He asked for it: Education is not like TV sets

Paul Noonan seems like a smart enough guy. In our previous tussles on education (see links at the top of this post, for example), he's proven a worthy opponent.

The other day, he actually tried provoking me:

When I think about whether a certain product should be left to the private sector v. the public sector, I usually think about TVs and freeways. TV's are products that are purchased by many individuals who benefit directly from owning the TV. Freeways, on the other hand, have many secondary beneficiaries [. . .]. In general, I think that most things should be left to the private sector, but if I believe that a certain product closely resembles a freeway, (national defense, certain infrastructure, sewers, etc.) I am more inclined to let the government have a role. The government still doesn't do a great job with many of these responsibilities, but the alternative is to not have these products and services at all.

We treat education as a freeway in this country, but I think it is clearly more like a television. Parents have an interest in purchasing a fine education for their kids, and so it seems that the best way to provide education would be in the free market.

This is the logical and philosophical argument for keeping the state out of schooling. What I never hear from those who are in favor of public education as it currently exists, such as Jay Bullock, is any logical or philosophical justification underlying their arguments. Jay is a champion debater, but he hits you with a thousand bb's, whereas I tend to hit with one giant missile. He'll drown you with information, little examples of public school successes or failures of privatization, but there is no underlying coherence to his arguments.

That's my style of fighting all right--The Blog of 1000 BBs. I will teach it to anyone willing to learn for a mere $600.

More seriously, I need to diffuse Paul's giant (and misguided) missle. While I may sometimes lack underlying coherence (it's there; sometimes you just need 3-D glasses to see it), Paul lacks common sense. Aside from the reductionist false dischotomy proposed by Paul's little thought experiment, he implies that there are no "secondary benficiaries" to free, quality public education. That there is no interest except on the part of parents in educating a child. That no one but individual families sees any positive or negative effect whether their children get an education.

I thought about spending the evening Googling up quotes like the classic one from Thomas Jefferson (“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education”) and trying to point out how much importance the people who founded this country placed on education. But, you know, Horatio Caine is busy trying to nail the guy who murdered his wife, so, frankly, I don't have time for that.

Let's instead go on a bit of a thought experiment of our own: What happens when Americans start treating education like TVs? Well, first of all, we know that the wealthiest buy the biggest, newest, flattest-screen TVs, while the rest of us get by with much less. Given that the top 20% of Americans have something like 84% of the nation's wealth, that leaves quite a few of us who will be buying shoddier models.

Moreover, consider what the market has done to TVs in the last few decades. This commentary was merely the first hit in a long Google list:

But Sony don't appear to be the only company affected by this general decline in standards. [. . .] To make things worse, much of today's consumer electronics is considered "disposable" rather than repairable.

The cost, and often poor availability of spare parts, combined with high labour rates means it's often just cheaper to buy a new VCR, TV or cellphone than it is to have the old one repaired.

The Wal-Martinization of America--and the world--has resulted in vast availability of inexpensive product, but you get what you pay for. Is it worth $40 a year to buy a new DVD player every time your cheap one craps out, or should you spend five times that for one that will last ten years? When you think about education, your answer--whether as a parent or as an outside observer--has to be to get the long-lasting one.

But the market doesn't do well at getting the high-quality merchandise to the 80% of us who lack the resources to buy it outright. One of my favorite stories ever is "The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart." Consider this passage:

Selling Snapper lawn mowers at Wal-Mart wasn't just incompatible with Snapper's future--Wier thought it was hazardous to Snapper's health. Snapper is known in the outdoor-equipment business not for huge volume but for quality, reliability, durability. A well-maintained Snapper lawn mower will last decades; many customers buy the mowers as adults because their fathers used them when they were kids. But Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap, any more than a Viking range is cheap. The value isn't in the price, it's in the performance and the longevity.

You can buy a lawn mower at Wal-Mart for $99.96, and depending on the size and location of the store, there are slightly better models for every additional $20 bill you're willing to put down--priced at $122, $138, $154, $163, and $188. That's six models of lawn mowers below $200. Mind you, in some Wal-Marts you literally cannot see what you are buying; there are no display models, just lawn mowers in huge cardboard boxes.

The least expensive Snapper lawn mower--a 19-inch push mower with a 5.5-horsepower engine--sells for $349.99 at full list price. Even finding it discounted to $299, you can buy two or three lawn mowers at Wal-Mart for the cost of a single Snapper.

If you know nothing about maintaining a mower, Wal-Mart has helped make that ignorance irrelevant: At even $138, the lawn mowers at Wal-Mart are cheap enough to be disposable. Use one for a season, and if you can't start it the next spring (Wal-Mart won't help you out with that), put it at the curb and buy another one. That kind of pricing changes not just the economics at the low end of the lawn-mower market, it changes expectations of customers throughout the market. Why would you buy a walk-behind mower from Snapper that costs $519? What could it possibly have to justify spending $300 or $400 more?

Pretend for a minute that Paul compared education not to TV sets but to lawnmowers. Do you have faith in the market to offer the best education to the most people at an affordable price?

I'm not suggesting that the feds, the state, the city, or anyone else start subsidizing lawnmowers. Whether or not I toss my cheap lawnmower when it breaks is of no concern to the greater community: Only a handful of people ever have to look at my lawn. But my child--well, I don't have children, so, let's say your child--if your child has had nothing but a disposable education, your child would be little more than a burden on society. Multiply that by the many tens of millions who cannot afford--or don't care enough to find--non-disposable education for their children, and you have not the greatest country in the world, but the dumbest.

And imagine that this sentence is not about lawnmower consumers but about education and parents: If you know nothing about maintaining a mower, Wal-Mart has helped make that ignorance irrelevant. This scares me not as a government employee who might get muscled out of a job, but as an American who has to share the country with the children of parents like that.

Do I love the highways as they are? Not really. And I'm not fully content with education as it is, either. But I wouldn't trust the people who bring you cheap DVD players and disposable lawnmowers to keep our commercial traffic humming along. Neither would I trust them to look out for the best of society when it comes to education.

And, hey, exciting news: Horatio's going to Brazil!

Senate Republicans abuse literature, too

There will always be a need for English teachers; I will never be out of a job.

And I'm not just talking about fixing the kids who want to know R U a sk8r boi? or whatever, but also Republicans in the United States Senate.

I caught this one on the Sunday Morning shows:

The Senate defeated a proposal Wednesday by Sen. David Vitter to strip provisions from a major immigration bill that the Louisiana Republican described as amnesty for illegal immigrants but which proponents call an opportunity for "earned citizenship."

Vitter's amendment lost 66-33 after a spirited debate in which Vitter and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sparred over the definition of "amnesty."

"Tens of millions of Americans," Vitter said, know that legislation that would allow many of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country to eventually become citizens fits the dictionary "definition of amnesty."

McCain said that when the American people learn that the Senate bill would allow undocumented residents who learn English and pay back taxes and a $2,000 fine the chance to "get at the end of the line" of those seeking citizenship six years down the road isn't amnesty at all.

"Call it amnesty, call it a banana if you want to . . . but the fact is it is earned citizenship," McCain said.

"Methinks thou dost protest too much," Vitter said.

I'm all for Republican implosions, but that's not what caught my ear. It was Vitter's methinking. The reference is a painful misquoting of Gertrude's line in Hamlet III.ii, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Much worse is this one, which came to me via NPR one day last week:

A few minutes earlier, the Senate had voted 83-16 in favor of construction of the fence and 500 miles of vehicle barriers, the first significant victory in two days for conservatives seeking to place their stamp on the measure.

