A Mistake Kagen Doesn't Want to Make

by folkbum

I keep being occasionally relieved as I read all the lists posted yon and wide, of Democratic members of Congress who are wavering on health care now that we are inches from the finish line, lists that have not included any Wisconsin reps who should know better. In fact, if last week you asked me to put money down on which Rep would muck up the works, I might have guessed Gwen Moore--I have been afraid she would be hesitant to vote for the Senate bill (a necessary step in the process) because it was not progressive enough.

Pretty much last on my list of possible Wisconsin defectors was Dr. Steve Kagen. Why? When the man courted my endorsement in 2006, he sat across a Starbucks table from me and asserted, flatly, that comprehensive health care reform was his top priority. It was his signature campaign issue. And he was an easy yes vote in the House last year.

So what do I find today? Ugh:

Rep. Steve Kagen (D) of Wisconsin voted for reform, and is now hedging. "I have made the case to the speaker and also to the White House that we should take small pieces, small bites," Kagen said. "In the practice of medicine, I can't give a child a big pill. What do we do? We cut it up into pieces. Let's find things we can agree on."

WTF? Seriously? What is this about? His platform in 2006 was not "small bites," and it was a sight more progressive than the current versions of the reform package.

I will be calling Kagen's office tomorrow--hey, we all should: (920) 380-0061--to try to figure out what's going on. I mean, it can't be because Kagen thinks this will save his seat this fall. People who are planning to vote Republican or Tea Party or Martian or whatever aren't gonna suddenly turn around and go, Oh, yeah, Kagen's a swell guy! He lost those votes a long time ago, when he voted Yea the first time, if not long before that.

And anyway, I have yet to see a poll suggesting that any of the rogues gallery up nort' right now poses a risk.

And if Kagen really thinks this vote is the pivotal moment of this election, well, he's got two choices. He can enjoy the full support of state grass-roots Dems and stand on the right side of history, or he can vote no and wonder where his backers are come November.

(Greg Sargent compiles the list of others like Kagen who risk making a dumb mistake in the next couple of weeks.)

SpongeJohn GardPants and the Mythical Chinese Oil Drillers

by folkbum

(I would not have used xoff's greatest gift to Wisconsin bloggers in my title had this not been an underthesea-related story.)

A month or so ago, Vice President Dick "Dick" Cheney was rambling on about something and let slip a complaint that the Chinese were drilling up OUR OIL right off the coast of Florida with the help of Cuba, those commie bastards. Okay, that's a praphrase. Here's what Cheney really said:

Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, picked up the refrain. Cheney quoted a column by George Will, who wrote last week that "drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are."

In his speech, Cheney described the Chinese as being "in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to higher prices means more supply."

That makes for a great story and it backs a significant aspect of the Republican philosophy of drilling our way out of the gas crisis (which John McCain, GOP candidate for president, suggests we both can and can't do). Gas prices are high, Americans are ticked off, and the dirtyhippielibrultreehuggers won't let us have OUR OWN OIL but China is taking it.

I bet you can see the problem coming. That's right--the story was just not true.

[N]o one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba's shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

Cheney's office even did the unthinkable and admitted that Cheney was wrong and that no, China was indeed not drilling for oil off the coast of South Florida. It's also interesting to learn that Mel Martinez is now apparently a dirtyhippielibrultreehugger,

Note the dates on those stories: The first, explaining that the story was false, was posted on June 11. It even got some pretty heavy play on the blogs at the time. So it's not to much of a surprise to learn that John Gard, career politician who lost to first-time candidate Steve Kagen in 2006, would repeat the lie in a June 4 press release (.pdf).


But it doesn't explain why, days after the lie was exposed, Gard was still walking around handing out this flier at county fairs.

Talking Points Memo got ahold of the flier (confidential to 8th CD tipsters: what am I? Chopped liver?), and made some calls. Our old friend Mark Graul dug the hole deeper:

At first, Gard campaign manager Ellen Nowak told us that these flyers had been scrapped. "We didn't print them that way," Nowak said, after the text was read to her over the phone.

Then she made the mistake of referring us to communications director Mark Graul, who confirmed the flyer's existence. But he said it wasn't about China, insisting that the "foreign nations" reference was to India, Brazil and other countries. "We now know that China are not drilling per se," Graul said, "but other foreign countries are."

Sadly, that's not true, either.

