McIlheran Watch: Worst. Column. Ever.

The Sunday Crossroads is once again polluted with a vapid column by Patrick McIlheran.

P-Mac starts by saying that Governor Doyle's State of the State speech asks for way too much new stuff--pork, he calls it. Then,

The governor says his proposals won't cost much, $34 million in 2009. It's worth asking what he's promising.

In short, a little more. Most of the new things amount to repackaging programs with a few more people eligible.

In other words, all of that pork really isn't very much pork. $34 million is roughly .12% of the the state's annual budget. So it's too much, but not enough.

But then the rub:

The governor doesn't say, though it should be obvious, that the sloshed money will come from people the state thinks ought to make do with a little less. He hopes you don't realize that's probably you.

For now, it's not the sums so much as the attitude. To be affordable, worry less about redistribution and more about making life less expensive.

So the problem is not so much that J-Dizzle wants too much or too little. The problem is that the Dizz is one of the dirty, nasty, collectivist communist/socialist types. Instead of just "redistributing" $1600 a year from the average Wisconsinite in income and sales taxes, the state will take $1602. Ooooooh.

What P-Mac neglects to tell you is that he is all the time promoting programs that redistribute taxpayers' money. The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, for example, which has been the subject of any number of his columns, especially of late, takes money from taxpayers all over the state and puts that money into unaccountable private schools in Milwaukee. But you don't see him arguing to put a stop to that, now, do you?

McIlheran has to say something about Doyle's speech, since that's the Wisconsin Republican talking point of the week. (The national talking point is that Democrats are traitors who want you all to die in a terrorist attack.) But what can he say against making sure more good students can afford college, for example? Nothing--there is nothing in Doyle's proposals that can or should engender the kind of wild-eyed frothing that makes for good talk radio or newspaper columns. So he has to revive the Red Scare, and in doing so, falls flat with what may be his most milquetoast, most useless column ever.

The only good thing about the column will be robola's haiku, when he gets to it.