It’s a high-falutin’ name…the Government Accountability Board….which was created by the state legislature in 2007, partly as reaction to the public’s disgust with the constant corruption being exposed at the capitol, and partly because even the politicians admitted there wasn’t much in the way of oversight going on up there at the top of State Street.
The board is made up of six retired trial judges, and this week they’re talking about putting some more teeth into what’s been a pretty docile tiger since its inception.
One of the items on their docket is a proposed new law that would ban legislative staff members from doing campaign work on state time. You say - wait a minute - don’t we HAVE that already? Isn’t that the tip of the iceberg that brought down crooked politicians like Chuck Chvala and Scooter Jensen? Nope. Insiders know that when they got caught using state staffers to do their political and re-election work, they “rearranged the furniture” a bit, but didn’t make any substantive changes. And one of these days, Scooter may even actually go to jail. He was found guilty on corruption charges on March 11, 2006, and is still walking around free, getting extension after extension with his high-priced legal talent.
Here’s another “bold” move from the board…they want to ban state lawmakers from working as lobbyists for at least a year after leaving office (gosh - a year???? A full year???) and set up the same rules for state regulators, who would have to wait a full year before they could go to work in the industry they were “regulating” for us. How about….just a modest suggestion here….a TEN-year ban on both politicians who want to become lobbyists, and regulators who want to switch to the private sector in the same industry.
They’re also talking about new rules that would bar lobbyists from bundling their campaign donations to candidates, and limiting when PAC’s can donate to candidates. It just looks so bad when they throw these huge booze-and-gourmet food-at-expensive-restaurant soirees for the politicians while they’re actually in session.
Oh, and another thing….the board wants more leeway in making public the findings of stuff it’s investigating. Far as I’m concerned, the more daylight, the more disclosure, the better. How about “everything the board does or investigates is open to the public unless a small committee of active judges decides it’s best to keep it under wraps for a little while longer”.
I know, I have radical ideas. Too many years of my life spent in the news business, I guess. Heaven forfend the people should actually KNOW what their government is doing.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.
I guess I should live in New Hampshire, where the license plates proclaim “Live Free or Die”. I’m so tired of everybody telling me how to live my life.
We got about three inches of snow Saturday night. It’s March, it’s Wisconsin. It was “the State Tournament Blizzard” a week late. If you haven’t been a ‘sconnie most of your life, you may not be aware of the urban legend that there’s “always” a significant snowfall some time during the three-day run of the state boys’ basketball tournament.
I’d pretty much had my fill of NCAA Tournament basketball by 6 o’clock Saturday evening, so I switched over to a different local channel to catch the news. There, the 20-something anchor-in-training and the 20-something weather girl dispensed dubious advice to lead the broadcast.
Of course, since it had just begun to snow, they immediately went to the weather-girl to give us the latest on this highly dangerous and extremely tricky winter storm that was raging around us - NOT. After proving to us with geometric logic that it was indeed actually snowing outside, the weather-girl and anchor-in-training advised us against ANY travel of ANY sort. Something like “I hate to say it, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight”. The two agreed that this was a most dangerous situation, and going outside should be avoided at all cost.
Presumably, the two followed their own advice, and stayed at the studio until about 8 o’clock Sunday morning, when the gentle snow finally stopped.
Several months ago, one of the local print newspapers ran an item asking people if they thought the local weather people “hyped” the forecast. All but one of the respondents in their admittedly unscientific survey said “yes”.
That article must have escaped the notice of the two twenty-somethings dispensing the televised advice Saturday night…and their bosses. But then, as anybody who knows the biz can tell you, it’s weather that wins the ratings in the local TV game, and the more you can scare people into believing their family will not be safe unless they watch your weather, the higher the ratings will be.
So, when we get a three-inch snowfall, we must be warned against any travel of any sort. We must be reminded to stay tuned to this station, for the latest critical information (and dubious advice). I can’t wait for this summer, and the first thunderstorm we get. We’ll have to be warned that it is, in fact, raining, and that some thunderstorms have the potential to produce hail and high wind.
We must be some pretty stupid people, us TV viewers.