Sigh. A couple weeks before TPM had at Graul and co., the Green Bay Press Gazette, on their blog, not in the paper where it belonged, was on the case, with Gard standing by a weaselly version of the urban legend, that China was "exploring to set up" off of the Florida coast. That's not what the flier said, that's not what his campaign said when it announced its energy plan ( the references to China have not even been scrubbed from his website!).

It's a simple thing, John. Just man up and say, as the vice president did, that you were wrong. That you bought into a Republican urban oil myth (like the one about Katrina not causing any oil spills) and that you're sorry. It's not hard.

John Gard, et al., don't get it (and they have their facts wrong)

by folkbum

In my Janesville post below, I never offered up drilling ANWR (or offshore, or oil shale, or whatever) as a way to solve GM's problems--nor did I offer up the environmentalists and others who have blocked ANWR exploration as potentially at fault. A couple of commenters noticed the oversight.

But I left it out for two main reasons: One, suggesting a supply-side fix for our inevitable fossil-fuel decline is classic denial. When you keep doing what you have always done you will always get the same results. Two, there's just not that much oil there:

Drilling for oil beneath the pristine tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would do little to ease world oil prices, the federal government's energy forecasters said in a new report issued in a week that saw oil surpass $130 per barrel for the first time.

Congress has fought bitterly for years over whether to allow oil companies access to the Alaska refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, a habitat for seabirds, caribou, and polar bears. Oil company executives, called to Capitol Hill for a grilling over high oil prices, pointed to the untapped resources of ANWR and off the U.S. coastlines as evidence that Congress was as much to blame for the tight global supplies of crude as the petroleum industry.

But the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an independent statistical agency within the Department of Energy, concluded that new oil from ANWR would lower the world price of oil by no more than $1.44 per barrel—and possibly have as little effect as 41 cents per barrel—and would have its largest impact nearly 20 years from now if Congress voted to open the refuge today.

At $1.44 less per barrel, gas prices would fall seven cents a gallon.

John Gard, who is trying again to beat eighth-district Rep. Steve Kagen, showed he doesn't get it, either:

In remarks at a Green Bay news conference, Gard this afternoon cited "the United States Congress" as the main obstacle to lowering gas prices. [. . .]

Gard's plan calls for more drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, something Kagen has opposed, as well as more off-shore drilling and development of "shale oil sites" in western states. He also advocates cutting "red tape" on oil refineries.

The whole deal with oil shale is that it's only profitable when oil prices are high. And the refinery tale that he's spinning is a flat lie:

One reason for the drop in the number of U.S. refineries is that the petroleum industry began shutting down older, inefficient refineries and concentrating production in more efficient plants, which tended to be newer and larger.

Consolidation within the industry has also played a role in refinery operation. For example, the merger of Gulf Oil Corporation into Chevron Corporation in 1984 led to the closing of two large refineries, one in Bakersfield, California, and the other in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1998 Exxon merged with Mobil Oil and BP merged with Amoco. BP Amoco then bought Arco in April 2000 to create the world's largest non-OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil producer and the third-largest natural gas producer. In the May 2004 article "Effects of Mergers and Market Concentration in the U.S. Petroleum Industry," in GAO Highlights, the General Accounting Office noted that "over 2,600 mergers have occurred in the U.S. petroleum industry since the 1990s."

All that "red tape"? A lie:

From 1975 to 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received only one permit request for a new refinery. [. . .] A congressional investigation uncovered internal memos written by the major oil companies operating in the U.S. discussing their successful strategies to maximize profits by forcing independent refineries out of business, resulting in tighter refinery capacity.

The oil companies aren't falling over themselves to build new refineries because keeping tight reins on the supply is what keeps prices high. The blame for tight refinery capacity lies squarely at the feet of the oil companies themselves.

But the widespread use of these red herrings--ANWR, oil shale, refineries, ocean-killing coastal drilling--suggests, again, mass denial among conservatives from bloggers to candidates for Congress. The American experience of automobiles (and energy generally) is done. It must change. The Republicans are falling further and further into the past, further and further into irrelevancy. It's why Gard will lose again in November, why McCain will too: It's time to lead, which implies a certain amount of going forward, not backward. And it would help if they stopped lying.

Kagen not cowering in the presence of Petraeus

by bert

The most visible Democratic politicians have also been the most frustrating because their opposition to the Iraq War is limp and flaccid. In the midst of that frustration, reading Steven Kagen's statement today about the Gen. Patreaus hearings is like a cool drink of water. Here's a bit of it:

General Petraeus' appearance confirmed what Americans already knew: President Bush's war and his losing policy of "stay the course" have created more terrorists and made our homeland less secure.

