cheddarsphere-dot-com

I announce, with trembling pleasure, the arrival of . . . something . . .

Well, okay, it's just cheddarsphere.com. I kind of wish I'd had my stuff together enough to announce this at Saturday's BlogFest.

Right now it is not much, but my friend Scott Feldstein is hosting the prototype. What I'm hoping is that all of us, whoever we are and whatever we blog about, can use cheddarsphere.com as a hub for all the haps in Wisconsin blogs.

But the site is completely in flux, and I would like to see its growth happen kind of naturally and organically. I'm looking for your input, as my fellow Wisconsin bloggers. If you or anyone you know might want to get involved, we'll need creative people, technical people, and plenty of other kinds of people. The comments section below is for you and whatever you might have to contribute.

That is not to say that I don't have my own ideas, though. Here's some of what I was thinking:

• Forums. There's some free open source stuff Scott and I have looked at that we'll try to have going just as soon as we have clever logos and whatnot (hint, hint).
  
• I'd like to see RSS feeds from Wisconsin bloggers. And I'm not just talking about political bloggers, either; one thing Scott and I talked about after the BlogFest was how the event was only about political blogs. I would like to see all categories represented here--politics (in left, right, center categories) as well as arts, religion, sports, family, (pop) culture, beer, and so on. That would require some kind of code that would allow people to submit their RSS feeds, list their blog addresses, and categorize themselves.
  
• News feeds from major and minor news outlets; I think you can snag Google news feeds for certain search terms (like "Wisconsin"), but if there were a way to keep up with what daily and weekly papers are talking about, that would be better.
  
• A user-created calendar of events, so anyone doing or promoting anything can post it. I'm guessing some off-the-shelf software exists for that, too.

More ideas will come to me, I'm sure, as they will come to you. Just let me know.

Murder Most Swine

I know I'm going to catch a lot of heat for this, but I can't sit by any longer without saying something.

I believe Dennis Pork was murdered.

The evidence is all there, but the M-S-M is too busy with basketball and the latest Brett Favre rumors to put the pieces togther. Consider:

• Dennis Pork is one of only a few people who know Dennis York's true identity.
  
• I have seen Dennis Pork handing out cigarettes to WisPolitics.com staff in exchange for votes in the Blogger of the Year competition.
  
• The cloven-hoofprints in the mud next to the vans with slashed tires that I'd rented for my campaign vounteers to drive to Madison and bribe the WisPolitics.com staff with cigarettes are probably Dennis Pork's, though I'm sure now that he's dead, we'll never know the truth.
  
• The photograph of his death scene seems staged. Consider: Dennis Pork does not have opposable thumbs, so how could he have used that razor?
  
• WisPolitics.com severely edited the video of his acceptance speech (ostensibly to hide Dennis York's true identity), and now has pulled the video from its site. I believe that, had we been allowed to watch the rest of the video, Dennis Pork would have said he was being held hostage, and would be killed unless conservatives finally found a voice in the "mainstream media." He did, after all, begin the video by holding up a copy of that day's Wisconsin State Journal, about Mark Pocan's Pontiac, as if to prove he was still alive on that day.
  
• Jeff Mayers is a ninja, and could have made it look like an accident.

Now, I know that some of this is circumstantial, but, as a blogger, I feel duty-bound to sieze on the smallest piece of evidence that supports what I believe while ignoring everything else, even if those facts might be contradictory to my opinion.

As I said, I believe Dennis Pork was murdered, and I will not stop until the Cheddarsphere can claim a conviction for the man who did it as a victory, like ethanol, the gas tax, and Nicole Devlin. In fact, I promise you that I will not rest--I will not leave my basement!--until Dennis Pork's killer is brought to justice.

Watch this space

Scott Feldstein and I are cooking up something that will blow the pajamas off the Cheddarsphere. We can't tell you yet . . . but when we do, we hope you'll love the idea as much as we do.

Happy Anniversary

It has never hurt so much to have been so right. Glenn Greenwald reminds us of all those who were wrong--2318 times wrong.

Some Briefs

• Following up more on Feingold and censure, I'll note this story from today's paper:

  Doubts about the legality of the government's once-secret domestic surveillance program can be found among both liberal and conservative scholars and on both sides of the aisle in Congress.
  
  In other words, unlike his proposal for censure, Feingold's claims about "illegal wiretapping" are well within the mainstream of congressional debate on the issue.

  
  
• Barbara Miner, in this week's Shepherd Express, has a good rundown of why the recent Milwaukee voucher expansion bill is a bad deal:

  The winners and losers are clear in the deal that lifts enrollment at Milwaukee’s voucher schools.
  
  Winners include Republicans, voucher schools and eager entrepreneurs hoping to open a private school regardless of whether they know anything about education.
  
  Losers include Milwaukee taxpayers, the Milwaukee Public Schools and anyone who cares about public accountability for tax-funded programs.

  
  
• Joel McNally wonders if Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's bad fiscal management is merely incompetence, or could it be sabotage?

  Usually, when a politician seeks higher office, he attempts to portray himself as some sort of financial miracle worker whose management success has earned him the right to take on ever more daunting economic challenges.
  
  Instead, Walker compares his operation of county government for the past four years to the growing financial disaster facing the nation's airline industry. [. . .] Walker's announcement is particularly amusing because, until now, the centerpiece of Walker's campaign for governor is that as county executive he has submitted a tax freeze budget every year.
  
  Well, guess what happens when a conservative politician freezes taxes year after year while the costs of government continue to go up? Looming financial insolvency verging on bankruptcy. You can dismiss it as incompetence if you want. But what if it's something even more diabolical? What if it's actually a clever plot to destroy government from within?

  
  
• Conservatives can say what they want about "Bush Derangemnet Syndrome," but Barbara O'Brien has been tracking Liberal Derangement Syndrome.

Rick, Russ, and Censure

As promised, I want to look at Shark and Shepherd blogger Rick Esenberg's Saturday Op-Ed written to provide response--or, more accurately, balance--to Russ Feingold's essay defending his call for President Bush's censure, which itself was a response to the Journal Sentinel editorial I wrote about here.

It isn't that I think Russ can't defend himself--I'm sure he could--but he's busy being a US Senator somewhere, and I'm sitting here trying to avoid housework and paper grading. And Rick's essay, which is about as clearly stated a case as any I've seen, misses some points and raises disturbing questions. Here's how he starts:

Sen. Russ Feingold wants to censure the president for authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless surveillance of communications between people in the United States and people abroad believed to be al-Qaida operatives. In a spasm of oversimplification, Feingold likes to call this "domestic" wiretapping.

In light of its rarity and the potential harm to national security during time of war, censure should be limited to the most clear and serious presidential abuses. This case isn't even close.

"Domestic" may be one side's spin, sure, but it is not inaccurate: The NSA is listening in on calls where at least one party is in the United States, even a US citizen. Domestic means in the United States. Moreover, I have not seen a good argument how censure poses harm to national security. It's one of those standard tropes (like, "don't criticize the president in wartime") that Bush supporters have been using for four years to shut up any opposition. It is dangerously close to Dick Cheney's observation from election season 2004 that electing John Kerry would have left us less safe somehow. I don't buy it.

The more serious argument is that the NSA program violates the requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Whether this is so is highly technical and turns on facts that have not been made public. Even if NSA surveillance is outside its terms, FISA contains a huge exception. Surveillance that is not conducted within its framework is permitted if "otherwise authorized by Congress."

Shortly after 9-11, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force [AUMF], stating that the president should use "all necessary and appropriate force" against international terrorism.

This is the old "AUMF" overrides FISA. First of all, I did a search of the FISA statute, and did not find the phrase Rick quotes. I'm not saying it's not there; I just couldn't find it with my eyes or the search tools I have available to me. I did, however, find this gem somewhere else: "the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance, as defined in section 101 of such Act, and the interception of domestic wire, oral, and electronic communications may be conducted." Did you catch that? The law requires FISA be followed to intercept communications in the US. I think it is reasonable to look at that, and look at how blatantly the president has admitted to skirting the law, and see that there has been a serious violation.

In addition, the AUMF was indeed not intended by Congress to authorize violations of FISA. This is one of those "after-the-fact" excuses I noted here, and this notion, in fact, is specifically belied both by members of Congress and the administration's actions at the time it was passed. But Rick goes on, this time into the courts:

In Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, a Supreme Court majority held that the Authorization for Use of Military Force allowed the detention of American citizens as enemy combatants, overriding another law that said this may not be done unless "otherwise authorized by Congress."

