Where have Milwaukee's "progressives" been on this issue? The advocates for the working poor? Why haven't we heard the same objections that were aimed at Scott walker's modest cuts?
One example is the night parking fee, which is essentially a tax on poor people and some apartment dwellers. Most middle-class homeowners have a garage and aren’t parking on the street. But in densely crowded, older, generally poorer neighborhoods, there are lots of people without access to a garage who get socked a night parking fee. It’s quite unfair....
It’s bad enough the fee exists. But last week the Common Council increased the night parking fee for the first time since 1950, increasing it from $44 to $55 a year. Mayor Tom Barrett still has to review the budget, and could chose to veto this item.
He should. The increase will simply make it harder for poor people to pay for permits, which is already a problem. Many city residents end up getting lots of parking tickets because of this. State statistics show more people get their license suspended because they owe money for parking fines and other tickets. This in turn makes it harder for poor people to drive to work and remain employed. If the goal is to make sure as many city residents as possible are employed, it’s counterproductive to increase the night parking fee. If anything, the fee should be abolished.
(It's also making the county housekeepers union look petty.)
One day after the Milwaukee County Board agreed to privatize scores of county housekeepers, 19 of the 25 custodial staff at the Courthouse complex called in sick, county officials said Thursday.
Listening to President Obama and his Chinese counterpart this week, it was hard to tell who was Hu.
One is the leader of a great democracy. The other is the head of a repressive regime. But as the two men faced reporters in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Obama deferred to the wishes of President Hu Jintao: They would not take questions. In lieu of this rite of freedom, the two leaders exchanged platitudes. ...
It was, to put it charitably, a low-key way of spreading American values. A decade earlier, in that very same hall, President Bill Clinton criticized China's Tiananmen Square crackdown during a news conference with then-President Jiang Zemin. President George W. Bush, no fan of the media, made Hu squirm at the White House three years ago when he insisted that they take questions from U.S. and Chinese journalists.
Obama, by contrast, didn't hold a news conference in China.
**
Bonus read: What did The One actually accomplish on his Asian junket besides bowing to the Japanese emperor? Fred Barnes says, bupkus.
Has a president ever been less successful on a trip overseas than President Obama has on his eight-day excursion to Asia? I've been covering presidents since Gerald Ford and I can't think of one.
Obama struck out on his entire agenda in China and he acquiesced as the Chinese subjected him to the humiliation of a choreographed town hall meeting with student members of the Young Communist League. And he suffered through a 30-minute news conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao in which no questions from the media were allowed. Presidents normally come away on visits to foreign countries with "deliverables"--that is, tangible signs of progress like a treaty signing. All Obama got was a list of things the United States and China would do in the future. There's a name for this: diplomatic boilerplate.
The fund is, in the words of one elections observer, “dead as a doornail.” Legislators recently voted to fund Supreme Court races through a new “Democracy Trust Fund,” but the separate fund set up in 1977 still exists for everybody else, and dozens of candidates still take the taxpayer money.
Yet it does nothing to limit spending or promote competition and little, at best, to limit special interest involvement.
Thirty years after Schreiber’s paean to publicly financed campaigns, the fund hasn’t just failed to live up to its authors’ vision. It has, in fundamental ways, helped undermine it.
In other words: sounded good, well-intentioned, but in practice a complete failure. A fitting epitaph for most all campaign finance "reform," including McCain-Feingold.
Jeff Jacoby pens one of the best pieces I've seen so far on the narcissism of The One.
PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was "a painful barrier between family and friends" that symbolized "a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being." He referred to "tyranny," but never identified the tyrants -- he never uttered the words "Soviet Union" or "communism," for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan -- or even Mikhail Gorbachev.
A government panel's decision to toss out long-time guidelines for breast cancer screening is causing an uproar, and well it should. This episode is an all-too-instructive preview of the coming political decisions about cost-control and medical treatment that are at the heart of ObamaCare....
... every Democratic version of ObamaCare makes this task force an arbiter of the benefits that private insurers will be required to cover as they are converted into government contractors. What are now merely recommendations will become de facto rules, and under national health care these kinds of cost analyses will inevitably become more common as government decides where finite tax dollars are allowed to go.