The frank and bold tone of the statement is especially satisfying when it comes on the same week we wearily observed yet another carefully staged snow job by the Bush administration to sell this war. The latest ploy by the White House and its apologists is to hide behind a beatified general, with the obvious but unstated aim being to keep the quagmire going so the war's perpetrators can cut and run from its political damage when Democrats take over in 2009.

The next task for the local apologentsia will be to come after Kagen. To quote a house ad from a local radio station, depend on it.

UPDATE: I take back a little of the bile spewed toward most Democrats here.
Tied to President Bush's speech Thursday night, many of the candidates did not seem bowed in criticizing this war. TPM has a roundup, but the link will be moving on to other things after a while.

Kagen's Critics Are Getting Help

by Bert

Reporter Craig Gilbert earns page 1A in the Journal Sentinel today for a story about the right-wing dogpile on U.S. Representative Steve Kagen. The gist is that Kagen is getting bad publicity, started by a story in a Fox Valley monthly newspaper called Scene, for disrespecting White House leaders such as poor, sensitive Karl Rove. The FDA also warned Kagen, a doctor, about using unauthorized drugs in his medical practice. Gilbert's story is, of course, more bad publicity.

Kagen may deserve this coverage, and I personally support publishing lots of negative real news ("real news" excludes Rush, Sykes, Folkbum guest bloggers, and other mere echo chambers) about politicians of any stripe.

But I seem to recall some recent bad publicity for another Wisconsin congressman, James Sensenbrenner. The Rolling Stone, a publication that carries more weight than The Scene , named Sensenbrenner the second worst congressman in the nation in a story last fall. I checked LexisNexis just to confirm my memory, and, sure enough, Sensenbrenner's bad publicity earned no story from Gilbert, page 1A or otherwise. (A J-S column by Patrick McIlheran did mention it in passing.)

[A late update from your humble folkbum: See this post for my original take on the Rolling Stone rankings. Jim McGuigan thinks the Journal Sentinel should be giving this kind of scruitny to Scott Walker, too. Thanks to Burt for bringing this up--Jay]

Predictions. But Don't Hold Me to Them.

I've learned my lesson, so I'm going to throw in predictions for easy races. Grade inflation, you know. I'll start national and then go state:

• The Democrats will take the House, picking up 20-23 seats. That's lower than most estimates, but I'd rather be pessimistic and surprised by the results.
  
  
• Democrats will not take the Senate, though they will win four or five seats. No Dem incumbents will lose, except Joe Lieberman.
  
  
• Jim Doyle will be re-elected. Owen expects a Green victory, based on the "Incumbent Rule." I say, let's ask President Kerry what he thinks of the incumbent rule. And the margin won't be that close--something in 52-48 range. Eismann just won't be a factor.
  
  
• The Falk-Van Hollen race is too close to call, almost. (That's my hedge.) That said, I think Falk will win a squeaker--this may well be the last state-wide race to get called.
  
  
• Both statewide ballot measures will probably pass. I don't put it out of the realm of possibility that the amendment will fail--Fair Wisconsin has run an airtight campaign--but momentum in the "no" direction isn't enough. I wanted to see at least one poll with the thing going down before now.
  
  
• Republicans will keep the state Assembly. I know, I know, out on a limb there. But I feel confident.
  
  
• Democrats will take the state Senate. Reynolds and Zien definitely lose. Baby-daddy McReynolds is the most likely next loser.
  
  
• Herb Kohl will . . . wait for it . . . win. By at least 20%.
  
  
• The House races:
  1. Paul Ryan
     
  2. Tammy Baldwin
     
  3. Ron Kind
     
  4. Gwen Moore
     
  5. Jim Sensenbrenner (though with a much smaller margin than in 2004)
     
  6. Tom Petri
     
  7. Dave Obey
     
  8. Steve Kagen (by five or six points)
  
  
• Despite my ringing endorsement for Don Holt, David Clarke will be re-elected.
  
  
• John Chisholm will win the Milwaukee County DA's race.
  
  
• All the various Iraq war bring-'em-home referrenda will pass.

No matter what really happens--big Dem wins or big Dem losses--I agree with Scott:

I further predict that whatever happens, the right half of the blogosphere will instantly proclaim it a victory for their side. Yes. Because someone you never heard of said on CNN three months ago that Democrats could take the senate, the fact that it didn’t happen will be touted as proof-positive that the American people have rejected the left’s flawed agenda, while giving a mandate to the Republican party to move further to the right. [Ed. See Ann Coulter, laying that groundwork.] It will also be said that we played dirty. So dirty, in fact, that the only explanation for why we didn’t win every election by a landslide is that voters utterly spurned our bankrupt ideology in favor of GOP ideals.

