Gov. Doyle Signs Windmill Siting Bill, is the State Overreaching?

Today Governor Doyle signed into law a bill allowing the state to preempt any existing local ordinance regarding the site of wind farms. Local laws became a hot issue when citizens interested in putting windmills on their land (which would make them money) were unable to do so, due to ordinances passed hostile to windmills. This hostility stems from citizens not wanting to see windmills on their horizon, concerns of shadow or noise pollution, jealousy the money from the energy will not go in their pocket or the belief that wind energy is inefficient.

The bill passed the Assembly with bipartisan support and has been praised by advocacy groups, environmental and business alike. Surprisingly, local government rights did not enter the conversation, at least in any form of media I have read. When I first heard about a bill that would take away the ability of local governments to limit the placement of wind farms I believed it would be assailed by conservative groups as big government infringement on local government rights.

Considering the implications of the state taking over zoning laws traditionally the prerogative of municipal and county government, the competing interests must be weighed. Local, democratically elected governments ability to enact their own laws or the freedom of a citizen to place a windmill on the land they, and no one else, own.

Ultimately the interest of the individual outweighs the interest of the government. Some local governments enacted laws so broad windmills would not be legal anywhere within their borders. The state will take care to make windmills as unintrusive  as possible, while allowing citizens to reap the benefits of windmills on their land.

The people should always be cautious when the state looks to take power from their local government. In this case it was done to enhance freedom. This law will be good for Wisconsin.

Republican Party of Wisconsin has the Blinders on Again

The Republican Party of Wisconsin issued another less-than-factual press release. This one claims Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker (R) has kept taxes flat in his budget while Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) has increased taxes in his city (For non-Wisconsinites, both are likely candidates for governor).  As illustrated by Eye on Wisconsin it is clear that Walker has not held the line on taxes as RPW claims. Eye on Wisconsin does an excellent job exposing this so I do not feel the need to explain the authors work here. My point is that the Republican Party of Wisconsin is all to often just plain WRONG in their press releases.

Last week Sen. Feingold’s campaign sent out a fundraising email [screenshot here] stating “Russ has been outspent in every Senate race he’s ever run.” The RPW instantly shot back with a press release titled “Feingold’s Fundraising Fabrication.” Some of the falsehoods included by the RPW;

In 2004, Feingold spent over $9 million in his re-election effort, outspending his opponent by nearly $4 million. Nevertheless, Feingold issued an urgent plea this week for more money in an email filled with negative attacks and a misrepresentation of his campaign spending.

Feingold’s email clearly stated he was outspent by “oppenents” not a single “opponent.” Some of this money was primary spending by Republicans, but that money, in typical Republican fashion was used to attack Feingold and his record. Feingold response located here.

“Russ Feingold’s assertion that he’s been outspent by his opponents is laughable,” said Mark Jefferson, Executive Director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. “Here’s a guy who spent nearly $3 million more in his last re-election effort than Herb Kohl.”

Feingold has never ran against Herb Kohl, and you are well aware of that Mr. Jefferson. This is a non-issue.

The RPW is also lying about health care reform. From a 9/23 press release;

We are contacting working families and seniors in the area to inform them of DEMOCRATS’ plans to dismantle Medicare…Tell DEMOCRATS to stop the crusade to eliminate Medicare benefits for future generations.

This is absolute crap, Republicans preying on the fears of the elderly in a political crusade against health care reform which will benefit all Americans. No one wants to take Medicare away, its a wonderful government-run health care program. Yet the RPW has no problem exploiting the fears of the elderly, scaring them into thinking health care reform will come at the cost of Medicare benefits.

Conservative group Citizens for Responsible Government pull these stunts as well, but as we all know; kids learn from their parents.

The Future of Afghanistan: Controlled by the Taliban?

By Chris Tubbs, Veteran US Army – Contact: ctubbs8 at gmail.com

Lt. General Stanley McChrystal is demanding 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan (and leaking this request to the press) or the war there will be lost. Vice President Joe Biden is arguing within the administration (and without through press leaks) that the mission to build democracy in Afghanistan is a failure and should be changed to a more simple counter-terrorism mission. Conservative commentator George Will is making a slightly more extreme version of VP Biden’s argument. Finally we are having a REAL discussion on America’s future in Afghanistan.

During the campaign there was only a caricature of a real discussion. Republicans wanted to stay in the war because Republicans always want to stay in a war, any war, at any cost, no matter what. Democrats wanted to stay in Afghanistan because it was “the right war,” the one America was perfectly correct in starting, as opposed to “the wrong war” in Iraq. Unfortunately, this argument is no better than the Republican argument – the fact that we were within our rights to start this war has nothing to do with whether it is wise to continue said war after eight miserable years.

