So let’s say you weren’t convinced by my argument that Milwaukee’s crippled taxing authority is causing me to get more parking tickets than I deserve. Because you’re not me, and you don’t keep getting parking tickets, and I was probably just passing the blame for my irresponsible parking behavior. Fine.

But what if the Milwaukee Fire Department is closing fire companies on rotating basis to save money? Well, you’re still not me, and your house probably isn’t on fire, so maybe you still don’t care. But Bay View’s Engine 11 company was shut down for the month of February, leading someone who knows what they’re talking about to worry that residents could be put into “unnecessary jeopardy.”

Engine 11 on KK was one of two "brownout" companies during February. At least we're by the lake.

Lest you think Milwaukee could maintain full fire protection if only the city wasn’t wasting the money it has , let me re-refer you to the Public Policy Forum report that says “by most any standard, the City of Milwaukee is financially well run and management is not the cause of its fiscal problems.” The problem is revenue sources.

Aside from state aid, property taxes provide the major source of Milwaukee’s revenue. And it must remain the major source, even with over a thousand properties in foreclosure and with assessed real estate values declining by nearly five percent from 2008 to 2009. Milwaukee is left unnecessarily vulnerable by depending on the housing market and its volatile prices. That’s why Wisconsin doesn’t charge sales tax exclusively on lobster.

Well, that’s part of why.

And if everyone's house burns down because there’s no one around to put out the fires, there won’t even be any properties left to tax. Then what?

The Milwaukee Fire Department is obviously doing well with the resources it has. According to the Journal Sentinel, “the six fire deaths in each of the last two years were tied for the second-lowest death toll in 52 years.” But at some point someone decided that Milwaukee had the right number of fire stations in the right places. If that decision was wrong, let’s make whatever changes that would make sense. But fire companies are not facing temporary shut downs because we have too many of them, it’s because we can’t afford them. That appears to me to be a problem.

Scott Walker is opposed to a county sales tax dedicated to funding parks and transportation, exactly the kind of funding variety that the city government needs. Since any new taxing authority needs approval by the state, Governor Walker would have veto power over any effort to allow a Milwaukee sales or income tax.

I suppose if he was able to implement his county sales tax holiday, we could have all afforded new fire extinguishers.  

I have a job now, which is nice. Because working for four hours on Wednesday allowed me to earn almost enough money to pay the $30 ticket I got for parking “within 15 feet of a crosswalk” during my shift.

Friday I got a letter from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue informing me that my state tax refund has been offset by $100 to cover two debts to City of Milwaukee Parking Enforcement and a ten dollar fee. I called the contact number and waited for three minutes worth of a recording telling me that my call was being transferred. To what, or from what I never learned. Then I hung up.

Saturday I accidentally parked in front of a fire hydrant. Which was a stupid thing to do. And dangerous, because if someone wanted to start a fire the entire block would have gone up.

The fact that the van parked behind me and well within its own ten foot limit didn’t get a ticket makes me feel like I’m being picked on. I expect that next time I’m parked at a networked meter I’ll get a ticket while waiting for the old people ahead of me to figure out how to use the pay station.

(not paying his share)

 I’m sure of this makes me sound like some kind of delinquent driver, but let me assure you that’s not the case. In fact, this same week I got a notice from my insurance company saying that I’ve been such a good customer my rates won’t go up even if I cause a “large accident”. See?

So there must be some reason I’m paying $160 in parking fines this week, right? Well, kinda.

For over ten years, shared revenue payments from the state to Milwaukee have been frozen or reduced and have not kept up with the rate of inflation. These payments to the city aren’t charity. Unlike most other states, Wisconsin collects statewide sales and income taxes to be redistributed to the cities. Milwaukee is not allowed to create its own sales or income tax and depends on state shared revenue for 44% of its budget.

Governor Doyle has proposed budgets that trim shared revenue payments to help solve the state’s own budget problems, but he has prevented Republican legislators from cutting payments further. In 2002 Republican Governor Scott McCallum proposed eliminating the shared revenue payments altogether and then-Mayor John Norquist responded saying, “It's an absolutely mindless, cynical way to shift the blame from the spending increases in Madison… It's a very serious attack on local government, local services and local property-tax payers.” (Journal Sentinel 1/22/02)

Aside from being prohibited from having its own sales or income tax, the state also prevents Milwaukee from charging for services like garbage collection above their cost. So it’s no surprise that the city’s other enterprises, like water and parking are seen as a source of revenue. In 2008, the parking system provided a surplus of $18 million.

Milwaukee’s main independent source of revenue is property taxes. That’s why even though local taxes as a whole in Milwaukee are very low compared to similar cities, property taxes are higher.

A 2008 study by the Public Policy Forum concluded that despite good city management, the “lack of intergovernmental revenue growth will continue to be a primary cause of budget difficulties and represents a significant threat to the city’s financial health.”

A local sales tax would allow Milwaukee to control its own budgetary destiny, reduce property taxes, and stop giving me so many parking tickets. No one likes raising taxes, though, even when voters say please.

But the next governor will most likely be from the Milwaukee area and his understanding of the problem could help. 

 I did my taxes online last week. It only took a couple of hours and it was free. I think Liberty Tax Service knows about this.