The developments unfolded in a volatile political environment. The White House struggled for a second day to ease the concerns of House Republicans who contend that President Bush favors amnesty for illegal immigrants, and demonstrators massed a few blocks from the Capitol demanding immigrant rights.

CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports immigration activists didn't stop at the foot of the U.S. Capitol Building Wednesday — they walked right through the doors and into the offices of members of Congress.

Members of the "We Are America" coalition, who hope to use the demonstrations as the foundation of a political movement, won an on-the-spot audience with Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who told Attkisson: "I think it could change minds because it puts a human face on it."

Construction of the barrier would send "a signal that open-border days are over," said Sen. Jeff Sessions. "Good fences make good neighbors, fences don't make bad neighbors."

This is abuse of one of America's greatest poets, Robert Frost. Frost's poem "Mending Wall" ends with the line, "Good fences make good neighbors." But if you believe only the literal meaning of the words, you clearly have not read the rest of the poem. The poem opens (and repeats), "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." The rest of the poem describes the speaker and a neighbor's attempt to repair a stone fence that nature--darn that nature!--keeps tearing down. The neighbor mindlessly parrots "Good fences make good neighbors," but the speaker doesn't understand why. He says,

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

These are the lines Jeff Sessions needs to ponder.

Cognitive Dissonance

From Glenn Greenwald:

So, to re-cap the rules: (1) When a pro-war politician gives a pro-war speech as part of a graduation ceremony, and students in the audience heckle and boo him, that shows how Deranged the Angry Left is--because they heckled a pro-war speech. (2) When an anti-war politician gives an anti-war speech as part of a graduation ceremony, and students in the audience heckle, walk out and even riot, that also shows how Angry the Left is--because they "provoked a near riot" by pro-war students.

I could never be a conservative, because this--believing two contradictory things at once--is too much work for my lazy head.

McIlheran Watch: Lies that won't die

The conservative half of the blogeteria was in hysterics over the weekend based on a report out of Canada stating that Iran, bugaboo du jour of the martial right, had passed a law requiring Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims to wear colored tags identifying them as such.

Trouble is, no such law was ever passed.

But the conservative Cheddarspherians are not backing down from their stories. Owen was in Appleton all weekend at Woodstock or something, which may explain why he hasn't taken down his post. Peter claims that he doesn't "see anything in the denials that convinces me the original story is inaccurate." He goes on to say that "just because someone in Iran says it isn't true doesn't mean it isn't true."

Had he read the links I and mr. mxp provided him in his comments, Peter would have seen that it wasn't just "someone in Iran" saying that the law in question never existed. it was, in fact, a Jewish representative from Iran's Parliament (plus plenty of other poeple in positions to know). Peter thinks he can get away with not retracting the story by saying "to me, this fits the evil that is eminating from these nutjobs." In other words, because this is the sort of thing Iran might do, I will believe it even if it is clearly false.

This is where our good friend Patrick McIlheran comes in:

It was my honor to be one of the panelists Sunday on “Sunday Insight with Charles Sykes.” On it, I mentioned the report from Canada’s national newspaper, the National Post, that Iran passed a law requiring non-Muslims to wear colored badges identifying them as Jews, Christians or Zoroastrians.

The day after the show was taped, National Post reported that Iran denied such a law was passed. A spokesman for the U.S.-based Iranian-American Jewish Federation also said that Jews in Iran said that no such measure was in place--though the spokesman, Sam Kermanian, “added that Jews in Iran still face widespread, systematic discrimination,” according to National Post.

You'd think that here, P-Mac would say "my bad" and move on. But the title of his post is "Retraction. Well, OK, not a retraction." And he quotes the parts of the National Post citing others who doubt the falsity of the story.

In particular is this line from Bush-buddy and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who must read Peter's blog: "Unfortunately," Harper said, "we’ve seen enough already from the Iranian regime to suggest that it is very capable of this kind of action."

I'm not saying Iran is all lollipops and roses for everyone living there, but we should not try to prop up lies when there are plenty of truths to tell. We've been down that road before--and it turns out to be very expensive. But Iran is the story suddenly being thrust into our consciousness, hawks apparently being bored with Iraq. And so any story that can be spun will be spun, and for many months now, no doubt, some people on the internet and perhaps even in real life, will defend a (potential?) decision to attack Iran by citing the law that never was. In the meantime, real tragedies--like the horror show in Darfur--will go unremarked.

For example, Daily Kos front-pager SusanG suggests we look closer to home:

As a long haul suggestion then, I would offer this advice to the coming-late-to-the-party faux feminists on the right: Forget Iran. Begin with Saudi Arabia. Yes, Iran is oppressive to women. But at least there women can vote, run for office and drive. In Saudi Arabia, they can do none of these things, and just last week word came down from their king that women are no longer to be allowed to have their pictures in newspapers.

Since we are (temporarily) on better terms with the Saudis, perhaps we can get our country's hand-holding president to whisper in a sheik's ear that public erasure of half its population is just ... not quite playing well in Peoria. My guess is, we'll have to wait for a Democratic president to play even the politest game of hard ball with the Saudis--and even then, only once we're on the road to energy independence.

So, add another one to the list of lies that won't die--like Al Gore's having claimed to invent the internet, or that cutting taxes raises revenue, or that Bush speaks Spanish.

(Update: Casper points out in the comments that his blogmate Cantankerous covered this on Saturday. I didn't see it.)

Should I?

Last summer, we started running our community columnists and indicated that we'd solicit a new crop of writers in about a year. It's that time.

We chose 17 last year. This time, we're going to choose 20 or more to afford more flexibility.

We're seeking a range of people who reflect the region's ethnic, racial, geographic, gender, age and political diversity. That means liberals, conservatives and those who defy labels, and people from all over the Milwaukee metropolitan area.

The 700 words thing will be a bother. On the other hand, I can be as cool as Rick Esenberg.

I'm on a diet

If I seem extra irritable, grouchy, pissy, or otherwise put off, that's why.

We did this diet once before, about three years ago, and I actually lost about 60 pounds. We abandoned it amid the stress of buying a house and moving and the Howard Dean campaign and all of that, and in the years since I put all that weight back on and then some. But this time I mean it.

(I'm so hungry.)

Friday Random Ten

The in the very merry month of Edition

1. "Mayfair" Nick Drake from Made to Love Magic
2. "What May Seem Like Love" Whiskeytown from Faithless Street
3. "May I Suggest" Susan Werner from New Non-Fiction
4. "Maybe It's Imaginary" Kirsty MacColl from Electric Landlady
5. "May" Richard Shindell from Reunion Hill
6. "I May Know the Word" Natalie Merchant from Tigerlilly
7. "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her" Simon and Garfunkel from The Best Of
8. "Maybe, Just Maybe" Sons of the Never Wrong from Consequence of Speech
9. "Mayday" Kate McDonnell from Where the Mangoes Are
10. "May Day Cafe" The Nields from Live from Northampton

Into the belly of the beast

If you don't hear from me in a reasonable time after this post, send a search and rescue party to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel offices--I have a meeting this afternoon with the dreaded MSM and may not come out alive!

</snark>

(I'm back unscathed. Call off the dogs.)

Now it makes sense

Over the last couple of days, we've heard denials from all the telecoms that they actually did not provide the NSA with information about every single phone call placed within the United States since late 2001, despite what the widely read USA Today article may have said.

