Legislators' Conservation Scorecard Released: Special "Dishonor" Mention for New Berlin's Mary Lazich

The Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters has released a comprehensive scorecard for legislators' performance in the just-concluded session.

State Sen. Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin) wins a"dishonor" explanaatory mention separate from the posted charts for having continuing to vote against the Great Lakes Compact.

The final bill was a compromise supported even by Republican legislative leaders and the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.

As has been pointed out often on this blog, Lazich was so tightly entwined with a fringe, property-rights anti-Compact movement in Ohio that she put wacky ideology over the interests of her own home city constituents and long-term Great Lakes sustainability.

New Berlin has submitted the first application for a Lake Michigan diversion allowable under the Compact: had Lazich's position prevailed, New Berlin's application, now pending, would not have been able to move forward in the review process.

Greg Kowalski puts it into perspective, here.

Nice Tribute To Former Madison Alderwoman Betty Smith

Doug Moe, late of the Capital Times and now at the State Journal, has written a nice tribute to former Madison alderwoman and Council President Betty Smith as she turns 90.

The council is a non-partisan body, of course; Betty was an open-minded, progressive Republican, and you don't see too many people like that in today's political world.

Happy Birthday, and long life, to Alderwoman Smith.

Reports Show Little Improvement Since 1996 In SEWRPC Minority Hiring

In the two-paragraph "overview" of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission's 1996-1997 Affirmative Action plan - - the first such plan that SEWRPC says it produced - - the agency twice uses the phrase "action-oriented program" to describe what it has in mind.

Using SEWRPC affirmative action reports and other documents, it would be hard after more than a decade to describe those efforts as "action-oriented," or successful.

SEWRPC divides its staff among three categories: professional, technical and clerical.

Bottom line:

Of 66 full-time positions at the agency, there is one African-American female in the clerical category, one Asian, Pacific Island male in the professional category, and one Hispanic male, one Hispanic female and one Hispanic female in the technical division.

Five of 66.

And though its seven-county territory includes heavy minority populations in the cities of Milwaukee and Racine, SEWRPC, year-in-and-year-out has hired consistently few minority employees, yet has reported few solutions to self-reported "problem areas," results from affirmative action plans or meeting trend-setting goals, according to a review of SEWRPC affirmative action plans dating to 1996.

These reports are not online.

SEWRPC was created by state statute in 1960, and is comprised of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee, Walworth, Racine and Kenosha Counties.

Additionally, there are identical or nearly identical sections and language in both the 1996-1997 document and the current, 2007-2008 plan (the 2008-2009 report is not yet available).

This suggests that the reports, with hiring data changes and other tweaks added annually, appear to be produced from templates and texts from previous years' reports, and are not dynamic annual action plans looking forward to bold goals, or reacting to poor minority hiring records with innovative solutions.

The 1996-1997 plan's Equal Employment Opportunity Policy statement was signed by then-director Kurt Bauer, the agency's first lead manager.

The 2007-2008 statement was signed by Philip Evenson, Bauer's replacement and only the agency's second executive director.

Bauer is still employed by SEWRPC as a three-quarters' time consultant as executive director emeritus, records show.

SEWRPC is headquartered in the City of Pewaukee, in Western Waukesha County.

The 1996-1997 report indicates that among its 41 professional staffers - - civil engineers, surveyors, architects, planners and other relatively specialized jobs - - there was one minority, an Asian, Pacific Islander female.

One minority of 41 professionals.

Eleven years later, the 2007-2008 report indicates that of 42 professional staffers, there was still but one minority, an Asian, Pacific Islander male.

One minority of 42 professionals - - keeping the minority statistic in the professional ranks at a steady 2%, a percentage that is insignificant, but yet manages at two to bizarrely double the actual, even more paltry raw number of one.

The 1996-1997 report shows no minority members on a 10-person clerical staff; in 2007-2008, there was a slight improvement. One minority staffer had been hired, an African-American female, among eight clerical employees.

In the technical category - - comprising draftsmen, research aides, office equipment operators and others - - this was the breakdown:

In 1996-1997, there were four minorities - - two African-American males and two American Indian females - - on a 46-member technical staff.

In 2007-2008, on a smaller, 30-person technical staff, the report says there were seven minority staffers - - at first glance suggesting a significant percentage and raw number increase in minority hiring.

But wait: Those numbers do not tell the complete story, because the reports do not differentiate between full-time and part-time employees.

In response to a follow-up question, SEWRPC indicated of the seven minority technical staffers in the 2007-2008 report, four were part-time, and only three were full-time - - one Hispanic male, one Hispanic female and one American Indian female.

None of the technical staff minorities in full-time positions were African-American, though the four minority part-time technical staffer were all African-American, SEWRPC says.

Therefore, of 66 full-time employees at SEWRPC in the 2007-2008 affirmative action report, there are actually just five minority employees at the agency - - the aforementioned, three technical staffers, the one professionals and the one clerical employee, the sole SEWRPC African-American fullitime SEWRPC staffer - - for an agency-wide, minority full-time staff level of 7.5%.

You can decide if that is an Affirmative Action success for a public agency in the greater Milwaukee area. My conclusion is at the end.

Other interesting similarities between the current year report and the first one dating back to 1996-1997:

Both contain nearly identical lists of about three dozen media, educational and community organizations to which SEWRPC says it sends job notices as part of its minority outreach action.

The only difference is that Milwaukee central city radio station WNOV was dropped from the list after the 2006-2007 report, records show.

A minority summer internship program is referenced in the 2007-2008 report as one way SEWRPC can help place minority planning and engineering students at the agency.

But the report does not repeat earlier references to a proposed public-partnership, and steering committee, to create up to 50 additional intern positions "if at least ten organizations participated," according to reports from 2001-2002 through 2005-2006.

All the SEWRPC annual affirmative action reports beginning with the 1996-1997 document cite transit deficiencies as a real or potential barrier to minority employee hiring at the agency.

Yet citing problems with parking that were affecting staff recruiting, SEWRPC purchased office space farther west from its former downtown Waukesha headquarters- - where there were some transit connections- - to the more distant Pewaukee office park location that is not on a bus line.
It made the relocation even though SEWRPC acknowledged in its 1996-1997 affirmative action report's "problem areas" section that "the time and expense of commuting to downtown Waukesha is a major disincentive to potential job applicants from Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha Counties..."

But parking problems was an issue that SEWRPC affirmatively resolved with its move from downtown Waukesha to the smaller, more isolated and whiter City of Pewaukee.

The documentation: SEWRPC's Executive Committee minutes from 2/24/00, pps. 3-4, (not online), where the committee endorsed the making of an offer to purchase the Pewaukee office building:

"The discussion also included concerns about the existing Commission offices [in the Waukesha County Historical Society], including lack of parking and the inefficient layout of the current quarters, with a special concern being expressed on the probable detrimental effect on staff recruitment.".

But the resulting relocation by SEWRPC to Pewaukee made the transit disconnect and commuting distance even worse for the agency's Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine employees and applicants.

That lack of transit service and farther location to the west was not a sufficient reason for SEWRPC to either remain in downtown Waukesha, or to find new offices, if they they were truly needed, that were closer to the region's urban core.

So here we are in 2008, with SEWRPC, a 100% taxpayer-financed public agency that provides transportation, housing, water supply, land-use and other crucial planning services to that part of Wisconsin with the largest number of minorities - - but it can't do better than finding one minority professional for its full-time staff of 66, and has but four other full-time minority employees.

If you keep urban people off the payroll, and certainly off the all-white senior staff that SEWRPC also acknowledged did not have a single City of Milwaukee resident, it should come as no surprise that SEWRPC has been following a pro-suburban, highway-building policy agenda, too.

I've been arguing on this blog and in Milwaukee newspaper op-eds and one in Waukessha, too, that SEWRPC is a bad deal for Milwaukee, a city that sent SEWRPC $400,000 in operating money this year, has no representative on the SEWRPC 21-member governing board, and whose minority residents can barely break the color barriers on the SEWRPC staff.

I believe Milwaukee needs to withdraw from SEWRPC and either create a new, urban-focused planning commission in the region with other cities, or handle its share of the region's planning tasks in house, with its planning, transportation, public works and housing staffs.

After reading through the agency's Affirmative Action reports, and seeing little that has been successfully affirmative, or action-oriented, I renew my argument here, and rest my case.

Memo To The State Patrol

Officers, and your local counterparts:

You are leaving a lot of revenue on the table, and leaving highway workers exposed to needless risks, too, by the lack of enforcement into and through construction zones from State Highway 164 in Western Waukesha County on I-94 through the Marquette Interchange.

Individual knuckleheads that still race along that stretch in excess of the posted speed limits - - dropping in spots to 45 mph - - continue to drive that way with their menacing selfishness because there's no visible speed enforcement.

I was through that corridor today, in both directions, and saw only one law enforcement vehicle with its flashers on the shoulder, and that officer appeared to be assisting a motorist with a mechanical problem.

That's certainly a correct action, but the speeding that is going from Waukesha through the Marquette Interchange is ridiculous.

