Commentary Update for October 21, 2003
1. This Week's Show: This week's guest is Catherine Neiswender (pronounced NICE-wender), Community Development Educator for the University of Wisconsin Extension, Winnebago County. Information about what Catherine does can be found here: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/cty/winnebago/pages/crdmain.htm On the show we talk about what the UW Extension does as well as some specific issues related to planning.
2. Simile of the Week: Our friend Steve Walters of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in a report about Wisconsin Assembly bickering, came out with this one: Like exhausted boxers, they frequently had to go to their separate corners to regroup and cool down.
3. It Gets Worse (God, Gays and Guns): Steve Walters in his piece mentioned above actually understates dramatically the pathology of the current legislature. It's not just the bickering, but what they choose to bicker about. As noted by Representative Mark Pocan (D-Madison): "You would think that after facing the state’s largest deficit in history – a whopping $3.2 billion – state lawmakers would have much to do these days. State services have been cut, the University system has been slashed, state employees are being offered meager increases and in some cases real dollar decreases, and the state’s economy is still sluggish by most any measure. Further, the budget passed by the legislature this spring still leaves an approximately $700 million structural deficit for the next budget, guaranteeing a rougher road ahead following the past tough period.So what measures has the Republican majorities in the legislature put in place to solve these fiscal woes? . . . the fall legislative session is about God, Gays and Guns. . . . :
4. Inanity Cuts Both Ways: Rep. Pocan is correct in identifying the absurdity of the Republican agenda in Madison, especially when placed in context of the state's budget problems. But the Democrats have not fared much better. Representative Marlin Schneider (D-Wisconsin Rapids), one of the senior members of the legislature, is showing signs of an advanced form of hooey-itis. He announced last week that he wants to reestablish the partisan legislative caucuses, those political hack outfits at the very center of the scandals embracing the capitol. I find it incredible that the Democrats would even let this idea off Schneider's desk--they now go into the 2004 elections as the Party that wants to restore corruption to Madison. Schneider says that if his legislative colleagues didn't have to vote in public, the bill to restore the caucuses would pass easily. To which our friend Jay Heck of Common Cause says, "fortunately, they do have to vote in public and this insulting proposal ought to be consigned to the trash bin of history--where the legislative caucuses belong."
Schneider also wants to pass a bill relating to the "rights of UW Students." Here's my favorite part of the bill, which I call the "easiest way to get rid of troublemakers like Tony Palmeri provision": "Requires the chancellor to revoke the tenure of a faculty member or deduct six months pay for an untenured instructor whose academic advising causes a student to be enrolled at least one semester more than he or she otherwise would have been enrolled." Can you imagine the bureaucratic wrangling that would take place to prove or disprove the claim that it was the faculty member's advising that was the cause of the graduation delay? Talk about a Kafkaesque situation. I'm not a behavioral psychologist, but it seems to me a better idea would be to use a "positive reinforcement" model. If my advisees graduate on time or graduate earlier than expected, I get a promotion! (:-)
5. Even the Brigade agrees: Even the Oshkosh Northwestern Editorial Brigade, a group that could find a Socialist plot in 8,000 medical doctors' desire to expand Medicare and Communist leanings in opponents of Tax Incremental Financing districts, basically agree with Representative Pocan: "Wisconsin’s fall agenda for the Legislature further shows the lack of lawmakers, and the popularity of politicians. Ninety percent of this session should address job preservation and growth. Instead, the debates address contraception, guns, repeating the definition of marriage and teaching terminally ill people how to smoke pot. Apparently, not enough people are unemployed in northeast Wisconsin to stay a priority in this session."
6. Didn't he also have bad breath and a rare foot disease?: UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has spent the better part of the last two years auditioning for the role of the Bush's pet British terrier, was hospitalized on Sunday with severe chest pains and received electric shock treatment. This prompted an editorial in the UK Guardian ("Slowing Down Mr. Blair") which tried to counter the common belief that we are best served by young and vigorous politicians. They say the following about Winston Churchill: "Sixty years ago, this country was led through five years of total war by an old man who, while in office, successively suffered a heart attack, pneumonia, exhaustion, heart fibrillation, lung trouble and fever, who drank heavily almost every day and who was prone to clinical depression. Of course, a Churchill comes among us only rarely. Yet the saviour of the nation could not have survived politically today, because we have unrealistic expectations about political leaders' health and because we always sensationalism any problems that occur. It is not self-evident that modern nations are better led by men and women in their 40s and 50s than by those in their 60s and 70s." Hmm . . . didn't Churchill also have bad breath and a rare foot disease? (only fans of the Monty Python Happy Valley sketch will get the joke).
7. The ARAB curriculum breeds submission?: Yesterday the United Nations released a report claiming, among other things, that the US led War on Terror is "radicalizing Arabs." As a teacher at an American University, I could not help but laugh out loud when I read the criticism of the Arab curriculum that, "bred submission, obedience, subordination and compliance rather than free critical thinking." Perhaps in Arab countries and over here a Marlin Schneider solution could be put in place to solve the problem of curricula that do not promote free critical thinking: if a person proves to be a dumb shit after leaving the university, his or her teachers will have their tenure taken away! (this would have been a good way to rid academia of Reverend William Sloane Coffin, the famed Ethics teacher whose most famous student was Nixon's CREEP thug Jeb Stuart Magruder).
8. More Evidence of Washington's Patriotism: Our leaders in Washington never fail to remind us how patriotic they are. That's why we should all appreciate stories like this one from United Press International, revealing that sick and wounded US troops are being held in "squalor" down in Fort Stewart. If things like this are really true, it's as if the Baath Party is running the Army bureaucracy: "Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a 'preexisting condition,' prior to military service."
Peace,
-Tony