“Do you like attention? Let us TRAIN you to wave! We want the best wavers and holding weekly auditions to ensure only the best represent us.”

That’s a Craigslist ad in Seattle. Liberty’s Milwaukee ad euphemistically calls for “Marketer Positions”. How many MBA’s will show up for that interview? Or rather, audition.

 Anyway, now that I know Liberty Tax Service puts the best wavers on the corner, I want to see their best accountants. I saw someone at a bus stop dancing and wearing what might have been a plush green Statue of Liberty cape. They may or may not have worked for Liberty Tax Service.

Last week I was taught in class that a minimum wage is bad for an economy. And there is economic logic there: raising the lowest wages above their natural market price for low skill jobs will increase demand for those jobs, decrease funds available to hire other workers, and increase unemployment.

There are, of course, benefits to letting people, particularly poor people, have more money. Because when you give it to them it doesn’t just go away. They spend it. And as Paul Krugman notes about wages, “where there have been more or less controlled experiments, for example when New Jersey raised minimum wages but Pennsylvania did not, the effects of the increase on employment have been negligible or even positive.” The centrist conclusion, he says, is that minimum wages “reduce employment, but that the effects are small and swamped by other forces.”

Alternatives exist for helping low wage workers without disrupting market forces at all. The Earned Income Tax Credit can give families over $5,000 as part of their tax refund or throughout the year. That amounts to a $2.40 hourly raise for a full time worker. So the EIC is nice, but increasing it is harder to do politically than increasing the minimum wage because, as Krugman puts it, minimum wage increases are done “off-budget”.

I guess my point is that with 8.4% unemployment in Milwaukee it’s good that people are able to find work dressed as the Statue of Liberty, for pay likely made higher by our minimum wage, but not high enough that anyone is changing careers for it. And all that also goes for whatever mascot starts to stand outside of Blockbuster when they realize I can watch everything online.

Ah yes. I like January so much that it should always be January.

For one thing, people would have to take their driving test in the snow. And I'm more concerned about a person's ability to drive somewhere between ten and sixty miles per hour on Oklahoma Avenue when it’s snowing than I am their ability to parallel park in Greendale during June.

Plus there’s the resolutions. For someone as self-critical as me, New Year’s resolutions are pointless, or at least redundant. If it were always January, I suppose I’d get more credit for constant self doubt.

And there’s January’s State of the County address, Scott Walker’s yearly speech in which he announces his plans to privatize the airport and cut property taxes. If he gave this speech every month, perhaps Citizens for Responsible Government would realize that during Walker’s seven year stewardship, Milwaukee County’s property tax levy has actually increased by twenty percent, or $43.8 million. This while, according to the Walker campaign site, he “authored seven consecutive budgets without increasing the property tax levy from the previous year.” So maybe someone would notice and ask him to stop saying that.

In January there are no lines at the mall because everyone already spent the money they don’t have on Christmas presents. Which is nice. And at Southridge there is no line at the Cash 4 Gold kiosk, where you can quickly turn your gold into last month’s credit card payment, or if you’re lucky, last month’s house payment. There’s no line at Cash 4 Gold in January, not because it’s unpopular, it’s just that everyone already sold their used gold last month at Christmas 4 Gold.  

(The relationship between gold and Christmas goes all the way back to the magi, who knew to give gold rather than cash from the crumbling Roman Empire. This is the same reason that these days people give Best Buy gift cards.) 

So the holidays are over and January offers us a time for quiet temperance. It’s a great time to pay down a little debt and stop buying and eating things just for the hell of it.

I propose three every year.

People love patios. That’s why last April I asked the maitre d’ at Sheridan’s in Cudahy to unlock a table and chairs. The waitress broke two water glasses on the way out to us. We had a couple Manhattans and left. People love patios.

Which is good, because there will soon be a combination of more patios and more standing on patios in Wisconsin. And the air inside bars will be more thick with complaining than with carcinogens.

The upcoming smoking ban has been on my mind lately, since every time I leave the house now I need to wear so many coats and when I get home they each smell like they smoked a pack of Camels. But they didn’t. And neither did I.

So I’m out of Febreze. Oh, and then there’s the heart disease and cancer I’m getting. But a lot of things can give you cancer, and it’s not like the government is banning bisphonal A.

Starting July 5^th though, cigarette smoking will be banned in all Wisconsin bars, restaurants, and sports arenas. There are two exceptions. A minor one allows cigar and pipe smoking at already existing cigar bars and tobacco stores that get at least 15% of their revenue from such sales. The other allows smoking in Indian casinos. Which makes sense I guess, since you can already go there to drink and gamble all night and pay $4 ATM fees.

So the Great Native American Revenge continues, as once again they seize the territory of freedoms ceded by our nanny state liberalism. Next they’ll be the only ones denying us coverage for inadequate medical care and selling us Double Hummers that run on crude oil and polar bears.

But that is a digression, of course. Since the new law bans smoking in all other workplaces, waiters, hostesses and bartenders no longer have to quit their jobs just so they can not have heart attacks every hour at work. But most of us don’t work in bars. So the argument over the smoking ban comes down to people like me being annoyed by cigarette smoke, and smokers being annoyed by not smoking. With the ban having passed, I get to find something else to be annoyed about and we all get to live longer enjoying that.