It costs, the Chicago Tribune reports, $9.90 per ride to run the Chicago Transit Authority. The system takes in, on average, 98 cents per ride in fares. The rest gets made up by taxpayers...
And why is transit so expensive? Some of it is because rail construction is fantastically expensive -- the figure drops to $7 per ride if you exclude just a few of the more recent rail construction projects.
But some is labor, too. Public transit is staffed by unionized, public-sector labor, and that costs a lot. Reports the Trib:
“CTA labor union contracts provide a 3 percent wage increase this year and call for 3.5 percent hikes next year and in 2011.
“CTA President Richard Rodriguez and CTA board Chairman Terry Peterson have asked the unions to make similar concessions to cut costs, but union leaders have so far refused.
“ ‘We're not giving up anything,’ vowed Darrell Jefferson, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241, which represents bus drivers and bus mechanics.”
We pay 22% more for health insurance, Pew ranks us 9th worst fiscal mess in the U.S., half of minority men in Milwaukee are jobless. School district levies are going up an average of 7.16% statewide and less than 70% of MPS kids graduate from High School. We just got word our energy costs will rise 4%...and then more the following year, and that's without the horrors any Cap & Trade-type legislation would bring. Wisconsin isn't really rolling out the red carpet when it comes to attracting business: arm yourself with these stats when making your decisions on who you're backing next year.
Judge Butler served on the state Supreme Court for four years, enough time to have his judicial temperament grow in infamy. Having first run unsuccessfully in 2000, he was appointed by Democratic Governor Jim Doyle to the seat vacated by Justice Diane Sykes in 2004. But after serving four years, voters had seen enough of his brand of judicial philosophy, making him the first sitting justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in four decades to lose a retention election last year.
In Ferdon v. Wisconsin Partners, he drew the rage of doctors and others when he dismantled the state's limit on noneconomic damages in medical malpractices cases—the kind of tort reform that had been serving the state well. Business groups were likewise floored by his decision in Thomas v. Mallet, which allowed "collective liability" in lead paint cases—making any company a potential target, regardless of whether they made the paint in question. His nickname as a public defender was "Loophole Louis," a name that stuck when, as a judge, he was considered to be soft on crime.
At his confirmation hearing this month, Mr. Butler was quick to make light of his double rejection by Wisconsin voters, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that "After 16 years on the bench, I may be a better judge than a politician."
Ahem. That's a coded nod to liberal groups like the George Soros-funded Justice at Stake that are trying to eliminate judicial elections. Rather than letting voters choose judges, they prefer so-called "merit selection" plans whereby judges are selected by committees of lawyers.
State court judges like Mr. Butler are likely to be an important source of nominees for President Obama. Because Democrats have been out of office since the Clinton Administration, many of the liberal judges on the federal district courts are older, an incentive for the White House to comb state courts for new judges—especially for the federal appeals courts.
Mr. Butler's nomination also shows the return to prominence of judicial ratings by the American Bar Association, which traditionally gives extra weight to "judicial experience." The ABA, which was ousted by the Bush Administration in part because of the ABA's notorious liberal bias, is now back in favor in the Obama White House. Mr. Butler served on the ABA's Standing Committee on Judicial Independence, a group that like Justice at Stake critiques how that independence is supposedly compromised by the need to raise money for judicial elections.
Mr. Butler's nomination shows the dominance of liberal ideology in Mr. Obama's judicial selections, and especially a contempt for Wisconsin voters
Via Hotair: Not only does Graham have to tell him that there’s no precedent for trying battlefield detainees in civilian court, but Holder’s emphasis on how we don’t need a confession to convict Bin Laden completely misses the larger point Graham’s trying to make. The real worry in a district-court trial isn’t what’ll happen to archterrorists like Osama or KSM, whose perpetual detention is assured; the worry is that those trials will establish precedents that’ll be exploited by lesser jihadis at their own trials later on. KSM won’t be released because the political consequences to the administration are too dire, but what about some other terrorist who’s less well known to the public and whose guilt, while certain to the CIA, is less provable under normal evidentiary rules? A confession in a case like that might be critical — but what if he wasn’t Mirandized before he confessed? What then? That’s Graham’s point, and Holder seems to want nothing to do with it.
Mounting evidence that independent voters have soured on the Democrats is prompting a debate among party officials about what rhetorical and substantive changes are needed to halt the damage.
