I'm never on the cutting edge of anything.Wisconsin's eight House lawmakers spent nearly $1.7 million on "franked mail" from 2003 through 2005, a review by the Journal Sentinel found.While I won't deny that the last statement is true, the paper is clearly overblowing the story. Some of the Cheddarshere has also fallen for it, too: From the left, Tony Palmieri raises his Pork Advisory warning level; from the right, Peter DiGaudio complains about the "staggering cost" of government spending--presumably, the cost of the franking a part of that.
Letters, brochures, constituent surveys--these and other mailings all go out at taxpayers' expense. Thanks to a system known as "congressional franking," lawmakers need not bother with postage; their signature suffices. [. . .]
With changes in both franking rules and technology, spending is no longer restricted to mail. Lawmakers also use automated phone calls, newspaper ads and high-volume e-mails to put out the word that they're doing their job.
Taken together, it's a built-in advantage for incumbents, political scientists say.
Gas is hovering at around three bucks a gallon, there's still a nasty war in Iraq and state politicos are gearing up for one heckuva fight for control of the governor's mansion.Ann Althouse, whom I just don't care to read but who seems like a nice enough person from the eight seconds I had to talk to her last month at the blog summit (cue the Spice Boys: "It's all about them!"), doesn't write about Wisconsin politics as a rule. Or gas prices. Or much political at all--which is why I don't read her. She's all about "The Sopranos" and other pop culture-y things, with an eye-glazing helping of law besides.
But if you're a blogger, forget about all that. To the folks in cyberspace, what could possibly be more important than ...
Blogging.
Ann Althouse, a Madison blogger with a national following, is reporting - er, make that blogging - live from a blogging conference at Harvard Law School. You can even get a picture of her typing away at her laptop while at one session.
Now we know. Blogging: It's all about me.
"I'm the most average person on the board in some ways," he said last night after being elected. "I don't have a special agenda...My job is to facilitate a meeting and work very hard to keep the board focused."Not that I was pleased with Johnson's agenda--far from it--but at a time when the Board needs to show some guts and lead, Dannecker's initiativelessness will just leave the district and the city feeling even more hopelessly mired in all the problems we face.
It is not a simple solution to problems of school financing in Wisconsin. In fact, it's not a solution at all.Read the whole thing.
[T]hree years ago on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, [Senate Intelligence Committee member] Feingold himself was involved in disclosing sensitive intelligence information that, according to four former senior intelligence officers, impaired efforts to capture Saddam Hussein and potentially threatened the lives of Iraqis who were spying for the United States.I mean, c'mon, it's a giant sitting duck of a target that they could just--
On March 20, 2003, at the onset of military hostilities between U.S. and Iraqi forces, Feingold said in a speech to the National Newspaper Association that he had "been in touch with our intelligence community" and that the CIA had informed President Bush and the National Security Council "of intelligence information from what we call human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein and his leadership in a bunker in the suburbs of Baghdad."
The former intelligence officials said in interviews that Feingold was never held accountable for his comments, which bore directly on the issue of intelligence-gathering sources and methods, and revealed that Iraqis close to Hussein were probably talking to the United States.
[T]he reason Wisconsin's Tax Freedom Day is nine days later than when Doyle first started in office is because the federal government has been asking for more money. The Tax Foundation report shows federal spending drove the change--not state or local governments.
And Green voted for three of the last four federal budgets.
Polls show that despite an economy cooking along at 3.5% annual growth, unemployment lower than it's been for most of the past quarter-century and the eagerness of would-be employers like Schneider, people think the outlook stinks, that the breadwinner work has fled to China, leaving only bun-slicer jobs at Burger Barn.And let's call this paragraph B:
[Vice president in charge of recruiting at Schneider National Rob Reich's] company held a recruiting fair in its hometown of Green Bay last month, expecting a few hundred people. Eight hundred showed up, including more than 100 would-be truckers. "It was outstanding," he says, though he's still looking for more, thousands nationwide.These paragraphs both live at the top of McIlheran's Sunday Comics this week. Apparently, P-Mac is distressed that the people--those stupid people!--are too pessimistic about the Bush economy which, by his figuring, is "cooking along."
[McIlheran's paraphrase of your humble folkbum's view] is, government’s costs ought to rise as fast as it costs to employ government workers, by his lights. Other than a suggestion that voters try to rebuild health care for lower costs (lower costs unlikely to emerge under the idee fixe of the left, a single-payer plan), Bullock feels the real route to happiness lies not in restraining taxes but changing who pays them.Which is not exactly what I said. You, reader, pay a hefty property tax every year (and this year it will be even higher) in part because that's the way the state has historically paid for what it does. What I said, and what McIlheran hides behind ellipses, is that we here in Wisconsin need to have a discussion--among other things that might work to control costs--about whether we want to keep that up. That is a discussion we cannot have under current leadership and in a climate of gimmicky, movement-conservative pseudo-solutions--like the new one proposed today.