If you drive the speed limit in that corridor, you won't see any traffic enforcement, but you will get a ton of dirty looks and shaken fists from motorists who think it is their God-given right to drive at 70 mph or above even with "road construction ahead" signs and orange barrels everywhere.

WisDOT is running some heart-tugging "slow down" TV commercials aimed at motorists who zoom through construction zones.

Some ticket-writing would provide a bigger safety net than some TV spots for the workers out there as the idiots scream by.

Change Is Everywhere - - Except In Highway Planning

Huge layoffs and aircraft mothballing at Midwest Airlines.

Even faster production cessation at the General Motors truck plant in Janesville.

Tract and subdivision homes losing value quicker and deeper than city or older, inner-ring suburban properties.

Spiking fuel costs are making economic waves and changing behaviors everywhere - - except in the offices of public sector agencies that plan highways and have power over transportation improvements and investments.

At the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, and the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, planners, designers and engineers continue to propose and execute highway construction projects as if gasoline still cost about half what it actually costs today.

WisDOT is forging ahead with a $1.9 billion bells-and-whistles rebuilding and expansion of I-94 from south Milwaukee to the Illinois state line.

It is using a plan recommended by SEWRPC in 2003 that used traffic projections based on gasoline costing $2.30-a-gallon, with a predicted 3% annual increase, putting it today at $2.51-a-gallon.

[I was at SEWRPC today: regular gas at the Mobil station just south of the offices there at the intersection of State highway 164 and I-94 costs $4.299-a-gallon]

The same SEWRPC-written, WisDOT-implemented plan also contains another $3.8 billion in spending throughout the SEWRPC seven-county region on more freeway rebuilding and added lanes, with a half-billion ticketed in 2012 for the Zoo Interchange west of Milwaukee.

SEWRPC's plan calls for adding 127 miles of new lanes, but did not include any rail components.

Taking its cues from SEWRPC, and incorporating its own historic disdain for any passenger rail except the federally-subsidized Amtrak system, WisDOT did choose to add them - - even though a commuter rail initiative from Milwaukee to Racine to Kenosha, parallel to the freeway segment being widened in that corridor, sits on a shelf after many years of study.

Plenty of people have worked on the commuter rail plan in good faith. That's not the problem.

It's that road-building signals coming from the top are still the priority and direction.

I know a person pretty high up in the Minnesota Department of Transportation - - the WisDOT equivalent just to our northwest - - and that person said when Jesse Ventura was elected Minnesota Governor, the law was laid down:

We're Building Light Rail In The Twin Cities, Now!

The agency was redirected from the top to get it done, and the Hiawatha system is up and running, and breaking all ridership projections.

In our largest urban area, we do not have these choices - - because our political leaders and their opinion-maker partners deny them to us.

While Governor, Tommy Thompson and then-Waukesha County Executive Dan Finley toadying to anti-city interests fomented by right-wing talk radio, blocked and vetoed light rail.

The Waukesha Freeman as we speak opposes Waukesha County even joining a regional transportation authority to rationalize area-wide transportation services because it believes it would be too much of a benefit to the City of Milwaukee.

Our bus system in Milwaukee is dying, rail is stalled, but billions are about to be spent on wider highways, with fancier exit ramps, as driving is declining.

It's a collective state and regional failure, being played out with our tax dollars, on behalf of a dying paradigm in which road contractors and their political allies are the winners at society's expense.

Cousins Center, Open Space Preserved By Cardinal Stritch University

It appears that Cardinal Stritch University may save the Cousins Center properties in St. Francis that could have fallen to developers and bulldozers.

This would be welcome news on several fronts, not the least of which is the preservation of more than 40 acres near the lakefront.

Bush Fake "Initiative" On Offshore Oil Drilling Means Nothing

Pres. Bush's executive order on offshore oil drilling means nothing, as federal law and strong opposition by Republican politicians in Florida and California still stand in the way.

W's father, George H.W. Bush signed the original ban on offshore drilling, and brother Jeb, as Florida Governor, stood with Dad on the issue.

There's A Winner In SEWRPC Renaming Search

Not long ago, the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission paid a public relations firm to craft a new name and logo - - ideas that went nowhere but, presumably, into paid invoices.

Details here, thanks to fellow blogger Gretchen Schuldt.

However, through serendipity and clever writing elsewhere, I think we have a winner in that name-game contest, but let me back up a bit, and explain:

I saw this headline - - "District lines may not be representative" - - on a Sunday Journal Sentinel column and I got giddy thinking someone else was seeing the light about SEWRPC's setup and was willing to take a few brickbats about undermining regional cooperation.

SEWRPC is made up of seven counties, some of which have less people than a handful of Milwaukee aldermanic districts, but the commission setup mandates no City of Milwaukee representation, and so on.

Then I read the first few lines of the column and all I could imagine was Julia Taylor over at the Greater Milwaukee Committee (context and links, here) pounding out a letter to the editor about these heresies:

"Dreamers and planners like to pretend the whole metropolitan area is just one, big, blissfully happy family.

"We’re not.

"The city has about as much in common with the suburbs, oftentimes, as a perch has with a pickle."

Writing like that is apt to make some people's hair catch fire or fall out.

Now, in fairness, I need to say that the column by Mike Nichols was not, after all, about SEWRPC, though Mike has beaten the drums pretty loudly for Germantown to remove itself from the regional technical college system, MATC, (he calls it the Milwaukee Area Taxing College), so there are times when he can find fault with these unrepresentative regional/taxing bodies.

Anyway: Mike's column was an analysis of the 8th State Senate District race between incumbent Republican Alberta Darling, from River Hills, and challenger Sheldon Wasserman, the Democratic State Representative from Milwaukee.

The District contains strongly Democratic and Republican territories.

SEWRPC, made up of Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee, Washington, Ozaukee, Waukesha and Walworth Counties, was created by the state legislature in 1960.

But its name is so clunky, and identity so opaque, that SEWRPC paid a public relations firm with tax dollars to suggest a new name.

The suggestion - - Regional Planning Commission of Southeastern Wisconsin - - mercifully, was never implemented, but I think Nichols has provided an inspiration that SEWRPC can have for free:

The Perch and Pickle Planning Commission, or PPPC.

Doesn't that say it all about our so-called region, with a nice alliteration thrown in as a jargon-busting bonus?

I have been to countless meetings where people do not know what the acronym "SEWRPC" stands for, or what it does.

They confuse it with the sewerage commission (MMSD) or a political action committee (PAC).

It can even be confused with a political action committee representing sewage treatment companies.

SEWRPC is, simply, a publicly-financed planning and taxing district that has a distinctly-suburban orientation, but one where Milwaukee has no role in its governance - - except to fork over a few hundred thousand dollars in property tax dollars every year that gets spent against its interests.

The commission has avoided writing a regional study about affordable housing, with problem solving recommendations, since 1975 - - but has helped the state build more freeways across the region without equivalent transit.

That leaves hemmed-in city workers fewer transportation options to get to jobs that followed development on open land, and to fewer housing options also in the sprawling suburbs, too.

Can you say "Pabst Farms," for example?

On paper, the commission 'represents' Walworth County farmers, villages like Racine County's Elmwood Park (pop. 474), lakefront estate owners in Waukesha County's (and the state's) most upscale village of Chenequa (pop. 583) - - plus low-income trailer park occupants and hundreds of thousands of renters in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha of many colors and who speak many languages.

That diversity has no representation in SEWRPC thinking, daily management, commission direction, or in the makeup of nearly the entire agency's staff.

Nichols column reminds us that every resident has an equal voice in deciding who will represent them in the politically and economically-fragmented 8th District.

That's not the case at SEWRPC's Pewaukee headquarters, where an absence of representation on the commission's board, may I say, keeps Milwaukee in a powerless pickle.

And if I can extend Nichols' metaphor (as his former editor at the Milwaukee Journal, I feel I have the right to butcher his copy one more time), where the suburbs run things from their very comfortable Western Waukesha County perch.

The one that is not even on a bus line.

That's why I suggested in a June 8th Journal Sentinel Crossroads op-ed that Milwaukee, either the city, county, or both, withdraw from SEWRPC and use the hundreds of thousands of property tax dollars they transfer annually to SEWRPC, er, the PPPC, and establish an urban-friendly planning commission.

It can have a simple name that underscores what it does and where it is:

The Milwaukee-Area Planning Commission.

County's Decline Fits Scott Walker's Private Sector And Political Preferences

Declining Parks. Declining Transit. Most County Executives would be embarrassed at these circumstances, and resulting critical editorials, but for Grover Norquist-fan Scott Walker, everything is right on schedule.

Grover Norquist is the conservative advisor preferring government shrunk so small that its remnants can be drowned in a bathtub.

Next up for Walker; state services and his 2010 run for Governor.

If you like what's happening to the once-great county parks and transit systems, then Walker is definitely your candidate.

Gov. Schwarzenegger Rips Pres. Bush On Global Warming

Righty bloggers will say Arnold is not a real Republican, but that's his party and he's California's Governor, so this has definite value.

Text and video here.