We got about three inches of snow Saturday night. It’s March, it’s Wisconsin. It was “the State Tournament Blizzard” a week late. If you haven’t been a ‘sconnie most of your life, you may not be aware of the urban legend that there’s “always” a significant snowfall some time during the three-day run of the state boys’ basketball tournament.
I’d pretty much had my fill of NCAA Tournament basketball by 6 o’clock Saturday evening, so I switched over to a different local channel to catch the news. There, the 20-something anchor-in-training and the 20-something weather girl dispensed dubious advice to lead the broadcast.
Of course, since it had just begun to snow, they immediately went to the weather-girl to give us the latest on this highly dangerous and extremely tricky winter storm that was raging around us - NOT. After proving to us with geometric logic that it was indeed actually snowing outside, the weather-girl and anchor-in-training advised us against ANY travel of ANY sort. Something like “I hate to say it, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight”. The two agreed that this was a most dangerous situation, and going outside should be avoided at all cost.
Presumably, the two followed their own advice, and stayed at the studio until about 8 o’clock Sunday morning, when the gentle snow finally stopped.
Several months ago, one of the local print newspapers ran an item asking people if they thought the local weather people “hyped” the forecast. All but one of the respondents in their admittedly unscientific survey said “yes”.
That article must have escaped the notice of the two twenty-somethings dispensing the televised advice Saturday night…and their bosses. But then, as anybody who knows the biz can tell you, it’s weather that wins the ratings in the local TV game, and the more you can scare people into believing their family will not be safe unless they watch your weather, the higher the ratings will be.
So, when we get a three-inch snowfall, we must be warned against any travel of any sort. We must be reminded to stay tuned to this station, for the latest critical information (and dubious advice). I can’t wait for this summer, and the first thunderstorm we get. We’ll have to be warned that it is, in fact, raining, and that some thunderstorms have the potential to produce hail and high wind.
We must be some pretty stupid people, us TV viewers.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Legislating Morality? We Do It Every Day
I get a laugh out of people who say silly things like “you can’t legislate morality”. Hogwash. We do it all the time, and have ever since our nation was founded. Some political dweeb was repeating that hackneyed crap the other day, talking about the robber barons and their bonuses.
The ten commandments are just as much a book of law as a code of moral conduct, and you’ll find reflections of six of the commandments (4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10) in the laws of our nation. We don't care too much, apparently, about the graven images or cussing. Plenty of municipalities have "blue laws" where you can't buy liquor on Sunday. But try messing with your neighbor’s wife and see what happens to you in divorce court. Even when we don’t legislate morality, we sure enforce a moral code in our civil and criminal courts.
The IRS code is full of morality. I’m old enough to remember when you could deduct ALL the interest you paid - credit cards, car loans, and of course mortgage interest. Not so much any more except for the home mortgage interest. You see, home ownership is a GOOD thing which the government encourages. No morality there?
My old stomping ground, Oshkosh, is having fun with legislated morality. In a few days, the bulldozers will tear down Supreme Video, on Washburn Street (the HiWay 41 frontage road), so the road can be widened. The place is notorious. A few years back, former State Senator Gerry Lorge got into a mess of trouble at Supreme Video when he exposed himself to an undercover Oshkosh cop.
You and I own Supreme Video, you know. We (the Wisconsin Department of Transportation) bought the porn palace in January for 1.4 million dollars. It was purchased by a Union Grove developer a while back for 600 grand, and the property has an assessed value of just under 349 grand. We paid more than twice what it’s worth on the market, and quadruple the assessed value, because of legislated morality.
The DOT and the city have been trying to move the porn shop for years, without success. Why no success? The LAW says you can’t have a porn shop with video booths closer than 500 feet to a residence, a church, a day care center….I could go on, but you get the idea. The law made it impossible to locate the porn shop elsewhere along the HiWay 41 corridor.
So don’t tell me you can’t legislate morality. We do it just about every session of every unit of government, from a town board to the state legislature. And we enforce a moral code in our courts.
