Good Milwaukee Blogs For Outstate Readers

Friends in Madison and elsewhere around the state often ask about where they can turn for informed and lively commentary about Milwaukee's political culture.

Here are three solid choices, and they are over on the Blog Roll to my right (I could switch that layout, I guess!):

1. Milwaukee Rising, written by my former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel colleague Gretchen Schuldt. She has become an expert in highway spending and politicking, and the wayward ways of our highway happy regional planning commission, too.

Among her achievements: co-founding a regional anti-highway expansion coalition, CASH - - Citizens Allied for Sane Highways - - and making presentations about why its a bad idea to jam another $6 billion in new freeway lanes through Milwaukee and area neighborhoods, wetlands and commercial strips.

So her blog. and the separate online newsletter she edits for the Storyhill Neighborhood Association - - referenced at her blog - - are both valuable resources in understanding the battles over transportation planning and spending in southeastern Wisconsin.

2. I'm also a fan of Plaisted Writes. Mike Plaisted is an attorney and his focus is often on the media, especially talk radio.

If you live outside Milwaukee, it helps to understand how this ubiquitous rightwing radio media phenomena operates here, and Plaisted's blog offers solid commentary.

3. And of course, one of the granddaddies of progressive blogging - - Jay Bullock, the always readable Folkbum.

Schuldt, Bullock and Plaisted go a long way in explaining Milwaukee's political environment.