Bush Administration Snoozed, Country Suffered Repeatedly

Can January 20, 2009 somehow come more quickly so that the Bush administration can be relegated to the Department of Bad Memories?

Bush's signature image will the detached observer, flying high above flooded New Orleans, having sat paralyzed at his ranch on vacation, wondering what to do?

Asleep at the switch there, like he was when he ignored the intelligence that warned of an imminent Al Qaeda attack, then followed the Neocons into Iraq and spent a trillion dollars there, and is now going to spend and lend more to stave off massive bank and lender failures in the deregulated financial world that his thin grasp of ideology and philosophy suggested was a nifty idea.

The government is now going to lend money to two huge companies that together hold about $5.3 trillion in mortgages, many of them suspect because they were made to people who should never have been given the loans.

And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC, stepped in this weekend to takeover a giant failed California institution, IndyMac Bank, which wasn't even on the list of 90 troubled US banks, according to the New York Times.

Who is minding the store?

The more dollars printed and loaned out by the Federal Reserve, the weaker our currency becomes, and the higher the price of oil will rise, since it's calculated in these value-losing greenbacks.

Pretty dangerous territory for the US of A right now, and the buck, devalued as it is, stops at the President's desk.

George W. Bush: Worst president in our history, and we will be paying for his laziness and detachment for generations.

Gretchen Schuldt Reorganized Her Blog

Here 'tis. Everything you need to know about transportation planning and related matters here in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.

http://milwaukeerising.net/wordpress/

When You Need A Firefighter, Call The WMC

The $265 million tax break goosed through the State Supreme Court by the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and its servant, Justice Annette Ziegler, will cost the average Wisconsin family of four about $200.

Someone is going to have to fill up that $265 million hole in the state budget - - the source of revenue that comes back to municipalities and schools - - and that someone is you and yours truly.

So figure it this way: the next time you hit an unfilled pothole, or it takes an extra week for the streetlight by your house to be repaired, or the snowplow runs seem fewer this winter - - remember that a special interest got a big gob of public funding and you made up the difference.

People complain about taxes, but never want services cut.

Well, actually, that's not accurate.

What they want cut is a service that other people use, or that they believe they themselves will never want or need.

People complain about services provided to the general public, and especially to the poor, but then demand services that cost money on the back end - - after a crime has been committed, or blight has dragged down property values, or their kids' school performance has fallen.

If you are in a traffic accident, you want the police there - - now.

If your house catches fire, you want the fire department there - - immediately.

If a storm brings down a tree that blocks the street in front of your driveway, you want the public works crew there to remove it - - fast.

If the water tastes foul, or a restaurant meal makes you sick, or your neighbor has too many tenants, you want those inspectors to get to the bottom of the problem - - instantly.

These service cost money, and are costing individual property taxpayers more and more each year because business has managed to shift a greater percentage of its share of social responsibility financing to ordinary taxpayers and homeowners.

The WMC, whose members already enjoy tax breaks on manufacturing, equipment, computers and construction (through taxpayer-subsidized Industrial Revenue Bonds and Tax Increment Financing borrowings), are now getting an even bigger serving from the public trough through friendly members of the State Supreme Court.

Think of the WMC-serving Justices as flight attendants in first-class, while you're sitting in a seat designed for ten-year-olds and paying for a mini-bag of pretzels.

"Cocktail before takeoff? Hot towel? White wine, or red with dinner?"

Ziegler should have recused herself from the $265 million computer software case, but didn't.

The WMC didn't spend nearly $2 million on her 2007 campaign, and spend heavily again to get Justice-elect Michael Gableman on the Court later this year and have them step back from WMC inspired and supported cases.

Democracy and simple fairness, whether in the court house or on your annual tax bill, are in real trouble here, but people may not realize it until the firefighter or the police officer or the street repair crew they need is, at best, late arriving..

Sierra Club Backs Obama, His Energy Plan

The Sierra Club explains the difference between the Obama and McCain energy plans, and why it has endorsed Obama for President, here.

Official US Report Says ANWR Oil Savings Is 75 Cents A Barrel

The US Energy Department says that if oil were tapped in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), as Republicans and their oil industry pals are demanding, the projected savings in oil prices from this new supply would be 75 cents-a-barrel, when the oil begins to flow in ten years.

A 42-gallon barrel of crude oil converts to 19-20 gallons of gasoline, depending on the refinery, so the per-gallon savings, if passed on to motorists, would be pennies on the gallon.

And with the oil heading into the world market, much would go to China, India and other countries.

Can we get a little logic and honesty into this debate?

Conservative Cleric Addresses Global Warming

A conservative religious leader preaches against global warming. What's the right going to say?

The Great Lakes Compact Is A Win For Water Bottlers

Dave Dempsey writes another strong op-ed about the Great Lakes Compact and the failure in Wisconsin and the other Great Lakes' states to close the Compact loophole that allows for diversions of unlimited volumes of water in bottles as large as 5.7 gallons.

Closing that loophole had little support among Wisconsin legislators.

City of Franklin Is Among The "Most Growing," Says Mary Lazich

State Sen. Mary Lazich, (R-New Berlin), or whomever it is that writes her blog, announces that Franklin is one of the "most growing" communities in the state.

Sounds a bit off.

Here's the full item:

This morning, I had the privilege of participating in the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Sendik’s Fine Foods at the Shoppes of Wyndham Village in Franklin.

It was fitting the special ceremony was held under sunshine and gorgeous blue skies, as though the wonderful project was meant to come to Franklin.

I recall the first contact I had about this development when I was asked to lend support in the hope Sendik’s would help Franklin’s tax base.

I was pleased to endorse a project that will benefit consumers, taxpayers, and education in Franklin.

Congratulations go out to Mark and Mary Carstensen for making this quality development dream come true along with Franklin Mayor Tom Taylor, the Franklin Common Council and the Franklin Plan Commission for their vision.

Franklin is prosperous, one of the most growing communities in all of Wisconsin. I appreciate representing Franklin in state Senate District 28 and I wish Sendik’s, owner Tom Balisteri Jr., and the Shoppes at Wyndham Village the very best.

Immigrants Add Value

Here's a refreshing approach to that xenophobic drivel about immigrants that pours out of righty talk radio.

Antarctic Ice Melting, Even During Its Winter

Yeah, that global warming is a myth.

I heard Mr. Rush Limbaugh say so just the other day.

So why do they keep taking pictures of it

Limbaugh closed out a rant on July 9th with this spew:

"I don't believe the emissions warm the planet in the first place. I don't buy any of it. But your kids are being sold this bill of goods, folks. They are eating it up. Keep a sharp eye on them. They might soon qualify for Climate Change Delusion Syndrome."

Note: Blogger tells me this is the 2,000th post I've created since this blog began on February, 2, 2007, but hey, who's keeping score?

Post #1 had to do with Lake Michigan water, New Berlin's diversion efforts, and the relationship of water to sprawl development in Waukesha County at the expense of resources in Milwaukee and the surrounding area.

The Great Lakes Compact has passed in the interim, and Lake Michigan water may flow there from Milwaukee one day soon, but the land-use implications raised in that posting by Ald. Michael Murphy are every bit as valid today as they were on Feb. 2, 2007.

SF To Encourage Drivers' Cell Phone Usage

San Francisco thinks installing sensors transmitting parking space availability to SmartPhone owners will cut down on fights over spaces and wasteful circling the block while praying that a space opens up.

Maybe.

But if the sensors send the open signal to your SmartPhone, doesn't that encourage you to check your phone when you're behind the wheel, and then race through traffic to get the space?

Urban traffic congestion is a serious problem, but so is inattentive driving due to cellphone usage.

And do I have to get a SmartPhone now?

I just got a phone with a camera.

By the time I get a SmartPhone, we'll have light rail.

More Ammunition For A Downtown UWM Campus

UWM should look to other cities' experience laid out here, scrap that plan to put its new engineering campus in a sprawl setting in Wauwatosa, and locate the new facility in the heart of Milwaukee.

Thats's where there is housing and transit, plus cultural, entertainment and retail amenities.

Not to mention other schools and universities, too.

Local advocates have been making this case for some time.

Unconventional Wisdom: Forbes Likes Milwaukee

Don't you love it when a national business publication blows up the state's self-loathing naysayers?

This time, it's Forbes, giving Milwaukee a high ranking for young professionals.

The US Continues To Fumble Clean Air Policy

The EPA and the courts combine to keep stalled any progress on smokestack gas emissions.

It's "wait until next year."

How To Hurt Public Support For Passenger Rail?

Answer:

If you are Waukesha, forget to file the paperwork that shuts off the freight train horns.

How Big Is Your Bubble, Mr. Bush?

Regarding burst bubbles, there was tech, now housing, with banking around the corner, but not yet oil, it seems.

With 3,000 points off the Dow, and probably more to come, you have to wonder: is the Really Big Bubble actually the US economy, thought to be ever-expandable, reliable, safe and pre-eminent worldwide?

For Pres. Bush, the Herbert Hoover comparisons get more relevant.