Following serious setbacks with independents in off-year elections earlier this month, White House officials attributed the defeats to local factors and said President Barack Obama sees no need to reposition his own image or the Democratic message.
Since then, however, a flurry of new polls makes clear that Democrats are facing deeper problems with independents—the swing voters who swung dramatically toward the party in 2006 and 2008 but who now are registering deep unease with the amount of spending and debt called for under Obama’s agenda in an era of one-party rule in Washington.
A Gallup Poll released last week offered a disturbing glimpse about the state of play: just 14 percent of independents approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest figure all year. In just the past few days alone, surveys have shown Democratic incumbents trailing Republicans among independent voters by double-digit margins in competitive statewide contests in places as varied as Connecticut, Ohio and Iowa.
**
New CBS poll finds that independents continue to slip away from The One.
President Barack Obama is being greeted warmly in China, but back in the U.S. his overall approval rating has slipped to 53 percent, according to a new CBS News poll.
Approval for Mr. Obama's handling of the situation in Afghanistan has dropped as well as more Americans now disapprove than approve.
However, a majority of Americans still approve of the way Mr. Obama is handling his job as president, but this percentage is down three points. Fifty-three percent of Americans approve of how he's handling his job, down from 56 percent last month.
The president's approval rating has dropped seven points among independents. Forty-five percent of independents now approve of how the president is handling his job. Last month, a majority of 52 percent approved.
Assessments of how Mr. Obama is handling the war in Afghanistan have become more negative since early October. Thirty-eight percent now approve of how President Obama is handling the war - but even more, 43 percent, disapprove. Disapproval has risen nine points, from 34 percent last month.
Again, most of the change has occurred among independents. Last month, 44 percent of independents approved and 36 percent disapproved of the job Mr. Obama was doing on Afghanistan. Now, more independents disapprove than approve: 49 percent disapprove, and just 30 percent approve.
The federal site also claims another $2,209,169 sent to six districts that don't exist: the 00th, 9th, 10th, 14th, 39th, and 55th congressional districts.
That money awarded to "phantom" districts supposedly saved or created 12.8 jobs. The total number of jobs saved or created in Wisconsin is 10,072.7.
It's another record-high for the U.S. National Debt which today topped the $12-trillion mark. Divided evenly among the U.S. population, it amounts to $38,974.34 for every man, woman and child.
Once upon a time, generations tried to leave a legacy to their heirs. But we have become the first generations to mooch off of our children and grandchildren... on an almost biblical scale. By the end of the decade the Obama/Democrat spending orgy will boost the debt to around $19 trillion.
For their inheritance... we've sold them to the Chinese.
Imagine for the moment that George Bush had done this; but the larger question is:why the stonewall in the first place? Why not have an open investigation into what went wrong and who screwed up? At this point what do they have to hide?
Congress wants to determine what failures allowed Army Major Nidal Hasan to kill 14 people and wound dozens of others in a premeditated shooting spree at Fort Hood. The Obama administration has refused to cooperate into a probe to find those failures. Ben Pershing at the Washington Post wrote last night that the White House refuses to provide witnesses to Congress for hearings into the counterterrorism failure.
Thousands of poor people in Wisconsin have waited months for food stamp benefits because of a backlog of applications at a state processing center.
The Hunger Task Force of Wisconsin estimated that the federal FoodShare benefits left undelivered totaled more than $11.7 million from May to October, while nearly two-thirds of applications filed since mid-June were not processed within the 30-day time requirement. FoodShare is the name for the old food stamps program.
The state took over processing duties for Milwaukee County in May and, based on early results, appears to be no better at attending to FoodShare applicants than the county. The county's error rate and delays in processing aid applications led to the state takeover....
Extra efforts to trim the backlog have begun to work, Boffeli said. The state increased the staff at its enrollment services center in Madison and closed its phone lines on Fridays to give workers time to devote to the backlog. The hours applicants can conduct required interviews by telephone have been reduced Monday through Thursday.
Mike Tate, the chairman of the state Democratic Party released this web-only ad on behalf of Tom Barrett yesterday. Just in case Barrett isn't familiar with the talents of Mr. Tate, we provide this sample.
In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.
Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city's largest municipal union.
Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.
"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.
Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.
Unfortunately, this is what it feels like to be a debtor nation pleading with your bankers to let you keep your line of credit..
Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.
Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade....
Peter Wehner on Obama's bizarre decision to try KSM in New York.
Every month the Obama administration seems to outdo itself in terms of making terribly unwise decisions. This one ranks high among them. It will add another damaging brushstroke to the Obama canvas. The current administration is revealing itself one act at a time; the curtain is being pulled back on it one decision at a time. The liberal, and in some cases the radical, actions of the Obama administration are piling up like cars in a rush-hour traffic accident. But a day of reckoning will come, I suspect; first to Mr. Obama’s party, and then to Mr. Obama himself.
Longtime Republican heavyweight Jim Klauser is no longer backing Mark Neumann's guv campaign and has decided to instead support Walker, according to a GOP source with knowledge of the decision.
Klauser's wife, Shirley, has been serving as Neumann's campaign treasurer. But she's leaving as well, the source said.
Neumann's campaign has been flailing and failing to gain any traction, as Walker has been locking up the grassroots. Initially, Klauser's backing gave him some credibility, but so far Neumann has shown no sign of being able to capitalize. His defection at this stage is a potentially devastating blow.
In other words, the Medicare commission would come to function much like the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which rations care in England. Or a similar Washington state board created in 2003 to control costs. Its handiwork isn't pretty.
The Washington commission, called the Health Technology Assessment, is manned by 11 bureaucrats, including a chiropractor and a "naturopath" who focuses on alternative, er, remedies like herbs and massage therapy. They consider the clinical effectiveness but above all the cost of medical procedures and technologies. If they decide something isn't worth the money, then Olympia won't cover it for some 750,000 Medicaid patients, public employees and prisoners.
So far, the commission has banned knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis, discography for chronic back pain, and implantable infusion pumps for pain not related to cancer. This year, it is targeting such frivolous luxuries as knee replacements, spinal cord stimulation, a specialized autism therapy and MRIs of the abdomen, pelvis or breasts for cancer. It will also rule on routine ultrasounds for pregnancy, which have a "high" efficacy but also a "high" cost.
Currently, the commission is pushing through the most restrictive payment policy in the nation for drug-eluting cardiac stents—simply because bare metal stents are cheaper, even as they result in worse outcomes. If a patient is wheeled into the operating room with chest pains in an emergency, doctors will first have to determine if he's covered by a state plan, then the diameter of his blood vessels and his diabetic condition to decide on the appropriate stent. If they don't, Washington will not reimburse them for "inappropriate care."
If Democrats impose such a commission nationwide, it would constitute a radical change in U.S. health care.
Why did Barrett fudge his position on taxes right out of the box?
As he delivered prepared remarks, Barrett made one potentially significant deviation from the text distributed to reporters. When he came to a line that originally read, "Our families and businesses want state tax increases to stop," he changed it to: "Our families and businesses want fair taxes."
Is it possible he is really launching a campaign for governor without a clear, articulated position on taxes? That he hasn't decided what he's going to say about the Doyle and Obama take hikes? Is he thinking that is going to be I'm-a-nice-guy substance-free campaign?
Of course, Barrett can try to distance himself on the tax issue from his fellow Democrats in Madison and Washington. (Although that will be difficult as Jim Doyle and Barack Obama's handpicked candidate.)
But it will a lot harder to distance himself from his own record. You think this might have something to do with his hedging and fudging?
Bonus question: Can anyone find anywhere any evidence whatsoever that Tom Barrett opposed a single Doyle tax or fee increase?
Or any letter, comment, or statement in which Barrett has differed from a single policy of the Obama Administration -- from the $787 billion porkulous package, to the bailouts, the takeovers of the auto industry, the massive deficits, cap and trade, to the taxes on businesses in Obamacare?
Barrett's proposal increased the tax rate by 10 percent (per $1,000 of assessed value) to $8.90. Barrett proposed increasing the tax levy by 4.4 percent. Walker proposed a tax levy freeze (0%), and an increase in the tax rate by 2.53 percent to $4.05.
Barrett has increased the property tax levy in each of the six budgets he has proposed, Walker has submitted a freeze in each of the eight budgets he has proposed.
