Wisconsin Politics

Rightwing pundits [who ought to have their credibility licences revoked] have been wrong about every major policy area in the last eight years.

Now they're telling Obama to go slow and be mindful that the last election demonstrates that we are a center-right nation demanding only slight changes in the direction of foreign and domestic policy, and indeed rightwing prescriptions for the crises that ail us.

You want to help Americans make a living : Listen to the economists in the Wall Street Journal.

You want to help Americans get health care: Let people choose to pay for it or not get it. [Wisconsin's Paul Ryan is big on that.]

Obama might be listening, but thankfully he's not heeding their advice.

And Obama continues his outreach directly to Americans. Good for him, good for us.

From Change.gov:

The President-elect has directed the Transition's economic team to develop the details of a plan for a two-year, nationwide effort to strengthen our economy. It will center around jobs rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools, and making America a leader in alternative energy.

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Maybe $50 million for the piping alone. Maybe more.

And why not, with hundreds of millions of dollars, and perhaps even more, in annexations and subdivisions able to tout "Lake Michigan Water," instead of "Nice View" in their ads.

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There are claims that Waukesha's water diversion scheme is a hit with environmentalists, but is that correct?

Maybe some environmental leaders and activists can weigh in with comments.

I have had an unusual schedule the last few weeks, missed the meeting that Waukesha officials had with some environmental organizations' representatives, and would like to know what the reaction and feedback have been.

Guest post opportunities are available.

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Better than I could have done.

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I suggested in this post a few days ago that Wauwatosa would be heard from after the City of Waukesha announced it intended to make Underwood Creek its treated sewage dumping point in order to complete a Lake Michigan water diversion loop.

Sure enough, a Wauwatosa blogger, noting that Underwood Creek runs almost through her backyard, isn't looking forward to Waukesha's waste water adding value to her community.

I don't know the blogger, but I imagine her perspective will be mainstream.

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— A new group in Racine is
attracting international attention.  After
only one week in existence, Yes We Can Racine has
already been featured on National Public Radio and the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation.  Tapping
into the spirit of volunteerism, Yes We
Can Racine is a new non-profit dedicated to taking local action to solve
local issues. 

 

“The response has been phenomenal” according to Kelly Gallaher,
one of the founding members.  “We gained
twenty-four volunteers in the first twenty-four hours of operation.  After only seven days there are already more
than seventy volunteers connected online.” 

 

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Update: See McClatchy's Guantanamo: Beyond the Law series for a close look at administration lawlessness, and its utter inhumanity toward the innocent.

From the Times, Judge Orders Five Detainees Freed From Guantanamo:

In the first hearing on the government's justification for holding detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a federal judge ruled Thursday that five Algerian men were held unlawfully for nearly seven years and ordered their release.

Bush and Cheney had called these innocents the worst of the worst, who are so evil and dangerous that we just had to throw out habeas corpus.

The Bush administration feared the consequences of innocents asking for a look at the evidence in federal court.

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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorially supports the Lake Michigan diversion plan being rolled out by the City of Waukesha. The editorial is here.

But the carts are being lined before the horses, so to speak.

For one thing, the editorial says the diversion and preferred water return-flow plan are in line with recommendations in a study being done by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

Correct. The Waukesha plan appears to be in line with the study that is being done. It is not finished. The recommendations are preliminary. They have only been recommended by an advisory committee.

The recommendations are to be reviewed at a series of public meetings at which the agency staff and consultants are supposed to listen, then work that public feedback into a report to the full commission.

Can we at least go into that public meeting phase with the expectation that public input will be genuinely absorbed?

The editorial also says that Waukesha has a plan to return the water it borrows from Lake Michigan.

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The past six weeks have seen a narrowing of focus here at the blog as we concentrated first on the election, and more recently on the events unfolding in Egyptian politics.

As often happens when covering these major events, we have an abundance of stories that are piling up...and deserve our attention...and in this case, it’s a story that will take us far from the usual political real estate upon which we would normally slog.

It’s my happy duty, instead, to point you toward one of my favorite musicians...and in the course of doing that, to an event series that is also well worth your time...and in the course of doing that, to a bar that is working hard, every day, to fulfill your live music needs—and by an even happier coincidence, the three intersect this Sunday.

I’m a sucker for a chanteuse, I admit, be it Billie Holiday, or k.d. lang, or even Grace Jones...and I’m even more of a sucker for that Ralph Sharon sound—the stand-up bass, the piano, brushes, a nice sax solo...with a strong voice out front.

The two meet in Madeleine Peyroux.

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To borrow a line from Art Kumbalek of the Milwaukee Shepherd Express, "Man, oh Manishevitz, what a world we live in, ain' it?"

We the taxpayers are being called upon to socialize recapitalize, not only the financial markets, but now the auto industry, too. Who's next, the retailers?

Something has to be done to save the more than 3 million workers serving this domestic industry, something we sadly could not accomplish to keep the Janesville, Wis., plant alive.

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Odd response to the Journal Sentinel series on alcohol abuse very close to home.

So the issue is how the NY Times made Wisconsin look?

Come on.

Wasn't the point of the JS series that we are responsible for how we are behaving, not how others are interpreting it?

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As America enters what is feared to be a long and deep recession, one question is whether we save or let fade our auto industry.

The GOP has long been hostile to the auto industry's unions so any union-busting opportunity not used is a wasted opportunity, in their view: Let 'em crash, millions of jobs lost, so what?

House Republicans sitting in their fantasy world spouting free market bromides are capable of anything.

But does anyone believe that saving the millions of jobs that depend on the domestic auto industry is not in itself sufficient cause to act?

The new Congress and President will act, and Republicans as a Party opposing comprehensive measures will find themselves by the political wayside very quickly.

The economy will be geared toward establishing a middle class and raising families by this new administration.

Health care reform and the whole array of initiatives addressing the concerns of real people will become policy next year, and the Republicans will scream while they lose a generation or two of voters who will see the results.

The Wall Street crisis and recession of 2008 will become Barack Obama's 9/11, used to show Bush and the Republicans what the American people are capable of when challenged to act together for the common good and spoken with honestly as fellow citizens.

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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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