Add to it claims of vote fraud (crack-heads making up names for ACORN is not a winning vote-fraud strategy, by the way) and perhaps even a lawsuit by Mark Green to challenge the legality of his loss. It will get uglier before it gets better. That is a prediction you can take to the bank.

Jessica McBride denies the existence of PTSD, history, reality . . .

Jessica McBride, UWM lecturer in Journalism, is wrong. A lot. She is not afraid to show it. Here, she's desperately trying to hang John Kerry around Steve Kagen's neck (the italics are her quotes of a Lakeland Times interview with Dr. Kagen, and that's her bold, too):

And then there's this creative way of increasing casualty figures:

Kagen cited 650,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, 2,700 U.S. soldiers dead and another 20,000 injured, as well as countless more "injured mentally."

This is perhaps the most egregious flub in her post (not at all the only one). She seems to be denying that post-traumatic stress disorder--a very real and very debilitating disorder--somehow doesn't exist or doesn't count. Last I checked, McBride is not a doctor (MD or psychology or even journalism), and not really qualified to make diagnoses or rewrite, wholesale, chapters of the DSM-IV. Her insistance that men and women returning from Iraq with PTSD aren't really casualties is insulting both to the vtes and their families.

Indeed, Iraq has produced a higher number of PTSD sufferers than previous wars. Even a cursory Googling turns up hundreds of articles about the seriousness of the disease and the toll it takes on the soldiers and their lives. Here's just one take:

Many of the most common wounds aren't seen until soldiers return home. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is an often-debilitating mental condition that can produce a range of unwanted emotional responses to the trauma of combat. It can emerge weeks, months or years later. If left untreated, it can severely affect the lives not only of veterans, but their families as well.

Of the 244,054 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan already discharged from service [as of February 2005, when this article was written], 12,422 have been in VA counseling centers for readjustment problems and symptoms associated with PTSD. [. . .]

Post-traumatic stress was defined in 1980, partly based on the experiences of soldiers and victims of war. It produces a wide range of symptoms in men and women who have experienced a traumatic event that provoked intense fear, helplessness or horror. The events are sometimes re-experienced later through intrusive memories, nightmares, hallucinations or flashbacks, usually triggered by anything that symbolizes or resembles the trauma. Troubled sleep, irritability, anger, poor concentration, hypervigilance and exaggerated responses are often symptoms.

I suppose if Jessica McBride wants to explain in greater detail how these men and women aren't really suffering and weren't really casualties of this war, she's welcome to. But first, she might want to do some further reading on Iraq and PTSD: I recommend the VA, the Christian Science Monitor, a help group for PTSD vets, the Iraq War Veterans Organization, Inc., and even her beloved FOXNews.

But, as I mentioned, McBride's denial of PTSD is not the only denial of reality she engages in--and there's also her lack of such common journalistic techniques as, say, research. What drew her into the Kagen article in the first place, besides maybe a pathological (oops, I'm not qualified to diagnose, either! See how easy it is to avoid such problems?) irrational desire to elect John Gard to Congress, was Kagen's mention of what his constituents had told him (same rules on italics and bold):

As usual, Doc Kagen, of recent "injun time" fame, goes off the rhetorical deep end. Such as when he said that everywhere he goes, people tell him they are concerned about Iraqi troops... in the U.S. (!)

"John Gard will write a blank check for this Republican Congress and this president to stay indefinitely in Iraq," he says. "Everywhere I go, people tell me the same thing - our troops don't belong in Iraq, and Iraqi troops don't belong in the U.S. So we understand that it's a mess. There's no plan. There's a losing strategy and there's no end in sight. So my response is: I'm going to be very interested in oversight - aggressively - and bring this country to accountability. Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush must be held accountable for their actions."

While I agree that there is little likelihood of Iraqi troops coming to town now, I think Steve's interlocutor there made a relatively good analogy: We have as much business being in Iraq as Iraqis do being here, that is, none. McBride has a different opinion, of course, but differing opinions do not "off the deep end" necessarily make--especially when the ones with those opinions are people completely different than the one she diagnoses as being off the deep end. More:

He [Kagen] sounds suspiciously like John Kerry:

"But even when we had a draft we know who served. It was the lowest socioeconomic strata. It's always been throughout human history that those who are not in power are the ones to fight the wars."