Today we learn that, just days before the story broke, Bush signed a presidential memo that, in effect, would exempt the telecoms from liability if they lied to the people, the press, and their shareholders about their activities.

I mean, I suppose it could just be a coincidence . . .

Fraley's Daily Forward

UPDATE: WisOpinion has taken the link down. No word from Brian.

Diamond Dave caught this first, but I think it deserves wider play.

WisOpinion--good non-partisans who often link to your humble folkbum--has spotlighted this post from Blogger Republican campaign strategist Brian Fraley. Now, I've met Brian and he is a decent, smart fellow, and this probably would not be an issue at all had WisOpinion not picked it up. The post begins,

An interesting point comes to mind when contemplating the immigration question. It is amazing that people from across the globe are clamoring to come here. After all, if you listen to liberals, we Republicans have screwed up this country, right?

Following that are quotes about how bad America sucks from famous liberals Bill Mahr, Michael Moore, Gwenneth Paltrow, Sean Penn, and more

The post is probably one of those email forwards, likely originating with rightwingsparkle, where the quotes are in almost exactly the same order as in Brian's post (she includes links to sources for all the quotes, making me think she's the origin), with the addition of some items from this page. Snopes doesn't have anything on this to verify the accuracy of the quotes--I checked.

As I said, I'm assuming Brian got this as an email forward--he's not the kind of guy (as far as I can tell) who would just cut and paste someone else's blog post. But, when posting a forward, he should have at least have indicated it was exactly that. WisOpinion may never have picked it up, then, but at least neither they nor Brian would be looking as foolish as they are now knowing what it is.

Meet Bill Tonight

That's Bill Elliot, who is running for the open 23rd Assembly District seat:

You are invited to an event for Bill Elliott,
who is running as a Democrat in the 23rd Assembly District.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006
6:00pm – 8:00pm

At the Home of
Barbara Becker & Slack Ulrich
9745 N. Lake Dr., Bayside, WI 53217
(Please Park on the east side of Lake Drive)

Suggested Contribution: $25, all donations gratefully accepted.

R.S.V.P.’s are appreciated but not required,
call 414.803.1694 or email info@billforwisconsin.com.

Hosted by Barbara Becker, Slack Ulrich,
and Bryan & Heather Kennedy

I won't be able to make it, but I hope some of you can.

Backward

A long time ago, on a blog far away (and long since defunct), I used to debate badly outgunned conservatives on a variety of topics. Once I even debated my arch nemesis, back before he had a last name, and I kicked his butt. One of the first battles there--not one I was on--was over the death penalty; you can find it all here (plus the archive of my head-to-head with Owen).

The Republican position in that death penalty debate was, essentially, "If we can employ every tool at our disposal to make sure that no innocent person is put to death ever, then we can kill with abandon and happy consciences!" The advisory referendum passed out of the Wisconsin State Senate today has a lot of the same flavor. Republicans want our permission--this thing is really only lacking the "pretty please"--to throw the switch if they can guarantee only really guilty, really bad people will die.

The Republican's opponent in that old debate--the late, eloquent, saintly, and deeply missed Dan Champion--could not stomach that argument. He saw through the idealism and perfect-worldism of his opponent to the core of what makes these extreme Republicans salivate for death:

In my book, God can go ahead and impose the death penalty whenever He chooses.

Um… just not fallible humans. That’s been my point all along: human failure. Human weakness. Human compulsion for revenge.

Ah, revenge. [. . .] As a retributory tool, death works wonderfully. The desire for revenge is the dark secret in all of us. It has, I suppose, been so since the beginning of time. It is human nature to resent a hurt, and each of us has a desire to hurt back. [. . .]

By exacting revenge on criminals as a society, that society drops to the social stratum of its dregs. We are then playing on the murderer’s terms, by their rules, and we cannot win. Official revenge is no better than Hatfield and McCoy revenge, and the results are no less odious.

Even if it is perfect, it is still wrong.

Wrong does not have factors you can control for, DNA evidence that makes it okay, or any level of permission granted by voters to obviate its wrongness.

Wisconsin is my adopted state--don't get me started on what's going on in Ohio right now--and I have on a regular basis been proud of much of what goes on here. The state's motto, "Forward," means something to me. It means, among other things, not going backwards. That sounds glib; I don't mean it to be.

Consider what Wisconsin Republicans have been up to over the last few years (no links--my head hurts):

• They want to bring back the days of the Old West with concealed weapons
  
• They want to stifle the most promising--and most profitable--lines of biomedical research
  
• They want to bring back the death penalty, which Wisconsin saw fit to abandon in 1853
  
• They want to kick gay and lesbian citizens to the curb through their hateful anti-marriage amendment
  
• They want to dismantle the public schools and protections for victims of malpractice
  
• They want to make it as hard as possible for non-white, non-landed citizens to vote

And so on. This is the face of the elected Republican party in Wisconsin: Bloodthirsty, reactionary, cruel, heartless.

This is why they fear Tommy Thompson, why they still haven't granted him a speaking slot at their convention: He's a big doofus, but he is none of those things. Neither are the voters of Wisconsin, and those voters would have shown Mark Green the door.

We need to start going forward again, with one voice against these people. Vote no on their backwards agenda; vote for forward in November.

The ess-pray ould-shay art-stay alking-tay in ode-cay

It's all over the blogs by now (liberal blogs, anyway--conservatives don't seem bothered by it), that the feds are using that new-fangled NSA domestic spying to un-free the press:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Add the first to the rest of the amendments downed by this administration--classics like the fourth and the sixth, for example. Can quartering soldiers be far behind?

Confidential to FedEx:

It should not be impossible to reach a live person from your phone system. Zero, pound, star, nothing could get me to a live person.

Confidential to everyone else: Screaming the door tag number or "help" into the phone doesn't make the computer do what you want it to any faster.

I *NEVER* get what I want

Let me just say that Santa owes me big this Christmas.

In Dominionism News . . .

I always find Dominionist, creationist, and pre-millenialist things kind of frightening and fascinating, since I grew up around people who took everything between Genesis and Revelations quite seriously. I read The Late Great Planet Earth when I was in high school just because it was lying around.

Anyway, both J A Bartlett and Mustang Bobby have hair-raising posts on the subject in the last few days, both partly inspired by Michelle Goldberg's forthcoming book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. MB, in particular, has some scary stuff from James Kennedy, too. Give 'em a read.

Run, Tommy, Run

Seriously, does Tommy! Thompson still have that many blank pages left in his scrapbook that he needs to keep generating press like this?

Consider what the article tells us:

1. Katherine Skiba is still obsessed with Tommy! and can't stop stroking his ego. Please, Katherine, Tommy!'s like the class clown: If you just ignore him, he'll stop.
   
2. Republicans have not invited Tommy! to the state convention yet, even though a long time ago he said he wanted to speak there and announce, well, something.
   
3. What Tommy! might announce is a run for governor, which he thinks he can win.
   
4. Tommy! has no real confidence in actual candidate for governor Mark Green.
   
5. Mark Green, who says that he thinks Tommy! "rescued" Wisconsin, has no sense of recent Wisconsin political history. Remember that taxes are lower, as a percentage of personal income, now under Doyle, and Tommy!'s $3+ billion deficit when he left office would make a horrible platform to run on.
   