While the resolution says nothing about detentions (as it says nothing about surveillance), the court reasoned that detaining the enemy is a traditional incident of waging war and thus was included within the Congress' broad approval of the use of force.

This is a bit of spin, too, as the government actually lost that case--the majority opinion held that the US had to follow constitutional guidelines regarding the detention of US citizens captured in war. In addition, the AUMF explicitly states that the president's war powers, under the War Powers Resolution, are in force; however, "even the war power does not remove constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties," the Hamdi court noted. I'm pretty sure the Constitution says something about "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

After a digression about World War Two movies, Rick continues:

Even if we could conclude that the NSA program violates the terms of FISA, the inquiry as to its legality is not over. The Constitution makes the president the commander in chief of the armed forces. If that power includes the right to monitor communications between Americans and enemy agents abroad, then any attempt to limit that authority, including FISA, would be unconstitutional.

As for FISA's constitutionality, the federal government has had nearly 30 years to challenge it. In fact, for 25 of those 30 years, presidents--including Reagan and the first President Bush--not only did not challenge the law, but did not violate it, either. Still, if the current President Bush believes FISA unconstitutional, the right choice is not to violate the law, but to change or challenge it. That he chose to disregard it smacks not of concern for national security, but of arrogance. More from Rick:

[W]e know that some in Congress have been informed of the details, and few, if any, are calling for the program's suspension. There has been no serious attempt to pull its funding. In other words, even those who want to criticize the president for the program don't want him to stop.

Telling only "some" in Congress about the surveillance was itself a violation of the law, and Rick maybe does not remember that at least two of those told (and as few as eight, of 535, may have been informed) objected--Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (more from Think Progress today). Those told about the program could say nothing--not to propose cutting its funding, not to speak out to the press--because it was classified. Rick is being disingenuous if he believes silence about the program before its revelation last December is evidence of complicity.

Finally, Rick writes,

Even if not required by law, why not get warrants anyway? It is hard to answer that because we don't know exactly what the NSA program, which is necessarily secret, entails. It might, for example, involve computer monitoring of large numbers of communications to which the traditional notions of probable cause are ill-suited.

This is very concerning to me, because, after a spirited (if wrong-headed) defense of what Bush is doing, Rick admits that we may not know what Bush is doing. If this is so, how can we defend it, unless we accept the doctrine that the executive is all-powerful, ineffable, and infallible? I refuse to do so. One of two things is true here; either the administration could have gotten warrants under FISA (99.99999% success rate, remember) and didn't; or, Bush is lying about the nature of the program when he tells us about the cell phones captured on the battlefield that have US numbers in them. Either way, Bush is pushing the bounds of what is acceptable.

In the end, Rick Esenberg misses a compelling part of Russ Feingold's argument that censure is necessary. Whether or not FISA is constitutional, whether or not a sympathetic Supreme Court eventually decides that Article II of the Constitution grants presidents more power than 220 years of history have seen, the president still deserves reprimand. I'll let Russ explain why:

Not only did the president break the law, he also actively misled Congress and Americans about his actions. Before the existence of this program was revealed, the president went out of his way in several speeches to assure the public that the government was getting court orders to wiretap Americans in the United States--something that he now admits was not the case. [. . .]

In this year's State of the Union address, the president implied that before he authorized the program, he couldn't have wiretapped terrorist suspects. That is simply untrue. Congress passed FISA in 1978 specifically to lay out the rules for wiretaps of terrorists and spies, and it has updated that law repeatedly since. FISA includes safeguards, which the president is ignoring, to protect the rights and freedoms of law-abiding Americans.

The president also has made a series of flawed legal and factual arguments to defend the program. He has claimed inherent executive powers that appear to have no bounds. [. . .] And he has said that past presidents have used the same authority and that federal courts have approved the exercise of that authority, when neither is true.

Rick didn't know that Feingold wrote that in his op-ed, as Rick didn't have it in front of him. But this is undeniable; while there is no great clip of Bush saying, "I did not authorize warrantless wiretaps of that woman, Ms. Lewinsky" to run over and over again on the news, there is a clear pattern of misleading the public--something he does regularly. If that does not deserve censure, I don't know what does.

BlogFest 06 over and done with

For one, I didn't win Blogger of the Year. That would be Dennis York, whose acceptance speech can be seen here (opens the video).

For two, I didn't come to blows with Owen. Or Sykes, McBride, DiGaudio, or anyone, for that matter. I did, however, kill James Wigderson and stuff him in the bathroom trash can.

I got a chance to talk face-to-face to a whole lot of very nice people. I have some specific thoughts on some of the things covered in the sessions, but I won't get to them right now. Except for one thing: John McAdams said something that explains a lot, about a lot of things. In a discussion of the "mainstream media"--that dreaded MSM--he said "Mainstream Media is a state of mind."

State of mind.

(Feldstein accutely translated that into "MSM is anyone I disagree with.")

So, here's what I've decided: I am MSM. If all it is is a state of mind, then, well, I have that state. I am MSM. So you can all begin to treat me accordingly.

When do the paychecks start coming?

Busy MetaBlogging day

I will be out and about much of the day talking about blogging. If the WisPolitics Blog Summit has WiFi, I may liveblog parts of it. Either way, I'll post at least a small summary tonight.

In the meantime, it's off to Fox 6, where Brian Fraley and I will be doing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Hope he memorized his lines . . .

UPDATE: Brian and I were on, literally, between the children and the dog. Never, ever follow children or animals. Sigh.

This whole thing just makes me angry

I should have waited until morning to read this article about the proposed new unelected Mitchell airport authority:

More than three years before the public knew about it, business lobbyists were drafting a bill to create a regional airport authority that would take control of Mitchell International Airport away from Milwaukee County government.

And a key priority in those behind-the-scenes talks was ensuring that neither the County Board nor county voters would have a say in the handover.

It gets mostly worse from there, so I'll probably be grinding my teeth all night.

However, I want to send major props to my County Boardsman, Richard Nyklewicz, who is doing the people's business here and fighting to keep the airport in the hands of the public, where it belongs.

For more background, see this previous post.

Friday Random Ten

The It's not stereotypical of the Irish, but rather of people like the idiots who put a garbage can through the back window of my car a couple of years ago because they got drunk on St. Patrick's Day Edition

1. "Drunk Lullaby" Redbird from Redbird
2. "Too Drunk to Dream" Whiskeytown from Faithless Street
3. "Daughter of a Drunk" Andrew Calhoun from Shadow of a Wing
4. "Drunken Sailor" Great Big Sea from Great Big Sea
5. "Women and Wine" Martin Sexton from Live at the Gathering of Vibes
6. "St. Patrick's Day" John Mayer from Room for Squares
7. "I Gotta Get Drunk" Redbird from Redbird
8. "Drink Another Round" Don Conoscenti from Paradox of Grace
9. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert
10. "Might as Well Get Drunk" G.E. Smith & the Saturday Night Live Band from Get a Little

Wake Up to Jay!

This Saturday morning, I'll be a guest (perhaps with another blogger to be named later), along with Brian Fraley, on Fox 6's "Wake Up to Fun!" to talk about--what else--blogs, blogging, and the first annual WisPolitics Blog Summit. Tune in (or, since it's Saturday, set your TiVo) at 8:00 AM and watch me embarrass myself on TV again.

(Now comes the part where Stacie makes jokes about me.)

Feingold *is* Mainstream

The national conservative media, national conservative bloggers, and the right half of the Cheddarsphere have been strutting around for the better part of a week crowing about how embarrassed they are by Russ Feingold, how far outside the mainstream he is, and how "fringe" he is. Here's just a sampling from the parts of the Cheddarsphere that I have seen:

• tee bee: "It's official: Russ Feingold is tone-deaf, a step behind, and thinks throwing in with the crazy far-left will get him a seat on the '08 ticket."
  
• DiGaudio: "Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Al Qaeda) couldn't be more alone if he were on a deserted island without Gilligan and The Skipper. [. . . W]e are used to him being a kook; now we are embarrassed by him. He isn't ahead of any pack. He is just on the kook fringe and playing to the peaNUT gallery (emphasis on NUT)."
  
• The Game: "The MSM loves to call Bush and other people on the Right extreme or out of touch, or 'not mainstream.' What about Russ Feingold? [. . .] Russ was the only person to vote against the Patriot Act the first time....do you think having NO ONE agree with you make you out of the mainstream?"
  