Ziegler Hands WMC, Allies A $265 Million Tax Gift

You got excited about getting a $600 federal tax stimulus check?

Consider this:

Though the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce spent around $2 million on her 2007 State Supreme Court campaign, and also paid lawyers bringing a pivotal sales tax claim to the Court, Justice Annette Ziegler wrote the Court's 4-3 ruling released today in favor of the WMC position.

Apparently that's not a conflict of interest, which makes the Court little more than a WMC subsidiary.

The result: the WMC wins another long-term tax shift onto the backs of personal sales, property and income taxpayers, the state owes the company a $265 million refund, and with WMC-client Justice-elect Michael Gableman about to join the Court, Wisconsin taxpayers are in for a fleecing that could last decades.

The Journal Sentinel's first story about the decision is here.

The WMC is implementing a very effective plan right out of Republican strategist Grover Norquist's playbook.

He's the national organizer who favors cutting the size of the government so completely that what's left can be drowned in a bathtub.

The Republican Party and heavy-spending , so-called independent groups like the WMC have managed a takeover of the state Supreme Court, where its agents will do the bidding of big business, strip government of its ability to regulate in the common interest, and strip away its funding.

The WMC is focused on protecting business profits that preserve the growing pay gap between management and employee.

Owners and managers have less need for public services - - transit, parks, libraries, and even schools and public health services, to name but a obvious few.

The state will meet its obligation and provide the refund. It will also continue to lower taxes to sectors already exempted from sales taxes - - manufacturing, equipment, computers - - and so forth.

The rest of us will pay more, and/or have additional services cut.

At some point the WMC may discover that stripping public service financing ultimately hurts workforce education, development and retention, but right now, the WMC is only focused on its members' bonuses, stock options, dividends, golden parachutes and total compensation packages.

The bar at the Madison Club's gonna be packed today.

Madison Monastery Going Green

I heard about this project a few months ago; I really give the order credit for its ambitious goals.

Maybe their commitment will rub off on other developers who shy away from LEED certification because of upfront costs and miss the long-term and communal savings.

More Drunk Driving Tragedy On Wisconsin's Roads

This time, the victim is a world-class bicyclist, home after a successful cross-country fundraising trek.

CNN Discovers The Downside Of Canadian Tar Sand Exploitation

Readers of this blog will not find this CNN report entirely surprising.

Just remember that the spoils extracted from Alberta will be piped to Superior, WI and Whiting, IN and elsewhere in the upper Midwest for refining and shipping, so some of the environmental cost will be borne by motorists here eager to burn the product.

Stop Calling Them Freeways

A new study shows that highways don't pay for themselves.

Of course, when the same reality is applied to rail transit, the right starts yelling about "subsidies," but we don't hear the same language to describe the true costs of those free(sic)ways.

The Overhead Wire: Cool Blog Title, Solid Content

OK, so the good folks there at The Overhead Wire said something nice about my writing, but I've been a reader there for a while.

Solid site with excellent links to rail transit sites and info.

Check it out.

McCain Does Not Have A Bill Richardson Moment

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson stumbled during the early Democratic primaries when he suggested that Wisconsin send Great Lakes water to Nevada and the arid southwest.

John McCain is not making the same mistake.

Immigration Irony: McCain May Not Be A Citizen Who Can Legally Run For President

Daggone laws!

Bring back Mitt Romney.

WMC Charges Its Free Speech Violated - - In A Published Op-Ed

Bad blog headline:

This is better - - WMC Uses A Published Newspaper Column To Claim Its Free Speech Has Been Violated.

Anyway...we all need editors.

But back to the irony I am trying to communicate.

The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce alleges its free speech rights are being violated - - and makes the allegations in an op-ed published by the Capital Times, one of the accused violators, if you read between the lines of the WMC's rant.

Now if the WMC's free speech was really being violated, would its op-ed have been published?

By one of those doing the violating?

The contradictions are severe: chalk it up to some bad pizza at the WMC dining room.

Some funny commentary by Illusory Tenant.

Scott Walker's Wrecking Of County Parks Rivals His Damage To The Bus System

Scott Walker's pursuit of recognition for the worst-managed County government gets momentum with the news he has pushed funding for Milwaukee County parks near the bottom of a national ranking.

Not long ago, Milwaukee was noted as the only major bus system to show a drop in ridership - - this due to Walker's simultaneous, sabotaging cuts in routes and increases in fares - - so Walker is well on his way to winning the national county executives' annual booby prize.

His goal is to transfer that record and his open contempt for public services to state government with a run for Governor in 2010.

Assembly GOP Takes An Early Hit

Incumbent State Rep. Jeff Wood, (R-Chetek), waited until the end of the filing deadline to declare himself a candidate for re-election - - as an Independent.

That was too late for the GOP to get a party candidate on the September 9th primary ballot.

My Dad would have called that "dirty pool," and suggests a certain fear factor among Republicans that '08 is lining up as a GOP debacle.

Its Own Data Give SEWRPC That Country Club Feel

I have just finished reading the 2006-2007 annual Affirmative Action report and accompanying minority hiring data compiled by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - it’s not available on line, so the agency provided the document and others - - and frankly, I am shocked at what I read.

SEWRPC has 83 employees - - 68 full-time, 15 part-time:

Of 42 so-called professionals - - engineers, surveyors, planners and other scientific positions - - there is only one minority individual - - an Asian-Pacific Islander male.

One.

Let that sink in.

One of 42.

At a 100% publicly-financed governmental agency, authorized by a state statute. One of 42.

Of 33 so-called technical staffers (office equipment operators, “draftsmen,” research aides and others), there are nine minorities, including five African-American males, one African-American female, one Hispanic male, one Hispanic female, and one American Indian female.

Of eight clerical employees, there is one minority, an African-American female.

That's eleven of 83.

The report does not say how many of the minorities are full or part-time, but [update]: there are indications that the minority totals, principally in the "technician" category, may be influenced by the inclusion of part-timers, even interns, and if this is proven by additional information I have requested from SEWRPC, I will certainly post that.

In a June 8th op-ed in The Milwaukee Journal Sunday Crossroads section, I said SEWRPC's all-white 11-person senior management staff, along with structural and financial inequities in the agency's management and funding, were among the reasons that SEWRPC was a bad deal for the City of Milwaukee.

After some pushback from public officials support SEWRPC in its current configuration, I repeated my position and linked to the officials' statement, all here.

What is not in dispute is that City of Milwaukee taxpayers pay a disproportionate share of the agency’s operating budget without any representation on the 21-member SEWRPC board.

Milwaukee is a city of 602,000 people, and minorities make up the majority of the city’s population.

And after reading the agency’s Affirmative Action annual report (Affirmative? Action??) - - and knowing from other SEWRPC documents that these staffing patterns have remained relatively constant for years (in 2005, there were four African-Americans, two Hispanics, two Asian, Pacific Islanders, and 1 American Indian, or nine non-white staffers of 87 total) - - I am more convinced than ever that:

Milwaukee residents are institutionally dissed by SEWRPC management:

Milwaukee absolutely needs to withdraw from SEWRPC and put its annual tax dollar transfer to SEWRPC ($400,000 this current year through the county's budgeting procedures) towards a more representative, non-discriminatory and urban-focused policy planning agency.

Furthermore:

SEWRPC says in the report - - and again, this language appears in much the same form in past years’ reports - - that its Waukesha location, and the lack of transit service there are among the probable reasons that there are so few minority employees on its staff.

Well, whose fault is that?

Did the region's minority residents fill in survey forms back in 1960 when SEWRPC was created and urge the agency to locate its offices in Waukesha County?

SEWRPC even moved a few years ago from its long-time offices in downtown Waukesha to an even more remote location in an office park in Pewaukee where, as I mentioned in my Journal Sentinel op-ed, and elsewhere, it isn't even located on a bus line.

As SEWRPC gets around to noting, too.

It's enough to make your head spin, because many of the employment and commuting issues that SEWRPC itself acknowledges would never have arisen, or would have been easier to correct, if the agency had been located in Milwaukee.

Here, verbatim, is the SEWRPC description of its “problem,” and the causes:

(I’ll have more to say later about SEWRPC’s intimation that there just aren’t enough trained minority professionals from which the agency might make some hires.)

PROBLEM AREAS

“The Commission will make a concerted effort to increase the representation of nonwhites on the Commission staff in accordance with the previously stated affirmative action goals. Attainment of the nonwhite employment goals is constrained by several factors—factors which need to be considered in the formulation of the affirmative action program, set forth in the next section of this document, and in the evaluation of progress toward implementing the affirmative action plan.

“First, the Commission has found it difficult to recruit nonwhites for professional and technical staff positions owing to a lack of qualified minority applicants in the planning, engineering, earth science, and related fields. There appear to be relatively few young people of minority groups choosing these fields for their careers and securing the necessary higher education which, in many cases, involves masters degrees.