Either way, there’s no going back now. The ban will take effect six months from today and it passed the state legislature last year with wide support among Democrats and Republicans. Even before the ban, 39 Wisconsin communities already had some kind of smoking ban. So its unlikely that even Governor Walker could reverse it if he wanted to. 

(Here's kind of a neat interactive map that shows what everyone else does.)

New Year’s Day will bring the Bicycle Polar Plunge, when people ride their bikes into the frigid water of Lake Michigan at South Shore Park. Soon enough, with everyone being encouraged to drive old cars instead of use public transportation, Januarys will be so warm that the only danger in doing the Bicycle Polar Plunge will be the pollution in the water.

The last time I swam in Lake Michigan I learned afterward that the beach was classified as dangerously polluted and by swimming in it I was exposed to a level of E. coli comparable to a “bathtub full of raw chicken”. What size bathtub, the EPA did not specify. Nonetheless, I was fine and am, but when Scott Walker closes more public pools and Januarys start getting hotter, more children will want to swim safely in our great lake.

All of which leads me to ask, shouldn’t we stop dumping raw sewage into Lake Michigan?

It turns out that a third of U.S. sewage systems violate the Clean Water Act by dumping sewage during heavy rains, so at least Milwaukee isn’t doing anything unusual. The problem is that combined sewers (which carry rainwater and are also connected to our sinks, showers, and toilets) are designed to overflow into the rivers and lake instead of backing up into people’s houses. Backups that Scott Walker might prefer, because then children could swim in their own basements without the government telling them what to do and trying to clean their sewage. But I don’t know. I never asked him.

One way we avoid combined sewer overflows is via the Deep Tunnel system. The Deep Tunnel, 26.5 miles of giant pipes as low as thirty stories below Milwaukee, collects and holds excess water until it can be treated. So then how come we keep dumping shit in the lake, you and all the children without public pools might ask?

The Deep Tunnel, photo from mmsd.com

Well. The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) says that the Deep Tunnel was designed to reduce overflows to two per year, which is about the number of overflows it does allow on average. I suppose that number could be reduced with more Deep Tunnel, and an extension is currently under construction deep below 27^th street. So that’s good. And if two overflows a year seem like a lot, in the years before the Deep Tunnel was operational we averaged fifty to sixty.

(!!!)

But according to MMSD, the source of 89% of the pollution going into Lake Michigan is not from sewage overflows. It’s from polluted runoff water. The amount and quality of runoff water is poorly affected by new development which covers land that could once absorb rainwater, but now sends rainwater across a parking lot through motor oil and cigarettes into a storm drain.

MMSD has purchased 2,000 acres of land along waterways in areas that are expected to see heavy development in the next twenty years. They will keep the land undeveloped to provide a natural way for water to be collected. The district also encourages subtle changes to developed property that can reduce the amount of rainwater ending up in the sewer system. Disconnecting downspouts that empty into the ground, installing rain barrels that collect water from rooftops, and rain gardens that containing long-rooted native plants are among them.

Which is nice. But not everyone is going to do those things. They haven’t. So how about offering them instead? Homeowners check off on their tax return to indicate they want a rain garden and the county hires someone to come by and plant wildflowers by the downspout. Or install a rain barrel. And there should be regulations on commercial development like requiring so much green space to balance a parking lot.

This stuff would incur minor costs, of course. But it seems to me like a reasonable way to keep our water supply from being poisoned. Fortunately Kevin Shafer, the Executive Director of MMSD, seems rather forward thinking. We do sell Milorganite after all. 

Earlier this month Governor Doyle signed the bill discussed here that will provide public financing for state Supreme Court campaigns, making Wisconsin only the third state to do so. Which is a good thing. Or better than a bad thing, anyway.

Under the new law, candidates can receive $100,000 for a primary campaign and $300,000 for a general election, for free, from the state government. In exchange they cannot raise large sums outside of this, meaning no begging potential future plaintiffs and defendants for cash, which doesn’t seem like something judges should be doing in the first place. At least not with their robes on.

So that’s good. And if a candidate accepts the public financing agreement but their opponent doesn’t, and chooses instead to raise an unlimited amount of money from businessmen and game show hosts, the publicly financed candidate will get additional funds from the state to compete. The publicly financed candidate will get no recompense though, if an outside group buys so-called issue ads that are political but do not explicitly endorse a candidate.

So that’s kinda fair. But if it sounds like this is getting expensive, and will get more expensive, and the only solution will be to pour more money into the campaigns, maybe the problem is the money. Or rather, what candidates need the money to pay for.

So let’s see, how about a checklist of things campaigns need to pay for: (confidential source)

Something stands out there. To me anyway, and probably to WITI Fox 6, home of the most “snow PIX from the first storm of the season”. Because expensive political campaigns are an advertising boon for television broadcasters. And now that the state is providing the funding, we are effectively subsidizing private broadcaster profits, cutting a check in exchange for airtime during Judges Alex, (Joe) Brown, Judy and (Divorce) Court.

Ugh.

Don’t get me wrong, the new campaign finance law is commendable. Keeping judicial candidates (or candidates for anything) from fundraising can only aid the equitable and honest functioning of our government. Yes, the state should provide funding for buttons, stickers, and shirts, but campaigns would be a whole lot less expensive if the government did something completely within its power and right to do.

