Commentary Update for June 24, 2003: Commerce Committee Says NO, Budget Debacle, Amistad, Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place, Supremes, Happy Birthday Grandma

Last week Jim and I taped half-hour interviews with Teresa Thiel and Jim Simmons. The programs should debut this week on channel 66. When I know the exact date I will send that information along. Meanwhile, we will try to get the shows played on Oshkosh Cable Access Television.

In other news:

*Commerce Committee Says NO To FCC: A bipartisan majority of US Senators on the Commerce Committee voted to overturn the horrendous FCC media consolidation ruling. Whether the full Congress will overturn the FCC ruling is not certain, but the fact that the Commerce Committee voted as they did is a testament to the massive citizen activism that has taken place on this issue. Some of the Senators have apparently claimed that they have never received as much citizen contact on any other issue, including the recent war in Iraq.

*Budget Debacle: I honestly thought that Wisconsin's state legislature could not get any more immoral, embarrassing, and flat-out fiendish during this year's budget deliberations than they did during the "budget repair" session last year in which former Governor McClueless and some alleged felons in the legislature stole our tobacco settlement money, tried to put the blame for the state's budget ills on local governments, and passed a fraudulent "campaign finance reform" bill that was immediately struck down by a court. Yet much to my chagrin, Jim The New Democrat Doyle and the Republican majorities in the Senate and Assembly are almost bad enough to make one nostalgic for the halcyon days of McClueless and the alleged felons. At least with the latter there was no pretense about a "new beginning" or other vapid and insulting phrases Jim The New Democrat Doyle pulls out at every stop.

How bad is the budget? The Journal Sentinel covers the budget specifics. Representative Marlin Schneider says the state's motto should be changed from "forward" to "backward." Ed Garvey says it's time to start over. Representative Gary Sherman says the centerpiece of the Republican budget, the so-called "property tax freeze," is pure smoke and mirrors. Lest you think that only Democrats had anything negative to say about the budget, Republicans Mike Ellis and Rob Cowles could not support their own party's budget because of the Arthur Andersen-like accounting on which it is based. Indeed, the Republicans had to cut a deal with rogue Democratic Senator Gary George in order to get the budget passed. Jim The New Democrat Doyle (who in my opinion is most to blame for this mess because his own original budget submission was in the spirit of Arthur Andersen itself) immediately said he would veto the George deal. There will undoubtedly be other vetos.

Be sure to take a look at Rich Eggleston's piece for the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities newsletter on how the Republican tax freeze proposal was in large measure the result of public opinion polling. The entire WAC newsletter is worth a read this month.

*Amistad Coming To Sheboygan: A replica of the slave ship Amistad will be docked in Sheboygan Harbor from July 16-18. This will be the ship's only stop in Wisconsin. Wisconsin's United Church of Christ, a major player in the abolitionist movement of the 19th century, is the major sponsor of the event.

*Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Iraq's Shiite Muslims, the majority faction in the country, hated Saddam but are not too thrilled with the "liberation" forces either. Meanwhile our man in Baghdad, civilian administrator Paul Bremer, thinks the Iraqis need a good dose of old fashioned American capitalism. The Iraqi's responded to Bremer's call by sabotaging the main oil pipeline outside Baghdad. Applying Dapper Don Rumsfeld's logic, the blowing up of an oil pipeline is merely an expression of the joy and ebullience the Iraqi's are experiencing as a result of gaining freedom. (By the way, old Rummy is becoming funnier than Jay Leno; did anyone see a few weeks ago when, questioned about whether our failure to find WMDs suggests they never existed, Rummy said in his unflappable Teddy Roosevelt rough rider meets Wayne Newton nightclub singer style that "we haven't found Saddam yet but we know he existed." You should know, Rummy. You should know.)

*Supremes Uphold Affirmative Action/Censorship: Call it a split decision. The Supreme Court said the Affirmative Action plan at the University of Michigan Law School was okay, but not the undergraduate admissions plan. You can find texts of both decisions on the Supreme Court website:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=02-516

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=02-241

In another decision yesterday, the Court upheld a federal law saying that libraries must place anti-porn filters on computers in order to receive federal funds. Critics of the decision say, correctly in my view, that the Court is allowing federal funds to be used as a pretext for censorship. Interestingly, two of the justices (Kennedy and Breyer) said the law is constitutional as long as libraries disable the filters for adults who request it. Yet "disabling" language appears nowhere in the law, making the justices' directive a clear case of "legislating from the bench." ACLU rep Chris Hansen says, "Although we are disappointed that the Court upheld a law that is unequivocally a form of censorship, there is a silver lining. The Justices essentially rewrote the law to minimize its effect on adult library patrons." Isn't this what the conservatives always accuse the liberal judges of doing?

Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Souter dissented in this decision. Stevens wrote an individual dissent, which says in part, "This Court should not permit federal funds to be used to enforce this kind of broad restriction of First Amendment rights, particularly when such a restriction is unnecessary to accomplish Congress' stated goal . . . The abridgment of speech is equally obnoxious whether a rule like this one is enforced by a threat of penalties or by a threat to withhold a benefit."

*Happy Birthday, Grandma: Rosa Palmeri turned 100 a few weeks ago. Here she is at her birthday party.

All the best,

-Tony