Tuesday, September 25, 2007

$17.2 Million For Nothing

Legislative inaction on the state budget has cost the taxpayers $17.2 million in salaries, fringe benefits, and other costs, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

One of the great ironies of the impasse is that, since Wisconsin's governor has virtual dictatorial control over the budget and can use his "Frankenstein Veto" to crunch the numbers however he sees fit to do so, the legislative wrangling is largely hot air. Or worse, it is the most vile kind of "bumper sticker politics" designed to put up a front of loyalty to the monied interests needed during reelection time.

It's hard to imagine a more rotten system.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Some readers might have an impulse to rebut with any number of remarks or comparisons as to what gov't might be like under Hitler or Saddam, or the pain caused by some one-horse-town Evil Sheriff. Or to be timely and mention the Myanmar monks and the seemingly greater suffering endured by those people there. They might also simultaneously 'enjoy' , as I am (not!), the cutesy journalistic smug patronising moron framing of buddhism done by people who think it's like what you see in martial arts films and consequently want to gag tho' I'm not holding my breath on that. But I'm digressing waaay too far, and your choice of the word "rotten" skirts around all that anyway.

Rotten like a vegetable that retains the outward appearance of its intended shape, a fruit about which a hurried person might think, "I'll buy that". But closer contact releases a bad smell, reveals that putrescent sliminess, inspires a revulsion infinitely more powerful than any attraction anything may originally have had.
A rottenness that stays as a 'scent memory' long after the object is gone - could I still be smelling that? can stench actually burn your nose and seem to be stuck there?
So, more rotten? Probably not.

p.s. I would like extra credit for use of the word "putrescent".