McIlheran Watch: Worst. Column. Ever.

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

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

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

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

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

But then the rub:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concealed Carry goes down, again--and there's a lesson here

The right Cheddarsphere will complain about yet another Jim Doyle Veto on a Friday--and, frankly, I also would have preferred he waited until this statement could get more press:

The bill does not create a single job, help a single Wisconsin citizen afford health care or improve schools for a single Wisconsin child.

Several others in the left half of the Cheddarsphere have already commented, including Xoff and Ben, the former of whom notes that this sentence should be a mantra. I agree--in fact, it could just be added below the word "Veto" on the red rubber stamp. Perhaps it could even be added to legislative Republicans' stationery, just to save Democrats the time.

Here's a challenge to the right Cheddarsphere: Name one initiative Republicans have sent to Doyle in the last six months that does the things Doyle has challenged them to do.

UPDATE: Rick Esenberg tries the challenge and fails.

Vouchers: From the "tell me something I don't know" files

On the front page of the Metro section in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Doyle seems willing to negotiate on voucher cap

No, really? I mean, really?

Friday Random Ten

The Par-tay for 1000 posts! Edition

1. "3,000 Miles" Ellis Paul from Stories
2. "Ten Thousand Skies" Vance Gilbert from Unfamiliar Moon
3. "84,000 Different Delusions" Shawn Colvin from A Few Small Repairs
4. "You and Me of the 10,000 Wars" Indigo Girls from Nomads Indians Saints
5. "If I Met Me at a Party" The Loomers from Shine
6. "Party Generation" Dar Williams from End of the Summer
7. "Born a Thousand Times" Sons of the Never Wrong from Waterbug's Vote in November
8. "Mil Besos" Patty Griffin from 1000 Kisses
9. "Forty Thousand Headmen" Traffic from The Best of . . .
10. "1000 Miles Away" Carrie Newcomer from Visions & Dreams

Compare/ Contrast

Seth of the new-to-the-blogroll In Effect does something I was thinking about doing, saving me the trouble. It's nice to have friends in the Cheddarsphere!

Anyway, Seth lays out, point by point, the two plans to alleviate the potential crisis if and when the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program hits its cap again next fall.

Any independent observer can see which plan is actually designed to improve education.

RIP, Wilson Pickett

The midnight hour has finally come.

folkbum's rambles and rants turns 1000!

Yes, boys and girls: This post, the very one you are now holding in your hot little hands, marks folkbum's rambles and rants's 1000th post!

I have considered, for some time now, what I would do when this landmark rolled around. I figured I would want to take the time to thank all of the not-mes who have participated over the last three years so that not all 1000 posts have been mine. So, Jeff, Tim, Jeremy, Sarah, Stephen, Bryan, Ingrid, and Josh: Thanks for being a part of the fr&r family. Also thank you to the readers. Back in the day, when I only got ten or eleven hits an day and most of them were people Googling "Aaron Carter armpits" or "Elizabeth Edwards big fat cow," I was grateful for any attention. Now we have a lively group of regular readers and commenters and emailers, all of whom I appreciate dearly.

Finally, I would like to post, verbatim, the most important news item of the day, in commemoration of this monumental occasion:

Goose knocked out city street lights

A now-deceased goose on an ill-fated flight path knocked out power to every street light in the city of Milwaukee and roughly 500 We Energies customers for more than an hour Wednesday, said company spokeswoman Beth Martin.

The goose flew into a power line around 5 p.m. which triggered equipment failure to a "feeder" that delivers electricity to the city's street lights, which operate on their own power grid, Martin said.

"That particular line that failed feeds the City of Milwaukee street lights," Martin said.

It also cut power to about 500 customers on the south side, she said.

Power was back on by 6:32 p.m., Martin said, adding "We actually have the goose... I don't know what (the We Energies crew) do with it from there"

Keep comin' back, everybody.

Voices on Vouchers

This morning's Milwuakee Journal Sentinel's letters-to-the-editor section is all about vouchers, the cap and the crisis related to it, and everyone from Howard Fuller to Patrick McIlheran. Since you've been putting up with my own bloviations for some time now, I thought I would point you to what real, blog-less people might think on the issue.

I'd also like to highlight two letters in particular, from education professionals. The first is from the President of the Urban Day School, a long-established and successful private school participating in the program. He writes, in part,

We have more than 500 choice students at Urban Day and are one of the original seven schools to enter the choice program in 1990. Though Urban Day has a solid reputation and has educated thousands of Milwaukee's inner city children, the school would lose hundreds of seats under the cap. This uncertainty is troubling to schools and threatening to parents.

