Prediction for the Wisconsin primary:
- Barack Obama 55% vs. Hillary Clinton 44%
- John McCain 62% vs. Mike Huckabee 34% vs. Ron Paul 4%
Do nothing 'til you hear from me
If the Dane County Board, absent your congenial tour guide, was merely a do-nothing entity, like Harry Truman's famed 80th Congress, that would be an improvement.
This is a county board that is seriously unserious. It has:
- Passed rental rules that restrict tenant screening just when we could use more crime fighting tools.
- Turned Columbus Day into Indigenous Peoples Day.
- Voted, unlike the Common Council, on presidential impeachment.
- Gave more time off the job for county employees. (In Supv. Dave Ripp's immortal words, "who is going to do the work?")
- Voted post haste to support a $46 million Regional Transportation Authority for a train that will run from Middleton to Sun Prairie, all funded with an increase in the sales tax that would make Dane County the most heavily taxed county in Wisconsin.
- Voted to return 200 criminals from jails in other counties back to our streets wearing ankle bracelets.
- Raised its own pay.
But wait, as the Popeil commercials would say, "there's more!"
You see, this is a county board where the pronouncements of young UW campus radical Ashok Kumar are taken seriously. It was his bill that got us Indigenous Peoples' Day.
Now young Ashok, proud member of Progressive Dane, has sponsored a resolution to create a sister-what? relationship with a patch of land in Venezuela. Yes, Hugo Chavez' Venezuela, the new workers' paradise.
Not someplace in Iraq or Afghanistan yearning to breathe free.
So as not to short change the revolutionary aspects, Ahok is joined by fellow Prog Danes Barbara Vedder and Al Matano. One of the contacts listed by Ashok in his press release is the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution, current employer of that red-headed wild child Ben Manski. (Described by no less than John Nichols as "savvy.") The savvy Ben Manski. "Savvy!"
"Working class communities in cities and counties across the United States have greatly benefited from sister relationships with Venezuela," Ashok states. Yep, nothing more blue collar, working class than Madison and Dane County. How telling the conceit that the likes of Ashok Kumar identifies with "the working class."
There is another election this Tuesday; 6 of the 37 districts in Dane County will have a Dane County Board primary. I am one who thinks the conservative moderates have a good to decent chance to take the majority from the Left/Progressive Dane majority, currently at 22 members, contrary to what you may have read in the daily press. I've worked the numbers. I like them numbers.
Scott Walker, human Rorschach test
What is it about Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker that causes the Progressive Dane newspaper/website to go ballistic beyond parody? You can just hear the pus hit the ceiling when the name Scott Walker reaches Nichols land. Dig this:
Walker, who tried unsuccessfully to secure the Republican nomination for governor in 2006 and comes close to drooling whenever a statewide race is in the offering, is grudgingly seeking re-election in next week's Feb. 19 primary and the April 1 election that will follow.
"Drooling?" How is that in the least bit credible? Why not throw in the scent of sulfur while we're at it? How do these people expect to be taken seriously? Do they know how they sound? Well, this one got loads of on-line responses.
As "Smoke and Mirrors" responds: "Will we be seeing a scathing editorial chastising Clinton and Obama for running for President and not serving their full terms as senator? Or for that matter, what about Lena Taylor not finishing her term?"
Um, it's not like Kathleen Falk hasn't tried to break out of the county jail with runs for governor and then attorney general. Is The Kathleen drooling?
Remember, this is a newspaper/web site that has had nothing to say about the scandalous self-aggrandizing pension fund that Walker's Democratic predecessor imposed on the taxpayers of Milwaukee County. It was Scott Walker who understood and gave voice to the grass roots citizens' revolt while the Democratic establishment was in the pooh-pooh mode. That is Scott Walker's crime.
Milwaukee needs all the Scott Walkers it can get. Lena Taylor? Too "savvy" in the John Nichols sense.
