On the cover of the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, the magazine asks "Is America Over?" That question is gnawing at nearly every American these days. The anxiety this pondering produces is what the Tea Party and Occupy movements have in common.
I return from a brief trip to Washington, D.C. with decidedly mixed emotions. The new monument to Martin Luther King Jr. is a beauty and it was a thrill to see it. My wife and I took my son there to visit friends and family, as well as show him around our nation's capital. Overall, we had a nice stay.
Among the letters to the editor in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is one that caught my eye titled "Democracy is dead; the wealthy reign." Made me think back to a couple of weeks ago when I was on the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh campus giving a speech very much like the one I gave a few weeks earlier at Fighting Bob Fest.
Only eight Major League Baseball teams are good enough during the regular season to make the playoffs. And only one of those teams will win its last game. Every other team's season ends with bitter disappointment. But the fact that this ended up being the Brewers' fate doesn't diminish the team's accomplishments. The Brewers had a helluva year.
It can't be easy to get Scott Walker to take your phone call. Unless you are David Koch. Or at least someone Walker believes is David Koch.
In a recent article for his newspaper's "PolitiFact" feature, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Kertscher declared two claims to be untrue. One was made by the Walker administration. The other by the head of an association representing town governments.
Ten years ago new congressional and state legislative district lines were drawn to adjust for population changes reflected in the 2000 census. Those lines were very good for office holders and very bad for any voter who didn't feel well represented and longed for a fresh face.
Here's hoping I'm wrong, but the one-sentence collegiality pledge approved by the Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes me as being about as valuable as the countless "clean campaign" pledges candidates for public office have made over the years. Which is to say roughly a thimble full of spit.
I'm looking through today's print edition of The Capital Times and I come to page 22. Something called the "WisPolitics Stock Report." A telling title, implying that political ideas and public policies are nothing but commodities traded in some marketplace.
Wisconsin just got a big dose of what the U.S. Supreme Court wrought by its ruling in the Citizens United case torturing the meaning of the First Amendment to allow unlimited election spending by corporations and other wealthy interests. In this summer's senate recall elections, we were treated to $44 million worth of "free" speech.
John Nichols had it right. Obama's jobs speech needed to be a doozy. I'm afraid it wasn't. Now we'll see how Congress responds. Or if Congress responds at all.
Mahatma Gandhi famously said there are seven things that will destroy us: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice and politics without principle. He called them the seven deadly sins.
The fate of state rules requiring disclosure of special interest election spending rests with the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The court is scheduled to hear the case early next month. Justice David Prosser has said he plans to participate in the case despite close personal and political ties to attorney Jim Troupis who is representing the tea party groups and conservative organizations like Americans for Prosperity that are challenging the rules.
Wisconsin – and our entire country – needs a totally new approach to election financing.
I know one thing for sure about Republicans. They can read. I was already aware of their fondness for Ayn Rand, but it's also clear they've got much more than passing familiarity with George Orwell.
It's easy to fathom why a great many people can't seem to bring themselves to care about redistricting. After all, it boils down to drawing maps, which seems dweebish. And it's always been seen as insider politics in its purest form, which most people hate with a passion.
Article IV, Section 4 of the Wisconsin Constitution requires state legislative districts to be "bounded by county, precinct, town or ward lines, to consist of contiguous territory and be in as compact form as practicable."
I want my, I want my, I want my Fox TV. I want my, I want my, I want MSNBC.
Dave Zweifel wrote the other day about a friend from out of state calling him to ask what the hell is going on in Wisconsin. Good question. And he's not the only one getting it.
A proposal signed into law by Republican Governor Scott Walker was sought by trucking giant Schneider National whose owner exceeded the $10,000 limit on campaign contributions to Walker during his 2010 run for governor.
From the debt ceiling talks in Washington to the reaction to the Wisconsin Supreme Court's Stranglegate scandal, the politicians' Rule Number One is on prominent display. When things get fouled up, never accept responsibility and always assign blame.
Public confidence in the state Supreme Court has never been lower, for obvious reasons.
A powerful special interest group that supports a budget plan to let credit unions more easily convert to banks contributed $15,000 to an outside electioneering group that has spent more than $1 million since last fall to help elect GOP legislators.
For all the yammering by Republicans who control the legislature about keeping policy and other non-fiscal items out of the proposed 2011-2013 state budget, former state budget officer John Montgomery managed to assemble a lengthy digest of items - 11 pages worth - that Republican Governor Scott Walker should consider nixing with his veto pen when he signs the budget Sunday.
Whether the U.S. Supreme Court's current interpretation of the First Amendment is correct or not, it does – for the time being anyway – represent the law of the land. By the Supreme standard articulated in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the union-busting bill passed by the Wisconsin Legislature and signed into law by Governor Scott Walker is unconstitutional on free speech grounds.