The ten commandments are just as much a book of law as a code of moral conduct, and you’ll find reflections of six of the commandments (4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10) in the laws of our nation. We don't care too much, apparently, about the graven images or cussing. Plenty of municipalities have "blue laws" where you can't buy liquor on Sunday. But try messing with your neighbor’s wife and see what happens to you in divorce court. Even when we don’t legislate morality, we sure enforce a moral code in our civil and criminal courts.
The IRS code is full of morality. I’m old enough to remember when you could deduct ALL the interest you paid - credit cards, car loans, and of course mortgage interest. Not so much any more except for the home mortgage interest. You see, home ownership is a GOOD thing which the government encourages. No morality there?
My old stomping ground, Oshkosh, is having fun with legislated morality. In a few days, the bulldozers will tear down Supreme Video, on Washburn Street (the HiWay 41 frontage road), so the road can be widened. The place is notorious. A few years back, former State Senator Gerry Lorge got into a mess of trouble at Supreme Video when he exposed himself to an undercover Oshkosh cop.
You and I own Supreme Video, you know. We (the Wisconsin Department of Transportation) bought the porn palace in January for 1.4 million dollars. It was purchased by a Union Grove developer a while back for 600 grand, and the property has an assessed value of just under 349 grand. We paid more than twice what it’s worth on the market, and quadruple the assessed value, because of legislated morality.
The DOT and the city have been trying to move the porn shop for years, without success. Why no success? The LAW says you can’t have a porn shop with video booths closer than 500 feet to a residence, a church, a day care center….I could go on, but you get the idea. The law made it impossible to locate the porn shop elsewhere along the HiWay 41 corridor.
So don’t tell me you can’t legislate morality. We do it just about every session of every unit of government, from a town board to the state legislature. And we enforce a moral code in our courts.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Fitchburg: Home To Terrorist Sympathizers?
It disgusts me the depths to which some people will go to smear others in political campaigns. I got a phone call yesterday morning from my friend Jay Allen, who’s been on the Fitchburg City Council for years, and is now running for Mayor against this Vivian person.
After I fired Jay at Mid-West many years ago, he built a very successful business in appliance repair, and has come into my home many times to fix stuff. We’ve remained friends through the years, and I often joke with him that when I fired him, it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Some day, Jay will be able to “buy and sell” me many times over. And he has worked hard for his success. His business is growing by leaps and bounds and he works his butt off.
This Vivian person put out a piece of campaign literature alleging that Jay has “ties to a domestic terrorist organization”. What a load of horseshit, as Bill Lueders at Isthmus exposed in a great online article. Take a moment to read it, and you’ll be as disgusted as I am at this Vivian person. Lueders’ article has a link to the “campaign document” that labels Jay a terrorist sympathizer.
The local blogosphere was abuzz with the story yesterday, and Paul Soglin’s blog resonated this morning with a great post about the smear on Jay.
Here’s the thing that annoys me the most. People like this Vivian person will stoop to any depth to try and make their opponent look bad. And the fear appeal is their stock-in-trade. Remember the recent campaigns that have done the same thing? The gut-check judge smearing her opponent constantly (and the right-wing bloggers lapping it up); the last State Supreme Court election that saw one candidate call the other - a sitting Justice - “Loophole Louie” - and the constant din of negativity that pervades so many of the state and local races these days.
Full disclosure: I am a friend of Jay Allen‘s and a financial contributor to his campaign, but am not connected in any other way with his campaign organization. I can’t even vote in that election because I don’t live in Fitchburg, nor do I live in an area which will be annexed by Fitchburg. Crap like the stuff this Vivian person is throwing around is scary, not only because it’s patently absurd, but because IT WORKS. How else would we have elected a person like the gut-check woman or Herr Goebbel-mann???
I hope the voters of Fitchburg will not be scared by this horrid lie the Vivian person is telling. But too often, the people most likely to vote are those also most likely to be swayed by false allegations of terrorist ties. I hope they see it for the hogwash it is.
After I fired Jay at Mid-West many years ago, he built a very successful business in appliance repair, and has come into my home many times to fix stuff. We’ve remained friends through the years, and I often joke with him that when I fired him, it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Some day, Jay will be able to “buy and sell” me many times over. And he has worked hard for his success. His business is growing by leaps and bounds and he works his butt off.
