Welcome, if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or subscribe to our email newsletter. Thanks for visiting!

… The Wisconsin Minimum Markup law!  Stop it today by calling Governor Doyle at 608-266-1212.  For the full scoop, check out this video:

Scott McCallum, meet Gordon Brown. A Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Mr. Brown’s reputation as chancellor of the exchequer was based on strong global growth. But while the world boomed, Mr. Brown spent. Since 2000, Britain has been the second-most profligate country of the 30-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, topped only by South Korea. British public spending since 2000 has risen by 7.7 percentage points of GDP while key EU members such as Germany, Austria, the Nordic countries, Greece and Spain all have managed to hold their spending below the growth of their economies.

These massive transfers from the market to the state have resulted in decelerating productivity growth and a worsening fiscal position. In every budget, Mr. Brown presented borrowing forecasts that were then missed. So every budget he would have to find new ways to tighten the squeeze on the tax base. It couldn’t last.

A story as old as time (well, not really, but you get the point). The economy is good, and a popular incumbent, Tommy Thompson or Tony Blair, is able to ride the good times with greater spending and tax cuts. Then along come bad times, and the money dries up, and the spending commitments are still coming due. In both cases, the incumbent had since extricated himself, and his successor is punished by voters for the deficits. We’ll have to see if Barbara Lawton loses to Scott Walker for similar reasons.

As we know from the coverage of today’s swearing in of Milwaukee’s new police chief, crime is one of the City’s biggest problems, if not “the” biggest problem. Marquette is touched by the problem of crime in Milwaukee: it affects the school’s reputation and the experience of students for the duration of their academic career.

It particularly affects the lady-folk on campus, traditionally a bigger target for violence from the more sinister citizens of Milwaukee. The Department of Public Safety does its part to protect all students, but they cannot be everywhere, all the time. (Preventing daytime kidnappings on 16th and Wells, for example).

In an ideal world, as many law-abiding, trained Marquette women who were comfortable bearing arms as possible would be packing heat. Unfortunately, Jim Doyle and the Democrat Party of Wisconsin stand in the way of the plain language of the Constitution permitting security and defense by citizens (Art 1, Sec 25).

In lieu of this, many serious feminists have worked to find ways for women to defend themselves. One development is the taser. To this end, Dana Shafman of Shieldher, Inc. is working to arm as many women as possible with the latest in taser technology with TASER C2:

The TASER® C2 is the most sophisticated personal protection system ever developed. TASER® systems are Electronic Control Devices (ECDs), which use a replaceable cartridge to deploy two small probes that are attached to the TASER® C2 by insulated conductive wires with a maximum length of 15 feet (4.5 meters).

The TASER® C2 transmits electrical pulses along the wires and into the body of the target, overstimulating the sensory and motor functions of the peripheral nervous system, causing overwhelming incapacitation.

Shafman has an ingenius marketing plan.

Announcing: SHIELDHER TASER® PARTIES. The Shieldher, Inc. organization sponsors “Taser Parties” the same way your Grandma and great aunt Betty once sponsored “Tupperware Parties.” Here, guests can learn more about how arming oneself with a taser may improve self-defense:

Thank you for your excitement about attending a Shieldher TASER® Party! While we would love to have one in every city across America immediately, we are rolling out Shieldher’s TASER® Parties city-by-city over the coming months. We plan to be in 6 states by March 2008 and hope to be in the other 34+ states by the end of 2008! It is a lofty goal but one that we are committed to for 2008. The reason for the rollout is to ensure the quality of the parties so that we can properly educate Shieldher’s clients and staff.

This is a brilliant, awesome idea. It’s too bad law-abiding women (and men) can’t arm themselves with firearms, but women can and probably should arm themselves with tasers. I think MU’s DPS should get in the game by sponsoring, if not this brand of taser, some kind of Taser Party so that interested ladies can research which brand might fit them.

If Marquette wants to continue to be serious about keeping students safe, despite any uncertain wrangling that happens down at City Hall, they ought to look to innovative ways to protect students. What better public relations tool than to tell interested students and faculty that it personally familiarizes or trains them in how to operate a taser?