And that’s to make broadcasters air campaign ads for free. As previously complained about, TV broadcasters are allowed to use the airwaves for free in exchange for serving the “public interest”,  something that everyone involved with appears to define rather differently than I do.

It could be very simple: allow viable candidates a certain amount of free airtime, and if broadcasters want to sell issue ads, they have to be balanced by more free candidate airtime. The broadcasters wouldn’t like this, of course, because they’d miss out on profits. But the airwaves are our public space, TV stations are only licensed to use them, and the healthy functioning of our republic need not be hostage to their ability to make money by selling time to frighten, confuse, and misinform.

Time that, starting with the next Supreme Court campaign, will be paid for by you and me.

So I’d be sad to see Barrett exit as Milwaukee’s mayor. But I’d be happy if Barrett left Milwaukee to be governor of Wisconsin, and if he became governor of Wisconsin by defeating Scott Walker, well.

In 2002, Rep. Barrett’s congressional district was eliminated by the Republican-dominated state government, leaving Milwaukee with only one U.S. House member. Barrett then took an unsuccessful run for governor, and wound up as Milwaukee’s mayor, where he has quietly overseen economic development efforts in the city and surrounding counties, and a decrease in crime.

Barrett’s low-key style could not be contrasted more heavily than with this: (don't watch all of it)

I really don’t know what that means, but the crowd doesn’t seem bothered by the man’s incoherence and random pandering. What freedom do these people want from the government besides the freedom to put lead in toys and the freedom to not have abortions and to not marry gay people?

Scott Walker came to local prominence in 2002, during the effort to recall Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament and other County Supervisors from office. Recalling was very popular back then, it was a way for people who lost elections to win them again later, without needing to have won the election. Walker was anointed as the favorite of a group called Citizens for Responsible Government, translated as:

Citizens = Old People
For = Against
Responsible Government = Taxes

During the Ament recall, the Milwaukee Labor Council accurately described CRG’s efforts as “GOP types… using the recall to help advance their hidden agenda of privatizing such county services as the zoo, the airport, public transportation and mental health services. Prodded by ‘ultra right-wing talk show hosts’ Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner, it said, leaders of the recall are ‘attacking public employees and public services.’” (Journal Sentinel  2/8/02)

Seven years later, their assessment looks prophetic. Walker would like to sell the airport and the zoo, and every summer he tries to close county pools only so he can smell the salt of children’s tears.

CRG is still around, and now they want Scott Walker to be governor. And if the CRG people aren’t at tea parties these days, it’s only because they know tea is for homos.

Today the group calls itself “a non-partisan, fiscally conservative, grassroots political action group” and includes things on its website like “… the Wisconsin State Politburo (oops, we mean Assembly) passed AB-15…” Get it? And its home page offers the poll question “Who do you trust to deliver a fair budget that FINALLY makes government live like its citizens?” Options are the “County Leader” Walker and the “county bobble-head”, County Board Chairman Lee Holloway.

(Surprisingly the poll shows the county bobble-head is favored by 14% of the site’s visitors, and it only let me vote once. Could be non-partisan after all?)

All of which is to say that CRG has chosen Scott Walker as its champion and their shining hope for Wisconsin’s future. Which is, of course, scary as hell.

Walker’s popularity with the group, and with voters in general stems from his intransigence on taxes. He will not raise taxes on a house, he will not raise them on a mouse. He will not raise taxes here or there, he will not raise taxes anywhere.

Which allows him to say things on his new campaign website like that he “authored seven consecutive budgets without increasing the property tax levy from the previous year [and] despite failing national and state economies, Milwaukee County recorded a budget surplus in 2008.”

If you read that, you might think that Walker’s budget with no property tax increase led to a budget surplus. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the county board rejected his budget as proposed and increased property taxes 3.1%. The board also rejected Walker’s plan to cut parks staff, layoff county maintenance workers and pay private companies to do their jobs, and of course, raise admission for kids at public pools.

So Walker proposes a budget that would do harm to the county’s finances, employees, and citizens, the board fixes it, and he takes credit for the results. Might as well propose no taxes and free flag shirts.

Thanks for stepping up, Mayor. 

Fortunately, and contrary to my bio above, I don’t drive home from work on the Hoan Bridge every evening at five. I used to, and other people do, and they wait inexplicably for the stop lights on Oklahoma Avenue, wondering why the on/off ramp there needs stoplights. They wait in traffic backed up for a mile on the freeway, waiting for the light to change and change again and change and change again. And if they’re like me, they don’t just get off at the port instead, because the whole thing is just so ridiculous.

But that’s not the reason I think the Hoan Bridge should be torn down.

Last year, the state DOT commissioned a study to explore alternatives to resurfacing and repairing the bridge, which the DOT says needs to be done by 2013 and would cost $220 million. The bridge itself will need to be replaced in thirty years. The alternatives to repairing the Hoan include building a ground level extension of the 794 highway with a smaller lift bridge that would allow ships to pass through to the port. The estimated cost of a new road and bridge is the same as repairing the Hoan, and building at grade would allow up to $5.7 billion in new commercial, residential, and public development of the port area, much of which is now unused.

(above: a proposal for redevelopment of the Hoan Bridge area and a Google Maps image of one section)

But the very act of studying an alternative to the Hoan Bridge has left people in the area, well, confusing me.

