. The Department of Natural Resources was one of the prime targets in the Walker years, as he slashed funding for science, environmental protection, state parks and a range of other programs that made Wisconsin a national leader.
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Sep 23, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — Well, there was a bit of good news for the U.S. in a recent report comparing health care system performance of 10 peer nations. The report, issued by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that promotes high-performing, equitable health care systems, places the U.S. near the top in one category: patient care, which is bolstered by services like mammograms, vaccines and other essentials to quality care.
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Sep 9, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT – Here’s a question that won’t be asked in upcoming presidential debates or addressed in any detail by candidates for public office: What will you do to strengthen our nation’s response to the next pandemic? It’s a question that should be paramount on the minds of those who would lead, but it won’t be addressed in most campaigns. Public health experts are all-but begging governments to take steps now, before we endure another pandemic, be it this year or a decade from now.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — The next time someone tells you America is going to hell in a handbasket, tell that person to take a hike — with a handbasket — to the local farmers’ market. It shouldn’t be too hard to find one. Wisconsin has somewhere around 300 farmers’ markets, according to Travel Wisconsin. For perspective, there are 190 cities in Wisconsin. Chances are most of those cities have farmers markets, and a lot of villages and towns do, too.
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Aug 12, 2024 | 
captimes.com | Bill Berry
STEVENS POINT — Who would have thought the town of Eureka in northwest Wisconsin — population 1,700, give or take — would be guilty of government overreach. That’s what the state’s big business lobby says. Scott Rosenow, executive director of Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce’s Litigation Center, is representing a couple of town residents WMC who object to a town ordinance that seeks to make industrial agriculture facilities accountable for their operations.