Does McBride not think this is true? Does she not remember her history lessons? Though it's true that the wealthy volunteers died at a similar rate in Vietnam to the poor, that's because the poorer draftees didn't get the "hazardous roles as pilots or infantry captains and lieutenants." Demographically, draftees were poorer, period. And the theme of complaints about the old (and powerful) sending the young to die is not original to Kagen (or Kerry); it goes back, in this country, to Revolutionary War-era poetry, at least. Yes, more!:

He wants to cut Homeland Security funding.

Kagen says he wants to get pork-barrel spending - whether in homeland security or elsewhere within the government - under control.

'Cause there's no pork in DHS, you know. And:

He also seems to be implying that Americans are enemy combatants... or something. Seriously, this guy could get elected to Congress. He can't even form a rational thought.

Kagen attacked the president's recent signing of a bill allowing the federal government to decide who can be defined as an enemy combatant. "If you're so defined under the law, they have the right to take you away and you don't have a right to a jury trial," he said. "You do not have the right of habeas corpus. So we've created a totalitarian state and given up our right of habeas corpus and our privilege of being an American. [. . .]"

McBride also doesn't know how to read the law that clearly gives the administration the right to declare whom it will an enemy combatant,

even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.

Perhaps she'd like to see that of me or Dr. Kagen, some indefinite detention somewhere I don't have access to Google to demonstrate how wrong she is.

Or maybe she just doesn't care. The Brawler yesterday documented McBride's disdain for "true objectivity." That may encompass her need to wallow in the wrongness, coat herself in it. Her insistence on "truthiness"--that what she feels is right must be right, reality be damned. That she is willing to toss aside not just a partisan opponent (in Kagen) is not a surprise. What is a surprise is that she's willing to toss aside veterans of the Iraq War and the Vietnam War, that she's willing to toss aside your civil rights, that she's willing to toss aside the truth about something as easily verifiable as DHS pork.

There's a difference between "true objectivity" and offense. Regardless of what she may think, McBride is the "MSM," and a professional influencer of the next generation of media folk. If this is a harbinger of the future . . .

A bunch of things to start your week

• Welcome USA Today readers! The article I was interviewed for about teacher bloggers is running today. I get two whole paragraphs. If you're here for the first time, you may want to read my reactions to being interviewed generally--and some of the issues raised by the reporter specifically--in this post from last month, as I go into much more depth than the article indicates.
  
  
• The USA Today story also has a great list of blogs in the sidebar, including some I read regularly. You should read them, too. One note: Ms. Frizzle has un-anonymized herself and is blogging her Fullbright exchange year in Turkey. (Hat tip to Edwise on that one. And, yes, I still haven't changed that link in my own sidebar, either.)
  
  
• New Rule: Anyone who thinks that conditions at Guantanamo Bay are so great--people like a certain pundit wannabe that some say I have an unhealthy obsession over--should spend time there. And not just like visit as a reporter, either. They should be kidnapped from their houses in the middle of the night, flown there in the company of people who don't speak their language and without being told what's happening or why, and forced to stay there without contact from their families, attorneys, or anyone more helpful than the Red Cross every few weeks. They could even take a detour on the way to some prison in Eastern Europe somewhere for treatments at the day spa waterboarding and more. After five years, without charge, we'll see if they still think it's the greatest place on earth. (The Journal Corp. blogging software is still returning errors when I try to link to specific posts, but the one I'm talking about is the "Ooh, it's so degrading" one.)
  
  
• The National Council of Teachers of English did a massive survey last spring about how No Child Left Behind is affecting (or not) teaching and learning in English teachers' classrooms. I participated, but I don't remember what all of my answers were. I can tell you, however, that my feelings are generally in line with the results:

  This study confirms findings from several recent public opinion polls that the more people know about NCLB, the more inclined they are to have an unfavorable opinion about its effects on public schools, teachers, and students.
  
  Virtually every poll shows public support for the four goals established by Congress when the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001. But, literacy educators agree with the public that the law has failed to improve the education system for schools, teachers, students, and their families by not effectively meeting these goals. The table below shows a striking majority of literacy educators see NCLB as being ineffective when asked how well it was meeting its four stated goals:
  
  Based on what you’ve seen in your school and classroom over the past four years, to what extent do you think NCLB has been effective in reaching the four reform goals described by the U.S. Department of Education? [Number of teachers answering g]enerally ineffective (1 – 3 on a six point effectiveness scale).