County Supervisor Patricia Jursik is leading the Coalition to Save the Hoan and she’s joined by Bay View’s County Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic, Alderman Tony Zielinski, and Scott Walker. They’re having town hall meetings with citizens and collecting signatures on a petition that rejects “demolishing the Hoan and replacing it with ground-level lift bridges and a boulevard.”

I don’t understand this at all. A coalition to save Bay View’s efficient connection to downtown and the Marquette Interchange I would understand. I’d even sign the petition. But the coalition to save the Hoan specifically seems at best short sighted and arbitrary, and at worst like political grandstanding.

The Coalition’s materials don’t say they want to save the bridge for aesthetic or cultural reasons. If they did, I’d say I think the bridge is kind of ugly. It’s a landmark sure, but so was County Stadium. The lakefront would be better served with a smaller scale modern bridge that echoes the Calatrava and Pier Wisconsin while allowing utilization of a stretch of the lakefront for development beyond a shit factory.

Members of the Coalition have economic concerns about removing the connection between 794 and the Marquette Interchange, Bay View and downtown. Fine. But no one is suggesting that be done. Why not replace the Hoan Bridge with a less expensive structure that creates more development opportunities?

The effects that a smaller bridge would have on traffic and on the port should be studied, but the opposition is opposed to any studies. A new bridge would be at ground level, meaning traffic would need to stop for it to open and allow ships to pass through to the port. The DOT’s commissioned study shows the bridge would need to open on average of once per day for about six minutes, maybe longer. So if you were rushing to get to work on time this would be a problem if that six minutes in a day happened to coincide with your commute.

But really, opening the bridge would be no worse than waiting for that goddamned traffic light on Oklahoma Ave.

At least one member of local government is responding rationally to all of this. Downtown Alderman Bob Bauman said, "Why would you not want to look at the matter and find out the facts? …It's almost irresponsible to say we don't even want the information." 

If you wanted to start your own TV station in Milwaukee, you’d have a tough time. But if you already had a station before, say June, and everyone had to buy a digital converter whose cost was subsidized by the government, well then you’d have two stations, or maybe three or six.

Since TV broadcasts switched to more efficient digital signals in June, broadcasters can “multicast”, fitting up to six streams of programming in the space that they used to fit one analog signal. And using broadcast frequencies more efficiently should be good for you and for me, because we own the broadcast spectrum.

WTMJ’s 4.2 subchannel features 24-hour local weather, and MPTV’s channel 36 has a range of multicast subchannels with food and music and world stuff. But aside from those, you’ll have a hard time finding anything new or local on these new local channels. So the digital conversion is also good for Tom Selleck and Ron Popeil, because there’s a lot more time and space for their shows.

But so what? I like Magnum P.I., right?

No. No I don’t, that was a joke.

But let’s pretend for a moment that someone likes Magnum P.I.. If they enjoy watching it every afternoon at 4:00 on 6.2, and WITI is able to sell advertising during it, what right do I have to complain?

Well. As the Federal Communications Commission explains, “In exchange for obtaining a valuable license to operate a broadcast station using the public airwaves, each radio and television licensee is required by law to operate its station in the ‘public interest, convenience and necessity.’ This means that it must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license. “

If you were still thinking about Ron Popeil while reading that last part, go ahead and reread it, because it’s both ridiculous and true.

The airwaves are a public space, owned by the public, like a park or a beach or a highway. And while some companies pay the government to lease a range of broadcast frequencies for, say cell phones, television stations don’t pay anything to broadcast. Like taking over a public park or highway, the TV station gets to use the space for free, with the stipulation that their broadcasting serves the public interest.

That compromise was made when the government first began to grant licenses for the finite broadcast spectrum. The broad public interest requirement was designed to protect the free speech rights of broadcasters while protecting the free speech interests of our representative democracy, which depends on an open marketplace of ideas.

The Federal Radio Commission described the nature of broadcasters as trustee of the public airwaves this way: “the station itself must be operated as if owned by the public....It is as if people of a community should own a station and turn it over to the best man in sight with this injunction: ‘Manage this station in our interest.’”

Is that even remotely close to what is actually happening on television?

Imagine local news that was worth watching, with local stations competing to be the most thoughtful and insightful. And coverage of local music and culture. And time for political candidates to speak without having to raise millions of dollars.

The excuse that there is not enough time to devote to that kind of programming doesn’t work anymore. With digital multicasting, stations have two, three, or six times as many hours to fill. Time that is now being filled with infomercials and shows that were shitty before they were old.

With their increased presence on our televisions, local stations’ failure to serve the public has only multiplied.  

Because then things like this wouldn’t happen.

In campaigns for the Wisconsin Supreme Court during 2007 and 2008 the Wisconsin Association of Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) spent four million dollars to help elect Justices Annette Ziegler and Mike Gableman. That’s twice the amount that the Ziegler and Gableman campaigns spent combined.

The pro-business group spent far more toward Ziegler’s election than any other group or individual, and their advertisements were not based on her friendliness to business, but instead on how safe she would keep us.

