Lather, rinse, repeat

This is what happens when you hand the reins to people who think the government needs to be drowned in a bathtub.

That's the sentence.

For the next eighteen months, every time the Bush Administration screws up, some version of that sentence (preferably a more pithy, clever, and catchy version) needs to come out of the mouth of every Democrat who gets near a microphone.

That's how you change the cultural consciousness.

Find a simple way of stating some version of the core of your message and repeat it over and over and over again until it becomes part of received wisdom.

It's also a good way to counter a talking point your opponents have successfully deployed.

Spend and spend Republicans, for example, needs to pass through the lips of Democrats every day, until "tax and spend Democrats" is effectively torpedoed.

A crime Victor Hugo would recognize

The Green Bay Press-Gazette is reporting:

Appleton police received a call Wednesday of a burglary — not of valuables but of food.

The burglar apparently entered the unlocked apartment and walked away with a pizza, six eggs, a can of beef ravioli, a can of peaches and one chicken-and-broccoli Hot Pocket, authorities said.

Over the years, we have become conditioned to thing of theft as the result of greed, laziness, or the desire to fuel a drug addiction. Crimes like those committed by Jean Valjean are consigned in our imaginations to some foggy and distant past. No one in our nation, we think, is going to have to steal because he or she was hungry.

As this story demonstrates, sometimes we think wrong.

A not so rhetorical question

What is more harmful to the military? Don't Ask Don't Tell or the waivers that have been granted allowing criminals to serve?

Forcing progress?

Governor Jim Doyle will call a special session of the state legislature on Monday, in hopes of spurring a resolution to the ongoing budget debate. Whether this move has any hope of producing results is still unclear.

According to Governor Doyle, every time the two sides come close to an agreement, "extreme voices" on the conservative side foil the process, leading him to wonder if the Republicans are serious about wanting a budget passed. Assembly Speaker Huebsch says that Wisconsinites are too highly taxed to handle any more governmental drains on their wallets and contends that the Republicans are negotiating in good faith.

In the meantime, Wisconsin is the only state that has not passed a budget for the next two fiscal years. And who suffers? The schools. Next Monday the local school districts were due to receive word on how much state money they would receive. Budgets for individual districts were made months ago, with promised moneys already worked in. Now, the districts will have to work with what they got in the last budget cycle, moneys that do not account for necessary increases in staff and every-rising utility costs. So, there will be shortfalls, and local governments will be left with a difficult choice between laying off workers and increasing local property taxes. Given the current anti-tax sentiment, the latter seems unlikely. More probable, at least in my estimation, is that programs will be cut, and if national trends are any indicator, the first things to go will be art and music.

Another blow to southeastern Wisconsin's industrial base?

For decades, the Miller Brewing Company has been an anchor for Milwaukee. It is not the community's only industry, but it is certainly one of the most important, one of the most long-standing, and - along with Harley Davidson - one of the companies most closely linked to Milwaukee's identity.

In the wake of today's reports of a merger of Miller Brewing Company and Coors, the future of the company is very much in doubt.

Operations will continue in Milwaukee and in Golden, CO, but no one yet is willing to say where the company's headquarters will be.

The potential for lost jobs is bad enough, but this is about more than lost jobs.

I grew up in the Milwaukee Metro, and the city is a part of me - and always will be - on a very deep level. While I have chosen to come to Northern Wisconsin to live with the rest of my family, and while I love this part of the state, it is Milwaukee that will always be the one place in this world that I love most.

Brewing is, and always has been, a part of Milwaukee's soul. The city has spent the last decade or so trying to update and modernize its image, and to an extent, it's been successful. Still, Milwaukee remained the home of Miller and the home of Harley Davidson, and that was the thing that informed and shaped its heart. If MillerCoors takes its headquarters elsewhere, part of that heart will stop beating.

Positive fallout from Columbia University speech

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University last month, some conservative groups worked themselves into a froth of righteous indignation. This, they cried, was abhorrent. Columbia University was, they said, aiding and abetting terrorism by letting a "terrorist" speak to and face questioning by American college students.

Columbia University countered that it was a good thing to, while Ahmadinejad was already in New York, make him face open questioning and dissent.

Events in Tehran seem to be bearing out the Columbia University side of the argument. According to the BBC,

[a] rare anti-government demonstration have been held in the Iranian capital during a speech at Tehran University by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There were scuffles as hundreds of supporters and opponents of the president gathered outside the venu.

Eyewitnesses said police used tear gas to hold the demonstrators back.

Student leaders had challenged Mr. Ahmadinejad to meet them after he spoke at Columbia University in the US of the freedoms enjoyed by Iranian students.

(emphasis added)

The protest was small, but for Iranian students to characterize Ahmadinejad as "the dictator," as they did in one of their chants, is a heartening sign for those of us who have long hoped that the younger generation might find a way to liberalize Iran.

Research matters

The Wisconsin State Journal is reporting that an ongoing study of hibernating ground squirrels being conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may help doctors to lengthen the amount of time that organs can survive outside of the body between harvest and transplant.