• Wigderson, in the Freeman: "Democrats in 2008 may look at the company Feingold keeps, his die-hard opposition to the Patriot Act, his obsession with the NSA surveillance program, his premature call for withdrawal from Iraq, and they may start looking in a different direction for a presidential candidate – one with some credibility on national security, instead of someone who panders to the fringe left and conspiracy theorists within the Democratic Party. Before then, we might remember the overreach and ambition of another junior senator from Wisconsin and ask Feingold, 'Have you no shame?' "
  
• Jenna: "He is alone on this issue, and he will be championed by moveon.org and Kos folks--but that doesn't mean anything for a presidential bid. Will the left love him? Yep. Will he see tons of money roll in, that campaign-finance-reforming-Senator? Yes. Will he be able to win a general election with the far left? Of course not."
  
• The vacationing Fred: "Like him or not, Russ Feingold is on the far left fringe of the left."
  
• Wendy: "Russ Feingold: Leader of the freak parade that is the Moonbat Left."
  
• P-Mac: "Do you trust the part of government trying to catch jihadists, or do you trust the one one-hundredth of the Senate that’s trying to gin up fear of the president?"
  
• McBride: "After all, Feingold's increasingly far-left stances are defining the Democratic Party in a manner that helps Republicans."
  
• Fraley: "Never intended to actually pass, the censure resolution has refocused the spotlight on Feingold, the "Maverick," and will help him with his presidential aspirations. [. . .] Feingold is not only raising money, he's building a list of the loony left."
  
• Chris, to whom I am not allowed to link: "As Senator Quisling keeps bowing at the Moonbat Altar he is handing us the War Club we need to use to defeat him in 2010. [. . .] If we show those Blue collar Reagan Democrats along the River and Up north that Russ is a member of the Hollywerid crowd and a AntiAmerica Moonbat he will lose a lot of support."
  
• And once again, my favorite, Rick Esenberg: "What this is [is] a hard left politician positioning himself to garner the support of the drum circle left."

I quote so extensively, not just because I like the copy-paste, but to try to show the magnitude of this argument from the right. Time after time after time, the right tries to marginalize anyone who raises uncomfortable questions about the conduct and activities of their golden-boy president as "far-left," "fringe," and "out of the mainstream." Well, here's a picture, so no one gets confused when I try to explain it words, later:


More Americans (though, admittedly, within the margin of error) would like the censure. And the language of the question is even neutral enough it ought to placate any of my rightly friends' concerns--it is a simple statement of fact. Now, I can see the complaints coming about the number of Democrats in the sample, but the right would still have to explain away how nearly a third of Republicans are the "far-left fringe of the far left"; are 42% of independents part of the "drum-circle left," too? Because, you know, that's a pretty big cricle. And, come on, 70% percent of Democrats favor censure--to suggest that Feingold is outside of the mainstream of his own party is just to flat-out lie; it seems more like our other Democratic elected officials (I'm looking at you, Herb Kohl) are fringier than Feingold is. (Update: A Newseek poll finds support for censure at 42%-50%, but I cannot find the wording of the question. Still, to suggest that 42% is "fringe" is absurd.)

Also consider the new SurveyUSA's monthly presidential approval survey, where Bush actually gets worse numbers than in the censure survey above. I realize this is the worst kind of apples-to-oranges thing, and Paul Brewer will be very disappointed when he sees me say this, but only eight states have approval ratings for Bush better than his no-censure number. Here in Wisconsin, Bush's approval rating is net negative 18%. Of course, disapproval is no reason to censure (and, indeed, Clinton's numbers were much better even at the height of impeachment); but it does put the lie to claims Feingold is more outside the mainstream of what people want, since the most recent SurveyUSA poll on senators landed Russ a net positive 18% here in Wisconsin--36% better than the president is doing!

It is not hard to believe that the right is pushing its "far left of the far left" idea. It is all they have, since they can't seem to accept the fact that 1) the administration is breaking the law; 2) the president is not popular; and 3) Russ Feingold is accurately reflecting the mainstream of the American public.

Memory Lane, Presidential Wrongdoing Edition

Remember this classic, from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board about Clinton?

Editorial: Impeachment is premature, unfair

It's easy to see Republicans' point in seeking impeachment against the president for perjury and obstructing justice. But their actions are ill-advised on a number of fronts, from the purely political to mere ineffectiveness. Let us suggest, however, that this time, Republicans are premature. This quest for impeachment, though no doubt driven by principle, has something of a tilting-at-windmills quality that will only distract from more urgent business.

Impeachment of a president has been done only once before. It was a doubtful tool in that instance. It is even more doubtful now. That's because it is occurring before there has been a proper vetting of whether the president has committed an illegal act.

Republicans are correct that President Clinton does appear to have perjured himself and obstructed the investigation into his wrongdoing. But an impeachment vote now could be self-satisfying for purely political reasons on both sides of the aisle. Its outcome, however, is preordained and will be a wholly unnecessary distraction from the real business at hand--determining if Clinton willfully and knowingly violated laws.

Of course you don't remember it, because the paper never wrote it. Back in 1998, the paper said "Let impeachment proceedings begin":

There are compelling reasons why the country would be better served if the shortcuts of resignation and censure or reprimand are avoided. [. . .] Instead, Congress--beginning with the House--needs to begin the impeachment process and conduct it responsibly and expeditiously.

They were ready to get on with impeachment. The paper did, I will admit, demand that the hearings be "dignified," but they seemed displeased that Clinton was let off the hook: "Yet, there can be no satisfaction with the Senate outcome among Americans who honestly believe the president acted like a fool and demeaned the high office to which they twice elected him," they wrote. "To its everlasting disgrace, the Senate could not even muster the courage to at least censure the man who brought such dishonor to the nation in what will forever be known as the Monica Lewinsky Affair."

Everlasting disgrace be damned, I suppose, when it comes to Russ Feingold's measure to censure President Bush for his admitted violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Even though the paper admits today that "the Constitution does not empower the president to ignore those laws he chooses," they will not stand up for the Constitution's demands that Congress exercise its authority on the matter. Instead, they write, "Censure is premature, unfair."

However, I suspect that somewhere Russ Feingold is smiling, since towards the front of the paper, he says that "It's doing what I had hoped. As difficult as this is, everybody is now talking again about" the president's breaking of the law. To be fair, even the Journal Sentinel is talking about it; the headline by itself on the editorial today (calling censure "unfair") doesn't quite carry the full weight of the demands the editors to make about the need for real investigation and oversight:

Congress has refused to entertain a meaningful investigation into National Security Agency wiretapping and has never adequately investigated whether intelligence was manipulated to rush a nation to war.

And, still, there is some hope that enough public outrage--perhaps spurred by midterm elections--or further revelations could finally cause Congress to find backbone instead of a way to make the law fit White House actions, rather than vice versa.

Congress has displayed breathtaking unwillingness or ineptitude on the wiretapping issue. That's why it's time it launched an independent investigation.

Calling Feingold's motion for censure "unfair," though, only provides fodder for the radio talkers and right half of the Cheddarsphere. It provides cover for people like Representative F. Jim Sensenbrenner, whose House Judiciary Committee can and should be investigating the matter. It provides an out for anyone who still wants to look the other way while this White House gathers power on an unprecedented scale.

Calling it unfair also makes the editorial board look like fools, since, if that was what Russ was really after--renewed calls for a genuine investigation--he just got it. He wins this round, even if censure never happens.

WI-Sen: Debate!

Yes, in fact, there is a debate scheduled in the 2006 Wisconsin Senate race. Herb Kohl may not be there, but it sounds like the majority of his challengers will be. I probably won't make it (I don't want to make the drive to Madison), so one of you will have to go and tell me what happens.

Stupid Blogger!

Blogger's returning errors in Safari, so I'm going to try posting a little from Firefox, and see what happens . . .

Speaking of bloggers, it's not too late to register (it's free!) for Blogapalooza 2006, more properly known as the first annual WisPolitics Blog Summit.

Another Front-Page Blunder

Yesterday, Seth caught a mistake on page A1 of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Here’s the first line of the article in question: “An analysis by the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau released Monday says taxpayers could have saved up to $1.9 billion in state taxes over 20 years if revenue limits had been in place” (emphasis mine).

Interesting opener, I thought, considering the LFB report does not deal specifically with taxes and neither does the constitutional amendment it analyzes. The issue at hand for both is revenue.

Seth, who's been doing great work on the ins and outs of the TP Amendment, goes into why, exactly, the article both factually inaccurate why the LFB study should not be heralded the way it has been.