I guess I thought that $2.2 million could get you better than a Microsoft Publisher template, but I don’t spend millions of dollars on judicial elections, so what do I know. (image from Wisconsin Democracy Campaign)

The year after her election, Justice Ziegler wrote the opinion for a 4-3 majority in favor of WMC. The court’s ruling created what a dissenting justice described as “a new exemption in the tax laws [for business] that the Legislature did not see fit to enact.”

 And last week the court ruled, again 4-3, to adopt petitions by WMC and the Wisconsin Realtors Association changing the rules for judges so that they may still preside over cases where one of the parties gave cash to their campaign or otherwise helped the judge to get elected.

Is this a problem? I guess that depends on if you think problems are problems.

Wisconsin law currently provides for $48,000 in funding for judicial elections, a relative pittance that candidates decline so they can raise and spend an unlimited sum. An effort is now underway in the state Legislature to reform the public financing system. The Impartial Justice Act would limit campaign contributions to $100 per donor and provide candidates with $400,000 to spend in the primary and general elections. I don’t know if the new law would do anything to prevent WMC or any other organization from independently outspending the candidates.

All of which leads me to the obvious question: why the hell are we electing judges in the first place?

As Sandra Day O’Connor has said, “No other nation in the world does that… because they realize you’re not going to get fair and impartial judges that way.” In other countries judges are appointed by the executive (as federal judges are appointed in the U.S.) or they must pass specific legal and civil service exams.

State Rep. Frederick Kessler, who represents the northwest side of Milwaukee and Wauwatosa has introduced an amendment to the state Constitution that would allow gubernatorial appointment of state Supreme Court justices, followed by approval of the state Senate and subsequent reconfirmation by the Senate every ten years. 

It would be naive to expect that our judges are or should be purely apolitical. When a governor or president appoints judges, they are motivated by politics and the judge’s political philosophy. But there is a great difference between a judge being appointed by a politician and a judge acting as a politician.

Because it would be equally naïve to think that a judge will always be impartial when ruling on a case that involves a past and potential future donor. And naive to expect that a judge will always be impartial when they are facing reelection, will need to run another political campaign, and need to solicit more political donations and endorsements. The New York Times reported on a study showing “’all judges, even the most punitive, increase their sentences as re-election nears,’ resulting in some 2,700 years of additional prison time, or 6 percent of total prison time… over a 10-year period.”

This is nuts.

Republican State Assembly member Mike Huebsch, the former Assembly speaker, is not someone whose views I usually agree with. Like, say, this view:

“Supporters of the beer tax hike say Madison needs just a little more tax money; politicians just don’t have quite enough of your paycheck, and until they do, they can’t fund deserving government programs and real changes the people of Wisconsin are calling for. It’s an old argument, based on the flawed assumptions that government does not have enough of your money and that there is no limit to what taxpayers can afford.”

Right. So when Huebsch and two other Republican Assembly members recently introduced a bill that would open Wisconsin to new nuclear power plant construction, why wouldn’t I think that was a bad idea?

Nuclear power plants produce radioactive material that is dangerous from a security, environmental, and wanting to live perspective. The nuclear waste is so deadly that it kind of seems like nature’s way saying “hey, don’t do that”. It’s so deadly that it needs to be buried well below the earth’s surface for a million years.

Another problem is that building a new nuclear plant costs about $10 billion. Which is, of course, a lot of money. But how much a lot? We Energies’ new coal power plant in Oak Creek cost a quarter of that amount to build, $2.3 billion, and that was the most expensive construction project in Wisconsin history. So for any utility to consider building a nuclear plant, they’ll want to be convinced that they will have a market for selling nuclear power throughout the lifetime of the plant, and they’ll probably want the government to subsidize construction costs.

And why would we want to do that, when there are forms of alternative energy to invest in that don’t create as a byproduct the most horrible substance on earth?

Well, alternative energy sources have their own problems. Biomass power plants, like the one We Energies has proposed building near Wausau, burn wood scraps left over from industrial use. The resource is plentiful, but there’s a good reason why we don’t just burn things we don’t want anymore. Other resources like solar and wind have potential but can’t take over for coal completely – not yet anyway. So what about using nuclear power in the meantime?

And if the choice is between building a nuclear plant or more coal powered plants? Coal fired power plants are responsible for 27% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Every year more than 20,000 people die prematurely from pollutants released when burning coal, and by destroying the atmosphere it will eventually kill everyone. Nuclear power, on the other hand, has never killed a single person in this country.

What about the nuclear waste, that horrible, deadly material? Consider how much space is needed to safely store the waste. All of the nuclear waste from all of the nuclear power plants running in the U.S. over the past fifty years would require 300 acres for storage. How much is 300 acres, in say, Humboldt Parks?

Five.  And since Humboldt Park is already going to be a prison, it’s not available for storing nuclear waste. But think of all of the land available in the United States. Nevada, which is mostly desert, and mostly owned by the federal government could fit over a million Humboldt Parks inside of it. And we only need room for five.

As for the cost of nuclear power, a study by Wisconsin’s WISBERG Foundation (PDF) says that to be profitable, power from a new nuclear plant would have to be sold at $.15 per kilowatt hour. By comparison, We Energies’ current rate for electricity is $.12. The small premium for nuclear power would be a fair one in exchange for shutting down all of the coal plants.

But remember, I’m the one who thinks the government doesn’t have enough of your money. 

