Milwaukee

I'm guessing that Congress will fashion some sort of financial package for the US auto industry, but before the deal is struck, it would be helpful to generations of Americans less aware of history to have two GM-related items put on the record.

The first was GM's sabotage of its 1960's electric car. As the auto company pleads for taxpayer dollars in the billions to help it stay afloat in a period highlighted by its launch of the electric Chevrolet Volt, let's have GM acknowledge and explain why it killed off its own electric car nearly a half-century ago.

And let's have the House of Representatives reproduce the findings of the late Wright Patman, a Democrat from Texas, who was among those who documented the conspiracy among GM, Firestone and Standard Oil to destroy urban electric rail transit systems in favor of buses that ran on rubber tires and combustion engines.

I remember when the trolley tracks were ripped out of the streets in my hometown of Washington, DC in favor of buses.

I cannot say if Milwaukee's electric trolley systems were specifically part of the GM-Firestone-Standard Oil cabal, but it's well known that the city had both intra-city rail and numerous high-speed interurban trains west to Oconomowoc and south to Chicago that could hit 120 m.p.h.

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Wisconsin's Iraq Moratorium campaign, which asks people to act on the Third Friday of every month to end the war and occupation of Iraq, continues to grow.

A new organizing effort in western Wisconsin, with the theme of "Health care, not warfare," has sparked new Moratorium events on Friday, Nov. 21, in Rice Lake, Superior, and Eau Claire.

“People quickly see the connections and respond instantly to the ‘Health care Not Warfare’ theme and the coordinated public lobbying tactic,” organizer Steve Carlson says. More communities are expected to join in December.

The Iraq Moratorium asks people to interrupt their regular routines on the Third Friday of every month and take some action, individually or collectively, to call for an end to the war and occupation of Iraq .

Wisconsin has been a hotbed of Iraq Moratorium activity, with more actions scheduled every month than any other state except California , with six times the population.  The Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice (WNPJ), a statewide coalition of more than 160 groups, has helped spread the Moratorium among its members.

The Iraq Moratorium-Wisconsin project is aimed at communities where the Third Friday activity has not yet taken hold.  Among the additional targets are Hudson, Chippewa Falls, Ashland and Menomonie.

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The announcement last week by the City of Waukesha that it intends to use Underwood Creek as its new wastewater discharge point on the back end of a Lake Michigan diversion scheme guarantees that water-based environmental concerns will be front-and-center in Southeastern Wisconsin throughout 2009.

Why?

Waukesha has to sell the idea to its taxpayers and water utility ratepayers.

Approval by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources must be forthcoming.

The seven other Great Lakes states have to approve the plan.

The City of Wauwatosa will no doubt be heard from, given that the river (well, creek) runs through it.

Then there are all the interests in the Menomonee Valley that have worked for years on development, pollution abatement and stormwater management there: is a higher, faster, wastewater-laden Underwood Creek emptying into the Menomonee Valley what the doctor ordered?

And then there is the water supply plan moving simultaneously through the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - a set of recommendations, surprise, surprise...that endorses a Lake Michigan diversion to Waukesha. Expect there to be significant public discussion of that set of recommendations and the narrow framework in which it was developed,

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Shut out of leadership positions after their party won control of both houses of the legislature, Milwaukee Democrats were given two seats on the pivotal, budget-writing Joint Committee on Finance.

The committee has 16 members.

Milwaukee County supplies the largest number of Democratic voters in the state, and Milwaukee is the only city its size in Wisconsin.

All in all, a weak showing by and for Milwaukee.

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Folk Bum has a post displaying the American Family Association’s (AFA) promotion of a Christmas-lighted cross that appears precisely like the image of a burning cross.

And the AFA is drawing howls.

“The American Family Association--they of the our-morality-for-all bent--is offering a sweet new Xmas gift,” laughs Folk Bum.

"The American Family Association has really topped themselves," observes John Cole.

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