Today, the error is on page B1, which is the front page of the Metro section, in the headline "2 schools will be dropped from voucher program." The article in question is about two schools, yes, including Tucker's Institute of Learning, a school in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Tucker is being dropped by the Department of Public Instruction immediately, and demanding a refund, because there are questions about the attendance figures it reported. (Speaking of attendance, the MPS schools who now will take those students in will get--you guessed it--not one cent to cover the cost of educating them for the rest of the year.)

The other school, however, is an MPS charter school, Pheonix High School. Pheonix is not being closed now; it is just not having its contract renewed for next year. And it is not at all a voucher school.

Update: The title of the on-line story now reads, "2 schools will be dropped from voucher, charter programs."

I Wish . . .

. . . everybody coming here looking to disagree with me on the whole Feingold censure thing would read at least the bullet points that explain both why the domestic spying program terrorist surveillance program is illegal and why censure is reasonable.

. . . there was a reverse Google. You put in a website, and the reverse Google will tell you what search strings will return that website as the number one regular Google hit.

. . . I had a hybrid. I admit it. I have Prius envy.

. . . I didn't have to report that the "market" has failed yet again in the Milwaukee voucher program. DPI has stepped in to close Tucker's Institute of Learning. Once again, this should be the responsibility of the parents--parents who, because of the reluctance of Republicans and choice proponents to support real accountability, don't have the information or empowerment to close the school themselves.

BlogFest 06!!!!!

The exclamation points may be overstating the case, but there is still time to register for the first annual WisPolitics Blog Summit, where yours truly (star of little and littler screen) will be on a panel about . . . blogging. The shindig is this Saturday afternoon out in Waukesha somewhere--check the link for details.

Happy Pi Day

How are you celebrating? With pie, I hope!

Feingold, Censure, and the WTMJ interview

Update II: WTMJ's story, in words and video, is here. Use that link instead of Patrick's. Update: Patrick from Badger Blogger has the video here. Be kind to his bandwidth.

Update III: Don't forget, Owen and I will be on a panel togther at BlogFest 06!

Like Owen, I was invited down to the WTMJ studios to do an interview about blogs and their reactions to Russ Feingold's call for a censure of President Bush. I was expecting more of a hard-hitting, issues-oriented interview, so in the car on my way to the studio, I practiced my answers to all the questions I thought I would get (yes, the warrantless spying program broke the law; no, this was not just the naked ambition of a presidential candidate). I didn't get any of those questions.

The interview was good, though; Charles Benson, who did the thing, asked me about blogs, blogging, and bloggers in general. He did get into my own political perspective, and my thoughts on Feingold and the call for censure. Mostly, he seemed interested in what reactions I saw across the Cheddarsphere and on national blogs to the story.

Benson asked me some more background kind of questions while the cameraman shot some footage of me "blogging" and of my trusty laptop in action. (Maybe I should set up a fund to raise money towards a new MacBook Pro, eh?) In all, it was a positive experience; though Benson didn't seem to know a ton about blogging, he took me seriously and took the idea of blogging seriously, too. On the way out, we had a nice chat about what the freshmen at Marquette University High School are reading these days (ugh, The Odyssey!) and he mentioned that as election season nears, he'll be calling more on bloggers for their perspectives.

Cool.

But I wanted to make a couple of the points I rehearsed in my head before it gets too late. There is, of course, the criticism that Feingold is facing that this move to censure Bush for his lawbreaking is just the motions of a presidential candidate-to-be, that this is all ambition's ugly mug. It is most certainly not: Consider that when Senator after Senator took to the microphone in 1998 to declare that the president is never above the law, Feingold was among them. To ask that Feingold now abandon the principles he's held for eight years and two presidents--that the executive is not above the law--because some people will see it as "ambition" is disgusting. It's offensive.

There's also the criticism levied against Feingold today by the likes of Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan, that Feingold wants to stop us from spying on al Qaida. This is, of course, a complete lie; no one is asking anyone to stop spying on al Qaida, or at all. All we are asking for is that the surveillance be carried out under the law. Again, I will note, the fact that Republicans are introducing legislation to make the warrantless spying program legal after the fact shows that even they know the law was broken.

Finally, there's the argument advanced by my new sparring partner Rick Esenberg: "What this is," he writes, "is a hard left politician positioning himself to garner the support of the drum circle left." As a cymbal-wielding leader of the drum-circle left, I reject this. The right of late (well, since 2000) has made cheese with the notion that any position that challenges whatever the Republican orthodoxy of the day may be is immediately labeled the "looney left," as are any people who advance those positions. See, for example, the very very moderate Howard Dean who, because he questioned the wisdom of the war in Iraq, was marginalized by the press and Republicans as being off his rocker. They're doing it now to Russ, who is, like Dean, too moderate and too complicated to be pigeon-holed as liberal. More on this later, I'm sure.

Jensen's Jail Time and the Spice Boys

The Amtal Rule points out how Spivak and Bice failed in their attempt at "balance" today. You know the kind of "balance" I'm talking about--one from one side, one from the other, and it's even! They write,

What does it take to make a bunch of bloggers from the right sound like a group of liberal defense lawyers from the left, praising a defendant and whining about a judge's unfair rulings?

That's easy, simply convict one of their own [. . .]. Then watch the the lefty bloggers do their own about-face, calling for a tough jail sentence and praising the prosecution, which was led by Brian Blanchard, who just so happens to be a politically ambitious Democrat.

Then the Spice Boys go on to cite some in the right half of the Cheddarsphere who did, indeed, bemoan Scott Jensen's conviction. (They did this, I would guess, without checking what those same conservatives said about, say, Chvala's or Burke's convictions.) Hypocrisy proved! they gloat.

And, to provide "balance," they almost echo Jensen himslef in trying to prove that "everyone did it." They pull out a few liberals who were harsh on Jensen (and his Republican supporters) without bothering to check if they were simlarly harsh to the convicted Democrats. The Amtal Rule finds this disheartening:

They don't mention that we've had the same standard for Democrats found guilty in the caucus scandal. The Amtal Rule chimed in here and here.

Spivak and Bice don't see a reason to do their jobs and back up what they write. Instead they trot out hackneyed stereotypes (conservatives are for "law and order" and liberals are for "defending criminals") and masquerade it insightful journalism.

It's a good thing the Spice Boys didn't try to use me as an example, either, since there's no hypocrisy here.

Remember, these are the big-shot political investigative reporters down to the daily paper . . .

Watch the Channel 4 news at 10 tonight

Just do.

Things there is still time to do

1. Your taxes.

2. Vote for me in the preliminary round of Koufax Award voting for "Best State or Local Blogger." Click that link, scroll (waaaaaay) down, and type folkbum's rambles and rants in the comment box. I'm losing pretty badly to people from more populous places. I bet even my conservative readers would be happy to see some Badger State representation among the finalists, right? So go vote! Thanks to all who voted! I don't think I was last place, exactly, but I'm not hopeful I'll make the finals.

3. Register for the WisOpinion/ WisPolitics First Annual Blog Summit. Your humble folkbum will be among the panelists. (An aside: What does one wear to a conference about blogging? Assuming no pajamas, of course . . .)

Censure

It's a startling thought to realize that more presidents have been impeached (2) in this country than have been censured (1), given that censure is, comparatively speaking, the lesser of the two things Congress can do to show disapproval.

That's why it will be interesting over the next week to see how the Congress reacts to Russ Feingold's proposed censure of President Bush for breaking the law. Everyone knows--even Bush, who has repeatedly admitted it--that he and his administration were outside the bounds of the law when he authorized warrantless wiretaps of American citizens and others on US soil. Those actions run afoul of the plain language of the FISA statute which governs this kind of surveillance, even the langauge of the statute as amended after 9/11 as part of the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. Period. The rationales offered after the program came to light have had a loserish "after-the-fact quality" to them, according to a former Justice official.

So, he did it. We all know he did it. Feingold, as Democrats should have done months ago, is asking for the Congress to recognize this criminal behavior for what it is. Good for Russ.

Republicans, on the other hand, are hard at work trying to cover up the illegality by making the program, post facto, legal. That would be roughly the equivalent of Democrats offering legislation in 1998 that would make it legal for presidents to lie under oath. (Had that happened, maybe Bush would have testified under oath to the 9/11 commission, eh?) In bills proposed by Senators DeWine and Specter, all would be forgiven, and the currently illegal program would be given the veneer of Congressional approval, though it runs directly counter to what Congress demanded of intelligence agencies in 1978. (Those last two links, by the way, are to Gleen Greenwald, who also has agreat perspective on Feingold's proposed censure.)

