Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Kevin Barrett: Someone Else's Billy Goat

My old friend, AFSCME union leader, Dode Lowe, used to have an appropriate saying for the occasional loose cannon among his members.  When confronted with a questionable individual that the union was forced to defend, Dode used to say, "He may be a billy goat, but he is our billy goat."

Those of us who defended the University of Wisconsin from narrow minded assaults this past year, often had Kevin Barrett held up to us as an example of a misguided teacher who was a waste of taxpayers' money. This is the Barrett who doubts that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center was the work of foreign terrorists, but offers suggestions that perhaps domestic operatives were responsible for the attack.

Barrett is now running for Congress, as a Libertarian in Wisconsin's Third Congressional District.  As John Nichols notes in The Capital Times column on Friday:

Barrett will shake up District 3 race

...Barrett, a convert to Islam who has argued for a number of years that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "had nothing to do with Islam" and that "the war on terror is as phony as the latest Osama bin Laden tape."

...A Republican legislator, Whitewater state Rep. Steve Nass, condemned the university for a man critics describe as "a conspiracy nut."

...A 10-day review by UW Provost Patrick Farrell of Barrett's teaching record and his plans for the introductory class determined that Barrett would fairly represent a variety of viewpoints in his course -- and was thus fit to teach.

Those of us who believe that professors should be left alone to teach as long as they are open and fair, will continue to defend his right to espouse his bizarre world view.

On the other hand, now that Barrett has solidly aligned himself with the Libertarian Party, it gives me great comfort that everyone knows he is someone else's billy goat. It was last year that I repudiated Barrett and Ward Churchill as not being part of the political left.

The Libertarians and the conservatives can have him.

So there.

University of Wisconsin System - Two Headed Huebsch

The University of Wisconsin System has six campuses  searching for new chancellors. Two of the chancellors are retiring and four are moving on to higher paying positions. UW System chancellor exodus could grow/

Wisconsin ranks last in faculty salaries when compared to other Big Ten schools and the entire system does badly when compared to to its cohort of institutions. Republican Party Winning Battle To Destroy University of Wisconsin System. Led by Republican Mike Huebsch, the Wisconsin Assembly underfunds the schools.

Its very simple. You cannot retain good people when you do not pay them.  You do not have to pay them extraordinary salaries, just something competitive that ranges towards the mean. The private sector knows that.

In Wisconsin we have one of the fiercest opponents of public education chairing the state committee that overlooks our schools. He uses every opportunity to attack the UW System.

Steve Nass is not the issue. The responsible party is the man who put him in power.

Last December the La Crosse Tribune published an editorial commending their local legislative delegation for supporting the UW- La Crosse campus. Local leaders, students leading way on UW-L’s plan for growth

On Thursday, our entire legislative delegation was represented at a Board of Regents committee meeting to show support...But perhaps most striking was the presence and vocal support of Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem.

To say that UW-L’s plans haven’t exactly been the darling of Huebsch’s caucus would be an understatement.

It is five months later, the UW system is hurting and hurting badly. It is unfortunate, but the more powerful, more effective Huebsch is the one backing Nass, not the one who showed up at the UW Regents' meeting.

Kutler on Republican Executive Powers

Waxing America's favorite Emeritus Professor in the entire galaxy, the esteemed University of Wisconsin Constitutional scholar Stanley Kutler, reminds us that the Republican Party, with an almost century long record of limiting the power of the president, now embraces what could be called an imperial presidency:

  Hunkering Down in Baghdad

Voltaire had it right: history is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play on the dead...

...Executive power expanded enormously during World War II. After the war, old guard Republicans, still rooted in isolationism, proposed a constitutional amendment to give Congress authority to regulate all executive agreements with foreign powers....Republican concerns that first President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta and then President Harry S. Truman at Potsdam had bargained away too much....The GOP also objected to Truman’s sending troops to Korea in 1950 without congressional approval.

Kulter notes that with the Bush Administration is "... betting that the rest of the world, from Europe to Asia, will quietly accept U.S. troops to defend their economic interests..."

Kutler writes that Bush "may have made a prophet of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who said last September that “the Iraq war is largely about oil” and essential for the global economy."

U.S. Supreme Court Engages in Activism: Ask Scalia

One of the phoniest, opportunistic ploys in recent years is the conservative assault on an independent judiciary calling for "judicial restraint" and attacking liberal or progressive justices as "judicial activists."

Rick Esenberg of the Federalist Society, takes this up in a paper used by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce in the last judicial race, A Court Unbound? The Recent Jurisprudence of the Wisconsin Supreme Court:

Judges who seek to exercise restraint will tend to adopt techniques of construction that confine, rather than expand, their discretion...Judges practicing restraint will exhibit a sensitivity for the role of other branches of government....

