From my Disptaches column in Wisconsin Interest:

As John Keats would have appreciated, autumn in Wisconsin is a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness; it is, unfortunately, also the season when Wisconsin legislators, weary from the task of taxing and spending, turn to the minutiae of the bored politician.

Solons spent their time on a resolution that urged us to refrain from calling the swine flu..."swine flu," lest we offend the porcine community, and on urgent legislation to permit NFL team buses to blow through red lights on their way to Lambeau Field, lest linebackers suffer the indignity of waiting among the unwashed of Ashwaubenon.
 

It's here somewhere, I'm sure.

State bureaucrats spent much of the fall trying to explain such irritants as the missing DNA of 12,000 Wisconsin felons from the states criminal database; massive fraud in the Wisconsin Shares program; and why state governments attempt to consolidate its computer servers had cost $90.9 million - seven times more than the Doyle administration had estimated.
 

In a burst of common sense, the state's tourism folks also quietly shelved the widely mocked "Wisconsin: Live Like You Mean It" slogan and logo, which seemed to depict a state taxpayer being held upside by his ankles until all of the change in his pocket fell out.
 

All in all a bad season for logos. The Wisconsin Tourism Federation shamefacedly changed its acronym after it was mocked on a blog called Your Logo Makes Me Barf, which pointed out that the initials WTF had other (and unfortunate) connotations.

Some dates to remember.
 

June 29, 2009: Gov. Jim Doyle signs a new state budget that raised taxes and fees by more than $2 billion, raised spending by $3.6 billion, let property taxes jump by another $1.5 billion, and left the state with a structural deficit of upwards of $2 billion.
 

Sept. 22, 2009: The Tax Foundation drops Wisconsin from 38th to 42nd in a ranking of state business climates, largely on the basis of the higher taxes.
 

Sept. 24, 2009: Forbes magazine ranks the state even lower, saying that Wisconsin is now one of the three worst states in the country for business. In the Forbes list, Wisconsin dropped from 43rd in 2006 to 48th in a measurement that included costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life.