Posts filed under 'Politics'
Spivak and Bice’s latest post at Spiceblog subtly implies that Rep. Scott Gudnerson might have a few conflicts of interest because he’s the owner of a liquor and sporting goods store in Wind Lake.
(Let’s set aside the oddness of that particular combination for now.)
This goes along with the basic assumption that any businessperson who is also a politician MUST be beset by conflicts of interest.
It is true that every once and a while a legislator who is also a businessperson will end up voting on something that could have an effect on his or her business.
But let’s look at the alternative. Most legislators are less likely to be businesspeople and more likely to be lawyers.
Question: How do lawyers make their living?
Answer: Interpretting and manipulating laws.
Question: What do legislators do every day?
Answer: Make laws.
Seems to me that legislators who are lawyers have a conflict of interest every single time they vote
Which would I prefer as a legislator?
I’m not conflicted at all.
Give me the businessperson every single time.
January 27th, 2006
Watchdog Milwaukee just posted a viscious personal attack on Charlie Sykes .
I’ve never met Charlie Sykes face-to-face.
I don’t really listen to him on the radio. (I’m an NPR fan.)
And I don’t agree with everything he says.
But I don’t think anyone deserves the ugly personal assault made by Jim McGuigan in this post.
In it, viagra sale Mr. McGulgan says, “Honor, integrity and fidelity are key to who I am. ”
Right after he calls Mr. Sykes a “pig,” a “coward,” and a “scumbag.”
Try as I might, I just can’t see anything honorable in that at all.
January 26th, 2006
You say Delay.
And I say Gary.
You say Jensen.
And I say Thompson.
Delay! Gary! Jensen! Thompson!
Let’s call the whole thing Abramoff.
Neither side has the high ground folks. Try to remember that when you’re throwing stones.
January 26th, 2006
If a United States law enforcement agency has a warrant to wiretap, cialis sale sovaldi isn’t that warrant normally aimed at just one of the two parties in the conversation?
1.) Doesn’t the use of that warrant ALWAYS violate the non-targeted parties’ right not to be listened to?
Don’t we do that pretty much all the time?
2.) Isn’t the United States government justified in listening to ANY foreign communication they can intercept in a time of war?
Did we need warrants to break the Japanese and German codes in WW2? Did we get a warrant to tap into the Soviet Union’s undersea communications cables during the cold war?
3.) Don’t the vast majority of these warrantless wiretaps involve listening to foreign parties (which we have an unlimited “right” to listen to) talking to people inside the U.S. (who are analogous to the innocent second party in any wiretap situation)?
Can someone explain to me what the problem is? (I’m not being rhetorical, I just don’t see it.)
January 25th, 2006
I love it when people blame guns for crime.
It’s even better when someone like Gregory Stanford of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel finds a way to blame guns AND America at the same time.
In an column entitled “Our deadly exports: Guns, viagra canada recipe violence and homicides”, cialis Stanford basically says Toronto’s elevated homicide rate in 2005 is our fault.
(To be fair, Gregory isn’t the first one to try to blame the evil United States for Toronto’s problems. Toronto Mayor David Miller himself laid the blame on our doorstep when he said, “The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto.”)
I have a question for Mr. Stanford (and Mayor Miller, for that matter): why do you keep blaming guns (and America), but not the young black men who are the ones committing the shootings?
I’m aware that the above statement is inflammatory.
And, whether you believe it or not, I’m not a racist.
I’m a realist.
And I can do the numbers:
Let’s start with the disingenious assertion that guns cause violent crime.
According to a BBC report there are approximately 200 MILLION guns in the United States.
The FBI estimated that there were around 10,242 murders committed with guns in the year 2000.
Do the math.
That means 0.005121 percent of the guns in the United States were used in a murder that year.
Take a moment to digest that number.
If guns were the (or even a) root cause of homicide, wouldn’t more than .005 percent of them lead to a murder?
Or course they didn’t, because 99.99 percent of guns in America are owned by responsible, law-abiding people.
Now let’s take a look at the numbers that really tell us what’s going on in Toronto (and Milwaukee for that matter):
Staff Inspector Brian Raybould, head of the Toronto police homicide squad and a 36-year veteran of the Toronto police force, was quoted in the Buffalo News saying that 90 percent of his city’s shooting deaths are gang-related and are mostly “young black men shooting young black men.”
According to this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel graphic, 75% of the 122 people killed in Milwaukee in 2005 were black.
Because murders are almost always between members of the same race, I can only assume this means that 3 out of every 4 murders in Milwaukee in 2005 were commited by a black man.
