Finally, a Sales Tax Vote

After years of posturing, passing the buck, and public relations fiascos, the Winnebago County Board of Supervisors last night finally took a vote on whether or not to enact a half percent increase in the county sales tax. They voted down the tax by a 10-27 vote. County Executive Mark Harris deserves much credit for submitting only one budget--a budget that included the sales tax--thus forcing the Board to go on record with a vote.

Voting against a tax increase is easy--what's difficult is finding $775,000 in cuts. As the budget deliberations proceed and Board members find that their pet county projects are headed for the chopping block, all of a sudden Harris' tax proposal may not sound like such a bad idea. Don't be surprised if it is reconsidered.

Still Cheesy After All These Years

According to Business Week Online:

"If you still think of Wisconsin as the state that churns out all that bland, industrially produced cheddar and mozzarella, you're not up on your cheeseology. In the last decade the Dairy State has become home to dozens of small producers whose innovative, handmade cheeses are racking up prestigious awards and wowing cheesemongers around the country."

Rae Vogeler For US Senate Ad

They got the idea from Bob Dylan, of course:

McCabe Interview

My interview with Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign can be found here. It's a very good summary of all that's ailing Wisconsin politics these days.

McCabe on Radio Commentary TONIGHT

Mike McCabe, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and one of the most valuable players in the movement to bring some sanity to Wisconsin politics, is my guest tonight live on Radio Commentary from 6:15 - 7:00 p.m. on WRST-FM 90.3. The show can be webstreamed live off of the WRST website. I'll place the interview online sometime over the weekend.

Kudos To The Campus Greens

As any rational person not walking in fear of Representative Steve Nass could have predicted, the appearance of Kevin Barrett at UW Oshkosh last night was somewhat anti-climactic. That should not be surprising, because when you take the McCarthyite paranoia and scapegoating out of the equation, you're left simply with a movie and a speech on a controversial topic. I actually felt sorry for the college Republicans; they were placed in the absurd position of having to stand against academic freedom and free speech--two of the most conservative values around when the word "conservative" has some real meaning. If Al Gore were president today and during 9/11, these same students and their mentors would be shouting from the rooftops about the absurdity of the 9/11 Commission Report. Barrett would be their hero.

Kudos to the campus Greens for seeing that this entire isssue is not about personality cults, partisan politics, or university public relations. They understand that legislative attempts to micromanage the university curriculum and the out of classroom statements of teachers ultimately threatens us all. They understand that the search for Truth on ANY topic becomes impossible when administrators and faculty allow themselves to be bullied and intimidated by politicians, the press, or other special interests. To think that the legislature will "leave us alone" or treat us better after Barrett is undermined and/or booted out of the System is horribly naive. Today it's Barrett, tomorrow it will be someone else (perhaps a stem cell researcher, evolutionary biologist, or prison reform advocate).

So thank you campus Greens for showing the administration and faculty that it is still possible to act with courage and integrity on a college campus.

Video The Vote!!!

First check out what Cheryl Hentz has to say about the latest Diebold source code leak.

Scientists Endorse Tom Sawyer

Too Bad there isn't a Huck Finn in the race. Anyone know if Gordon Hintz can play Tom Sawyer on air guitar?

RNC Injects Racist Appeal In TN Senate Race

How desperate are the Republicans to hold on to the US Senate? Consider the tight race between Democrat Harold Ford and Republican Bob Corker to replace Bill Frist in Tennessee. Ford is an African-American. The Republican National Committee is running an inane ad produced by an outside group that includes racist innuendo about a black man and white woman. Not only has the NAACP denounced the ad, but so has the Corker campaign, calling it "tacky, over the top and is not reflective of the kind of campaign we are running."

A racist appeal in the closing days of a tight Senate race calls to mind Jesse Helms' racist "white hands" ad run against Democrat Harvey Gantt in 1990.

Iraq: The Real Story

Excellent film made by Sean Smith, award winning war photographer for the UK Guardian. According to the Guardian, Smith "spent nearly six weeks with the 101st Division of the US army in Iraq. Watch his haunting observational film that explodes the myth around the claims that the Iraqis are preparing to take control of their own country."

Howard the Debate Ducker

I don't think a debate between Howard Dean and RNC Chair Ken Mehlman would be too exciting, but Dean thinks it would be a "gladiatorial contest for the sake of entertainment." Translation: Kenny might provoke me into raising my voice and you right wing cable goons will make "Dean goes nuts again" the dominant story heading into November 7.

Barack Obama Inc.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the only African-American in the US Senate and the latest Democratic Party "rock star," is clearly positioning himself for a spot on the 2008 presidential ticket. Ken Silverstein's "Barack Obama, Inc.: The Birth of a Washington Machine," the cover story in the November issue of Harper's(not online yet), is required reading for anyone interested in how even a decent guy like Obama gets caught up in the "web of institutionalized influence trading that afflicts official Washington"--making it highly unlikely that he would be able to put a reform program in place even if he were to get elected to the highest office in the land.

Obama indicated to Silverstein a keen awareness of the culture of official Washington (which, by the way, is the same culture of official Madison that gives us corporate shills like Coke Doyle and Pepsi Green as allegedly serious candidates for governor) and how it renders reformers impotent, yet Silverstein wonders if reform is now possible. He writes: "The question . . . is just how effective --let alone reformist--Obama's approach can be in a Washington grown hostile to reform and those who advocate it. After a quarter century when the Democratic Party to which he belongs has moved steadily to the right, and the political system in general has become thoroughly dominated by the corporate perspective, the first requirement of electoral success is now the ability to raise staggering sums of money. For Barack Obama, this means that mounting a successful career, especially one that may include a run for the presidency, cannot even be attempted without the kind of compromising and horse trading that may, in fact, render him impotent." Silverstein then shows how on a range of policy issues Obama has sided with his campaign contributors--even when it meant ending up voting with the Republicans on the class action suit "reform" bill, ethanol subsidies, and other measures.