Not to say his view is invalid, I do think it is revealing. For all the criticism of the Taxpayer Protection Amendment as overly complex (well, yes) or inflexible (good!), it is not the mechanism that grates on the left, it is the very idea that government’s growth can be restrained. It’s all about making the right people pay more.
Corporations influence ALEC because they foot a large part of the bill and they dominate the information flow. While legislators pay only $50 for a two-year membership, ALEC's 300+ corporate sponsors pay annual membership dues ranging from $5,000 to $50,000.The list of corporate sponsors is enlightening, as well:
ALEC is supported by many right-wing foundations and organizations, including but not limited to: National Rifle Association, Family Research Council, Heritage Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Milliken Foundation, DeVos Foundation, Bradley Foundation, and the Olin Foundation.So it makes sense that
ALEC has over three hundred corporate sponsors. Some corporations and trade groups that have strong ties to ALEC include: Enron, American Nuclear Energy Council, American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, Chevron, Coors Brewing Company, Shell, Texaco, Union Pacific Railroad, Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, others.
ALEC has proposed that many public services be taken over by for-profit private businesses, including schools, prisons, public transportation, and social and welfare services.I could go on about ALEC, but that's not the point of this post. Just ask yourself, if TABOR and its ilk originated with a group like ALEC, whose interests were really at heart when the idea was hatched? Probably not yours.
One of ALEC’s central concerns is government regulations of businesses, especially regulations that protect the environment and/or public health.
Looking to give poorer students the technological muscle to scale the "digital divide," the Milwaukee Public Schools district is turning to the promise of an emerging wireless service described as "Wi-Fi on steroids."The right's reaction (from Phelony Jones, Clint, Dad29, Peter DiGaudio, and Brian Fraley, among probably others, those are just the ones I've seen) seems mostly directied two ways. One, of course, is the cost; the article cites a figure of $500,000 for the cost of that pilot system. The bloggers, though, forget to note that MPS's share of that half mil is only $220,000. Yes, that sounds like a lot--and it would buy three teachers--but ity is a drop in the bucket of MPS's billion-dollar budget, and three teachers might be a fair trade (in a district with more than 200 schools and 6000 teachers) for wireless access for our students. Besides, this money is almost certainly coming from the Department of Technology's budget--in lieu of some other spending--and will be supported by the district's leasing out the unused spectrum. In fact, if MPS didn't use this spectrum, they would lose it, according to the FCC. Wouldn't that be the bigger waste?
Using WiMax, MPS would provide free broadband Internet service to the homes of all MPS students and staff.
The district would be one of the first public entities in the country to launch a WiMax system, using television channels that the Federal Communications Commission allocated for educational purposes. A pilot system covering roughly 5 square miles is scheduled to be operating by August 2007.
Ninety-four of the 100 largest school districts in the country have higher graduation rates than Milwaukee, where the graduation rate is 45%, according to a study by the Manhattan Institute, a think tank in New York. [. . .] The Manhattan Institute studies have repeatedly found that while Wisconsin has one of the highest graduation rates overall, it also has one of the worst graduation rates for African-American students. This year, Wisconsin came in third, with an overall graduation rate of 85%. For African-Americans, the statewide graduation rate was 55%--the second-lowest in the country. MPS was about 60% black in 2003, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.My initial thought was, "tell me something I don't know." I know we can do better; after all, I do this for a living. But 45% is absurd. Then I remembered, Jay Greene works for the Manhattan Institute. That would explain that. Of course, you could (should, probably) call that an ad hominem attack. Regardless, Greene has an agenda, and that agenda is to manipulate data to make public schools look as bad as possible. Put this study on the pile, and let's get back to the real work of making education in Milwaukee possible.
Critics have long said that the Manhattan Institute's methodology underestimates the graduation rate nationally, particularly in urban areas and among minority students. State and district estimates put the 2003 graduation rate in Milwaukee at 61% and 67%, respectively. In the past, the institute has consistently published studies with findings that support school vouchers.
This is an intriguing story that might come to Milwaukee some day. The city of Omaha, Nebraska has agreed to create three separate school districts segregated by race.Kane may not spend a lot of time in Milwaukee's schools, but there's really not much that would have to change for this to happen here. I think it's a bad idea, and I don't think there's data to support such a change.
According to this story, the reason is that many ethnic groups--particularly African-Americans--want to control their own districts in order to ensure all students receive the best education.