“A second factor regarding the difficulty of hiring nonwhites may be lack of public transportation. The time and expense of commuting to the Waukesha area could be a disincentive to potential job applicants from Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha Counties—particularly in view of the pay levels attendant to most of the Commission technical and clerical positions. The Commission worked with Waukesha County in 2005 to reinstate transit services between Milwaukee and Waukesha County to help fill this gap. Moving to Waukesha County in order to take a technical or clerical job at the Commission is an option which may be available to some.

“Thirdly, hiring for professional positions in general at the Commission has been limited in recent years owing to budgetary constraints, and is expected to remain limited over the next several years. This is reflected on Figure 1, which shows the distribution of the professional work force and the combined technical-clerical workforce of the Commission, by the number of years at the professional or technical-clerical level. As shown, the Commission professional staff has quite been stable over the years, with 31 professionals, or 74 percent of the professional work force, having at least five years of service; and 26 professionals, or 62 percent, having at least 10 years of service. Barring unforeseen staff attrition or a significant increase in the Commission work program, it is anticipated that the hiring for professional positions will be minimal—limited to perhaps one or two positions per year—over the next several years.”

So:

By its own accounting, there is little staff turnover, there are few new hires, and there are significant barriers to bringing minorities to jobs and employment at SEWRPC.

Meaning that the odds of changing the 48-year-old agency, as currently located and managed, into a genuinely representative workplace seems as remote for Milwaukee's minority workers as is SEWRPC's offices in Western Waukesha County.

Which is not even on a bus line.

Pitching Urbanism Is Getting Easier For John Norquist

Former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist finds $4-per-gallon gasoline is helping along his Congress for the New Urbanism.

The New York Times is listening, along with the marketplace.

For people who even enjoy (gasp!) Milwaukee, see the post below.

Stop The Presses! People Like Living In Milwaukee

There's almost a "Gee-Whiz!" feeling to this story: People like living in Milwaukee (!) and the population is holding steady (!).

This wouldn't seem so surprising if you just turned off the city-haters on right-wing talk radio and did what the people interviewed for the story are doing: enjoying the lake, Miller Park, pleasant neighborhoods and Leon's Frozen Custard.

Biofuels, Yes; Corn-Based Ethanol, No.

More support for ethanol derived from wood products, grasses - - anything but the King of Vegetables, corn.

Belling 'Defended' Summerfest For Eliminating Black Acts

During his anti-Summerfest monologue Monday in the wake of its decision to remove a violent US Army game from this year's festival, WISN-AM 1130 talker and self-described jilted Summerfest sycophant Mark Belling listed all the apparently unappreciated "water-carrying" he done for the Summerfest.

Including this odd, racially-charged bit of 'defense' for Summerfest:

"It's decision to eliminate virtually all Black groups," Belling said, in favor of acts that appealed to what he called "Oldfogeyville."

Hey, Summerfest: How's all that sitting with you?

You can hear it on his podcast, Hour Two, Part One.

Begin at the ten-minute mark, though much of the entire segment is taken up with his unhappiness with Summerfest's current management.

By the way, this is not the first time that Belling has racialized Summerfest.

Last year he used his column in The Freeman, the Waukesha daily paper, to warn parents against letting their children attend the Summerfest concert by the hip-hop artist Ludacris.

(The link to Belling's column is no longer active, but I had copied some key sentences into a blog posting: "Thanks, Summerfest. This is what we really need right now," Belling writes. "Advice to the rest of us: July 1 might not be the night you want to be hanging around the lakefront.")

There were no reported incidents of violence following the concert - - just more affirmation that Belling demagogues race for ratings and effect.

T. Boone Pickens, New Wind Power Devotee, Should Be Approached Warily

Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is getting a lot of ink and air time because he's touting wind power as an alternative to importing oil.

Well, that's fine and dandy, but remember, this is also the guy buying up water rights .

The key paragraph from that business website:

"Pickens has no qualms about charging people for water and has a ready quip for those who think it wrong to do so. “I know what people say - water’s a lot like air. Do you charge for air? ’Course not; you shouldn’t charge for water,” says he. “Well, OK, watch what happens. You won’t have any water.'”

The green Pickens loves most is money.

The G-8 Is Dinking Around With Climate Change

Putting off decisions about severe air pollution, energy waste and climate change to 2050 is hardly leadership.

I doubt I'll be around by then, but my grandchildren will know that years earlier, we failed them.

The Weaknesses Of Local Conservative Talk Radio

So it was Monday, and I was spinnin' the dial, and the afternoon shows here in Milwaukee were offering up three weaknesses in the tiresome righty talk radio format.

I. Talkers as Know-It-Alls:

Jonathan Green on 620 WTMJ-AM's 3:00 - - 6:00 p.m. drive time program "The Green House" decided to ventilate about FAA-mandated flight cancellations in April.

If you remember, the FAA had found that American, Southwest and other airlines had delayed some mandatory inspections of wiring bundles, and forced airlines to ground planes and make the required checks.

The curmudgeonly Green opined that he knew a guy who told him definitively that the FAA action took place because some bureaucrats were unfairly looking at wiring with a "micrometer," suggesting that the inspections were too strict, perhaps unnecessary.

In actuality, the inspections had been ordered two years ago; airlines like American that found their planes grounded had missed known FAA deadlines and an 18-month period during which the repairs could have been made legally.

Green probably forgot that two major airplane crashes since 1996 have been been traced, in part, to wiring problems.

Green rarely takes callers, so what he says can only be contradicted by show partner Phil Cianciola, a news guy who is usually more informed, and provides the show's humor and depth.

These disasters Green overlooked include the 1996 explosion of a TWA Boeing 747 off Long Island, NY, that killed 230 people, and a 1998 crash of a Swiss Air MD-11 in Nova Scotia that killed 229 people.

The wiring bundles implicated in those crashes were different than those that were the subject of the recent FAA enforcement action, but ask yourself:

Do you really want federal inspectors to look the other way when it comes to mandatory aviation safety inspections, especially involving parts like wiring bundles that carry electrical current?

II: Talkers As Whiners:

Mark Belling, the WISN-AM 1130 afternoon talker who competes with Green was still crying about the decision by Summerfest and the US Army to modify a killing simulator on the festival grounds after complaints from peace activists and others.

Though the controversy was over last weekend, and the Summerfest festival has closed for the season, too, Belling couldn't let it go.

He railed at Summerfest for catering more to long-haired hippies from the East Side "who don't use deodorant" than respecting Belling and his audience.

To which I only say, "Boo-Hoo."

Belling complained that he had been dissed even though he had carried a lot of water for Summerfest (his words).

He said he felt like the woman thrown over the side of the boat by a guy who was dating more than one woman, and chose the other gal. (Again, his words and simile, too).

There's nothing as pathetic as a righty talker in full victim/low-self esteem mode.

III: Talkers as Angry Middle-Aged Men: This is what so many of the hosts - - Green, Belling, Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner - - have in common.

(And hey, don't throw any age-ist labels my way: Of the bunch only Green is older than I am, and not by much.)

This Milwaukee AM righty radio crew comes across as a bunch of bitter complainers, usually with a predictable, over-lapping group of targets:

Big Guvmint, big cities, Democrats, the Journal Sentinel, and an assortment of liberals, environmentalists and other Friends of the Earth.

Station managers are making money with these interchangeable, talking parts, but the righty talk radio monotone on WTMJ and WISN, Milwaukee's two leading AM stations, has driven away a substantial percentage of the general public that doesn't define itself as ideologically right-wing.

Final thought:

I prefer Eric Von on WMCS AM 1290 on the AM band in the afternoons, but I often listen to the righty talkers so I know what right-wingers are thinking.

Affordable Housing Near Pabst Farms?

Turns out there's little affordable housing for Pabst Farms workers.

Please tell me you are not surprised to hear that.

Turns out a developer wants to build some nearby - - just a little - - and the hand-wringing has begun.uimz

Madison More Attentive To Ozone Reduction Than Milwaukee

Lee Bergquist of the Journal Sentinel produced a depressing piece - - if you're in Milwaukee, that is - - about Madison and Dane County's more aggressive community response to ozone alerts than the Milwaukee 'approach.'

In Madison, a bad air day leads to free bus rides to encourage motorists to leave their automobiles at home.

And employers offer discounted lunches to employees who also leave their cars home to cut down on emissions.

Bergquist couldn't find similar responses or initiatives here in Milwaukee - - where the air is consistently dirtier than it is in Madison.

Denver's Light Rail, Progressive Planning, Has Milwaukee Connection

Democrats convening in Denver for their 2008 Presidential Nominating Convention will see a city on the move, with light rail development, a downtown baseball stadium and other amenities.

When you're there, send your kudos to Peter Park, the city's Planning and Development Director for the last four-and-a-half-years.

Park was Milwaukee city planning director under former Mayor John O. Norquist, now the CEO at The Congress for The New Urbanism, Chicago.

The WMC Is Feeling The Heat

Fresh blog wars surround the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), with righty-bloggers aiming their Internet indignation at WMC critic Paul Soglin.

Paul's blog gets you some history.

The WMC brought all this on itself with its television spots that helped bring down sitting State Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler in April, and a year earlier, a separate ad campaign that helped put Annette Ziegler on the court.