  • Encouraging stronger accountability for results?--58%
    
  • Providing more freedom for schools and communities?--93%
    
  • Encouraging proven educational methods?--81%
    
  • Providing more choices for parents?--81%

  
  In addition, only 15% of literacy educators reported that NCLB has been effective in improving educational equity in their schools, a core rationale for passage of the Act in 2001.

  Read the whole thing, as they say, including some actual statements from literacy teachers about how NCLB has not improved literacy education.
  
  
• Michael J. Mathais has written probably the best post to come out of the Cheddarsphere in the last week:

  Although her picture stayed at JSOnline for two days at the start of this week, it seemed crowded away by the election news and speculation over whether President Bush had delivered too partisan a 9/11 speech.
  
  The picture was gone by Wednesday, but the story had garnered some interest. By 10:00 p.m. that day it was on a list of “most viewed” stories.
  
  Merideth Howard, an Army reservist from Waukesha, told relatives she didn’t know why she had been sent to Afghanistan, fretted about her training, and worried that, at the age of 52, she was too old to be in a combat zone.

  Please, please, please read the rest.
  
  
• Seth nails the budget debate between Jim Doyle and Mark Green:

  So getting back to the contradictions laid out by Doyle and Green in this current election race, the key to electoral success is really not what the candidates say about the budget -- they're both going to say contradictory stuff -- but rather how they say it. And on this point, so far, Green is getting slammed.
  
  A look at the JS article this morning tells us that Doyle's election year proposals would cost an estimated $66 million per year, while Green's would run at least $148 million per year. I bolded the "at least" because it's central to the problems Green has been having when discussing the budget.

  The significant difference on budgets, to me, between these two, is that Jim Doyle took office four years ago with a massive structural debt and budget shortfall from the Republican Thompson-McCallum years, and had to fix it. His fixes have been imperfect, but this state is now on a course that doesn't add up to insolvency. Mark Green, on the other hand, has been a part of Bush's Congress, where the mantra has been "cut taxes, raise spending." And look at where the national debt has gone. Is that the kind of budgeting experience we want in Madison? I think not.
  
  
• All those Republicans--I'm looking at you, Fred--who said they'd disapprove of ABC's phony "Path to 9/11" if it contained invented scenes about Bush, well, it does. I'll wait here for the condemnations.
  
  
• Along the same lines, a number of conservative bloggers are sure that the Valerie Plame outing controversy is over now that Richard Armitage has been revealed as one of Bob Novak's sources. But Novak keeps changing his story, so you gotta wonder what else he's hiding.
  
  
• Kudos to Fair Wisconsin for a good fight so far against the anti-civil-unions-and-any-substantially-similar-arrangement amendment. They've done some great organizing locally, and they have another knock-out ad (opens to a Quicktime movie).
  
  
• Those wacky white supremacists. Always rallying around something.
  
  
• In the Wisconsin 8th CD, where Steve Kagen is going to beat John Gard in a few weeks, the National Republican Congressional Committee is, as I first reported here, planning to spend a ton of money on independent expenditure ads. Carrie Lynch comments here, and Cory Liebmann suggests that the NRCC really needs to look at their own candidate before making ads against Kagen.
  
  Nationally, the story is much the same. As Chris Bowers points out, the Republicans so far have outspent Democrats, but the Dems have spent zero dollars in defense while Reps have spent 85% of their total defending seats like the WI-08. Chris has it laid out quite clearly in handy table format for you.
  
  
• The tax cuts didn't create jobs. Period.
  
  
• Anyone like me, who plans to do candidate advocacy on-line this year, should spend some time with the Net Democracy Guide.
  
  
• Finally, a question for Milwaukee-area iPod + iTrip users. What channel are you using? I've kind of settled on 88.5, but I still get static sometimes driving around town.

WI-08, the folkbum endorsement: Steve Kagen

As with the Secretary of State primary, I wasn't sure I was going to endorse anyone in the open 8th Congressional District primary. There are three strong and capable Democrats running for that seat, and any one of them will be a marked improvement over not just John Gard, the presumptive Republican nominee, but Mark Green and any other Republican in Congress right now.

However, the more I've thought about it and the more I've read about the race, I've come to the conclusion that the strongest candidate, and the one most likely to be able to provide an appealing alternative to Gard, is Steve Kagen.

I've been predisposed to like Kagen since he was the first of the three candidates to make a direct appeal to bloggers a year ago. Reaching out to the netroots is an important symbolic step, even if, as I assured him then and am more convinced of now, my own influence is relatively small. In that first meeting and in a second one last spring, he wasn't just seeking money or pixels; he was actively seeking advice. Kagen listens, and that's one thing I like about him.