So, to sum up:
1. Bush breaks law, admits to it
2. Democrats (Feingold, at least) demand censure and accountability
3. Republicans push to make the illegal activity legal

This is America in 2006. Congressional Republicans here are showing obligation not to law or the people who elected them, but to their party. (See, for example, Bill Frist's response to Feingold, which stopped just short of accusing Russ of treason.)

Jensen, Schultz Convicted

The Jensen trial is over:

After 17 hours of deliberations over three days, a Dane County jury today convicted former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen of three felonies and one misdemeanor for directing legislative staffers to campaign on state time. [. . .] Jensen would be the fourth lawmaker in the state's 158-year history to be forced out of office by a criminal conviction.

The jury also convicted former Assembly aid Sherry Schultz, who, like Jensen, was not smart enough to know that admitting to the crime before trial is contraindicated in most circulmstances. Jensen had hoped, first, that the "everybody did it" defense would fly (it didn't). Then he tried to use the "I was such a bad boss I didn't know what they were doing" defense (which also apparently didn't work).

I doubt Scooter will do all 16 years of the maximum sentence, but his bad, bad decision to go to trial means he'll almost certainly do more time than any of the other now-convicted former legislators caught up in the scandals. It will also certainly cause--well, shouldcause, if state media follow the leads--some repercussions for Mark Green and Scott Walker, who were in the Assembly at the same time and were implicated in testimony at trial.

WI-06: Vic Spadaro's real website

In comments to my post from the other day, John Curry, Spadaro's campaign manager, noted the the correct Spadaro for Congress website is housed at http://www.spadaro4congress.com. I still recommend turning off or down your speakers when you get there.

Small High Schools Trouble in MPS

I expended a whole lot of electrons last spring writing about the small-high schools phenomenon, particularly as it was being implemented, badly, I thought, here in the Milwaukee Public Schools. With the (not-small-school) changes coming in my own high school, I've been thinking and worrying about how those changes will affect me and my colleagues, and not really focusing on what has been happening at the small high schools around the city. The grapevine gave me rumors, of course; today's news, though, brings confirmation of that poor implementation and follow-through:

In a sign of troubles at Milwaukee's Washington High School, the organization overseeing a multimillion-dollar grant to the city's schools has yanked its support and funding from two of the new, small schools located there. The move also speaks to the challenges in breaking apart existing, large high schools.

The Technical Assistance & Leadership Center, the organization charged with monitoring a $17.25 million grant Milwaukee Public Schools received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support small high schools in the city, decided recently to deny continued funds to the Washington High School of Expeditionary Learning and the Washington High School of Information Technology. A third school located in the Washington multiplex, the Washington High School of Law, Education and Public Service, will continue to receive support from the Gates grant and from the center. [. . .] The two schools will lose coaching from the Technical Assistance & Leadership Center and will also have the remaining balances of implementation grants of $150,000 each revoked.

[The] Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent [. . .] said he told leaders of the two small schools that "they needed to keep forging forward and putting in the necessary changes to be successful as small high schools" and they could have their grants reinstated.

Washington is one of the traditional high schools to be phased out and replaced by a "multiplex," a process that was foisted upon the teachers and students from above. Decades of research and documentation show that small schools can be and are often successful when the reform is bottom-up, community based. The reforms of the MPS high school redesign have generally not been: Teachers and staffs (not to mention students and parents) have been told, "Here is what you're doing," with no buy-in from any of the stakeholders except the superintendent. This, as you can imagine, is problematic. As I wrote a year ago,

the successful small schools are bottom-up and designed not in pursuit of money but in pursuit of community goals not otherwise being met. And in this kind of top-down enforced reform, teachers are left powerless, but with a myriad of questions that administrators would prefer not to answer.

The answer, apparently, is "keep forging ahead." Once again, the superintendent is trying to lead by pushing from behind--which is nothing like leadership at all.

In the meantime, we have yet another year of lost education for the students in these schools.

Friday Random Ten

The Self-Contradictory Edition

1. "I Am Not" Melissa Ferrick from Willing to Wait
2. "Yes I Am" Melissa Etheridge from Yes I Am
3. "Only the Truth" Don Conoscenti from Paradox of Grace
4. "Lie to Me" Vance Gilbert from Unfamiliar Moon
5. "Never" Jon Svetkey from yeahyeahyeah
6. "Always" John Gorka from Old Futures Gone
7. "Glow" Willy Porter from Dog Eared Dream
8. "Fade to Black" The Nields from Live at the Iron Horse
9. "Highrise" Vance Gilbert from One thru Fourteen
10. "Basement Apartment" Sarah Harmer from Live at the World Cafe

This is not why music piracy is wrong

Apparently a Milwaukeean is among the first people to be prosecuted for posting music for download before it is released commercially:

A federal indictment in Nashville, Tenn., accuses [this guy] of posting four songs by alt-country artist Ryan Adams last summer, a month before their official release. If convicted of three charges, he could face up to 11 years in prison under a year-old law aimed at protecting copyrighted music and movies.

[This guy and another guy] were indicted Wednesday in Tennessee on a charge of conspiracy and two counts of copyright infringement. The two were part of a chain of people to copy songs illegally from an advance copy of Adams' CD "Jacksonville City Nights," the FBI alleges. [. . .] The songs were posted on the Web in August 2005, about a month before the album's scheduled release, according to the indictment.

The threat of prosecution is not what makes music piracy wrong. Piracy is wrong because using someone else's intellectual property without permission, and in a way that (at least potentially) costs them money, is theft.

Period.

Yeah, yeah, I know that Ryan Adams didn't go broke because of this one guy. And the more people who do it, the greater the eventual cost to the artists.

I've known too many songwriters in my day whose ability to eat or drive to the next gig depends on legitimate sales of their music to excuse theft from people who might be able to afford it. So, don't. Peace out.

Feingold's National Listening Session

You probably have already heard, but I thought I'd pass it on anyway:

Milwaukee, WI. - U.S. Senator Russ Feingold’s Progressive Patriots Fund announced today that Senator Feingold will hold the first ever nationwide online Listening Session this Friday March 10, 2006 at 10:30am EST.

“When I first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1992, I promised to hold an open, town hall style meeting, or Listening Session, in each of Wisconsin's 72 counties, every single year.” Feingold said. “These meetings are one of my favorite things about being a U.S. Senator. They give me the opportunity to hear first hand what people are concerned about and, more importantly, they help me do my job better.”

In addition to the over 950 Listening Sessions he has held in Wisconsin, Feingold has held similar Listening Sessions in Alabama, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Feingold’s first ever online Listening Session will give people from around the country the opportunity to ask questions, say what's on their minds, or just see what others are talking about.

People interested in participating in Feingold’s online Listening Session can sign up at: www.progressivepatriotsfund.com.

For further information contact George Aldrich at (414) 727-5682

My work schedule precludes my participation, but don't let that stop all of you!

No Bajingo talk at Marquette

If we don't talk about women's sexuality, then we can keeep pretending that it doesn't exist, right? I'm not sure if that's exactly the rationale behind Marquette University's decision not to allow a student group to produce The Vagina Monologues, but it certainly gives the impression of head-in-the-sandism. This is especially true once you start looking at the shifting official statements:

Father Andy Thon, the vice president of student affairs [. . .] said he did not prohibit "The Vagina Monologues" because of concerns that it wasn't Catholic. Instead, he told a student group in February that it could not perform the play because the short time frame raised questions about the production's quality. He said there were better ways to address issues of violence that were not "distractive," according to a statement given to the group. [. . .]

President Father Robert Wild's office, however, has offered a more definite answer [. . .]. "Our Division of Student Affairs recently denied approval to a student who wanted to stage a reading of the play, and, as has been the case here, is not prepared to give anyone approval to do so in the future," Frieder said in a letter.

There's not enough time, they said. It's distracting, they said. (Yeah, sexual abuse often is.) Then they said, talk of the v-word will never be welcome. Good luck being a woman at Marquette.

Several times this week I've looked at a calendar--it's 2006!--and had to shake my head. Marquette is telling women that they (or at least mention of their hoohas) are not welcome there, and South Dakota has passed a most draconian anti-woman law. These are both moves along the same continuum, a continuum comprising people determined to deny women their autonomy, their humanity.

For more on this general topic, I recommend, as I often do, Barbara O'Brien.

Sorry for the slow day

But there was work, a trip to the credit union, and then Drinking Liberally . . . Kept me busy.