And people wonder why I get so very cranky when I hear Assembly Republicans talk about cutting UW-system funding.

First it was electric guitars, now it's an xBox

As part of their eternal quest to reach adolescent males, some evangelical churches are holding Halo 3 gatherings for the pre-teen and teen set in church basements across the country.

The contradiction inherent in using violent video game to attract potential worshipers to congregations whose denominations have roundly condemned violent video games seems to have escaped the pastors in question.

As has been noted many times over the last seven years, irony is dead.

A rose by any other name does not, in fact, smell as sweet

I've noticed a rather interesting phenomenon over the last couple of weeks.

Increasingly, as the situation in Burma has become more troubling, some major news outlets have begun calling Burma by its name, instead of using the moniker adopted by the military junta.

It has gotten to the point where, in a recent TIME magazine story about Basques in Spain, a Basque nationalist party leader was quoted as saying "The right to gather must be respected, in [Burma] and in Spain." Now, based on the sentence structure, it seems clear that the editors at TIME made a conscious choice to replace "Myanmar" (which is what I suspect the Basque leader said) with Burma. If I am correct in my guess, it is a heartening indicator of the media's willingness to speak truth, rather than "fact."

Some would say that the nation should be called "Myanmar," as that is the appellation chosen by the group the currently rules. It is not, however, the country's legitimate name.

In 1990, an general election was held in Burma, an election which the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won decisively. The military junta refused to allow the party to take power, staging a military coup. As the only popularly elected representatives of the people, the National League for Democracy and Aung San Suu Kyi are the only existing legitimate government of Burma. They have repeatedly insisted that the nation's name is Burma, not "Myanmar."

To give the appellation "Myanmar" to Burma legitimizes the junta and delegitimizes the freely exercised democratic choice of her people. If we accept "Myanmar" we accept the junta's right to determine what the nation is called, and by implication, we accept their right to rule. If we call the nation by its right name, every time the word Burma escapes our lips, our pens, or our keyboards, the invalidity of the current regime is underlined.

Some news outlets have chosen to continue using the moniker "Myanmar." This is deeply regrettable, and it is to be hoped that they will soon choose truth over "fact."

Sometimes you find some of the really important stuff in the sports pages

Since Tommy Thompson appointed George Meyer to the position, the Department of Natural Resources Secretary has been a member of the Governor's cabinet.

There were sound reasons for making this move. Back in the 1970s, conservationism and environmentalism were largely different movements in the state, with different - sometimes conflicting - central concerns. The DNR was largely the preserve of the conservationists, and it was thought that if the post were made into a cabinet-level appointment, it would be possible to bring environmental concerns to the fore. In 1995, the first cabinet-level appointment to the DNR headship was made.

The experiment has not turned out well, and there is now a growing push to remove the DNR head from the cabinet. It is hoped that doing so will stem the tide of marginally competent politicized appointments that have weakened the agency over the last decade.

The drive is principally being pushed by hunters and anglers, the same group that dominated the forces of conservationism during the 70s. To some, this might seem a step back for the environmental movement, but assuming this would be so is only possible if you ignore the evolution of the hunting and fishing community in the state, and evolution that it has been both interesting and heartening to watch.

As they have observed the impact of environmental degradation on the state's wildlife and natural spaces, hunters and anglers have increasingly framed their conservationism in environmental terms. The fit between the two movements isn't perfect - sometimes it isn't even really close - but on an ever increasing number of issues, the two communities are finding themselves in common cause.

It is to be hoped that this development will prevent the sort of one-dimensional institutional capture that initially spurred the movement to bring the DNR head into the Cabinet and that future DNR heads will have the natural resources policy experience necessary to properly balance the two interests.

Can you hear me now?

It's no secret that connectivity is the key to competitiveness in the current global market.

Unfortunately, this is one feature that has always put the United States at a distinct disadvantage. With it's wide swaths of open land, dotted here and there with the occasional small town, the nation has long struggled with a cellular and broadband infrastructure that has left millions in rural areas with spotty service or no service at all, as any motorist who has had their car break down in parts of Northern Wisconsin can attest.

This, of course, is more than a simple inconvenience to stranded drivers. It cuts a portion of the population off from the opportunity to use their imagination and entrepreneurial skills to strengthen the economy of their state and of the nation as a whole. It's a horrible waste of intellectual capital.

The big telecoms have been singularly ineffective in solving this problem, so some local folks are trying their hand at creating a solution. I don't know enough about the relevant technology to be able to assess their chances, but I do wish the "three farm boys" (former Governor Tommy Thompson, McKinley Reserve CEO Todd Thiel, and Bellin Building owner Steve Schneider the best of luck.

As a lifelong Democrat, I've never been a big fan of the former Governor, but he and his fellow investors have identified an important need here, and it would be good for the state if they were able to effectively and ethically address it.

Check, please

There are now reports hitting the wires that Assembly Republicans are being intransigent on purpose, that they aren't negotiating in good faith, that they actually don't want a budget to pass.