This is not to say that Nancy Nusbaum (Jamie Wall just doesn't have a shot) wouldn't listen either; all I know is she never called me.

But it is in the contrast between Kagen and Nusbaum that I see a reflection of what the contrast would be between Kagen and Gard. 2006 is, nationally, shaping up to be an anti-Republican, anti-incumbent year. John Gard is nothing if not a Republican incumbent, even if he's never held this particular office. Gard is a politician's politician. Everyone knows who he is and what he is and, frankly, people just don't like him that much. Nancy Nusbaum, of course, hasn't been sitting atop an ineffective and reactionary legislature. But Nusbaum is also a politician--albeit one on the side of good rather than evil. Kagen, on the other hand, can ride a wave of anti-politician sentiment that Nusbaum and Gard can't harness.

I think the voters in the 8th are seeing that. I can't help but roll my eyes a little bit every time someone tells me that Kagen is winning big--the polls they cite are all paid for by Kagen's campaign. However, it is important to note that neither Gard nor Nusbaum is releasing internal polling data. That suggests to me that the numbers Gard and Nusbaum are seeing aren't the kind to be proud of. Even if you take Kagen's polls with a grain of salt, the lack of data from Gard and Nusbaum still speaks volumes.

The Republicans, who lined up behind Gard, also are looking at Kagen as their eventual opponent. The NRCC is already buying coordinated ads against Kagen. There's no question that the Republicans have made some bad decisions in this cycle (how much money are they spending to defend Lincoln Chaffee in a primary?), but I believe they must have their own polling showing a Kagen win on the Democratic side.

The 8th is a winnable district this year: There's no incumbent, and a general anti-Republican sentiment across the nation. I firmly believe that the best bet we have to take it is with Steven Kagen.

WI-08 news: Numbers, Deception, and the Spice Boys' stupid snark

• NUMBERS: The fundraising numbers are in for Wisconsin's 8th Congressional district, with (no surprise here) Republican John Gard leading the way:

  Gard, the Assembly speaker, raised nearly $265,000 in the second quarter this year and had $882,000 in the bank as of the end of last month, according to new campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Since the start of his campaign for the House seat being vacated by Rep. Mark Green, Gard has raised $1.35 million [. . .]
  
  His Republican rival for the party nomination, state Rep. Terri McCormick, raised $11,000 for the three-month period, and had less than $3,500 in the bank. McCormick has raised a grand total so far of $58,051 and has lent her campaign more than $66,000, for full tally of $124,436. [. . .]
  
  Democratic candidate Nancy Nusbaum, the former Brown County executive, pulled in nearly $188,000 during the last quarter and finished the period with about $340,000 in cash. She has raised a total of $632,247 and also has lent her campaign $225,000, which adds up to more than $857,000 for her effort.
  
  Fellow Democrat and Appleton physician Steve Kagen's largely self-funded campaign had $772,000 on hand at the end of the period, with Kagen raising just under $44,000 for the quarter. The owner of a chain of allergy clinics in the Fox Valley, Kagen has lent his campaign $1.45 million. Grand total in money raised or lent for Kagen: $1.58 million.
  
  Jamie Wall, the third Democrat in the race, raised $88,099 for the quarter and had $417,305 in the bank. Wall is a business consultant and former state development official who lives in Green Bay. He's raised a total of more than $600,000 and lent more than $100,000 to his campaign for a grand total of $715,694.

  Kevin of the conservative Lakeshore Laments blog provides more detail on all the filings: Gard, McCormick, Kagen, Nusbaum, and Wall.
  
  I'm a little disappointed our candidates aren't doing quite as well as Dems in other high-profile races, but I am glad to see that, combined (including Kagen's $1.45 million loan to his campaign), we've significantly outraised the Republicans.
  
  You can visit the websites of Kagen, Nusbaum, and Wall to contribute, or, through my ActBlue page, you can give to the WI-08 general fund--money that will be dispersed to the winner of the September 12 primary.
  
  
• MORE NUMBERS: Steve Kagen has a new poll showing him winning both the primary (by 30+ points!) and the general against presumed Republican winner John Gard. You can see the SpiceBlog take, or you can read what Xoff found in Hotline.
  
  
• DECEPTION: Speaking of the Spice Boys, they note in today's paper something else that Xoff beat them to--Gard's campaign misled both the workers and the management at an Appleton firetruck plant, where they were filming for a commercial. From the paper's article:

  One of the workers, a 50-year-old employee with 10 years at the company, told us this week that a friend who also works at Pierce approached her about appearing in the video because the camera crew needed another woman. The woman, who asked not to be identified because of concerns for her job, said she read lines for the camera about how Pierce makes "all kinds of firetrucks for governments, for Iraq, for all over the world."
  