Despite the pressure being put on him by Lt. Gen. McChrystal and the Republicans, President Obama is taking his time to do a complete and very thorough review of the situation in Afghanistan, what the mission there should be, and how we get out. The danger here is that President Obama will do little more than “stay the course” because he is afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t. Harry Truman’s presidency was severely damaged by his supposedly “losing” China to the communists. Lyndon Johnson kept escalating the war in Vietnam largely because he did not want the same thing to happen to his presidency. The American people often have a hard time facing up to facts about the world that they do not like. Let there be no mistake here, if we switch to a counter-terrorism mission rather than the (so-far failed) nation-building mission we are pursuing now the Taliban will retake Afghanistan. President Obama has made no secret of the fact that his main concerns will be focused in the area of domestic reform. This is as it should be but if he changes the mission in Afghanistan and the Taliban retake the country his domestic reforms may be in quite a bit of trouble.

Despite this problem the President must change the mission in Afghanistan to counter-terrorism. First, the US simply does not have the troops available to get the job done. Lt. Gen. McChrystal wants 40,000 more troops but where are these troops going to come from? The vast majority of the troops in Iraq will still be needed there for some time to come. Additionally, in order to achieve Iraq-like results in Afghanistan we will need even more troops there than we used in Iraq because Afghanistan is a far more rural country. The Taliban have a perfect sanctuary in Pakistan and we have no real reason to believe that we can completely defeat them.

The American people have the mindset we are invincible so if we lose at something it must be because someone screwed up. We “lost” China because the State Department was riddled with commies. We lost in Vietnam because Democrats stabbed the country in the back just as we were on the verge of winning. It only follows that we lost in Afghanistan because Obama is a socialist weakling. This argument will weaken the President politically but so will a long drawn-out stalemate while public support for the war diminishes.

Despite the seeming indestructibility of the Taliban it might still be worth one last shot if it weren’t for Hamid Karzai. In his blatant election-rigging he has betrayed both America and the Afghan people. Apparently, he has forgotten that the only thing that stands between him and the Taliban is the US Army. If anyone on “our side” deserves a beheading it is him. The credibility of the government is the single biggest key to any successful counter-insurgency operation. President Obama knows this and it is why he is conducting the second Afghanistan review in the nine months since he took office.

Time and again the American people and their leaders have shown a great unwillingness to face up to unpleasant facts. Karzai has thrown away the already small chance there was of stabilizing Afghanistan. American forces must shift focus to a more humble mission of taking out Al-Qaeda leaders and training camps. Yes, this will mean the Taliban take Afghanistan back. We can only hope that President Obama has the guts, as his predecessors from other wars have not, to tell the American people the truth. Then maybe the American people will finally accept that America is not invincible.

WI Bill Restores Voting Rights to Non-incarcerated Felons/Defeat JB Van Hollen

Wisconsin Assembly Bill 353 would restore the right to vote to roughly 40,000 “citizens” (if  a resident with absolutely no input on their leaders can be considered a citizen)  currently on probation or parole for a felony. These people are taxpaying members of society contributing as much or as little as anyone else, except they committed a crime in the past and got caught. This bill would not put polls in prisons, just offer the felons still serving time on probation or parole the ability to participate in the most fundamental act in our democracy.

Current Wisconsin law grants voting rights to convicted felons only after the completion of any probation or parole handed down in sentencing. A bill similar to AB 353 failed to pass the last session of the WI legislature, but with Democrats taking control of the Assembly this year (for a total of both houses of the legislature and the governors office) this bill stands a much better chance, unless Attorney General JB Van Hollen has his way. His office, The Department of Justice, issued a press release last month stating his opposition to AB 353. Some of his stated concerns;

Potential voter fraud connected with the proposal, increased burdens on the criminal justice system, judges and voting officials and unanswered technical issues of custody status not addressed in the bill.

Van Hollen offers no evidence as to potential voter fraud, and is refuted in a WPR story;

Opponents of the measure are worried that parolees who are revoked just before an election, may try to vote absentee. But state elections board director Kevin Kennedy says current state laws would prevent that.

Not to mention a felon on his way back to jail is not going to make voting absentee his last act as a free man. As to increased burdens on the justice system and officials? A Department of Administration analysis (page 5) determined that up to $14, 000 could be saved without distributing lists of felons on probation and parole to election officials. I think the voting process would be simpler if an election official did not have to concern themselves with the probation or parole status of a potential voter.

The press release from Van Hollen’s state-funded Department of Justice website also appears on his personal campaign website. This is a questionable act, seemingly mixing state business with political business.

Van Hollen picks-and-chooses the cases he wants to work on. He issues negative statements about laws before the legislature that if passed, would be his job to defend. It appears he mixed state business and campaign politics.