Someone better get Esenberg's paper into the hands of the justices serving on the United States Supreme Court, starting with Anthony Scalia who Esenberg fondly quotes: "[a] text should not be construed strictly, and it should not be construed leniently; it should be construed reasonably, to contain all that it fairly means."

Scalia, Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. are having a difficult time following their own admonitions when it comes time to the "Millionaire's Amendment" to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act.

The issue is simple enough. Under the law individuals can contribute a maximum of $2,300 to a campaign. The candidate can spend as much as they like. If a wealthy candidate contributes over $350,000 of her own money, then the individual contributors of the opponent can go as high as $6,900.

Simple enough.

Now enter the reactionary justices on the Supreme Court. Hearing a case challenging the act, these conservative justices are wallowing in judicial activism.

Justices Assail 'Millionaires' Amendment'

"The campaign finance regimes we've approved up to now, the significant limitations, have had an anti-corruption rationale," Scalia said. "The only purpose of this is to level the playing field. And I am deeply suspicious of allowing elections to be conducted under a regime whereby Congress levels the playing field. That seems to be very dangerous."

and

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said he found it "a particular vice" of the amendment that it allows the opponent of a self-financing candidate to have greater ties and to receive more money from his political party. "It puts this statute in the position of preferring one kind of speech over another. And we simply do not do that," Kennedy said.

Obviously these justices are substituting their own judgment for that of the legislative body, the United States Congress.

I am waiting for the critics of Louis Butler and Shirley Abrahamson to assail Scalia and Roberts for this exercise in judicial activism.

You can hear the crickets chirping.

More on Colorado As Budget Role Model For UW

For several years, Republican leadership in the Wisconsin legislature led by Assembly Speaker Michael Huebsch (R-West Salem) and architect of the attack on the University of Wisconsin, Stephen Nass (R-Whitewater), used Colorado as a role model. When they wanted to drive Wisconsin into economic ruin by adopting TABOR, they used Colorado's adoption of deadly spending restraints as their example of horrible fiscal management.

Now we get word from Denver that, Regents hike CU-Boulder tuition 9.3%

The decision for undergrad residents comes atop a 14.6 percent hike last year. A lack of state funds is cited:

University of Colorado Regents approved the tuition hike Tuesday, saying they had no choice but to raise the price instead of cutting programs. "None of us likes to increase tuition," Regent Paul Schauer said. "But in light of the situation we are in now, we are not left with too many options."  Last year, tuition increased 14.6 percent....

...University of Colorado Regents approved the tuition hike Tuesday, saying they had no choice but to raise the price instead of cutting programs...

... Evan Dreyer, spokesman for Gov. Bill Ritter, said the state and the university need to do more to increase higher-education funding.

None of this is new to UW students. As we noted last week, Republican Party Winning Battle To Destroy University of Wisconsin System.

Wisconsinites have two options.  The first is send a clear unequivocal message to the leadership in the state legislature that we understand the value of education and want the UW System properly funded. The other option is to hope that other states outperform us in the race to the bottom.

Margaret Farrow Tramples Constitution on Behalf of Gableman. Candidate Silent.

Margaret Farrow who introduces herself, "as a former Republican Lt. Governor and member of the Wisconsin State Legislature," wrote a fund raising letter on February 1, 2008 on behalf of Mike Gableman who is challenging distinguished jurist, Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler.

Farrow, who wants to "bring law and order back to the Supreme Court," asserts:

When it comes to Louis Butler's record on crime, he has voted to give criminals more rights.

• Louis Butler voted against allowing bloody clothing to be used as key evidence in a murder case. (State v. Knapp)

That statement is legally incorrect, it is misleading, and it is an affront to our heritage.

What Gableman and Farrow ignore is that our criminal justice system starts with a very simple premise. It is what separates us from the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans.

Every defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The rights in question are those of all citizens, not criminals.  These are the rights of defendants in criminal cases.

Tragically as we have learned over the years, many people are wrongfully charged, and there are others who were convicted who were innocent. Some of them are your friends, neighbors, and family.

This is the kind if incendiary rhetoric we can expect from the opponents of Louis Butler in the coming month. This what you can expect in television ads from special interest groups who do not disclose the source of their money. This is what you can expect from organizations that take significant sums of money from out-of-state interests who refuse to reveal their identities.

In the meantime, the Gableman cabal assumes you are a criminal if you stand beside the United States Constitution.

This is the same Gableman who signed the following clean campaign pledge, which he authored:

Publicly repudiate dishonest negative ads made by independent groups against our opponent.