Choice is no longer an experiment. It has proved itself year after year. At Urban Day, we see evidence in high attendance rates and graduates who go on to attend Milwaukee's finest high schools.

Schools like Urban Day are a part of the solution. They are producing the educated young people we all want. Such schools, their students and their parents deserve support.

He points out two of the most serious problems raised by the recent discussion of vouchers, the cap, and DPI's rationing plan that offers no protection established schools and current students. One, he notes that this voucher program is "no longer an experiment." I would say it is not an experiement for him, and for the students in his school. But what about all those kids at Northside, or any one of the 18 or so other schools that the pro-voucher Journal Sentinel labeled as questionable in its series on vouchers last spring? Is it right that taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for schools like those? Does he really think that those seat-of-the-pants operations deserve the same respect and deferrence his school gets?

Second is the new rationing plan that DPI has offered after the first, fair plan, which would have saved all of Urban Day School's seats, was rejected by the very voucher supporters now targeting Jim Doyle and DPI because of the crisis this new plan will cause. UDC's president should call George and Susan Mitchell and ask them why some of the groups they bankroll stopped the plan that would have kept his successful school on the right path.

The second letter I want to highlight is from a high school teacher in Oconomowoc, who echoes thoughts about Patrick McIlheran's Sunday column that I also expressed:

Parents and students at my school have asked me many of the same questions raised in Patrick McIlheran's Jan. 15 column ("Students want to know why learning's wrong").

My students ask me why they have to take standardized tests when we could actually be learning something useful at testing time. They want to know why the Republican-controlled Legislature continues to support revenue caps even though they threaten an education that works by forcing annual program and staffing cuts.

President Bush must believe our public school parents are intellectually unequipped to make a decent choice about their child's education. Why else would he have supported an ever-burgeoning federal reach, in the name of accountability, into public education? Only a small percentage of our student body chooses to leave our district; some even enter through the open enrollment program. But I guess Bush knows better than our parents whether our district is working.

If parents and students are the true measures of accountability, as McIlheran suggests, let's ditch "No Child Left Behind." If not, then apply it and other state and federal laws to voucher schools. Until a universal accountability standard exists for public and private schools, this taxpaying public school teacher will never support tax-paid vouchers.

Well said, sir. Politicians who fall all over themselves to cut public school budgets rush to support increases in funding for the unaccountable shadow school system that is the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Voucher supporters flee from anything that would allow a real one-to-one comparison to the public schools in terms of performance assessment. Even the new bill offered by Republicans that would put a "study" in place doesn't require any voucher school to test anyone, and if they do, they don't have to use the state tests. Any results from any such study would be utterly meaningless.

Grading Doyle's college pact: A+

I didn't see Governor Jim Doyle's State of the State; I didn't even read the full transcript. I did, however, get a billion and a half emails from everyone and his sister telling me all the goodies in it. And, of course, walking through the Right Cheddarsphere, I learned via their outrage which parts I'd like best. Doyle's college tuition aid plan got a single line in this morning's Journal Sentinel write-up of the speech, but did warrant a full article Tuesday before the speech. I also knew it would be important since my arch-enemy Owen disliked it intensely.

On the merits, though, the idea deserves a full airing and wide support. From the article:

Under the plan [. . .] eighth-graders would sign a pledge agreeing to maintain at least a B average in high school, take college-prep courses and live a clean life.

If they get accepted to a Wisconsin public university and receive as much financial aid as possible but still can't cover their tuition, the state would pick up what's left with grants or subsidized loans or guarantee the student a work-study job.

Doyle said the plan, modeled after similar programs in Indiana and North Carolina, would help students get into college in the face of ever-increasing bills. [. . .]

The program's details are still in flux, but [UW System President Kevin] Reilly estimated that it would cost the state $5 million to $10 million a year. The UW System would request the money in the state budget, which is subject to legislative approval.

Ten million dollars a year is roughly .04% of the state's annual budget, by the way.

According to Doyle in his address last night, he envisons that, "The neediest families will receive grants to pay the costs of education. Others at slightly higher incomes will get a mix of loan subsidies, grants, and work study. But as long as the student holds up his or her end of the bargain, every family that qualifies for financial aid will get a package that fully covers their tuition." The idea is to find ways to close the gap between the cost of the UW schools students are accepted to and the amount of financial aid provided through the feds.