Last Friday night, young girls from around south dakota came to Sioux Falls for a spring ball. This one is called "The Purity Ball" it's a yearly event run by Leslee Unruh's abstinence clearinghouse.Besides the willies the story gave me, there is something offensive and damned scary in the idea that today, in 2006 for cryin' out loud, there is still such a strong movement of men who feel the need to own and control their women. Here we have an entire generation of girls being taught that they belong to their fathers right up until the point that their fathers give them to their husbands, to whom they will then belong. Digby follows up here.
The idea is that these young women come with their fathers. To celebrate their sexual purity.
Unruh: We think that its important for fathers to the be the first ones to look into their daughters eyes and to tell her that her purity is special, and its ok to wait until marriage.
Hinojosa: It might have all the trappings of a regular prom... But this one ends a little differently.
Girls reciting pledge: "I make a promise this day to God...
Hinojosa: The young women here all make a promise to their fathers that they wont' have sex until the day they get married.
Girls reciting pledge: “...to remain sexually pure...until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my husband. ... I know that God requires this of me.. That he loves me. And that he will reward me for my faithfulness.”
And the Republicans are preparing their agenda for the fall elections:
GOP Campaign to Focus on Flag Burning, Gay Marriage, Abortion
Thank God they're on top of things, because if we can't get this nationwide epidemic of flag burning under contol, we could be in some real trouble.
Meanwhile, over in Right Blogostan the hysteria du jour revolves around the refusal of the producers of South Park to permit an cartoon image of Mohammad to appear on the show.
Her: Jay?
Me: Yes?
Her: It's Becca.
Me: Becca?
Her: You don't remember? Becca!
Me: Becca who?
Her: You know, Becca!
Me: I've known several Beccas . . .
Her: C'mon. We used to hang out at St. Marks? We got drunk together and you threw up on Katie right in front of me?
Me: I think you may have the wrong Jay.
Her: Huh?
Me: I've never thrown up on anyone named Katie.
Her: Oh. Maybe I have the wrong number then.
The Post article, worth reading, tries drawing a parallel between lefty blogger rage and Newt Gingrich. Opinion Journal’s James Taranto points out that the more accurate parallel, the real right-wing rage, was back in John Birch Society or Colonel McCormick days:It's true that the Post piece does draw the parallel to the Gingrich era. McIlheran--well, Taranto, really, but P-Mac seems to dig it--tries to push the right-wing parallel even further into the shadows. This, like the Gingrich comparison in the first place, is utter spin.
“But can anyone imagine an Angry Right figure being treated as respectfully in the mainstream media as (blogger Maryscott) O’Connor is in the Post? Don't get us wrong--we have no brief for right-wing moonbats. We’re just a bit troubled that the press treats someone like O’Connor so sympathetically.
“This double standard actually ought to trouble the left more. By treating crazy right-wingers as disreputable figures, the media give the Republican Party an incentive to distance itself from its fringes. The ‘mainstreaming’ of the Angry Left, by contrast, makes the Democratic Party angrier and crazier--and less likely to win elections.”
There is no question that there is anger and even some extremist rhetoric on the Left. But no sane person could deny that one finds the same type of mindset on the Right, but to a magnitude that is incalculable. The real difference is that, to find rank hatemongering on the Right, one need not go digging into the 300th comment on a blog or the most extreme postings of a relatively obscure blogger, because this type of limitless rhetorical attack has been a staple of the mainstream Right for more or less two decades now.Is there anger on the left? Sure. I feel it, everyone I drink liberally with feels it, I know my liberal readers feel it. But I do not--and will never--send my minion(s?) after anyone. I do not--and will never--recommend talking to conservatives with blunt objects instead of reasoned arguments. I do not--and will never--call conservatives treasonous or, as one prominent right Cheddarsphere denizen often describes liberals, a cancer on society. Maybe Patrick McIlheran is content to pretend that it doesn't happen, but it does, and on blogs more widely read than his own every day.
The Right's best-selling author calls liberals traitors and urges that they be beaten with baseball bats and attacked with bombs. Its most popular radio talk show host --with his 20 million daily followers--has spent the last 20 years urging that liberals be deported and praising the kidnappings of his political opponents, while other favorites on Right-wing radio routinely call for the imprisonment of leading Democrats. Similarly, some of the Right's favorite commentators have urged that those who espouse liberalism be tried for sedition, or worse.
One favorite right-wing commentator has written two books--one devoted to showing that liberals are mentally ill, and the other defending the internment of innocent American citizens in prison camps. The Right's leading elected officials and pundits just in the last couple of years have repeatedly taken to threatening federal judges who issue opinions they dislike.