I like beer. And so do a lot of other people, many of whom also drive cars. Unless of course it’s Biketoberfest. Wisconsin ranks among the highest in the nation for alcohol related traffic deaths, while our state’s beer tax is the third lowest. The beer tax has not increased in forty years and the legislature is likely to reject an attempt to do so now that would fund the enforcement of new drunken driving penalties.

Surely the reason that our beer tax has not increased from $0.065 per gallon since 1969 (and has not been adjusted for inflation) is because we make beer here, and like it, and like to drink it. And our legislators are afraid of increasing the tax on something that everybody likes so much. And they have been effectively lobbied by breweries, large and small, to keep the tax that low.

Michigan, the home of GM, Ford, and Chrysler does not have the lowest vehicle taxes the nation just because they make cars. Because that wouldn’t really make sense. No, a 2006 study shows Michigan’s vehicle taxes ranged from 8th highest to 13th highest in the nation, depending on the vehicle value.

I’m not saying that our beer tax should be 8th highest, but I am saying that there is no good reason to keep the beer tax artificially low relative to other states. Of course Bay View and Milwaukee and Wisconsin have a beer drinking culture. That’s why we don’t need a state-backed incentive to drink more. Or a state-backed incentive to have more car accidents.

Take a look at Wisconsin and other Midwestern states’ beer taxes:

After a couple gallons, you probably don’t notice that six cents anymore. For perspective, take a look at two other consumption taxes, the states’ sales and cigarette taxes:

The relatively high cigarette tax shows that the state is willing to raise taxes to discourage behavior harmful to our society. But Wisconsin does not have one of the nation’s highest rates of cigarette related car accidents. Because that’s stupid. We do have one of the nation’s highest rates of drinking among pregnant women. And that’s stupid.

The industry argues that increasing the tax will cause jobs to be lost and breweries to be closed. Even if this is true, their argument rests on the logic that the success of their business takes precedence over the reduction of some ill to society. This is the same reason we need to keep the health insurance companies right?

An alternative for funding the new drunken driving law is to raise the state’s liquor tax. Fine. But as Rep. Terece Berceau who has been advocating a beer tax increase for a while pointed out, in the U.S., beer accounts for 81% of the alcohol consumed in hazardous amounts. She said legislators are “stonewalling an increase in the alcoholic beverage that is most abused by binge drinkers.”

I’m not sure if that’s childish or corrupt, but it’s sad and dumb. 

Or at least the next 52% of guys who voted last November for a Milwaukee county sales tax increase dedicated to parks and transit. And even though those 52% of guys, many of whom were surely female, voted for the higher tax it has not been implemented.

Why is that? Because until August Governor Doyle was still acting as if he were running for reelection next fall.

And if he did, I would have voted for him. And it would have been an unpleasant experience for both of us.

So he and the Democrats in the state legislature who need to approve a dedicated sales tax increase have not. Because they are afraid that if they raise taxes, the Republicans will accuse them of raising taxes. And Republicans don’t think anyone should pay taxes for anything, much less parks, which should either be privatized or turned into prisons.

As reported in the Journal Sentinel, “in the 1990s, new prisons became economic anchors for many rural areas…  as the number of adult inmates more than doubled.” (7/22/2003)

Which gives me an idea.

The parks budget is less than half of what it was twenty years ago adjusted for inflation. And Scott Walker’s 2010 budget calls for the elimination of 400 more county employees and a 3% wage cut.

But when Walker was a state legislator, he wrote the Truth in Sentencing law to eliminate any chance of parole for felons. So there it is, an alternative to the sales tax increase: parks employees that Scott Walker will never try to get rid of.

Felons.

They can repair pavilions and pick up trash and reseed the greens because they’ll be living in the parks. Humboldt Park Penitentiary.  See?

And studies show that psychological benefits are among the advantages of urban green spaces. Who better to experience an increase in calm and decrease in violent behavior than those serving mandatory minimum sentences with no chance of release? They’ll get plenty of exercise, and their dangerous presence in the neighborhood will be counteracted by the increased property values and neighborhood development associated with well-managed urban parks.

Or the state legislature could approve the sales tax increase that Milwaukee county voters endorsed last year. The dedicated tax would mean parks no longer need to be funded with property taxes, so if done correctly it wouldn’t even mean a tax increase, only a protection of and dedication to the funding of parks.

Representative Christine Sinicki, whose district includes Cudahy, St. Francis and parts of Bay View, is reintroducing a 0.5% sales tax increase for “parks, recreation, and culture”. The governor has not yet been heard from. 

There are many places where you do not want to be seen drinking, and one of these was the Oklahoma Tap on Oklahoma and Hanson. While not seen drinking there, you could also not be seen having a drunk vagrant woman tell you she’ll sleep with you when you’re a few years older, or having her put bronzer on your friend’s face. You could not be seen eating from the free nacho bar. And you could not be seen losing your Bay View Tavern Keepers Association pool league games, repeatedly, to a blind man who drank Diet Cokes.

And while the blind man could not see you drinking at the Oklahoma Tap because he was blind, no one else could either. Because the Oklahoma Tap didn’t have windows.

Or an ATM.

Or olives.

But it did have four fifty cent pool tables, well arranged and well taken care of. Rare enough in Bay View, I guess, for our Bay View pool league to have included Bigalke’s on 27^th and Wal Mart, which was not, I think, in Bay View, but did have Southern Comfort on tap.