To make sure we're all clear: This past year, tuition at UW schools about 7%. This is not a surprising increase, given recent history. At present rates, the tuition alone at UW-Milwaukee, for example, will be north of $8700 for an in-state student. Someone working full-time at McDonald's wages (assuming Republicans get their way and hold minimum wage low) would earn only about $12000 anually. Should an 18-year-old have to put in 40 hours a week just to give 3/4 of it to UW for an education?

Okay, I know that if all you got to pay for college is your minimum wage job, you're probably eligible for financial aid--loans, workstudy, and even grants (though Bush and the national Republican party is out to cut grants, you know). But Owen's conservatarian dander is up:

So, in the long run, the taxpayers would be subsidizing much of the student population’s tuition. The student would not have to pay anything out of pocket to cover the cost of school. What effect might this have?

First, the student would no longer have an incentive to work or apply for scholarships to pay for his school. Why work hard in high school to save for college if the government is going to foot the bill? Why fill out those 200 scholarship applications? Furthermore, why would parents bother saving money for their kids’ college? They can blow that money on a boat instead because, after all, the government will be picking up the bill.

Second, more kids would be more likely to slack off in college. When a kid is busting his butt to pay for college, he is more likely to attend more classes, study harder, and graduate sooner. The kids with the free rides are the ones who have 5 senior years.

Let's be clear again: Ain't none of this free rides. The idea is to remove or ease the gap between financial aid and families' ability to pay, and the true cost of a university education. Financial aid--and I speak as someone who got a lot of it and is still, nine years after graduation, paying it back--involves loans, loans, work study, and more loans (except for those endangered grants). The incentive is still there to save and work, both on the parents' end and on the students' end. Some day those loans will come due. Students and parents will still be expected to kick in--only the neediest of families would get anything close to what Owen envisions as a "free ride." For all his talk lately of helping out the poor but motivated students in Milwaukee's voucher program, you'd think Owen would be in favor of exactly this sort of program.

Let me also speak not only as someone who has experience with student loans, but as one who teaches high school students, both high- and low-achieving. On any given day, I work with students who have Governor Doyle's expected 3.0 average and students who've had a good semester if they get a 0.25 average. One thing they all seem to have in common is the notion that they want to go to college. There is no such word as graduate anymore; the word is graduateandgotocollege, just like that. Another thing they all seem to have in common is after-school jobs. Some days, these are the bane of my existence. "Why aren't these essays done?" I can ask of any given class, college-prep or remedial. "I had to work," the class answers back.

"Why do you have a job?" I ask. "Don't you realize that school is your job? What can you possibly need money for?"

"To pay for college," they say. When pressed about how much they have in the bank after all that working, the students--regardless of ability level or actual likelihood of college admission--say not much. Then they look guiltily down at their $100 shoes.

Some students, particularly the students of Hmong immigrant families, do have to work to support the household, and sometimes that can't be helped. But every year, even among my International Baccalaureate students--especially among them!--I see students not working to potential because they are working to buy that prom dress (or tuition).

If those pressures eased, just a little (not to mention if even a few percent more of my students honored a pledge to be college-prep and lead a clean life) my job would be easier, graduation rates higher, and overall GPAs much less embarassing. I know that some conservatives who have criticized the plan--from Owen to Assembly Speaker John Gard--have a stake in keeping the Milwaukee Public Schools worse than they need to be to buttress support for Milwaukee's voucher program. But here Governor Doyle is drawing a very clear finish line that will encourage more students to get there, not just in my high school in Milwaukee, but all across the state.

Let's work toward making that a reality.

More wacky moonbat liberal treasonous traitors

are demanding an investigation into the NSA's domestic warrantless-wiretap program . . . You know, far-left Michael-Moore-style lunatics like Grover "drown government in a bathtub" Norquist, Alan "cold, dead hands" Gottleib, and Paul "Heritage Foundation" Weyrich:

Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). [. . .]

"When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information," said [Former U.S. Rep. Bob] Barr. "However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism."

At what point will knee-jerk Bush supporters acknowledge that something is rotten in Denmark?

McIlheran Watch: Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

I don't know what they're paying per word, but I can do today's column in about 1% of the space:

Bob Donovan's ballot question has complicated answers.

Read the whole column to see how he stretches that out into 700 words and gets in his bad joke (look for skis), his reflexive, anti-tax misrepresentations, and his anti-union, pro-TABOR Republican talking points. Got to stick with the formula, right?