  This is where things get tricky.
  
  The woman, a political independent who said she votes for whoever appears most honest, said she and her friend assumed that the tape was for use by Pierce. The company runs videos on flat-screen televisions at its plants so visitors can see what is being done at each. The videos are updated from time to time.
  
  During the hour that it took to film the spot, the woman said, no one told her or her friend the real purpose for the video. [. . .] What's more, a Pierce spokeswoman said this week that the Gard campaign never asked for permission to tape its employees saying anything. Ann Stawski said the camera crew was given the OK only to get some footage in a Pierce facility for use as a "backdrop" in an ad.

  Now that the flap has been raised, Gard rightfully will not use the workers' words in his commercial. Still, I think it raises some ethical questions about the way Gard is running that campaign, or at least about the suitability of the production company. If there's more like that going on, we could have a real problem with--and a real national spotlight on--Gard's deceptive campaign practices.
  
  
• STUPID SNARK: However, I have to point out my favorite part of the Spivak and Bice article about the deceptive filming:

  Only after the filming was over were the two given a waiver to sign. The woman said she signed it quickly without reading the form because she had to return to her job doing detailing work on the trucks. Her friend signed hers but then asked to see it again so she could read it.
  
  "She said, 'That (video) was for John Gard,' " the woman recalled her friend remarking. "I said, 'Who the hell is that?' "
  
  She explained, "I didn't even know who was running for the Senate."
  
  Um, Gard is running for Congress, actually.
  
  "See how much I know."

  See how much they know: The last I checked, the Senate was a part of Congress! See we have this bi-cameral legislature with two bodies that make up the Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate.
  
  So there you go, folks: I read the Spice Boys, so you don't have to.

Great Minds Think Alike?

Last night I quoted a John Gard fundraising plea, in which he wrote, "The control of the U.S. House of Representatives is at stake, right here in Wisconsin. A Dr. Kagen victory would help the Democrats win the House back." I said that the Democrats' winning back the House was exactly the right thing, and that "Kagen should start putting that sentence on all his literature."

Then this shows up in my inbox this morning:


If you don't click to enlarge, I'll just point out that the highlighted text there reads,

In his recent request for donations, my opponent (John Gard) stated:

"The control of the U.S. House of Representatives is at stake, right here in Wisconsin. A Dr. Kagen victory would help the Democrats win the House back." - Direct Quote

One person I would not want to be today: whoever it is who writes John Gard's fundraising emails.

John Gard gets facts wrong about early TV ads

Not that I keep up with John Gard much, but, you know, I do try to keep tabs on those rabble-rousers out there in Waukesha County, including Wigderson. Wigderson, apparently, does keep up with Gard, and he notes today that Gard is upset about TV ads from Democrat Steve Kagen. Gard's press release reads, in part (his emphasis and bad punctuation),

One of my opponents, extreme liberal candidate Dr. Steve Kagen will begin running expensive 60-second TV ads starting next week!

This comes a full 168 days before the Primary Election!

This is the earliest ever on record for a Wisconsin Congressional candidate to be buying TV ads. Dr. Kagen wants to buy the 8th District seat with an onslaught of ads that shows the Howard Dean faction of the Democratic party will do whatever it takes to win this seat. The control of the U.S. House of Representatives is at stake, right here in Wisconsin. A Dr. Kagen victory would help the Democrats win the House back.

Reading that last part, of course, I'm thinking, right on. A Dr. Kagen victory would help the Democrats win back the House. Sounds good to me; Kagen should start putting that sentence on all his literature.

But, that's not what's funny here. What's funny here is that, in fact, Gard is absolutely wrong that Kagen's ads are "the earliest ever on record." I seem to recall (in fact, I blogged about it) 5th CD Democrat Bryan Kennedy was on the air with an ad last September. And, you know, Herb Kohl has been on the air for almost a month, but, I'll give Gard the benefit of the doubt that he meant "House candidate" when he wrote "Congressional candidate."

Of course, Gard uses the rest of his release to urge supporters to send him money ('cause, you know, he'd like to buy the seat, too, with his $500-a-head Dick Cheney fundraisers). While it's true that Gard can't self-fund the way Kagen can, Gard isn't exactly hurting, either, especially compared to his primary opponent, Terri McCormick.