And how fondly I recall these sentiments from Sen. Jesse Helms during the Clinton years:In an effort to dampen the furor over his Commander-in-Chief remarks, on November 22 Helms told a newspaper reporter from his home state of North Carolina that the President should be careful about visiting military bases in that state. "Mr. Clinton better watch out of he comes down here," Helms said. "He better have a bodyguard."Can one even contemplate the reaction if a Democratic Senator today warned George Bush to avoid military bases becasue he would likely be physically attacked by a military that hated him? Granted, those threats against the President were merely from a leading Republican Senator, not from an anonymous commenter on a blog, but they do nonetheless demonstrate that the Right, including its most powerful figures, long ago relinquished any limits when it comes to rhetorical attacks. The only difficult part of compiling this list is deciding what the worst offenders are and which examples should be left out. And that is to say nothing of the daily doses of hatred and bile that spew forth from the Right blogosphere, which I have no doubt someone else will be compiling shortly--again.
It is just astonishing to have to read an endless article from the Post about the supposed rage and anger on the "Left"--all based on the sought-out, most extreme sentiments of people with little or no real influence--while the eliminationist and traitor rhetoric that has been a central rhetorical tool of the Right's primary power centers for decades is mentioned only in passing, only by way of explaining how the Right used to engage in this sort of rage-driven politics until the Left took over. But anyone who listens on any given day to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, or who reads the hate-mongering and treason-accusing screeds of Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Powerline, know how fundamentally false that picture is.
“Do you approve of disapprove of the way Jim Doyle is handing his job as governor?”Immediately, you'll notice that SUSA has many fewer at "not sure" that UWM, but UWM's approval number here seems much more in line with previous SUSA "favorable" numbers.
Approve ........... 45%
Disapprove ....... 33
Don’t Know ..... 22
Democrat Jim Doyle ................................ 43%This poll, though, has favorability numbers closer to the new SUSA, with the Dizzle at 53% favorable to 29% unfavorable. Green's numbers in the poll show that people don't know him enough yet not to like him. I hear he's working on that, though.
Republican Mark Green ........................... 35%
A Third Party or Independent Candidate .... 6%
I do not plan to vote in the election ............ 3%
Not Sure ................................................ 14%
SATURDAY, April 15, 2006, 2:25 p.m.That's the sort of thing I would do. And I'm a blogger.
By Journal Sentinel
Question for Jude jurors
If you are a Jude case juror, or know of one, please call reporter John Diedrich at 414-224-2318 or e-mail him at jdiedrich@journalsentinel.com.
Q40. As you may also know, a U.S. Senator has valled for a Senate resolution to censure George W. Bush, which is a formal expression of disapproval, but does not carry any legal consequences. The Senator claims it was illegal for Bush to authorize government agencies to use electronic surveillance to monitor American citizens without a court warrant. What do you think? Do you think that George W. Bush should be censured by the Senate for this, or not?Among Democrats (remember, the right says that Russ is way on the left fringe), censure has support 3-1. A solid majority of independents--53%--support it, too.
Yes, censure 46
No, don't censure 45
(via myDD)
support for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq has grown, according to the April 7-9 survey of 800 likely Wisconsin voters by Strategic Vision LLC of Atlanta. More than half of those surveyed (55%) supported withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq within six months, while 33% were opposed.Okay, admittedly, this is a different wording than the referenda questions, which all tended to use right now as a starting point instead of an end-of-2006 timetable like the one Senator Russ Feingold proposed six months ago. But the evidence is clear that voters around the state are much more in favor of bringing the troops home safe sooner than leaving them over there.
A number of communities in the state of Wisconsin have placed on their local ballots a question about withdrawing troops from Iraq as soon as possible. If this were on your local ballot, would you vote in favor of withdrawing troops or against withdrawing troops?While this language also avoids the word now, it also makes it clear what voters across the state actually think about the question and how they would vote were the legislature to offer a state-wide advsiory question on the issue. In fact, among registered voters, the "yes" vote climbs a little to 52%; 50% percent of independents, 47% of third party voters, and even 19% of Republicans are saying "yes" in this poll. (Margins of error are, of course, higher on the sub-groups, but the trend is clear.)In Favor...................................................................... 51%
Against....................................................................... 38%
Wouldn’t vote in local election (vol.)................................ 2%
Not Sure....................................................................... 9%
Refused....................................................................... 1%
Maybe the idea of the United States would launch a nuclear first strike – albeit a "surgical" one – is too hard for most Americans, including most American journalists, to process. [. . .] It's even harder to square with our national self-image than the invasion of Iraq. We're the global sheriff, after all – Gary Cooper in a big white hat. And while Gary Cooper might shoot an outlaw down in a fair fight at High Noon, he wouldn't sneak into their camp in the middle of the night and incinerate them with nuclear weapons. That's not how the Code of the West is supposed to work.Billmon makes a reasonable case--a frighteningly, maddeningly reasonable case--that we may be on the verge of madness.