6. Tommy! wants to run for president someday. And I want to be an astronaut.

Given a choice--you know, gun to the head and all--I'd rather have Tommy! than Mark Green; Tommy! was never beholden to the extremist wingnutty Republican faction that currently sets the Madison agenda. I'd love to see Tommy! go toe-to-toe with the Republicans on, for example, stem cell research.

But the big reason Tommy! should run is that it absolutely will remind people of what happened under his rule through the 1990s. While there may currently be a blur of "good ol' days" in a lot of people's eyes, Tommy!'s rule was not all, or even mostly, the sunshine and roses people think it was. The entire debate can begin and end with the question of what state's budget shortfall was when Tommy! left office. And we can have a real debate about taxes; were we better off back then? Paul Soglin pointed out the other day the utter transparency and weakness of tax hell arguments, and I think a head-to-head with Tommy!, who wouldn't fall back on the kind of gimmicky cop-outs Green would, could really make this fall's election about something more than cheap rhetoric. And Doyle--who bit big fiscal bullets to fix the mess Tommy! and Scott McClellan McCallum left him--wins by a mile.

Friday Random Ten

The Hello, MacBook Pro Edition

1. "Found Someone New" Susan Tedeschi from Just Won't Burn
2. "Brand New Baby" Mark Erelli from Hillbilly Pilgrim
3. "New Favorite" Alison Krauss & Union Station from New Favorite
4. "Pastures New" Nickel Creek from Nickel Creek
5. "Brand New Companion" Townes van Zandt from Live at the Old Quarter
6. "(This is) My New Vow" Jennifer Kimball from Veering from the Waves
7. "The New Kid" Old 97s from Drag it Up
8. "New Thing Now" Shawn Colvin from A Few Small Repairs
9. "New Slang" The Shins from Garden State
10. "New Blues" Phineas Newborn, Jr. from The Great Jazz Piano of

I don't know what to do!

I mean, should I be excited about the prospect of an investigation into Jim Sensenbrenner's possible violations of federal law?

Or, should I be excited about Bush hitting twenty-frigging-nine percent in the new HI poll?

Really, what's a Wisconsin Democrat to do?

In NO! News--Big Victory for Fair Wisconsin

Among other big fights this fall--for Jim Doyle, against Sensenbrenner, and for the 8th CD--there is the fight against the amendment that bans gay marriage, civil unions, and any substantially similar arrangement.

Fair Wisconsin, the people who bring you the NO on the Amendment blog, have secured a big victory, one you won't hear about in the media, I'm sure (see update below). They announced today that they now have 72 county coordinators in the fight against the amendment:

“With six months until Election Day, we have assembled a massive grassroots outreach program with lead volunteers on the ground in every single Wisconsin county,” said Fair Wisconsin Campaign Manager Mike Tate. “These volunteers live in every corner of Wisconsin and come from all different walks of life. They are highly motivated and passionate about defeating the ban and keeping discrimination out of our constitution.”

The county coordinators will serve as leaders willing to be contacts for other volunteers in their area. They will also help to provide a local perspective on why more and more voters oppose the civil unions and marriage ban.

We need to recognize that the pro-discrimination folks will have massive mobilization as well. Fair Wisconsin's achievement here is huge and gives the good side of the force significant boots-on-the-ground capability.

Please contact Fair Wisconsin if you are interested in volunteering or donating to help the cause.

(Update: The media have covered it, kind of. Susan Lampert Smith mentions it in a bad column today, and the Wisconsin Radio Network did an item.)

Feingold in 2008

Brian Fraley has asked me to weigh in on his call for presidential favorites for 2008. So far, no Democrats seem to have contributed anything at all to his comments thread, and the Republicans there are vacillating among neo-Icarus Newt Gingrich, neo-Confederate George Allen, and concert pianist Condoleezza Rice--none of whom, of course, appeal to me.

I've made no secret around here that I would like to see Russ Feingold take a run at the presidency. For one, I think he would be refreshing on the campaign trail: His criticisms of the current administration are not partisan but ideological (i.e., Russ believes in the fourth amendment, and the president doesn't); his complaints about Congress are not petty politcs but concern over the fact that that don't do their jobs any more; and every campaign he has run has been a triumph of substance over mudslinging.

For another, I also think that Russ would make a great president. He clearly has a strong moral compass has not been swayed--unlike other senators I could name--by the trappings of Washington. As much as Dem bloggers have been writing lately about the pod people who make up the DC establishment (see, for example, Digby and Greenwald), Russ seems to be avoiding the problem. This is in part, I think, because he does actually take the time to visit every county in the state at least once a year (when was the last time a president visited every state annually?). Personally, I think we've had enough Wisconsin representatives "go Washington" already.

Russ believes in fiscal restraint (see, for example, his near-lone support of PAYGO rules), protecting civil liberties, and fighting terrorists instead of unnecessary wars of choice. He supports most other boilerplate Democratic issues, too (even if he is a "maverick"), such as protecting a woman's right to choose and ensuring that everyone is insured. His agenda would be basically my agenda (especially after I get that call about Chief of Staff, natch), and I can get behind that.

So, there you go--a whole slew of reasons for Russ Feingold in 2008.

Plus, Peter's head will explode.

Drinking Liberally Milwaukee--Tonight!

Today is the second Wednesday, so . . .

Details here.

Tuesday Excerpts

These are mostly a couple of days old . . . but I'm behind.

Gretchen Schuldt:

Let's get this straight. County Executive Scott Walker thinks that the Connector’s $300 million estimated price tag is too high, but he thinks that a $6 billion or $8 billion or $10 billion plan -- whatever it is now -- to build bigger freeways is "economic development."

John Conyers:

That was back when Congress did something called "oversight." You know, in our tri-partite system of government, when Congress actually acted like a co-equal branch. The Republican Congress decided to be a rubber stamp for President Bush instead. [. . .]

Oversight should not be a partisan undertaking. As we saw in the late 90's, when oversight is used out of anger or spite, or to gain partisan advantage, the American people express their strong disapproval.

Personally, I have had enough partisanship for the last six years to last a lifetime and I think we need to bring the American people back together.

But we also need to serve their interests. Congressional oversight is part of that. It is a check and balance, designed to protect the American people from too much power being concentrated in too few hands.

Steve Gilliard:

We divide history into neat segments which do not exist in real life. The New Deal made the fleets and armies possible. Berlin's skies turned black filled with airmen saved by government relief and flew in planes build by a government ready to do large things and ask for great sacrifices.

When Grover Norquist talks about drowning the government and the conservatives talk of small government, they forget that it was large government which saved Europe from communism after WWII, the one that fought the Korean War. They want a large government to wage war, but a small one to run America and the two do not mesh.

We have an army taking autistics and gang members because there is no way Bush can ask for national service, even voluntary national service, from the majority of Americans. Most of those in the service want out when their enlistments end. The former NCO's and Officers on the blog are horrified by this.

But after 9/11, Bush asked for nothing. Not to save gas, not to enlist, nothing. So the burden fell on the willing and they are tired. Tired of war, tired of begging for food, tired of seeing their friends horrifically wounded. Once, military service was a way up and out for the working poor, a way to see the world. Most military jobs involve transportation or other kinds of service, only 10 percent, the stuff they show on TV, involves killing, and only a few are members of the elite Special Operators. But Iraq is so dangerous that any job can involve risk, and parents do not want their children taking that risk.

Bush has demanded nothing, and he gets nothing.