Democrat Scott Hassett has filed to run against Van Hollen for Attorney General in 2010 (assuming my prediction is wrong, as usual, and Van Hollen does not run for governor). I can’t find a website for Hassett, all I know is he was head of the DNR for five years, and has to be better than the incumbent. Maybe I’ll vote for him…

Wisconsin Food Stamp Program: Failing

Wisconsin’s FoodShare program (an updated version of food stamps) is a failure. The stated mission of FoodShare:

FoodShare Wisconsin was created to help stop hunger and to improve nutrition and health. FoodShare helps people with limited money buy the food they need for good health.

FoodShare is a failure because in spite of its description, it contains almost no standards on the nutritional value of food able to be purchased under the program. The state places a set amount of money (based on income and family size) on a card and the purchases are limited by these basic rules:

FoodShare benefits cannot be used to buy:
-Any nonfood item, such as pet foods; soaps, paper products, and household   supplies; grooming items, toothpaste, and cosmetics
-Alcoholic beverages and tobacco
-Vitamins and medicines
-Any food that will be eaten in the store
-Food that is hot at the point of sale

If these guidelines seem vague, its because they are. Beef sticks, candy bars, potato chips and soda are all eligible for purchase with state funds. Energy drinks are not, but I know this only because I read a 14 page table of specific eligible vs. ineligible foods.

Some  point-of-sale systems do not filter energy drinks as ineligible (Kwik Trip), at at small stores that input prices into the register manually, computer-aided eligibility determination isn’t even an option. Why is Pepsi acceptable but Red Bull isn’t? Does it fall under the category of “vitamins and medicine?” How is a retail employee supposed to to make that distinction?

Tobacco cannot be purchased under FoodShare. That has to be rung up separately. Cigarettes are expensive because they are heavily taxed and tobacco taxes are a terribly regressive form of taxation. Poor people will continue to smoke, continue to be poor, and continue to receive assistance in the form of FoodShare. Quit raising tobacco taxes.

Some people need FoodShare benefits greatly. To keep FoodShare in the hands of these people, Wisconsin’s Democratic lawmakers need to take a serious look at what foods taxpayers are willing to provide to low-income citizens. If some TV station pulls a FoxNews/ACORN type story with someone buying soda and beef sticks on hidden camera there is going to be outrage. The Democrats in the legislature needs to get stricter regulations on eligible food in place before this happens. With control of the Assembly, Senate and Governors office the blame for this scandal will be placed squarely on them, and thats the last thing they need.

Gay Marriage in Washington D.C.

David Catania of the Washington D.C. Council will soon be introducing the “Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009,” which would legalize gay marriage in Washington DC. The bill has ten co-sponsors (from a 13 member council) and seems guaranteed to pass.

This is bigger than any states legalization of gay marriage as the District is administered by Congress, so all laws passed by the Council are at the mercy of congressional review. If Congress decides not to step in and overturn the law that inaction denotes the biggest step toward gay marriage the legislative branch of the federal government has ever undertaken.

The federal government employs 27% of workers in D.C. but under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act they do not recognize same sex marriages. If the D.C. Council passes this law Congress and President Obama may be forced to reconsider DOMA as a matter of policy. The president has already stated his opposition to DOMA, but he does not support same sex marriage either. This could force him to make that push for gay rights we all expected after his campaign.

Of course the law faces challenges. The bills author, from a Washington Post article;

“I think it is very important for people to realize we are talking about a civil marriage, not a religious marriage,” Catania said.

Is it still necessary to convince people of this? Unfortunately the answer must be yes. Until people realize that legalizing same sex marriage does not mean the pope will have to marry Rosie and Ellen the fight for marriage equality will be harder than it needs to be. Conservatives from all over the country will get involved, conveniently forgetting their mantras of limited government and states (or districts) rights.

I don’t see a repeal of DOMA in the near future. Congress is way too busy with health care reform to bring up another divisive issue. Maybe all the D.C. law will accomplish is gay marriage in D.C., but for all the gay couples there that just want the same rights as everyone else, thats still a very good thing.

Mercury Marine in Fond du Lac, Rewards for Greed and Bullying

In late August the machinists union at the Mercury Marine plant in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin rejected a contract extension which would have frozen wages for seven years, increased the cost of employees health insurance and cut pay by 30% for new employees and employees returning from mandatory furloughs. Mercury threatened to move the plants operations to a non-union Oklahoma factory as leverage to force the rotten deal through the union, but the union stood its ground and rejected the contract.

Last Friday the union voted on the deal a third time, this time accepting Mercury’s crap deal. The workers must have bought into the “some job is better than no job” rhetoric right-wing talk radio had been throwing out since the “No” vote. Ashamed to face the unemployment line they caved to the greedy Mercury executives, who in turn screwed over their employees in Oklahoma, closing the plant that stood to benefit until Fond du Lac agreed to the concessions.

