News 10.21.16
21 October 2016 News
The director of the Ripon Chamber of Commerce says Ripon will still be known as Cookie Town USA when the last cookie plant closes its ceases production next month and closes its doors December 2nd. Treehouse Foods was the last remaining cookie plant with ties that date back to Rippin Good Cookies. Chamber director Jason Mansmith says Ripon will continue to hold its Cookie Daze celebration in the summer…and may even ask Treehouse if they would still be able to provide cookies for the celebration. Meanwhile Mansmith says many of the 51 laid off workers have found new jobs. He says Alliance Laundry Systems in Ripon is undergoing a big expansion, and many of the people at Con Agra or Treehouse have found jobs and opportunities at that facility.
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A no contest plea for a Waupun man accused of forcing a 17 year old girl to view sexual activity. At a plea hearing Wednesday, 56 year old Ronald Mueller entered the plea to an amended charge of causing mental harm to child. He was charged with causing a child to view sexual activity. Mueller is accused of performing sexual acts on the family dog while the teen was in the room. A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for December 2nd.
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A Lomira man convicted of sexual assault is going to prison for a long time. Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Joseph Sciascia sentenced 55 year old William Bonney to 20 years of initial confinement and 10 years of extended supervision. In July, Bonney pleaded no contest to a charge of 1st degree sexual assault. Bonney forced sexual intercourse with a woman, causing a pregnancy in 2014. Bonney had known the victim since the age of 14 and admitted to having intercourse with her since she was a teenager.
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Wisconsin’s attorney general has asked a federal appeals court to let stand the conviction of a man found guilty in a case profiled in the popular “Making a Murderer” series on Netflix. A federal magistrate judge ruled in August that investigators tricked Brendan Dassey into confessing he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape, kill and mutilate photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. In a brief filed with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday, Attorney General Brad Schimel urged rejection of Dassey’s claim that his confession was coerced. Schimel says “substantial police coercion” is required for any confession to be involuntary, and that the Wisconsin Court of Appeals was right to affirm in 2013 that Dassey’s was voluntary. So he says the magistrate’s ruling to the contrary should be reversed.
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A report from the federal Agriculture Department shows that Wisconsin lost almost 400 dairy farms in the last year, though one official says the news isn’t all that bad. About 94,000 dairy herds were active in the state as of Oct. 1 — 4 percent less than in 2015. Wisconsin Dairy Business Association President Gordon Speirs says the number of lost farms this year is low compared to previous years, when annual losses reached as high as 1,000. He says that’s “a real victory for our industry” given low milk prices in the past year and a half.
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About 30 percent of all absentee ballots cast in Wisconsin so far have come from the state’s most heavily Democratic counties. The latest data posted on the Wisconsin Elections Commission website shows ballots cast in Milwaukee and Dane counties are far outpacing those that have come from the conservative suburban counties of Washington, Waukesha and Ozaukee. As of Wednesday, there were just over 55,000 ballots returned in Dane and Milwaukee counties compared with about 21,700 in the co-called WOW counties. About 183,700 were cast statewide. Republican candidates typically must do well in those Milwaukee suburban counties to counter the Democratic votes in Milwaukee and Madison. Absentee ballots must be returned by Nov. 8, a change from the past when they could be postmarked by Election Day if received by that Friday.
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