Last year our host and patron Gil sold the Oklahoma Tap. The new owners, young and friendly, renamed the bar Straight Shots, and the sign outside includes enough puns to clearly communicate that the focus is still on being a great place to play pool. And it is among the best in the neighborhood.

Straight Shots can take plastic, and probably has olives. And of course, windows, which have been carved out of the walls. So from the inside the bar looks a lot less like a basement or worse, and from the outside it looks like a place that you’re allowed to go into.

And now you can be seen drinking at Straight Shots, which probably isn’t a bad idea from a business perspective.

But you and I must retreat to those other places where we don’t want to be seen drinking. Family parties, daylight hours, and of course, wandering the streets during the Bay View Bash. 

Which separates me from Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. Because his plan for public transportation is to have poor people buy cars. He wants to grow the economy enough so the 75% of bus riders who have no alternative transportation won’t need the bus system, and then we won’t have to worry about it anymore.

Or.

We could grow the economy just enough so poor people can afford bus fares. A report (PDF) from Milwaukee’s Public Policy Forum shows that the Milwaukee County Transit System ranks among the highest in its dependence on fares to cover operations. And the only increase in ridership from 2000 to 2007 occurred during a year when fares weren’t increased.

And I suppose we should grow the economy enough so that poor people can afford comfortable walking shoes, because Milwaukee lost more riders than any other peer city at the same time it was a leader in reduction of routes and service hours.

So those are some alternatives to shutting the public transit system down entirely.

Another idea would be to not eliminate public transportation, but increase its use. And not just by poor people. New transit options and new services can attract new riders with jobs, money, and cars.

For instance, MCTS is currently incapable of using magnetic fare cards because the fare boxes on its buses were purchased in the mid 1980’s, possibly before magnets. To give you an idea, this MCTS ad is newer than its fare boxes:

So MCTS’s scarce funding could be spent on new fare boxes instead of Pat Sajak trivia videos, which have not attracted me to ride the bus because Pat Sajak is surprisingly conservative.

Fascist Mayor Tom Barrett has an even better idea for increasing transit ridership. Last week he introduced an updated plan for a modern streetcar system that would connect downtown to the east side. With dedicated lanes and technology that gives the streetcars priority at traffic lights, they could achieve timeliness and dependability that MCTS buses can’t. The streetcars would run on electricity which can (theoretically) be a clean and sustainable source of energy. And there is enough federal funding waiting around to significantly reduce the city’s cost of implementing the system.

Since 1991, Milwaukee has had $91.5 million in unused federal support for mass transit. With city and county government unable to agree on how to spend the funds for the past seventeen years, Wisconsin’s congressional delegation finally included in an omnibus spending bill last March the requirement that the funds be split between a streetcar system and bus rapid transit. To qualify for the $54 million apportioned for streetcars, the city must cover 15% of the construction costs.

Multiple streetcar routes are being considered, with each including a connection to Milwaukee’s newly renovated intermodal station on St. Paul Avenue and running as far north as Brady Street. The permanent streetcar route would encourage development along its path and its connection to the intermodal station would make commuting via a future KRM line more practical.

The streetcar system would be considered a starter system that could be expanded to adjacent neighborhoods. As Barrett said, "Once you have something in the ground, the debate will change from 'This is the end of Western civilization as we know it' to 'How do we get this line extended to Miller Park.’”

One problem though, is that with all of the potential for economic development, poor people will soon be able to afford cars.

 So President Obama is a power hungry statist who intends to euthanize disabled children and grandmothers. I’m aware.

And Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is proposing a “strongly anti-democratic” new initiative.  But I’m not worried about him euthanizing grandmothers.

No. Because he’s saving grandmothers from domestic violence, in the street, on the weekend, during his vacation, in person.

But he is planning a different, equally nefarious power grab. Barrett and Governor Jim Doyle are developing a plan for the mayor to appoint the school superintendent, the unelected position currently appointed by the school board.

If you need to catch your breath, please do so, and allow my Alderman, Tony Zielinski, to take over here for a moment:

“[T]aking away the right to vote, which is one of our most fundamental rights we have here as citizens is not something that should be on the table. There’s many people that lost their lives fighting for the rights that some people take for granted.”

That’s right. The mayor wants to take away the right our troops are fighting for in Afghanistan, the right for Milwaukee to have a 4.3% turnout in a School Board primary election.

Milwaukee Public Schools have the nation’s highest racial disparity in reading achievement. The system has declining enrollment and ongoing budget problems.

Mayors in other large cities, including New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia have taken roles in public school governance. Those cities have claimed improved student performance and “significantly” rising test scores.  No one seems to have an argument that mayoral control would make the school system worse, only that it will shut people out of the democratic process.

But taking away the right to vote for a school board will make the school system more accountable to voters.

This is why we don’t elect police officers, or teachers, or bailiffs. No, more elections don’t make everything better. As the number of offices to be filled increases, elections reach a point of diminishing returns, where the number of well-informed voters is so low that real accountability is removed from the job. So why not give responsibility for the school system to the most accountable local official?

If he wants to take responsibility for the success of Milwaukee Public Schools, that’s great. After all, the mayor is up for election every four years and that’s something most fascists don’t offer.