It was good to get out to DL again, and I got to see the gang and a bunch of candidates for stuff. Here's one for you: Drinking Liberally is the new MeetUp. Discuss.

McIlheran Watch: Old Faithful

Even when writing about the Republican primary for Wisconsin governor, Patrick McIlheran somehow is still able to slam both teachers unions and MoveOn.org. Right on schedule . . .

Scott has intercepted an important message

It's about where I'll be Wednesday evening. And where you should be, too.

You don't even need a decoder ring.

Finally, a challenger in WI-06

Via this Daily Kos diary, I found this news report of a challenger to Tom Petri in Wisconsin's sixth district.

The guy is Vic Spadaro--turn off your volume before you visit his website--a veteran and a successful businessman. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for Assembly in 2004, sure, but, you know, in this season of overwhelming pro-Democratic sentiment . . .

His website is ugly and two years out of date, but his platform is sound. He won't have the kind of national appeal that other "Fighting Dems" will have, but he will draw some support, I'm sure.

More importantly, this means we're four for four in challenging Republican incumbents this year. Go, team!

Tierney at it Again

The "School Zone" blog from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes today that John Tierney's newest column is again about Milwaukee's voucher program. You may remember Tierney from these very pages last week.

Today, the hard work has already been done for me, on Tierney's column. The "School Zone" quotes and paraphrases extensively:

Tierney cites research that concluded that the voucher program was having a positive effect on Milwaukee Public Schools, and he quotes MPS school board president Ken Johnson--who supports vouchers--saying that school choice had helped lead to a system in which people at individual MPS schools select new teachers, which reduced "the dance of the lemons" in which bad teachers transferred from school to school.

Tierney writes, "While critics complain that there still isn't definitive evidence that voucher students are doing better overall in their new schools, the results so far in Milwaukee and other cities are more than enough to declare vouchers a success."

He points out that spending per student on voucher students is much less than on MPS students and quotes Denise Pitchford, principal of CEO Leadership Academy, a high school in the program, saying that she accepted lower pay to work at the school than she was previously making in MPS. "It represented less money but a better opportunity," Pitchford said. Tierney used that phrase to summarize the whole voucher program.

Then Media Matters for America debunks a big chunk of the Tierney's argument:

New York Times columnist John Tierney, in his March 7 column (subscription required), misrepresented the findings of a study conducted by Harvard researcher Rajashri Chakrabarti on school vouchers in Milwaukee, claiming that Chakrabarti's study showed "that as the voucher program expanded in Milwaukee, there was a marked improvement in test scores at the public schools most threatened by the program." In fact, Chakrabarti's 2005 study, which compared school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Florida, questioned whether the Milwaukee voucher program actually had an effect on public schools. [. . .]

Chakrabarti's study, however, found that the Milwaukee program was deficient to voucher programs in Florida, and that "the results in Milwaukee are mixed" in terms of improving performance in nearby public schools. Chakrabarti concluded:

The Milwaukee program, on the other hand, is a "voucher shock" program with a sudden government announcement that all low income public school students would be eligible for vouchers. In the context of an equilibrium theory of public school and household behavior, this paper argues that the Florida-type program should bring about an unambiguous improvement in public school performance and this improvement should exceed the improvement (if any) in the Milwaukee-type program.

And then Greg Anrig at TPM Café finishes the debunking by citing a number of things that readers of this blog will already be familiar with. These include Tierney's canard that voucher schools are easier to close (Anrig must read me, since he notes that the "schools closed in Milwaukee [. . .] were the result of outside intervention or financial malfeasance, not parents voting by their feet"). And with the lack of real results reporting that comes with the new compromise bill, expect more outside intervention and less "market" action by parents, who should be doing the real work of choice.

Once again, non-Milwaukeean Tierney ignores what is actually going on in Milwaukee--including looking at the Journal Sentinel's own even handed reporting on the voucher program--in favor of retyped press releases and pablum from Ken Johnson, who seems more interested in making vouchers succeed than in doing his job on the school board.

McIlheran Watch: He only sees out of his right eye

The bad thing about Patrick McIlheran's having a blog is that now there's daily wingnuttery to combat (though still no Saturdays! and his posts are less than 700 words, which either makes it easy for me or just means it's higly conentrated wingnuttery). Today, he takes another swipe at those radical 1960s (live in the past, much?) in discussing the Supreme Court decision yesterday that said, basically, if a university accepts federal money, it can't bar military recruiters.

Academic opposition to the recruiters was about more than the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuals in the barracks. It was about the 1960s. [. . .] The lawsuit began--in trying to overturn the discreet deliberate ignorance of service members' sex habits--by trying to make an active acceptance of homosexuality in the military part of the normalization of homosexuality in American culture. It ended up, instead, by putting in doubt the ability of colleges to maintain their Vietnam-era disdain for ROTC.

It continues to amaze me that the right-wing media's message hasn't changed in 35 years.

It does not surprise me that P-Mac then approvingly links to three conservative bloggers' takes on the case, making it seem--at least to those familiar with the idea that the blogsphere might have two sides--that the conservatives feel smugly victorious in their triumph over liberal academe. He neglects to mention (or fails to notice) that the decidedly liberal Daily Kos--the biggest blog on the planet--had a front-page post called SCOTUS Gets it Right on Military Recruiting . . .

(Another) Misleading Editorial on Vouchers

. . . in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I know, I know--try not to look so shocked.

Today they opine on accountability in voucher schools under the bad-deal compromise legislation expected to become law any minute now. I will leave aside their accreditation statistics--which I question--because I'm working (slooooowly) on a more comprehensive post about accrediation and the MPCP. Instead, I'll just hit two points. One:

[T]he hubbub over the cap has obscured a huge breakthrough on academic accountability. Lack of such accountability has been the program's major drawback; partisan politics has heretofore blocked a solution.

I suppose "partisan politics" is an ambiguous enough phrase that it may not mean what they probably mean. There is a bad meme out there, popping up like whack-a-mole on a regular basis, that about Jim Doyle's having vetoed a "study" of voucher schools back in 2003. As I noted here, Doyle did indeed veto a bill, but it would not have provided any meaningful accountability. Aside from being funded solely by pro-voucher interests, the bill study would not have offered parents any information about the schools their children actually attend.

The same problem exists in the new law. The editorial board doesn't get that. They write,

[T]he bill requires that voucher schools administer standardized tests in reading, math and science in the fourth, eighth and 10th grades, just as the state's public schools must do. The voucher schools must give the results to the Legislative Audit Bureau for periodic analyses and to the School Choice Demonstration Project at Georgetown University, which is preparing to do a long-term study of the program. [. . .A]s part of the long-term study, a representative sample of voucher students will take the state tests.

Overwhelmingly, by the way, voucher schools already administer standardized tests. Now, the results will become public.

This legislation mustn't be the final word on academic accountability. The schools could use more transparency on such matters as truancy and graduation rates, for instance. But this measure should help the public take a good snapshot of the academic performance of voucher schools.

This is misleading in several ways. For one, it is not clear that the results would be "public." The bill says only that the Legislative Audit Bureau is to "review and analyze the standardized test score data received from the School Choice Denonstration Project [and] shall report to the legislature the results of the standardized tests administered." It is not clear that this would be anything more than program-wide averages, since the rest of the section of the bill (119.23(7)(e)2) is all about reporting the state-test sample results. There is no requirement that results be made available to the press or even to the parents of the children tested! As I have maintained all along, none of this is useful to parents, who may be trying to decide between a public school--about which all kinds of data are available--and a voucher school, about which they may not be able to learn anything.

For two, the language of the bill actually sounds like schools, except those "sample" students, will be precluded from giving the state tests at all. The bill calls for "a nationally normed standardized test." The WKCE, our state test, is technically a criterion referenced test built specifically for Wisconsin, not a nationally normed test. I'm curious to see how that one plays out.

For three, the "snapshot" of performance will be far less complete than what public schools provide, as it should go beyond the editorial's resonable calls for graduation rate and truancy reporting. Public schools, of course, now test all grades 3-8 plus 10; besides this, public schools are required to break down the data they collect by race, sex, socioeconomic status, special-education status, English language learner status, and more. Aside from the "sample" students, which will, I hope, be carefully selected to be representative, there will be no way to tell if the voucher program is actually helping those it was designed to help--poor minority students.

I do not like the test, test, test mentality associated with No Child Left Behind, but it makes no sense to me that the rigorous collecting and reporting of performance data demanded of public schools is so consistently rejected for these private schools which take our tax dollars just as eagerly. Even with the passage of this bill, which takes some baby steps in the direction of accountability, voucher schools will largely remain a black hole for any parent or taxpayer wishing to know whether the investment of time or money was worth it.