Silverstein shows how Obama is not a sell-out as much as a product of the times: "I recall a remark made by Studs Terkel in 1980, about the liberal Republican John Anderson, who was running as an independent against Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. 'People are so tired of dealing with two-foot midgets, you give them someone two foot four and and they start proclaiming him a giant.' In the unstinting and unanimous adulation of Barack Obama today, one wonders if a similar dynamic might be at work. If so, his is less a midgetry of character than one dictated by changing context. Gone are the days when . . . the US Senate could comfortably house such men as Fred Harris (from Oklahoma, of all places), who called for the breakup of the oil, steel, and auto industries; as Wisconsin's William Proxmire . . . a crusader against big banks who neither spent nor raised campaign money; as South Dakota's George McGovern, who favored huge cuts in defense spending and a guranteed income for all Americans; as Frank Church of Idaho, who led important investigations into CIA and FBI abuses."

What we're left with, then, is an extreme form of lesser-evil politics. I don't think we're going to see real change until the Obamas of the Democrats become part of an organized effort to leave the Party, much like the Progressive revolt in the Wisconsin of the 1930s. Don't look for that to happen anytime soon.

Eisman Shines On WPR

Green Party candidate for governor Nelson Eisman was on WPR this morning, answering the same questions posed to Coke Doyle and Pepsi Green during their alleged "debate" on Friday. The interview with Eisman can be found here.

Radio Interviews With Hintz, Leschke

Friday night on WRST-FM's "Wild Eyed Radio," District 54 Assembly candidates Gordon Hintz (Democrat) and Julie Pung-Leschke (Republican) were interviewed. The interview with Hintz was conducted by Wild Eyed host Drew VanWyk and can be found here. I interviewed Pung-Leschke during the "Radio Commentary" segment of Wild Eyed. That interview can be found here.

I have to give Julie credit for her performance during the interview. Whereas Drew asks Gordon mostly softball questions, I ended up in a debate with Julie. Moreover, during our interview there were some good phone calls, but also a few worthless ones that sounded like Hintz supporters who need to get a life. Listen for yourself and make your own judgements. Overall I'd say Julie held her own.

Finally, a good use for school textbooks

Most students hate textbooks, but Republican candidate for Oklahoma State Superintendent of Schools Bill Crozier has found an extra-curricular use for them: shields to defend against bullets fired in the classroom. Read about it here.

Maguire on Academic Freedom

The other night at UW Oshkosh, a panel of professors gave their opinions on "Academic Freedom as a Form of Free Speech." Miles Maguire, a journalism professor on the campus, delivered what I thought was a brilliant statement on the topic. Acting very much like a crap detector in the tradition of the great H.L. Mencken cited in his text, Maguire exposes how the campus administration's treatment of the Kevin Barrett event has had bad consequences for academic freedom on our campus. He says in part:

The question that we have to ask ourselves is whether we believe in academic freedom in fact or merely as a convenient way of shielding ourselves from criticism.

The test has to be whether we conduct ourselves in a way that is consistent with the claims and the statements about academic freedom that our found in the institutions’ governing documents.

If we look in Chapter One of the Faculty Handbook, we see this statement:

“To be free, a university must encourage a full examination of all viewpoints, but to remain free, the institution must avoid actions which advocate a particular viewpoint.”

I don’t see how what we are doing on this panel, and the one two weeks ago on “Why People Believe Weird Things” can be squared with that statement.

Rather than encourage a full examination of Kevin Barrett’s point of view, it seems to me that we are trying to overshadow and crowd out his appearance on campus. And in doing that we are advocating a particular viewpoint about his legitimacy.

With Miles' permission, I reproduce his entire statement here.

WPR/St. Norbert Poll Results

The latest WPR/St. Nortbert College poll has Jim "Coke" Doyle leading Mark "Pepsi" Green by a 51-38 margin. Since neither Coke nor Pepsi and their establishment sponsors would let Nelson "Clean Water" Eisman in the debates, he polls at only 1%.

The attorney general race seems closer than it should be, with Falk ahead of Van Hollen by a 44-38 margin with 12% unsure and 7% claiming to support another candidate (McGruff the crime dog, perhaps?).

On the referendum questions, bringing the death penalty back is currently favored by a 50-45 margin. The "yes" vote on the marriage amendment is ahead 51-44.

I think it's significant that the poll does not reach cell phone users, meaning that there is probably not an accurate read for the 18-40 year old age group. True, that group will probably not vote in high numbers anyway, but on the death penalty and marriage amendment they could be the swing.

Yesterday, all Paul's troubles seemed so far away

This just in here at the T2T celebrity gossip desk: Sir Paul McCartney's estranged wife Heather Mills is accusing the former Beatle of a range of domestic abuses which include lunging at and cutting her with a snapped-off wine glass.

Moon Rocks

Click Here for a Jason Moon Peace Day folk concert. Click here for a radio interview I did with Jason some time back.

Modern Political Debate

Andrew Sullivan on his blog today says this today about a Monty Python bit: "If you've ever despaired at a blizzard of inane, contradictory sound-bites that passes for political debate on cable news, then this classic Monty Python sketch is for you. It's two and a half minutes in the argument clinic. As fresh as the day it was first broadcast":