I've kept my powder dry on Chris Rickert, the new columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal but my early take is that he is fairly well decaffeinated and room temperature, at that. That is in keeping with the newspaper's policy (since editor Ellen Foley) to speak softly and carry a small twig.
But that was before Karl Garson of Crawford County. Looks like he is a regular columnist. Who knew that Progressive Dane had a chapter out in the hinterland? Because Garson serves up red meat prog-liberalism rivaling the Raging Grannies at Fighting BobFest.
Garson's journalist arson parrots the Left's talking point (singular) that the American people have gone completely off their nut. He has precedents. Like Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post, whose de Toqueville-like reading is that "The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats."
Remember the late ABC anchor Peter Jennings complaining, in the wake of the Newt Gingrich revolution in 1994, that the electorate was throwing a temper tantrum? But Garson of Crawford County does them one better.
The American citizenry is "spoiled rotten," says he.
Folks, there's expert political analysis you just can't get anywhere else in Madison. Garson subscribes to the Prog/Liberal theory of government as the nourishing milk teat of all human sustenance.
It is the theory that can cause President Obama and the liberals surrounding him to try to make an angry America forget their failed $837 billion stimulus package by proposing ... another taxpayer-supported stimulus plan! (This time it will work, I promise!)
Reading from the same faith-based book of economics, Garson scolds his readers for disagreeing with Pelosi-Reid-Obama.
Because you're being asked to pay for a government that's given you benefits that have spoiled you rotten, you're whining.
Don't you children get it? Government gives us stuff. Good stuff, like presents under the Christmas tree. Uncle Sam is really Santa Claus. But then you complain when you get the MasterCharge bill. Ungrateful whiners!
Wait -- as Ron Popeil would say -- there's more! Here are some of the choice invectives employed in Garson's column Tuesday: "childlike, naive, petulant, third-grade thinkers, prejudiced, school children, savage(ry), strange ..."
Um, Garson, sure you're not having a tantrum of your own?
The Great Recession: would socialism work?
Not to be outdone by Garson, Mayor Dave thinks he has the solution that will quell the tea partiers's anger: income redistribution. Mayor Dave writes, in his taxpayer supported blog:
Part of the answer to the recession needs to be a more equitable distribution of the prosperity that has become so concentrated. ... So, what we've got right now is a misplaced populism -- an anger directed not at the root of the problem, but instead at the very institutions that can correct it.
That institution being government, of course. Do you get the feeling that Mayor Dave is planning a little more income redistribution (don't worry, he knows what is "equitable") with his next property tax bill? More Section 8! More "services" to the disadvantaged. Feed me, Seymour! That's one thing government sure fire can do: take from Peter and give to Paul!
Got socialism?
Madison schools pay a price for illegal immigration
We've got two armed street gangs getting into it just outside West High School, brandishing weapons. These are not just wannabes -- the gangs were involved in an April drive-by shooting outside Webcrafter's printing plant on the near East side.
Police arrested the driver, Carmelo Salgado-Lopez, 19, a member of the South Side Carnales, and the passenger, Uriel Duran-Martinez, 18, a suspected Carnales member.
Here is what the oh-so-politically correct WI State Journal will NOT tell you: the two gang bangers are illegal aliens. What Madame Brenda and her set would call "immigrants," only they didn't go through Ellis Island like a lot of our great-grandparents.
On Sunday, police recovered two handguns, including the one believed to have been used in the incident.
Staff at West and the city's three other main high schools and two middle schools were told Tuesday to determine if safety plans are needed for any students who might be at risk, said Luis Yudice, security coordinator for the Madison School District. [WI State Journal: 9-8-10]
Hear is the irony, Yudice chaired the Dane County Task Force on for (Illegal) Immigration, the one that wants Sheriff Mahoney to stop enforcing the law, as I have reported previously.
A little man, just turned 3...