Even my own hyperactive imagination is having a hard time wrapping itself around the idea. I'm familiar enough with Cold War history to know the United States has at least considered the first use of nuclear weapons before – in Korea and even in Vietnam – and I know it was long-standing U.S. strategic doctrine never to rule out a nuclear response to a Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe. But the current nuclear war gaming strikes me as much more likely to end in the real thing – partly because the neocons appear to have convinced themselves a "tactical" strike doesn't really count, partly because of what Hersh politely refers to as Bush's "messianic vision" (Cheney may have his finger on the bureaucracy, but Shrub is still the one with his finger on the button) but mostly because I think these guys really think they can get away with it. And they might be right. [. . .]
Why should anyone or anything change? When a culture is as historically clueless and morally desensitized as this one appears to be, I don’t think it’s absurd to suppose that even an enormous war crime – the worst imaginable, short of outright genocide – could get lost in the endless babble of the talking heads. When everything is just a matter of opinion, anything – literally anything – can be justified. It’s only a matter of framing things so people can believe what they want to believe.
A petition drive aiming to cut the Waukesha County Board to 11 members will not succeed in blocking board action tonight on an alternative plan, the chief organizer said today. [. . .]Funny how those duly elected representatives will thwart the will of the people every time . . . As Kent Brockman would say, "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Democracy just doesn't work."
Normally, the group would have until mid-May to complete its petition drive seeking a binding countywide referendum on changing the 35-member board to 11 members. But because state law limits how often such a change can take place, petitioners were racing to finish before tonight's scheduled County Board vote tonight on downsizing the board to 25 members.
If the board approves that plan - or any other change - the petition drive becomes a moot point.
Green’s year-end 2005 campaign finance report shows he collected $845 from a salesman for the Hayward, California-based Pacific Cheese Company. The company is among several featured on the Real California Cheese web site, and boasts being the “leading supplier of high-quality natural cheese in the western United States.”But, you know, I take my cheese seriously. Very seriously.
Wisconsin lost its decades-long title as the nation’s #1 dairy state in the 1990s to California, and to rub it in Sunshine State cheese makers frequently run talking-cow television ads to push their product here.
In a state that once banned the sale of margarine, should this guy really be taking money from California cheese makers if he wants to become Wisconsin’s next governor?
Waukesha's "non partisan" mayorSee?
Yeah, right. Check the photo of him out over at the Leftwing Folkbum Rambles and Rants, at the state Democrats' annual fundraising dinner. Really non partisan, isn't Nelson. [. . .] If he's not partisan, I don't know what is.
My new Freeman column on the topic is up.
Holloway ethics case trimmedBrian Fraley re-writes the headline: "Holloway Still Faces Dozens of Ethics Charges"
60 charges against county official dismissed
Two-thirds of about 90 non-criminal ethics charges against Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway were dismissed Monday by a hearing examiner.
That still leaves about 30 of the more serious counts intact, including allegations that Holloway had a conflict of interest in voting for county funding for a local social service agency that paid Holloway some $165,000 in a never-consummated property deal.
More voters in 30 Wisconsin communities voted Tuesday to stay the course in Iraq than wanted the troops to withdraw. It was purely a symbolic message, but a heartfelt one.She neglected to mention that there were 33 ballot questions that day.
The depth of public dissatisfaction with Bush and the highly partisan nature of the criticism are underscored by public attitudes toward efforts by some in Congress to censure him or impeach him for his actions as president.I included that last part, knowing that if I didn't, it would be the first club trotted out to beat down my point. I say, so what? At least 11% of people polled seemingly don't care if the move to censure Bush for his disregard of a law that makes a felony out of exactly what he's admitted doing* is political. It may be that Russ is capitalizing on the matter for his own gain, but it's still apparently the right move in people's minds.
Democratic and Republican congressional leaders view both scenarios as remote possibilities. Still, more than four in 10 Americans--45 percent--favor censuring or formally reprimanding Bush for authorizing wiretaps of telephone calls and e-mails of terrorism suspects without court permission. Two-thirds of Democrats and half of all independents, but only one in six Republicans, support censuring Bush, the poll found.
Last month, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced a resolution in the Senate to censure Bush. A majority of Americans, 56 percent, said his move was driven more by politics than by principle.