Milwaukee Voucher Prediction Thread

Just as a reminder, if you have appreciated my coverage and commentary on the Milwaukee school voucher issue, please help me on my quest to be a Koufax Award finalist. Click here and type folkbum's rambles and rants in the comment box. Thanks!

I never made any Oscar predictions, and, given that the only movie that won anything that I had actually seen was the penguin one, that seems smart. However, I feel much more confident in making some predictions about what will happen to the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program next year, having read the compromise bill and considered its implications. And with the legislature and Governor Doyle set to make it official any second now, I figured I'd look into the ol' crystal ball.

So, bookmark this one, and when the full scope of what happens under the cap is clear, you can look back and see whether or not I was right about all of this:

One prediction I wanted to make was that the calls would start coming for ann unlimited, state-wide system of vouchers. Sadly, Republican state rep. Robin Vos has already started the clamoring; Seth has the details about how Vos beat me to the wire. But to the rest of the predictions:

1. I will start by putting the over-under at 1750 students as the increase in the number of participating students. That's higher than recent years' increases, and much higher than the Public Policy Forum had otherwise predicted for this fall.. It's nowhere near the 15,000 seats schools said they thought they could fill.
   
2. The right will trumpet the bigger-than-expected increase as further signs of the voucher program's "success." This will be part of the long-standing tradition of defining participation as success, despite a general lack of evidence about the quality of the schools. See, for example, this guy, who glosses completely over any questions of quality in declaring that school choice is somehow good for the economy.
   
3. A significant portion of the increase--I'm going to guess at least 1000, if not a full 2/3--will be moderate-income white students. Changes in the law will allow many currently ineligible students to slip right into the program without even having to change schools. The new law is even ambiguous enough that non-Milwaukee resident students may be able to attend voucher schools.
   
4. The "samples" of test scores provided to the Legislative Audit Bureau will show that the sample students do as well or better than average MPS students. However, the law provides for no mechanism to offer any information on any individual voucher school. Parents will remain in the dark about whether any particular school is as good as the voucher program as a whole.
   
5. The "funding flaw"--the flaw that both takes tens of millions away from the Milwaukee Public Schools and sticks Milwaukee residents with the bill--will not be resolved in the budget negotiated next year. There will be no impetus, whether Doyle is re-elected or not, to address it, and the "stick-it-to-Milwaukee" attitude will continue unabated.

Feel free to add your own predictions in the comments.

More on the Airport Mutiny

Mutiny, piracy, whatever you want to call it: No one--seriously, I have yet to read a defense of the idea, if anyone has one you want to shoot my way--is happy with the idea of turning Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport over to a private board. Here's some more on the issue from Bay Viewan Bill Sell:

The airport is well managed by Milwaukee County. There have been no reports of poor management--on the contrary, airport director C. Barry Bateman is given high marks for managing this largest airport in the state, without using property tax money to do so.

Why should this change? Why privatize our airport? The Airport District bill solves no problem, and cuts out the public by putting the power of eminent domain in the hands of a seven person management politically insulated from the public.

Thankfully the Milwaukee County Board and the Mayor’s office are resisting this misguided proposal. The County Executive, however, is supportive of the change, which increases his personal power over the airport. Scott Walker’s appointive power under this law would grace his campaign for governor at a time when he is spending money to explain to out-state Wisconsin who he is.

What The Airport District Bill Does
Plale’s bill defines Wisconsin’s public airports into two new categories: (a) large (only GMIA!)—”in excess of 2 million scheduled passenger enplanements” per year [229.861 (1) (a)]; and (b) all the other airports [229.861 (1) (b)]. GMIA has about 3.5 million passenger enplanements per year; Dane County about 1 million. (“Enplanements” are passengers departing.) [. . .]

The bill takes the assets of Mitchell Field away from Milwaukee County “without financial consideration other than the assumption of liabilities and obligations.” [229.865 (1) (a) emphasis added] There is no provision in this bill for Milwaukee County consent. [. . .] While taking Mitchell Field from the County, the bill allows all other counties or municipalities to sell their airports. The transfer of jurisdiction “may take the form of a sale, lease, or other conveyance and may be with or without financial consideration.” [. . .] GMIA assets would be turned over free of charge to an unelected district board. The bill requires no consent of the Milwaukee County Board. The drafting of the bill was, apparently, a surprise to local officials.

For out-state airports this bill is an opportunity for cash. This cash-out opportunity is tactical, lining up other airport managements in favor a bill to wrest control of GMIA--a kind of legislative mobbing, or ganging up. Anti-Milwaukee strategy is not new, either, but when Senator Plale--who represents a hunk of Milwaukee--rides currents of anti-Milwaukee fever (as he has at other times, too), a Milwaukee voter must wonder what--or whether--is he thinking?

As I said, no one is presenting justifications for this bill, this taking of the airport from the people of Milwaukee County and putting it in the hands of an unelected board with no compensation.

It wasn't that long ago that the buzz was about demanding that tech college boards start being elected instead of appointed; why on earth would anyone think that turning over an operation the size of Mitchell International to an appointed board is a good idea?

Blog Summit, take two

As I noted yesterday, the WisPolitics/ WisOpinion people are holding their first annual Blog Summit in a couple of weeks. The revised schedule is now available, and it does, in fact, include your humble folkbum:

Two more leading Wisconsin bloggers have been added to the March 18 inaugural WisPolitics/WisOpinion Blog Summit to talk about the blogging phenomenon.

Panelists Owen Robinson of Boots & Sabers and Jay Bullock of folkbum's rambles and rants, joined by other citizen bloggers, will discuss ``Why blog? Defining the phenomenon from a citizen bloggers'  perspective'' as part of an afternoon program focusing on the impact of blogs on politics and government in Wisconsin

The event also will feature the 2005 Wisconsin blogger of the year award.

The summit is set for Saturday, March 18 from 1 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. at the Country Springs Hotel in Waukesha. It is sponsored by AT&T Wisconsin, WisPolitics, WisOpinion and others. Attendance is free and open to all interested parties, but attendees must register in advance by contacting John Link at link@wispolitics.com

Other participants include:
• Ann Althouse, a nationally recognized blogger and UW-Madison law school faculty member. She will deliver the summit's keynote address.
• Charlie Sykes, Milwaukee WTMJ-AM morning radio host and leading conservative voice.
• Ed Garvey, Madison attorney and former Democratic candidate for governor and U.S. senator, who blogs from the liberal side at FightingBob.com
• Brian Fraley, a GOP strategist, who blogs about politics.
• State Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, who has his own blog.
• Jessica McBride, UW-Milwaukee journalism instructor, radio talk show host and conservative media blogger.
• UW-Madison political scientist Ken Mayer.
• John McAdams, blogger and Marquette professor of political science.
• And Jennifer L. Peterson, attorney in the Madison office LaFollette Godfrey & Kahn, who will address the legalities of blogging.

The program includes two addresses and three panel discussions as well as the award presentation. For a tentative schedule, click here: http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=56125 To register, contact: link@wispolitics.com

So there you go--and you had, in fact, better go there. I will be taking attendance!

Also, as long as I have you thinking about state politics and me, here's another reminder that I'm counting on you, my readers, to support me in my quest for a Koufax Award for Best State or Local Blogger! I have slipped out of first place and I'm now, best as I can tell, somewhere around tenth. Voting is open only for a limited time!

METRA in Milwaukee

I had a dream last night--don't ask me why--that Milwaukee had a subway system, although instead of really being a subway, it was more like a roller coaster that ran through downtown and all around the area. Not exactly the same thing.

Back in reality, I see Mayor Tom Barrett has the idea of expanding the METRA rail service, which is slated to stop at the Amtrak station downtown, out to Miller Park and State Fair Park. Seems like the perfect way to get more people to these places with less need for parking at the venues. Now Chicagoans who want to go see a game at Miller park have to navigate the maze of under-construction freeways, adding to Milwaukee's congestion. The traffic around State Fair Park during the fair is awful, and trying to park anywhere nearby is a real bear. If I could hop on a train to get to State Fair, or the Brewers, or Summerfest, I'd consider it more than I do now.

It also seems like the existing tacks and METRA's willingness to invest in Southeastern Wisconsin make the plan a natural fit.

Pre-School

I'm looking forward to the rest of this series. I wonder, though, if it will change any of the minds in Madison who don't see pre-school as one of the keys to making education better in poor areas. Short of making poverty itself disappear, high-quality early-childhood education is one of the best things we can do.

