vicforberger

[vicforberger]

Catholic Charities: Religious exemption found

On June 5th, the US Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion that reversed the Wisconsin Supreme Court to find that the state court had violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment by explicitly imposing “a denominational preference by differentiating between religions based on theological lines.” By distinguishing between religious bodies that engage in proselytizing with their…

[vicforberger]

Fix for using Webex on Linux

Webex does not work on Ubuntu 24.04/Noble systems. Thanks to Michael Heilmann, the error is related to a missing apparmor profile. I did fix this bug by adding a apparmor profile for Webex into a new file here “/etc/apparmor.d/Webex”: abi <abi/4.0>, include <tunables/global> profile Webex /opt/Webex/bin/CiscoCollabHost flags=(unconfined) { userns, # Site-specific additions and overrides. See…

[vicforberger]

Department Proposals in 2025

At the 20 March 2025 meeting of the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council, the Department introduced another round of extensive, substantive proposed changes to unemployment law. Note: Despite many of these proposals being repeats from prior proposals, the Department did not include any financial estimates with these current proposals. At the April 17th Council meeting, however, the Department…

[vicforberger]

SSDI eligibility ban in Wisconsin is illegal

On July 17, 2024, the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin ruled on a case challenging whether it was legal to prevent recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) from also receiving Wisconsin unemployment compensation benefits. The court held that the state law that automatically prevented SSDI recipients from receiving unemployment compensation…

[vicforberger]

Catholic Charities of Wisconsin at the US Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court granted the petition for review in Catholic Charities, and oral argument is scheduled for March 31st at 10am eastern time. You can listen to the oral argument at this link. The issue being addressed by the justices in this case is: Does a state violate the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses by denying a religious organization an otherwise-available tax exemption because the…

[vicforberger]

Unemployment claims for federal employees

Given the mass layoffs of late happening with federal employees, some information for how federal employees can claim unemployment benefits is probably needed. In general, the administration and eligibility calculations/determinations of unemployment benefits is handled at the state level. The benefits themselves, however, come from the federal government. Because the administration varies from…

[vicforberger]

Forced arbitration for workers

For more than a decade, an increasing number of workers are finding that they have “agreed” to have all of their workplace disputes handled through arbitration proceedings. Note: This “agreement” is often little more than a clause in small print in pages of paperwork that you sign with no discussion or even chance to review. The problem is that this forced arbitration of a dispute is a…

[vicforberger]

Catholic Charities of Wisconsin might be going to the US Supreme Court

The diocese has petitioned for review before the US Supreme Court the Catholic Charities decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Note: All the filed materials with the US Supreme Court are available at the court’s public docket for this case. In its decision, Catholic Charities v. LIRC, 2024 WI 13, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that non-profit entities affiliated with the diocese (but not…

[vicforberger]

Public hearing on unemployment in 2024

The Department has scheduled a public hearing on unemployment benefits and taxes for Thursday, November 21st, at 2 to 4 pm and 5 to 6 pm. This public hearing is online only (via webex) and requires prior registration for both sessions: registration for the 2 to 4 pm session and registration for the 5 to 6 pm session. Comments can also be submitted in writing via [e-mail message](mailto:…

[vicforberger]

Setting up Airplay on Xubuntu

Ubuntu handbook has instructions on how to get Airplay up and running on a Linux box. With these instructions, here is what I did for my desktop. $ aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC662 rev3 Analog [ALC662 rev3 Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Subdevices:…

[vicforberger]

Upgrading to Xubuntu Noble -- 24.04 from 22.02 -- and a review

I have upgraded my desktop but not my laptop. Note: Xneo is an alias for neofetch --ascii_distro xubuntu. In general, the switch to mostly snaps could be smoother, and I still need to play with the system more to discover all the changes. Note: the upgrade to Noble 24.04 was delayed several days after initial release. Disabling third-party PPAs For any upgrade, third-party PPAs are disabled…

[vicforberger]

Frequent and recurring errors in log files

Given the breadth of hardware and operating system wrinkles at play with Linux, it is all too common to see recurring and minor errors pop up about some setting or hardware snafu that really does not matter. For my desktop computer, I was seeing log files of 2 to 4 gigs in size. Here is how I tracked this problem, discovered the cause, and found a solution (at least for the ballooning log…

[vicforberger]

Which political party is more likely to lead to economic gains

Or, who should be in charge for the sake of middle-class prosperity, Mr. Potter or George Bailey? Unemployment is a key economic indicator, as the rate is tied to whether companies are hiring or laying off workers. The whole point of unemployment benefits, after all, is economic insurance for businesses so that their customers continue to have money to buy the things they need, like food and…

[vicforberger]

No administrative concealment penalties for Lost Wage Assistance

There is no doubt any longer that the 40% administrative concealment penalty that the Department charges for unemployment fraud is highly profitable to the Department. Note: The 40% administrative penalty is actually two separate penalties: a 15% penalty that goes back into the unemployment trust fund and a 25% penalty that goes into a separate program integrity fund. The program integrity fund…

[vicforberger]

Gig workers in Wisconsin

On March 26th of this year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided that further review in Amazon Logistics v. LIRC, 2024 WI 15, was premature. As a result, the court of appeals decision in Amazon Logistics v. LIRC, 2023 WI App 26, 407 Wis.2d 807, 992 N.W.2d 168, remained in place. Before getting to that appeals court decision and what it means, the terrain for gig workers (also called self-employed…

[vicforberger]

Wisconsin economic news

Jake has been on a tear with economic news for Wisconsin, and it has been too long since I provided an update on this front. So, I’m going to piggyback off of his efforts. In general, Wisconsin has seen both solid job AND wage growth the past few years. While the beginning of 2023 saw a slight slow down, the latter half of 2023 saw significant income growth in the state, especially when…

[vicforberger]

Religious exemptions to unemployment taxes in 2024

Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued its decision in Catholic Charities v. LIRC, 2024 WI 13. At issue in this case was whether the Catholic Charities entities would be exempt from paying any unemployment taxes (and their employees no longer eligible for unemployment benefits when laid off) because the Catholic Charities entities are, like churches themselves, operated for faith-based…