The WMC was within its rights to back Ziegler, and Butler's opponent, Burnett County Circuit Court Judge Michael Gableman, no matter how shallow the ads or the candidates they were backing.

The WMC has been throwing its political and financial weight around for years, and surely knows that pushback can be part of the game.

Now that it's happening (disclosure: I sit on a One Wisconsin Now board, and that group also has a WMC Watch effort underway), I think it's interesting that WMC is now not enjoying the game so much.

So it goes.

Obama's Midwest Charter Plane Makes Unscheduled Landing; Did We Know Obama Was A Midwest Customer?

I first noticed the AP story about the unscheduled landing made by Barack Obama's chartered Midwest Airlines MD-80 an hour or so ago.

A couple of observations:

* Good that it was a problem easily handled by the cockpit crew.

* Interesting that Obama is chartering a type of aircraft that Midwest said it was taking out of regular service because of poor fuel economy. The MD-80's are Midwest's biggest airplanes, and can make transcontinental flights non-stop, albeit at a fuel cost premium. The company's newer B-717's have more fuel-efficient engines.

* And did I miss seeing earlier reporting that the Obama campaign was a Midwest charter customer?

Support For Great Lakes Compact Does Not Guarantee Water Policy Harmony

Editorial boards continue their push on behalf of the Great Lakes Compact as the momentum shifts from the states - - seven of eight Great Lakes states have adopted it, with Pennsylvania about to finally join the others - - to the US Congress.

The Buffalo News weighs in, here.

So far, so good, as both presumptive US presidential candidates are backing the Compact, and organized opposition does not appear on the horizon.

If I had to put down a bet, I'd say the Compact gets approved by the Congress and President in 2009 or 2010, and then the action will move to these arenas:

* States that have not passed Compact implementation rules and procedures will get busy doing so. Wisconsin has already passed its implementing language, so communities seeking diversions know what standards they have to meet and what data and commitments to conservation they need to provide in their applications.

According to the Compact, an out-of-basin community like Waukesha seeking a Great Lakes water diversion must receive approval from all the Great Lakes states.

* Activists in one or more states will push for tougher restrictions, or an outright ban, on bottled water exports, thus closing off an egregious loophole in the Compact.

Since the bottled water industry is powerful in Michigan, there could be retaliation from Michigan in the form of a diversion application denial if the applying community is in a state that moves against water bottling.

Just because the states have agreed on a Compact, and if and when it is approved by the Congress, there is no guarantee that the so-called water wars couldn't break out within the Great Lakes basin.

David Maraniss Has Written Another Great Book

On the eve of the 2008 Summer Olympic games in Beijing, China, Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and historian David Maraniss has produced an elegant perspective: Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World.

The book will be a treat for people born after that remarkable, first-ever commercially-televised Olympiad because Maraniss's story-telling and reporting skills bring the games, their personalities and layers of intrigue fully to life.

For those of us with some memory of the Rome games, the book’s interviews and documentation illuminate both the individual participants’ stories - - the emergence of Cassius Clay, the grace and guts of Decathlon champion Rafer Johnson - - and also the Cold War backstory and other '60's trends, all in wonderful detail.

In those days, beating the Soviets at everything, whether in space exploration, weapons' development or the Olympic boxing ring was a national pre-occupation.

So Maraniss gives us the news release battles between Soviet and American political leaders - - and also the often-hilarious story about our CIA's unsuccessful use of US track star David Sime at the Rome games to convince a Soviet athlete to defect.

The Olympics: those idealized, purely athletic contests only, right?

Sure.

I loved reading about the graceful, three-gold medal performance by American sprinter Wilma Rudolph, a polio survivor, that captivated athletes, spectators and reporters alike.

Her success was more broadly significant given the second-class status of women’s athletics, and the racial discrimination she and other African-American sports figures endured before the Civil Rights movement began soon thereafter to break down barriers across American society.

Maraniss brings Rudolph's medal triumphs fully alive, but it was an interview with her older sister Yvonne Rudolph that really brought it all home.

Yvonne Rudolph recalls an eight-year-old Wilma Rudolph finally shedding her leg braces to wear her first pair of regular shoes to church and delivering a speech where “everybody…cheered for her."

Maraniss's signature talent, book-after-book, is an ability to blend archival research, first-person interviews and then fresh language to connect sports, politics, race, and culture - - complex topics on their own that lesser authors would treat as separate and distinct.

That special literary architecture, that gift, is central to my favorite Maraniss books - - Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, and They Marched Into Sunlight: War And Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 - - and it's again on full display in Rome 1960.

The harsh reality of sport is that losers out-number winners, yet the also-rans complete the picture and leave their own memorable, even celebratory impressions, too.

The book is populated with losers who’d been favored to win, only to fall flat.

Or felt they were cheated by anti-American judges.

Or competed when hurt and suffered early elimination, like the deeply religious American high-jumper Joe Faust.

His story takes up just a mere five pages, and in lesser hands might have been an anecdote, or an omission altogether, but Maraniss tells us through Faust's experience a great deal about what is best in people, and the Olympic spirit.

During seven years of training, the teen-age California phenom had used each practice jump - - 100 a day - - as his private “cycle of repair,” with the crossbar an imagined crucifix over which Faust would leap “into the arms of a loving God,” wrote Maraniss.

Faust was living monastically in a Los Angeles cottage behind which he had built a makeshift jumping pit using a tattered mattress, poles and a bamboo crossbar when Maraniss tracked him down nearly fifty years after the Rome games.

“With no one watching,” Maraniss wrote, “Joe Faust was high-jumping still, with a sore knee but bounce in his step, practicing his cycle of repair, rising with penance, clearing the crucifix, absolving his sins, descending with gratitude.”

It is that kind of reporting and writing that will have readers telling their friends that they have to go out and buy this book.

Rome 1960 will prepare us for the stories and controversies likely to emerge in Beijing:

Records will fall and so will reputations.

Politicized judging will be alleged, as will cheating - - the Rome Olympics produced proof of some cyclists' doping and inklings of later-proven East German steroid abuses.

Will there be a fresh crop of disgraced track-and-field competitors this year, and by the way, are those new super high-tech swim suits a form of questionable performance enhancements, too?

And will there be a new subtext of super-power competition between US athletes and their counterparts from host-nation, gas-guzzling, air-polluting China?

Will 2008 be a broader battle of West vs. East, reminiscent of 1960's US vs. the USSR/Eastern bloc dynamics?

A personal note:

I first met David in 1973 when I was a young aide to then Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, and Maraniss was an even younger City Hall reporter for WIBA, a local radio station.

It has been a pleasure and an inspiration to have seen his career keep rising from Madison radio reporter - - and I think he even had a separate late night stint on FM radio playing what were probably albums in those days by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and "Cream" - - to Pulitzer Prize winner at The Washington Post, to an authentic American literary figure, top-rank biographer and historian.

(I was also interviewed for They Marched Into Sunlight.)

So let the 2008 games begin, and prepare yourself with Rome 1960.

I can't imagine a better summer read.

*****

Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World, is a Simon & Schuster book. It runs 496 pages and costs $26.

C.C. Sabathia's Signing Shakes The City

The Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club's post-Selig family ownership continues to make waves in the city, and in Major League baseball, with its blockbuster deal for C. C. Sabathia, the Cleveland Indians' 2007 American League Cy Young award-winning pitcher.

I love the Brewers' management's risk-taking, go-for-it mentality.

If only that approach would only rub off on so many other institutions around here still mired in yesterday's unimaginative "we've-never-done-it-that-way-before" mindset.

Massive Exodus From US Highways Predicted: Is Wisconsin Listening?

A new study predicts that $7-per-gallon gasoline would drive millions of vehicles from American highways and cause profound lifestyle shifts, not the least of which would be less demand for more new roads and lanes (highway capacity) and greater demand for transit.

Short summary, here.

Maybe gasoline won't get to $7, and maybe it will.

At least someone somewhere is thinking seriously about it, and has put together some data.

If planners at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission are doing the same thinking and number-crunching and big-picture analysis, they're keeping it to themselves.

All we can do is look at their recommendations and implemented plans:

* $1.9 billion spending about to begin on an eight-year rebuilding of I-94 between south Milwaukee and the Illinois state line, with 35 miles of new lanes in each direction.

* A widened Zoo Interchange (where State highway 45, I-94 and I-894 merge west of Milwaukee) moved to a more hurried beginning in 2012.

* About $3 billion in additional expansion and rebuilding throughout SEWRPC's seven-county region, ending in about 2025, give or take.

* An expanding gap between road-financing and revenues.

As I suggested here yesterday, there is a great need now for leaders in the public and private sectors to push SEWRPC and WisDOT to recalibrate their highway planning.

They need to formally shift away from their outmoded calculations of gasoline costing $2.30-per-gallon, with a 3% annual increase (this would put gas today at $2.51-per-gallon, which is nowhere near the still-escalating cost of $4.19), and get busy on shifting spending towards transit.

Part of the reason there is so little innovative, or even merely-reasonable reactive thinking in Wisconsin transportation policy, is the intrinsic and embedded power of the highway lobby in Wisconsin.