On the other hand, the kids in the accompanying story remind me too much of my high school students. I don't relish wating ten years to see the benefits . . .

They are uniters, not dividers

They being Republican state rep. Jeff Stone and Democratic state sen. Jeff Plale, who are trying to wrest control of Milwaukee County's Mitchell International Airport out of the hands of the people and place it in the hands of a private body.

They have managed to upset bloggers on both the left and the right. I also am against the idea, seeing no need to change the way things are working. Having been through Mitchell more times in the past year than ever before, I remain convinced that the place is running pretty smoothly. The place is not in debt; renovations are proceeding apace. Even the TSA lines are reasonable at peak hours. I really have no idea what kind of benefit Stone and Plale think they're going to get out of this.

Thompson v. Doyle? I would pay to see that

Now, I did get new glasses today, so I can't be entirely sure that I'm reading this right:

According to [former Governor Tommy] Thompson, people such as Elizabeth Dole, the GOP senator from North Carolina who now leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have urged him to run this fall against Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl, who is seeking a fourth term but has yet to draw a Republican opponent.

Thompson said he was more inclined to try to oust [current Governor Jim] Doyle and return to the job he held for 14 years, longer than any governor in state history. Two Republicans, U.S. Rep. Mark Green and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, already are vying to go mano a mano against Doyle. Thompson, in answer to a question, said he had not discussed his potential candidacy with the two. Nor, he says, does his interest reflect on how he imagines they would do.

To hear him tell it, it's vox populi fueling his gubernatorial ambitions. "Walking through the airports in Milwaukee and Madison and La Crosse and Green Bay, people are saying, 'Please come back and run for governor. We need you back to right the ship of state,' " he said.

Let me get this straight: Governor Doyle comes in to office in 2003 facing a $2.8 billion deficit and balanced the budget without significant tax increases and without a tobacco settlement to cash in. Now the man who is primarily responsible for that deficit wants to jump in and face Doyle down? I'd love to see that debate, since the answer to every question posed to Doyle would just be, "How big will the deficit be next time, Tommy?"

Also, I think it's important to note that Katherine M. Skiba's only source for this article--including the vox populi hogwash--is Tommy Thompson himself. "Yeah, yeah," he says, "everbody wants me ta run for sumpin'. They loves them some Tommy."

If it comes down to a vote between the guy who left the mess or the guy who cleaned it up, we'll see who loves them some Tommy, I tell you what.

WisPolitics.com Blog Summit

WisPolitics.com/ WisOpinion.com is planning a Blog Summit in two weeks, for Saturday, March 18, from 1 to 3 PM at the Country Springs Hotel in Waukesha. Admission is free, but you have to register in advance by email.

There's a link in that press release to the tentative agenda. That agenda will change in the near future to add . . . well . . . me. And, I hope, a few other non-"professional" bloggers who aren't using blogging as an extension of what they already do for a living. This addition comes after some reasonable critiques of the original all-pro line-up from the right half of the Cheddarsphere. Thanks to those guys for taking this summit seriously enough to critique it, and thanks to the WisPolitics/ WisOpinion folks for listening and adding some of us little folk.

I look forward to seeing everybody there! (Did I mention it's free?)

Koufax Award

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I have been nominated for a Koufax award for Best State or Local Blog. This time I did not even nominate myself!

The Koufaxes, if you don't know, are the premier liberal (Sandy Koufax was a lefty pitcher) blog awards. Period. You can talk about your Bloggies or your Oscars or whatever the heck else is out there, but winnig a Koufax is something special.

The current round of voting is for the semi-finals is every category. The top 6-10 vote getters in each category advance to the finals in a week or two. My category seems to be one of the least-heavily populated; consider, for example, the 300 or so nominees in Most Deserving of Wider Recognition!

Also, I know I mentioned it last time, the folks at Wampum who put this on every year could really use your help; click on the "Make a Donation" button and show your appreciation.

And then go vote for me! (I'm currently tied for first, with three votes cast.)

folkbum approved!

Best. Eraser. Ever.

I'm hoping for an endorsement contract.

The first step is admitting you have a problem

And folkbum's rambles and rants alumnus Tim Schilke takes that step:

Now that I finally recognize my addiction and the harm it has done to my country and to the world, I’ve decided to follow a 12-step program toward recovery. Traditionally, the first step is for me to admit that I am powerless over my addiction, and that my life has become unmanageable. I can admit that now. Although in my situation, unsustainable is a much better word. [. . .]

The second step of 12 requires me to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to a state of sanity. Fortunately, my sanity was restored last week, when President Bush visited Milwaukee to remind me of my addiction.

What is he addicted to? And how can Bush help him? You'll have to read the rest to find out.

Friday Random Ten

The Cover Me Edition

1. "Crocodile Man" Chris Smither from Live at McCabe's, covering Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
2. "If Not for You" Bill Camplin from Project One, covering Bob Dylan
3. "If I Were" Peter Mulvey from Glencree, covering Pamela Means
4. "Hallelujah" Jeff Buckley from Grace, covering Leonard Cohen
5. "Everybody Knows this is Nowhere" Dar Williams from My Better Self, covering Neil Young
6. "You Stay Here" Willy Porter from High Wire Live, covering Richard Shindell
7. "Killing the Blues" Shawn Colvin from Cover Girl, covering Roly Salley
8. "The Only Way" Ellis Paul and Vance Gilbert from Side of the Road, covering Mark Erelli
9. "Little Martha" Leo Kottke from Live, covering The Allman Brothers Band
10. "The River, Where She Sleeps" Darryl Purpose from A Crooked Line, covering Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer

Earl Hickey announces opposition to the TP Act

Well, kind of.

Tonight's episode of "My Name is Earl"--which you should be watching, if you're not, by the way, because it's really quite good--involved Earl's growing to believe that the government was good for nothing. After a series of hilarious hijinks stemming from Earl's desire to pay $500 in taxes he believes he owes the government (which he tries to pay at the "Government Offices" building), Earl and his brother end up dangling from ropes inside an empty water tower.

You'll just have to trust me on this.

Oh, and I should add a spoiler warning, although it would be pretty hard not to figure out that NBC wouldn't leave the title character and his brother to bake to death in a water tower.

After three days or so stuck there in the water tower, just as Earl is finishing a rant against the government, he looks up to see a diverse and representative sample of government employees looking down at him through the hole in the top, asking, "Are you fellas all right?"

And, indeed, they were, because government worked for them: The police, the public works people, the fire department--all of them came together to rescue Earl and his brother.

After paying for the fines he and his brother incurred for trespassing--the equivalent of what Earl thought he owed in taxes--Earl offers to pay the many-times-greater cost of rescuing the two of them. But, Earl notes, it turns out that rescuing is free for taxpayers.

And that, in essence, is what I believe the function of government is--it's there to rescue you, for free, when you need it. Some people (not naming names here, but his last name rhymes with Rothman) have decided that tying the hands of government is more important than making sure government has the flexibilty, resources, and ability to rescue the Earls in water towers when necessary. That Earl someday could be me, or you, or your parents, or your neighbors. But this Taxpayer Protection Amendment--the Bride of TABOR to some; the TP Act to me--is all about taking that away.

Earl Hickey knows: Paying your taxes is good karma. Rescuing people who need it--metaphorically and literally--should not play second fiddle to tax-hell fearmongering.

Mark Pocan recounts the "debate" on the Hate Amendment

Rick Esenberg tells me I shouldn't call it the Hate Amendment, but I do, and will continue to. Later I may explain why I call it that instead of the more cumbersome amendment to ban gay marriage, civil unions, and any "substantially similar" legal arrangement amendment.

I also put "debate" in quotation marks, since only two people seemed to speak in favor of the bill:

The only Republicans to debate the merits of the measure were the author, Rep. Mark Gundrum, and Rep. Eugene Hahn. Hahn’s debate centered on the need to follow the Bible – or as he stated, the B-I-B-L-E. He spelled it out as to not say the word aloud.

Gundrum, for his part, briefly answered a few questions about the bill, but finally let a little of the real conservative red meat on this issue out as he talked about his fear of multiple people getting married in the Netherlands. He also heard there were “polyamorists” in Wisconsin.

So there ya go. Read the rest, as it includes a nice moment courtesy of Milwaukee's Jon Richards, and some pretty scary stuff about John Gard.

McIlheran Watch: I'm just suprised he drove a foreign car

But now he has a minivan. Boo, hoo.