And speaking of formula, robola (at new digs!) does P-Mac haiku again.

One More example of Hold 'em hokum

Al Gore gave a speech yesterday. He was joined by Republican Bob Barr in an event in which the two called for a special counsel to investigate potential violations of the law by the current administration. Al Gore knows something about independent investigators, as one dogged his boss for the better part of a decade.

Starting on the right foot, Hold 'em blogger Peter DiGaudio calls our former Vice President, who served a long and distinguished career in Congress prior, Algore and says he fell out of a tree to give his speech. Oh. It hurts. The laughter. It hurts. Then,

Algore is referring to, of course, the NSA wiretapping and electronic surveillance of suspected Al Qaeda operatives inside the U.S. while in contact with foreign terrorists. Of course, Algore conveniently neglects to mention the NSA's Echelon program, conducted under the Clinton administration, or the equally invasive Carnivore program, proposed by the FBI under Clinton. I will have more information on these two programs in a separate entry.

Let's do this slowly: Clinton never violated FISA under Echelon. George Tenet, whom the right grants sainthood for his work under Bush, said "We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department" when he testified before Congress in April 2000. That's a fine distinction, since Bush admits to bypassing FISA. Carnivore searches were all conducted with probable cause and warrants, at least as of 2000, before Bush took over. Who knows what's happened since. Peter would like to equate the warrantless wiretaps with two programs that were conducted with warrants. That's apples and cockroaches, man.

Peter then recounts some standard talking points, leading to

While we are at it: I am sick and tired of the MSM's deliberate mischaracterization of this as "domestic spying." It was not domestic spying; ordinary Americans were never in danger of having their privacy invaded by Big Brother, and no domestic phone calls were monitored.

Peter wrote this yesterday, before today's New York Times story (none of the authors has a book deal, so there goes the easy out). The gist:

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans. [. . .]

Under a presidential order, the agency conducted the domestic eavesdropping without seeking the warrants ordinarily required from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles national security matters. [. . .] Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called. In other cases, lists of phone numbers appeared to result from the agency's computerized scanning of communications coming into and going out of the country for names and keywords that might be of interest. The deliberate blurring of the source of the tips caused some frustration among those who had to follow up. [. . . I]n bureau field offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more "calls to Pizza Hut," one official, who supervised field agents, said.

So yes, Peter. This was domestic spying, tracking down people and contacts in the US who were not agents of a foreign power or bent on any plot more sinister than than a thin crust with pepperoni.

Peter then, in his own words and those of boor Neal Boortz, offers rapid-fire lie after lie. There's the "Gorelick Wall" lie, in which he tries to pin 9/11 on a minor Clinton administration official; there's the "Buddhist temple/ 'No controling legal authority' " lie, in which he reminds us of one of the right's most sinister stories about Gore and ignores the results of a Republican-led investigation into the matter that cleared Gore. He ends with the "Aldrich Ames warrantless search" lie, which ignores the fact that physical searches were not illegal under FISA until 1995, after the Ames searches. Oh, wait, Peter (quoting Boortz) actually said that Clinton wiretapped Ames without a warrant. That, too, is a lie: "[T]he Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued orders authorizing electronic surveillance of Ames's office and residence"--or so said the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in November 1994.

In the end, Peter declares that "The decline of this man into utter madness would be sad, if it weren't so doggone funny." It would certainly be funny, if any of it were true. I wish Peter allowed comments, so I could debunk there, and not here. Alas, his readers will probably keep believing the hokum.

Update: I could have just let Al Gore respond.

More rhetorical questions

This time from Peter DiGaudio, whose Texas Hold 'Em Blog doesn't take comments either. In a post entitled "The Hildabeast Attacks," which in its opening words references the "Al Sharpton Traveling Circus," Peter tries to lecture us on tolerence:

Sen. Hillary Clinton made her appearance, shrill as ever. There is something about the Hildabeast that reminds me of fingernails on a dry chalkboard. I also have to roll my eyes at The Smartest Woman Who Ever Lived — lecturing us about the "culture of corruption" in George W. Bush's Washington. Talk about irony. Let's take a trip down Memory Lane, shall we, and revisit the most corrupt administration in American history. Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewatergate, Chinagate, Cattlegate, Zippergate, the Missing Billing Records, Pardongate, etc. — you can read all about those as well as all the Clinton scandals here and here for a refresher. [. . .]

One of the worst things to come of out the mouth of the Hildabeast, though, was the race card right off the bottom of the deck when she compared the House of Representatives to an antebellum plantation in the Old South.

