Yesterday a state trooper and the Senate Sergeant at Arms went to Senator Mark Miller’s house in Monona. He wasn’t there:

Monona Doug posted a link to an article on the State Bar of Wisconsin site that describes the history of the labor movement in Wisconsin.

Fortunately we no longer see scenes like this one, where the National Guard killed five Milwaukee employees on strike because they were demonstrating for an eight hour work day:

In May 1886 thousands of Milwaukee workers demonstrated in support of a national movement for an eight-hour day. The demonstration turned into a contentious strike that reached a climax when National Guard troops fired on strikers at a plant in Bay View, killing five of them. The “Bay View riots” triggered a wave of legal reaction: several strike leaders were prosecuted for conspiracy to boycott and inciting to riot, and in 1887 the Legislature reacted to the riots by passing Wisconsin’s first labor laws.

And:

In 1931 Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to create an unemployment compensation system. The Wisconsin labor movement set the campaign for the system in motion and was always the prime force behind the campaign. But the system applied to all workers, not just union members, and the Legislature did not view it as a concession to organized labor.

Eight hour work days and unemployment compensation are just some of the things we take for granted today.

Many years ago I decided to stop watching Packers games and only watch any NFC Championship games and Super Bowl games they play in.

Watching regularly was too stressful (all those Favre interceptions) and I just gradually lost interest in watching men play a boy’s game and get paid millions for it.

Besides, living in Wisconsin, I’m usually all too aware of what the Packers are up to, even when I don’t watch.

But a recent New Yorker article listed some cool things about the Packers and why they are the only team worth paying attention to:

* The Packers are the only football team owned by their fans (112,000 of them, to be precise).

* They are located in Green Bay, which has a population of only 101,000, and not in the larger, hipper, shinier city of Milwaukee.

* The Packers GM gets to make decisions without a millionaire owner breathing down his neck and has had the freedom to do things like ditch Brett Favre in favor of Aaron Rodgers.

* Volunteers work the concession stands at home games and 60% of the proceeds go to charity.

* Volunteers remove the snow from the field before home games (imagine the response Jerry Jones would get if he asked for volunteers).

* The beer is cheaper than at other stadiums.

* Every home game has been sold out for two decades.

* Unlike other NFL teams, which tax their local communities and then keep the profits for themselves, the Packers actually aid their local community by not draining it of resources.

Now that I know these cool deets about the Packers, and now that I’ve seen how Aaron Rodgers doesn’t throw interceptions like Favre did, maybe, just maybe I’ll let myself watch a few more Packers games now.