Like stubborn children who don't want to clean their room, members of the liberal Madison Common Council don't like recent laws reforming the use of Project Labor Agreements - and they don't want to follow them. A Madison city attorney had to remind them that giving union shops exclusive access to public projects is illegal now. Rules are rules, and the law's the law, even for liberals who would prefer otherwise.

Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee are a lot like Rolaids - They spell relief: Tax relief. The tax cut-package passed last week by the Republican-controlled JFC totals more than $530 million in relief for Wisconsin taxpayers. That’s on top of the $8 billion-plus the conservative majority delivered in the previous eight years.

MacIver Newsmakers: Sen. Kathy Bernier by The MacIver Institute

In one of the bigger Big Government ideas coming from ostensibly free-market conservatives, the Legislature’s budget-writing committee wants to track your vehicle’s mileage. The committee last week approved a state transportation budget that explores a mileage-based fee system. Whether that would entail self-reporting, or technology that creepily tracks motorist mileage, the proposal puts Wisconsin on the road to Big Brother Land. Even more troubling, the language gives the Joint Finance Committee, not the full Legislature, the authority to approve or deny any mileage tracking plan that comes out of the study committee. That’s too much control in the hands of a few, and it has Big Brother riding shotgun.

Here’s the good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Joint Finance Committee’s Transportation budget.

-No gas tax, no indexing - or taxation without representation. That’s very good.

-Transportation bonding at the lowest level in 18 years, that’s good.

But at nearly $500 million, it’s a big-spending transportation budget, and it relies heavily on fee hikes.

Now, the ugly. The JFC’s transpo budget includes very little in the way of reforms for a Department that has squandered billions of taxpayer dollars.

Nicole Hemkes was tired of being another "paper doctor" - just a few minutes with each patient followed by way too much paperwork. In December, Hemkes left that paper chase and opened a direct primary care clinic in the Madison area. Not only does this model of health care delivery get docs back to the basics - more time with patients and less insurance company paperwork - it has the potential to truly reduce the cost of quality health care.

British colonists started a revolution and founded a nation in large part based on a basic, rhyming principle: No taxation without representation. Two and a half centuries later, some in government still haven’t learned. Case-in-point: Gov. Tony Evers’ budget, which includes annual increases in the gas tax tied to the rate of inflation to help pay for Wisconsin’s road projects - and let future Legislatures off the hook when it comes to raising taxes.

MacIver Newsmakers: Direct Primary Care Pioneer, Dr. Nicole Hemkes by The MacIver Institute

The phrase "Ponzi Scheme" is already taken, but taxpayers could be forgiven for thinking the federal government's "free" Medicaid money pledge is a pyramid scheme in the making. Free money skeptics have plenty of reasons to think it's only a matter of time before the federal government backs off its promises to continue offering a more generous match rate for states that accept Medicaid expansion cash and leave states holding the very expensive bag.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson talks Mueller madness, why he’s quickly becoming the Johnny Cash of the U.S. Senate, and whether CNN’s Jim Acosta will ever find love again on this edition of MacIver Newsmakers.