The natural skeptic in me is generally impelled to discard that sort of claim as nothing more than a public relations maneuver on the part of state Democrats. But, there's one fact that gets in the way of that inclination.

Apparently, back in March, state Assembly Republicans "asked for a memo from the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau about what would happen if no budget were adopted."

Why would anyone do that, unless the intent was to push things to the point where there was a good chance that no budget would be adopted?

It can't be said that Democrats haven't given up anything in these negotiations. In fact, they gave up the one thing they wanted most in the new budget: universal health care for every Wisconsin resident. But that, apparently, is not enough for state Republicans. Their goal, at least according to what they've been saying, is a budget with no new taxes.

There's a degree to which this is a principled stance, and it certainly is fitting with GOP political practices, which have increasingly been dependent on making pledges to decrease taxes. This tack is especially popular with Wisconsin voters, who always feel wretchedly over-taxed (whether we actually are, given the services we receive is another question entirely). So, refusing to pass a budget containing any tax hikes is, at least initially, going to be very popular with Republican and Independent voters.

There is, however, going to be a point of diminishing returns for this sort of tactic.

Wisconsin is a state where, even when the Packers are on a win streak and play a Sunday night game, the overwhelming majority of folks come in and do their work like it was any other day. There are cultural presumptions up here in favor of doing one's job and doing it - at least - competently. Refusing to do one's job is generally viewed with scorn.

Passing a budget, and compromising if need be to do so, is part of the Legislatures job.

If the reports are right, if the Republicans in the Assembly are intentionally trying to create a situation where no budget is passed, and if that gets out (this is the big if, given the power of the GOP media machine), Republicans are going to become very unpopular in this state.

When we voted you in, we actually wanted you to govern

According to Steven Walters of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch is refusing to consider plans that would penalize state legislators who fail to deliver a budget by July 1 of a given year. Huebsch says that "[t]he recent experience of other states has shown us that deadlines and shutdowns lead to more government spending -- not less -- and timetables force the Legislature to tax first and ask questions later." He also claims that an earlier deadline would do nothing to force House Republicans and Senate Democrats to come to terms with their differences.

This purported concern for good governance might be a little more compelling were it not for the fact that we are still without a budget.

Yes, on October 5, a little over three months after the budget was due, the two chambers of the legislature simply cannot bring themselves to compromise enough to deliver a budget, leaving the state to limp along on an ad hoc basis, using last years numbers, a move that has been roundly condemned by local governments and by the citizenry at large.

Of particular concern is the potential impact of their negligence on school districts.

Perhaps I'm just a starry eyed idealist, but I expect that when legislators are sent off to Madison, they are obligated to make sure that - at the very least - the basics of government functionality are carried out.

Not being able to negotiate their way to a budget is an inexcusable dereliction of duty.

Thankfully, Governor Doyle appears to be taking the matter seriously, and going public to tell the Legislature to stop dicking around with the public trust.

As time passes, I find myself increasingly drawn to reforms of procedure that would entail cutting legislators pay if they fail to bring in a budget in a timely fashion. Maybe if we hit them in their wallets they'll wake up and actually do their job with regard to the citizens' money.

Other faiths need not apply

I am, and always have been, one of those people who gets extremely frustrated while watching the news coming out of our various centers of government.

I am also one of those people who frequently turns to her husband and says "You know, it would be a lot more sensible if they just did X."

I have ideas about public policy. I have notions about how governance should proceed. I have the capacity to compromise and to communicate my notions to folks on the other side in such a way that I can either persuade them to change their position or at least compromise to find some middle ground. I'm also moderately attractive and a pretty good public speaker.

So, have I ever thought of running for something? Of course, on more than one occasion, and then the idea is immediately abandoned.

Why?

Well, let's start out by looking at this bit of video from Senator McCain.




Whether we like it or not, and in spite of all of our rhetoric to the contrary, we have gotten to the point as a nation where it is virtually impossible for someone who is not of a particular religion (or set of religious traditions) to run for higher office.

As is already clear to anyone who has so much as read the header to this blog, I am not a member of the favored line of religious tradition.

I am a Celtic Pagan, and as such, I am to be deemed unacceptable by a certain portion of the voting public (probably by a majority, if we're going to be completely honest). The fact that I am eminently unelectable really doesn't bother me so much as a personal matter (though I admit to being more than a little irked at Senator McCain's implication that my faith would make him question my morals and ethics).

At the end of the day, the fact that I can never successfully run for higher office is immaterial. What is relevant, and more than a little sad, is the extent to which this whole notion of us being a Christian nation and all of the connotations that carries with it, shuts millions of voices out of the debate.

E pluribus unum, folks. Out of many, one. That was our original motto, our original deepest principle.

From the get go, we were based on the notion that more voices in the debate will, in the long run, produce better results. Granted, we haven't always been very good about putting that principle into action, but the principle was there, and it left the door cracked open just enough for minority voices to get their toe in and wrench the thing open the rest of the way.

As time passes, that opportunity seems to be fading.

And that really should make everyone more than a little sad.