It gets worse. Mercury Marine was rewarded for their bullying and greed. Since the initial threat to move operations to Oklahoma the stock of parent company Brunswick Corp has doubled in value. The city and county have offered Mercury up to $50 million in tax breaks and incentives to keep the plant in Fond du Lac, shut down the Oklahoma plant and move some (certainly not all) of the jobs to Fond du Lac.

County supervisors and Fond du Lac City Manager Tom Herre are all hailing the vote to approve the contract as a victory for the area. The $50 million in tax breaks and incentives amounts to over $1.000 for each resident of the city. Currently Mercury employed 850 factory workers and 1,000 at its headquarters building in the city. The factory jobs were going to Oklahoma if the union did not approve the contract. The headquarters jobs were up in the air. The plant closing in Oklahoma employed 380 people, not nearly as many will be moved to Wisconsin, Mercury will consolidate positions wherever possible.

This is a raw deal for Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and Stillwater, Oklahoma. It is a raw deal for employees and taxpayers. The only beneficiaries are the executives getting rich by cutting the pay of their hard working employees. That is just plain wrong.

Observations on Obama’s Address to the Youth

President Obama’s address to the youth of the nation from Wakefield High School in Virginia was everything I expected, dull and apolitical. Other than Obama mentioning that when he was young he did things he was not proud of (which I cannot envision Bush admitting) this speech could have been delivered by any president.

Obama pulled out campaign-style rhetoric by referring to three specific students who faced challenges in their lives, but unlike a campaign speech these students had already persevered through hard work.

During the speech Fox News occasionally showed two classrooms (Manhattan Beach, CA and Yorktown Heights, NY) full of with white students, MSNBC showed one classroom with predominately minority students, and an auditorium where the race of the students was not discernable.

Immediately following the speech Dr. Nancy of MSNBC began interviewing a man with no public speaking skills who was concerned students following up on Obama’s speech would  be divulging personal information and leaving themselves open to indoctrination. Dr. Nancy insulted him for a moment and then cut to a ten minute lovefest with several guests about how wonderful the speech was. By this time Fox News was already discussing health care.

We’ll probably never know the impact of Obama’s speech, but hopefully it inspired a few children. Now we can get back to arguing about health care reform and the national debt.

The Nonsense of Winona’s NightCAP Underage Drinking Citations

Every year when classes begin the police in Winona swarm the area around my alma matter, Winona State University, on foot patrol looking for underage drinkers. According to the Winona Daily News;

The sweep was part of NightCAP Junior, a program funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and administered through the Minnesota Office of Traffic Safety. It pays police overtime to crack down on underage drinking.

A search of the NHTSA website suggests that Minnesota is the only state diverting any of the federal funding to underage drinking enforcement, while other states spend all the money on what appears to be the primary purpose of the program, combating drunk driving. As “traffic safety” is part of the title of both government agencies behind the NightCAP program, drunk driving should be the only focus of the program.

Why is Minnesota the only state spending the money to bust underage drinkers? The college towns of St. Cloud and Mankato were also targeted under the program. Would the citizens of Minnesota not be better served by taking drunk drivers off the street, as opposed to drunk college students? Very few of the college students were even taken off the street, instead being issued citations with fines. If this had anything to do with public safety these students would have thrown into a paddywagon and hauled to jail to sober up. This stunt was nothing more than a revenue generator for the city’s police departments.

Heads up to the Minnesota Office of Traffic Safety: The message being sent to college students is next NightCAP Junior don’t walk home after the party, drive. Cops can’t pull you over if they’re all busy walking around campus. Then there will be a legitimate traffic safety issue for your office to deal with.

The Problem with Referendums and School Funding

Fighting Bob has a pretty good article today on the school funding battle going on between state and local government. The author is a little hard on the legislature as Wisconsin’s latest budget was difficult and cuts had to be made, and he seems to ignore that whether money comes from a state tax or a local tax, its still a tax. However that doesn’t change the basic fact that the formula for funding Wisconsin’s schools is deeply flawed. Point being:

More and more, funding schools is done by local property tax referendum.

That is a big problem. Referendums rarely pass because:

A. People don’t want their taxes to go up.

B. People without children in school really don’t want their taxes to go up.

Black River Falls just missed out on a golden opportunity to build a new elementary school to replace aging buildings that don’t meet ADA requirements because people didn’t want their property taxes to go up. Unfortunately the children that are most affected by the referendum were not allowed to vote on their own future.

Something has to be done about the way Wisconsin funds education. Forcing all major spending decisions to go to referendum turns into Taxpayers vs. Children. Children, our future, are all too often the losers of that match-up. Education is one of the most important responsibilities of government. As undemocratic as it sounds, passing these important decisions off to voters en masse is irresponsible because it leaves children in low quality schools.

As stated earlier, a tax is a tax no matter what level of government levies it. If we cannot pass referendums to finance education, we need to try something else. We can’t afford not to.