This Vivian person put out a piece of campaign literature alleging that Jay has “ties to a domestic terrorist organization”. What a load of horseshit, as Bill Lueders at Isthmus exposed in a great online article. Take a moment to read it, and you’ll be as disgusted as I am at this Vivian person. Lueders’ article has a link to the “campaign document” that labels Jay a terrorist sympathizer.
The local blogosphere was abuzz with the story yesterday, and Paul Soglin’s blog resonated this morning with a great post about the smear on Jay.
Here’s the thing that annoys me the most. People like this Vivian person will stoop to any depth to try and make their opponent look bad. And the fear appeal is their stock-in-trade. Remember the recent campaigns that have done the same thing? The gut-check judge smearing her opponent constantly (and the right-wing bloggers lapping it up); the last State Supreme Court election that saw one candidate call the other - a sitting Justice - “Loophole Louie” - and the constant din of negativity that pervades so many of the state and local races these days.
Full disclosure: I am a friend of Jay Allen‘s and a financial contributor to his campaign, but am not connected in any other way with his campaign organization. I can’t even vote in that election because I don’t live in Fitchburg, nor do I live in an area which will be annexed by Fitchburg. Crap like the stuff this Vivian person is throwing around is scary, not only because it’s patently absurd, but because IT WORKS. How else would we have elected a person like the gut-check woman or Herr Goebbel-mann???
I hope the voters of Fitchburg will not be scared by this horrid lie the Vivian person is telling. But too often, the people most likely to vote are those also most likely to be swayed by false allegations of terrorist ties. I hope they see it for the hogwash it is.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Live Like You Mean It - In A Van, Down By The River
“I am thrice divorced, and I live in a van, down by the river.” Immortal words of motivational speaker Matt Foley, one of the many hilarious and memorable characters created for Saturday Night Live by Madison’s own Chris Farley.
The state’s tourism folks may as well have appended Farley’s line to their new slogan, “Live Like You Mean It”. It would have at least lent some originality and Wisconsin flavor to a hackneyed phrase that’s been used by everything from a rum purveyor to a book on how to stop being fat.
Baldy unveiled the new/old/recycled slogan in LaCrosse a few days ago, with the green letters WISCONSIN (aren’t we earth-friendly….green letters) overtopped by a red man (no, not a native American…a man rendered in red ink) doing a cartwheel across the green letters. Red, for those of you who can actually see it (I am red color-blind) is supposed to mean ENERGY.
Never mind that there are only a handful of ‘sconnie guys who can actually DO a cartwheel.
Sarah Klavas, who is the “brand manager” for the state, told the Associated Press she saw no contradiction in using a recycled slogan to promote the state’s originality. For those of you who haven’t checked lately, the Wisconsin Department of Tourism’s website calls itself the “home of original thinking”.
Say what? ORIGINAL??
The Milwaukee outfit Red Brown Kle' charged us taxpayers 50 grand to foist this new slogan upon us, one which they knew full well had been used by scores of other outfits, and fully disclosed that fact to the tourism bosses two months before it was “unveiled“ a few days ago.
Those folks at Tourism claim it’s a 13-billion-dollar business in Wisconsin, and plenty of us in south-central Wisconsin know first-hand how many primary and secondary jobs depend on tourism, and I’m not just talking about the Dells.
No less an editorial juggernaut than the Sheboygan Press opines “a tourist or visitor judges his or her travel experiences mainly on how well they are treated”. True dat…on our recent Spring Training odyssey to Arizona, we were treated like royalty by everybody from Sky Harbor Airport to the hotel to the ball parks.
The point is, more than any slogan or logo, it’s up to us ‘sconnies to make visitors welcome and enjoy their visit and make them want to come back.
“Live Like You Mean It” probably doesn’t hurt anything, but it probably doesn’t DO anything to make people want to come here.
I’d rather have something like “great beer, great cheese, no toll roads”.