This money-driven coziness is historical, and bi-partisan, and it rules transportation policy planning and priority-setting in and around the Capitol.

With elected officials unlikely to seriously consider cost-cutting and alternative-planning initiatives, and with a regional planning commission without independence from WisDOT (it took $1 million from WisDOT to write the $6.5 regional highway plan - - a plan that WisDOT, the client, is now only too willing and eager to implement) - - it will fall to grassroots groups and influential editorial writers to wage a continuing campaign for less concrete and more transit spending.

Northern Counties Want Rail Hookup To Twin Cities

Douglas and Superior Counties want a high-speed passenger rail link to the Twin Cities across the state border.

Maybe our railophobics in the southern part of the state could learn a thing or two from their upnorth counterparts.

Fewer Fireworks Heard; Maybe The New Fine Schedules Worked

Kudos to Milwaukee city government for instituting tougher fine schedules for illegal fireworks.

I have no idea if more tickets were written this July 4th weekend, but I think the publicity helped tamp down the bottle-rocket launches that had made the UW-M area intolerable every Independence Day and night.

Public fireworks' displays are traditional and fun. Rattling your neighbors windows and freaking out their pets through the night is selfish.

Update: As I said in the comments section, people in the 'burbs wouldn't tolerate fireworks' disruptions, either, and The Freeman in Waukesha verifies it.

Closing The St. Lawrence Seaway Picks Up Support

The Journal Sentinel supports it, and State Rep. Sheldon Wasserman, (D-Milwaukee) agrees, too:

The St. Lawrence Seaway has brought the Great Lakes so many fish-killing invasive species that closing the waterway from the Atlantic Ocean is the smart economic thing to do.

It would have been unthinkable not that many years ago to push such a radical idea, but awareness about the fragility of the Great Lakes has grown, and their preservation is now more mainstream than ever.

Wasserman is also a candidate for the State Senate seat currently held by Republican Alberta Darling.

Need For Water Science Highlights UW-M's Value, Opportunity

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is moving ahead with its plan to establish a new school of freshwater science, building on the existing expertise it has had for years at the WATER Institute.

This spring's flooding continues to present problems that need good science - - the floodwaters are not receding - - and UW-M should already be in a position to assist.

Urban Wilderness Program Sunday at Urban Ecology Center

More good programming at the city's gem on the Milwaukee River.

Leaders' Reaction To Economic Peril Is Sadly Soporific

Thinker and writer James Howard Kuntsler tries to shake us out of our collective denial with some choice words about the perilous state of our economy: incomprehensible debt, oil overdependency, farmland loss, resource depletion, an unaffordable vehicle fleet, sprawl development, collapsing airlines, an archaic train system, and more.

As I read his essay, (and as I've said before, Kuntsler is not for the faint-hearted, but if you don't read him, you are missing out on some fearless truth-telling), here's what ran through my mind:

How can anyone in state government with a straight face justify the late-2008 launch of $1.9 billion in pubic spending on remodeling and expanding I-94 between south Milwaukee and the Illinois state line?

Why hasn't the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - the outfit that created this $6.5 billion regional freeway rebuilding and expansion debacle - - recognized reality, admitted miscalculation (error would be unthinkable) and recommended pulling back its plan because the $2.30-per-gallon gasoline price assumption upon which it was based has been shattered by gas prices that are spiking out of sight?

Why is the collective leadership and planning capacity in this area - - whether elected officials, SEWRPC, the business collaborative M-7 and/or others - - incapable of action with some urgency behind it?

Why haven't they thrown their doors open, begun to meet and seek public opinion about how to at least mitigate the widespread consequences in this new economic environment - - ramifications that are already showing up, like housing foreclosures and job losses, to mention but two of the more obvious.

Why aren't they leading some sort of coordinated, common approach to solutions to the additional demands that are coming for more public services in 2009 - - when state shared revenue to local communities will fall further - - at the same time that evaporating property values and tax bases will force more trims to budgets and problem-solving resources.

It's as if those whom we call leaders - -whether in government or the private sector - - are popping Valium when their creative thinking and organizing will be needed with unprecedented acuity by everyday citizens/taxpayers/consumers.

I'd say that July 4th was being truly recognized if I saw an energized commitment from people with their hands on the levers of power to get busier with today's realities.

Welcome "Cognitive Dissonance" Blog

Another one on our team, here.

Madison Gas Prices 26 Cents Below Milwaukee's

Recent stories indicated that the special gasoline formulation for southeastern Wisconsin adds 14 cents a gallon to the price.

So why is regular gasoline on E. Capitol Dr. in Milwaukee at $4.199, $3.999 in Lake Mills and $3.939 in Madison (the BP station on E. Washington just below the Square)?

Murphy Oil: More Clean Air Act Violations?

Having paid record fines for violations at its Superior, WI, plant, you'd think it wouldn't engage in similar behaviors in Louisiana.

Total Victory! Sykes Veers Today's Anti-Left Rant To Light Rail, Global Warming And ME!

This Summerfest brouhaha has completely unhinged Charlie Sykes.

As he closed the 10:30 a.m. segment, Charlie lapsed into a character with a lispy falsetto voice having an imaginary discussion with leftists who like drinks with little umbrellas, oppose cookouts on July 4, or, like me, are in favor of light rail.

Setting aside any effort to analyze the illogical, one thing was clear: Charlie is not a master of impersonation.Ruch Limbaugh has that particular mocking voice down pat; Charlie's needs more practice.

So from a listener's point-of-view it was an awful few minutes of radio, about on the level of high school sophomores geeking around at after-school radio club.

Summerfest Reinstates A Less-Violent Shooting Game; Talk Radio Throws A Tantrum

Talk radio is not used to losing, or accepting a compromise, and today, it's in full squawk mode.

Why?

Peace activists and others complained that family-friendly Summerfest was an inappropriate venue for a US Army's Humvee simulator that permitted young people to fire machine guns at virtual people on a screen.

So Summerfest and the Army pulled the game in favor of a modified version that kept the guns, but swapped inanimate targets for the humans.

So is everybody happy with a compromise that keeps killing images out of the festival?

Are you kidding?

Charlie Sykes is in full rant this morning, accusing Summerfest of capitulating to "moonbats."

You know these righty talkers are dealing with a little losing, as they see it, when they lapse into their programmed name-calling.

A few years ago, the right had an echo-chamber that controlled the airwaves and the Internet around here.

It's still an uneven playing field, given the incessant righty radio on both leading AM stations,WTMJ and WISN, day and night, but the other side has a few blogs and networks that can get a few results, too.

Charlie attacked Bill Christofferson for posting Summerfest's phone number and then Charlie read off the number, twice. As he had done yesterday, too to gin up calls to Summerfest in support of the killing game.

A double-standard?

And he questioned who these Veterans for Peace really were, as apparently that group had complained to Summerfest,as did Peace Action Wisconsin.

I don't know if Bill is a member of either Peace Action Wisconsin or Veterans for Peace, but I do know he served two tours during the Vietnam War as a US Marine, and I don't think any of the local righty talkers can match that.

.

Hallelujah! Aldi's Can Open A Supermarket On Blue Mound Road

The Town of Brookfield Plan Commission stuck its collective nose in the air when Aldi foods proposed a discount supermarket for Blue Mound Road, but sanity and appreciation of a bargain led the Town Board to its thumbs up instead.

Trader Joe and Aldi are controlled by the same family, so that made Brookfield's image-makers feel a little better.

To Reach A Good Outcome, A Regional Housing Plan Has To Be Wide-Open From The Beginning

The Public Policy Forum noted in a detailed 2002 study that the region's segregation was an economic drag, and that SEWRPC - - the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - could write a housing plan to help the region overcome segregation's negative brake on the economy.

Too bad no one listened, as SEWRPC last completed a housing study in 1975 - - and that took seven years from its proposal by the City of Milwaukee to publication.

Rumor has it SEWRPC is circulating a proposed work plan that calls for a housing study to be launched perhaps this year and completed by 2010-2011.

So much has changed in the housing picture in just the last year, given the subprime mortgage market meltdown, falling home prices, disappearing homeowners' equity and epidemic foreclosures.

And as SEWRPC began this spring to flesh out a potential housing study work plan, spiking gas prices threw into doubt many of the basic assumptions in SEWRPC's master, uberland use plan that has been in place while suburbia marched west towards Jefferson County and away from Milwaukee.

What's taking place now in the housing market and alongside it have come on top of other varied cultural and economic shifts since the last SEWRPC housing study - - like gentrification, Kenosha's appeal to Chicagoans, and revivals where the conventional wisdom said they couldn't happen: Milwaukee's downtown, third and fifth wards, and in the Menomonee Valley.

And there have been declines of some older suburbs, like West Allis and West Milwaukee, which had major factory tax base losses in recession that took hold in the late '70's.

More freeway lanes are being built, but driving is down, and so is Milwaukee County bus ridership. Certainly all these conditions affect the housing market, renters and homeowners.

And watershed planning is taking hold in the SEWRPC region - - another new wrinkle and opportunity that will influence economic development and every housing-related activity, too.