Tim Rock:

I am proud to be a flaming liberal. While taxes may be a wee high, I am not sorry to pay my fair share and help ensure government functions, roads are smooth and people in need are given a helping hand. In regards to a helping hand: Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is a favorite conservative phrase these days. Apply it to Halliburton and its greedy brethren and I’ll listen.

Kevin Drum:

The idle rich beneficiaries of the estate tax repeal are pretty obvious — you need to inherit an estate worth several million dollars before you even start to think about paying estate taxes — but the investment tax cuts are a little more subtle. Thus the handy chart on the right, which shows exactly who's favored by the GOP's cherished investment tax cuts. You can click for a more detailed explanation, but why bother? As you can see, the bars on the chart barely even register for anyone making less than a million bucks a year. That's the tax cut the GOP is making its highest priority.

Glenn Greenwald, reminding us that Bush is not a liberal:

A liberal is not merely someone who advocates increased government spending or new government programs, but instead, is someone who does so in order to achieve specific goals and ends. For that reason, to describe a president as "liberal," it is woefully inadequate to simply demonstrate increased federal spending and increased federal power. One has to know the goals and ends of this expansion.

George Bush has drastically expanded the reach, scope and power of the federal government (something which is un-conservative, at least in theory), but that power has been applied in plainly un-liberal ways, and towards decidedly un-liberal ends. For instance, his administration has run roughshod over federalism and states' rights principles and has sought to expand the scope of the Commerce Clause in order to increase the scope of federal power at the expense of the states (clearly the opposite of the crux of small-government conservatism), but has done so in order to achieve goals which are the opposite of liberalism.

The administration has wielded inflated theories of federal power in order: (a) to interfere in a state court probate proceeding so as to dictate the outcome of an individual's end-of-life decisions; (b) to prevent states from allowing their terminally ill citizens to opt for physician-assisted suicide; (c) to override state law allowing sick people and their doctors to turn to medical marijuana; (d) to federalize laws governing marriage (traditionally the exclusive province of the states) in order to ban same-sex marriages; (e) to empower the FDA to override objective scientific inquiry with religious convictions so as to ban the use of safe and effective pharmaceutical products and nullify scientific consensus on moral grounds; (f) to spend more money and increase law enforcement powers in order to combat adult pornography and gambling; (g) to fund new federal programs to teach Americans about abstinence, promote religious-based teachings, and proselytize about other favored moral concepts; and (h) to increase the power of the Department of Education to regulate and control the nation's public schools through reliance on standardized tests.

These are all instances in which the Bush administration has expanded the reach of federal power and increased domestic federal spending -- often by intruding into areas historically reserved for the states. That conduct is the antithesis of the belief of small-government conservatives in federalism, states' rights and restrained federal power. And yet, in no sense could any of these efforts to expand federal power be described as anything resembling "liberalism."

Barbara O'Brien

According to Howard Fineman on Countdown, the White House thinks the Hayden confirmation hearings will help them. The NSA spy program will be front and center, and the Bushies think that’s a winner for them. More dissociative thinking?

I'm just not feeling the blog right now

Or maybe it's blogstipation, since I have several long posts that I haven't written that are kind of bottling up the other stuff.

Plus, you know, work. So, tell me, what are you not blogging about today?

(And, if you can stand it, wade through the comments to this post, where some people are actually discussing policy. Suckers.)

Really big show tonight

Really big.

Just a reminder that you can swing by the Coffee House tonight at 8 for the annual Portage Road Songwriters Guild's New Song Showcase. It's a scant $4 at the door, and you get to meet your humble folkbum.

Friday Random Ten

The End of an Era Edition
This is the last Friday Random Ten generated by the iTunes on my trusty old iBook

1. "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" REM from Eponymous
   
2. "I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You" Colin Hay from Garden State Soundtrack
3. "Next Lover" James from Seven
4. "That Day is Done" Elvis Costello from The Very Best Of
5. "The End of the Tour" They Might Be Giants from John Henry
6. "I Won't Cry Over You" Ellis Paul from Translucent Soul
7. "I Am Done" Melissa Ferrick from Willing to Wait
8. "The End of the Summer" Dar Williams from End of the Summer
   
9. "All Over Again" BB King from Live at the Apollo
   
10. "Harder Now That It's Over" Ryan Adams from Gold

It's Here! It's Here!

I got my MacBook Pro tonight. I ordered it Sunday from Apple's web store; below is the FedEx tracking for the shipment:
I'm very pleased. Only 25 hours in clock time getting here (from Shanghai on a jet, I know), and less than five days from order to power on.

Of course, I spent two hours "transferring" data from my current, limping iBook which I can't now seem to find on the MacBook. I may have to do the transfers the hard way . . .

But I have to say: This thing is fast.

An experiment

I'm linking to this post by Clint the Milwaukee Id10t, not because I agree that Jim Sensenbrenner should run for president, but to confirm Peter's hypothesis. We'll let Clint tell us later who sent him more hits, me or Spivak and Bice.

See, I told you it was a gimmick

A couple of weeks back, I wrote, talking about Republican efforts to pass a TABOR-style amendment to Wisconsin's constitution,

Legislators basically want to peg one number (and whether they call it "spending" or "revenue" you, the voter, are supposed to hear "taxes") to another, unrelated number. They want to create a constitutional correlation where no such correlation currently exists.

It is, in short, a gimmick, an election-year sop for the masses. It is not based on anything more than a desire to capitalize on well-founded tax dissent in this state for political gain.

The two key parts to that were the idea that you--the taxpayer--are supposed to think that you'll pay less in taxes if they pass the amendment, and the fact that any such amendment is nothing more than a gimmick.

Seth at In Effect has time, as usual, to do the research on the amendment actually passed through the Assembly last week. He discovers that the amendment is, in fact, nothing but hot air and empty promises:

According to the LFB analysis, under the Assembly-approved amendment, the state was $501 million under the limit in 1983-1984, the most under of all the years, and it was $1.7 billion over the limit in 1999-2000, which is the highest over of all the years. [. . . T]he tax burden was less in the year the state took in $1.7 billion over the limit than it was in the year the state was $501 million under the limit. [. . .]

Due to the complexity of public finance, it is impossible to accurately target taxes without necessarily creating the loopholes proponents of an amendment won’t accept.

To be fair, the "real" fiscal conservatives around the state and Cheddarsphere are displeased with the Assembly's version, and it won't make it out of the Senate--well, no version will--anyway, so this will be long forgotten by 2008 when the rush to do it again will be on.

But it illustrates what is perhaps the most important point I have tried to make with my TABOR posts of late: While there is real and justifiable anger over the rate of taxation in this state--particularly the property tax--as long as we have gimmick-obsessed people in charge in Madison nothing productive will ever happen to address that. As long as we have people--pretty much an entire party, now--running on the platform of "Vote for me! I can't control my own spending!," we'll never see real leadership on controlling costs and managing growth intelligently.

Gimmicks are never good governing.

Republicans in the legislature not ethical

And, according to Mark Pocan, more of them are unethical than are willing to vote for even a half-hearted revenue amendment.

According to the DayWatch:

Supporters fell 21 votes short because they would have needed a two-thirds majority to bring the bill to the floor. Five Republicans--Sheryl Albers of Reedsburg, Brett Davis of Oregon, J.A. "Doc" Hines of Oxford, Terri McCormick of Appleton and Mark Pettis of Hertel--joined all Democrats in favor of taking up the bill.