When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation and you know what I'm talking about...

Simply amazing. Is there no level to which the Democrats will go?

Was Shrillary out of line in specifically using the plantation reference for Republicans on a day set aside to honor the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? You be the judge.

How many prominent black Democrats can you name? Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois. Maybe Charlie Rangel, the veteran congressman from Harlem. That's it.

I can name whole rafts of celebrities and other public figures, from Kanye West to Oprah. Without even Googling, I can name a significant chunk of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Jesse Jackson, Jr. and our own Gwen Moore. Harold Ford, who's running for Senate in Tennessee. John Lewis who, with Jesse Jackson Sr., is one of the few remaining public figures who marched with Dr. King. The whole of the CBC, in fact, is Democrats: Republican districts have not elected a single African American since JC Watts retired (though Peter gets points for reminding us that Watts and the CBC didn't come to terms).

But this isn't--and shouldn't be--a spitting match, to see who can loogey the farthest. Peter levies some serious charges: "Tell me which party is the party of bigots. Please," he writes. He is proud that his Republican president has appointed African Americans to top posts. (I won't mention how Lani Guinier and Jocelyn Elders, Clinton nominees, were rejected by an overwhelmingly white Congress on trumped-up trivia.) Peter rightfully trumpets a couple of African American Republicans running for things, and how Michael Steele got elected in Maryland (but only in the sense that voters elected Dick Cheney). Then, "Tell me which party is the party of bigots. Please."

I don't know. Maybe it's the party of Trent Lott, who announced today that he's running for senate again, neglecting to say whether he still wished the segregationists had won election back in the 40s. Maybe it's the party of Newt Gingrich, who said, under similar circumstances to Hillary Clinton yesterday, "Since they think it is their job to run the plantation, it shocks them that I’m actually willing to lead the slave rebellion.” Maybe it's the party of Ken Mehlman, who was forced to apologize for the "Southern Strategy."

Okay, so the "Southern Strategy" is generally abandoned, and Republicans have made great strides in reaching out to minorities and burying any last vestiges of overt racism too deep to see. But to call Democrats bigots--as Peter implicitly does--because he doesn't follow national politics enough to name prominent elected Democrats and candidates is ridiculous. If Newt Gingrich can lead a slave rebellion, surely Hillary can, too.

But what of being bigots, intolerant or judgmental? Well, Peter uses the basest insults to describe prominent women and minorities in the Democratic Party--"Hildabeast," "Shrillary," and "Sharpton's Traveling Circus," for example. He names every single Republican faux-scandal surrounding the Clinton administration, though administration officials were cleared of wrongdoing in every single case by the most expensive and zealous prosecutions ever, implying a flasehood--that the Clintons were corrupt. If Peter is setting the standard for fairness, decency, and respect . . . well, let's just say he isn't. At least, I won't accept that standard for myself.

McBride plays the rhetorical questions game

Since she doesn't allow comments, any question she asks on her blog would have to be rhetorical now, wouldn't it?

Anyway, inspired by Carrie's divine take-down of McBride's weekend column, I have decided to try my hand at today's post, "Who's pro choice?" She writes that she has come to the conclusion that liberals are against choice, but not, of course, in the abortion rights sense. In what follows, my responses are in italics, as she refers to liberals as "they":

• They don't want the public to have the choice over the ideology of Supreme Court justices. The fact that President Bush clearly stated that he would appoint conservatives before the election, and people picked him anyway (or as a result), means nothing to those Democrats who would block the nomination of Sam Alito.
  Perhaps McBride is unaware of polling data suggesting that if people knew what Alito really stood for, they wouldn't want him. The people wanted another O'Connor, not another Scalia.
  
  
• They don't want poor people to have the choice of which schools to send their children.
  Oh, please. Do we have to do this again?
  
  
• They don't want women to have the choice to stay home and raise their kids, without being treated with derision.
  Ah, the great straw (wo)man of anti-feminism, that stay-at-home moms are the object of scorn among the enlightened. While not a woman, and not stay-at-home at that, I do consider myself an adjunct second-and-a-half wave feminist, and that's not the sort of thing anyone actually believes. Anti-feminsists believe feminists believe it, but we don't. The key is, of course, agency: No woman should be forced, as some conservatives would have it, into that role.
  