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial today on the insane socialization of Wisconsin’s medical sector proposed by the socialists of the Wisconsin State Senate.

I’ll quote it in full, it’s the best succinct rebuttle you could probably find to the proposed system.

When Louis Brandeis praised the 50 states as “laboratories of democracy,” he didn’t claim that every policy experiment would work. So we hope the eyes of America will turn to Wisconsin, and the effort by Madison Democrats to make that “progressive” state a Petri dish for government-run health care.

This exercise is especially instructive, because it reveals where the “single-payer,” universal coverage folks end up. Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate have dropped the Washington pretense of incremental health-care reform and moved directly to passing a plan to insure every resident under the age of 65 in the state. And, wow, is “free” health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker. [E/A]

Read more »

Do Dem pols throw events like this for the sole reason that the Journal Sentinel will attend and write up a big puff piece on it?

As James Taranto might say, hyperbole watch!

In February, a host of Milwaukee leaders stood behind Gov. Jim Doyle to hail his “Milwaukee package,” some $80 million in initiatives to help boost the city.

On Thursday, a comparable group gathered to lash out at Assembly Republicans, slamming the demise of the package in the GOP version of the budget passed this week.

In an earlier meeting with Journal Sentinel editors and reporters, Doyle said the Assembly vote had “eviscerated” the package.

“Maybe there’s some little thing that’s left,” Doyle said. “But I don’t think so.”

The story has 27 brief paragraphs. Of them, 13 are direct or indirect quotes from Democrats while 7 are direct or indirect quotes from Republicans, including this firebreather: “Milwaukee certainly will be able to survive and get by” (Gundrum); and this procedural comment about the budget: “Huebsch said one possibility would be to approve the budget in stages, as agreements are reached in each area.”

Those are quotes, mind you, and do not include the helpful “information” paragraphs that feed into Democrat talking points about what constitutes a “cut” in spending.

This map assigns states the names of other countries based on similar Gross Domestic Products (GDP).

Among the fifty states, Wisconsin’s GDP ranks #33 with about $200 billion (I think for 2006).

Which begs the question - if Wisconsin is South Africa, is Jim Doyle a white overlord? His disapproval among blacks appears to be similar!

Elizabeth “Libby” Burmaster is the superintendent of public instruction for the State of Wisconsin. She is described by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as “closely associated with Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and was strongly backed by Democrats…,” even though her office is technically non-partisan.

From Burmaster’s statement on new DPI data, quoted in the MJS this morning:
“Despite increased poverty in Wisconsin, we saw gains at nearly every grade level in mathematics and rising or stable scores for reading.”

From the MJS story:

Nationwide, poverty and lower academic performance generally are found together. Burmaster said it was notable that Wisconsin’s scores stayed steady as the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch - the general definition for poverty among schoolchildren - had increased.
This year, the DPI said, 32.45% of students who took the state tests were labeled economically disadvantaged. Three years earlier, the figure was 26.56%.

What about this great Wisconsin economy Governor Doyle is always bragging about? With his careful stewardship and leadership for our economy, shouldn’t the number of kids in poverty be down, not up six points?

That’s correct, according to a great piece published in the Seattle Times yesterday Chevron, one of the “big oil” companies often demonized by the liberal Democrats and climate alarmists “already produces 70 percent of the ethanol made in the United States.” Why does this even matter? It illuminates a dangerous cycle that is occuring (laid out below) and should shed some light on the subject for some of my liberal friends who love to “stick it to big oil”.

Any market, energy or otherwise, will always react. Companies are always looking to the future and working to build a sustained advantage. When oil companies see that they are drilling for a limited amount of product they will look for more and look farther into the future for new ways to supply energy, without governemnt intervention. The demonization of big oil and the legislation that results from it helps no one.