The state’s tourism folks may as well have appended Farley’s line to their new slogan, “Live Like You Mean It”. It would have at least lent some originality and Wisconsin flavor to a hackneyed phrase that’s been used by everything from a rum purveyor to a book on how to stop being fat.
Baldy unveiled the new/old/recycled slogan in LaCrosse a few days ago, with the green letters WISCONSIN (aren’t we earth-friendly….green letters) overtopped by a red man (no, not a native American…a man rendered in red ink) doing a cartwheel across the green letters. Red, for those of you who can actually see it (I am red color-blind) is supposed to mean ENERGY.
Never mind that there are only a handful of ‘sconnie guys who can actually DO a cartwheel.
Sarah Klavas, who is the “brand manager” for the state, told the Associated Press she saw no contradiction in using a recycled slogan to promote the state’s originality. For those of you who haven’t checked lately, the Wisconsin Department of Tourism’s website calls itself the “home of original thinking”.
Say what? ORIGINAL??
The Milwaukee outfit Red Brown Kle' charged us taxpayers 50 grand to foist this new slogan upon us, one which they knew full well had been used by scores of other outfits, and fully disclosed that fact to the tourism bosses two months before it was “unveiled“ a few days ago.
Those folks at Tourism claim it’s a 13-billion-dollar business in Wisconsin, and plenty of us in south-central Wisconsin know first-hand how many primary and secondary jobs depend on tourism, and I’m not just talking about the Dells.
No less an editorial juggernaut than the Sheboygan Press opines “a tourist or visitor judges his or her travel experiences mainly on how well they are treated”. True dat…on our recent Spring Training odyssey to Arizona, we were treated like royalty by everybody from Sky Harbor Airport to the hotel to the ball parks.
The point is, more than any slogan or logo, it’s up to us ‘sconnies to make visitors welcome and enjoy their visit and make them want to come back.
“Live Like You Mean It” probably doesn’t hurt anything, but it probably doesn’t DO anything to make people want to come here.
I’d rather have something like “great beer, great cheese, no toll roads”.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Save A Tree? Not so much....
My good friend Doug Moe wrote a column the other day exhorting his readers to PRINT a copy of any e-mail, document, or file they really wanted to keep. Like me, Doug does not take well to those preachy little things you find in various places that say things like “save a tree - save the planet - consider helping to save the earth by not printing this”.
Hogwash. Trees are a crop, a very carefully-managed crop at that. Thousands of years ago when I was a student at Hortonville High School we learned about trees for paper through a program called Trees For Tomorrow. People who have obviously never learned about the paper industry act as though paper companies make wide swaths through residential neighborhoods, cutting down trees willy-nilly and laying waste to the urban landscape.
We grow a lot of trees for paper in Wisconsin….and a lot of trees for use at Christmas time, so don’t talk to me about “waste of resources“. We’re usually in the top five states in the nation for Christmas Tree production, for something that has a “useful life” of about a month.
But Doug’s column wasn’t about the paper industry and its conservation programs, it was about how computers will “disappear” your stuff and you’ll lose it forever - so, if you’re writing a book (like Doug was, about Bret Favre, when he had a “manuscript accident”), best to PRINT OUT the pages as you write them, and not rely on such flimsy artifacts of technology like the thumb drive.
I learned a long time ago to print anything I really wanted to keep - particularly the stuff other people pay me to write. But I got too lax with my policy when I bought a digital camera several years ago, and stored the photos on my computer. In December of ‘07 I had the mother of all hard-drive crashes, and lost most of the pictures I’d taken with that camera.
My tech guys told me this was the WORST hard-drive crash they’d ever seen, because absolutely NONE of the data was recoverable. They told me for about $1500 they could send it off to a place that does work for Homeland Security to see if THEY could get anything off it, but there’d be no guaranty. I had a hard-drive crash in early ‘06 and my tech guys got what they could off that drive, so some of my early pictures were backed up on DVD, thank you very much, but all the photos I took between early ‘06 and late ‘07 were gone, gone, gone.
Now, I pay for a service that backs up everything I tell it to, which is darn near everything. Since I seem to be prone to hard-drive crashes, I’m waiting for the day my investment in this service will pay off.
