Bruce Thompson, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

Data Wonk: How Brad Shimel Defeated Himself

1 week ago | urbanmilwaukee.com | Bruce Thompson

Since last year’s spring election for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, one widely accepted theory has dominated discussion about the causes of Susan Crawford’s strong performance — that it basically continued a trend of liberal justices winning the state’s high court races. What do the numbers tell us? The chart below shows the votes for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice over the past decade. The bars represent the number of votes each candidate received in the general election.
Good people

1 week ago | pinecountynews.com | Bruce Thompson

If you have visited with me, you have often heard, “There are a lot of good people out there.”In the challenges I have endured these past two years, many “Good People” have shown compassion, support and love. A person really finds out who his friends are in the darkest of times. These people cheer us on to better days and a positive outlook. Another thing you hear me say is, “Bad things happen to good people.” Our world is marked with sin right from the days of Eve and Adam.
Data Wonk: Wisconsin Legislative Districts Still Gerrymandered?

1 month ago | urbanmilwaukee.com | Bruce Thompson

The official results of the 2025 spring election, which recently released, have some very surprising numbers. The general result, of course, we know: Wisconsin voters’ rejected the attempt by Donald Trump and Elon Musk to make the election an endorsement of DOGE and the Trump administration. This was a very partisan race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court that is increasingly partisan. But buried in the data is some eyebrow raising information about Wisconsin’s legislative map.
Data Wonk: Was Gov. Evers 402 Year Proposal Legal?

1 month ago | urbanmilwaukee.com | Bruce Thompson

The news that the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to uphold Governor Tony Evers’ use of his partial veto power to create a requirement that the Wisconsin school revenue limit be increased $325 per pupil every year for the next 402 years has drawn attention nationally. The story has been covered in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and many others. [inarticled]The controversial court case was called Lemieux v. Evers, and involved one set of vetoes made by the governor.
Data Wonk: Did Schimel Get Too Partisan in Election?

2 months ago | urbanmilwaukee.com | Bruce Thompson

Looking back at the April election, did Brad Schimel sabotage his candidacy? The next graph shows the (unofficial) results of April 1 election. In the election for Supreme Court justice, Susan Crawford easily defeated Brad Schimel by ten percentage points. The race for Superintendent of Public Instruction was much closer. The incumbent, Jill Underly managed to retain her office.
Data Wonk: Foreign Tariffs Targeting Wisconsin’s Red Counties

Mar 27, 2025 | urbanmilwaukee.com | Bruce Thompson

Discussion about Donald Trump’s existing and threatened tariffs on goods from other countries has focused mainly on their likely effect on inflation and the cost of living. Much less attention has focused on likely American job losses from the tariffs other countries impose on products from the United States. Two recent articles—one from the Brookings Institute and the other from The New York Times—have addressed the question of what other countries’ tariffs on American goods should target.
Data Wonk: Why Is Trump Targeting Veterans?

Mar 12, 2025 | urbanmilwaukee.com | Bruce Thompson

Currently, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) proposes to fire 83,000 of the 492,000 Veterans’ Affairs employees, or about 17% of the VA’s workforce. This seems like a strange decision from several angles.
Data Wonk: How Vulnerable Is Wisconsin to Federal Firings?

Mar 5, 2025 | urbanmilwaukee.com | Bruce Thompson

Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s war against the federal government is likely to have an increasingly negative effect on Wisconsin residents. So far, the negative effects of DOGE on Wisconsin is largely limited to the firings of people working in the federal government. However, as DOGE digs in, it is likely to negatively affect Wisconsinites who have to deal with the government, such as folks who want to know why a tax deduction was disallowed or why Medicare rejected a medical treatment.
Data Wonk: How Fair Are Wisconsin’s Taxes?

Feb 26, 2025 | urbanmilwaukee.com | Bruce Thompson

A recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum calculated that Wisconsin’s state and local government tax burden—the percentage of income going to taxes–had continued its long-term decline in the most recent year. This decline in average taxes as a proportion of average income is shown in the graph below. The report concluded that the tax burden from local taxes had declined from 4.5% in 1990 to 3.2% in 2024 (shown in blue).
JD Vance visits East Palestine again, promises to bring MAGA common sense to clean-up Biden’s failures

Feb 5, 2025 | americanthinker.com | Bruce Thompson

Vice President JD Vance just made his fifth trip to East Palestine, Ohio on the second anniversary of the derailment disaster involving a hazardous freight train run by Norfolk Southern. There has been extensive site remediation, a settlement of two lawsuits, and the final report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).