  
• They don't want universities and other employers to have the choice over who to admit or hire but rather would force them to make selections based on race.
  There is and has been demonstrable bias in how universities or employers make these decisions. Once a month we are treated to some news show or another's "special report" to tell us that racism--explicit or implicit, institutional or individual--exists in the job or lending or housing industries. When the playing field is level, regulatory efforts will be unnecessary.
  
  
• They don't want citizens to choose whether they want a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In otherwords, they don't think the people should have a say in the uprooting of centuries of societal tradition.
  This reminds me P-Mac's claim that he ought to be free to be a bigot. Moreso, it's a misreading of our side--we're perfectly ready to beat this in a referendum on the merits--but the larger point is that this isn't even something government should be concerned with. When there are pressing matters before the legilsature, why are they debating this?
  
  
• They don't want taxpayers to have a choice in how much of their money is spent. So they are against a Taxpayers Bill of Rights.
  I thought we had that choice. It's called elections. We have them several times a year.
  
  
• They don't want people to choose whether or not they would feel more protected if they carried a concealed gun.
  I want the choice not to be paranoid that the guy tailgating me isn't packing.
  
  
• They don't want people to choose whether their children should pray in school.
  Wow. This is probably the worst misreading of the facts on the list. Organized or mandatory prayer is out, of course, but there are not ACLU hall monitors stopping the wee ones from saying grace before lunch or praying that the pop quiz is easy.
  
  
• They don't allow women to choose a stance opposing abortion, without being called "anti-woman."
  Anti-choicers aren't all anti-woman. They are anti-women's rights, which is again about agency. We prefer women to be able to make their own decisions in conjunction with their families and doctors. In the same way McBride wants women to be allowed to stay home and raise kids without derision, we want women to choose how and when to have those kids without government interference.
  
  
• They don't want Christians to choose their beliefs on things like homosexuality, without being called bigots.
  There is a difference between believing, as many devout people do, that homosexuality is a sin, and seeking to curb the civil rights of gays and lesbians based on that belief.
  
  
• They don't allow minorities to choose political parties, without being called names.
  She's right, you know. I call them Republicans. Or Democrats. Or Greens. Or whatever.
  
  
• They don't let people choose to side with the opposite political party on issues, without fear of being called racists and idiots.
  I don't know what this means. But I know that in the past couple of days, in the heated debate around vouchers and the impending cap train wreck, I have been called all sorts of things by her side of the Cheddarsphere.

After this series of misrepresentations, distortions, and us-versus-theming, she says, "There's nothing like the tolerance of the Left, is there?" To that, I say, see my next post.

Businesses support vouchers as-is . . . why?

Carrie Lynch wonders what a conversation in a boardroom might sound like if the businessfolk ran their enterprise like the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program:

Employee: We'd like to spend more money on Project X.
Boss: How much more?
Employee: We don't know for sure. We'd just like to have an open line of credit and take as much out every year as we see fit.
Boss: I see. Is Product X selling well now?
Employee: We have no idea.
Boss: Ok, why not? What could go wrong with this?

Of course, I just gave away the punchline, but the whole post is worth a read. You really do have to wonder why business interests--who almost certainly do want better schools for Milwaukee's kids--would be so uncritically in favor of throwing money into a black hole of indeterminate quality.

When the audit makes you look bad, blame the audit

So sayeth Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke:

Freeway accidents and wait times for help from Milwaukee County sheriff's deputies have risen significantly in recent years, while tickets for speeding and other violations are way down, a new county audit shows. [. . .]

Response times to all types of calls for service on the freeway went up less than a half-minute, from 10.5 minutes to 10.9 minutes. But wait times for injury-accident calls rose from 5 minutes to 7 minutes, or 40%, and almost doubled for property-damage calls, from 7 minutes to 13 minutes, auditors found.

Deputies in 2004 wrote about half the number of speeding tickets issued in 2001, a drop of more than 13,000 citations. [. . .]

The audit cited a variety of factors for the trends, including a 29% increase in calls for service; a 5% increase in freeway traffic; and a shift in priorities under Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. Clarke reassigned 11% of the department's freeway-patrol deputies to jail duty in 2002. He also has asked deputies on the patrol to handle other duties, such as making warrant arrests and conveying prisoners. [. . .]

Clarke criticized the audit methodology as "not first-rate" and said it was overly focused on statistical outcomes.

He initially disputed the uptick in accidents, which auditors based on state Department of Transportation figures. He later said if the trend was reported correctly, the increase was because the department had been too focused on speeding tickets as its primary safety tool.