Remember that the bill passed the Republican-controlled State Senate with only eight votes against. I've written about it before here and here.

UPDATE: Carrie Lynch asks a good question.

For those of you whose calendars remain insufficiently marked

It is not too late to plan to come down to Milwaukee's Coffee House to see me and my pals in the Portage Road Songwriters Guild for our Third Annual New Song Concert this Saturday:

Portage Road Songwriters Guild New Song Concert
Saturday, May 6, 8:00 pm (doors open at 7:30)
The Coffee House, 631 N. 19th St, (at Wisconsin Avenue)
Cover: A mere $4.

It will be a good time and will feature, among other things, my debut on the mandolin, a march in 3/4 time, and--wait for it--an intermission.

Glenn Greenwald Rocks

I shouldn't really have to say that, but I will. Greenwald is a civil rights/ first amendment attorney, who has been focusing on the fairly regular lawbreaking by the Bush administration. He is doing work that needs, simply, to be done. His new book is the only serious, scholarly work examining where and how the Bush administration is deviating from tradition and from generally understood principles of constitutional law.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: Oh, yeah, another moonbat with Bush Derangement Syndrome. Not true. Greenwald explains:

Contrary to [NRO columnist Byron] York's somewhat sloppy claim that the book "is an indictment of George W. Bush of the sort that has become commonplace on the Left in the last few years," the reason I wrote the book is precisely because the issues it discusses have been largely (and inexcusably) ignored in our national political discussions.

Over the last five years, our country has been gradually though incessantly changing in fundamental and radical ways. The things we see and hear our government doing are squarely at odds with how we perceive of ourselves as a nation and the values which Americans, by definition, universally embrace. We have watched while this administration imprisoned U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and claimed the right to keep them there indefinitely with no trial, no charges and no access to lawyers; routinely used torture as an interrogation tool; created secret gulags in former Soviet Eastern European prisons in order to detain people beyond the reach of the law or monitoring; and eavesdropped on American citizens, on U.S. soil, without warrants or oversight of any kind in patent violation of a 28-year-old law which makes warrantless eavesdropping on Americans a criminal offense.

Those scandals have received their fair share of attention, but this critical point has not: all of those scandals stem from the fact that we have a president who, expressly and out in the open, claims that he has the power to act in the broadly defined area of national security (which includes measures taken against American citizens on U.S. soil) without any "interference" from anyone--including Congress, the courts, and even the law. In sum, we are radically changing our system of government, and, in the process, have transformed ourselves from a country that, for decades, was widely respected as a restrained and principled superpower into an amoral, highly militaristic and aggressive state which is widely feared and despised.

In other words, he doesn't do garden-variety Bush-bashing; he's doing a systematic unpacking of the worst offenses of the administration.

Yesterday, for example, Glenn pointed us to this Boston Globe article:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Other presidents have done the same thing, of course, but, as Kevin Drum points out, not to the scale Bush has. Bush--with a Republican Congress passing the laws, mind you--is averaging more per year than Bill Clinton--also with mostly a Republican Congress--did in his entire term. Glenn correctly comments, "That is why the President has never bothered to veto a law--why bother to veto laws when you have the power to violate them at will?"

I know that among my readers, some of the conservatives have already given up on Bush. For those who haven't, though, I really, really wonder how you can hang on with someone who has such an utter and irrefutable disdain for the law. And how 32% of the rest of the country can be there with you.

[Insert that Homer Simpson drooling sound]

I'm never on the cutting edge of anything.

Except this. I'm still months behind, but that's better than my usual years.

Within two weeks!

(Until then, blogging may be spotty, as I'm getting it to resolve some current issues. But the Apple folks are very good, and sending me a replacement iBook, which I don't want, but was able to sell to offset the cost of the MacBook Pro.)

Robbery! Wisconsin's Congresspeople owe you 31¢

There's this thing they say about local TV news: If it bleeds, it leads. In other words, if a story can be sensationalized and work people into a tizzy, it deserves prominence even if it creates an inaccurate picture of the way the world actually is.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel never passes up a chance to do the same thing to our politicians--usually Governor Doyle--and today they go after our congressional delegation:

Wisconsin's eight House lawmakers spent nearly $1.7 million on "franked mail" from 2003 through 2005, a review by the Journal Sentinel found.

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.

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.

But here's the deal: The paper reports that between 2003 and 2005--over three years--Wisconsin's eight representatives spent nearly $1.7 million. If you do the math, that's about 31¢ for every citizen of Wisconsin. Ten cents a year per person. Even if you wanted to go per household, you might be talking a dollar per household for the last three years. That won't even buy you the newspaper that reported the story.

But, you know, it bleeds.

Bill for Wisconsin

I'm going to talk about Spivak and Bice again . . . but this time, for doing what they usually do, which is report the political gossip. They're blogging that almost-ex-weatherman Jim Ott is considering a run for the 23rd Assembly District, currently held by the retiring Curt Gielow. Ott would be running as a Republican; the Spice Boys also say that Mequon Alderman John Wirth is also considering a run for the seat for the GOP.

What the Spiced Ones don't mention is that there is already an announced candidate for the Democratic slot on the ballot--my friend and former Bryan Kennedy campaign manager Bill Elliot. The website isn't much now, but, hey, he seems at least to be ahead of the two Republicans in that regard.

I've added Bill to the "folkbum-endorsed" section of the sidbar. Bill's been endorsed by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, as well. For more, you can email his campaign at info@billforwisconsin.com.

In other sidebar candidate news, I stumbled across the blog--not recently updated, though--of first CD candidate Dr. Jeff Thomas; I've added that to the "Candiblogs" section, which, until now, only had Pat Kreitlow. If you are or know of a Democratic candidate for state or federal office with a blog, let me know, and I'll add you to the list, too!

Spice Boys almost decapitated by the point as it whizzes past

I am not certain there are two reporters, anywhere, who have as much animosity for the subject they are assigned to that Spivak and Bice have for blogging. The description attached to their blog space at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reads, "Journal Sentinel columnists Cary Spivak and Dan Bice trudge through the scores of local political blogs so you don’t have to." Clearly, with the level of contempt they regularly show bloggers, this is not an assignment they relish. "Trudge," indeed.

For example, they seem convinced that every blogger ever has exactly one motivating factor: Selfishness. They're just sure every blogger's greatest desire is to see themselves in print or is otherwise in the blog game for self-aggrandizement. When they do indeed blog about blogs, they just can't help but let their contempt shine through.

Which brings us to their offering for today:

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.

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.

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 heaven forbid that she take time out of her busy schedule discussing who may be America's next top model to attend and cover a national conference about blogging!

More than anything else, it shows that Spivak and Bice just don't have much of a feel for what this medium that they are supposed to cover is all about, whose niche is where, and what we think is actually important. You'd think, on a day like today, when the actual Wisconsin political blogs are all over the One-Night Stand of the Frat Brother of the Gynecologist of TABOR's Ex-Girlfriend (full props to Diamond Dave for that one!), the Boys could come up with something more informative and informed than the mean-spirited snipe at Althouse.

As much as I hate to say it, Patrick McIlheran actually does "get" this medium, as evidenced by his writing today of the post los Niños Spice should have written.

Maybe covering the blogs (so you don't have to!) just isn't as much fun as trafficking in political gossip. Maybe they just don't have any respect for people like me (and Althouse) who don't get (or want) a paycheck for writing every day. Either way, their scorn couldn't be more clear. Thanks, Boys, for all your efforts to marginalize us.