If past is prologue, I won’t have to wait too long.
Hogwash. Trees are a crop, a very carefully-managed crop at that. Thousands of years ago when I was a student at Hortonville High School we learned about trees for paper through a program called Trees For Tomorrow. People who have obviously never learned about the paper industry act as though paper companies make wide swaths through residential neighborhoods, cutting down trees willy-nilly and laying waste to the urban landscape.
We grow a lot of trees for paper in Wisconsin….and a lot of trees for use at Christmas time, so don’t talk to me about “waste of resources“. We’re usually in the top five states in the nation for Christmas Tree production, for something that has a “useful life” of about a month.
But Doug’s column wasn’t about the paper industry and its conservation programs, it was about how computers will “disappear” your stuff and you’ll lose it forever - so, if you’re writing a book (like Doug was, about Bret Favre, when he had a “manuscript accident”), best to PRINT OUT the pages as you write them, and not rely on such flimsy artifacts of technology like the thumb drive.
I learned a long time ago to print anything I really wanted to keep - particularly the stuff other people pay me to write. But I got too lax with my policy when I bought a digital camera several years ago, and stored the photos on my computer. In December of ‘07 I had the mother of all hard-drive crashes, and lost most of the pictures I’d taken with that camera.
My tech guys told me this was the WORST hard-drive crash they’d ever seen, because absolutely NONE of the data was recoverable. They told me for about $1500 they could send it off to a place that does work for Homeland Security to see if THEY could get anything off it, but there’d be no guaranty. I had a hard-drive crash in early ‘06 and my tech guys got what they could off that drive, so some of my early pictures were backed up on DVD, thank you very much, but all the photos I took between early ‘06 and late ‘07 were gone, gone, gone.
Now, I pay for a service that backs up everything I tell it to, which is darn near everything. Since I seem to be prone to hard-drive crashes, I’m waiting for the day my investment in this service will pay off.
If past is prologue, I won’t have to wait too long.
Monday, March 23, 2009
We're Really Getting Hosed (Again)
There's a fascinating post on Slate.com from former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who gave a stunningly clear explanation of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of AIG and the bailout billions.
Spitzer points out the original decision to bail out AIG, when their phony derivate investments unraveled, was made by…..are you ready…..Hammerin’ Hank Paulson, who was then the Treasury Secretary; Toxic Timmy Geithner, who has Hammerin’ Hank’s job now, but was then head of the New York fed; Lloyd Blankfein, who was at the time the CEO of Goldman-Sachs; and the ubiquitous Ben Bernanke, head man at the Fed.
So, what’s AIG doing with the latest round of bailout billions, other than paying out obscene bonuses to those who ran a failed trading unit? Why, they’re paying off their trading partners in the derivative scheme….Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and a who’s-who of failed “banking” institutions.
In other words, AIG sold these big investment outfits crappy derivatives (“credit default swaps”); when the system unraveled and they all went bust, AIG took the taxpayer bailout money and shipped it directly to their trading partners…so they didn’t lose a CENT on these ludicrous “investments”.
Can you say “inside job”? Spitzer does. And he oughtta know.
While these giant financial institutions are being paid back 100 cents on the dollar for their reckless adventures in fantasy, you and I are being asked to shoulder the burden.
Wealthy politician Jim Sensensbrenner, one of our Wisconsin delegation to Washington, echoes the Republican mantra that the government shouldn’t be in the business of abrogating contracts these financial institutions have with each other, and the bonus contracts they have with their employees.
Bull.
We, the taxpayers, now OWN what's left of AIG. 80% is "ownership" no matter how you look at it. Since we own it, we can sure as hell re-write contracts or fire anybody we damn please.
All across America, we’re rewriting contracts to share the pain of the meltdown. Labor contracts are being changed, tax rates are changing, and everybody’s being asked to pitch in to help out.
Everybody, as it turns out, except the very institutions that brought us to ruin in the first place.
The more carefully you look into what Washington is doing with the money it borrowed in our name as taxpayers, the more disgusting it gets.
We are really being fleeced.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)