Here is the chain of events I find ironic and dangerous:

1. 1. Oil companies provide a crucial product, excel at it, and make a reasonable profit
2. 2. Liberals go apoplectic about pollution, even as it is spewing out of their tailpipes
3. 3. Along with farm labor lobbyists, environmental hyperbolists like Mr.Gore convince us to sink huge amounts of tax revenue into subsidies for ethanol and other alternative fuels.
4. 4. Oil companies, who are constantly spending a large portion of their profits on research and development, make 70% of US Ethanol.
5. 5. Oil companies now have more money from useless subsidies, the taxpayer takes it in the chin, our market becomes more convoluted and our business environment less competitive.

This is even happening right here in Wisconsin as Governor Dismal Jim Doyle commits this latest act of hipocrisy:

At the same time as Doyle has railed against what he has called the “excessive” profits of major oil companies, Badger State retirees with holdings in the state’s pension fund have done well by those same firms’ success.

All totaled, gains from oil company stocks in the fund amount to nearly $400 million over the past four years.
A spokesman for Doyle, who has proposed taxing big oil, said the governor isn’t bothered by SWIB’s investments in those stocks.

Just let the market be! If you believe the global warming hype, vote with your dollars, buy E85 cars or hybrids and invest in ethanol development companies. Organize with like-minded believers and buy “green” energy, solar panels, etc. We cannot support an endless system of subsidies, higher taxes and regulations that decrease our nation’s status as a competitive global marketplace.

If Gwen Moore should not be receiving the one award she’s getting from Marquette University, I wish we could give out multiple awards here at the CR Convention, there’s so many deserving recipients.

Up for CR of the Year were Nate Nelson, Tom Burton, and AJ Zahn. AJ has done the lion’s share of the work making the convention this weekend such a success - both as WI CR Secretary and as UW-SP Chair. Tom Burton is universally respected by everyone in the state, for his work at UW-Eau Claire, and for the larger Northwestern wing of the state. But Nate Nelson, ladies and gentlemen, as Ryan said, what’s there that can’t be said. The man is the CRs’ primary statewide champion of the second amendment. He has served in a variety of capacities on a variety of levels, including UWO Chapter Chair and WI CR Treasurer. His stories, both told by and about him, make a smile break out on every face. If there’s one CR in the room who’s wise and firebrand, passionate and patient, loved and respected, it’s Nate Nelson.

CR Chapter of the Year - Edgewood, new and growing, UW-Madison, a stalwart who puts on great events, and UW-Platteville, which, full disclosure, is currently my favorite CR Chapter, and has been since CPAC. Shout out to the guys at the Cattle Show!

Old Guard Award. Touching speech from AJ Zahn - thanks much. Proud to follow in the footsteps of fellow GOP3er Brian Collar, last year’s award winner.

Ted Kennedy Award Winner … Again, shout out to UW-Platteville and the guys from CPAC… I think there may be split opinions on the worthiness of my rug-cutting, but I certainly had a great time on our 4am Capitol/mall tour.

The jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me
The renegade who had it made, retrieved for a bounty

Story out of the JS today about the Federal Bureau of Investigation and trouble for one of Diamond Jim’s top fundraising cons:

Kenosha businessman Dennis Troha late Friday abruptly withdrew from the $808 million tribal casino project on which he’s invested years and millions of dollars.

The surprise move came as the FBI was investigating the thousands in campaign donations the Troha family has made to Gov. Jim Doyle.

Federal law gives Doyle veto power over any off-reservation casino in the state.

Sources said the FBI launched its probe of Troha and family members earlier this year.

And later:

Troha and 12 family members have donated $200,000 to Doyle since he first ran for governor five years ago, sometimes writing checks on the same day, campaign records show. Troha also played a role in sponsoring both of Doyle’s inauguration celebrations.

The casino deal could have earned Troha $88 million over seven years, according to records filed with the federal government as part of the Menominee tribe’s application for the casino.

Typical Diamond Jim, passing out state perks for his campaign contributers. Why would anyone expect that this would change since the election? From here, it will probably only get worse, because Diamond Jim likely won’t run for re-election again.

With the FBI on the lookout and a serious law enforcement official in the Attorney General’s office for the first time in over a decade and a half, hopefully Diamond Jim won’t be able to play games with taxpayer dollars for much longer.