Friday Random Ten

The Unforgivable Edition

1. "For Once in Your Life" Lucy Kaplansky from Ten Year Night
2. "Please, Mrs. Henry" Bob Dylan and The Band from The Basement Tapes
3. "Viola" Girlyman from Remember Who I Am
4. "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now" Cracker from Cracker
5. "Flying" Willy Porter from Dog Eared Dream
6. "What Kind of Love is This" Carrie Newcomer from My True Name
7. "A Little But Lonesome" Casey Chambers from Barricades & Brick Walls
8. "The Only Way" Ellis Paul and Vance Gilbert from Side of the Road
9. "Eyes Front (See Through You)" Peter Mulvey from The Trouble with Poets
10. "Unforgivable" Vance Gilbert from Unfamiliar Moon

In Milwaukee Public Schools news . . .

Last night the Board of School Directors installed milquetoast Joe Dannecker as its new president. Dannecker, who, unfortunately, represents me, replaces anti-public school Director Ken Johnson in the post.

This just makes me feel like crying in futility:

"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.

Sigh.

Second Cousin Once Removed of TABOR passes Assembly

After defeating the Bastard Stepson to TABOR 66-32 yesterday (and killing ethics reform in Republican caucus), Wisconsin Assembly Republicans introduced a new TABOR after midnight and passed it, almost sight-unseen, 50-48. State Rep. Mark Pocan, who was there, has lots more. This is a bad, bad bill.

Fallout will come during the day today, and I expect a significant number of Senate Republicans (and by significant, I mean three or four, which is all it will take to derail the thing) to distance themselves from this. Most will use the excuse that this amendment only addresses state spending--limiting it to the rate of increase in personal income--not local spending as well. TABOR and all its relatives will die this session.

For more on why TABOR and family are bad for Wisconsin, see this earlier post.

Update: Bellweather conservative blogger Owen calls it a "disaster."

Headline confusion

I don't care about the Packers; I don't follow much of anything involving them. (I'm sure my readership will now plummet.)

So the headline "Walker trade? Not likely, Thompson says" doesn't make me think football. It makes me think Tommy! has been thinking about sending the Milwaukee County Executive to Illinois for an alderman to be named later or something.

Health Care

A couple of things are converging to make this post. One is that on the same day a new report told us that more than 40% of moderate-income American adults went uninsured for at least part of 2005 (on top of more than half of low-income and 1 in 5 middle-income Americans--Kevin Drum has graphs), the State Senate approved a tax break for "health savings accounts," sending to Governor Doyle a bill that, most likely, will not help any of those moderate-income folks. Two bi-partisan bills that actually would help people--the Gielow/ Richards bill and the new Decker/ Musser bill will, unlike HSAs, get nowhere in this same legislature.

Conservative Peter DiGaudio (along with a big chunk of the Badger Blog Alliance) is upset at the impending death of a woman under Texas's "Futile Care Law" that allows hospitals to stop treatments that will not, ultimately, save a life, under certain conditions. DiGaudio claims that this kind of rationing to health care is just a preview of greater government involvement. At the same time, conservative Rick Esenberg defends insurance company Wellpoint for, essentially, signaling to a cancer patient that they would rather she die, too. I guess they, like the Texas hospital, are thinking, Why wait for the government to take over?

Plus, I haven't written a long, substantive post in a while, and my fingers get out of shape when I miss my one 1,000-word post a week minimum.

More proximately, the cause may be that in the comments to this post on TABOR and TABOR-like symptoms, several of you voiced your opinions on health care. While I don't think that we here in the folkbum community (hey, I have enough regulars I think I can call it that) will solve America's health care crisis, it seems appropriate to open up a thread here to see what kind of common principles we could all work from, whatever our perspectives.

When I think about health care, I start from a few basic core positions:

1. Collectively, this country spends too much on health care. We spend double per capita than most other western countries, yet we don't get care that's twice as good or double the satisfaction (read the whole thing). Related to that, medical inflation outpaces the CPI by far too much. (eRiposte has some telling data.)
   
2. The cost to individuals to get comprehensive health care coverage is too great and, indeed, even negotiated group plans purchased by employers cost too much.
   
3. The quality of Americans' health care absolutely should not be an accident of where they happen to work. The peculiar and uniquely American system of health insurance as a benefit of employment has distorted both the health care and labor markets.
   
4. The U.S. should not settle for a health care model that puts the most important decisions--from who your doctor is to what level of care you should receive--in the hands of anyone but consumers and patients.
   
5. One of the most backwards things about health care in this country is the secrecy, the multiple price-points for the same service, and the loopholes in care. I support the idea (proposed by, among others Steve Kagen) of unitary and transparent pricing. No reform can go forward without it.
   
6. Health care is, and should always remain, a two-word phrase.

There are a variety of reforms that I would support that fit in with those beliefs.

It is clear, though, that the number one task ought to be cutting the cost of delivering health care.

Here's one thing we know: Patients are paying more, but doctors (and nurses and PAs and techs and anyone else who earns a living seeing patients) aren't making more. Another thing we know: Most of that extra money is going to the middle man, the entity that takes your money and then hands it to doctors. There's where we need to start the reform.

I figure there are two extreme ways to do that. One would be eliminating insurance companies entirely and paying for everyone's care at the state or federal level. The other would be cutting everyone loose and letting them all negotiate for themselves the best deal they can get and hope the market looks out for the best interest of the ill and poor as well as the rich and healthy.

Anyone can see that neither of those extremes will be satisfactory to anyone except the extremists. What to do, then?

Seems to me, just ball-parking a plan here, that the best answer would be a combination of the two, a middle ground, if you will. Here's what I think a plan could look like. Figure that this gets done on a county-wide--or perhaps regional--scale; in fact, if I ever ran for county board or anything like that, this might be a significant part of my platform (any other candidate is free to use it):

• Start by gathering every public sector employee into one buying pool. Rather than letting each unit of government fend (and do the paperwork) for itself, put everyone in one group administered by a small agency that does only this. The agency will be partially paid for by the units of government, who would almost certainly contribute less here than they do to their own benefits departments.
  
• Ask insurance providers to submit plans to get access to that pool. The cost of admission for any insurance company would be a percentage fee--say, 3%--based on the previous-year's business in the county (or region). If a provider did $3,000,000 of business last year, they'd pay $90,000 to get in on the deal. The fee will offset the cost to the units of governments to set up and run the agency, and insurers will see it as part of the cost of doing business--cheaper than cutting themselves off from such a large pool of potential customers.
  
• Send a "rough draft" of the collected plan proposals to each insurer to ask if they want to make changes. That way, each insurer sees what the others are offering, encouraging them to compete with lower prices.
  
• The final set of available plans is sent to the employees. The specific units of government can then say--as the state does now with its employees--which, if any, of the plans would be "free," and which would result in a deduction of the difference from salaries. Employees choose the plan that looks best for them, and, like that, we have cheaper health care across the public sector.
  
• Then cover everyone without employer-provided insurance on a sliding scale based on the previous-year's income. People pick a plan from the same set of choices offered the public-sector employees. Cover the cost of the sliding scale with a small fee against businesses that do not offer health insurance to their employees.
  
• Finally, open it up to the private sector, letting business use the same set of choices (further encouraging more insurers to offer plans) the way the private sector does. As we do with insurers themselves, and with the units of government, assess a fee--perhaps a small percentage of payroll--to help pay for the administration. Any business that opts out--providing insurance itself--pays no fees at all to anyone, though access to lower-cost plans will almost certainly move employers into my plan.
  