(I have to make an assumption because an internet search turned up not a SINGLE statistic about how many of the killers in Milwaukee in 2005 were black. Note to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: you’re not doing the community a favor by trying to hide the truth about what’s going on in the inner city. If we don’t start by identifying a problem, we have no hope of fixing it.)
I have to say, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that young black men are commiting the majority of murders in Milwaukee given that even African-American columnist Eugene Kane admits as much in this article and in this one.
In 2002, even the U.S. Department of Justice stated that blacks were 7 times more likely than whites to commit a homicide .
Does all this mean that I think blacks are evil or more prone to violence as a race?
Emphatically no.
I believe there are cultural issues inside and outside of the black community that need to be addressed if we are going to end the violence.
But one thing we KNOW will not fix the problem is blaming the guns instead of the people who pull the triggers.
Gun control does NOT stop gun-related violence. Washington D.C. has the most restrictive gun law in the country and it hasn’t made it a safer place to live.
Thanks to Governor Jim Doyle, Wisconsin continues to deny its law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms and yet the homicide rate in Milwaukee still skyrocketed.
Guns don’t cause violence and I’m sick of people whose cause it is to outlaw guns using the existence of violence as their justification.
We will never solve this problem as long as people like Gregory Stanford and the Mayor of Toronto insist on targeting guns and refuse to set their sites on the real issues that trigger violence in the inner cities.
January 23rd, 2006
Last night Jim Doyle said, cialis shop “An agenda that says manufacturing jobs are not a thing of the past but the heart of our future.”
Manufacturing is the heart of our future?
Biotech? Sure.
Nanotechnology? Could be.
Video Game Design? Why not?
But manufacturing?
As in bending steel?
Belching smoke?
And competing with a couple billion hungry Chinese?
There’s nothing wrong with manufacturing as a component of our economy.
But anyone who says it should be the heart of our future sounds like they aren’t using their brain in the present.
January 18th, 2006
It feels like everywhere I turn there’s a glowing story about Brokeback Mountain.
And now it just won viagra medicine 0, buy viagra 5142956.story?coll=ny-entertainment-headlines”>Four Golden Globes.
(Two additional Golden Globes were given to people for playing a gay writer. And a transexual man. I have nothing against gays, writers, or transexuals, but isn’t enough enough?)
Doesn’t it seem like the movie critics, the press, and the award shows are pushing this movie a little too hard?
Brokeback Mountain is NOT a breakaway cross-over hit.
To date it’s made $32,074,517.
In the same six week period Memoirs of a Geisha made $47,314,182, but no one is calling it a hit.
Hell, Fun With Dick & Jane made $94,245,955 in just FOUR weeks.
In the exact same six week period that Brokeback Mountain has been out, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe made $264,020,859!
Now THAT is a cross-over, breakaway hit.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against gays AND I’m an agnostic not a Christian, but I find it funny that there’s been so much commentary about what Brokeback Mountain’s “success” means and very little talk about the significance of Narnia’s truly huge box office.
January 18th, 2006
I sort of wish the Supreme Court had struck down this law.
Because “Supreme Court kills Oregon Suicide Law” is a much better headline.
(Actually, best viagra case from a states’ rights position, sildenafil viagra I think it was a good decision. I’m a little disturbed that Thomas, Roberts, and Scalia dissented.)
January 17th, 2006
If Chile can elect a female leader, discount viagra levitra why can’t we?
I think it’s because the liberal press keeps pushing women like Hillary Rodham Clinton on us instead of women like Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
I don’t think we’re against having a woman for President. I think we’re against having the wrong woman as President.
January 15th, 2006
A couple of conservative bloggers…
…Musings of a Thoughtful Conservative and Right off the Shore…
… have already expressed amazement that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote an editorial in favor of Judge Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
So I went and read it.
And, cialis usa treatment it sounds less like an endorsement, then a scolding:
“He is a conservative jurist. This is what the electorate, albeit narrowly, indicated it wanted when it re-elected George W. Bush as president in 2004. There can be no reasonable claim that voters did not know this to be a likely consequence of their votes.”
They may as well have just said, “that’ll teach you to vote for the bad guys. Maybe next time, you’ll listen to us.”
The editorial goes on to say:
“Alito – and Roberts – could disappoint, of course, and renege on their own claims of open-mindedness. If they do, they will have betrayed a trust to the American people.”
Interesting.
It seems to me that if their first point is true…
“He is a conservative jurist. This is what the electorate, albeit narrowly, indicated it wanted when it re-elected George W. Bush as president in 2004.”
…then the only way John Roberts and Samuel Alito could betray “a trust to the American people” is if they DON’T vote to reverse Roe Vs. Wade.
January 15th, 2006
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