If you were focused on writing tickets, sir, why was your ticket production down, hm? And if you were re-assigning deputies to jail duty, why was the county found in contempt of court for 16,662 violations of all sorts of things at the jail, most of which were on your watch? Shouldn't someone over there have taken care of that? If, as you say elsewhere in the article, "It's kind of a no-win situation for me, but I had to get this budget under control," why is your own expense account so out of control, with all of your personal bodyguards and more?

There are so many reasons not to vote for Clarke when he's up again in November. Vince Bobot (no website yet that I can find) is a decent, law-and-order kind of guy. I wasn't so hot on Bobot for mayor, but he would have to do a better job as sheriff than Clarke.

Fighting Bum

The good folks at Fightin' Bob have made me sound concise about the Milwaukee choice/ voucher cap issue. In reality, I never met a word limit I couldn't blow through.

Still, it's worth dropping by to see what else Fightin' Ed and his posse have been up to.

Plus, Xoff and Seth have more.

A very special "Drinking Liberally,"

in which Jason learns the true meaning of forgiveness.

Or, rather, when everyone in the Milwaukee DL group gathers around the TV sets at Club Garibaldi's around 10 PM tonight--Tuesday--to watch the Drinking Liberally piece airing on WTMJ. I won't be there--that's really past my bedtime--but I will TiVo it and watch it over and over again.

McIlheran Watch: But I repeat myself

Not content with just one badly-written op-ed about Milwaukee's school choice in a month (see M-Watch 1/4/06), McIlheran writes another. This time he puts his words in the mouths of voucher students who, oddly enough, read the first column.

Oh, they lament, why does Big Bad Jim Doyle want to kick me out of my good school? Why does he want me to fail?

Yawn, yawn. I've covered this before--today, even!--so I won't bother. But, you know what, give me a day off and a notepad, and I could find Milwaukee Public Schools students who want to know why the Republicans in the state legislature wanted to cut funding for their schools in the last state budget, or why those same Republicans have rejected out of hand Doyle's offer to lift the voucher cap if it means ensuring smaller class sizes and better-qualified teachers in their public classrooms.

Heck, I don't even need the day off. I could just talk to my own classes tomorrow. In fact, Pat, why don't you swing by in time for my third block--they're the rambunctious group--and you can ask them yourself?

ACE picks wrong target for Voucher Ads, plus a rant against those who spin lies

The usual suspects are at it again. Howard Fuller's group, the Alliance for Choices in Education, bankrolled by movement conservatives George and Susan Mitchell, is buying ads blaming Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle for the rationing plan for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, proposed by DPI for next fall:

The step was the first in what is likely to be an extended and heated series of moves by partisans on all sides as the cap issue comes to a head in coming weeks and, along with it, possibly other Milwaukee-related education issues. It came four days before Doyle is to give his annual "state of the state" speech.

Under the law covering the voucher program, the number of students using state money to attend private schools cannot exceed 15% of the enrollment in Milwaukee Public Schools. The program is at the cap this year and is almost sure to exceed it next fall.

The state Department of Public Instruction last month issued a plan for handling the issue that voucher advocates say is likely to lead to thousands of students being forced to change schools and many schools being harmed or forced to close. The DPI would ration the vouchers equally among schools that apply for them, making no distinction between well-established voucher schools and newly created ones, some of which never open their doors.

In the ad, one student currently enrolled in a voucher school says, "Gov. Doyle's just made a big mistake," and another responds, "He's throwing away my dream."

Voucher advocates have previously urged Doyle to support lifting the cap on the voucher program, but Doyle has said he would do so only if other conditions are met.

Hm. Sounds like it really is J-Dizzle's fault, right? Well, no: DPI--which is not under the control of Doyle's office--has been forced to implement a less-than-ideal solution to the cap problem because Republican legislators and school choice advocates rejected the more fair plan DPI proposed last August. That meant, when the cap was hit this fall, DPI had to develop a less fair plan that nobody likes. But couldn't Doyle have just lifted the caps? you ask. Read further:

Doyle has offered to raise the cap to 18% as part of a package of proposals that includes requiring more accountability in the voucher schools; changing a state financing formula that, in effect, costs taxpayers money whenever a student switches from MPS to a voucher school; and providing more money for the state's program to reduce class size in public schools.

"The governor is ready to sign a bill today that increases the cap and ensures that students and their siblings already in choice schools can stay in them," said Doyle spokeswoman Melanie Fonder. "It's the right thing to do, and the governor will continue to work on that in a bipartisan way to get that done."