Writing a plan that recognizes and weaves all these factors together - - and my list is hardly definitive - - and that confronts the segregation that the Public Policy Forum study, and countless others have pointed out, will require the crafting and execution of one heckuva complicated and important plan.

SEWRPC has its own way of doing things: Work plans are drafted internally; existing plans and studies guide the crafting of new initiatives.

Advisory committees are then established which guide staff and consultants towards a finished product that must be approved by a full commission vote.

So while SEWRPC has ample data, and no doubt some planners on staff who can get a lot more, will the agency let them look at case studies and examples far-and-wide to get the best product available?

And while those internal processes are important, so is the outside game.

This plan has got to be rooted in what people think and want, not just what technical experts think and want.

Everyday experience makes everyday people expert, and nothing is more basic that housing.

SEWRPC has asked its newly-formed Environmental Justice Task Force to suggest possible appointments to a housing study advisory committee, and this is a positive thing, but I'd suggest SEWRPC go several steps further.

To ensure that this study is a genuine, no-bolds-barred examination of the region's housing history, problems and potential solutions, and the connections between housing, transportation, land-use, economic development and other large planning areas, SEWRPC should:

1. Post the draft work plan on its website. Then publicize that it is there and distribute it far and wide - - including to groups, elected officials and to regional planning agencies in Wisconsin, and nationally - - and take comments and suggestions from the public.

SEWRPC and its Environmental Justice Task Force should together review those comments.

2. Public meetings to take additional comments on the proposed work plan should be held, much like charettes and other open and welcoming participatory sessions have been held in Milwaukee, and elsewhere, in advance of the beginning of plan writing and advisory committee work.

This would define the creation of the work plan, which is also sometimes called the scope of work, as a key component - - perhaps as the most important step - - in the development and writing of the overall plan itself.

That is because it would define the public's participation as central from the beginning.

In that fashion, SEWRPC could demonstrate that it is determined to make up for a nearly 40-year silence of major work on the region's housing issues with a bold and comprehensive approach from the beginning.

Yes - - this might add a few months to the study's beginning, but it also might produce a quicker final product - - because so much of the focus would have been clear intentionally from the outset, making buy-in and acceptance by taxpayers, businesses and government at the end much easier.

And after four decades, what's another month or two?

Hard Times For Newspapers, Here And Elsewhere

Big cuts at the L.A. Times and Journal Sentinel announced on the same day.

Most interesting piece of the story is that a large number of pages at the LA Times are being eliminated because with the economic downturn there are fewer ads, and readers are complaining there's too much to read.

Wow.

Torture Techniques Used Against US Troops In Korea Now Used By...US

Do you need any more evidence that this administration is truly depraved?

Call Summerfest And Thank Them For Removing Killing Game

Give Summerfest a call at 414-273--2680 and thank them for removing the Army's killing game from the grounds. I just called. It takes but a minute.

It was inappropriate to begin with, but good for Summerfest to remove it.

What Does Milwaukee County Expect From Its Hefty Annual Payment To SEWRPC?

In its 2007 annual budget, Milwaukee County transferred $845,525 to the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, making up 36% of SEWRPC's 2008 annual operating budget, records show.

Grants, contracts and other payments bring the 2008 SEWRPC budget to more than $7 million - - all from public entities.

SEWRPC is comprised of seven counties; Milwaukee County's payment is by far the largest among the seven.

As I've noted many times on this blog, and in op-eds, City of Milwaukee property taxpayers accounted for about 48% of that payment, or just over $400,000 - - and though it has no representation on the SEWRPC board of 21 commissioners, the City of Milwaukee residents' $400,000 payment exceeds the individual county payments from five of the other seven SEWRPC counties (only Waukesha County's is higher).

Each of the seven counties has three seats on the SEWRPC board.

What does Milwaukee County ask for in return for that annual payment on behalf of county taxpayers, among them city residents who make up about two-thirds of the county population?

If SEWRPC were an $845,000 consultant or vendor to the county, or a $400,000 consultant or vendor to the city, wouldn't there be basic contract performance to be documented, and delivered?

Wouldn't there be diversity and affirmative action standards to be met and detailed, and penalties, perhaps cancellation, if that performance were fumbled?

According to SEWRPC, there are no minorities or City of Milwaukee residents on SEWRPC's 11-member management team.

This is not a new situation surrounding these key SEWRPC staff positions.

It's time for Milwaukee County government, on behalf of the city and county taxpayers who are paying the biggest share of the freight out at SEWRPC, to begin to hold the agency more accountable for how it spends public dollars and whom it hires to manage them.

Dave Dempsey Goes After Michigan's Water Bottlers

In a tightly-written and compelling op-ed in the Detroit Free Press, author and activist Dave Dempsey takes the Michigan legislature to task for continuing to enable water bottlers to take the states' waters and divert them in unlimited amounts - - in bottles.

The so-called bottled-water exemption is among the biggest loopholes in the Great Lakes Compact, inserted there during the eight-state, two-country negotiations that created the draft compact in 2005.

As Dempsey points out, there are multiple controls on diversions of water in pipes, but as long as the bottles are no larger than 5.7 gallons each, Nestle and others can remove as much Great Lakes water as they want.

Bottling is a powerful industry in Michigan because nearly the entire State of Michigan is in the Great Lakes basin, so the source is relatively plentiful.

That's hardly an excuse to waste it, but that's the unfolding story in Michigan, which just approved the Compact and companion legislation that industry weakened substantially so it could continue its easy access to the state's water supplies.

Expect this all to go to the courts.

Summerfest Cancels Killing Simulator

Folks in Summerfest management must have been helping themselves to generous freebies at the beer tents to have forgotten their new commitment to family entertainment when they allowed the Army to set up a Humvee simulator from which kids could shoot life-size people on a screen.

Congrats to Peace Action Wisconsin for urging Summerfest to come to its senses.

We await the loud squawk from right-wing talk radio/bloggers/politicos...

Michael Savage Knows His Rotten Tomatoes

There's news today that tomatoes may not be the culprit in the national salmonella outbreak.

I doubt that, and I think this is more liberal bias in media, because Dr. Michael Savage told his 'nation' about two weeks ago that it was definitely Mexican tomatoes that caused the outbreak.

Paul Hayes, SEWRPC Advocate, Defends Agency

Paul Hayes, the Milwaukee Journal's former environmental reporter, wrote an op-ed for the Journal Sentinel's Crossroads on June 29th that is in support of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, (SEWRPC), and I am happy to post a link to it, here.

It is essentially a response to a Crossroads op-ed I wrote on June 8th, linked here.

I have known Paul for a long time, as we both worked at the long-gone Journal.

He has a commanding voice in environmental reporting; the history of SEWRPC he is writing for the agency that he mentioned in his op-ed will be rich in detail and value.

I understand that Paul is coming at the SEWRPC debate from a different perspective than mine, and I'm fine with that. It's a disagreement.

And I'm raising issues with the agency's direction and priorities and management, not with individual staffers' technical work or expertise.

I believe that the City of Milwaukee's lack of representation on the Commission board - - which is a failing of the state law that created it, not of the agency - - is a severe problem that constitutes taxation without representation.

Without a constant and internal pro-city, pro-urban, Milwaukee-immersed perspective, SEWRPC has not been pushed to make Milwaukee issues the high priority they need and should be if regional cooperation and regionalism are going to have genuine and inclusive meaning.

Not has SEWRPC focused on making Milwaukee/minorities hires for top jobs, or made meaningful minority participation on its advisory committees a priority, either.

Examples?

The water supply advisory committee has 32 members, of which but one is a minority (Hispanic) individual;

No minority individual or City of Milwaukee resident is a member of the management staff, yet Milwaukee County pays the largest share among the seven SEWRPC counties to the agency's annual operating budget.

SEWRPC has not completed a regional housing study since 1975 - - and that one had its origins in the 60's. Housing is integral to land use, transportation, job creation and other planning and quality-of-life basics.
The freeway expansion plan written by SEWRPC, and being implemented by the state department of transportation contains no transit spending in, or parallel to, the freeway corridors.

I'm not talking about transit plans that are written and sit on shelves without clients or advocacy.

I'm talking studies that are moved to implementation.

Excising transit from that study was a short-sighted decision rooted in a one-dimensional mind-set when the recommendations were made - - and in the light of gas price spikes, a decision somewhere between serious and calamitous, especially for low-income people or those without automobiles.

These gaps and orientations and preferences are long-standing at the agency, and I see no urgency on the part of SEWRPC management to embrace a new ways of doing things.

One final note:

I did not propose terminating the agency.

I proposed that the City and or the County of Milwaukee use their shares of the agency's operating funding they provide automatically from local property taxes to create a new agency to partner with SEWRPC to change the definitions and dynamics of regionalism and planning in this part of the state.

Perhaps other jurisdictions with urban populations would care to join in.

It was meant as a constructive and creative suggestion, and I hope this discussion keeps on going with a conclusion that reforms SEWRPC and makes planning a better deal for Milwaukee.

A new agency is the best way to do that, in my opinion.