• Here's the kicker: Make the fees on business and contributions from the units of government to participate larger than the fee levied against those who don't provide insurance at all. This will encourage a slow migration of everyone--public and private sector--into a system that allows for maximum transparency and competition among insurers (and providers--see above), maximum choice for consumers, and the power of the state to bargain with insurers to keep their costs down. It takes employers out of the losing game of providing health insurance, but doesn't add up to single-payer.

That's my idea. Tear it apart in the comments below--but only if you provide some ideas of your own.

Victor Wooten is the best. Bass player. Ever.

If we had an army of Victor Wootens, we'd groove the Iraqi insurgency to a standstill in a matter of minutes.

I'm just sayin'.

Ways to Die

Some people ask me if I blog because someday I'd like to be a journalist.

Well, no, I don't want to be a journalist. When the whackjobs on the Right do finally start the civil war, the journalists, apparently, will be lynched. I'd rather die the quicker, less painful, death by shooting I was previously promised by a Wisconsin blogger.

Barbara O'Brien, as she usually does, has more.

Speaking of Pat Roberts

Roberts is trying--again--to mess with Phase 2 of the investigation into inelligence before the Iraq War began. quiddity over at uggabugga (I love typing that!) poses it as a math problem.

100% Stupid

When I noticed last week that the Harsdorf/ Brown Wicked Stepsister to TABOR included the "65% solution," I thought about writing a post focusing on that. I've read some on this thing, and it's the hot new conservative fad for fixing schools. It's not a good plan.

But then I got busy; my brother got married; life, generally, intervened--you know how it goes. And Xoff beat me to it. As he notes,

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.

Leaking

With all the hoopla in the right Cheddarsphere over the firing of possible CIA leaker Mary McCarthy (see here or here, for two examples), and the general attitude of that side to Russ Feingold (too many links to even try), I'm surprised they all missed this:

[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.

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.

I mean, c'mon, it's a giant sitting duck of a target that they could just--

Oh. Wait. That story's not about Senate Intelligence Committee member Russ Feingold; it's about Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kansas). Gotta stop those leakers, eh?

Happy Equal Pay Day, 2006!

For all of my working women readers, I hope your Equal Pay Day has been a good one.

Monday Quickies

• First, whether you think you're in the left, right, or center--or even not anywhere on the spectrum--you should be concerned that they're going to take away "internet neutrality." What does this mean? Your ISP could decide to block, well, anything. Here's more about how you can help.
  
  
• For the record, Patrick McIlheran's links to me have brought, according to the SiteMeter, zero hits. I'm not sure what it means, but I feel the need to say it. Update, April 27: One hit.
  
  
• Carrie Lynch writes a post I never had time to.
  
  
• The best part of this story:

  [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.

• Seth tells us about CFAF, which is not the sound of coughing up phelgm, but an "interest group." The discussion raises an interesting point: Since the governor has no say in a constitutional amendment, like the TABOR family amendments, why is Mark Green campaigning for governor on the issue? Why is CFAF running ads against Doyle about it?
  
  
• Read about a conservative whose health insurance company wants her to die. As there are no atheists in foxholes, there are none opposed to health care reform among the seriously ill.
  
  
• Remember when the right Cheddarsphere had a fit about Jim Doyle holding hearings to try to figure out why gas prices were so high? (Fraley is still at it.) Well, let's see if they lay into George W. Bush with the same kind of gusto.

McIlheran Watch: Conservative Economic Delusions

I don't have a lot of time for blogging this morning, but I do want to squeeze in a quick round of the M-Watch. See if you can spot the contradiction. Let's call this paragraph A:

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."

Here's the contradiction: If the economy is really so "cooking," why did two or three times the number of expected people show up at a job fair? It certainly can't be because the economy is "cooking along" for them, can it?

Like the good shills at Fox News (aside to Paul Brewer: Can we call that a push poll?), McIlheran is willing to believe that good numbers in some metrics mean everyone's boats have gotten higher in the rising tide. This is clearly not the case: Some people's boats are taking on a lot of water.

To be fair, some of his column directs reasonable criticism at Milwaukee officials who squashed an attempt by e-retailer BuySeasons.com to move into new development in the city's Menominee Valley. Officials were hoping better-paying and non-seasonal employment would end up there, but they clearly erred in killing that opportunity.

But most of McIlheran's column is bewildered rumination over why people think the economy is so bad since everyone can be a truck driver ("where you can spend hours engaging your mind via books on tape"--really, I'm not making this up). He needs to go read some Billmon, who explains, with graphs and pictures, why people think the economy sucks. Hint: It has something to do with the huge spike in corporate profits and the flat line of personal income. Tack on $3.09 for gas and, well, it starts to feel pretty glum, doesn't it?

Happy Earth Day, 2006

Gaylord Nelson's biographer, Bill Christofferson, reminds us of the first Earth Day.

He noticed! He noticed! (More TABOR)

I'm as giddy as schoolgirl at an O-Town concert! After a solid year of my taking on his right-wing nuttery (May 1st is our anniversary!), Patrick McIlheran finally mentions me today on his blog!

Sadly, he's not apologetically abandoning his indefensible beliefs, but rather trying to tell me that I'm wrong:

[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.

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.

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.

What I also said, and what McIlheran deliberately ignores (and Republican legislators fail to address), is that it is "the mechanism that grates on" me, and grates massively. See, any artificial tie between state and local spending (or revenue) and some unrelated data point (like inflation or the rate of new development in a community) is stupid. It's, like, stupid-and-a-half. I didn't use such plain language in my essay yesterday, and maybe if I had, McIlheran would have gotten the point. The point is, simply, that limiting how much government can do based on a measure unrelated to what government does is in-flippin'-sane, and will ultimately push the state into the same kind of death spiral Colorado is desperately trying to pull out of now.

If McIlheran is content to be so short-sighted, well, a year of plugging away at him hasn't changed his mind yet, so it's not bound to happen anytime soon.

Do I have all the answers to complex issues of state and local taxing and spending? No, of course not. I'm an English major, and a bad speller to boot. But I know BS when I see it--I teach high school, remember?--and TABOR, the Bride of TABOR, the Ugly Children of TABOR, the Downstairs Neighbor of TABOR, and all the other Republican-sponsored constitutional amendments we've seen in the last few years are BS of a very pure strain. They're transparent attempts to harness Wisconsinites' disatisfaction with high property taxes, not real solutions to why costs keep increasing and a greater share of those costs are borne by property owners and working stiffs.

I want this state to move beyond gimmicks. McIlheran, apparently, doesn't.

Friday Random Ten

The "What I'm trying to say is . . ." Edition

1. "Italian Shoes" Patty Larkin from Red = Luck
2. "Early" Victoria Williams from Going Driftless
3. "See Him on the Street" the Jayhawks from Tomorrow the Green Grass
4. "Lonely House" Connie Evingson from I Have Dreamed
5. "Mad Mission" Patty Griffin from Living with Ghosts
6. "Digging a Ditch" Dave Matthews Band from Busted Stuff
7. "Farewell to Bitterroot Valley" Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer from Tanglewood Tree
8. "Bloomington" Old 97s from Drag it Up
9. "Independence Day" Ani DiFranco from Little Plastic Castle
10. "Southwind" Willy Porter from The Trees Have Soul