I guess the pledge does not apply to any dishonesty authored by the candidate's own organization.

And none of this addresses the Farrow-Gableman assertion that a Butler decision, "...provided the deciding vote to overturn a sexual predator decision by a circuit court, resulting in the release of the predator into Milwaukee County.”

The predator was never released.

Go figure what will come next from candidate Gableman who claims to be committed to honesty and fairness.

Senator Russ Feingold. Why He Is the Best

I found it on Wisopinion.com

It needs as much exposure as possible.

Russ Feingold on the New FISA Legislation

 

Republicans Push Socialist Agenda, Telephone Company Dropped From Capitalism

In yet another effort to destroy the marketplace and  capitalism, Republicans are again using government regulation to advance their social of agenda of redistributing wealth and crushing the entrepreneurial spirit.

As the United States Senate moves towards a vote on the Telephone Company Bail Out and Subsidy Bill, otherwise known as the Telephone Company Immunity Plan (FISA)*, Senator Christoper Dodd (D CT) may be the only pillar of democracy and free enterprise left in Congress.

The Bush foisted plan was simple. Enlist the phone companies to illegally turn over private records of subscribers without a warrant or a court order. Now the errant capitalists are fearful of numerous lawsuits which might cost them millions of dollars.

Rather than let the marketplace work things out, the Republicans are trying to use legislation to immunize the telephone commies companies against liability.

A bunch of self-righteous, politically-bought hypocrites who dare not talk or shoot straight.

They do not believe in the Constitution or capitalism. They believe in their own fat wallets.

Update 8:22 am: Using classical doublespeak, these treacherous termites use fancy names like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act  when they are really doing domestic spying. As noted in the comments below, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold deserves great credit for a five year struggle to protect out democracy against these Bush and Cheney lead subversives.

Laffer Laughing at Belling's Curve

The Laffer Curve suggests there is an optimal rate for government to collect taxes. It does not suggest that lower tax rates are optimal.

Mark Belling stretched the fantasy curve again. We will not waste time getting into the debate as to the flawed logic behind the thinking of the Laffer Curve. As a reminder, Arthur Laffer suggested, as noted at Investopeid.com , Laffer Curve, that:

The curve suggests that, as taxes increase from low levels, tax revenue collected by the government also increases. It also shows that tax rates increasing after a certain point (T*) would cause people not to work as hard or not at all, thereby reducing tax revenue.

In other words Mark Belling is just plain wrong when he says:

Laffer’s theory was that as tax rates declined, economic activity (and therefore income) would increase resulting in more taxes paid to government.

If you believe in this hocus-pocus, at least get it right. Laffer argues that there is an optimal point were the tax rate will result in the greatest revenue for the government.

Set the tax rate too high, and revenues decline. Set the rate to low and revenues decline.

In other words, taxes might be too low.

More misinformation from right wing Milwaukee talk radio.

Out of fairness to Mark, his analysis on Mike Dikta's attempt to help old injured football players was good. Maybe Belling should stick to sports.

Sweden Has PaintBall Guns, Invasion Imminent; Halliburton, Burger King Gets $7 Billion Contract

After eight years in office it is clear that we misunderstood George W. Bush. At first we thought he was running the student government or the fraternity house. The recent revelation that Iran's nuclear program was not restarted after suspension in 2003 leaves only one conclusion.

The Bush White House is run by thugs who plan to funnel every tax dollar they raise into the hands of Halliburton and the war profiteers with their scandalous no-bid contracts.

The entire Grover Norquist "shrink government" ploy was designed to divert their real intentions.  After all, no presidential administration in history has spent so much money, so fraudulently, so wastefully, and with such deadly results.

I don't know who thinks Bush has an ounce of credibility left, but those who do need therapy.  Badly.

As for Hallibutron or Burger King, which does not return change in real money to soldiers who purchase their products at the Iraq airport,* all of these companies need to be shaken upside down until every cent is drained from their fat wallets.

Sweden had better be careful.

*U.S. Troops Order Comfort, With Fries on the Side: Soldiers Looking for a Taste of Home Make for a Booming Business at Iraq's First Burger King

...The restaurant probably owes much of its success to its location. The sprawling, heavily fortified airport complex, the nerve center of the U.S. military's operations in Iraq, provides a captive clientele of more than 6,000 soldiers, plus contractors and other civilians. In addition, Washington dignitaries fly in and out, and all mail for U.S. forces in Iraq arrives here...

...Of course, only U.S. bills are accepted. Instead of giving coins as change, the restaurant gives out cardboard chips worth 25 cents each, redeemable at the post exchange.