Howard Fuller, chairman of the alliance, said Doyle should approve raising the cap and drop the other proposals, which he said had no chance of passing the Legislature.

This is what we call burying the lead. Years ago, Jim Doyle started offering to work with legislative Republicans on a solution to the cap problem, one that would prevent the kind of mess that we see coming this fall. Yet time after time, the Republicans have asked for one thing only: A complete removal of the cap. They have shown no willingness to compromise, no willingness to consider the 96,000 other children in Milwaukee and how to improve the education for them. Because, let's face it, even if the cap disappeared tomorrow, there would not be a voucher spot for 96,000 more students. We have to do something for them. But, no.

I saw this morning, via pro-voucher blogger (and non-Milwaukeean) Owen,that Alberta Darling--friend to brown and black children everywhere, though almost none live in her distrcit--is proposing new legislation to

1. End the enrollment cap on the MPCP.
2. Eliminate eligibility barriers that bar many low-income families from the MPCP.
3. Modify the program’s eligibility criteria so that students in families experiencing a small increase in income aren’t removed from the MPCP.
4. Direct the Legislative Audit Bureau to provide comprehensive reports on standardized test scores based on an independent scholarly research project that will begin this year.

That's Owen's summary, and based on the article (which gives a reasonably fair rundown of both sides' plans), is accurate, so let's consider them. First of all, a complete elimination of the cap should be out of the question: The more we give the legislature "outs" to fixing problems within MPS ("Can't they just go to a voucher school?" sorts of things), the less likely they are to bother. As for eligibility barriers, I am guessing these are things like the rules saying parents must try MPS first (a child moving to Milwaukee over the summer, for example, is not eligible to enter a choice school right away). I could see some room for compromise there, as well as #3, depending on how small the "small increase" is.

As for #4, this is another useless idea. No new tests would be required, and they would not have to be the state tests. Further, no school would have to start testing that does not already--in other words, any data gathered would be utterly useless and offer no real point-to-point comparison of MPS and the voucher schools. Doyle proposed requiring the state's tests in his last compromise offer, and I said then, it's a bad idea. Not because I am afraid the voucher schools will do better than public schools--some will, some won't, and if we don't already know that, we're really screwed--but because it will require private schools to adopt the state model academic standards (something many private schools won't want to do) and, speaking as one with experience planning for and administering the tests, I do not wish that on my worst enemy. It is grueling and unconscionable to put children throught that experience, for days on end, year after year. If I could get rid of them in my school, you'd better believe I would. They are not authentic assessments of student achievement and they do not promote genuine educational experiences. As for Darling's plan, they tried this in 2003, when Doyle rightfully rejected it.

And the Wall Street Journal joins in the bandwagon, too, today, talking tests and spinning the facts about that 2003 bill:

Running scared in this election year, [Jim Doyle] claims he wants to raise the cap on Milwaukee's choice program. But he insists on including side issues in any deal with the Legislature. For instance, he demands choice students take standardized tests and have the results made public. But in 2003 he vetoed a bill that would have done just that because the teachers union wanted to block an objective study of choice.

The bill J-Dizzle vetoed in 2003 was not what he proposed this year:

Under the bill, an initial report would be due to the Legislature by October 1, 2005. The study would be funded by private donors.

Opponents said the bill is weak because it allows individual voucher schools to opt out of the study and because it fails to require voucher schools to administer the same tests as public schools.

Plus, it was part of a package of bills that would have eliminated the cap and expanded the program county-wide--another Alberta Darling creation. (I called it the Thomas More High School Protection Act, since TMHS is this close to being in the city, and desperately wanted voucher money. They even tried to un-annex themselves from St. Francis!)

So it's time for people to really get their facts straight:

• Jim Doyle has been trying to meet Republicans half-way on a bill to raise (not eliminate) the cap for years
  
• Republicans want complete capitulation from the governor, Democrats, public school advocates, and the taxpayers on the issue, with no regard for accountability or oversight
  
• DPI is forced to implement a ridiculous rationing scheme by Republican legislators and school choice activists who rejected the "fair" plan (which would have given priority to returning voucher students), seeing a great 2006 campaign issue
  
• Previous attempts at imposing testing regimes would have yielded usesless data (since they didn't require full participation or the same tests) and no enforcement or accountability structure

The Wall Street Journal is getting a letter from me, and so is anyone else who continues to repeat Republican, movement-conservative spin.

Edited after I learned more about Darling's plan.