The horned frog is a hideous creature, an evolutionary mistake,
a pest with no purpose but to vex humankind
Blaska is tanned and rested, but he is not ready.
Perhaps Ethelred the Unready lurks somewhere in my stagnant gene pool. I thought long and hard about running for Madison School Board. I would take down teacher's union pawn Marj Passman. I would sweep to victory on the motto "Students and Parents First" -- not radicalized teachers unionists. John Mathews would declare me his latest "enemy of the people." I would increase the fire insurance coverage on the Stately Manor.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Two things conspired against the Squire's return to the ring:
1. The prospect of endless night meetings. I did 12 years of night meetings on county board on top of a full-time day job. Been there, done that.
2. Running for public office means giving up this blog. Me like blog. Me want keep blog. I remain the only Madison-based blogger writing in a consistently conservative mode, with all due respect to my Monona friend Sunny Schubert and, perhaps, The Althouse. Not just blogging -- name the consistently conservative voice in Madison outside WIBA radio.
'Mild-fred' steps out
I am mildly encouraged by Scott Milfred's take in Sunday's WI State Journal. "Mild" does seem to be the appropriate adverb ever since Tom Still, Sunny Schubert, and Tim Kelley departed. The WSJ's editorial policy seems to be "offend no one." The journalistic style is to use small words and big letters -- in a university town where the major industry (and full time sport) is government!
The corollary of that, of course, is influence no one nor interest anyone. Boring does not sell, people!
So, it's a bit of a disconnect to hear Mild-fred lament the lack of "bold" in Jim Doyle's eight years. For that attribute the Democrat substituted mold. Was any governor in recent memory -- mine dates back to Gaylord Nelson -- as boring -- or more inconsequential? (Not counting lieutenant governors filling in for Pat Lucey and Tommy Thompson.)
Milfred praised Doyle for urging a dramatic takeover of the failed Milwaukee public school system -- and rightly questioned why he waited until the eighth year and lame duck status.
So there wasn't much bully left in his pulpit.
Great line. Only at the 11th hour Doyle could muster the mustard to go up against the teachers union, to which he had prostituted his first seven years in office. "His own Democratic party shrugged him off," Milfred notes.
If only we had seen more of the bold, independent Doyle back when it really counted.
Uh, that's the only time you can be bold, right? When it really counts? That was the other thing: Here is a Democrat in the governor's office and Democrats controlling both houses of the Legislature and he gets the cold shoulder.
That will not happen to Scott Walker whose 14 cabinet picks include four current or former legislators two of them past Assembly speakers, including Mike Huebsch in the all-important Department of Administration.
Look for the new administration to remove the teachers union as obstacles to education reform. Anti-reform apologists for the status quo -- people like Ed Garvey, Dave Zweifel, Thomas J. Mertz and their Union First allies in Progressive Dane and at Democrat(ic) Party HDQ -- can wail and gnash teeth all they want. But change is a-coming to the statist, union-controlled educational swamp.
Merit pay for teachers, longer school years, expanded vouchers, incentives for charter schools and more virtual schooling is coming to Wisconsin.
The Squire is enough of an egotist to get a chuckle out of The Capital Times' mention [Dave Blaska should consider school run]. But Holy Hoosefuss, why did they run that photograph unless it was for political blackmail!
On the Madison School Board, I would have been a certain Yes vote for Kaleem Caire's academy. But then, if Blaska had been Blaska the Bold his name would have been on the ballot.
Quote of the week
"There has to be some alternative to a system that is designed to make sure nobody goes broke no matter how badly they are run." -- economist Alfred E. Kahn, who died last week.
As head of the Civil Aeronautics Board in the 1970s -- under Jimmy Carter, of all people -- Kahn deregulated the airlines. Oh, how the "progressives" yelped. Now Barack Obama wants to regulate the Internet. Sheesh!
Finally, thank you, Brett Favre, my generation's Babe Ruth. Thank you, Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy, for holding firm with Aaron Rodgers. Now, go Packers! (And run Starks.)
